How I set up FreeBSD

I recently reclaimed a laptop and provisioned it for use as a development machine. For reference, these are the steps I took.

OS installation

Copy a new ISO onto a USB stick:

dd if=FreeBSD-12.0-RELEASE-amd64-mini-memstick.img of=/dev/<the usb device> bs=1M

Then boot from this and go through the install. Most options are defaults but I choose the following:

• partitions: ZFS on root, encrypted root
• services: enable moused, ssh, powerd, ntpd
• hardening: disable sendmail, clear tmp

Create a user and ensure it is in the additional ‘wheel’, ‘operator’, and ‘video’ groups.

Initial configuration

Once rebooted do the following to get started (not always in this order):

• Run freebsd-update fetch install to get the latest release. Reboot after this.
• Update /etc/pkg/FreeBSD.conf to use latest instead of quarterly.
• Add any local package repositories to /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/.
• Run pkg upgrade which will install ‘pkg’ and do an update.

For accelerated graphics the intel DRM module is installed and loaded at boot:

doas pkg install drm-kmod
sysrc kld_list+="/boot/modules/i915kms.ko coretemp"

Enable the following sysctl and powerd flags for suspend etc.:

echo 'hw.acpi.lid_switch_state=S3' >> /etc/sysctl.conf
sysrc powerd_flags="-N"

Shorten the boot time:

echo 'autoboot_delay="0"' >> /boot/loader.conf
echo 'hw.usb.no_boot_wait="1"' >> /boot/loader.conf

Enable CPU micro-code updates:

pkg install devcpu-data
echo 'cpu_microcode_load="YES"' >> /boot/loader.conf
echo 'cpu_microcode_name="/boot/firmware/intel-ucode.bin"' >> /boot/loader.conf

Enable controlling screen brightness:

pkg install intel_backlight
echo 'acpi_video_load="YES"' >> /boot/loader.conf
cp /usr/local/share/examples/intel-backlight/acpi-video-intel-backlight.conf /usr/local/etc/devd/

Install some basic packages:

pkg install git tmux rsync

Aggregate the wifi and ethernet links:

sysrc wlans_iwm0="wlan0"
sysrc ifconfig_wlan0="WPA"
sysrc ifconfig_em0="ether $(ifconfig wlan0 ether |awk '/ether/ {print $2}')"
sysrc cloned_interfaces="lagg0"
sysrc ifconfig_lagg0="laggproto failover laggport em0 laggport wlan0 DHCP"

Personalisation

At this stage sync and configure some basic tools. Start with a known set of files that are on every machine. These are usually synchronised via syncthing or rsync but for the initial install they are copied from a central file server or cloned from git:

Copy personal documents:

rsync -Pa felix@zappa:Documents/ ~/Documents/

Install SSH keys from the above documents:

cp ~/Documents/ssh/felix/id_ed25519* ~/.ssh/
ssh-add

Clone password store and dotfiles:

git clone git@<password url> ~/.password-store
git clone git@src.userspace.com.au:felix/dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles

Run dotfile sync script to get all current configs and settings:

~/.dotfiles/bin/dm

Package installation

Install minimal set of packages:

pkg install git tmux rsync password-store
pkg install sway alacritty # for wayland or,
pkg install i3 xorg xterm # for x11
pkg install dmenu i3status
pkg install firefox libreoffice
pkg install go texlive-full
pkg install neovim neomutt

Desktop configuration

If using Sway there are a few required tweaks.

First is access to the /dev/input/* devices which by default are only accessible by root. Is a proper fix for this? Add the following to /etc/devfs.rules so they are usable by the video group (which is needed to run sway anyway):

[localrules=10]
add path 'input/*' mode 0660 group video

and then add devfs_system_ruleset="localrules" to /etc/rc.conf.