In the End

Night's raven crosses the boundary from Jabulsa to Jabulqa,

dawn rises at last, a griffon from a ruby's heart,

legions of darkness flee before the ranks of morning 

as error dissipates before Truth's face; 

the stars blush like maidens in purdah 

caught by their mothers without their veils, 

and fall, fall headlong into the Sun, as in the end 

all parts rejoin the Whole at last

–Dîvân-e Nâsir-e Khusraw, Trans. Peter Lamborn Wilson with G.R. Aavani, p. 63

Life Ultimate

"'Eternal life' is the promise of most religions, what is 'eternal life' like in Islam?" [0:00]

"In the Islamic paradise, do we lose our personality and 'merge' into some cosmic consciousness [as] some religions teach?"[5:31]

"From an Islamic point of view, how ultimately real and significant in Islamic philosophy is paradise?" [8:45]

On Time

Tonight I will link to two short texts which relate to "time." Together, they are a word of warning addressing how we choose to understand our relationship with time. If there's one thing to learn from your religion, philosophy, or however you muse about over life, I really think this is close to "the big one" – the truest way to live is in the now.

... And you run and you run
To catch up with the sun
But it's sinking

Racing around
To come up behind you again

The sun is the same
In a relative way
But you're older

Shorter of breath
And one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time

Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines

Hanging on in quiet desperation
Is the English way

The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I'd something more to say ...

–From Pink Floyd, "Time," Dark Side of the Moon

We convince ourselves that life will be better after we get married, have a baby, then another. Then we're frustrated that the kids aren't old enough and we'll be more content when they are. After that, we're frustrated that we have teenagers to deal with. We'll certainly be happy when they're out of that stage. 

We tell ourselves that our life will be complete when our spouse gets his or her act together, when we get a nicer car, are able to go on a nice vacation, when we retire. 

The truth is, there's no better time to be happy than right now. If not now, when?

Your life will always be filled with challenges. It's best to admit this to yourself and decide to be happy anyway. 

One of my favorite quotes comes from Alfred D. Souza. He said, "For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, or a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life." 

This perspective has helped me to see that there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So, treasure every moment that you have and treasure it more because you shared it with someone special, special enough to spend your time with...and remember that time waits for no one.

So, stop waiting until you finish school, until you go back to school, until you lose ten pounds, until you gain ten pounds, until you have kids, until your kids leave the house, until you start work, until you retire, until you get married, until you get divorced, until Friday night, until Sunday morning, until you get a new car or home, until your car or home is paid off, until spring, until summer, until fall, until winter, until you're off welfare, until the first or fifteenth, until your song comes on, until you've had a drink, until you've sobered up, until you die, until you're born again to decide that there is no better time than right now to be happy. 

Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

–Crystal Boyd, 1997,
in Midnight Muse, 2000

Survey | A Generation in Transition: Religion, Values, and Politics among College-Age Millennials | Public Religion Research Institute

Survey | A Generation in Transition: Religion, Values, and Politics among College-Age Millennials | Public Religion Research Institute

In the Beginning Was Consciousness (Lecture by Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr)

Delivered at the Harvard Divinity School last year. Dr. Nasr discusses the epistemological changes that have occurred in recent centuries beginning in Europe, the Scientific Revolution, and the descent of true science to Scientism and the corresponding symptoms of the empty and utterly hopeless understanding of reality so frequent in the time and place in which we live. He shares his belief that, in light of some signs of change in recent decades, we are finally on the cusp of our long trajectory into intellectual darkness and back. A global future of polished hearts and awakened souls may not so distantly await.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJbASTsjxE8
 

Friday Prayers from Kazakhstan

Creating a Custom Bash Prompt for each GNOME Terminal Profile

This website does a particularly good and simple job of explaining how to set up your own custom bash prompt style in Linux. One issue that I had been having, however, is that I could not find any way to have more than one co-existing prompt style. That is, to set up each terminal profile to have its own bash prompt design. I managed to find a number of people online looking to set up multiple bash prompt styles for each of their GNOME terminal profiles, but with no answers. Thankfully, I was ultimately able to figure it out by my own trial and error.


First of all, read the instructions on http://www.linuxhelp.net/guides/bashprompt/bashprompt-print.php to learn how to set up a "PS1=..." line for your ~/.bashrc file. As you may already know, if you wish to make changes for all bash sessions, you can add such a line to the bottom of that file, or you may simply type it into a bash prompt to enable the configuration temporarily.



I will use as an example the following format, generated with the help of the website provided above:

PS1="\[\033[0;31m\]Linux\[\033[1;37m\]Box \\w"

Rather than adding this to your ~/.bashrc file and therefore modifying the prompt style of all your terminals, you can simply make a copy of your .bashrc file and make the changes to that file; call it whatever you would like (I call mine .bashrcalt).

cd 

cp .bashrc .bashrcalt

Then, in the GNOME Terminal profile settings for the specific profile you would like to work with, go to the "Title and Command" tab, check the box that says "Run a custom command instead of my shell," choose "Exit the terminal when command exits" and, for the command to run, set the following:

 bash --rcfile .bashrcalt

Now, load a GNOME Terminal session with your custom profile enabled. e.g.:

gnome-terminal --profile=the_name_of_your_profile_here

You should be viewing the bash prompt with the custom set up you configured.

Creating a fixed RAM disk in Ubuntu

Ciao lume.

A couple weeks ago I began tinkering with an operating system called Icaros, a desktop distribution of AROS, which is in turn a modern operating system designed to imitate and build upon the classic AmigaOS 3.1 environment. AROS comes with a "RAM Disk"--a fixed or dynamic partition of a computer's memory set asside to function as though it were a disk drive--loaded on the machine by default.

A RAM disk offers the benefit of storing and retrieving data more quickly than on an actual hard disk, as well as some security features thanks in part to the fact that any data stored on the disk will be removed on reboot. A RAM disk can be beneficial for numerous purposes, most commonly today to set as the location for browser cache to make visited webpages load faster (ideally on larger RAM disks with proper size limitations noted in one's browser cache settings). The use and benefit of RAM disks (which as far as I know have been around longer than permanent disk drives) will whither away with the replacement of spinning disk drives with static-state drives. For the moment, however, I found it an interesting enough concept that, despite the fact I have little to no apparent use for one, I decided to create a RAM disk that boots at each startup in Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid).

There are a few easier ways to do this which you can easily google and bing yourself. I have found, however, that what most people consider today a RAM disk are actually disks that use both physical as well as virtual memory, the latter being stored on the hard drive and thus eliminating the purpose of having a RAM disk to begin with. I also made the decision that I wanted a RAM disk of fixed size, not a dynamic one (e.g. mounting /dev/shm) which can take over up to half the system memory--I only have two gigabytes of RAM on my machine).

To do this, run:

sudo mkfs -t ext3 -q /dev/ram1 65536
sudo mkdir -p /media/ramdisk
sudo mount /dev/ram1 /media/ramdisk -o defaults,rw

(Where 65536 is the size in kilobytes, translating to an example size of 64 megabytes.)

The RAM disk should then be mounted on the desktop. To make this happen at system startup (for all users), run:

gksudo gedit /etc/rc.local

(Replace gedit with your preferred editor, replacing gksudo with the ordinary sudo command for terminal-based, non-graphical editors.)

Making sure not to add anything after the line reading exit 0, add the following to the file:

mkfs -t ext3 -q /dev/ram1 65536
mount /dev/ram1 /media/ramdisk -o defaults,rw
chmod 777 -R /media/ramdisk

A few additional tweaks: Setting the RAM disk up as an ext3 partition, a folder lost+found is created every time the RAM disk is loaded at boot-up. I personally found this annoying. As you may know, to hide a file or folder (without having to rename it) in Gnome, you must create a file named .hidden whose contents list the names of the file(s) you wish to hide and which must be stored in the same directory. To make this happen each time you log in, you can create a text file containing nothing but lost+found, name it whatever you would like, and then store it somewhere obscure. Then create a basic script which copies that file to /media/ramdisk/.hidden - The contents of the script can be as simple as:

#!/bin/bash

cp /home/user/example/hide_thing /media/ramdisk/.hidden &

Set the script to load when you log in by (System - Preferences - Startup Applications) setting the command to: /the/location/of/your/script/./the_name_of_your_script.sh


The RAM disk I set up is viewable by all users of my system including my guest account. Any files that are stored to the RAM disk can be viewed by others users by logging out and switching sessions (as long as the machine is not rebooted). I decided to create a folder called private on the RAM disk (which is automatically created every time I log in, which is only viewable only by me. To do this, add the following line to the script just shown:

mkdir /media/ramdisk/private && sleep 1s && chown YOU_USER_NAME -R /media/ramdisk/private && sleep 1s && chmod 700 -R /media/ramdisk/private &

Now all I have to do is find a use for this thing. This article will be grossly obsolete in a few months if it isn't already.

Truth and Religious Unity

From my final paper for my Ethics class.

Few doubt that our world and what we can directly perceive are but one piece of a much greater and mysterious ultimate reality. Throughout the course of human history, certain individuals, gifted in the greatest of spiritual intelligence, have by whatever cultural explanation claimed to have become conscious of this ultimate truth, and in the form of a message that the worldly around them could comprehend, founded what would become the great religions of human history as shamans, prophets, and sages. Preceding our modern world of globalization and multicultural exchange was a time when one single “grand narrative” was generally understood as the ultimate guiding truth by the vast majority of people within any given society. As John Esposito, a scholar on Islamic studies at Georgetown explains, what distinguishes the modern world from that of the past is that we are ever immersed in cultural and religious diversity explained by a new “metanarrative” of pluralism: “No single story,” he writes, “can possibly be all encompassing for all people in a given culture, especially as global culture emerges and the world’s religions are found in everyone’s home town. Diversity relativizes all stories” (Esposito 24-25). The often overwhelming perplexity that is religious diversity may itself be a reason for the modern world’s loss of tradition and even a driving force behind moral relativism. In modern times, the followers of each tradition must ask: does the diversity of the world’s religions necessarily negate their validity, and must the existence of cultural diversity necessitate moral relativism?

In his essay “The Case Against Moral Relativism,” Louis Pojman manages to construct a list of ten non-arbitrary rules of morality:

Do not kill innocent people, do not cause unnecessary pain or suffering, do not cheat or steal, keep your promises and honor your contracts, do not deprive another person of his or her freedom, do justice, treating equals equally and unequals unequally, tell the truth, help other people, at least when the cost to oneself is minimal, show gratitude for services rendered, and obey just laws (Pojman 184).

Our ability to construct a list of universal rights and wrongs matched by traditions across the globe seems in itself, at the very least, to limit the likelihood of moral relativism. However, it seems that there are some societies, such as the Kwakiutl and clans of Melanesia which reputedly embrace violence and murder as virtues and thus violate some of these principles. Perhaps, then, these may not be called universal per se. The existence of exceptions may turn what would otherwise be called universals into general tendencies at best, but it does not in any way mean that the values of differing cultures may not, nonetheless, have a common point of convergence, even a unified origin.

The common origin of world languages is the human brain. Despite the outer diversity of human languages, all languages follow systematic patterns which can be predicted by the presence of other, corresponding patterns. Each of such patterns generally occurs in one of a finite number of forms, abiding by linguistic universals. Knowing much about how nouns work in a certain language, for example, a linguist can predict with a great deal of accuracy, in accordance with documented linguistic universals, how verbs work in that same language. A proportionally small number of universals, however, are almost always violated in the grammar of any given language. Understanding, then, that language is a part of culture, the existence of universal moral principles as manifested in human culture is in fact not refuted by the existence of cultural outliers such as the Kwakiutl.

The great religions of the world, including Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Chinese religions among others, all can be said to vary extensively. On an esoteric level, however, as in the case of language, there appears to be an innate, transcendent unity from which they all mutually originate. Each tradition calls for adherence to the same principles listed by Pojman, manifested through specific cultural norms. Moreover, each tradition in its orthodox form necessitates rite of tradition as a means of social unity and as a reflection of one’s submission to a higher power through belief in the mystical and unseen. How this higher power is described, as an inactive and impersonal force of “the Buddha nature” (Esposito 25), a fatherly personification, or yet by different explanation, is an understandable cultural variance considering the magnitude and intensity behind the concept of the Divine which in its purity exists arguably quite far beyond the worldly understanding.

The existence of universal, fundamental truths, which exist regardless of change in culture across time and space, is necessary in order to make judgments of what is right and what is wrong. It is debatable as to whether these absolute truths are or are not merely the creation of mankind. Each of the great religious traditions teaches that the origin of these truths is, in fact, not the product of man’s reason, but a revelation of the Divine Truth, God in the Western tradition. Just as different languages may convey the same powerful and emotional concepts using different combinations of simple, arbitrary sounds, many of the different religious traditions of the world may express the same innate and unworldly, underlying sapience, molded in the form of the worldly externalizations and cultures on which we are dependant.

Many believe that the best way to respond to the perplexity of religious diversity is syncretism, not merely accepting truth in multiple traditions but in fact combining them into one, single tradition. This is difficult to defend, however, for two principle reasons. Any polarized distinction between what is religious and what is merely cultural is in itself an artificial construction, and so all the religious traditions in their orthodoxy intertwine faith with law, rites, and dress. It is simply impossible to merge multiple religions in all their complexities into one tradition and still give each its due. Moreover, a consciously and intentionally syncretic faith would be an artificial construction necessitated by belief in the authentic, divine revelation of the traditions before it. Each religion was founded by sages, and each came with its own traditions believed to be authentic according to the founder’s enlightenment. To follow an artificially constructed religion would be to follow a tradition that is not recognized to be authentic by any religion, and the argument that the Divine Truth is lost in so doing is easily made. One cannot fully practice two religions at the same time just as one cannot follow two paths at once, even though the two paths may converge at the end.

A belief in the transcendent unity of religions, collectively housing a single “perennial philosophy,” is one that is held by many scholars of all the major world traditions. The practice of one tradition does not in itself disprove all others, and many of even the most orthodox of each tradition hold dear to this fact. In the Islamic tradition, the Holy Quran teaches that Jews, Sabians, Christians, and anyone who believes in God and does good deeds will have "nothing to fear or regret" (5:69). Moreover, the Quran explains that "for every nation there is a messenger" (10:47), that the Quran is not a new message but merely the confirmation of previous ones (12:111), and that all divinely inspired religious traditions received their scriptures as a part of the same universal message or "Umm Al-Kitab," that is, "the Mother of the Book" (43:4).

As another example, the Hindus have always advocated the common origin and unity of different, often seemingly conflicting, traditions. Jagadguru Chandrashekarendra Saraswati explains the lack of significance of the word Hindu in his essay The Vedic Religion: "Only when there are a number of religions do they have to be identified by different names" (Saraswati 13). However, as the Jagadguru declares, there is only one religion. Similarly to the Islamic concept of the Umm Al-Kitab, he affirms:

"For all the divisions in our religion there is but one scripture—a scripture common to all—and one Godhead which is known by many names. The Vedas are the common scripture and the Godhead common to all is the Brahman. Thus we can say with finality, and without any room for doubt, that all of us belong to the same religion" (19).

Despite the fact that the Hindu vision of a single Godhead is often manifested in multiple forms, this argument mirrors the centerpiece of Islamic monotheism: "La ilaha illa Allah," there is no god but God, which is not only a command to worship none but the One, but in fact a testimonial that there exists none but the only One, and that all the gods that can be said to exist have two possibilities: either they do not truly exist, or they are actually God. What may seem exclusivist on the surface, then, is in fact innately universal and pluralistic.

In Charles Colson’s “The Volunteer at Auschwitz,” Father Kolbe sacrificed his life for the life of another prisoner (Colson 529-534). This was particularly meaningful as, in the concentration camps, no value of human life was recognized. Those deemed useless to the agenda of the state were executed without concern. Those deemed to be useful were kept as long as they were such, often as guinea pigs in degrading and dehumanizing experiments. Father Kolbe’s actions served as a contrast to this environment, to remind humanity that each and every one of us is living due to the same force of life-creation as all others. In contrast to what the military machine in Auschwitz believed, life does and must have a meaning, as human life has a universal, underlying nature that makes it what it is.

All the traditions recognize the sanctity of life and seek to explain its origins. In the Holy Quran, God says that He breathed His Spirit into Adam (15:29). Many traditions discuss the concept of man as created in the form or likeness of God, and mystics all over the world from different places and times have envisioned man as almost nonexistent, merely a this-worldly shadow or reflection of the Divine Reality. While some may have a different answer, and others may suggest there is no answer at all, this, in some form or another, is the basis in all the great traditions for human life. To say that life is aspirated into our bodies by God is to say that while human life flows in our world, its origins are something beyond the dimensions of time and space that we may usually observe. The life-consciousness and self awareness of one person is equally valuable to one’s own because both lives are of the same essence that makes them life, and each originates from a mysterious common source that puzzles the religious and secular alike.

In the same way that taking an introductory course is needed in order to take one of a higher level, a recognition of truth, of an ultimate origin from which the axes are drawn and all things are plotted, is a prerequisite in the belief of universal right and wrong. To judge another’s actions by his own principles alone counts for nothing in the quest of distinguishing rightness and wrongness universally. Culture varies by place and also by time. As the perception of truth appears to change over the course of both, truth itself remains static.

On the surface, the existence of religious pluralism creates a myriad of conflicting truths from which the conclusion of moral relativism may seem reasonable. However, there are universal, underlying similarities shared among each of the great traditions which suggest not only a common message but a common origin, the perennial philosophy. Man’s existence itself is dependent on truth, as nothing can exist without it. It is our duty then, as human beings, to seek and protect it. If we conclude that the Ultimate Truth is God, then we have the responsibility of following Him. If we recognize divine prophecy, then we must attempt to follow one of the many revealed traditions, in all its form, in the most traditional way we can and without syncretism, in order to become fully human. While we seek the big questions as the religious and secular alike, we discover that diversity does not negate truth but is a miracle left as a sign of its existence, the garden of one underlying, transcendent truth from which many traditions flow.

Notes

Colson, Charles. "The Volunteer at Auschwitz," Louis Pojman, ed. The Moral Life. Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 529-34.

Esposito, John L., Fasching, Darrell J. and Lewis, Todd. Religion and Globalization: World Religions in Historical Perspective. Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 24-25.

Pojman, Louis. "The Case Against Moral Relativism", Louis Pojman, ed. The Moral Life. Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 166-90.

Saraswati Swamigal, Jagadguru Chandrashekarendra. “The Vedic Religion: Introductory” Introduction to Hindu Dharma: Illustrated. Online Library, The home page of World Wisdom - Perennial Philosophy and the World's Great Spiritual Traditions. http://www.worldwisdom.com.

How to upgrade the BIOS on an HP Compaq 6820s

Ciao, lume.

This is for anyone googling around, or binging around as they may be, for information regarding the HP Compaq 6820s laptop.

I've been using the 6820s for a couple of years now, and one thing that's always irked me is the fact that the keys on the right-hand keypad are, well, broken. If you have such a laptop, you probably have to press the num lock key two or three to get them to work. And then, if you use the caps lock key at any time, it actually turns num lock back off, and then you've got to press the num lock key several times to turn it back on again. (Also, there's no LED indicator, so don't expect to know which way it's set until you need to type something.) I eventually learned that this was not just a problem with my own laptop, but all the 6820s, HP had been aware of the program, and that it could be resolved by means of a BIOS upgrade. Sounded scary to me, but in all actuality BIOS upgrades on most mainstream hardware have become rather easy and automated.

Of course, HP didn't explain the steps involved.

Hoping to upgrade my BIOS from version F.05 (10/23/2007) to version F.0D N (4 Nov 2008), I downloaded the according automatic flash executable from HP's website, sp41876.exe. After following all instructions exactly, and rebooting, I received the error "BIOS failed to complete the update, Please ensure that you follow the correct procedures and try again. This may require two sequential BIOS updates to complete the process." No worries, I could still boot, and actually my system ran fine other than greeting me with this message at every boot up. The num lock keys were even fixed.

In order to resolve this, I had to download the executable (sp40490.exe) for the intermediary version, F.0B 06/20/2008, and install that version of BIOS after which I was able to install the newest version F.0D N (4 Nov 2008) without error. Of course, this was not mentioned on HP's website, or in the readmes accompanying either of the ROM flash executables. Nowhere did it say the BIOS had to be upgraded in two steps, nor that there was a minimum BIOS version to have installed before upgrading to the newest version.

No, instead, I had to find out about this from an error message... from my BIOS. That could have gone a lot worse.

Thanks HP.

Going from Ubuntu 8.04 to 9.04

Ciao, lume.

Well I have finally made the upgrade from Hardy Heron, and I've got to say, so far I'm pleased by Jaunty. After a few days of slowly configuring things back to the way I like them (custom keyboard layout, icon themes, etc.), I'm fairly well nestled into the new operating system.

In general, doing a clean install has erased a lot of the little problems that had slowly accumulated over the course of my previous installation which I hadn't figured out how to resolve, such as the inability to correctly display Arabic text in any web browser, or play certain Flash and Java applets.

Additionally, 9.04 just seems to run better. It also has better support for my video card (ATI driver). Actually, for the first time in an Ubuntu installation, a working driver gave me a perfect display with full resolution automatically from the installation without the need to download or activate other drivers. Support for my Broadcom wireless card has been streamlined into the Restricted Hardware Drivers section (I believe this was a feature of 8.10, which I skipped). Compiz still displays with some minor glitches here and there, but now I can display certain things such as screen savers, and run certain programs such as Livestation, without the intense screen flickering I would have in 8.04 without first deactivating Compiz. Also, for the first time in my Ubuntu experience, I am able to suspend and revive my machine successfully, which is a great surprise.

So far, I've only run into two problems, both about sound. The first one isn't such a big deal; I'm just having some occasional conflicts between two applications in Preferences section of the main menu. The "Sounds" application and the "Login Window" application both seem to have options to enable or disable startup/shutdown sounds, and enabling a startup sound in both seems to play it twice, and if I enable it only in the "Login Window" app, then eventually it discovers it's disabled in the "Sounds" app and stops working until I go in and mess with it again. Or maybe I'm imagining things!

The other problem, I probably should mention, is that Ubuntu 9.04 seemed to install without working sound. ALSA thought it was playing sound, most of the time the system didn't detect any problems with the driver; it simply thought it was playing everything fine, but alas, there was but dead silence. The only sounds I heard were in the login window, but I had no audio after logging in. I would occasionally get this message:

audiotestsrc wave=sine freq=512 ! audioconvert ! audioresample ! gconfaudiosink: Could not open audio device for playback.

I was finally able to get my audio working by following the instructions in this thread and forcing an ALSA update, running the "AlsaUpgrade-1.0.x-rev-1.17" script with option "-id".

One other little problem I had is that as of Ubuntu 9.04, by default, one can no longer use CTRL+ALT+Backspace to restart the X server and revert to the login screen. Easy fix:

sudo apt-get install dontzap
sudo dontzap -d

Finally, I was unable to create working keyboard shortcuts inside the Gnome Configuration Editor until I went in and enabled them in Compiz first, although the disabling may have been trigged by default after installing the Compiz Settings Manager (compizconfig-settings-manager).

All in all, I'm enjoying 9.04 so far, and definitely recommend the upgrade! I haven't really encountered any insurmountable problems, other than that of getting vmware to work again. But that's another story...

How to run FreeBSD 7.1 in VMware Server

A rough guide documenting my experience installing FreeBSD 7.1 in VMware Server on Hardy Heron with a working internet connection, working audio, and some working vmware-tools (automatic mouse grab, and proper video display).
Details:

FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE-i386 (Download the torrent from freebsd.org. I recommend grabbing either the -dvd1 option corresponding to your setup, or the -all option and checking only the -dvd1 and maybe documentation; there should be no need to download the other disks.

Emulator: VMware Server 1.0.6 build-91891.
Host OS: Ubuntu Linux 8.04/Hardy Heron

Pre-Installation:

1. I ran out of hard drive space in the VM the first time I tried to do this, and unless you plan on doing a minimal installation, I advise you to allocate at least six gigabytes for FreeBSD; if not, then I advise scrupulous caution during installation not to install extra, unneeded software during installation. You can always do that after installation by running the sysinstall command (as root).

2. Do, however, make sure that when prompted, you install the "ports collection" (section 2.7.2 of freebsd.org's guide.) This will make adding additional software later on much easier however at the expense of about half a gigabyte. FreeBSD without the ports is sort of like having Debian or Ubuntu with the apt-get command removed from the system. Moreover, you will need it in order to install the proper drivers.

3. Set your internet connection type inside VMware as NAT, connected at power on (we will later enable DHCP inside the guest for this to work). Set the DVD iso file as a CD/DVD drive in the VM, also to be connected at power on.

4. Do not forget, of course, when choosing which "distribution" (2.7.1) you would like, to select one that includes the X Window System unless you do not wish to install a graphical user interface. I personally went with option 9, home user plus GUI, but I ended up going back and installing sources afterward.

5. In step 2.6.3, pick any option other than leaving the MBR untouched or the guest will be unable to boot. Might as well go with the standard MBR option, unless you plan on installing multiple operating systems inside the same VM.

6. You may need to hit the escape key and select CD-ROM while the VM is booting in order to boot from the iso. Choose the default option (option 1) on the FreeBSD boot screen, and read and follow the directions carefully, installing a standard installation. Refer to freebsd.org's handbook, Installing FreeBSD, if you are unsure of something along the way.

7. Because we are installing in a virtual machine with the bootable DVD (no floppies necessary), many of the initial, preparatory steps can be skipped. Also, because we are working in a VM you can allocate all the space in the drive to FreeBSD without worry and without getting lost in partition utilities.

Post-Installation:

The first step in configuration after installing FreeBSD is a window reading "Network interface information required." For a working internet connection, select the first option, which for you may appear as ed0 but for me was le0. Take a note of which one it is.

You will be asked "Do you want to try IPv6 configuration of the interface?" You can choose yes here; the first time I installed, I was prompted to enable DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) and this gave me a connection automatically. I have since reinstalled four times trying to reproduce this situation but have not been able to. If this does not happen for you, simply type in any host name (such as networkhost) and leave the rest of the information blank; we'll enable DHCP manually.

The first time you have access to the command prompt as root, type ee /etc/rc.conf (ee being FreeBSD's terminal-based text editor) and add the line ifconfig_le0="DHCP" possibly replacing le0 with ed0, whichever appeared in the configuration menu before. Exit by pressing the escape key, and save changes. Reboot by typing shutdown -r now. Your internet connection should be automatically connected on reboot. You should notice the successful IP configuration while the OS is booting; otherwise, you can test it by pinging Google, for example.

To load the X Window Environment (over which you can install your choice among KDE, Gnome, etc.) type at the command prompt, startx. More than likely, the GUI will not load properly at this point. You can type exit from a terminal window to revert to command line interface. On my system, the screen resolution was irregularly large, over 2000 pixels wide and about the same in height, twice the size of my host's resolution. I also received the error message from VMware:

Unable to find an appropriate host video mode. Adding the guest mode to the 'display' subsection of the 'screen' section of your /etc/X11/XF86Config and restarting X is likely to help. Failed to switch to full screen SVGA mode.

Because of this, I had to constantly use the scroll bars to see what I was doing, and could not put the guest into full screen mode. After installing KDE, the problem continued, and KDE's screen resolution drop down menu was empty, not allowing me to change the resolution from there either.

Fortunately, installing VMware Tools solved this problem. Unfortunately, it's not as easy as it should be. But it could be worse, and they are somewhat functional. I started by following VMware's guide from the command line (GUI must not be loaded.)

After installation, one is asked to run the vmware-config-tools.pl script. Upon running this script, I received an error saying "This configuration program is to be executed in a virtual machine," even though, of course, it was being executed in a virtual machine! In order to bypass this, I booted back into KDE, because I found it difficult to this from ee, opened up vmware-config-tools.pl in Kate and modified the script. Search the document from the begining for "invm" and the first result will bring you to an if/else script, about one-third the length of the document from the top, starting around line 2,778.

Change:

{
$gSystem{'invm'} = 'yes';
} else {
$gSystem{'invm'} = 'no';
}

To this:

{
$gSystem{'invm'} = 'yes';
} else {
$gSystem{'invm'} = 'yes';
}

I made these changes, saved the script, and quit KDE as again this script must be run outside the X Window System. I again executed the script and this time it ran beautifully. I said yes to everything, keeping default options, and allowed it to create a new xorg.conf file. At this point I tried to load startx, and received an error message because the drivers referred to in xorg.conf were not present. No big deal, they're just not installed by default.

First, I installed the video driver:

cd /usr/ports/x11-drivers/xf86-video-vmware
make install clean

Then the mouse:

cd /usr/ports/x11-drivers/xf86-input-vmmouse
make install clean

Finally, typing startx should properly boot the X Window System. There will be no guest-host shared clipboard feature to which we are accustomed in guest operating systems better supported by VMware, but BSD's GUI will now load with proper video settings, with adjustable screen resolution, the capacity to work in full screen mode, and the always very useful auto-grab capabilities for the mouse.

At this point, from any terminal inside the GUI, we are instructed run vmware-toolbox & to finalize the configuration and adjust any additional settings. I am not sure if this is necessary as it is possible that the toolbox's features do not function at all, but I included this just in case they do succeed to implement some sort of performance enhancement.

Unfortunately it will not load by default as it relies on two old library files from a previous version of FreeBSD that have since been updated and renamed. To force it to work, we can make symbolic links, using the old names, linking to the new versions. Run the following two commands:

ln -s /lib/libc.so.7 /lib/libc.so.5
ln -s /lib/libm.so.5 /lib/libm.so.3

At this point, you should be able to launch vmware-toolbox. It will at least give you the option of a few additional features, such as clock synchronization with the host. I had thought this was working on my system but unfortunately I was incorrect, the clocks do not synchronize, but it is at least worth the try.

Finally, for audio, make sure you have added an audio device in the VM settings. Likely, you will not be getting any audio and/or are receving the error:

Error while initializing the sound driver: device /dev/dsp can't be opened (NO such file or directory) The sound server will continue, using the null output device.

To fix this, open up in any text editor the file /boot/loader.conf and add the following line:

snd_es137x_load="YES"

Reboot, and you should now have working audio in your BSD guest, giving you the final step in what should be a more or less perfectly running FreeBSD installation.

Please excuse any mistakes or unnecessarily lengthy workarounds as this article, which is basically a diary of the last 40-something hours of my life, is my first experience with FreeBSD.

I hope this was of use to someone. At least let me know if it was, so I know it was worth the time typing it! Good luck!