Installing GhostBSD into existing BE

Questions about the installation of FreeBSD
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Robiww
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2019 5:08 pm

Installing GhostBSD into existing BE

Post by Robiww »

I'm new to Ghost BSD but have been using PC-BSD and TrueOS (with an additional KDE install) for some years. Now with the new Trident that doesn't work, I just get error messages and there seems to be no solving on this issue. So I'm thinking of moving to GhostBSD but I have a few questions before installing.

1. Does GhostBSD use the same commands as PC-BSD/TrueOS? I'm specially thinking of the backup reversal command for e-mails, address book, bookmarks and settings 'tar xvf backup.tar'.
2. Can GhostBSD be installed into an existing ZFS BE so I can find my HOME folder? I would like to avoid having to format the drive and with this erase the files that are stored on the drive.
3. I understand GhostBSD uses Mate as DE?
4. I saw on a screenshot that there are different Panel layouts like Mate Desktop, Windowy, Element, Classy, Purity and Netbook. Are those different DE's or just variants of Mate?

That's all for now.
Thanks.
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ericbsd
Developer
Posts: 2052
Joined: Mon Nov 19, 2012 7:54 pm

Re: Installing GhostBSD into existing BE

Post by ericbsd »

1. GhostBSD uses all the same command than TrueOS.
2. No, so far GhostBSD does not support in an already installed in a ZFS BE.
3. Yes, that is right.
3. It is just different premade Mate desktop layout kinda like Ubuntu MATE.
Robiww
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2019 5:08 pm

Re: Installing GhostBSD into existing BE

Post by Robiww »

Thanks for the reply and some update.

I tested out GhostBSD on an external test HDD via USB. I think the file manager, menus and so looks kinda nice, but the Mate DE seems not so flexible/dynamic, but it's possible to live with that ;)

I also noticed that I couldn't manage NTFS-drives "not possible to open", but it was no problem to open a FAT32 formatted pin (I have a NTFS-formatted USB-pin to move files larger than 4GB between computers) and I didn't get any Internet connection. However, these two issues may have been due to that I drove the system from a USB-port. Is this a correct assumption or is GhostBSD incompatible with NTFS? Otherwise it worked good and testing to roll back with the backup.tar reversal command went without any problems what so ever.

Btw, in my stationary desktop machine I have a secondary internal ZFS-formatted HDD for storage. I saw it in the installation menu, but not in the system afterwards. I could imagine that also could have been due to USB-connection. But does GhostBSD support secondary ZFS-drive?

The gain with this is that I won't loose any files if I format the system drive. But that's not possible on a laptop unless you have more than one partition. But I learned easy on that partition ZFS-drives cannot easily be done. So my laptop was the reason for question #2.

Thanks!
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