Setting up the FreeBSD server

Well, I’ll tell you one thing - FreeBSD does NOT hold your hand like Linux does. This has had both frustrating and enlightening effects. On the one hand, it’s been very annoying to have to deal with all manner of config files I never had to deal with before. Apache and MySQL didn’t just work as soon as I compiled them. Apache needed me to change the server’s name to an name actually resolvable and MySQL needed me to chown the directory it had installed to. Webalizer wasn’t automatically installed and I had to manually configure it.

On the other hand, all of this configuration file editing has given me a deeper understanding of my www software as well as a much finer degree of control. I had no idea webalizer was so configurable! I thought I had to stick to the defaults they had given me! So this is turning out to be both a very fun and a very frustrating process. However, it continues to move along - so that’s good!