diff --git a/FAQ/admin.sgml b/FAQ/admin.sgml index 426187b675..f4f34e6260 100644 --- a/FAQ/admin.sgml +++ b/FAQ/admin.sgml @@ -1,827 +1,866 @@ - + System Administration Where are the system start-up configuration files?

From 2.0.5R to 2.2.1R, the primary configuration file is /etc/sysconfig. All the options are to be specified in this file and other files such as and /etc/netstart just include it.

Look in the /etc/sysconfig file and change the value to match your system. This file is filled with comments to show what to put in there.

In post-2.2.1 and 3.0, /etc/sysconfig was renamed to a more self-describing file and the syntax cleaned up a bit in the process. /etc/netstart was also renamed to /etc/rc.network so that all files could be copied with a /usr/src/etc/rc* /etc command.

/etc/rc.local is here as always and may be used to start up additional local services like or set custom options.

The /etc/rc.serial is for serial port initialization (e.g. locking the port characteristics, and so on.).

The /etc/rc.i386 is for Intel-specifics settings, such as iBCS2 emulation or the PC system console configuration.

Starting with 2.1.0R, you can also have "local" startup files in a directory specified in /etc/sysconfig (or /etc/rc.conf): # Location of local startup files. local_startup=/usr/local/etc/rc.local.d

Each file ending in If you want to ensure a certain execution order without changing all the file names, you can use a scheme similar to the following with digits prepended to each file name to insure the ordering: 10news.sh 15httpd.sh 20ssh.sh

It can be seen as ugly (or SysV :-)) but it provides a simple and regular scheme for locally-added packages without resorting to magical editing of /etc/rc.local. Many of the ports/packages assume that /usr/local/etc/rc.d is a local startup directory. How do I add a user easily?

Use the command.

There is another package called ``<roberto@FreeBSD.ORG> about it. It is currently undergoing further development.

To remove the user again, use the command. How can I add my new hard disk to my FreeBSD system?

See the Disk Formatting Tutorial at . I have a new removable drive, how do I use it?

Whether it's a removable drive like a ZIP or an EZ drive (or even a floppy, if you want to use it that way), or a new hard disk, once it's installed and recognized by the system, and you have your cartridge/floppy/whatever slotted in, things are pretty much the same for all devices.

If it's a ZIP drive or a floppy , you've already got a DOS filesystem on it, you can use a command like this: mount -t msdos /dev/fd0c /floppy

if it's a floppy, or this: mount -t msdos /dev/sd2s4 /zip

for a ZIP disk with the factory configuration.

For other disks, see how they're laid out using /stand/sysinstall.

The rest of the examples will be for a ZIP drive on sd2, the third SCSI disk.

Unless it's a floppy, or a removable you plan on sharing with other people, it's probably a better idea to stick a BSD file system on it. You'll get long filename support, at least a 2X improvement in performance, and a lot more stability. First, you need to redo the DOS-level partitions/filesystems. You can either use or /stand/sysinstall, or for a small drive that you don't want to bother with multiple operating system support on, just blow away the whole FAT partition table (slices) and just use the BSD partitioning: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rsd2 count=2 disklabel -Brw sd2 auto

You can use disklabel or /stand/sysinstall to create multiple BSD partitions. You'll certainly want to do this if you're adding swap space on a fixed disk, but it's probably irrelevant on a removable drive like a ZIP.

Finally, create a new file system, this one's on our ZIP drive using the whole disk: newfs /dev/rsd2c

and mount it: mount /dev/sd2c /zip

and it's probably a good idea to add a line like this to so you can just type "mount /zip" in the future: /dev/sd2c /zip ffs rw,noauto 0 0 How do I mount a secondary DOS partition?

The secondary DOS partitions are found after ALL the primary partitions. For example, if you have an "E" partition as the second DOS partition on the second SCSI drive, you need to create the special files for "slice 5" in /dev, then mount /dev/sd1s5: # cd /dev # ./MAKEDEV sd1s5 # mount -t msdos /dev/sd1s5 /dos/e Can I mount other foreign filesystems under FreeBSD?

for more information.

Any other information on this subject would be appreciated. How can I use the NT loader to boot FreeBSD?

The general idea is that you copy the first sector of your native root FreeBSD partition into a file in the DOS/NT partition. Assuming you name that file something like c:\bootsect.bsd (inspired by c:\bootsect.dos), you can then edit the c:\boot.ini file to come up with something like this: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows NT" C:\BOOTSECT.BSD="FreeBSD" C:\="DOS"

This procedure assumes that DOS, NT, FreeBSD, or whatever have been installed into their respective fdisk partitions on the Mount a DOS-formatted floppy (if you've converted to NTFS) or the FAT partition, under, say, /mnt. dd if=/dev/rsd0a of=/mnt/bootsect.bsd bs=512 count=1

Reboot into DOS or NT. NTFS users copy the attrib -s -r c:\boot.ini

Edit to add the appropriate entries from the example attrib -r -s c:\boot.ini

If FreeBSD is booting from the MBR, restore it with the DOS `` How do I boot FreeBSD and Linux from LILO?

If you have FreeBSD and Linux on the same disk, just follow LILO's installation instructions for booting a non-Linux operating system. Very briefly, these are:

Boot Linux, and add the following lines to /etc/lilo.conf: other=/dev/hda2 table=/dev/hda label=FreeBSD (the above assumes that your FreeBSD slice is known to Linux as /dev/hda2; tailor to suit your setup). Then, run lilo as root and you should be done.

If FreeBSD resides on another disk, you need to add ``loader=/boot/chain.b'' to the LILO entry. For example: other=/dev/sdb4 table=/dev/sdb loader=/boot/chain.b label=FreeBSD

In some cases you may need to specify the BIOS drive number to the FreeBSD boot loader to successfully boot off the second disk. For example, if your FreeBSD SCSI disk is probed by BIOS as BIOS disk 1, at the FreeBSD boot loader prompt you need to specify: Boot: 1:sd(0,a)/kernel

On FreeBSD 2.2.5 and later, you can configure to automatically do this for you at boot time.

The is a good reference for FreeBSD and Linux interoperability issues. How do I boot FreeBSD and Linux using BootEasy?

Install LILO at the start of your Linux boot partition instead of in the Master Boot Record. You can then boot LILO from BootEasy.

If you're running Windows-95 and Linux this is recommended anyway, to make it simpler to get Linux booting again if you should need to reinstall Windows95 (which is a Jealous Operating System, and will bear no other Operating Systems in the Master Boot Record). Will a ``dangerously dedicated'' disk endanger my health?

Now, while this is certainly the common case for people coming from a PC background, those people coming more from a Unix background and who are going to setup a machine just to run FreeBSD and only FreeBSD, are more used to the classic Unix way where the operating system owns the entire disks, from the very first sector through the end. A true fdisk table isn't of any use in this case, the machine is running FreeBSD 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, no other operating system should ever be booted on it. So, if you select ``A)ll FreeBSD'' in sysinstall's fdisk editor, and answer the next question with ``No'', you'll get this mode. Note that this means the BSD bootstrap also forms the MBR for this drive, so there's no space left for anything like a boot manager. Don't ever try to install one, or you'll damage the BSD bootstrap.

So why it is called ``dangerous''? A disk in this mode doesn't contain what normal PC utilities would consider a valid fdisk table. Depending on how well they have been designed, they might complain at you once they are getting in contact with such a disk, or even worse, they might damage the BSD bootstrap without even asking or notifying you. Some kind of operating system that is in rather widespread use on PCs is known for this kind of user-unfriendliness (of course, it does this in the name of ``user-friendliness''). At least one Award BIOS that is for example used in HP Netservers (but not only there) is known to ignore any harddisk that doesn't have what it believes to be a valid fdisk table. When it comes to booting, it simply ignores such a disk drive, advances to the floppy drive, and barfs at you with just ``Read error''. Very impressive, eh? They probably also call this ``user-friendly'', who knows?

The advantages of this mode are: FreeBSD owns the entire disk, no need to waste several fictitious `tracks' for just nothing but a 1980-aged simplistic partitioning model enforcing some artificial and now rather nonsensical constraints on how this partitioning needs to be done. These constraints often lead to what might be the biggest headaches for OS installations on PCs, geometry mismatch hassles resulting out of two different, redundant ways how to store the partitioning information in the fdisk table. See the chapter about . In ``dangerously dedicated'' mode, the BSD bootstrap starts at sector 0, and this one is the only sector that always translates into the same C/H/S values, regardless of which `translation' your BIOS is using for your disk. Thus, you can also swap disks between systems/controllers that use a different translation scheme, without risking that they won't boot anymore.

To return a ``dangerously dedicated'' disk for normal PC use, there are basically two options. The first is, you write enough NULL bytes over the MBR to make any subsequent installation believe this to be a blank disk. You can do this for example with dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rsd0 count=15

Alternatively, the undocumented DOS ``feature'' fdisk /mbr

will to install a new master boot record as well, thus clobbering the BSD bootstrap. How can I add more swap space?

The best way is to increase the size of your swap partition, or take advantage of this convenient excuse to add another disk.

Adding swap onto a separate disk makes things faster than simply adding swap onto the same disk. As an example, if you are compiling source located on one disk, and the swap is on another disk, this is much faster than both swap and compile on the same disk. This is true for SCSI disks specifically.

IDE drives are not able to allow access to both drives on the same channel at the same time (FreeBSD doesn't support mode 4, so all IDE disk I/O is ``programmed''). I would still suggest putting your swap on a separate drive however. The drives are so cheap, it is not worth worrying about.

It is a really bad idea to locate your swap file over NFS unless you are running in a very fast networking environment, with a good server.

Here is an example for 64Mb vn-swap (/usr/swap0, though of course you can use any name that you want).

Make sure your kernel was built with the line pseudo-device vn 1 #Vnode driver (turns a file into a device)

in your config-file. The GENERIC kernel already contains this. create a vn-device cd /dev sh ./MAKEDEV vn0 create a swapfile (/usr/swap0) dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/swap0 bs=1024k count=64 enable the swap file in /etc/rc.conf swapfile="/usr/swap0" # Set to name of swapfile if aux swapfile desired. reboot the machine

To enable the swap file immediately, type vnconfig -ce /dev/vn0c /usr/swap0 swap I'm having problems setting up my printer.

Please have a look at the Handbook entry on printing. It should cover most of your problem. See the The keyboard mappings are wrong for my system.

The kbdcontrol program has an option to load a keyboard map file. Under /usr/share/syscons/keymaps are a number of map files. Choose the one relevant to your system and load it. kbdcontrol -l uk.iso

Both the /usr/share/syscons/keymaps and the .

This can be configured in /etc/sysconfig (or ). See the appropriate comments in this file.

In 2.0.5R and later, everything related to text fonts, keyboard mapping is in /usr/share/examples/syscons.

The following mappings are currently supported: Belgian ISO-8859-1 Brazilian 275 keyboard Codepage 850 Brazilian 275 keyboard ISO-8859-1 Danish Codepage 865 Danish ISO-8859-1 French ISO-8859-1 German Codepage 850 German ISO-8859-1 Italian ISO-8859-1 Japanese 106 Japanese 106x Latin American Norwegian ISO-8859-1 Polish ISO-8859-2 (programmer's) Russian Codepage 866 (alternative) Russian koi8-r (shift) Russian koi8-r Spanish ISO-8859-1 Swedish Codepage 850 Swedish ISO-8859-1 Swiss-German ISO-8859-1 United Kingdom Codepage 850 United Kingdom ISO-8859-1 United States of America ISO-8859-1 United States of America dvorak United States of America dvorakx I can't get user quotas to work properly.

Don't turn on quotas on '/', Put the quota file on the file system that the quotas are to be enforced on. ie: FS QUOTA FILE /usr /usr/admin/quotas /home /home/admin/quotas ... What's inappropriate about my ccd?

The symptom of this is: # ccdconfig -C ccdconfig: ioctl (CCDIOCSET): /dev/ccd0c: Inappropriate file type or format #

This usually happens when you are trying to concatenate the `c' partitions, which default to type `unused'. The ccd driver requires the underlying partition type to be FS_BSDFFS. Edit the disklabel of the disks you are trying to concatenate and change the types of partitions to `4.2BSD'. Why can't I edit the disklabel on my ccd?

The symptom of this is: # disklabel ccd0 (it prints something sensible here, so let's try to edit it) # disklabel -e ccd0 (edit, save, quit) disklabel: ioctl DIOCWDINFO: No disk label on disk; use "disklabel -r" to install initial label #

This is because the disklabel returned by ccd is actually a `fake' one that is not really on the disk. You can solve this problem by writing it back explicitly, as in: # disklabel ccd0 > /tmp/disklabel.tmp # disklabel -Rr ccd0 /tmp/disklabel.tmp # disklabel -e ccd0 (this will work now) Does FreeBSD support System V IPC primitives?

Yes, FreeBSD supports System V-style IPC. This includes shared memory, messages and semaphores. You need to add the following lines to your kernel config to enable them. options SYSVSHM options "SHMMAXPGS=64" # 256Kb of sharable memory options SYSVSEM # enable for semaphores options SYSVMSG # enable for messaging

Recompile and install.

How do I use sendmail for mail delivery with UUCP?

The sendmail configuration that ships with FreeBSD is suited for sites that connect directly to the Internet. Sites that wish to exchange their mail via UUCP must install another sendmail configuration file.

Tweaking /etc/sendmail.cf manually is considered something for purists. Sendmail version 8 comes with a new approach of generating config files via some preprocessing, where the actual hand-crafted configuration is on a higher abstraction level. You should use the configuration files under /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf

If you didn't install your system with full sources, the sendmail config stuff has been broken out into a separate source distribution tarball just for you. Assuming you've got your CD-ROM mounted, do: cd /usr/src tar -xvzf /cdrom/dists/src/ssmailcf.aa

Don't panic, this is only a few hundred kilobytes in size. The file README in the cf directory can serve as a basic introduction to m4 configuration.

For UUCP delivery, you are best advised to use the mailertable feature. This constitutes a database that sendmail can use to base its routing decision upon.

First, you have to create your .mc file. The directory /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf is the home of these files. Look around, there are already a few examples. Assuming you have named your file foo.mc, all you need to do in order to convert it into a valid sendmail.cf is: cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf make foo.cf cp foo.cf /etc/sendmail.cf

A typical .mc file might look like: include(`../m4/cf.m4') VERSIONID(`Your version number') OSTYPE(bsd4.4) FEATURE(nodns) FEATURE(nocanonify) FEATURE(mailertable) define(`UUCP_RELAY', your.uucp.relay) define(`UUCP_MAX_SIZE', 200000) MAILER(local) MAILER(smtp) MAILER(uucp) Cw your.alias.host.name Cw youruucpnodename.UUCP

The nodns and nocanonify features will prevent any usage of the DNS during mail delivery. The UUCP_RELAY clause is needed for bizarre reasons, don't ask. Simply put an Internet hostname there that is able to handle .UUCP pseudo-domain addresses; most likely, you will enter the mail relay of your ISP there.

Once you've got this, you need this file called /etc/mailertable. A typical example of this gender again: # # makemap hash /etc/mailertable.db < /etc/mailertable # horus.interface-business.de uucp-dom:horus .interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus .heep.sax.de smtp8:%1 horus.UUCP uucp-dom:horus if-bus.UUCP uucp-dom:if-bus . uucp-dom:sax

As you can see, this is part of a real-life file. The first three lines handle special cases where domain-addressed mail should not be sent out to the default route, but instead to some UUCP neighbor in order to ``shortcut'' the delivery path. The next line handles mail to the local Ethernet domain that can be delivered using SMTP. Finally, the UUCP neighbors are mentioned in the .UUCP pseudo-domain notation, to allow for a ``uucp-neighbor!recipient'' override of the default rules. The last line is always a single dot, matching everything else, with UUCP delivery to a UUCP neighbor that serves as your universal mail gateway to the world. All of the node names behind the uucp-dom: keyword must be valid UUCP neighbors, as you can verify using the command uuname.

As a reminder that this file needs to be converted into a DBM database file before being usable, the command line to accomplish this is best placed as a comment at the top of the mailertable. You always have to execute this command each time you change your mailertable.

Final hint: if you are uncertain whether some particular mail routing would work, remember the -bt option to sendmail. It starts sendmail in address test mode; simply enter ``0 '', followed by the address you wish to test for the mail routing. The last line tells you the used internal mail agent, the destination host this agent will be called with, and the (possibly translated) address. Leave this mode by typing Control-D. j@uriah 191% sendmail -bt ADDRESS TEST MODE (ruleset 3 NOT automatically invoked) Enter

> 0 foo@interface-business.de rewrite: ruleset 0 input: foo @ interface-business . de ... rewrite: ruleset 0 returns: $# uucp-dom $@ if-bus $: foo \ < @ interface-business . de > > ^D j@uriah 192% How do I set up mail with a dialup connection to the 'net?

If you've got a statically assigned IP number, you should not need to adjust anything from the default. Set your host name up as your assigned internet name and sendmail will do the rest.

If you've got a dynamically assigned IP number and use a dialup In order to retrieve mail from your mailbox, you'll need to install a retrieval agent. /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup: MYADDR: !bg su user -c fetchmail

I'm assuming that you have an account for poll myISP.com protocol pop3 fetchall pass MySecret;

Needless to say, this file should not be readable by anyone except In order to send mail with the correct The following VERSIONID(`bsd.home.mc version 1.0') OSTYPE(bsd4.4)dnl FEATURE(nouucp)dnl MAILER(local)dnl MAILER(smtp)dnl Cwlocalhost Cwbsd.home MASQUERADE_AS(`myISP.com')dnl FEATURE(allmasquerade)dnl FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl FEATURE(nocanonify)dnl FEATURE(nodns)dnl define(SMART_HOST, `relay.myISP.com') Dmbsd.home define(`confDOMAIN_NAME',`bsd.home')dnl define(`confDELIVERY_MODE',`deferred')dnl

Refer to the previous section for details of how to turn this Eek! I forgot the root password!

Don't Panic! Simply restart the system, type -s at the Boot: prompt to enter Single User mode. At the question about the shell to use, hit ENTER. You'll be dropped to a # prompt. Enter mount -u / to remount your root filesystem read/write, then run How do I keep Control-Alt-Delete from rebooting the system?

Edit the keymap you are using for the console and replace the /usr/share/syscons/keymaps/us.iso.kbd. You may have to instruct /etc/rc.conf to load this keymap explicitly for the change to take effect. Of course if you are using an alternate keymap for your country, you should edit that one instead. + + How do I reformat DOS text files to UNIX ones? + +

Simply use this perl command: + + +perl -i.bak -pe 's/\r\n/\n/g' file ... + + +

file is the file(s) to process. The modification is done in-place, + with the original file stored with a .bak extension. + + + How do I kill processes by name? + +

Use . + + + Why is su bugging me about not being in root's ACL? + + +

The error comes from the Kerberos distributed authentication system. + The problem isn't fatal but annoying. You can either run su with the -k + option, or uninstall Kerberos as described in the next question. + + + How do I uninstall Kerberos? + +

To remove Kerberos from the system, reinstall the bin distribution + for the release you are running. If you have the CDROM, you can + mount the cd (we'll assume on /cdrom) and run + + +cd /cdrom/bin +./install.sh + + + + diff --git a/FAQ/hardware.sgml b/FAQ/hardware.sgml index 290dd682af..c785ddb287 100644 --- a/FAQ/hardware.sgml +++ b/FAQ/hardware.sgml @@ -1,401 +1,408 @@ - + Hardware compatibility What kind of hard drives does FreeBSD support?

FreeBSD supports EIDE and SCSI drives (with a compatible controller; see the next section), and all drives using the original "Western Digital" interface (MFM, RLL, ESDI, and of course IDE). A few ESDI controllers that use proprietary interfaces may not work: stick to WD1002/3/6/7 interfaces and clones. Which SCSI controllers are supported?

See the complete list in the . Which CD-ROM drives are supported by FreeBSD?

Any SCSI drive connected to a supported controller is supported.

The following proprietry CD-ROM interfaces are also supported: Mitsumi LU002 (8bit), LU005 (16bit) and FX001D (16bit 2x Speed). Sony CDU 31/33A Sound Blaster Non-SCSI CD-ROM Matsushita/Panasonic CD-ROM ATAPI compatible IDE CD-ROMs

All non-SCSI cards are known to be extremely slow compared to SCSI drives, and some ATAPI CDROMs may not work.

As of 2.2 the FreeBSD CDROM from Walnut Creek supports booting directly from the CD. Does FreeBSD support ZIP drives?

FreeBSD supports the SCSI ZIP drive out of the box, of course. The ZIP drive can only be set to run at SCSI target IDs 5 or 6, but if your SCSI host adapter's BIOS supports it you can even boot from it. I don't know which host adapters let you boot from targets other than 0 or 1... look at your docs (and let me know if it works out for you).

ATAPI (IDE) Zip drives are supported in FreeBSD 2.2.6 and later releases.

FreeBSD 3.0-CURRENT contains support for the parallel Zip However, you will need to build a new kernel with support for ppbus (Parallel Port Bus) in order to use the Zip. See the LINT configuration file for examples.

Also check out , and . Does FreeBSD support JAZ, EZ and other removable drives?

Apart from the IDE version of the EZ drive, these are all SCSI devices, so the should all look like SCSI disks to FreeBSD, and the IDE EZ should look like an IDE drive.

See . Which multi-port serial cards are supported by FreeBSD?

There is a list of these in the section of the handbook.

Some unnamed clone cards have also been known to work, especially those that claim to be AST compatible.

Check the man page to get more information on configuring such cards. I have an unusual bus mouse. How do I set it up?

FreeBSD supports the bus mouse and the InPort bus mouse from such manufactures as Microsoft, Logitech and ATI. The bus device driver is compiled in the GENERIC kernel by default. If you are building a custom kernel with the bus mouse driver, make sure to add the following line to the kernel config file: device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c tty irq5 vector mseintr

The bus mouse usually comes with an dedicatd interface card. It may allow you to set the port address and the IRQ number other than shown above. Refer to the manual of your mouse and the man page for more information. How do I use my PS/2 (``mouse port'' or ``keyboard'') mouse?

If you're running a very recent version of FreeBSD, the necessary driver, psm, is included and enabled in the kernel. The kernel should detect your PS/2 mouse at boot time.

If you're running a previous but relatively recent version of FreeBSD then you can simply enable it in the kernel configuration menu at installation time, otherwise later with -c at the boot: prompt. It is disabled by default, so you will need to enable it explicitly.

If you're running an older version of FreeBSD then you'll have to add the following lines to your kernel configuration file and compile a new kernel: device psm0 at isa? port "IO_KBD" conflicts tty irq 12 vector psmintr

See the if you've no experience with building kernels.

Once you have a kernel detecting psm0 correctly at boot time, make sure that an entry for psm0 exists in /dev. You can do this by typing: cd /dev; sh MAKEDEV psm0

when logged in as root. Is it possible to make use of a mouse in any way outside the X Window?

If you are using the default console driver, syscons, you can use a mouse pointer in text consoles to cut & paste text. Run the mouse daemon, moused, and turn on the mouse pointer in the virtual console: moused -p /dev/xxxx -t yyyy vidcontrol -m on

Where xxxx is the mouse device name and yyyy is a protocol type for the mouse. See the man page for supported protocol types.

You may wish to run the mouse daemon automatically when the system starts. In version 2.2.1, set the following variables in /etc/sysconfig. mousedtype="yyyy" mousedport="xxxx" mousedflags="" In versions 2.2.2 or later, set the following variables in /etc/rc.conf. moused_type="yyyy" moused_port="xxxx" moused_flags=""

Staring from FreeBSD 2.2.6, the mouse daemon is capable of determining the correct protocol type automatically unless the mouse is a relatively old serial mouse model. Specify ``auto'' as the protocol to invoke automatic detection.

When the mouse daemon is running, access to the mouse needs to be coordinated between the mouse daemon and other programs such as the X Window. Refer to on this issue". How do I cut and paste text with mouse in the text console?

Once you get the mouse daemon running (see ), hold down the button 1 (left button) and move the mouse to select a region of text. Then, press the button 2 (middle button) or the button 3 (right button) to paste it at the text cursor.

In versions 2.2.6 and later, pressing the button 2 will paste the text. Pressing the button 3 will ``extend'' the selected region of text. If your mouse does not have the middle button, you may wish to emulate it or remap buttons using moused options. See the man page for details. My mouse has a fancy wheel and buttons. Can I use them in FreeBSD?

The answer is, unfortunately, ``It depends.'' These mice with additional features require specialized driver in most cases. Unless the mouse device driver or the user program has specific support for the mouse, it will act just like a standard two, or three button mouse. How do I use the mouse/trackball/touchpad on my laptop?

Please refer to . And check out on the Mobile Computing page. What types of tape drives are supported?

FreeBSD supports SCSI, QIC-36 (with a QIC-02 interface) and QIC-40/80 (Floppy based) tape drives. This includes 8-mm (aka Exabyte) and DAT drives. The QIC-40/80 drives are known to be slow.

Some of the early 8-mm drives are not quite compatible with SCSI-2, and may not work well with FreeBSD. Does FreeBSD support tape changers?

FreeBSD 2.2 supports SCSI changers using the device and the command. The details of how you actually control the changer can be found in the man page.

If you're not using or some other product that already understands changers, remember that they're only know how to move a tape from one point to another, so you need to keep track of which slot a tape is in, and which slot the tape currently in the drive needs to go back to. Which sound cards are supported by FreeBSD?

FreeBSD supports the SoundBlaster, SoundBlaster Pro, SoundBlaster 16, Pro Audio Spectrum 16, AdLib and Gravis UltraSound sound cards. There is also limited support for MPU-401 and compatible MIDI cards. Cards conforming to the Microsoft Sound System specification are also supported through the pcm driver.

Which network cards does FreeBSD support?

See the section of the handbook for a more complete list. I don't have a math co-processor - is that bad?

In general this will not cause any problems, but there are circumstances where you will take a hit, either in performance or accuracy of the math emulation code (see the section ). In particular, drawing arcs in X will be VERY slow. It is highly recommended that you buy a math co-processor; it's well worth it.

What other devices does 2.X support?

See the for the list of other devices supported. Does FreeBSD support power management on my laptop?

FreeBSD supports APM on certain machines. Please look in the keyword. Workarounds for specific hardware problems

This section contains workarounds for specific hardware problems encountered by our users. Micron systems hang at boot time

Certain Micron motherboards have a non-conforming PCI BIOS implementation that causes grief when FreeBSD boots because PCI devices don't get configured at their reported addresses.

Disable the "Plug and Play Operating System" flag in the BIOS to work around this problem. More information can be found at I have a newer Adaptec controller and FreeBSD can't find it.

The newer AIC789x series Adaptec chips are supported under the CAM SCSI framework making it's debut in 3.0. Patches against 3.0-CURRENT and 2.2-STABLE are in . A CAM-enhanced boot floppy is available at . In both cases read the README before beginning.

I have an internal Plug & Play modem and FreeBSD can't find it.

You will need to add the modem's PnP ID to the PnP ID list in the serial driver. To enable Plug & Play support, compile a new kernel with /sys/i386/isa/sio.c, at about line 1200. Look for the string "SUP1310" in the structure "siopnp_ids[]" to find the table. Build the kernel again, install, reboot, and your modem should be found.

You may have to manually configure the PnP devices using the `pnp' command in the boot-time configuration with a command like pnp 1 0 enable os irq0 3 drq0 0 port0 0x2f8 to make the modem show.

 How do I get the boot: prompt to show on the serial console?

Build a kernel with Create /boot.config and place Unplug the keyboard from the system.

See /usr/src/sys/i386/boot/biosboot/README.serial for information.

 Why doesn't my 3Com PCI network card work with my Micron computer?

Certain Micron motherboards have a non-conforming PCI BIOS implementation that does not configure PCI devices at the addresses reported. This causes grief when FreeBSD boots.

To work around this problem, disable the "Plug and Play Operating System" flag in the BIOS.

More information on this problem is available at URL: + + + Does FreeBSD support Symmetric Multiproccessing (SMP)? + + +

SMP is supported in 3.0-CURRENT only. + diff --git a/FAQ/install.sgml b/FAQ/install.sgml index d9f4340207..5ea777b5b1 100644 --- a/FAQ/install.sgml +++ b/FAQ/install.sgml @@ -1,539 +1,552 @@ - + Installation Which file do I download to get FreeBSD?

You generally need just one floppy image, the floppies/boot.flp file, which you image-copy onto a 1.44MB floppy and then boot from in order to download the rest (and the installation will manage your TCP/IP connection, deal with tapes, CDROMs, floppies, DOS partitions, whatever's necessary to get the rest of the bits installed).

If you need to download the distributions yourself (for a DOS filesystem install, for instance), below are some recommendations for distributions to grab: bin/ manpages/ compat*/ doc/ src/ssys.*

Full instructions on this procedure and a little bit more about installation issues in general can be found in the Help! The boot floppy image will not fit on a single floppy!

A 3.5 inch (1.44MB) floppy can accomodate 1474560 bytes of data. The boot image is exactly 1474560 bytes in size.

Common mistakes when preparing the boot floppy are: Not downloading the floppy image in binary mode when using FTP.

Some FTP clients default their transfer mode to ascii and attempt to change any end-of-line characters received to match the conventions used by the client's system. This will almost invariably corrupt the boot image. Check the size of the downloaded boot image: if it is not exactly that on the server, then the download process is suspect.

To workaround: type binary at the FTP command prompt after getting connected to the server and before starting the download of the image. Using the DOS copy command (or equivalent GUI tool) to transfer the boot image to floppy.

Programs like copy will not work as the boot image has been created to be booted into directly. The image has the complete content of the floppy, track for track, and is not meant to be placed on the floppy as a regular file. You have to transfer it to the floppy ``raw'', using the low-level tools (e.g. fdimage or rawrite) described in the . Where are the instructions for installing FreeBSD?

Installation instructions can be found in the What do I need in order to run FreeBSD?

You'll need a 386 or better PC, with 5 MB or more of RAM and at least 60 MB of hard disk space. It can run with a low end MDA graphics card but to run X11R6, a VGA or better video card is needed.

See also the section on I have only 4 MB of RAM. Can I install FreeBSD?

FreeBSD 2.1.7 was the last version of FreeBSD that could be installed on a 4MB system. Newer versions of FreeBSD, like 2.2, need at least 5MB to install on a new system.

All versions of FreeBSD, including 3.0, will RUN in 4MB of ram, they just can't run the installation program in 4MB. You can add extra memory for the install process, if you like, and then after the system is up and running, go back to 4MB. Or you could always just swap your disk into a system which has >4MB, install onto it and then swap it back.

There are also situations in which FreeBSD 2.1.7 will not install in 4 MB. To be exact: it does not install with 640 kB base + 3 MB extended memory. If your motherboard can remap some of the ``lost'' memory out of the 640kB to 1MB region, then you may still be able to get FreeBSD 2.1.7 up.

Try to go into your BIOS setup and look for a ``remap'' option. Enable it. You may also have to disable ROM shadowing.

It may be easier to get 4 more MB just for the install. Build a custom kernel with only the options you need and then get the 4 MB out again.

You may also install 2.0.5 and then upgrade your system to 2.1.7 with the ``upgrade'' option of the 2.1.7 installation program.

After the installation, if you build a custom kernel, it will run in 4 MB. Someone has even succeeded in booting with 2 MB (the system was almost unusable though :-)) How can I make my own custom install floppy?

Currently there's no way to *just* make a custom install floppy. You have to cut a whole new release, which will include your install floppy. There's some code in /usr/src/release/floppies/Makefile that's supposed to let you *just* make those floppies, but it's not really gelled yet.

To make a custom release, follow the instructions . Can I have more than one operating system on my PC?

Have a look at Can Windows 95 co-exist with FreeBSD?

Install Windows 95 first, after that FreeBSD. FreeBSD's boot manager will then manage to boot Win95 and FreeBSD. If you install Windows 95 second, it will boorishly overwrite your boot manager without even asking. If that happens, see the next section. Windows 95 killed my boot manager! How do I get it back?

You can reinstall the boot manager FreeBSD comes with in one of two ways: Running DOS, go into the tools/ directory of your FreeBSD distribution and look for bootinst.exe. You run it like so:

bootinst.exe boot.bin

and the boot manager will be reinstalled. Boot the FreeBSD boot floppy again and go to the Custom installation menu item. Choose Partition. Select the drive which used to contain your boot manager (likely the first one) and when you come to the partition editor for it, as the very first thing (e.g. do not make any changes) select (W)rite. This will ask for confirmation, say yes, and when you get the Boot Manager selection prompt, be sure to select "Boot Manager." This will re-write the boot manager to disk. Now quit out of the installation menu and reboot off the hard disk as normal. Can I install on a disk with bad blocks?

FreeBSD's bad block (the command) handling is still not 100% (to put it charitably) and it must unfortunately be said that if you've got an IDE or ESDI drive with lots of bad blocks, then FreeBSD is probably not for you! That said, it does work on thousands of IDE based systems, so you'd do well to try it first before simply giving up.

If you have a SCSI drive with bad blocks, see . Strange things happen when I boot the install floppy!

If you're seeing things like the machine grinding to a halt or spontaneously rebooting when you try to boot the install floppy, here are three questions to ask yourself:- Did you use a new, freshly-formatted, error-free floppy (preferably a brand-new one straight out of the box, as opposed to the magazine coverdisk that's been lying under the bed for the last three years)? Did you download the floppy image in binary (or image) mode? (don't be embarrassed, even the best of us have accidentally downloaded a binary file in ASCII mode at least once!) If you're using one of these new-fangled operating systems like Windows95 or Windows NT, did you shut it down and restart the system in plain, honest DOS? It seems these OS's can interfere with programs that write directly to hardware, which the disk creation program does; even running it inside a DOS shell in the GUI can cause this problem.

There have also been reports of Netscape causing problems when downloading the boot floppy, so it's probably best to use a different FTP client if you can. Help! I can't install from tape!

If you are installing 2.1.7R from tape, you must create the tape using a tar blocksize of 10 (5120 bytes). The default tar blocksize is 20 (10240 bytes), and tapes created using this default size cannot be used to install 2.1.7R; with these tapes, you will get an error that complains about the record size being too big. Can I install on my laptop over PLIP (Parallel Line IP)?

Connect the two computers using a Laplink parallel cable to use this feature: +----------------------------------------+ |A-name A-End B-End Descr. Port/Bit | +----------------------------------------+ |DATA0 2 15 Data 0/0x01 | |-ERROR 15 2 1/0x08 | +----------------------------------------+ |DATA1 3 13 Data 0/0x02 | |+SLCT 13 3 1/0x10 | +----------------------------------------+ |DATA2 4 12 Data 0/0x04 | |+PE 12 4 1/0x20 | +----------------------------------------+ |DATA3 5 10 Strobe 0/0x08 | |-ACK 10 5 1/0x40 | +----------------------------------------+ |DATA4 6 11 Data 0/0x10 | |BUSY 11 6 1/0x80 | +----------------------------------------+ |GND 18-25 18-25 GND - | +----------------------------------------+

See also on the Mobile Computing page. Which geometry should I use for a disk drive?

(By the "geometry" of a disk, we mean the number of cylinders, heads and sectors/track on a disk - I'll refer to this as C/H/S for convenience. This is how the PC's BIOS works out which area on a disk to read/write from).

This seems to cause a lot of confusion for some reason. First of all, the All that matters is the For SCSI disks, the geometry to use depends on whether extended translation support is turned on in your controller (this is often referred to as "support for DOS disks >1GB" or something similar). If it's turned off, then use N cylinders, 64 heads and 32 sectors/track, where 'N' is the capacity of the disk in MB. For example, a 2GB disk should pretend to have 2048 cylinders, 64 heads and 32 sectors/track.

If it If you are not sure about this, or FreeBSD fails to detect the geometry correctly during installation, the simplest way around this is usually to create a small DOS partition on the disk. The correct geometry should then be detected (and you can always remove the DOS partition in the partition editor if you don't want to keep it, or leave it around for programming network cards and the like).

Alternatively, there is a freely available utility distributed with FreeBSD called ``tools subdirectory on the FreeBSD CDROM or on the various FreeBSD ftp sites) which can be used to work out what geometry the other operating systems on the disk are using. You can then enter this geometry in the partition editor. Any restrictions on how I divide the disk up?

Yes. You must make sure that your root partition is below 1024 cylinders so the BIOS can boot the kernel from it. (Note that this is a limitation in the PC's BIOS, not FreeBSD).

For a SCSI drive, this will normally imply that the root partition will be in the first 1024MB (or in the first 4096MB if extended translation is turned on - see previous question). For IDE, the corresponding figure is 504MB. What about disk managers? Or, I have a large drive!

FreeBSD recognizes the Ontrack Disk Manager and makes allowances for it. Other disk managers are not supported.

If you just want to use the disk with FreeBSD you don't need a disk manager. Just configure the disk for as much space as the BIOS can deal with (usually 504 megabytes), and FreeBSD should figure out how much space you really have. If you're using an old disk with an MFM controller, you may need to explicitly tell FreeBSD how many cylinders to use.

If you want to use the disk with FreeBSD and another operating system, you may be able to do without a disk manager: just make sure the the FreeBSD boot partition and the slice for the other operating system are in the first 1024 cylinders. If you're reasonably careful, a 20 megabyte boot partition should be plenty. When I boot FreeBSD I get ``Missing Operating System''

This is classically a case of FreeBSD and DOS or some other OS conflicting over their ideas of disk You will have to reinstall FreeBSD, but obeying the instructions given above will almost always get you going. I can't get past the boot manager's `F?' prompt.

This is another symptom of the problem described in the preceding question. Your BIOS geometry and FreeBSD geometry settings do not agree! If your controller or BIOS supports cylinder translation (often marked as ``>1GB drive support''), try toggling its setting and reinstalling FreeBSD. I have >16MB of RAM. Will this cause any problems?

Apart from performance issues, no. FreeBSD 2.X comes with bounce buffers which allow your bus mastering controller access to greater than 16MB. (Note that this should only be required if you are using ISA devices, although one or two broken EISA and VLB devices may need it as well).

Also look at the section on if you have that much memory, or if you're using a Compaq or other BIOS that lies about the available memory. Do I need to install the complete sources?

In general, no. However, we would strongly recommend that you install, at a minimum, the ``. With the exception of the kernel sources, our build structure is set up so that you can read-only mount the sources from elsewhere via NFS and still be able to make new binaries. (Because of the kernel-source restriction, we recommend that you not mount this on /usr/src directly, but rather in some other location with appropriate symbolic links to duplicate the top-level structure of the source tree.)

Having the sources on-line and knowing how to build a system with them will make it much easier for you to upgrade to future releases of FreeBSD.

To actually select a subset of the sources, use the Custom menu item when you are in the Distributions menu of the system installation tool. The src/install.sh script will also install partial pieces of the source distribution, depending on the arguments you pass it. Do I need to build a kernel?

Building a new kernel was originally pretty much a required step in a FreeBSD installation, but more recent releases have benefited from the introduction of a much friendlier kernel configuration tool. When at the FreeBSD boot prompt (boot:), use the "-c" flag and you will be dropped into a visual configuration screen which allows you to configure the kernel's settings for most common ISA cards.

It's still recommended that you eventually build a new kernel containing just the drivers that you need, just to save a bit of RAM, but it's no longer a strict requirement for most systems. I live outside the US. Can I use DES encryption?

If it is not absolutely imperative that you use DES style encryption, you can use FreeBSD's default encryption for even Since the DES encryption algorithm cannot legally be exported from the US, non-US users should not download this software (as part of the There is however a replacement libcrypt available, based on sources written in Australia by David Burren. This code is now available on some non-US FreeBSD mirror sites. Sources for the unencumbered libcrypt, and binaries of the programs which use it, can be obtained from the following FTP sites: ftp://ftp.internat.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD ftp://storm.sea.uct.ac.za/pub/FreeBSD ftp://ftp.iqm.unicamp.br/pub/FreeBSD ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/unix/FreeBSD/eurocrypt

The non-US Non-US users should please not download any encryption software from the USA. This can get the maintainers of the sites from which the software is downloaded into severe legal difficulties.

A non-US distribution of Kerberos is also being developed, and current versions can generally be obtained by anonymous FTP from braae.ru.ac.za.

There is also a for the discussion of non-US encryption software. For more information, send an email message with a single line saying ``<majordomo@braae.ru.ac.za>. The boot floppy starts but hangs at the ``Probing Devices...'' screen.

If you have a IDE Zip or Jaz drive installed, remove it and try again. The boot floppy can get confused by the drives. After the system is installed you can reconnect the drive. Hopefully this will be fixed in a later release. I get a ``panic: cant mount root'' error when rebooting the system after installation.

This error comes from confusion between the boot block's and the kernel's understanding of the disk devices. The error usually manifests on two-disk IDE systems, with the hard disks arranged as the master or single device on separate IDE controllers, with FreeBSD installed on the secondary IDE controller. The boot blocks think the system is installed on wd1 (the second BIOS disk) while the kernel assigns the first disk on the secondary controller device wd2. After the device probing, the kernel tries to mount what the boot blocks think is the boot disk, wd1, while it is really wd2, and fails.

To fix the problem, do one of the following: At the Boot: prompt, enter 1:wd(2,a)kernel and press Enter. If the system starts, then run the command echo "1:wd(2,a)kernel" > /boot.config to make it the default boot string. Move the FreeBSD disk onto the primary IDE controller, so the hard disks are consecutive. modify the wd configuration lines to read: controller wdc0 at isa? port "IO_WD1" bio irq 14 vector wdintr disk wd0 at wdc0 drive 0 # disk wd1 at wdc0 drive 1 # comment out this line controller wdc1 at isa? port "IO_WD2" bio irq 15 vector wdintr disk wd1 at wdc1 drive 0 # change from wd2 to wd1 disk wd2 at wdc1 drive 1 # change from wd3 to wd2 Install the new kernel. If you moved your disks and wish to restore the previous configuration, replace the disks in the desired configuration and reboot. Your system should boot successfully. + + What are the limits for memory and diskspace? + +

For memory, the (theoretical) limit is 4 gigabytes. One gigabyte + has been tested; you generally can't buy i386 PCs that can support + much more than that. + +

For filesystems, the maximum theoretical limit is 8 terabytes. In + practice, there is a soft limit of 1 terabyte, but with modifications + filesystems with 4 terabytes are possible (and exist). + +

The maximum size of a single file is 2 gigabytes. + diff --git a/FAQ/misc.sgml b/FAQ/misc.sgml index f40b9aec3c..04052b2a21 100644 --- a/FAQ/misc.sgml +++ b/FAQ/misc.sgml @@ -1,235 +1,242 @@ - + Miscellaneous Questions FreeBSD uses far more swap space than Linux. Why?

It doesn't. You might mean ``why does my swap seem full?''. If that is what you really meant, it's because putting stuff in swap rather than discarding it makes it faster to recover than if the pager had to go through the file system to pull in clean (unmodified) blocks from an executable.

The actual amount of dirty pages that you can have in core at once is not reduced; the clean pages are displaced as necessary. Why use (what are) a.out and ELF executable formats?

To understand why FreeBSD uses the a.out format, you must first know a little about the 3 currently "dominant" executable formats for UNIX:

The oldest and `classic' unix object format. It uses a short and compact header with a magic number at the beginning that's often used to characterize the format (see for more details). It contains three loaded segments: .text, .data, and .bss plus a symbol table and a string table. COFF

The SVR3 object format. The header now comprises a section table, so you can have more than just .text, .data, and .bss sections. ELF

The successor to FreeBSD tries to work around this problem somewhat by providing a utility for branding a known for more information.

FreeBSD comes from the "classic" camp and has traditionally used the format, a technology tried and proven through many generations of BSD releases. Though it has also been possible for some time to build and run native In FreeBSD's case, our shared library mechanism is based more closely on Sun's SunOS-style shared library mechanism and, as such, is very easy to use. However, starting with 3.0, FreeBSD will offically support Why won't chmod change the permissions on symlinks?

You have to use either `` and man pages for more info.

without any options and follow the symlink with a trailing slash (``/''). For example, if `` chmod 555 foo/

With the trailing slash, will follow the symlink, `` Why are login names

You'd think it'd be easy enough to change In FreeBSD 3.0 and later, the maximum name length has been increased to 16 characters and those various utilities with hard-coded name sizes have been found and fixed. The fact that this touched so many areas of the system is why, in fact, the change was not made until 3.0.

If you're absolutely confident in your ability to find and fix these sorts of problems for yourself when and if they pop up, you can increase the login name length in earlier releases by editing /usr/include/utmp.h and changing UT_NAMESIZE accordingly. You must also update MAXLOGNAME in /usr/include/sys/param.h to match the UT_NAMESIZE change. Finally, if you build from sources, don't forget that /usr/include is updated each time! Change the appropriate files in /usr/src/.. instead.

Can I run DOS binaries under FreeBSD?

Yes, starting with version 3.0 you can using BSDI's if you're interested in joining this ongoing effort!

For pre-3.0 systems, there is a neat utility called in the ports collection which emulates an 8088 and enough BIOS services to run DOS text mode applications. It requires the X Window System (provided as XFree86). What is ``

stands for Software Update Protocol, and was developed by CMU for keeping their development trees in sync. We used it to keep remote sites in sync with our central development sources.

SUP is not bandwidth friendly, and has been retired. The current recommended method to keep your sources up to date is How cool is FreeBSD?

Q. Has anyone done any temperature testing while running FreeBSD? I know Linux runs cooler than dos, but have never seen a mention of FreeBSD. It seems to run really hot.

A. No, but we have done numerous taste tests on blindfolded volunteers who have also had 250 micrograms of LSD-25 administered beforehand. 35% of the volunteers said that FreeBSD tasted sort of orange, whereas Linux tasted like purple haze. Neither group mentioned any particular variances in temperature that I can remember. We eventually had to throw the results of this survey out entirely anyway when we found that too many volunteers were wandering out of the room during the tests, thus skewing the results. I think most of the volunteers are at Apple now, working on their new ``scratch and sniff'' GUI. It's a funny old business we're in!

Seriously, both FreeBSD and Linux uses the `` Who's scratching in my memory banks??

Q. Is there anything "odd" that FreeBSD does when compiling the kernel which would cause the memory to make a scratchy sound? When compiling (and for a brief moment after recognizing the floppy drive upon startup, as well), a strange scratchy sound emanates from what appears to be the memory banks.

A. Yes! You'll see frequent references to ``daemons'' in the BSD documentation, and what most people don't know is that this refers to genuine, non-corporeal entities that now possess your computer. The scratchy sound coming from your memory is actually high-pitched whispering exchanged among the daemons as they best decide how to deal with various system administration tasks.

If the noise gets to you, a good ``fdisk /mbr'' from DOS will get rid of them, but don't be surprised if they react adversely and try to stop you. In fact, if at any point during the exercise you hear the satanic voice of Bill Gates coming from the built-in speaker, take off running and don't ever look back! Freed from the counterbalancing influence of the BSD daemons, the twin demons of DOS and Windows are often able to re-assert total control over your machine to the eternal damnation of your soul. Given a choice, I think I'd prefer to get used to the scratchy noises, myself! + + What does 'MFC' mean? + +

MFC is an acronym for 'Merged From -CURRENT.' It's used in the CVS + logs to denote when a change was migrated from the CURRENT to the STABLE + branches. + diff --git a/FAQ/network.sgml b/FAQ/network.sgml index 321a5926be..30f46b5ad5 100644 --- a/FAQ/network.sgml +++ b/FAQ/network.sgml @@ -1,1071 +1,1086 @@ - + Networking Where can I get information on ``diskless booting''?

``Diskless booting'' means that the FreeBSD box is booted over a network, and reads the necessary files from a server instead of its hard disk. For full details, please read Can a FreeBSD box be used as a dedicated network router?

Internet standards and good engineering practice prohibit us from providing packet forwarding by default in FreeBSD. You can however enable this feature by changing the following variable to : gateway_enable=YES # Set to YES if this host will be a gateway

This option will put the variable In most cases, you will also need to run a routing process to tell other systems on your network about your router; FreeBSD comes with the standard BSD routing daemon , or for more complex situations you may want to try It is our duty to warn you that, even when FreeBSD is configured in this way, it does not completely comply with the Internet standard requirements for routers; however, it comes close enough for ordinary usage. Can I connect my Win95 box to the Internet via FreeBSD?

Typically, people who ask this question have two PC's at home, one with FreeBSD and one with Win95; the idea is to use the FreeBSD box to connect to the Internet and then be able to access the Internet from the Windows95 box through the FreeBSD box. This is really just a special case of the previous question.

There's a useful document available which explains how to set FreeBSD up as a

and on your FreeBSD box.

See also the section on . Why does recompiling the latest BIND from ISC fail?

There is a conflict between the ``compat/include/sys/cdefs.h. Does FreeBSD support SLIP and PPP?

Yes. See the man pages for , , and . deals exclusively with incoming connections and deals exclusively with outgoing connections.

These programs are described in the following sections of the :

If you only have access to the Internet through a "shell account", you may want to have a look at the package. It can provide you with (limited) access to services such as ftp and http direct from your local machine. Does FreeBSD support NAT or Masquerading

If you have a local subnet (one or more local machines), but have been allocated only a single IP number from your Internet provider (or even if you receive a dynamic IP number), you may want to look at the program. The program has similar functionality built in via the is used in both cases. I can't make ppp work. What am I doing wrong ?

You should first read the and the . Enable logging with the command set log Phase Chat Connect Carrier lcp ipcp ccp command

This command may be typed at the /etc/ppp/ppp.conf configuration file (the start of the default section is the best place to put it). Make sure that contains the lines !ppp *.* /var/log/ppp.log

and that the file /var/log/ppp.log exists. You can now find out a lot about what's going on from the log file. Don't worry if it doesn't all make sense. If you need to get help from someone, it may make sense to them.

If your version of ppp doesn't understand the "set log" command, you should download the . It will build on FreeBSD version 2.1.5 and higher. Ppp won't dial in -auto mode

First, check that you've got a default route. By running name="netstat -rn">, you should see two entries like this: Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif Expire default 10.0.0.2 UGSc 0 0 tun0 10.0.0.2 10.0.0.1 UH 0 0 tun0

This is assuming that you've used the addresses from the handbook, the man page or from the ppp.conf.sample file. If you haven't got a default route, it may be because you're running an old version of that doesn't understand the word add 0 0 HISADDR

line to one saying add 0 0 10.0.0.2

Another reason for the default route line being missing is that you have mistakenly set up a default router in your file (this file was called /etc/sysconfig prior to release 2.2.2), and you have omitted the line saying delete ALL

from ppp.conf. If this is the case, go back to the section of the handbook. What does "No route to host" mean

This error is usually due to a missing MYADDR: delete ALL add 0 0 HISADDR

section in your /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup file. This is only necessary if you have a dynamic IP address or don't know the address of your gateway. If you're using interactive mode, you can type the following after entering delete ALL add 0 0 HISADDR

Refer to the section of the handbook for further details. My connection drops after about 3 minutes

The default ppp timeout is 3 minutes. This can be adjusted with the line set timeout NNN

where ppp.conf file, or to type it at the prompt in interactive mode. It is also possible to adjust it on the fly while the line is active by connecting to or . Refer to the man page for further details. My connection drops under heavy load

If you have Link Quality Reporting (LQR) configured, it is possible that too many LQR packets are lost between your machine and the peer. Ppp deduces that the line must therefore be bad, and disconnects. Prior to FreeBSD version 2.2.5, LQR was enabled by default. It is now disabled by default. LQR can be disabled with the line disable lqr My connection drops after a random amount of time

Sometimes, on a noisy phone line or even on a line with call waiting enabled, your modem may hang up because it thinks (incorrectly) that it lost carrier.

There's a setting on most modems for determining how tolerant it should be to temporary losses of carrier. On a USR Sportster for example, this is measured by the S10 register in tenths of a second. To make your modem more forgiving, you could add the following send-expect sequence to your dial string: set dial "...... ATS10=10 OK ......"

Refer to your modem manual for details. Nothing happens after the Login OK! message

Prior to FreeBSD version 2.2.5, once the link was established, would wait for the peer to initiate the Line Control Protocol (LCP). Many ISPs will not initiate negotiations and expect the client to do so. To force set openmode active

I keep seeing errors about magic being the same

Occasionally, just after connecting, you may see messages in the log that say "magic is the same". Sometimes, these messages are harmless, and sometimes one side or the other exits. Most ppp implementations cannot survive this problem, and even if the link seems to come up, you'll see repeated configure requests and configure acknowledgements in the log file until ppp eventually gives up and closes the connection.

This normally happens on server machines with slow disks that are spawning a getty on the port, and executing ppp from a login script or program after login. I've also heard reports of it happening consistently when using slirp. The reason is that in the time taken between getty exiting and ppp starting, the client-side ppp starts sending Line Control Protocol (LCP) packets. Because ECHO is still switched on for the port on the server, the client ppp sees these packets "reflect" back.

One part of the LCP negotiation is to establish a magic number for each side of the link so that "reflections" can be detected. The protocol says that when the peer tries to negotiate the same magic number, a NAK should be sent and a new magic number should be chosen. During the period that the server port has ECHO turned on, the client ppp sends LCP packets, sees the same magic in the reflected packet and NAKs it. It also sees the NAK reflect (which also means ppp must change its magic). This produces a potentially enormous number of magic number changes, all of which are happily piling into the server's tty buffer. As soon as ppp starts on the server, it's flooded with magic number changes and almost immediately decides it's tried enough to negotiate LCP and gives up. Meanwhile, the client, who no longer sees the reflections, becomes happy just in time to see a hangup from the server.

This can be avoided by allowing the peer to start negotiating with the following line in your ppp.conf file: set openmode passive

This tells ppp to wait for the server to initiate LCP negotiations. Some servers however may never initiate negotiations. If this is the case, you can do something like: set openmode active 3

This tells ppp to be passive for 3 seconds, and then to start sending LCP requests. If the peer starts sending requests during this period, ppp will immediately respond rather than waiting for the full 3 second period. LCP negotiations continue 'till the connection is closed

There is currently an implementation mis-feature in This goes on 'till one side figures out that they're getting nowhere and gives up.

The best way to avoid this is to configure one side to be set openmode passive command. Care should be taken with this option. You should also use the set stopped N command to limit the amount of time that set openmode active N command (where Ppp locks up shortly after connecting

Prior to version 2.2.5 of FreeBSD, it was possible that your link was disabled shortly after connection due to disable pred1 Ppp locks up when I shell out to test it

When you execute the If you wish to execute commands like this, use the Ppp over a null-modem cable never exits

There is no way for enable lqr

LQR is accepted by default if negotiated by the peer. Why does ppp dial for no reason in -auto mode

If To determine the cause, use the following line: set log +tcp/ip

This will log all traffic through the connection. The next time the line comes up unexpectedly, you will see the reason logged with a convenient timestamp next to it.

You can now disable dialing under these circumstances. Usually, this sort of problem arises due to DNS lookups. To prevent DNS lookups from establishing a connection (this will set dfilter 1 deny udp src eq 53 set dfilter 2 deny udp dst eq 53 set dfilter 3 permit 0/0 0/0

This is not always suitable, as it will effectively break your demand-dial capabilities - most programs will need a DNS lookup before doing any other network related things.

In the DNS case, you should try to determine what is actually trying to resolve a host name. A lot of the time, is the culprit. You should make sure that you tell sendmail not to do any DNS lookups in its configuration file. See the section on for details on how to create your own configuration file and what should go into it. You may also want to add the following line to your define(`confDELIVERY_MODE', `d')dnl

This will make sendmail queue everything until the queue is run (usually, sendmail is invoked with ``-bd -q30m'', telling it to run the queue every 30 minutes) or until a ``sendmail -q'' is done (perhaps from your ppp.linkup file). What do these CCP errors mean

I keep seeing the following errors in my log file: CCP: CcpSendConfigReq CCP: Received Terminate Ack (1) state = Req-Sent (6)

This is because ppp is trying to negotiate Predictor1 compression, and the peer does not want to negotiate any compression at all. The messages are harmless, but if you wish to remove them, you can disable Predictor1 compression locally too: disable pred1 Ppp locks up during file transfers with IO errors

Under FreeBSD 2.2.2 and before, there was a bug in the tun driver that prevents incoming packets of a size larger than the tun interface's MTU size. Receipt of a packet greater than the MTU size results in an IO error being logged via syslogd.

The ppp specification says that an MRU of 1500 should always be accepted as a minimum, despite any LCP negotiations, therefore it is possible that should you decrease the MTU to less than 1500, your ISP will transmit packets of 1500 regardless, and you will tickle this non-feature - locking up your link.

The problem can be circumvented by never setting an MTU of less than 1500 under FreeBSD 2.2.2 or before. Why doesn't ppp log my connection speed?

In order to log all lines of your modem ``conversation'', you must enable the following: set log +connect

This will make log everything up until the last requested "expect" string.

If you wish to see your connect speed and are using PAP or CHAP (and therefore don't have anything to "chat" after the CONNECT in the dial script - no "set login" script), you must make sure that you instruct ppp to "expect" the whole CONNECT line, something like this: set dial "ABORT BUSY ABORT NO\\sCARRIER TIMEOUT 4 \"\" ATZ OK-ATZ-OK ATDT\\T TIMEOUT 60 CONNECT \\c \\n"

Here, we get our CONNECT, send nothing, then expect a line-feed, forcing Ppp ignores the `\' character in my chat script

Ppp parses each line in your config files so that it can interpret strings such as When the chat interpreter parses each argument, it re-interprets the argument in order to find any special escape sequences such as ``\P'' or ``\T'' (see the man page). As a result of this double-parsing, you must remember to use the correct number of escapes.

If you wish to actually send a ``\'' character to (say) your modem, you'd need something like: set dial "\"\" ATZ OK-ATZ-OK AT\\\\X OK"

resulting in the following sequence: ATZ OK AT\X OK

or set phone 1234567 set dial "\"\" ATZ OK ATDT\\T"

resulting in the following sequence: ATZ OK ATDT1234567 Ppp gets a seg-fault, but I see no

Ppp (or any other program for that matter) should never dump core. Because ppp runs with an effective user id of 0, the operating system will not write ppps core image to disk before terminating it. If, however ppp $ tar xfz ppp-*.src.tar.gz $ cd ppp*/ppp $ echo STRIP= >>Makefile $ echo CFLAGS+=-g >>Makefile $ make clean all $ su # make install # chmod 555 /usr/sbin/ppp

You will now have a debuggable version of ppp installed. You will have to be root to run ppp as all of its privileges have been revoked. When you start ppp, take a careful note of what your current directory was at the time.

Now, if and when ppp receives the segmentation violation, it will dump a core file called ppp.core. You should then do the following: $ su # gdb /usr/sbin/ppp ppp.core (gdb) bt ..... (gdb) f 0 ..... (gdb) i args ..... (gdb) l .....

All of this information should be given alongside your question, making it possible to diagnose the problem.

If you're familiar with gdb, you may wish to find out some other bits and pieces such as what actually caused the dump and the addresses & values of the relevant variables. The process that forces a dial in auto mode never connects

This is a known problem when , the IP number of the tun interface is assigned to the socket endpoint. The kernel creates the first outgoing packet and writes it to the tun device. There are several theoretical ways to approach this problem. It would be nicest if the peer would re-assign the same IP number if possible The easiest method from our side would be to never change the tun interface IP number, but instead to change all outgoing packets so that the source IP number is changed from the interface IP to the negotiated IP on the fly. This is essentially what (and ppp's Another alternative (and probably the most reliable) is to implement a system call that changes all bound sockets from one IP to another. A third possibility is to allow an interface to be brought up without an IP number. Outgoing packets would be given an IP number of 255.255.255.255 up until the first SIOCAIFADDR ioctl is done. This would result in fully binding the socket. It would be up to None of these solutions has been implemented (yet). Why don't most games work with the -alias switch

The reason games and the like don't work when libalias is in use is that the machine on the outside will try to open a connection or send (unsolicited) UDP packets to the machine on the inside. The packet alias software doesn't know that it should send these packets to the interior machine.

To make things work, make sure that the only thing running is the software that you're having problems with, then either run tcpdump on the tun interface of the gateway or enable ppp tcp/ip logging (``set log +tcp/ip'') on the gateway.

When you start the offending software, you should see packets passing through the gateway machine. When something comes back from the outside, it'll be dropped (that's the problem). Note the port number of these packets then shut down the offending software. Do this a few times to see if the port numbers are consistent. If they are, then the following line in the relevant section of /etc/ppp/ppp.conf will make the software functional: alias port proto internalmachine:port port

where ``proto'' is either ``tcp'' or ``udp'', ``internalmachine'' is the machine that you want the packets to be sent to and ``port'' is the destination port number of the packets.

You won't be able to use the software on other machines without changing the above command, and running the software on two internal machines at the same time is out of the question - after all, the outside world is seeing your entire internal network as being just a single machine.

If the port numbers aren't consistent, there are three more options:

1) Submit support in libalias. Examples of ``special cases'' can be found in /usr/src/lib/libalias/alias_*.c (alias_ftp.c is a good prototype). This usually involves reading certain recognised outgoing packets, identifying the instruction that tells the outside machine to initiate a connection back to the internal machine on a specific (random) port and setting up a ``route'' in the alias table so that the subsequent packets know where to go.

This is the most difficult solution, but it is the best and will make the software work with multiple machines.

2) Use a proxy. The application may support socks5 for example, or (as in the ``cvsup'' case) may have a ``passive'' option that avoids ever requesting that the peer open connections back to the local machine.

3) Redirect everything to the internal machine using ``alias addr''. This is the sledge-hammer approach. None of this helps - I'm desperate !

If all else fails, send as much information as you can, including your config files, how you're starting command (before and after connecting) to the mailing list or the news group, and someone should point you in the right direction. I can't create a /dev/ed0 device!

In the Berkeley networking framework, network interfaces are only directly accessible by kernel code. Please see the /etc/rc.network file and the manual pages for the various network programs mentioned there for more information. If this leaves you totally confused, then you should pick up a book describing network administration on another BSD-related operating system; with few significant exceptions, administering networking on FreeBSD is basically the same as on SunOS 4.0 or Ultrix. How can I setup Ethernet aliases?

Add `` command-line like the following: ifconfig ed0 alias 204.141.95.2 netmask 0xffffffff How do I get my 3C503 to use the other network port?

If you want to use the other ports, you'll have to specify an additional parameter on the command line. The default port is ``. I'm having problems with NFS to/from FreeBSD.

Certain PC network cards are better than others (to put it mildly) and can sometimes cause problems with network intensive applications like NFS.

See for more information on this topic. Why can't I NFS-mount from a Linux box?

Some versions of the Linux NFS code only accept mount requests from a privileged port; try mount -o -P linuxbox:/blah /mnt Why can't I NFS-mount from a Sun box?

Sun workstations running SunOS 4.X only accept mount requests from a privileged port; try mount -o -P sunbox:/blah /mnt I'm having problems talking PPP to NeXTStep machines.

Try disabling the TCP extensions in by changing the following variable to NO: tcp_extensions=NO

Xylogic's Annex boxes are also broken in this regard and you must use the above change to connect thru them. How do I enable IP multicast support?

Multicast host operations are fully supported in FreeBSD 2.0 and later by default. If you want your box to run as a multicast router, you will need to recompile your kernel with the MROUTING option and run /etc/rc.conf.

MBONE tools are available in their own ports category, mbone. If you are looking for the conference tools For more information, see the . Which network cards are based on the DEC PCI chipset?

Here is a list compiled by , with some more modern additions: Vendor Model ---------------------------------------------- ASUS PCI-L101-TB Accton ENI1203 Cogent EM960PCI Compex ENET32-PCI D-Link DE-530 Dayna DP1203, DP2100 DEC DE435 Danpex EN-9400P3 JCIS Condor JC1260 Linksys EtherPCI Mylex LNP101 SMC EtherPower 10/100 (Model 9332) SMC EtherPower (Model 8432) TopWare TE-3500P Zynx ZX342 Why do I have to use the FQDN for hosts on my site?

You will probably find that the host is actually in a different domain; for example, if you are in foo.bar.edu and you wish to reach a host called ``mumble'' in the bar.edu domain, you will have to refer to it by the fully-qualified domain name, ``mumble.bar.edu'', instead of just ``mumble''.

Traditionally, this was allowed by BSD BIND resolvers. However the current version of that ships with FreeBSD no longer provides default abbreviations for non-fully qualified domain names other than the domain you are in. So an unqualified host mumble must either be found as mumble.foo.bar.edu, or it will be searched for in the root domain.

This is different from the previous behavior, where the search continued across mumble.bar.edu, and mumble.edu. Have a look at RFC 1535 for why this was considered bad practice, or even a security hole.

As a good workaround, you can place the line search foo.bar.edu bar.edu

instead of the previous domain foo.bar.edu

into your file. However, make sure that the search order does not go beyond the ``boundary between local and public administration'', as RFC 1535 calls it. ``Permission denied'' for all networking operations.

If you have compiled your kernel with the If you had unintentionally misconfigured your system for firewalling, you can restore network operability by typing the following while logged in as root: ipfw add 65534 allow all from any to any

You can also set "firewall_type='open'" in /etc/rc.conf.

For further information on configuring a FreeBSD firewall, see the . How much overhead does IPFW incur?

The answer to this depends mostly on your rule set and processor speed. For most applications dealing with ethernet and small rule sets, the answer is, negligible. For those of you that need actual measurements to satisfy your curiosity, read on.

The following measurements were made using 2.2.5-STABLE on a 486-66. IPFW was modified to measure the time spent within the Two rule sets, each with 1000 rules were tested. The first set was designed to demonstrate a worst case scenario by repeating the rule: ipfw add deny tcp from any to any 55555

This demonstrates worst case by causing most of IPFW's packet check routine to be executed before finally deciding that the packet does not match the rule (by virtue of the port number). Following the 999th iteration of this rule was an allow ip from any to any.

The second set of rules were designed to abort the rule check quickly: ipfw add deny ip from 1.2.3.4 to 1.2.3.4

The nonmatching source IP address for the above rule causes these rules to be skipped very quickly. As before, the 1000th rule was an allow ip from any to any.

The per-packet processing overhead in the former case was approximately 2.703ms/packet, or roughly 2.7 microseconds per rule. Thus the theoretical packet processing limit with these rules is around 370 packets per second. Assuming 10Mbps ethernet and a ~1500 byte packet size, we would only be able to achieve a 55.5% bandwidth utilization.

For the latter case each packet was processed in approximately 1.172ms, or roughly 1.2 microseconds per rule. The theoretical packet processing limit here would be about 853 packets per second, which could consume 10Mbps ethernet bandwidth.

The excessive number of rules tested and the nature of those rules do not provide a real-world scenario -- they were used only to generate the timing information presented here. Here are a few things to keep in mind when building an efficient rule set: Place an `established' rule early on to handle the majority of TCP traffic. Don't put any allow tcp statements before this rule. Place heavily triggered rules earlier in the rule set than those rarely used (without changing the permissiveness of the firewall, of course). You can see which rules are used most often by examining the packet counting statistics with ipfw -a l. + + How can I redirect service requests from one machine to another? + + +

You can redirect FTP (and other service) request with the 'socket' + package, available in the ports tree in category 'sysutils'. + Simply replace the service's commandline to call socket instead, like so: + + +ftp stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/local/bin/socket socket ftp.foo.com ftp + + +

where 'ftp.foo.com' and 'ftp' are the host and port to redirect to, + respectively. + diff --git a/FAQ/preface.sgml b/FAQ/preface.sgml index e3d46ac5bd..3c6720a2ed 100644 --- a/FAQ/preface.sgml +++ b/FAQ/preface.sgml @@ -1,529 +1,618 @@ - + Preface

Welcome to the FreeBSD 2.X FAQ! What is the purpose of this FAQ?

As is usual with Usenet FAQs, this document aims to cover the most frequently asked questions concerning the FreeBSD operating system (and of course answer them!). Although originally intended to reduce bandwidth and avoid the same old questions being asked over and over again, FAQs have become recognized as valuable information resources.

Every effort has been made to make this FAQ as informative as possible; if you have any suggestions as to how it may be improved, please feel free to mail them to the . What is FreeBSD?

Briefly, FreeBSD 2.X is a UN*X-like operating system based on U.C. Berkeley's 4.4BSD-lite release for the i386 platform. It is also based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's Net/2 to the i386, known as 386BSD, though very little of the 386BSD code remains. A fuller description of what FreeBSD is and how it can work for you may be found on the .

FreeBSD is used by companies, Internet Service Providers, researchers, computer professionals, students and home users all over the world in their work, education and recreation. See some of them in the

For more detailed information on FreeBSD, please see the What are the goals of FreeBSD?

The goals of the FreeBSD Project are to provide software that may be used for any purpose and without strings attached. Many of us have a significant investment in the code (and project) and would certainly not mind a little financial compensation now and then, but we're definitely not prepared to insist on it. We believe that our first and foremost "mission" is to provide code to any and all comers, and for whatever purpose, so that the code gets the widest possible use and provides the widest possible benefit. This is, we believe, one of the most fundamental goals of Free Software and one that we enthusiastically support.

That code in our source tree which falls under the GNU Public License (GPL) or GNU Library Public License (GLPL) comes with slightly more strings attached, though at least on the side of enforced access rather than the usual opposite. Due to the additional complexities that can evolve in the commercial use of GPL software, we do, however, endeavor to replace such software with submissions under the more relaxed BSD copyright whenever possible. Why is it called FreeBSD?

It may be used free of charge, even by commercial users. Full source for the operating system is freely available, and the minimum possible restrictions have been placed upon its use, distribution and incorporation into other work (commercial or non-commercial). Anyone who has an improvement and/or bug fix is free to submit their code and have it added to the source tree (subject to one or two obvious provisos).

For those of our readers whose first language is not English, it may be worth pointing out that the word ``free'' is being used in two ways here, one meaning ``at no cost'', the other meaning ``you can do whatever you like''. Apart from one or two things you What is the latest version of FreeBSD?

Version is the latest stable version; it was released in July, 1998. This is also the latest release version.

Briefly explained, -stable is aimed at the ISP or other corporate user who wants stability and a low change count over the wizzy new features of the latest release. At the moment, these versions are one and the same, but it shouldn't be long before the -current branch is polished enough for general release.

This is not to say that a 3.0-current snapshot is unusable for business services, and many people who need some 3.0 specific feature (newer compiler technology, faster networking code, etc) have decided to take a chance with it with very good results. We simply do not wish to "certify" 3.0 as mission-worthy until it's been better shaken-out. What is FreeBSD-current?

is the development version of the operating system, which will in due course become 3.0-RELEASE. As such, it is really only of interest to developers working on the system and die-hard hobbyists. See the in the for details on running -current.

If you are not familiar with the operating system or are not capable of identifying the difference between a real problem and a temporary problem, you should not use FreeBSD-current. This branch sometimes evolves quite quickly and can be un-buildable for a number of days at a time. People that use FreeBSD-current are expected to be able to analyze any problems and only report them if they are deemed to be mistakes rather than ``glitches''. Questions such as ``make world produces some error about groups'' on the -current mailing list are sometimes treated with contempt.

Every now and again, a release is also made of this -current development code, CDROM distributions of the occasional snapshot even now being made available. The goals behind each snapshot release are: To test the latest version of the installation software. To give people who would like to run -current but who don't have the time and/or bandwidth to follow it on a day-to-day basis an easy way of bootstrapping it onto their systems. To preserve a fixed reference point for the code in question, just in case we break something really badly later. (Although CVS normally prevents anything horrible like this happening :) To ensure that any new features in need of testing have the greatest possible number of potential testers.

No claims are made that any snapshot can be considered ``production quality'' for any purpose. For stability and tested mettle, you will have to stick to full releases.

Snapshot releases are directly available from and are generated, on the average, once a day for both the 3.0-current and 2.2-stable branches. What is the FreeBSD-stable concept?

Back when FreeBSD 2.0.5 was released, we decided to branch FreeBSD development into two parts. One branch was named , with the intention that only well-tested bug fixes and small incremental enhancements would be made to it (for Internet Service Providers and other commercial enterprises for whom sudden shifts or experimental features are quite undesirable). The other branch was , which essentially has been one unbroken line leading towards 3.0-RELEASE (and beyond) since 2.0 was released. If a little ASCII art would help, this is how it looks: 2.0 | | | [2.1-stable] *BRANCH* 2.0.5 -> 2.1 -> 2.1.5 -> 2.1.6 -> 2.1.7.1 [2.1-stable ends] | (Mar 1997) | | | [2.2-stable] *BRANCH* 2.2.1 -> 2.2.2-RELEASE -> 2.2.5 -> 2.2.6 -> 2.2.7 | (Mar 1997) (Oct 97) (Apr 98) (Jul 98) | | 3.0-SNAPs (started Q1 1997) | | 3.0.0-RELEASE (Oct 1998) | \|/ + [future 3.x releases]

The -current branch is slowly progressing towards 3.0 and beyond, whereas the previous 2.1-stable branch was superceded by the release of 2.2.0, the new "stability branch" aka 2.2-stable. 3.0-current will continue to be where the active development takes place, up until the actual release of 3.0. At that point, 3.0 will become yet another branch and 3.1-current will become the next "current branch". Why did the 2.1-stable branch end with 2.1.7.1?

While we'd certainly like to be able to continue 3 branches of development, we've found that the version control tools available to us are not particularly well-suited for this; in fact, they quickly result in a maintenance nightmare for any branch which lives much beyond 2-3 months. The 2.1-stable branch has, by contrast, lasted for well over a year and what little sanity the FreeBSD developers have left would be in serious jeopardy if we continued in this way. Perhaps in the future we'll figure out another model which gives everyone what they want, and we are working on such a model, but in the meantime it's probably best to think of the old -stable coming to an end with (the final point release after 2.1.7), and the new -stable beginning with 2.2.2. When are FreeBSD releases made?

As a general principle, the FreeBSD core team only release a new version of FreeBSD when they believe that there are sufficient new features and/or bug fixes to justify one, and are satisfied that the changes made have settled down sufficiently to avoid compromising the stability of the release. Many users regard this caution as one of the best things about FreeBSD, although it can be a little frustrating when waiting for all the latest goodies to become available...

Releases are made about every 6 months on average.

For people needing (or wanting) a little more excitement, there are SNAPs released more frequently, particularly during the month or so leading up to a release. Is FreeBSD only available for PCs ?

At present, yes, though a port to the and architecture is under way. If your machine has a different architecture and you need something right now, we suggest you look at or . Who is responsible for FreeBSD?

The key decisions concerning the FreeBSD project, such as the overall direction of the project and who is allowed to add code to the source tree, are made by a of some 17 people. There is a much larger team of around 80+ who are authorized to make changes directly to the FreeBSD source tree.

However, most non-trivial changes are discussed in advance in the , and there are no restrictions on who may take part in the discussion. Where can I get FreeBSD?

Every significant release of FreeBSD is available via anonymous ftp from the : For the current 2.2-stable release, 2.2.6R see the directory. For the current 3.0-current release, 3.0-SNAP, see the directory. releases are made once a day along the RELENG_2_2 branch (2.2.6 -> 2.2.x) as it winds its way towards the next point release on the 2.2 branch. With the occasional exception of accidental breakage, the RELENG_2_2 branch is being carefully maintained (no experimental changes, fixes made only after testing in -current). releases are also made once a day for the branch, these being of service purely to bleeding-edge testers and developers.

FreeBSD is also available via CDROM, from the following place(s):

Walnut Creek CDROM 4041 Pike Lane, Suite F Concord, CA 94520 USA Orders: +1 800 786-9907 Questions: +1 925 674-0783 FAX: +1 925 674-0821 email: WWW:

In Australia, you may find it at:

Advanced Multimedia Distributors Factory 1/1 Ovata Drive Tullamarine, Melbourne Victoria Australia Voice: +61 3 9338 6777 CDROM Support BBS 17 Irvine St Peppermint Grove WA 6011 Voice: +61 9 385-3793 Fax: +61 9 385-2360 And in the UK: The Public Domain & Shareware Library Winscombe House, Beacon Rd Crowborough Sussex. TN6 1UL Voice: +44 1892 663-298 Fax: +44 1892 667-473 Where do I find info on the FreeBSD mailing lists?

You can find full information in the What FreeBSD news groups are available?

You can find full information in the Are there FreeBSD IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels?

Yes, most major IRC networks host a FreeBSD chat channel: Channel #FreeBSD on EFNET is perhaps the most popular. Available at server irc.chat.org. Channel #FreeBSD on DALNET is available at irc.dal.net in the US and irc.eu.dal.net in Europe. Channel #FreeBSD on UNDERNET is available at us.undernet.org in the US and eu.undernet.org in Europe. Finally, you can also join #FreeBSD on BSDNET, a smaller BSD only chat network, at irc.FreeBSD.org.

Each of these channels are distinct and are not connected to each other. Their chat styles also differ, so you may need to try each to find one suited to your chat style. Books on FreeBSD

Greg Lehey's book ``Installing and Running FreeBSD'' is available - from Walnut Creek and ships with the 2.2.6 CDROM. There is also + from Walnut Creek and ships with the 2.2.7 CDROM. There is also a larger book entitled ``The Complete FreeBSD'', which comes with - additional printed manpages and includes the 2.2.6 CDROM set. It + additional printed manpages and includes the 2.2.7 CDROM set. It should be available in most good book shops now.

There is a FreeBSD Documentation Project which you may contact (or even better, join) on the doc mailing list: . This list is for discussion of the FreeBSD documentation. For actual questions about FreeBSD, there is the questions mailing list: .

A FreeBSD ``handbook'' is available, and can be found as: . Note that this is a work in progress, and so parts may be incomplete.

The definitive printed guide on FreeBSD is ``The Complete FreeBSD'', written by Greg Lehey and published by Walnut Creek CDROM Books. Now in its second edition, the book contains 1,750 pages of install & system administration guidance, program setup help, and manual pages. The book (and current FreeBSD release) can be ordered from , , or at your favorite bookstore. The ISBN is 1-57176-227-2.

However, as FreeBSD 2.2.X is based upon Berkeley 4.4BSD-Lite2, most of the 4.4BSD manuals are applicable to FreeBSD 2.2.X. O'Reilly and Associates publishes these manuals: 4.4BSD System Manager's Manual By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition June 1994, 804 pages : 1-56592-080-5 4.4BSD User's Reference Manual By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition June 1994, 905 pages : 1-56592-075-9 4.4BSD User's Supplementary Documents By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition July 1994, 712 pages : 1-56592-076-7 4.4BSD Programmer's Reference Manual By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition June 1994, 886 pages : 1-56592-078-3 4.4BSD Programmer's Supplementary Documents By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition July 1994, 596 pages : 1-56592-079-1

A description of these can be found via WWW as: . Due to poor sales, however, these manuals may be hard to get a hold of.

For a more in-depth look at the 4.4BSD kernel organization, you can't go wrong with:

McKusick, Marshall Kirk, Keith Bostic, Michael J Karels, and John Quarterman.

The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System. Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley, 1996. 0-201-54979-4

A good book on system administration is:

Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass & Trent R. Hein, ``Unix System Administration Handbook'', Prentice-Hall, 1995 : 0-13-151051-7

This book covers the basics, as well as TCP/IP, DNS, NFS, SLIP/PPP, sendmail, INN/NNTP, printing, etc.. It's expensive (approx. US$45-$55), but worth it. It also includes a CDROM with the sources for various tools; most of these, however, are also on the FreeBSD 2.2.6R CDROM (and the FreeBSD CDROM often has newer versions). How do I access your Problem Report database?

The Problem Report database of all open user change requests may be queried (or submitted to) by using our web-based PR and interfaces. The send-pr(1) command can also be used to submit problem reports and change requests via electronic mail. + + Where can I get ASCII/PostScript versions of the FAQ? + +

The up-to-date FAQ is available from the FreeBSD Web Server or any + mirror as PostScript and plain text (7 bit ASCII and 8-bit Latin1). + +

As PostScript (about 370KB): + + + + +

As ASCII text (about 220KB): + + + + +

As ISO 8859-1 text (about 220KB): + + + + + + Where can I get ASCII/PostScript versions of the Handbook? + +

The up-to-date Handbook is available from the FreeBSD Web Server or any + mirror as PostScript and plain text (7 bit ASCII and 8-bit Latin1). + +

As PostScript (about 1.7MB): + + + + +

As ASCII text (about 1080KB): + + + + +

As ISO 8859-1 text (about 1080KB): + + + + + + The ASCII handbook isn't plain text! + +

True, the ASCII and Latin1 versions of the FAQ and Handbook aren't + strictly plaintext; they contain underlines and overprints that + assume the output is going directly to a dot matrix printer. If you + need to reformat them to be human-readable, run the file through col: + + + $ col -b < inputfile > outputfile + + + + I'd like to become a FreeBSD Web mirror! + +

Certainly! There are multiple ways to mirror the Web pages. + + + Using CVSUP: You can retrieve the formatted files using CVSUP + from cvsup.freebsd.org. Add this line to your cvsup file: + + +www release=current hostname=/home base=/usr/local/etc/cvsup +prefix=/usr/local/www/data/www.freebsd.org delete old use-rel-suffix + + + + Using rsync: See for information. + Using ftp mirror: You can download the FTP server's copy of + the web site using your favorite ftp mirror tool. Simply start at + ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/www. + + + + I'd like to translate the documentation into Friesian. + +

Well, we can't pay, but we might arrange a free CD or T-shirt and a + Contributor's Handbook entry if you sbumit a translation of the + documentation. + Other sources of information.

The following newsgroups contain pertinent discussion for FreeBSD users: (moderated)

Web resources: The .

The FreeBSD handbook also has a fairly complete section which is worth reading if you're looking for actual books to buy.