diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/basics/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/basics/chapter.sgml index 8240e8f841..2c23e6824f 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/basics/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/basics/chapter.sgml @@ -1,907 +1,907 @@ Chris Shumway Rewritten by Unix Basics Synopsis basics The following chapter will cover the basic commands and functionality of the FreeBSD operating system. If you are new to FreeBSD, you will definitely want to read through this chapter before asking for help. After reading this chapter you will know: How Unix file permissions work. What processes, daemons, and signals are. What a shell is, and how to change your default login environment. How to use basic text editors. How to read manual pages for more information. Permissions Unix FreeBSD, having its history rooted in BSD Unix, has its fundamentals based on several key Unix concepts. The first, and most pronounced, is that FreeBSD is a multi-user operating system. The system can handle several users all working simultaneously on completely unrelated tasks. The system is responsible for properly sharing and managing requests for hardware devices, peripherals, memory, and CPU time evenly to each user. Because the system is capable of supporting multiple users, everything the system manages has a set of permissions governing who can read, write, and execute the resource. These permissions are stored as two octets broken into three pieces, one for the owner of the file, one for the group that the file belongs to, and one for everyone else. This numerical representation works like this: permissions file permissions Value Permission Directory Listing 0 No read, no write, no execute --- 1 No read, no write, execute --x 2 No read, write, no execute -w- 3 No read, write, execute -wx 4 Read, no write, no execute r-- 5 Read, no write, execute r-x 6 Read, write, no execute rw- 7 Read, write, execute rwx ls directories For the long directory listing by ls -l, a column will show a file's permissions for the owner, group, and everyone else. Here's how it is broken up: -rw-r--r-- The first character, from left to right, is a special character that tells if this is a regular file, a directory, a special character or block device, a socket, or any other special pseudo-file device. The next three characters, designated as rw- gives the permissions for the owner of the file. The next three characters, r-- gives the permissions for the group that the file belongs to. The final three characters, r--, gives the permissions for the rest of the world. A dash means that the permission is turned off. In the case of this file, the permissions are set so the owner can read and write to the file, the group can read the file, and the rest of the world can only read the file. According to the table above, the permissions for this file would be 644, where each digit represents the three parts of the file's permission. This is all well and good, but how does the system control permissions on devices? FreeBSD actually treats most hardware devices as a file that programs can open, read, and write data to just like any other file. These special device files are stored on the /dev directory. Directories are also treated as files. They have read, write, and execute permissions. The executable bit for a directory has a slightly different meaning than that of files. When a directory is marked executable, it means it can be searched into, for example, a directory listing can be done in that directory. There are more to permissions, but they are primarily used in special circumstances such as setuid binaries and sticky directories. If you want more information on file permissions and how to set them, be sure to look at the &man.chmod.1; man page. Directory Structures directory hierarchy Since FreeBSD uses its file systems to determine many fundamental system operations, the hierarchy of the file system is extremely important. Due to the fact that the &man.hier.7; manual page provides a complete description of the directory structure, it will not be duplicated here. Please read &man.hier.7; for more information. Of significant importance is the root of all directories, the / directory. This directory is the first directory mounted at boot time and it contains the base system necessary at boot time. The root directory also contains mount points for every other file system that you want to mount. A mount point is a directory where additional file systems can be grafted onto the root file system. Standard mount points include /usr, /var, /mnt, and /cdrom. These directories are usually referenced to entries in the file /etc/fstab. /etc/fstab is a table of various file systems and mount points for reference by the system. Most of the file systems in /etc/fstab are mounted automatically at boot time from the script &man.rc.8; unless they contain the option. Consult the &man.fstab.5; manual page for more information on the format of the /etc/fstab file and the options it contains. Processes FreeBSD is a multi-tasking operating system. This means that it seems as though more than one program is running at once. Each program running at any one time is called a process. Every command you run will start at least one new process, and there are a number of system processes that run all the time, keeping the system functional. Each process is uniquely identified by a number called a process ID, or PID, and, like files, each process also has one owner and group. The owner and group information is used to determine what files and devices the process can open, using the file permissions discussed earlier. Most processes also have a parent process. The parent process is the process that started them. For example, if you are typing commands to the shell then the shell is a process, and any commands you run are also processes. Each process you run in this way will have your shell as its parent process. The exception to this is a special process called init. init is always the first process, so its PID is always 1. init is started automatically by the kernel when FreeBSD starts. Two commands are particularly useful to see the processes on the system, &man.ps.1; and &man.top.1;. The &man.ps.1; command is used to show a static list of the currently running processes, and can show their PID, how much memory they are using, the command line they were started with, and so on. The &man.top.1; command displays all the running processes, and updates the display every few seconds, so that you can interactively see what your computer is doing. By default, &man.ps.1; only shows you the commands that are running and are owned by you. For example; &prompt.user; ps PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND 298 p0 Ss 0:01.10 tcsh 7078 p0 S 2:40.88 xemacs mdoc.xsl (xemacs-21.1.14) 37393 p0 I 0:03.11 xemacs freebsd.dsl (xemacs-21.1.14) 48630 p0 S 2:50.89 /usr/local/lib/netscape-linux/navigator-linux-4.77.bi 48730 p0 IW 0:00.00 (dns helper) (navigator-linux-) 72210 p0 R+ 0:00.00 ps 390 p1 Is 0:01.14 tcsh 7059 p2 Is+ 1:36.18 /usr/local/bin/mutt -y 6688 p3 IWs 0:00.00 tcsh 10735 p4 IWs 0:00.00 tcsh 20256 p5 IWs 0:00.00 tcsh 262 v0 IWs 0:00.00 -tcsh (tcsh) 270 v0 IW+ 0:00.00 /bin/sh /usr/X11R6/bin/startx -- -bpp 16 280 v0 IW+ 0:00.00 xinit /home/nik/.xinitrc -- -bpp 16 284 v0 IW 0:00.00 /bin/sh /home/nik/.xinitrc 285 v0 S 0:38.45 /usr/X11R6/bin/sawfish As you can see in this example, the output from &man.ps.1; is organized in to a number of columns. PID is the process ID discussed earlier. PIDs are assigned starting from 1, go up to 65536, and wrap around back to the beginning when you run out. TT shows the tty the program is running on, and can safely be ignore for the moment. STAT shows the program's state, and again, can be safely ignored. TIME is the amount of time the program has been running on the CPU—this is not necessarily the elapsed time since you started the program, as some programs spend a lot of time waiting for things to happen before they need to spend time on the CPU. Finally, COMMAND is the command line that was used to run the program. &man.ps.1; supports a number of different options to change the information that is displayed. One of the most useful sets is auxww. displays information about all the running processes, not just your own. displays the username of the process' owner, as well as memory usage. displays information about daemon processes, and causes &man.ps.1; to display the full command line, rather than truncating it once it gets too long to fit on the screen. The output from &man.top.1; is similar. A sample session looks like this; &prompt.user; top last pid: 72257; load averages: 0.13, 0.09, 0.03 up 0+13:38:33 22:39:10 47 processes: 1 running, 46 sleeping CPU states: 12.6% user, 0.0% nice, 7.8% system, 0.0% interrupt, 79.7% idle Mem: 36M Active, 5256K Inact, 13M Wired, 6312K Cache, 15M Buf, 408K Free Swap: 256M Total, 38M Used, 217M Free, 15% Inuse PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU CPU COMMAND 72257 nik 28 0 1960K 1044K RUN 0:00 14.86% 1.42% top 7078 nik 2 0 15280K 10960K select 2:54 0.88% 0.88% xemacs-21.1.14 281 nik 2 0 18636K 7112K select 5:36 0.73% 0.73% XF86_SVGA 296 nik 2 0 3240K 1644K select 0:12 0.05% 0.05% xterm 48630 nik 2 0 29816K 9148K select 3:18 0.00% 0.00% navigator-linu 175 root 2 0 924K 252K select 1:41 0.00% 0.00% syslogd 7059 nik 2 0 7260K 4644K poll 1:38 0.00% 0.00% mutt ... The output is split in to two sections. The header (the first five lines) shows the PID of the last process to run, the system load averages (which are a measure of how busy the system is), the system uptime (time since the last reboot) and the current time. The other figures in the header relate to how many processes are running (47 in this case), how much memory and swap space has been taken up, and how much time the system is spending in different CPU states. Below that are a series of columns containing similar information to the output from &man.ps.1;. As before you can see the PID, the username, the amount of CPU time taken, and the command that was run. &man.top.1; also defaults to showing you the amount of memory space taken by the process. This is split in to two columns, one for total size, and one for resident size—total size is how much memory the application has needed, and the resident size is how much it is actually using at the moment. In this example you can see that Netscape has needed almost 30 MB of RAM, and is currently only needing 9 MB. &man.top.1; automatically updates this display every two seconds; this can be changed with the option. Daemons, Signals, and Killing Processes When you run an editor it is easy to control the editor, tell it to load files, and so on. You can do this because the editor provides facilities to do so, and because the editor is attached to a terminal. Some programs are not designed to be run with continuous user input, and so they disconnect from the terminal at the first opportunity. For example, a web server spends all day responding to web requests, it normally does not need any input from you. Programs that transport email from site to site are another example of this class of application. We call these programs daemons. Daemons were characters in Greek mythology; neither good or evil, they were little attendant spirits that, by and large, did useful things for mankind. Much like the web servers and mail servers of today do useful things. This is why the BSD mascot has, for a long time, been the cheerful looking daemon with sneakers and a pitchfork. There is a convention to name programs that normally run as daemons with a trailing d. BIND is the Berkeley Internet Name Daemon (and the actual program that executes is called named), the Apache web server program is called httpd, the line printer spooling daemon is lpd and so on. This is a convention, not a hard and fast rule; for example, the main mail daemon for the Sendmail application is called sendmail, and not maild, as you might imagine. Sometimes you will need to communicate with a daemon process. These communications are called signals, and you can communicate with daemons (or with any running process) by sending it a signal. There are a number if different signals that you can send—some of them have a specific meaning, others are interpreted by the application, and the application's documentation will tell you how that application interprets signals. You can only send a signal to a process that you own. If you try and send a signal to someone else's process it will be ignored. The exception to this is the root user, who can send signals to everyone's processes. FreeBSD will also send applications signals in some cases. If an application is badly written, and tries to access memory that it is not supposed to, FreeBSD sends the process the Segmentation Violation signal (SIGSEGV). If an application has used the &man.alarm.3; system call to be alerted after a period of time has elapsed then it will be sent the Alarm signal (SIGALRM), and so on. Two signals can be used to stop a process, SIGTERM and SIGKILL. SIGTERM is the polite way to kill a process; the process can catch the signal, realize that you want it to shut down, close any log files it may have open, and generally finish whatever it is doing at the time before shutting down. In some cases a process may even ignore SIGTERM if it is in the middle of some task that can not be interrupted. SIGKILL can not be ignored by a process. This is the I do not care what you are doing, stop right now signal. If you send SIGKILL to a process then FreeBSD will stop that process there and then Not quite true—there are a few things that can not be interrupted. For example, if the process is trying to read from a file that is on another computer on the network, and the other computer has gone away for some reason (been turned off, or the network has a fault), then the process is said to be uninterruptible. Eventually the process will time out, typically after two minutes. As soon as this time out occurs the process will be killed. . The other signals you might want to use are SIGHUP, SIGUSR1, and SIGUSR2. These are general purpose signals, and different applications will do different things when they are sent. Suppose that you have changed your web server's configuration file—you would like to tell the web server to re-read its configuration. You could stop and restart httpd, but this would result in a brief outage period on your web server, which may be undesirable. Most daemons are written to respond to the SIGHUP signal by re-reading their configuration file. So instead of killing and restarting httpd you would send it the SIGHUP signal. Because there is no standard way to respond to these signals, different daemons will have different behavior, so be sure and read the documentation for the daemon in question. Signals are sent using the &man.kill.1; command, as this example shows. Sending a Signal to a Process This example shows how to send a signal to &man.inetd.8;. The &man.inetd.8; configuration file is /etc/inetd.conf, and &man.inetd.8; will re-read this configuration file when it is sent SIGHUP. Find the process ID of the process you want to send the signal to. Do this using &man.ps.1; and &man.grep.1;. The &man.grep.1; command is used to search through output, looking for the string you specify. This command is run as a normal user, and &man.inetd.8; is run as root, so the options must be given to &man.ps.1;. &prompt.user; ps -ax | grep inetd 198 ?? IWs 0:00.00 inetd -wW So the &man.inetd.8; PID is 198. In some cases the grep inetd command might also occur in this output. This is because of the way &man.ps.1; has to find the list of running processes. Use &man.kill.1; to send the signal. Because &man.inetd.8; is being run by root you must use &man.su.1; to become root first. &prompt.user; su Password: &prompt.root; /bin/kill -s HUP 198 As is common with Unix commands, &man.kill.1; will not print any output if it is successfully. If you try and send a signal to a process that you do not own then you will see kill: PID: Operation not permitted. If you mistype the PID you will either send the signal to the wrong process, which could be bad, or, if you are lucky, you will have sent the signal to a PID that is not currently in use, and you will see kill: PID: No such process. Why Use <command>/bin/kill</command>? Many shells provide the kill command as a built in command; that is, the shell will send the signal directly, rather than running /bin/kill. This can be very useful, but different shells have a different syntax for specifying the name of the signal to send. Rather than try to learn all of them, it can be simpler just to use the /bin/kill ... command directly. Sending other signals is very similar, just substitute TERM or KILL in the command line as necessary. Killing random process on the system can be a bad idea. In particular, &man.init.8;, process ID 1, is very special. Running /bin/kill -s KILL 1 is a quick way to shutdown your system. Always double check the arguments you run &man.kill.1; with before you press - RETURN. + Return. Shells shells command-line In FreeBSD, a lot of everyday work is done in a command line interface called a shell. A shell's main job is to take commands from the input channel and execute them. A lot of shells also have built in functions to help everyday tasks such a file management, file globing, command line editing, command macros, and environment variables. FreeBSD comes with a set of shells, such as sh, the Bourne Shell, and csh, the C-shell. Many other shells are available from the FreeBSD Ports Collection that have much more power, such as tcsh and bash. Which shell do you use? It is really a matter of taste. If you are a C programmer you might feel more comfortable with a C-like shell such as tcsh. If you have come from Linux or are new to a Unix command line interface you might try bash. The point is that each shell has unique properties that may or may not work with your preferred working environment, and that you have a choice of what shell to use. One common feature in a shell is file-name completion. Given the typing of the first few letters of a command or filename, you can usually have the shell automatically complete the rest of the - command or filename by hitting the TAB key on the keyboard. Here is + command or filename by hitting the Tab key on the keyboard. Here is an example. Suppose you have two files called foobar and foo.bar. You want to delete foo.bar. So what you would type - on the keyboard is: rm fo[TAB].[TAB]. + on the keyboard is: rm fo[Tab].[Tab]. The shell would print out rm foo[BEEP].bar. The [BEEP] is the console bell, which is the shell telling me it was unable to totally complete the filename because there is more than one match. Both foobar and foo.bar start with fo, but it was able to complete to foo. If you type in - ., then hit TAB again, the shell would be able to + ., then hit Tab again, the shell would be able to fill in the rest of the filename for you. environment variables Another function of the shell is environment variables. Environment variables are a variable key pair stored in the shell's environment space. This space can be read by any program invoked by the shell, and thus contains a lot of program configuration. Here is a list of common environment variables and what they mean: environment variables Variable Description USER Current logged in user's name. PATH Colon separated list of directories to search for binaries. DISPLAY Network name of the X11 display to connect to, if available. SHELL The current shell. TERM The name of the user's terminal. Used to determine the capabilities of the terminal. TERMCAP Database entry of the terminal escape codes to perform various terminal functions. OSTYPE Type of operating system. E.g., FreeBSD. MACHTYPE The CPU architecture that the system is running on. EDITOR The user's preferred text editor. PAGER The user's preferred text pager. MANPATH Colon separated list of directories to search for manual pages. Bourne shells To view or set an environment variable differs somewhat from shell to shell. For example, in the C-Style shells such as tcsh and csh, you would use setenv to set and view environment variables. Under Bourne shells such as sh and bash, you would use set and export to view and set your current environment variables. For example, to set or modify the EDITOR environment variable, under csh or tcsh a command like this would set EDITOR to /usr/local/bin/emacs: &prompt.user; setenv EDITOR /usr/local/bin/emacs Under Bourne shells: &prompt.user; export EDITOR="/usr/local/bin/emacs" You can also make most shells expand the environment variable by placing a $ character in front of it on the command line. For example, echo $TERM would print out whatever $TERM is set to, because the shell expands $TERM and passes it on to echo. Shells treat a lot of special characters, called meta-characters as special representations of data. The most common one is the * character, which represents any number of characters in a filename. These special meta-characters can be used to do file name globing. For example, typing in echo * is almost the same as typing in ls because the shell takes all the files that match * and puts them on the command line for echo to see. To prevent the shell from interpreting these special characters, they can be escaped from the shell by putting a backslash (\) character in front of them. echo $TERM prints whatever your terminal is set to. echo \$TERM prints $TERM as is. Changing Your Shell The easiest way to change your shell is to use the chsh command. Running chsh will place you into the editor that is in your EDITOR environment variable; if it is not set, you will be placed in vi. Change the Shell: line accordingly. You can also give chsh the option; this will set your shell for you, without requiring you to enter an editor. For example, if you wanted to change your shell to bash, the following should do the trick: &prompt.user; chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash Running chsh with no parameters and editing the shell from there would work also. The shell that you wish to use must be present in the /etc/shells file. If you have installed a shell from the ports collection, then this should have been done for you already. If you installed the shell by hand, you must do this. For example, if you installed bash by hand and placed it into /usr/local/bin, you would want to: &prompt.root; echo "/usr/local/bin/bash" >> /etc/shells Then rerun chsh. Text Editors text editors editors A lot of configuration in FreeBSD is done by editing a text file. Because of this, it would be a good idea to become familiar with a text editor. FreeBSD comes with a few as part of the base system, and many more are available in the ports collection. ee The easiest and simplest editor to learn is an editor called ee, which stands for easy editor. To start ee, one would type at the command line ee filename where filename is the name of the file to be edited. For example, to edit /etc/rc.conf, type in ee /etc/rc.conf. Once inside of ee, all of the commands for manipulating the editor's functions are listed at the top of the display. The caret ^ character means the control key on the keyboard, so ^e expands to pressing the control key plus the letter e. To leave ee, hit the escape key, then choose leave editor. The editor will prompt you to save any changes if the file has been modified. vi editors vi emacs editors emacs FreeBSD also comes with more powerful text editors such as vi as part of the base system, and emacs and vim as part of the FreeBSD Ports Collection. These editors offer much more functionality and power at the expense of being a little more complicated to learn. However if you plan on doing a lot of text editing, learning a more powerful editor such as vim or emacs will save you much more time in the long run. For More Information... Manual Pages manual pages The most comprehensive documentation on FreeBSD is in the form of manual pages. Nearly every program on the system comes with a short reference manual explaining the basic operation and various arguments. These manuals can be viewed with the man command. Use of the man command is simple: &prompt.user; man command command is the name of the command you wish to learn about. For example, to learn more about ls command type: &prompt.user; man ls The online manual is divided up into numbered sections: User commands. System calls and error numbers. Functions in the C libraries. Device drivers. File formats. Games and other diversions. Miscellaneous information. System maintenance and operation commands. Kernel developers. In some cases, the same topic may appear in more than one section of the online manual. For example, there is a chmod user command and a chmod() system call. In this case, you can tell the man command which one you want by specifying the section: &prompt.user; man 1 chmod This will display the manual page for the user command chmod. References to a particular section of the online manual are traditionally placed in parenthesis in written documentation, so &man.chmod.1; refers to the chmod user command and &man.chmod.2; refers to the system call. This is fine if you know the name of the command and simply wish to know how to use it, but what if you cannot recall the command name? You can use man to search for keywords in the command descriptions by using the switch: &prompt.user; man -k mail With this command you will be presented with a list of commands that have the keyword mail in their descriptions. This is actually functionally equivalent to using the apropos command. So, you are looking at all those fancy commands in /usr/bin but do not have the faintest idea what most of them actually do? Simply do: &prompt.user; cd /usr/bin &prompt.user; man -f * or &prompt.user; cd /usr/bin &prompt.user; whatis * which does the same thing. GNU Info Files Free Software Foundation FreeBSD includes many applications and utilities produced by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). In addition to manual pages, these programs come with more extensive hypertext documents called info files which can be viewed with the info command or, if you installed emacs, the info mode of emacs. To use the &man.info.1; command, simply type: &prompt.user; info For a brief introduction, type h. For a quick command reference, type ?. diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/boot/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/boot/chapter.sgml index 4fa6c7c0d7..d3417bb9ab 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/boot/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/boot/chapter.sgml @@ -1,664 +1,664 @@ The FreeBSD Booting Process Synopsis booting bootstrap The process of starting a computer and loading the operating system is referred to as the bootstrap process, or simply booting. FreeBSD's boot process provides a great deal of flexibility in customizing what happens when you start the system, allowing you to select from different operating systems installed on the same computer, or even different versions of the same operating system or installed kernel. This chapter details the configuration options you can set and how to customize the FreeBSD boot process. This includes everything that happens until the FreeBSD kernel has started, probed for devices, and started &man.init.8;. If you are not quite sure when this happens, it occurs when the text color changes from bright white to grey. After reading this chapter you will know: What the components of the FreeBSD bootstrap system are, and how they interact. The options you can give to the components in the FreeBSD bootstrap to control the boot process. x86 only This chapter only describes the boot process for FreeBSD running on Intel x86 systems. The Booting Problem Turning on a computer and starting the operating system poses an interesting dilemma. By definition, the computer does not know how to do anything until the operating system is started. This includes running programs from the disk. So if the computer can not run a program from the disk without the operating system, and the operating system programs are on the disk, how is the operating system started? This problem parallels one in the book The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. A character had fallen part way down a manhole, and pulled himself out by grabbing his bootstraps, and lifting. In the early days of computing the term bootstrap was applied to the mechanism used to load the operating system, which has become shortened to booting. On x86 hardware the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) is responsible for loading the operating system. To do this, the BIOS looks on the hard disk for the Master Boot Record (MBR), which must be located on a specific place on the disk. The BIOS has enough knowledge to load and run the MBR, and assumes that the MBR can then carry out the rest of the tasks involved in loading the operating system. BIOS Basic Input/Output System If you only have one operating system installed on your disks then the standard MBR will suffice. This MBR searches for the first bootable slice on the disk, and then runs the code on that slice to load the remainder of the operating system. If you have installed multiple operating systems on your disks then you can install a different MBR, one that can display a list of different operating systems, and allows you to choose the one to boot from. FreeBSD comes with one such MBR which can be installed, and other operating system vendors also provide alternative MBRs. The remainder of the FreeBSD bootstrap system is divided into three stages. The first stage is run by the MBR, which knows just enough to get the computer into a specific state and run the second stage. The second stage can do a little bit more, before running the third stage. The third stage finishes the task of loading the operating system. The work is split into these three stages because the PC standards put limits on the size of the programs that can be run at stages one and two. Chaining the tasks together allows FreeBSD to provide a more flexible loader. kernel init The kernel is then started, which will then probe for devices and initialize them for use. Once the kernel boot process is finished, the kernel passes control to the user process &man.init.8;, which then makes sure the disks are in a usable state. &man.init.8; then starts the user-level resource configuration which then mounts filesystems, sets up network cards to act on the network, and generally starts all the processes that usually are run on a FreeBSD system at startup. The MBR, and Boot Stages One, Two, and Three MBR, <filename>/boot/boot0</filename> Master Boot Record (MBR) The FreeBSD MBR is located in /boot/boot0. This is a copy of the MBR, as the real MBR must be placed on a special part of the disk, outside the FreeBSD area. boot0 is very simple, since the program in the MBR can only be 512 bytes in size. If you have installed the FreeBSD MBR and have installed multiple operating systems on your hard disks then you will see a display similar to this one at boot time. <filename>boot0</filename> Screenshot F1 DOS F2 FreeBSD F3 Linux F4 ?? F5 Drive 1 Default: F2 Other operating systems, in particular Windows 95, have been known to overwrite an existing MBR with their own. If this happens to you, or you want to replace your existing MBR with the FreeBSD MBR then use the following command. &prompt.root; fdisk -B -b /boot/boot0 device Where device is the device that you boot from, such as ad0 for the first IDE disk, ad4 for the first IDE disk on a second IDE controller, da0 for the first SCSI disk, and so on. Stage One, <filename>/boot/boot1</filename>, and Stage Two, <filename>/boot/boot2</filename> Conceptually the first and second stages are part of the same program, on the same area of the disk. Because of space constraints they have been split into two, but you would always install them together. They are found on the boot sector of the boot slice, which is where boot0, or any other program on the MBR expects to find the program to run to continue the boot process. The files in the /boot directory are copies of the real files, which are stored outside of the FreeBSD filesystem. boot1 is very simple, since it too can only be 512 bytes in size, and knows just enough about the FreeBSD disklabel, which stores information about the slice, to find and execute boot2. boot2 is slightly more sophisticated, and understands the FreeBSD filesystem enough to find files on it, and can provide a simple interface to choose the kernel or loader to run. Since the loader is much more sophisticated, and provides a nice easy-to-use boot configuration, boot2 usually runs it, but previously it was tasked to run the kernel directly. <filename>boot2</filename> Screenshot >> FreeBSD/i386 BOOT Default: 0:ad(0,a)/kernel boot: If you ever need to replace the installed boot1 and boot2 use &man.disklabel.8;. &prompt.root; disklabel -B diskslice Where diskslice is the disk and slice you boot from, such as ad0s1 for the first slice on the first IDE disk. Dangerously Dedicated Mode If you use just the disk name, such as ad0, in the &man.disklabel.8; command you will create a dangerously dedicated disk, without slices. This is almost certainly not what you want to do, so make sure you double check the &man.disklabel.8; command before you press - RETURN. + Return. Stage Three, <filename>/boot/loader</filename> boot-loader The loader is the final stage of the three-stage bootstrap, and is located on the filesystem, usually as /boot/loader. The loader is intended as a user-friendly method for configuration, using an easy-to-use built-in command set, backed up by a more powerful interpreter, with a more complex command set. Loader Program Flow During initialization, the loader will probe for a console and for disks, and figure out what disk it is booting from. It will set variables accordingly, and then the interpreter is started, and the easy-to-use commands are passed to it. loader loader configuration The loader will then read /boot/loader.rc, which by default reads in /boot/defaults/loader.conf which sets reasonable defaults for variables and reads /boot/loader.conf for local changes to those variables. loader.rc then acts on these variables, loading whichever modules and kernel are selected. Finally, by default, the loader issues a 10 second wait for key presses, and boots the kernel if it is not interrupted. If interrupted, the user is presented with a prompt which understands the easy-to-use command set, where the user may adjust variables, unload all modules, load modules, and then finally boot or reboot. A more technical discussion of the process is available in &man.loader.8; Loader Built-In Commands The easy-to-use command set comprises of: autoboot seconds Proceeds to boot the kernel if not interrupted within the time span given, in seconds. It displays a countdown, and the default time span is 10 seconds. boot -options kernelname Immediately proceeds to boot the kernel, with the given options, if any, and with the kernel name given, if it is. boot-conf Goes through the same automatic configuration of modules based on variables as what happens at boot. This only makes sense if you use unload first, and change some variables, most commonly kernel. help topic Shows help messages read from /boot/loader.help. If the topic given is index, then the list of available topics is given. include filename … Processes the file with the given filename. The file is read in, and interpreted line by line. An error immediately stops the include command. load type filename Loads the kernel, kernel module, or file of the type given, with the filename given. Any arguments after filename are passed to the file. ls path Displays a listing of files in the given path, or the root directory, if the path is not specified. If is specified, file sizes will be shown too. lsdev Lists all of the devices from which it may be possible to load modules. If is specified, more details are printed. lsmod Displays loaded modules. If is specified, more details are shown. more filename Display the files specified, with a pause at each LINES displayed. reboot Immediately reboots the system. set variable set variable=value Set loader's environment variables. unload Removes all loaded modules. Loader Examples Here are some practical examples of loader usage. single-user mode To simply boot your usual kernel, but in single-user mode: boot -s To unload your usual kernel and modules, and then load just your old (or another) kernel: kernel.old unload load kernel.old You can use kernel.GENERIC to refer to the generic kernel that comes on the install disk, or kernel.old to refer to your previously installed kernel (when you have upgraded or configured your own kernel, for example). Use the following to load your usual modules with another kernel: unload set kernel="kernel.old" boot-conf To load a kernel configuration script (an automated script which does the things you would normally do in the kernel boot-time configurator): load -t userconfig_script /boot/kernel.conf Kernel Interaction During Boot kernel boot interaction Once the kernel is loaded by either loader (as usual) or boot2 (bypassing the loader), it examines its boot flags, if any, and adjusts its behavior as necessary. kernel bootflags Kernel Boot Flags Here are the more common boot flags: during kernel initialization, ask for the device to mount as the root file system. boot from CDROM. run UserConfig, the boot-time kernel configurator boot into single-user mode be more verbose during kernel startup There are other boot flags, read &man.boot.8; for more information on them. init Init: Process Control Initialization Once the kernel has finished booting, it passes control to the user process init, which is located at /sbin/init, or the program path specified in the init_path variable in loader. Automatic Reboot Sequence The automatic reboot sequence makes sure that the filesystems available on the system are consistent. If they are not, and fsck cannot fix the inconsistencies, init drops the system into single-user mode for the system administrator to take care of the problems directly. Single-User Mode single-user mode console This mode can be reached through the automatic reboot sequence, or by the user booting with the option or setting the boot_single variable in loader. It can also be reached by calling shutdown without the reboot () or halt () options, from multi-user mode. If the system console is set to insecure in /etc/ttys, then the system prompts for the root password before initiating single-user mode. An Insecure Console in /etc/ttys # name getty type status comments # # This entry needed for asking password when init goes to single-user mode # If you want to be asked for password, change "secure" to "insecure" here console none unknown off insecure An insecure console means that you consider your physical security to the console to be insecure, and want to make sure only someone who knows the root password may use single-user mode, and it does not mean that you want to run your console insecurely. Thus, if you want security, choose insecure, not secure. Multi-User Mode multi-user mode If init finds your filesystems to be in order, or once the user has finished in single-user mode, the system enters multi-user mode, in which it starts the resource configuration of the system. rc files Resource Configuration (rc) The resource configuration system reads in configuration defaults from /etc/defaults/rc.conf, and system-specific details from /etc/rc.conf, and then proceeds to mount the system filesystems mentioned in /etc/fstab, start up networking services, start up miscellaneous system daemons, and finally runs the startup scripts of locally installed packages. The &man.rc.8; manual page is a good reference to the resource configuration system, as is examining the scripts themselves. Shutdown Sequence shutdown Upon controlled shutdown, via shutdown, init will attempt to run the script /etc/rc.shutdown, and then proceed to send all processes the TERM signal, and subsequently the KILL signal to any that do not terminate timely. diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install/chapter.sgml index 917c87be57..c661930b2e 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install/chapter.sgml @@ -1,4684 +1,4684 @@ Jim Mock Restructured, reorganized, and parts rewritten by Randy Pratt The sysinstall walkthrough, screenshots, and general copy by Installing FreeBSD Synopsis installation FreeBSD is provided with a text-based, easy to use installation program called Sysinstall. This is the default installation program for FreeBSD, although vendors are free to provide their own installation suite if they wish. This chapter describes how to use Sysinstall to install FreeBSD. After reading this chapter you will know: How to create the FreeBSD installation disks. How FreeBSD refers to, and subdivides, your hard disks. How to start Sysinstall. The questions Sysinstall will ask you, what they mean, and how to answer them. Before reading this chapter you should: Read the supported hardware list that shipped with the version of FreeBSD you are installing, and verify that your hardware is supported. Pre-installation Tasks Inventory Your Computer Before installing FreeBSD you should attempt to inventory the components in your computer. The FreeBSD installation routines will show you the components (hard disks, network cards, CDROM drives, and so forth) with their model number and manufacturer. FreeBSD will also attempt to determine the correct configuration for these devices, which includes information about IRQ and IO port usage. Due to the vagaries of PC hardware this process is not always completely successful, and you may need to correct FreeBSD's determination of your configuration. If you already have another operating system installed, such as Windows, or Linux, it is a good idea to use the facilities provided by those operating systems to see how your hardware is already configured. If you are really not sure what settings an expansion card is using you may find it printed on the card itself. Popular IRQ numbers are 3, 5, and 7, and IO port addresses are normally written as hexadecimal numbers, such as 0x330. We recommend you print or write down this information before installing FreeBSD. It may help to use a table, like this; Sample Device Inventory Device Name IRQ IO port(s) Notes First hard disk N/A N/A 4GB, made by Seagate, first IDE master CDROM N/A N/A First IDE slave Second hard disk N/A N/A 2GB, made by IBM, second IDE master First IDE controller 14 0x1f0 Network card N/A N/A Intel 10/100 Modem N/A N/A 3Com 56K faxmodem, on COM1: …
Backup Your Data If the computer you will be installing FreeBSD on contains valuable data then ensure you have it backed up, and that you have tested the backups before installing FreeBSD. The FreeBSD installation routine will prompt you several times before writing any data to your disk, but once that process has started it can not be undone. Decide Where to Install FreeBSD If you want FreeBSD to use all your disk then there is nothing more to concern yourself with at this point, and you can skip to the next section.. However, if you need FreeBSD to co-exist with other operating systems then you need to have a rough understanding of how data is laid out on the disk, and how this affects you. A PC disk can be divided in to discrete chunks. These chunks are called partitions. By design, the PC only supports four partitions per disk. These partitions are called primary partitions. To work around this limitation, and allow more than four partitions, a new partition type was created, the extended partition. A disk may contain only one extended partition. Special partitions, called logical partitions, can be created inside this extended partition. Each partiton has a partition ID, which is a number, used to identify the type of data on the partition. FreeBSD partitions have the partition ID 165. In general, each operating system that you use will identify partitions in a particular way. For example, DOS, and its descendants, like Windows, assign each primary and logical partition a drive letter, starting with C:. FreeBSD must be installed in to a primary partition. FreeBSD can keep all its data, including any files that you create, on this one partition. However, if you have multiple disks then you can create a FreeBSD partition on all, or some, of them. When you install FreeBSD you must have one partition available. This might be a blank partition that you have prepared, or it might be an existing partition that contains data that you no longer care about. If you are already using all the partitions on all your disks then you will have to free one of them for FreeBSD to use, using the tools provided by the other operating systems you use (e.g., fdisk on DOS or Windows). If you have a spare partition then you can use that. However, you may need to shrink one or more of your existing partitions first. A minimal installation of FreeBSD takes as little as 100MB of disk space. However, that is a very minimal install, leaving almost no space for your own files. A more realistic minimum is 250MB without a graphical environment, and 350MB or more if you want a graphical user interface. If you intend to install a lot of third party software as well then you will need more space. You can use a commercial tool such as Partition Magic to resize your partitions to make space for FreeBSD. The tools directory on the CDROM contains two free software tools which can carry out this task, FIPS and PResizer. Documentation for both of these is in the same directory. Incorrect use of these tools can delete the data on your disk. Be sure that you have recent, working backups before using them. Using an existing partition unchanged Suppose that you have a computer with a single 4GB disk, that already has a version of Windows installed, and you have split the disk in to two drive letters, C: and D:, each of which is 2GB in size. You have 1GB of data on C:, and 0.5GB of data on D:. This means that your disk has two partitions on it, one per drive letter. You can copy all your existing data from D: to C:, which will free up the second partition, ready for FreeBSD. Shrinking an existing partition Suppose that you have a computer with a single 4GB disk, that already has a version of Windows installed. When you installed Windows you created one large partition, giving you a C: drive that is 4GB in size. You are currently using 1.5GB of space, and want FreeBSD to have 2GB of space. In order to install FreeBSD you will need to either: Back up your Windows data, and then reinstall Windows, asking for a 2GB partition at install time. Use one of the tools such as Partition Magic, described above, to shrink your Windows partition. Collect Your Network Configuration Details If you intend to connect to a network as part of your FreeBSD installation (e.g., if you will be installing from an FTP site, or an NFS server) then you need to know your network configuration. You will be prompted for this information during the installation so that FreeBSD can connect to the network to complete the install. Connecting to an Ethernet Network, or Cable/DSL Modem If you connect to an Ethernet network, or you have an Internet connection via cable or DSL then you will need the following information: IP address. IP address of the default gateway. Hostname. DNS server IP addresses. If you do not know this information then ask your system administrator or service provider. They may say that this information is assigned automatically, using DHCP. If so, make a note of this. Connecting Using a Modem If you dial up to an ISP using a regular modem then you can still install FreeBSD over the Internet, it will just take a very long time. You will need to know: The phone number to dial for your ISP. The COM: port your modem is connected to. The username and password for your ISP account. Check for FreeBSD Errata Although the FreeBSD project strives to ensure that each release of FreeBSD is as stable as possible, bugs do occasionally creep in to the process. On very rare occasions those bugs affect the installation process. As these problems are discovered and fixed they are noted in the FreeBSD Errata, posted on the FreeBSD web site. You should check the errata before installing to make sure that there are no late-breaking problems which you should be aware of. Information about all the releases, including the errata for each release, can be found at http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/index.html. Prepare the Boot Discs FreeBSD can be installed from a number of different media; CDROM, DVD, FTP (both anonymous and non-anonymous), NFS, tape, or an existing MS-DOS partition. If you have FreeBSD on CDROM or DVD, and your computer allows you to boot from the CDROM or DVD (typically a BIOS option called Boot Order or similar) then you can skip this section. The FreeBSD CDROM and DVD images are bootable, and can be used to install FreeBSD without any other special preparation. The FreeBSD installation process is started by booting your computer in to the FreeBSD installer—it is not a program you run from within another operating system. To do this you must create some floppy disks that can be booted from, and then boot from them. If you are not installing directly from CDROM, DVD, or FTP then you are probably preparing your own installation media (e.g., an MS-DOS partition), which must be prepared before you install FreeBSD. This is a slightly more advanced, and infrequent activity, and is documented in . This includes the scenario where you want to create your own FTP site on your own network so that other computers can use your site as a FreeBSD FTP installation site. Acquire the Boot Floppy Images The boot discs are available on your installation media, and can also be downloaded from the ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/&rel.current;-RELEASE/floppies/ directory. The floppy images have a .flp extension. The floppies/ directory contains a number of different images, and the ones you will need to use depends on the version of FreeBSD you are installing, and in some cases, the hardware you are installing to. In most cases you will need two files, kern.flp and mfsroot.flp, but check README.TXT in the same directory to be sure. Your FTP program must use binary mode to download these disk images. Some web browsers have been known to use text (or ASCII) mode, which will be apparent if you can not boot from the disks. Prepare the Floppy Disks You must prepare one floppy disk per image file you had to download. It is imperative that these disks are free from defects. The easiest way to test this is to format the disks for yourself. Do not trust pre-formatted floppies. If you try to install FreeBSD and the installation program crashes, freezes, or otherwise misbehaves one of the first things to suspect is the floppies. Try writing the floppy image files to some other disks, and try again. Write the Image Files to the Floppy Disks. The .flp files are not regular files you copy to the disk. Instead, they are images of the complete contents of the disk. This means that you can not use commands like DOS' copy to write the files. Instead, you must use specific tools to write the images directly to the disk. DOS If you are creating the floppies on a computer running DOS/Windows then we provide a tool to do this called fdimage. If you are using the floppies from the CDROM, and your CDROM is the E: drive then you would run this: E:\> tools\fdimage floppies\kern.flp A: Repeat this command for each .flp file, replacing the floppy disk each time, and being sure to label the disks with the name of the file that you copied to them. Adjust the command line as necessary, depending on where you have placed the .flp files. If you do not have the CDROM then fdimage can be downloaded from the tools directory on the FreeBSD FTP site. If you are writing the floppies on a Unix system (such as another FreeBSD system) you can use the &man.dd.1; command to write the image files directly to disk. On FreeBSD you would run: &prompt.root; dd if=kern.flp of=/dev/fd0 On FreeBSD /dev/fd0 refers to the first floppy disk (the A: drive). /dev/fd1 would be the B: drive, and so on. Other Unix variants might have different names for the floppy disk devices, and you will need to check the documentation for the system as necessary. You are now ready to start installing FreeBSD. Starting the Installation By default, the installation will not make any changes to your disk(s) until you see the following message. Last Chance: Are you SURE your want continue the installation? If you're running this on a disk with data you wish to save then WE STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO MAKE PROPER BACKUPS before proceeding! We can take no responsibility for lost disk contents! The install can be exited at any time prior to the final warning without changing the contents of the hard drive. If you are concerned that you have configured something incorrectly you can just turn the computer off before this point, and no damage will be done. Booting Start with your computer turned off. Turn on the computer. As it starts it should display an option to enter the system set up menu, or BIOS, commonly reached by keys like F2, F10, Del, or Alt S . Use whichever keystroke is indicated on screen. In some cases your computer may display a graphic while it starts. Typically, pressing Esc will dismiss the graphic and allow you to see the necessary messages. Find the setting that controls which devices the system boots from. This is commonly shown as a list of devices, such as Floppy, CDROM, First Hard Disk, and so on. If you needed to prepare boot floppies then make sure that the floppy disk is selected. If you are booting from the CDROM then make sure that that is selected instead. In case of doubt you should consult the manual that came with your computer, and/or its motherboard. Make the change, then save, and exit. The computer should now restart. If you needed to prepare boot floppies, as described in then one of them will be the first boot disc, probably the one containing kern.flp. Put this disc in your floppy drive. If you are booting from CDROM then you will need to turn on the computer, and insert the CDROM at the first opportunity. If your computer starts up as normal, and loads your existing operating system then either: The disks were not inserted early enough in the boot process. Leave them in, and try restarting your computer. The BIOS changes earlier did not work correctly. You should redo that step until you get the right option. FreeBSD will start to boot. If you are booting from CDROM you will see a display similar to this: Verifying DMI Pool Data ........ Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM : 1. FD 2.88MB System Type-(00) /boot.config: -P Keyboard: yes BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01 Console: internal video/keyboard BIOS drive A: is disk0 BIOS drive B: is disk1 BIOS drive C: is disk2 BIOS drive C: is disk3 BIOS 639kB/64512kB available memory FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 0.8 (jkh@bento.freebsd.org, Mon Nov 20 11:41:23 GMT 2000) | Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt. Booting [kernel] in 9 seconds... _ If you are booting from floppy disc you will see a display similar to this: Verifying DMI Pool Data ........ BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01 Console: internal video/keyboard BIOS drive A: is disk0 BIOS drive C: is disk1 BIOS 639kB/261120kB available memory FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 0.8 (jkh@narf.osd.bsdi.com, Sat Apr 21 08:46:19 GMT 2001) /kernel text=0x24f1bb data=0x307ac+0x2062c | Please insert MFS root floppy and press enter: Follow these instructions by removing the kern.flp disc, insert the mfsroot.flp disc, and press Enter. Irrespective of whether you booted from floppy or CDROM, the boot process will then get to this point. Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt. Booting [kernel] in 9 seconds... _ Either wait ten seconds, or press Enter. This will then launch the kernel configuration menu. Kernel Configuration The kernel is the core of the operating system. It is responsible for many things, including access to all the devices you may have on your system, such as hard disks, network cards, sound cards, and so on. Each piece of hardware supported by the FreeBSD kernel has a driver associated with it. Each driver has a two or three letter name, such as sa for the SCSI sequential access driver, or sio for the Serial I/O driver (which manages com ports). When the kernel starts each driver checks the system to see whether or not the hardware it supports exists on your system. If it does then the driver configures the hardware, and makes it available to the rest of the kernel. This checking is commonly referred to as device probing. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to do this in a safe way. Some hardware drivers do not co-exist well together, and probing for one piece of hardware can sometimes leave another piece of hardware in an inconsistent state. This is a basic limitation of the design of the PC. Many older devices are what is called ISA devices—as opposed to PCI devices. The ISA specification requires each device to have some information hard coded in to it, typically the Interrupt Request Line number (IRQ) and IO port address that the driver uses. This information is commonly set by using physical jumpers on the card, or by using a DOS based utility. This was often a source of problems, because it was not possible to have two devices that shared the same IRQ or port address. Newer devices follow the PCI specification, which does not require this, as the devices are supposed to cooperate with the BIOS, and be told which IRQ and IO port addresses to use. If you have any ISA devices in your computer then FreeBSD's driver for that device will need to be configured with the IRQ and port address that you have set the card to. This is why carrying out an inventory of your hardware (see ) can be so useful. Unfortunately, the default IRQs and memory ports used by some drivers clash. This is because some ISA devices are shipped with IRQs or memory ports that clash. The defaults in FreeBSD's drivers are deliberately set to mirror the manufacturer's defaults, so that, out of the box, as many devices as possible will work. This is almost never an issue when running FreeBSD day-to-day. Your computer will not normally contain two pieces of hardware that clash, because then one of them would not work (irrespective of the operating system you are using). It becomes an issue when you are installing FreeBSD for the first time because the kernel used to carry out the install has to contain as many drivers as possible, so that as many different hardware configurations can be supported as possible. This means that some of those drivers will have conflicting configurations. The devices are probed in a strict order, and if you own a device that is probed late in the process, but that an earlier probe conflicted with, then your hardware might not function, or be probed correctly when you install FreeBSD. Because of this, the first thing you have the opportunity to do when installing FreeBSD is look at the list of drivers that are configured in to the kernel, and either disable some of them, if you do not own that device, or confirm (and alter) the driver's configuration if you do own the device but the defaults are wrong. That probably sounds much more complicated than it actually is. shows the first kernel configuration menu. We recommend that you choose the Start kernel configuration in full-screen visual mode option, as it presents the easiest interface for the new user.
Kernel Configuration Menu
The kernel configuration screen () is then divided in to four sections. A collapsible list of all the drivers that are currently marked as active, subdivided in to groups such as Storage, and Network. Each driver is shown as a description, its two three letter driver name, and the IRQ and memory port used by that driver. In addition, if an active driver conflicts with another active driver then CONF is shown next to the driver name. This section also shows the total number of conflicting drivers that are currently active. Drivers that have been marked inactive. They remain in the kernel, but they will not probe for their device when the kernel starts. These are subdivided in to groups in the same way as the active driver list. More detail about the currently selected driver, including its IRQ and memory port address. Information about the keystrokes that are valid at this point in time.
The Kernel Device Configuration Visual Interface
At this point there will always be conflicts listed. Do not worry about this, it is to be expected; all the drivers are enabled, and as has already been explained, some of them will conflict with one another. You now have to work through the list of drivers, resolving the conflicts. Resolving Driver Conflicts Press X. This will completely expand the list of drivers, so you can see all of them. You will need to use the arrow keys to scroll back and forth through the active driver list. shows the result of pressing X.
Expanded Driver List
Disable all the drivers for devices that you do not have. To disable a driver, highlight it with the arrow keys and press Del. The driver will be moved to the Inactive Drivers list. If you inadvertently disable a device that you need then press Tab to switch to the Inactive Drivers list, select the driver that you disabled, and press Enter to move it back to the active list. Do not disable sc0. This controls the screen, and you will need this unless you are installing over a serial cable. Only disable atkbd0 if you are using a USB keyboard. If you have a normal keyboard then you must keep atkbd0. If there are no conflicts listed then you can skip this step. Otherwise, the remaining conflicts need to be examined. If they do not have the indication of an "allowed conflict" in the message area, then either the IRQ/address for device probe will need to be changed, or the IRQ/address on the hardware will need to be changed. To change the driver's configuration for IRQ and IO port address, select the device and press Enter. The cursor will move to the third section of the screen, and you can change the values. You should enter the values for IRQ and port address that you discovered when you made your hardware inventory. Press Q to finish editing the device's configuration and return to the active driver list. If you are not sure what these figures should be then you can try using -1. Some FreeBSD drivers can safely probe the hardware to discover what the correct value should be, and a value of -1 configures them to do this. The procedure for changing the address on the hardware varies from device to device. For some devices you may need to physically remove the card from your computer and adjust jumper settings or DIP switches. Other cards may have come with a DOS floppy that contains the programs used to reconfigure the card. In any case, you should refer to the documentation that came with the device. This will obviously entail restarting your computer, so you will need to boot back in to the FreeBSD installation routine when you have reconfigured the card. When all the conflicts have been resolved the screen will look similar to .
Driver Configuration With No Conflicts
As you can see, the active driver list is now much smaller, with only drivers for the hardware that actually exists being listed. You can now save these changes, and move on to the next step of the install. Press Q to quit the device configuration interface. This message will appear. Save these parameters before exiting? ([Y]es/[N]o/[C]ancel) Answer Y to save the parameters and the probing will start. After displaying the probe results in white on black text Sysinstall will start, and display its main menu ().
Sysinstall Main Menu
Reviewing the Device Probe Results The last few hundred lines that have been displayed on screen are stored, and can be reviewed. To review the buffer, press Scroll Lock. This turns on scrolling in the display. You can then use the arrow keys, or PageUp and PageDown to view the results. Press Scroll Lock again to stop scrolling, Do this now, to review the text that scrolled off the screen when the kernel was carrying out the device probes. You will see text similar to , although the precise text will differ depending on the devices that you have in your computer.
Typical Device Probe Results avail memory = 58880000 (57500K bytes) Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc065d000. md1: Malloc disk npx0: <math processor> on motherboard npx0: INT 16 interface pcib0: <Host to PCI bridge> on motherboard pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0 pcib1: <VIA 82C598MVP (Apollo MVP3) PCI-PCI (AGP bridge> at device 1.0 on pci0 pci1: <PCI bus> on pcib1 pci1: <Matrox MGA G200 AGP graphics accelerator> at 0.0 irq 11 isab0: <VIA 82C586 PCI-ISA bridge> at device 7.0 on pci0 isa0: <ISA bus> on isab0 atapci0: <VIA 82C586 ATA33 controller> port 0xe000-0xe00f at device 7.1 on pci0 ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0 uhci0: <VIA 83C572 USB controller> port 0xe400-0xe41f irq 10 at device 7.2 on pci0 usb0: <VIA 83C572 USB controller> on uhci0 usb0: USB revision 1.0 uhub0: VIA UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1 uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered chip1: <VIA 82C586B ACPI interface> at device 7.3 on pci0 fdc0: <NEC 72065B or clone> at port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq6 drq2 on isa0 fdc0: FIFO enabled, 8 bytes threshold fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0 atkbdc0: <keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x60-0x6f on isa0 atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> flags 0x1 irq 1 on atkbdc0 kbd0 at atkbd0 psm0: <PS/2 Mouse> irq 12 on atkbdc0 psm0: model Generic PS/2 mouse, device ID 0 vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0c3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0 sc0: <System console> at flags 0x100 on isa0 sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags-0x300> sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0 sio0: type 16550A sio1: at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq3 on isa0 sio1: type 16550A ppc0: <Parallel port> at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0 ppc0: SMC-like chipset (ECP/EPP/PS2/NIBBLE) in COMPATIBLE mode ppc0: FIFO with 16/16/15 bytes threshold ppi0: <Parallel I/O> on ppbus0 plip0: <PLIP network interface> on ppbus0 ad0: 8063MB <IBM-DHEA-38451> [16383/16/63] at ata0-master using UDMA33 acd0: CDROM <DELTA OTC-H101/ST3 F/W by OIPD> at ata0-slave using PIO4 Mounting root from ufs:/dev/md0c /stand/sysinstall running as init on vty0
Check the probe results carefully to make sure that FreeBSD found all the devices you expected. If a device was not found then it will be listed as missing. If the device's driver required configuring with the IRQ and port address then you should check that you entered them correctly. If you need to make changes to the UserConfig device probing, its easy to exit the sysinstall program and start over again. Its also a good way to become more familiar with the process.
Select Sysinstall Exit
Use the arrow keys to select Exit Install from the Main Install Screen menu. The following message will display: User Confirmation Requested Are you sure you wish to exit? The system will reboot (be sure to remove any floppies from the drives). [ Yes ] No The install program will start again if the CDROM is left in the drive and [Yes] is selected. If you are booting from floppies it will be necessary to remove the mfs.root floppy and replace it with kern.flp before rebooting. Introducing Sysinstall Sysinstall is the installation application provided by the FreeBSD Project. It is text based, and is divided in to a number of menus and screens that you can use to configure and control the installation process. The Sysinstall menu system is controlled by the arrow keys, Enter, Space. and other keys. A detailed description of these keys, and what they do, is contained in sysinstall's usage information. To review this information, ensure that the Usage entry is highlighted and that the [Select] button is selected, as shown in , then press Enter. The instructions for using the menu system will be displayed. After reviewing them, press Enter to return to the Main Menu.
Selecting Usage From Sysinstall Main Menu
Selecting The Documentation Menu From the Main Menu, select "Doc" with the arrow keys and press Enter.
Selecting Documentation Menu
This will display the Documentation Menu.
Sysinstall Documentation Menu
It is important to read the documents provided. To view a document, select it with the arrow keys and press Enter. When finished reading a document, pressing Enter will return to the Documentation Menu. To return to the Main Installation Menu, select "Exit" with the arrow keys and press Enter. Selecting The Keymap Menu To change the keyboard mapping, use the arrow keys to select "Keymap" from the menu and press Enter
Sysinstall Main Menu
A different keyboard mapping may be chosen by selecting the - menu item using up/down arrow keys and pressing SPACE. - Pressing SPACE again will unselect the item. When + menu item using up/down arrow keys and pressing Space. + Pressing Space again will unselect the item. When finished, choose the [OK] item using the arrow keys and press Enter. Only a partial list is shown in this screen representation. Selecting [CANCEL] will use the default keymap and return to the Main Install Menu.
Sysinstall Keymap Menu
Installation Options Screen Select "Options" and press Enter
Sysinstall Main Menu
Sysinstall Options
The default values are usually fine for most users and do not need to be changed. The description of the selected item will appear at the bottom of the screen highlighted in blue. Notice that one of the options is "Use Defaults" to reset all values to startup defaults. Press F1 to read the help screen about the various options. Pressing Q will return to the Main Install menu. Begin A Standard Installation The "Standard" installation is the option recommended for those new to Unix or FreeBSD. Use the arrow keys to select "Standard" and then press Enter to start the installation.
Begin Standard Installation
Allocating Disk Space Your first task is to allocate disk space for FreeBSD, and label that space so that Sysinstall can prepare it. In order to do this you need to know how FreeBSD expects to find information on the disk. Disk Organization The smallest unit of organization that FreeBSD uses to find files is the filename. Filenames are case-sensitive, which means that readme.txt and README.TXT are two separate files. FreeBSD does not use the extension (.txt) of a file to determine whether the file is program, or a document, or some other form of data. Files are stored in directories. A directory may contain no files, or it may contain many hundreds of files. A directory can also contain other directories, allowing you to build up a hierarchy of directories within one another. This makes it much easier to organize your data. Files and directories are referenced by giving the file or directory name, followed by a forward slash, /, followed by any other directory names that are necessary. If you have directory foo, which contains directory bar, which contains the file readme.txt, then the full name, or path to the file is foo/bar/readme.txt. Directories and files are stored in a filesystem. Each filesystem contains exactly one directory at the very top level, called the root directory for that filesystem. This root directory can then contain other directories. So far this is probably similar to any other operating system you may have used. There are a few differences; for example, DOS uses \ to separate file and directory names, while MacOS uses :. FreeBSD does not use drive letters, or other drive names in the path. You would not write c:/foo/bar/readme.txt on FreeBSD. Instead, one filesystem is designated the root filesystem. The root filesystem's root directory is referred to as /. Every other filesystem is then mounted under the root filesystem. No matter how many disks you have on your FreeBSD system, every directory appears to be part of the same disk. Suppose you have three filesystems, called A, B, and C. Each filesystem has one root directory, which contains two other directories, called A1, A2 (and likewise B1, B2 and C1, C2). Call A the root filesystem. If you used the ls command to view the contents of this directory you would see two subdirectories, A1 and A2. The directory tree looks like this. / | +--- A1 | `--- A2 A filesystem must be mounted on to a directory in another filesystem. So now suppose that you mount filesystem B on to the directory A1. The root directory of B replaces A1, and the directories in B appear accordingly. / | +--- A1 | | | +--- B1 | | | `--- B2 | `--- A2 Any files that are in the B1 or B2 directories can be reached with the path /A1/B1 or /A1/B2 as necessary. Any files that were in /A1 have been temporarily hidden. They will reappear if B is unmounted from A. If B had been mounted on A2 then the diagram would look like this; / | +--- A1 | `--- A2 | +--- B1 | `--- B2 and the paths would be /A2/B1 and /A2/B2 respectively. Filesystems can be mounted on top of one another. Continuing the last example, the C filesystem could be mounted on top of the B1 directory in the B filesystem, leading to this arrangement. / | +--- A1 | `--- A2 | +--- B1 | | | +--- C1 | | | `--- C2 | `--- B2 Or C could be mounted directly on to the A filesystem, under the A1 directory. / | +--- A1 | | | +--- C1 | | | `--- C2 | `--- A2 | +--- B1 | `--- B2 If you are familiar with DOS, this is similar, although not identical, to the join command. This is not normally something you need to concern yourself with. Typically you create filesystems when installing FreeBSD and decide where to mount them, and then never change them unless you add a new disk. It is entirely possible to have one large root filesystem, and not need to create any others. There are some drawbacks to this approach, and one advantage. Benefits of multiple filesystems Different filesystems can have different mount options. For example, with careful planning, the root filesystem can be mounted read-only, making it impossible for you to inadvertently delete or edit a critical file. FreeBSD automatically optimizes the layout of files on a filesystem, depending on how the filesystem is being used. So a filesystem that contains many small files that are written frequently will have a different optimization to one that contains fewer, larger files. By having one big filesystem this optimization breaks down. FreeBSD's filesystems are very robust should you lose power. However, a power loss at a critical point could still damage the structure of the filesystem. By splitting your data over multiple filesystems it is more likely that the system will still come up, making it easier for you to restore from backup as necessary. Benefit of a single filesystem Filesystems are a fixed size. If you create a filesystem when you install FreeBSD and give it a specific size, you may later discover that you need to make the partition bigger. This is not easily accomplished without backing up, recreating the filesystems with the size, and then restoring. FreeBSD 5.0 will feature a new command, growfs, which will make it possible to increase the size of a filesystem on the fly, removing this limitation. Filesystems are contained in partitions. This does not have the same meaning as the earlier usage of the term partition in this chapter, because of FreeBSD's Unix heritage. Each partition is identified by a letter, a through to h. Each partition can only contain one filesystem, which means that filesystems are often described by either their typical mount point on the root filesystem, or the letter of the partition they are contained in. FreeBSD also uses disk space for swap space. Swap space provides FreeBSD with virtual memory. This allows your computer to behave as though it has much more memory than it actually does. When FreeBSD runs out of memory it moves some of the data that is not currently being used to the swap space, and moves it back in (moving something else out) when it needs it. Some partitions have certain conventions associated with them. Partition Convention a Normally contains the root filesystem b Normally contains swap space c Normally the same size as the enclosing slice. This allows utilities that need to work on the entire slice (for example, a bad block scanner) to work on the c partition. You would not normally create a filesystem on this partition. d Partition d used to have a special meaning associated with it, although that is now gone. To this day, some tools may operate oddly if told to work on partition d, so Sysinstall will not normally create partition d. Each partition-that-contains-a-filesystem is stored in what FreeBSD calls a slice. Slice is FreeBSD's term for what were earlier called partitions, and again, this is because of FreeBSD's Unix background. Slices are numbered, starting at 1, through to 4. Finally, each disk on the system is identified. A disk name starts with a code that indicates the type of disk, and then a number, indicating which disk it is. Unlike slices, disk numbering starts at 0. Common codes that you will see are listed in . When referring to a partition FreeBSD requires that you also name the slice and disk that contains the partition, and when referring to a slice you should also refer to the disk name. Do this by listing the disk name, s, the slice number, and then the partition letter. Examples are shown in . shows a conceptual model of the disk layout that should help make things clearer. In order to install FreeBSD you must first configure the disk slices, then create partitions within the slice you will use for FreeBSD, and then create a filesystem (or swap space) in each partition, and decide where that filesystem will be mounted. Disk Device Codes Code Meaning ad ATAPI (IDE) disk da SCSI direct access disk acd ATAPI (IDE) CDROM cd SCSI CDROM fd Floppy disk
Sample Disk, Slice, and Partition Names Name Meaning ad0s1a The first partition (a) on the first slice (s1) on the first IDE disk (ad0). da1s2e The fifth partition (e) on the second slice (s2) on the second SCSI disk (da1). Conceptual Model of a Disk This diagram shows FreeBSD's view of the first IDE disk attached to the system. Assume that the disk is 4GB in size, and contains two 2GB slices (DOS partitions). The first slice contains a DOS disk, C:, and the second slice contains a FreeBSD installation. The FreeBSD installation has three partitions, and a swap partition. The three partitions will each hold a filesystem. Partition a will be used for the root filesystem, e for the /var directory hierarchy, and f for the /usr directory hierarchy. .-----------------. --. | | | | DOS / Windows | | : : > First slice, ad0s1 : : | | | | :=================: ==: --. | | | Partition a, mounted as / | | | > referred to as ad0s2a | | | | | :-----------------: ==: | | | | Partition b, used as swap | | | > referred to as ad0s2b | | | | | :-----------------: ==: | Partition c, no | | | Partition e, used as /var > filesystem, all | | > referred to as ad0s2e | of FreeBSD slice, | | | | ad0s2c :-----------------: ==: | | | | | : : | Partition f, used as /usr | : : > referred to as ad0s2f | : : | | | | | | | | --' | `-----------------' --' Creating Slices using FDisk No changes you make at this point will be written to the disk. If you think you have made a mistake and want to start again you can use the menus to exit Sysinstall and try again. If you get confused and can not see how to exit you can always turn your computer off. After choosing to begin a standard installation in Sysinstall you will be shown this message. Message In the next menu, you will need to set up a DOS-style ("fdisk") partitioning scheme for your hard disk. If you simply wish to devote all disk space to FreeBSD (overwriting anything else that might be on the disk(s) selected) then use the (A)ll command to select the default partitioning scheme followed by a (Quit. If you wish to allocate only free space to FreeBSD, move to a partition marked "unused" and use the (C)reate command. [ OK ] [ Press enter to continue ] Press Enter as instructed. You will then be shown a list of all the hard drives that the kernel found when it carried out the device probes. shows an example from a system with two IDE disks. They have been called ad0 and ad2.
Select Drive for FDISK
You might be wondering why ad1 is not listed here. Why has it been missed? Consider what would happen if you had two IDE hard disks, one as the master on the first IDE controller, and one as the master on the second IDE controller. If FreeBSD numbered these as it found them, as ad0 and ad1 then everything would work. But if you then added a third disk, as the slave device on the first IDE controller, it would now be ad1, and the previous ad1 would become ad2. Because device names (such as ad1s1a) are used to find filesystems, you may suddenly discover that some of your filesystems no longer appear correctly, and you would need to change your FreeBSD configuration. To work around this, the kernel can be configured to name IDE disks based on where they are, and not the order in which they were found. With this scheme the master disk on the second IDE controller will always be ad2, even if there are no ad0 or ad1 devices. This configuration is the default for the FreeBSD kernel, which is why this display shows ad0 and ad2. The machine on which this screenshot was taken had IDE disks on both master channels of the IDE controllers, and no disks on the slave channels. You should select the disk on which you want to install FreeBSD, and then press OK. FDisk will start, with a display similar to that shown in . The FDisk display is broken in to three sections. The first section, covering the first two lines of the display, shows details about the currently selected disk, including its FreeBSD name, the disk geometry, and the total size of the disk. The second section shows the slices that are currently on the disk, where they start and end, how large they are, the name FreeBSD gives them, and their description and sub-type. This example shows two small unused slices, which are artifacts of disk layout schemes on the PC. It also shows one large FAT slice, which almost certainly appears as C: in DOS / Windows, and an extended slice, which may contain other drive letters for DOS / Windows. The third section shows the commands that are available in FDisk.
Typical Fdisk Partitions Before Editing
What you do now will depend on how you want to slice up your disk. If you want to use FreeBSD for the entire disk (which will delete all the other data on this disk when you confirm that you want Sysinstall to continue later in the installation process) then you can press A, which corresponds to the Use Entire Disk option. The existing slices will be removed, and replaced with a small area flagged as unused (again, an artifact of PC disk layout), and then one large slice for FreeBSD. If you do this then you should then select the newly created FreeBSD slice using the arrow keys, and press S to mark the slice as being bootable. The screen will then look very similar to . Note the A in the Flags column, which indicates that this slice is active, and will be booted from. If you will be deleting an existing slice to make space for FreeBSD then you should select the slice using the arrow keys, and then press D. You can then press C, and be prompted for size of slice you want to create. Enter the appropriate figure and press Enter. If you have already made space for FreeBSD (perhaps by using a tool such as Partition Magic) then you can press C to create a new slice. Again, you will be prompted for the size of slice you would like to create.
Fdisk Partition Using Entire Disk
When finished, press Q. Your changes will be saved in Sysinstall, but will not yet be written to disk. Install a Boot Manager You now have the option to install a boot manager. In general, you should choose to install the FreeBSD boot manager if: You have more than one drive, and have installed FreeBSD on to a drive other than the first one. You have installed FreeBSD alongside another operating system on the same disk, and you want to choose whether to start FreeBSD or the other operating system when you start the computer. Make your choice, and then select [OK] and press Enter.
Sysinstall Boot Manager Menu
The help screen, reached by pressing F1, discusses the problems that can be encountered when trying to share the hard disk between operating systems. Creating Slices on Another Drive If there is more than one drive, it will return to the Select Drives screen after the boot manager selection. If you wish to install FreeBSD on to more than one disk than you can select another disk here, and repeat the slice process using FDisk,
Exit Select Drive
Make sure [OK] is highlighted, then press Enter to continue with the installation. Creating Partitions using <application>Disklabel</application> You must now create some partitions inside each slice that you have just created. Remember that each partition is lettered, from a through to h, and that partitions b, c, and d have conventional meanings that you should adhere to. Certain applications can benefit from particular partition schemes, especially if you are laying out partitions across more than one disk. However, for this, your first FreeBSD installation, you do not need to give too much thought to how you partition the disk. It is more important that you install FreeBSD and start learning how to use it. You can always re-install FreeBSD to change your partition scheme when you are more familiar with the operating system. This scheme features four partitions—one for swap space, and three for filesystems. Partition Layout for First Disk Partition Filesystem Size Description a / 64MB This is the root file system. Every other filesystem will be mounted somewhere under this one. 64MB is a reasonable size for this filesystem. You will not be storing too much data on it, as a regular FreeBSD install will put about 40MB of data here. The remaining space is for temporary data, and also leaves expansion space if future versions of FreeBSD need more space in / b N/A 2-3 x RAM The system's swap space is kept on this partition. Choosing the right amount of swap space can be a bit of an art. A good rule of thumb is that you should have two or three times the amount of RAM as swap space. So if you have 64MB of RAM then you should have between 128MB and 196MB of swap. You should also have at least 64MB of swap, so if you have less than 32MB of RAM in your computer then set the swap amount to 64MB.If you have more than one disk then you can put swap space on each disk. FreeBSD will then use each disk for swap, which effectively speeds up the act of swapping. In this case, calculate the total amount of swap you need (e.g., 128MB), and then divide this by the number of disks you have (e.g., two disks) to give the amount of swap you should put on each disk, in this example, 64MB of swap per disk. e /var 50MB The /var directory contains variable length files; log files, and other administrative files. Many of these files are read-from or written-to extensively during FreeBSD's day-to-day running. Putting these files on another filesystem allows FreeBSD to optimise the access of these files without affecting other files in other directories that do not have the same access pattern. f /usr Rest of disk All your other files will typically be stored in /usr, and its subdirectories.
If you will be installing FreeBSD on to more than one disk then you must also create partitions in the other slices that you configured. The easiest way to do this is to create two partitions on each disk, one for the swap space, and one for a filesystem. Partition Layout for Subsequent Disks Partition Filesystem Size Description b N/A See description As already discussed, you can split swap space across each disk. Even though the a partition is free, convention dictates that swap space stays on the b partition. e /diskn Rest of disk The rest of the disk is taken up with one big partition. This could easily be put on the a partition, instead of the e partition. However, convention says that the a partition on a slice is reserved for the filesystem that will be the root (/) filesystem. You do not have to follow this convention, but Sysinstall does, so following it yourself makes the installation slightly cleaner. You can choose to mount this filesystem anywhere; this example suggests that you mount them as directories /diskn, where n is a number that changes for each disk. But you can use another scheme if you prefer.
Having chosen your partition layout you can now create it using Sysinstall. You will see this message. Message Now, you need to create BSD partitions inside of the fdisk partition(s) just created. If you have a reasonable amount of disk space (200MB or more) and don't have any special requirements, simply use the (A)uto command to allocate space automatically. If you have more specific needs or just don't care for the layout chosen by (A)uto, press F1 for more information on manual layout. [ OK ] Press Enter to start the FreeBSD partition editor, called Disklabel. shows the display when you first start Disklabel. The display is divided in to three sections. The first few lines show the name of the disk you are currently working on, and the slice that contains the partitions you are creating (at this point Disklabel calls this the Partition name rather than slice name). This display also shows the amount of free space within the slice; that is, space that was set aside in the slice, but that has not yet been assigned to a partition. The middle of the display shows the partitions that have been created, the name of the filesystem that each partition contains, their size, and some options pertaining to the creation of the filesystem. The bottom third of the screen shows the keystrokes that are valid in Disklabel.
Sysinstall Disklabel Editor
Disklabel can automatically create partitions for you, and assign them default sizes. Try this now, by Pressing A. You will see a display similar to that shown in . Depending on the size of the disk you are using the defaults may or may not be appropriate. This does not matter, as you do not have to accept the defaults.
Sysinstall Disklabel Editor With Auto Defaults
To delete the suggested partitions, and replace them with your own, use the arrow keys to select the first partition, and press D to delete it. Repeat this to delete all the suggested partitions. To create the first partition (a, mounted as /), make sure the disk information at the top of the screen is selected, and press C. A dialog box will appear prompting you for the size of the new partition (as shown in ). You can enter the size as the number of disk blocks you want to use, or, more usefully, as a number followed by either M for megabytes, G for gigabytes, or C for cylinders.
Free Space For Root Partition
The default size shown will create a partition that takes up the rest of the slice. If you are using the partition sizes described earlier then delete the existing figure using Backspace, and then type in 64M, as shown in . Then press OK.
Edit Root Partition Size
Having chosen the partition's size you will then asked whether this partition will contain a filesystem or swap space. The dialog box is shown in . This first partition will contain a filesystem, so check that FS is selected and then press Enter.
Choose The Root Partition Type
Finally, because you are creating a filesystem, you must tell Disklabel where the filesystem is to be mounted. The dialog box is shown in . The root filesystem's mount point is /, so type /, and then press Enter.
Choose The Root Mount Point
The display will then update to show you the newly created partition. You should repeat this procedure for the other partitions. When you create the swap partition you will not be prompted for the filesystem mount point, as swap partitions are never mounted. When you create the final partition, /usr, you can leave the suggested size as is, to use the rest of the slice. Your final FreeBSD DiskLabel Editor screen will appear similar to , although your values chosen may be different. Press Q to finish.
Sysinstall Disklabel Editor
Choosing What To Install Select The Distribution Set Deciding which distribution set to install will depend largely on the intended use of the system and the amount of disk space available. The predefined options range from installing the smallest possible configuration to everything. Those who are new to Unix and/or FreeBSD should almost certainly select one of these canned options. Customizing a distribution set is typically for the more experienced user. Press F1 for more information on the distribution set options and what they contain. When finished reviewing the help, pressing Enter will return to the Select Distributions Menu. If a graphical user interface is desired then a distribution set that is preceeded by an X should be chosen. The configuration of XFree86 and selection of a default desktop is part of the post-installation steps. For more information on the XFree86 distribution see . If compiling a custom kernel is anticipated, select an option which includes the source code. For more information on why a custom kernel should be built or how to build a custom kernel see . Obviously, the most versatile system is one that includes everything. If there is adequate disk space, select All as shown in by using the arrow keys and press Enter. If there is a concern about disk space consider using an option that is more suitable for the situation. Other distributions can be added after installation.
Choose Distributions
Installing The Ports Collection After selecting the desired distribution, an opportunity to install the FreeBSD Ports Collection is presented. The ports collection is an easy and convenient way to install software. The ports collection does not contain the source code necessary to compile the software. It is a collection of files which automates the downloading, compiling and installation. discusses how to use the ports collection. The installation program does not check to see if you have adequate space. Select this option only if you have adequate hard disk space. User Confirmation Requested Would you like to install the FreeBSD ports collection? This will give you ready access to over 5000 ported software packages, at a cost of around 70MB of disk space when "clean" and possibly much more than that if a lot of the distribution tarballs are loaded (unless you have the extra CDs from a FreeBSD CD/DVD distribution available and can mount it on /cdrom, in which case this is far less of a problem). The ports collection is a very valuable resource and well worth having on your /usr partition, so it is advisable to say Yes to this option. For more information on the ports collection & the latest ports, visit: http://www.freebsd.org/ports [ Yes ] No Select [ Yes ] with the arrow keys to install the ports collection or [ No ] to skip this option. Press Enter to continue. The Choose Distributions menu will redisplay.
Confirm Distributions
If satisfied with the options, select Exit with the arrow keys, ensure that [ OK ] is highlighted, and press Enter to continue. Installation Media If Installing from a CDROM, use the arrow keys to highlight the "Install from a FreeBSD CDROM" option. Make sure [OK] is highlighted, then press Enter to proceed with installation.
Choose Installation Media
Press F1 to display the Online Help for installation media. Press Enter to return to the media selection menu. Final Warning The installation can now proceed if desired. This is also the last chance for aborting the installation to prevent changes to the hard drive. This is the point of no return. User Confirmation Requested Last Chance! Are you SURE you want to continue the installation? If you're running this on a disk with data you wish to save then WE STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO MAKE PROPER BACKUPS before proceeding! We can take no responsibility for lost disk contents! [ Yes ] No Continuing The Installation Select "Yes" and Press Enter to proceed. The installation time will vary according to the distribution chosen and installation media used. There will be a series of messages displayed indicating the status. When the installation is complete when the following message is displayed : Message Congratulations! You now have FreeBSD installed on your system. We will now move on to the final configuration questions. For any option you do not wish to configure, simply select No. If you wish to re-enter this utility after the system is up, you may do so by typing: /stand/sysinstall . [ OK ] [ Press enter to continue ] Press Enter to proceed with post-installation configurations. Aborting The Installation Selecting [No] and pressing Enter will abort the installation so no changes will be made to your system. The following message will appear : Message Installation complete with some errors. You may wish to scroll through the debugging messages on VTY1 with the scroll-lock feature. You can also choose "No" at the next prompt and go back into the installation menus to try and retry whichever operations have failed. [ OK ] Pressing Enter will return to the Main Installation Menu to exit the installation. Post-installation Configuration of various options follows the successful installation. A option can be configured by re-entering the configuration options before booting the new FreeBSD system or after installation using /stand/sysinstall. Network Device Configuration If you previously configured PPP for an FTP install, this screen will not re-appear. For detailed information on Local Area Networks and configuring FreeBSD as a gateway/router refer to the tutorial PPP- Pendantic PPP Primer. User Confirmation Requested Would you like to configure Ethernet or SLIP/PPP network devices? [ Yes ] No This option allows configuration of network devices by selecting [Yes] and pressing Enter
Selecting An Ethernet Device
Select the appropriate interface and press Enter. User Confirmation Requested Do you want to try IPv6 configuration of the interface? Yes [ No ] In this private local area network the current Internet type protocol (IPv4) was sufficient and "No" was selected with the arrow keys and Enter pressed. If you want to try the new Internet protocol (IPv6), choose [Yes] and press Enter. If yes is chosen, it will take several seconds for scanning RA servers. User Confirmation Requested Do you want to try DHCP configuration of the interface? Yes [ No ] There is no DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) so "No" was selected with the arrow keys and Enter pressed. Answering [Yes] will execute dhclient, and if successful, will fill in the network configuration information automatically. Refer to the FreeBSD Handbook for more information. The following Network Configuration screen shows the configuration of the Ethernet device for a system that will act as the gateway for a Local Area Network.
Set Network Configuration For ed0
- Use TAB to select the information fields and + Use Tab to select the information fields and fill in appropriate information: Host The fully-qualified hostname, e.g. k6-2.weeble.com in this case. Domain The name of the domain that your machine is in, e.g. weeble.com for this case. IPv4 Gateway IP address of host forwarding packets to non-local destinations. Fill this in only if the machine is a node on the network. Leave this field blank if the machine is the gateway to the Internet for the network. Name server IP address of your local DNS server. There is no local DNS server on this private local area network so the IP address of the provider's DNS server (208.163.10.2) was used. IPv4 address The IP address to be used for this interface was (192.168.0.1). Netmask The address block being used for this local area network is a Class C block (192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255). The default netmask is for a Class C network (255.255.255.0). Extra options to ifconfig Any interface-specific options to ifconfig you would like to add. There were none in this case. - Use TAB to select [OK] when finished and press + Use Tab to select [OK] when finished and press Enter. User Confirmation Requested Would you like to Bring Up the ed0 interface right now? [ Yes ] No Choosing [Yes] and pressing Enter will bring the machine up on the network and be ready for use after leaving leaving the installation. Configure Internet Services User Confirmation Requested Do you want to configure inetd and simple internet services? Yes [ No ] If [ No ] is selected, various services such telnetd will not be enabled. This means that remote users will not be able to telnet into this machine. Local users will be still be able to access remote machines with telnet. These services can be enabled after installation by editing /etc/inetd.conf with your favorite text editor. See for more information. Select [ Yes ] if you wish to configure these services during install. An additional confirmation will display. User Confirmation Requested The Internet Super Server (inetd) allows a number of simple Internet services to be enabled, including finger, ftp and telnetd. Enabling these services may increase risk of security problems by increasing the exposure of your system. With this in mind, do you wish to enable inetd? [ Yes ] No Select [ Yes ] to continue. User Confirmation Requested inetd(8) relies on its configuration file, /etc/inetd.conf, to determine which of its Internet services will be available. The default FreeBSD inetd.conf(5) leaves all services disabled by default, so they must be specifically enabled in the configuration file before they will function, even once inetd(8) is enabled. Note that services for IPv6 must be seperately enabled from IPv4 services. Select [Yes] now to invoke an editor on /etc/inetd.conf, or [No] to use the current settings. [ Yes ] No Selecting [ Yes ] will allow adding services by deleting the # at the beginning of a line.
Editing <filename>inetd.conf</filename>
- After adding the desired services, pressing ESC + After adding the desired services, pressing Esc will display a menu which will allow exiting and saving the changes. Configure Gateway User Confirmation Requested Do you want this machine to function as a network gateway? [ Yes ] No [Yes] was selected and Enter pressed since this machine will be acting as the gateway for a local area network and forwarding packets between other machines. Anonymous FTP Deny Anonymous FTP Selecting [No] and pressing Enter will still allow users who have accounts with passwords to use ftp. User Confirmation Requested Do you want to have anonymous FTP access to this machine? Yes [ No ] With [No] highlighted, press Enter to continue with post-installation configuration. Allow Anonymous FTP User Confirmation Requested Do you want to have anonymous FTP access to this machine? [ Yes ] No If you select [Yes] and press Enter you would be allowing anonymous ftp connections. Be aware of the security considerations if you elect to allow this. To allow anonymous FTP, use the arrow keys to select [Yes] and press Enter. The following screens (or similar) will appear :
Default Anonymous FTP Configuration
Pressing F1 will display the help : This screen allows you to configure the anonymous FTP user. The following configuration values are editable: UID: The user ID you wish to assign to the anonymous FTP user. All files uploaded will be owned by this ID. Group: Which group you wish the anonymous FTP user to be in. Comment: String describing this user in /etc/passwd FTP Root Directory: Where files available for anonymous FTP will be kept. Upload subdirectory: Where files uploaded by anonymous FTP users will go. The ftp root directory will be put in /var by default. If you do not have enough room there for the anticipated FTP needs, the /usr directory could be used by setting the FTP Root Directory to /usr/ftp. When you are satisfied with the values, press Enter to continue. User Confirmation Requested Create a welcome message file for anonymous FTP users? [ Yes ] No If you select [Yes] and press Enter, an editor will automatically start allowing you to edit the message.
Edit The FTP Welcome Message
This is a text editor called ee. Use the instructions to change the message or change the message later using a text editor of your choice. Note the file name/location at the bottom. Press ESC and a pop-up menu will default to "a) leave editor". Press Enter to exit and continue. Configure Network File Services NFS Server User Confirmation Requested Do you want to configure this machine as an NFS server? Yes [ No ] If there is no need for a Network File System server or client, select [No] and press Enter. If [Yes] is chosen, a message will pop-up indicating that the the exports file must be created. Press Enter to continue. Message Operating as an NFS server means that you must first configure an /etc/exports file to indicate which hosts are allowed certain kinds of access to your local file systems. Press [Enter] now to invoke an editor on /etc/exports [ OK ] A text editor will start allowing the exports file to be created and edited.
Editing the Exports File
Use the instructions to add the actual exported filesystems now or later using a text editor of your choice. Note the filename/location at the bottom. - Press ESC and a pop-up menu will default to + Press Esc and a pop-up menu will default to "a) leave editor". Press Enter to exit and continue. NFS Client With the arrow keys, select [Yes] or [No] as appropriate and press Enter. This example shows the NFS client option as [No]. User Confirmation Requested Do you want to configure this machine as an NFS client? Yes [ No ] Security Profile A security profile is a set of configuration options that attempts to achieve the desired ratio of security to convenience by enabling and disabling certain programs and other settings. User Confirmation Requested Do you want to select a default security profile for this host (select No for "medium" security)? [ Yes ] No Selecting [ No ] and pressing Enter will set the security profile to medium. Selecting [ Yes ] and pressing Enter will allow selecting a different security profile.
Security Profile Options
Press F1 to display the help. Press Enter to return to selection menu. Use the arrow keys to choose Medium unless your are sure that another level is required for your needs. With [ OK ] highlighted, press Enter. An appropriate confirmation message will display depending on which security setting was chosen. Message Moderate security settings have been selected. Sendmail and SSHd have been enabled, securelevels are disabled, and NFS server setting have been left intact. PLEASE NOTE that this still does not save you from having to properly secure your system in other ways or exercise due diligence in your administration, this simply picks a standard set of out-of-box defaults to start with. To change any of these settings later, edit /etc/rc.conf [OK] Message Extreme security settings have been selected. Sendmail, SSHd, and NFS services have been disabled, and securelevels have been enabled. PLEASE NOTE that this still does not save you from having to properly secure your system in other ways or exercise due diligence in your administration, this simply picks a more secure set of out-of-box defaults to start with. To change any of these settings later, edit /etc/rc.conf [OK] Press Enter to continue with the post-installation configuration. System Console Settings There are several options available to customize the system console. To view and configure the options, select [Yes] and press Enter. User Confirmation Requested Would you like to customize your system console settings? [ Yes ] No A commonly used option is the screensaver. Use the arrow keys to select "Saver" and then press Enter.
Screensaver Options
First, select the desired screen saver using the arrow keys - and then press SPACE. The "X" will indicate the + and then press Space. The "X" will indicate the selected screensaver.
Screensaver Options
The default time interval is 300 seconds. To change the time interval, select "Timeout" using the arrow keys and press - SPACE. A pop-up menu will appear : + Space. A pop-up menu will appear :
Screensaver Timeout
The value can be changed, then select [OK] and press Enter to return to the System Screensaver options menu. At the Screensaver Menu, select [OK] and press Enter again to return to the System Console options menu.
System Console Configuration Exit
Selecting [EXIT] and pressing Enter will continue with the post-installation configurations. Setting The Time Zone Setting the timezone for your machine will allow it to automatically correct for any regional time changes and perform other timezone related functions properly. The selection menus will vary according to your geographical selections. User Confirmation Requested Would you like to set this machine's time zone now? [ Yes ] No Select [Yes] and press Enter to set the time zone. User Confirmation Requested Is this machine's CMOS clock set to UTC? If it is set to local time please choose NO here! Yes [ No ] If the machine's CMOS clock is set to local time select [No] with the arrow keys and then press Enter. If the CMOS clock is set to GMT or UTC, select [Yes] and press Enter.
Select Your Region
The appropriate region is selected using the arrow keys and then press Enter.
Select Your Country
Select the appropriate country using the arrow keys and press Enter. This is a partial chart of the country selection menu.
Select Your Timezone
The appropriate time zone is selected using the arrow keys and pressing Enter. Again, this is a partial chart. Confirmation Does the abbreviation 'EDT' look reasonable? [ Yes ] No Confirm the abbreviation for the time zone is correct. If it looks okay, press Enter to continue with the post-installation configuration. Linux Compatibility User Confirmation Requested Would you like to enable Linux binary compatibility? [ Yes ] No Selecting [Yes] and pressing Enter will allow running Linux software on FreeBSD. The install will proceed to add the appropriate packages for Linux compatibility. If installing by FTP, the machine will need to be connected to the Internet. Sometimes a remote ftp site will not have all the distributions like the Linux binary compatibility. This can be installed later if necessary. Mouse Settings This option will allow you to cut and past text in the console and user programs with a 3-button mouse. If using a 2-button mouse, refer to manual page, &man.moused.8;, after installation for details on emulating the 3-button style. This example depicts a non-USB mouse. User Confirmation Requested Does this system have a non-USB mouse attached to it? [ Yes ] No Select [Yes] for a non-USB mouse or [No] for a USB mouse and press Enter.
Select Mouse Protocol Type
Use the arrow keys to select "Type" and press Enter
Set Mouse Protocol
The mouse in this example is a PS/2 type, so the default "Auto" was appropriate. To change protocol, use the arrow keys and then - press SPACE. Select [OK] and press + press Space. Select [OK] and press Enter to exit this menu.
Configure Mouse Port
Use the arrow keys to select "Port" and press Enter.
Setting The Mouse Port
This system had a PS/2 mouse, so the default "PS/2" was appropriate. To change the port, use the arrow keys and then press the space bar. Select [OK] and press Enter to exit this menu.
Enable The Mouse Daemon
Last, the mouse daemon is enabled and tested.
Test The Mouse Daemon
The cursor moved around the screen so the mouse daemon is running: Select [YES] to return to the previous menu then select "Exit" with the arrow keys and press Enter to return to continue with the post-installation configuration. Configure X-Server User Confirmation Requested Would you like to configure your X server at this time? [ Yes ] No This can be done later using /stand/sysinstall if you do not have graphics card and monitor information handy. Equipment damage can occur if settings are incorrect. Select [Yes] and press Enter to proceed with configuring the X server. Select Configuration Method
Select Configuration Method Menu
There are several ways to configure the X server. XF86Setup is fully graphical and probably the easiest. Use the arrow keys to select the "XF86Setup" option and press Enter. Message You have configured and been running the mouse daemon. Choose "/dev/sysmouse" as the mouse port and "SysMouse" or "MouseSystems" as the mouse protocol in the X configuration utility. [ OK ] [ Press enter to continue ] The mouse daemon previously configured has been detected. Press Enter to continue. Press [Enter] to switch to graphics mode. This may take a while... [ OK ] Press Enter to switch to the graphics mode and continue. It will not try to switch to the graphics mode until Enter is pressed. The screen will go black and then shortly a screen with a large "X" in the center will appear. Be patient and wait. After a few more moments, the XF86 Setup Introduction will appear. Read all instructions carefully. Press Enter to continue. X-Mouse The mouse is the first item to be configured. The mouse daemon was already running and "Emulate3Buttons" was added for my mouse type. Click on "Apply" and check the mouse actions are working properly. X-Keyboard Click on the "Keyboard" menu item. The default settings were fine for my keyboard. Select the options appropriate for your situation then click on "Apply". Video Card Click on the "Card" menu item. Select the appropriate video card from the list using the scrollbar. Clicking on your card will show as "Card selected:" above the list box. Next, the "Detailed Setup" was selected just to check any details. Monitor Click on the "Monitor" menu item. There are two ways to proceed. One method requires that you enter the horizontal and vertical sweep capabilities of your monitor. Choosing one of the options listed that the monitor is the method used in the illustration. Do not exceed the ratings of your monitor. Damage could occur. If you have doubts select "ABORT" and get the information. The remainder of the installation process will be unaffected and configuring the X-Server can be done later using /stand/sysinstall. After selecting a listed option, the screen will display the horizontal and vertical sweep rates that will be used. Compare those to the monitor specifications. The monitor must be capable of using those ranges. Video Mode Selection Click on the "Modeselection" menu item. Selected the modes and color depth appropriate for the system. Other These are generally reasonable values. Verify all the settings once again and select "Done". It will then attempt to switch to x-mode to verify the settings. If nothing appears or appears wrong, kill the x-server using - CTRLALTBACKSPACE + CtrlAltBackspace and adjust the settings or revisit them after installation. Saving Configuration After selecting [DONE] the following message will display: If you've finished configuring everything press the Okay button to start the X server using the configuration you've selected. If you still wish to configure some things, press one of the buttons at the top and then press "Done" again, when you've finished. After selecting [OKAY], some messages will briefly appear advising to wait and attempting to start the x-server. This process takes a few moments, so be patient. The screen will go blank for a short period of time and then the following should appear: "Congratulations, you've got a running server! The configuration can now be saved in the location indicated and continue with the installation. If the monitor display needs adjusted, xvidtune can be ran to adjust them. There are warnings that improper settings can damage your equipment. Heed them. If in doubt, do not do it. Instead, use the monitor controls to adjust the display for x-windows. There may be some display differences when switching back to text mode, but it is better than damaging equipment. The xvidtune can be ran later using /stand/sysinstall. If it does not appear or is distorted, kill the server with - CTRLALTBACKSPACE + CtrlAltBackspace to continue and configure the x-server after installation using /stand/sysinstall. The installation program will create the 'X' link to the server by selecting [Yes]: Do you want to create an 'X' link to the SVGA server? (the link will be created in the directory: /usr/X11R6/bin) Okay? [ Yes ] No Link created successfully. [ OK ] Press Enter to continue configuration. Select Default X Desktop I selected the K Desktop Environment with the arrow keys and then pressed Enter to set it as my default window manager.
Select Default Desktop
The selected desktop package will then be loaded on they system. Install Packages Only one package is shown being added for purposes of illustration. Additional packages can also be added at this time if desired. After installation /stand/sysinstall can be used to add additional packages. User Confirmation Requested The FreeBSD package collection is a collection of hundreds of ready-to-run applications, from text editors to games to WEB servers and more. Would you like to browse the collection now? [ Yes ] No Selecting [Yes] and pressing Enter will be followed by the Package Selection screens:
Select Package Category
All packages available will be displayed if "All" is chosen. Additional packages may be on other CDs. These can also be added later using /stand/sysinstall. The bash shell is shown selected. Select as many as desired - by highlighting the item and pressing the SPACE. + by highlighting the item and pressing the Space. A short description of each package will appear in the lower left corner of the screen.
Select Packages
When the package(s) are selected, select [OK] and then press Enter to return to the Package Selection menu.
Install Packages
Use the arrow keys to select [INSTALL] and pressing Enter will ask for confirmation.
Confirm Package Installation
Selecting [OK] and pressing Enter will start the package installation. Installing messages will appear until completed. Make note if there are any error messages. The final configuration continues after packages are installed. Add User/Groups User Confirmation Requested Would you like to add any initial user accounts to the system? Adding at least one account for yourself at this stage is suggested since working as the "root" user is dangerous (it is easy to do things which adversely affect the entire system). [ Yes ] No Select "Add User" with the arrow keys then and press Enter.
Select Add User
Add User Information
The following descriptions will appear in the lower part of - the screen as the items are selected with TAB + the screen as the items are selected with Tab Login ID The login name of the new user (mandatory) UID The numerical ID for this user (leave blank for automatic choice) Group The login group name for this user (leave blank for automatic choice) Password The password for this user (enter this field with care!) Full name The user's full name (comment) Member groups The groups this user belongs to (i.e. gets access rights for) Home directory The user's home directory (leave blank for default) Login shell The user's login shell (leave blank for default). (/bin/sh) The login shell was changed from /bin/sh to /usr/local/bin/bash to use the bash shell that was previously installed as a package. The user was also added to the group "wheel" to be able to become a superuser with root privileges. Groups could also be added at this time if specific needs are known. Otherwise, this may be accessed through using /stand/sysinstall after installation is completed.
Exit User and Group Management
I selected [Exit] with the arrow keys then [OK] and pressed Enter to continue the installation. Set Root Password Message Now you must set the system manager's password. This is the password you'll use to log in as "root". [ OK ] [ Press enter to continue ] The password will need to be typed in twice correctly. Needless to say, make sure you have a way of finding the password if you forget. Changing local password for root. New password : Retype new password : The installation will continue after the password is successfully entered. Exiting Install User Confirmation Requested Visit the general configuration menu for a chance to set any last options? Yes [ No ] Selecting [No] with the arrow keys and pressing Enter returns to the Main Installation Menu
Exit Install
Select [EXIT INSTALL] with the arrow keys and press Enter. User Confirmation Requested Are you sure you wish to exit? The system will reboot (be sure to remove any floppies from the drives). [ Yes ] No Select [Yes] and remove floppy if booting from floppy. The CDROM drive is locked until you select yes to exit and press Enter. The CDROM drive is then unlocked and can be removed from drive (quickly). The system will reboot so watch for any error messages that may appear. FreeBSD Bootup If everything goes well, you will see similar messages scroll off the screen and you will arrive at a login prompt. You can view - the content of the messages by pressing SCROLL-LOCK + the content of the messages by pressing Scroll-Lock and using PgUp and PgDn. - Pressing SCROLL-LOCK again will return + Pressing Scroll-Lock again will return to the prompt. The entire message may not display (buffer limitation) but can be viewed from the command line after logging in by typing dmesg at the prompt will get similar information. Login using the user/password you set during installation (rpratt, in this example). Avoid logging in as root except when necessary. Typical boot messages : Copyright (c) 1992-2001 The FreeBSD Project. Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE #0: Sat Apr 21 10:54:49 GMT 2001 jkh@narf.osd.bsdi.com:/usr/src/sys/compile/GENERIC Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz CPU: AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor (300.68-MHz 586-class CPU) Origin = "AuthenticAMD" Id = 0x580 Stepping = 0 Features=0x8001bf<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,MCE,CX8,MMX> AMD Features=0x80000800<SYSCALL,3DNow!> real memory = 268435456 (262144K bytes) config> di sn0 config> di lnc0 config> di le0 config> di ie0 config> di fe0 config> di cs0 config> di bt0 config> di ata1 config> di aic0 config> di aha0 config> di adv0 config> q avail memory = 256983040 (250960K bytes) Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc044d000. Preloaded userconfig_script "/boot/kernel.conf" at 0xc044d09c. md0: Malloc disk npx0: <math processor> on motherboard npx0: INT 16 interface pcib0: <Host to PCI bridge> on motherboard pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0 pcib1: <VIA 82C598MVP (Apollo MVP3) PCI-PCI (AGP) bridge> at device 1.0 on pci0 pci1: <PCI bus> on pcib1 pci1: <Matrox MGA G200 AGP graphics accelerator> at 0.0 irq 11 isab0: <VIA 82C586 PCI-ISA bridge> at device 7.0 on pci0 isa0: <ISA bus> on isab0 atapci0: <VIA 82C586 ATA33 controller> port 0xe000-0xe00f at device 7.1 on pci0 ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0 ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0 uhci0: <VIA 83C572 USB controller> port 0xe400-0xe41f irq 10 at device 7.2 on pci0 usb0: <VIA 83C572 USB controller> on uhci0 usb0: USB revision 1.0 uhub0: VIA UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1 uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered chip1: <VIA 82C586B ACPI interface> at device 7.3 on pci0 ed0: <NE2000 PCI Ethernet (RealTek 8029)> port 0xe800-0xe81f irq 9 at device 10.0 on pci0 ed0: address 52:54:05:de:73:1b, type NE2000 (16 bit) isa0: too many dependant configs (8) isa0: unexpected small tag 14 fdc0: <NEC 72065B or clone> at port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2 on isa0 fdc0: FIFO enabled, 8 bytes threshold fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0 atkbdc0: <keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x60-0x6f on isa0 atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> flags 0x1 irq 1 on atkbdc0 kbd0 at atkbd0 psm0: <PS/2 Mouse> irq 12 on atkbdc0 psm0: model Generic PS/2 mouse, device ID 0 vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0 sc0: <System console> at flags 0x1 on isa0 sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300> sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0 sio0: type 16550A sio1 at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa0 sio1: type 16550A ppc0: <Parallel port> at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0 ppc0: SMC-like chipset (ECP/EPP/PS2/NIBBLE) in COMPATIBLE mode ppc0: FIFO with 16/16/15 bytes threshold ppi0: <Parallel I/O> on ppbus0 lpt0: <Printer> on ppbus0 lpt0: Interrupt-driven port plip0: <PLIP network interface> on ppbus0 ad0: 8063MB <IBM-DHEA-38451> [16383/16/63] at ata0-master using UDMA33 ad2: 8063MB <IBM-DHEA-38451> [16383/16/63] at ata1-master using UDMA33 acd0: CDROM <DELTA OTC-H101/ST3 F/W by OIPD> at ata0-slave using PIO4 Mounting root from ufs:/dev/ad0s1a swapon: adding /dev/ad0s1b as swap device Automatic boot in progress... /dev/ad0s1a: FILESYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS /dev/ad0s1a: clean, 70119 free (655 frags, 8683 blocks, 0.7% fragmentation) /dev/ad0s1f: FILESYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS /dev/ad0s1f: clean, 6976313 free (51774 frags, 829297 blocks, 0.7% fragmentation) /dev/ad0s1e: filesystem CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS /dev/ad0s1e: clean, 97952 free (9 frags, 12381 blocks, 0.0% fragmentation) Doing initial network setup: hostname. lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384 inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x8 inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 Additional routing options: tcp extensions=NO IP gateway=YES TCP keepalive=YES routing daemons:. additional daemons: syslogd. Doing additional network setup: portmap. Starting final network daemons: creating ssh RSA host key Generating RSA keys: Key generation complete. Your identification has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key. Your public key has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key.pub. The key fingerprint is: 2d:02:37:d2:0e:68:93:8f:9c:46:de:92:f4:be:60:0a root@k6-2.weeble.com creating ssh DSA host key Generating DSA parameter and key. Your identification has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key. Your public key has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key.pub. The key fingerprint is: 38:af:d2:1f:63:14:00:d8:83:fd:dd:4b:97:1c:43:6d root@k6-2.weeble.com. setting ELF ldconfig path: /usr/lib /usr/lib/compat /usr/X11R6/lib /usr/local/lib setting a.out ldconfig path: /usr/lib/aout /usr/lib/compat/aout /usr/X11R6/lib/aout starting standard daemons: inetd cron sendmail sshd usbd. Initial rc.i386 initialization: linux. rc.i386 configuring syscons: blank_time screensaver moused. Additional ABI support: linux. Local package initilization:. Additional TCP options:. login: rpratt Password: Generating the RSA and DSA keys may take some time on slower machines. This happens only on the initial boot-up of a new installation. Subsequent boots will be faster. If the X server has been configured and a Default Desktop chosen, it can be started by typing startx at the command line. FreeBSD Shutdown It is important to properly shutdown the operating system. Do not just turn off power. First, become a superuser by typing su at the command line and entering the root password. This will work only if the user is a member of the group wheel. Otherwise, login as root and use shutdown -h now. The operating system has halted. Please press any key to reboot. It is safe to turn off the power after the shutdown command has been issued and the message "Please press any key to reboot" appears. If any key is pressed instead of turning off the power switch, the system will reboot. Supported Hardware hardware FreeBSD currently runs on a wide variety of ISA, VLB, EISA, and PCI bus-based PCs with Intel, AMD, Cyrix, or NexGen x86 processors, as well as a number of machines based on the Compaq Alpha processor. Support for generic IDE or ESDI drive configurations, various SCSI controllers, PCMCIA cards, USB devices, and network and serial cards is also provided. FreeBSD also supports IBM's microchannel (MCA) bus. A list of supported hardware is provided with each FreeBSD release in the FreeBSD Hardware Notes. This document can usually be found in a file named HARDWARE.TXT, in the top-level directory of a CDROM or FTP distribution or in sysinstall's documentation menu. It lists, for a given architecture, what hardware devices are known to be supported by each release of FreeBSD. Troubleshooting installation troubleshooting The following section covers basic installation troubleshooting, such as common problems people have reported. There are also a few questions and answers for people wishing to dual-boot FreeBSD with MS-DOS. What to Do If Something Goes Wrong... Due to various limitations of the PC architecture, it is impossible for probing to be 100% reliable, however, there are a few things you can do if it fails. Check the Hardware Notes document for your version of FreeBSD to make sure your hardware is supported. If your hardware is supported and you still experience lock-ups or other problems, reset your computer, and when the visual kernel configuration option is given, choose it. This will allow you to go through your hardware and supply information to the system about it. The kernel on the boot disks is configured assuming that most hardware devices are in their factory default configuration in terms of IRQs, IO addresses, and DMA channels. If your hardware has been reconfigured, you will most likely need to use the configuration editor to tell FreeBSD where to find things. It is also possible that a probe for a device not present will cause a later probe for another device that is present to fail. In that case, the probes for the conflicting driver(s) should be disabled. Do not disable any drivers you will need during the installation, such as your screen (sc0). If the installation wedges or fails mysteriously after leaving the configuration editor, you have probably removed or changed something you should not have. Reboot and try again. In configuration mode, you can: List the device drivers installed in the kernel. Change device drivers for hardware that is not present in your system. Change IRQs, DRQs, and IO port addresses used by a device driver. After adjusting the kernel to match your hardware configuration, type Q to boot with the new settings. Once the installation has completed, any changes you made in the configuration mode will be permanent so you do not have to reconfigure every time you boot. It is still highly likely that you will eventually want to build a custom kernel. MS-DOS User's Questions and Answers DOS Many users wish to install FreeBSD on PCs inhabited by MS-DOS. Here are some commonly asked questions about installing FreeBSD on such systems. Help, I have no space! Do I need to delete everything first? If your machine is already running MS-DOS and has little or no free space available for the FreeBSD installation, all hope is not lost! You may find the FIPS utility, provided in the tools directory on the FreeBSD CDROM or various FreeBSD FTP sites to be quite useful. FIPS FIPS allows you to split an existing MS-DOS partition into two pieces, preserving the original partition and allowing you to install onto the second free piece. You first defragment your MS-DOS partition using the Windows DEFRAG utility (go into Explorer, right-click on the hard drive, and choose to defrag your hard drive), or Norton Disk Tools. You then must run FIPS. It will prompt you for the rest of the information it needs. Afterwards, you can reboot and install FreeBSD on the new free slice. See the Distributions menu for an estimate of how much free space you will need for the kind of installation you want. Partition Magic There is also a very useful product from PowerQuest called Partition Magic. This application has far more functionality than FIPS, and is highly recommended if you plan to often add/remove operating systems (like me). However, it does cost money, and if you plan to install FreeBSD once and then leave it there, FIPS will probably be fine for you. Can I use compressed MS-DOS filesystems from FreeBSD? No. If you are using a utility such as Stacker(tm) or DoubleSpace(tm), FreeBSD will only be able to use whatever portion of the filesystem you leave uncompressed. The rest of the filesystem will show up as one large file (the stacked/double spaced file!). Do not remove that file or you will probably regret it greatly! It is probably better to create another uncompressed primary MS-DOS partition and use this for communications between MS-DOS and FreeBSD. Can I mount my extended MS-DOS partition? partitions slices Yes. DOS extended partitions are mapped in at the end of the other slices in FreeBSD, e.g., your D: drive might be /dev/da0s5, your E: drive, /dev/da0s6, and so on. This example assumes, of course, that your extended partition is on SCSI drive 0. For IDE drives, substitute ad for da appropriately if installing 4.0-RELEASE or later, and substitute wd for da if you are installing a version of FreeBSD prior to 4.0. You otherwise mount extended partitions exactly like you would any other DOS drive, for example: &prompt.root; mount -t msdos /dev/ad0s5 /dos_d Valentino Vaschetto Contributed by Advanced Installation Guide This section describes how to install FreeBSD in exceptional cases. Installing FreeBSD on a System without a Monitor or Keyboard installation headless (serial console) serial console This type of installation is called a "headless install", because the machine that you are trying to install FreeBSD on either doesnt have a monitor attached to it, or doesnt even have a VGA output. How is this possible you ask? Using a serial console. A serial console is basically using another machine to act as the main display and keyboard for a system. To do this, just follow these steps: Fetch the Right Boot Floppy Images First you will need to get the right disk images so that you can boot into the install program. The secret with using a serial console is that you tell the boot loader to send I/O through a serial port instead of displaying console output to the VGA device and trying to read input from a local keyboard. Enough of that now, let's get back to getting these disk images. You will need to get kern.flp and mfsroot.flp from the floppies directory. Write the Image Files to the Floppy Disks. The image files, such as kern.flp, are not regular files that you copy to the disk. Instead, they are images of the complete contents of the disk. This means that you can not use commands like DOS' copy to write the files. Instead, you must use specific tools to write the images directly to the disk. fdimage If you are creating the floppies on a computer running DOS then we provide a tool to do this called fdimage. If you are using the floppies from the CDROM, and your CDROM is the E: drive then you would run this: E:\> tools\fdimage floppies\kern.flp A: Repeat this command for each .flp file, replacing the floppy disk each time. Adjust the command line as necessary, depending on where you have placed the .flp files. If you do not have the CDROM then fdimage can be downloaded from the tools directory on the FreeBSD FTP site. If you are writing the floppies on a Unix system (such as another FreeBSD system) you can use the &man.dd.1; command to write the image files directly to disk. On FreeBSD you would run: &prompt.root; dd if=kern.flp of=/dev/fd0 On FreeBSD /dev/fd0 refers to the first floppy disk (the A: drive). /dev/fd1 would be the B: drive, and so on. Other Unix variants might have different names for the floppy disk devices, and you will need to check the documentation for the system as necessary. Enabling the Boot Floppies to Boot into a Serial Console Do not try to mount the floppy if it is write-protected mount If you were to boot into the floppies that you just made, FreeBSD would boot into its normal install mode. We want FreeBSD to boot into a serial console for our install. To do this, you have to mount the kern.flp floppy onto your FreeBSD system using the &man.mount.8; command. &prompt.root; mount /dev/fd0 /mnt Now that you have the floppy mounted, you must change into the floppy directory &prompt.root; cd /mnt Here is where you must set the floppy to boot into a serial console. You have to make a file called boot.config containing "/boot/loader -h". All this does is pass a flag to the bootloader to boot into a serial console. &prompt.root; echo "/boot/loader -h" > boot.config Now that you have your floppy configured correctly, you must unmount the floppy using the &man.umount.8; command &prompt.root; cd / &prompt.root; umount /mnt Now you can remove the floppy from the floppy drive Connecting Your Null Modem Cable null-modem cable You now need to connect a null modem cable between the two machines. Just connect the cable to the serial ports of the 2 machines. A normal serial cable will not work here, you need a null modem cable because it has some of the wires inside crossed over. Booting Up for the Install It is now time to go ahead and start the install. Put the kern.flp floppy in the floppy drive of the machine you are doing the headless install on, and power on the machine. Connecting to Your Headless Machine cu Now you have to connect to that machine with &man.cu.1;: &prompt.root; cu -l /dev/cuaa0 That's it! You should be able to control the headless machine through your cu session now. It will ask you to put in the mfsroot.flp, and then it will come up with a selection of what kind of terminal to use. Just select the FreeBSD color console and proceed with your install! Preparing Installation Media If you are Placeholder Before Installing from CDROM If your CDROM is of an unsupported type, please skip ahead to the MS-DOS Preparation section. Unix If you are creating the boot floppies from a Unix machine, see the Creating the Boot Floppies section of this guide for examples. Once you have booted from DOS or floppy, you should then be able to select CDROM as the media type during the install process and load the entire distribution from CDROM. No other types of installation media should be required. After your system is fully installed and you have rebooted (from the hard disk), you can mount the CDROM at any time by typing: &prompt.root; mount /cdrom Before removing the CD from the drive again, you must first unmount it. This is done with the following command: &prompt.root; umount /cdrom Do not just remove it from the drive! Before invoking the installation, be sure that the CDROM is in the drive so that the install probe can find it. This is also true if you wish the CDROM to be added to the default system configuration automatically during the installation (whether or not you actually use it as the installation media). installation network FTP Finally, if you would like people to be able to FTP install FreeBSD directly from the CDROM in your machine, you will find it quite easy. After the machine is fully installed, you simply need to add the following line to the password file (using the vipw command): ftp:*:99:99::0:0:FTP:/cdrom:/nonexistent Anyone with network connectivity to your machine can now chose a media type of FTP and type in ftp://your machine after picking Other in the FTP sites menu during the install. If you choose to enable anonymous FTP during the installation of your system, the installation program will do the above for you. Before Installing from Floppies installation floppies If you must install from floppy disk (which we suggest you do NOT do), either due to unsupported hardware or simply because you insist on doing things the hard way, you must first prepare some floppies for the installation. At a minimum, you will need as many 1.44MB or 1.2MB floppies as it takes to hold all the files in the bin (binary distribution) directory. If you are preparing the floppies from DOS, then they MUST be formatted using the MS-DOS FORMAT command. If you are using Windows, use Explorer to format the disks (right-click on the A: drive, and select "Format". Do NOT trust factory pre-formatted floppies! Format them again yourself, just to be sure. Many problems reported by our users in the past have resulted from the use of improperly formatted media, which is why we are making a point of it now. If you are creating the floppies on another FreeBSD machine, a format is still not a bad idea, though you do not need to put a DOS filesystem on each floppy. You can use the disklabel and newfs commands to put a UFS filesystem on them instead, as the following sequence of commands (for a 3.5" 1.44MB floppy) illustrates: &prompt.root; fdformat -f 1440 fd0.1440 &prompt.root; disklabel -w -r fd0.1440 floppy3 &prompt.root; newfs -t 2 -u 18 -l 1 -i 65536 /dev/fd0 Use fd0.1200 and floppy5 for 5.25" 1.2MB disks. Then you can mount and write to them like any other filesystem. After you have formatted the floppies, you will need to copy the files to them. The distribution files are split into chunks conveniently sized so that 5 of them will fit on a conventional 1.44MB floppy. Go through all your floppies, packing as many files as will fit on each one, until you have all of the distributions you want packed up in this fashion. Each distribution should go into a subdirectory on the floppy, e.g.: a:\bin\bin.aa, a:\bin\bin.ab, and so on. Once you come to the Media screen during the install process, select Floppy and you will be prompted for the rest. Before Installing from MS-DOS installation from MS-DOS To prepare for an installation from an MS-DOS partition, copy the files from the distribution into a directory named, for example, c:\FreeBSD. The directory structure of the CDROM or FTP site must be partially reproduced within this directory, so we suggest using the DOS xcopy command if you are copying it from a CD. For example, to prepare for a minimal installation of FreeBSD: C:\> md c:\FreeBSD C:\> xcopy e:\bin c:\FreeBSD\bin\ /s C:\> xcopy e:\manpages c:\FreeBSD\manpages\ /s Assuming that C: is where you have free space and E: is where your CDROM is mounted. If you do not have a CDROM drive, you can download the distribution from ftp.FreeBSD.org. Each distribution is in its own directory; for example, the bin distribution can be found in the &rel.current;/bin directory. For as many distributions you wish to install from an MS-DOS partition (and you have the free space for), install each one under c:\FreeBSD — the BIN distribution is the only one required for a minimum installation. Before Installing from QIC/SCSI Tape installation from QIC/SCSI Tape Installing from tape is probably the easiest method, short of an online FTP install or CDROM install. The installation program expects the files to be simply tarred onto the tape, so after getting all of the distribution files you are interested in, simply tar them onto the tape like so: &prompt.root; cd /freebsd/distdir &prompt.root; tar cvf /dev/rwt0 dist1 ... dist2 When you go to do the installation, you should also make sure that you leave enough room in some temporary directory (which you will be allowed to choose) to accommodate the full contents of the tape you have created. Due to the non-random access nature of tapes, this method of installation requires quite a bit of temporary storage. You should expect to require as much temporary storage as you have stuff written on tape. When starting the installation, the tape must be in the drive before booting from the boot floppy. The installation probe may otherwise fail to find it. Before Installing over a Network installation network serial (SLIP or PPP) installation network parallel (PLIP) installation network Ethernet There are three types of network installations you can do. Serial port (SLIP or PPP), Parallel port (PLIP (laplink cable)), or Ethernet (a standard Ethernet controller (includes some PCMCIA)). The SLIP support is rather primitive, and limited primarily to hard-wired links, such as a serial cable running between a laptop computer and another computer. The link should be hard-wired as the SLIP installation does not currently offer a dialing capability; that facility is provided with the PPP utility, which should be used in preference to SLIP whenever possible. If you are using a modem, then PPP is almost certainly your only choice. Make sure that you have your service provider's information handy as you will need to know it fairly early in the installation process. If you use PAP or CHAP to connect your ISP (in other words, if you can connect to the ISP in Windows without using a script), then all you will need to do is type in dial at the ppp prompt. Otherwise, you will need to know how to dial your ISP using the AT commands specific to your modem, as the PPP dialer provides only a very simple terminal emulator. Please refer to the user-ppp handbook and FAQ entries for further information. If you have problems, logging can be directed to the screen using the command set log local .... If a hard-wired connection to another FreeBSD (2.0-R or later) machine is available, you might also consider installing over a laplink parallel port cable. The data rate over the parallel port is much higher than what is typically possible over a serial line (up to 50kbytes/sec), thus resulting in a quicker installation. Finally, for the fastest possible network installation, an Ethernet adapter is always a good choice! FreeBSD supports most common PC Ethernet cards; a table of supported cards (and their required settings) is provided in the Hardware Notes for each release of FreeBSD. If you are using one of the supported PCMCIA Ethernet cards, also be sure that it is plugged in before the laptop is powered on! FreeBSD does not, unfortunately, currently support hot insertion of PCMCIA cards during installation. You will also need to know your IP address on the network, the netmask value for your address class, and the name of your machine. If you are installing over a PPP connection and do not have a static IP, fear not, the IP address can be dynamically assigned by your ISP. Your system administrator can tell you which values to use for your particular network setup. If you will be referring to other hosts by name rather than IP address, you will also need a name server and possibly the address of a gateway (if you are using PPP, it is your provider's IP address) to use in talking to it. If you want to install by FTP via a HTTP proxy (see below), you will also need the proxy's address. If you do not know the answers to all or most of these questions, then you should really probably talk to your system administrator or ISP before trying this type of installation. Before Installing via NFS installation network NFS The NFS installation is fairly straight-forward. Simply copy the FreeBSD distribution files you want onto a server somewhere and then point the NFS media selection at it. If this server supports only privileged port (as is generally the default for Sun workstations), you will need to set this option in the Options menu before installation can proceed. If you have a poor quality Ethernet card which suffers from very slow transfer rates, you may also wish to toggle the appropriate Options flag. In order for NFS installation to work, the server must support subdir mounts, e.g., if your FreeBSD 3.4 distribution directory lives on:ziggy:/usr/archive/stuff/FreeBSD, then ziggy will have to allow the direct mounting of /usr/archive/stuff/FreeBSD, not just /usr or /usr/archive/stuff. In FreeBSD's /etc/exports file, this is controlled by the . Other NFS servers may have different conventions. If you are getting permission denied messages from the server, then it is likely that you do not have this enabled properly. Before Installing via FTP installation network FTP FTP installation may be done from any FreeBSD mirror site containing a reasonably up-to-date version of FreeBSD. A full list of FTP mirrors located all over the world is provided during the install process. If you are installing from an FTP site not listed in this menu, or are having trouble getting your name server configured properly, you can also specify a URL to use by selecting the choice labeled Other in that menu. You can also use the IP address of a machine you wish to install from, so the following would work in the absence of a name server: ftp://209.55.82.20/pub/FreeBSD/&rel.current;-RELEASE There are three FTP installation modes you can choose from: active or passive FTP or via a HTTP proxy. FTP Active This option will make all FTP transfers use Active mode. This will not work through firewalls, but will often work with older FTP servers that do not support passive mode. If your connection hangs with passive mode (the default), try active! FTP Passive FTP Passive mode This option instructs FreeBSD to use Passive mode for all FTP operations. This allows the user to pass through firewalls that do not allow incoming connections on random port addresses. FTP via a HTTP proxy FTP via a HTTP proxy This option instructs FreeBSD to use the HTTP protocol (like a web browser) to connect to a proxy for all FTP operations. The proxy will translate the requests and send them to the FTP server. This allows the user to pass through firewalls that do not allow FTP at all, but offer a HTTP proxy. In this case, you have to specify the proxy in addition to the FTP server. There is another type of FTP proxy other tha HTTP proxies. This type is very uncommon, though. If you are not absolutely certain, you can assume that you have a HTTP proxy as described above. For a proxy FTP server, you should usually give the name of the server you really want as a part of the username, after an @ sign. The proxy server then fakes the real server. For example, assuming you want to install from ftp.FreeBSD.org, using the proxy FTP server foo.bar.com, listening on port 1024. In this case, you go to the options menu, set the FTP username to ftp@ftp.FreeBSD.org, and the password to your email address. As your installation media, you specify FTP (or passive FTP, if the proxy supports it), and the URL ftp://foo.bar.com:1234/pub/FreeBSD. Since /pub/FreeBSD from ftp.FreeBSD.org is proxied under foo.bar.com, you are able to install from that machine (which will fetch the files from ftp.FreeBSD.org as your installation requests them. Check Your BIOS Drive Numbering If you have used features in your BIOS to renumber your disk drives without re-cabling them then you should read first to avoid confusion. diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/serialcomms/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/serialcomms/chapter.sgml index 83f88ae128..ebb83deb0f 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/serialcomms/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/serialcomms/chapter.sgml @@ -1,2593 +1,2595 @@ Serial Communications Synopsis serial communications Unix has always had support for serial communications. In fact, the very first Unix machines relied on serial lines for user input and output. Things have changed a lot from the days when the average terminal consisted of a 10-character-per-second serial printer and a keyboard. This chapter will cover some of the ways in which FreeBSD uses serial communications. After reading this chapter you will know: How to connect terminals to your FreeBSD system. How to use a modem to dial out to remote hosts. How to allow remote users to login to your system with a modem. How to boot your system from a serial console. Before reading this chapter you should: Know how to configure and install a new kernel (). Understand Unix permissions and processes (). Have access to the technical manual for the serial hardware (modem or multi-port card) that you would like to use with FreeBSD. Introduction Terminology bits-per-second bps Bits per Second — the rate at which data is transmitted DTE DTE Data Terminal Equipment — for example, your computer DCE DCE Data Communications Equipment — your modem RS-232 RS-232C cables EIA standard for hardware serial communications When talking about communications data rates, the authors do not use the term baud. Baud refers to the number of electrical state transitions that may be made in a period of time, while bps (bits per second) is the correct term to use (at least it does not seem to bother the curmudgeons quite a much). Cables and Ports To connect a modem or terminal to your FreeBSD system, you will need a serial port on your computer and the proper cable to connect to your serial device. If you are already familiar with your hardware and the cable it requires, you can safely skip this section. Cables There are several different kinds of serial cables. The two most common types for our purposes are null-modem cables and standard ("straight") RS-232 cables. The documentation for your hardware should describe the type of cable required. Null-modem Cables null-modem cable A null-modem cable passes some signals straight through, like signal ground, but switches other signals. For example, the send data pin on one end goes to the receive data pin on the other end. If you like making your own cables, you can construct a null-modem cable for use with terminals. This table shows the RS-232C signal names and the pin numbers on a DB-25 connector. Signal Pin # Pin # Signal TxD 2 connects to 3 RxD RxD 3 connects to 2 TxD DTR 20 connects to 6 DSR DSR 6 connects to 20 DTR SG 7 connects to 7 SG DCD 8 connects to 4 RTS RTS 4 5 CTS CTS 5 connects to 8 DCD For DCD to RTS, connect pins 4 to 5 internally in the connector hood, and then to pin 8 in the remote hood. Standard RS-232C Cables RS-232C cables A standard serial cable passes all the RS-232C signals straight-through. That is, the send data pin on one end of the cable goes to the send data pin on the other end. This is the type of cable to connect a modem to your FreeBSD system, and the type of cable needed for some terminals. Ports Serial ports are the devices through which data is transferred between the FreeBSD host computer and the terminal. This section describes the kinds of ports that exist and how they are addressed in FreeBSD. Kinds of Ports Several kinds of serial ports exist. Before you purchase or construct a cable, you need to make sure it will fit the ports on your terminal and on the FreeBSD system. Most terminals will have DB25 ports. Personal computers, including PCs running FreeBSD, will have DB25 or DB9 ports. If you have a multiport serial card for your PC, you may have RJ-12 or RJ-45 ports. See the documentation that accompanied the hardware for specifications on the kind of port in use. A visual inspection of the port often works, too. Port Names In FreeBSD, you access each serial port through an entry in the /dev directory. There are two different kinds of entries: Call-in ports are named /dev/ttydN where N is the port number, starting from zero. Generally, you use the call-in port for terminals. Call-in ports require that the serial line assert the data carrier detect (DCD) signal to work. Call-out ports are named /dev/cuaaN. You usually do not use the call-out port for terminals, just for modems. You may use the call-out port if the serial cable or the terminal does not support the carrier detect signal. If you have connected a terminal to the first serial port (COM1 in MS-DOS parlance), then you want to use /dev/ttyd0 to refer to the terminal. If it is on the second serial port (also known as COM2), it is /dev/ttyd1, and so forth. Kernel Configuration FreeBSD supports four serial ports by default. In the MS-DOS world, these are known as COM1:, COM2:, COM3:, and COM4:. FreeBSD currently supports dumb multiport serial interface cards, such as the BocaBoard 1008 and 2016, as well as more intelligent multi-port cards such as those made by Digiboard and Stallion Technologies. The default kernel only looks for the standard COM ports, though. To see if your kernel recognizes any of your serial ports, watch for messages while the kernel is booting, or use the /sbin/dmesg command to replay the kernel's boot messages. In particular, look for messages that start with the characters sio. To view just the messages that have the word sio, use the command: &prompt.root; /sbin/dmesg | grep 'sio' For example, on a system with four serial ports, these are the serial-port specific kernel boot messages: sio0 at 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 on isa sio0: type 16550A sio1 at 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa sio1: type 16550A sio2 at 0x3e8-0x3ef irq 5 on isa sio2: type 16550A sio3 at 0x2e8-0x2ef irq 9 on isa sio3: type 16550A If your kernel does not recognize all of your serial ports, you will probably need to configure a custom FreeBSD kernel for your system. For detailed information on configuring your kernel, please see . The relevant device lines for your kernel configuration file would look like this: device sio0 at isa? port "IO_COM1" tty irq 4 vector siointr device sio1 at isa? port "IO_COM2" tty irq 3 vector siointr device sio2 at isa? port "IO_COM3" tty irq 5 vector siointr device sio3 at isa? port "IO_COM4" tty irq 9 vector siointr You can comment-out or completely remove lines for devices you do not have. Please see the &man.sio.4; manual page for complete information on how to write configuration lines for multiport boards. Be careful if you are using a configuration file that was previously used for a different version of FreeBSD because the device flags have changed between versions. port "IO_COM1" is a substitution for port 0x3f8, IO_COM2 is 0x2f8, IO_COM3 is 0x3e8, and IO_COM4 is 0x2e8, which are fairly common port addresses for their respective serial ports; interrupts 4, 3, 5, and 9 are fairly common interrupt request lines. Also note that regular serial ports cannot share interrupts on ISA-bus PCs (multiport boards have on-board electronics that allow all the 16550A's on the board to share one or two interrupt request lines). Device Special Files Most devices in the kernel are accessed through device special files, which are located in the /dev directory. The sio devices are accessed through the /dev/ttydN (dial-in) and /dev/cuaaN (call-out) devices. FreeBSD also provides initialization devices (/dev/ttyidN and /dev/cuai0N) and locking devices (/dev/ttyldN and /dev/cual0N). The initialization devices are used to initialize communications port parameters each time a port is opened, such as crtscts for modems which use CTS/RTS signaling for flow control. The locking devices are used to lock flags on ports to prevent users or programs changing certain parameters; see the manual pages &man.termios.4;, &man.sio.4;, and &man.stty.1; for information on the terminal settings, locking and initializing devices, and setting terminal options, respectively. Making Device Special Files FreeBSD 5.0 includes the devfs filesystem which automatically creates device nodes as needed. If you are running a version of FreeBSD with devfs enabled then you can safely skip this section. A shell script called MAKEDEV in the /dev directory manages the device special files. To use MAKEDEV to make dial-up device special files for COM1: (port 0), cd to /dev and issue the command MAKEDEV ttyd0. Likewise, to make dial-up device special files for COM2: (port 1), use MAKEDEV ttyd1. MAKEDEV not only creates the /dev/ttydN device special files, but also creates the /dev/cuaaN, /dev/cuaiaN, /dev/cualaN, /dev/ttyldN, and /dev/ttyidN nodes. After making new device special files, be sure to check the permissions on the files (especially the /dev/cua* files) to make sure that only users who should have access to those device special files can read and write on them — you probably do not want to allow your average user to use your modems to dial-out. The default permissions on the /dev/cua* files should be sufficient: crw-rw---- 1 uucp dialer 28, 129 Feb 15 14:38 /dev/cuaa1 crw-rw---- 1 uucp dialer 28, 161 Feb 15 14:38 /dev/cuaia1 crw-rw---- 1 uucp dialer 28, 193 Feb 15 14:38 /dev/cuala1 These permissions allow the user uucp and users in the group dialer to use the call-out devices. Serial Port Configuration ttyd cuaa The ttydN (or cuaaN) device is the regular device you will want to open for your applications. When a process opens the device, it will have a default set of terminal I/O settings. You can see these settings with the command &prompt.root; stty -a -f /dev/ttyd1 When you change the settings to this device, the settings are in effect until the device is closed. When it is reopened, it goes back to the default set. To make changes to the default set, you can open and adjust the settings of the initial state device. For example, to turn on mode, 8 bit communication, and flow control by default for ttyd5, type: &prompt.root; stty -f /dev/ttyid5 clocal cs8 ixon ixoff rc files rc.serial System-wide initialization of the serial devices is controlled in /etc/rc.serial. This file affects the default settings of serial devices. To prevent certain settings from being changed by an application, make adjustments to the lock state device. For example, to lock the speed of ttyd5 to 57600 bps, type: &prompt.root; stty -f /dev/ttyld5 57600 Now, an application that opens ttyd5 and tries to change the speed of the port will be stuck with 57600 bps. MAKEDEV Naturally, you should make the initial state and lock state devices writable only by the root account. Sean Kelly Contributed by Terminals terminals Terminals provide a convenient and low-cost way to access the power of your FreeBSD system when you are not at the computer's console or on a connected network. This section describes how to use terminals with FreeBSD. Uses and Types of Terminals The original Unix systems did not have consoles. Instead, people logged in and ran programs through terminals that were connected to the computer's serial ports. It is quite similar to using a modem and some terminal software to dial into a remote system to do text-only work. Today's PCs have consoles capable of high quality graphics, but the ability to establish a login session on a serial port still exists in nearly every Unix-style operating system today; FreeBSD is no exception. By using a terminal attached to a unused serial port, you can log in and run any text program that you would normally run on the console or in an xterm window in the X Window System. For the business user, you can attach many terminals to a FreeBSD system and place them on your employees' desktops. For a home user, a spare computer such as an older IBM PC or a Macintosh can be a terminal wired into a more powerful computer running FreeBSD. You can turn what might otherwise be a single-user computer into a powerful multiple user system. For FreeBSD, there are three kinds of terminals: Dumb terminals PCs acting as terminals X terminals The remaining subsections describe each kind. Dumb Terminals Dumb terminals are specialized pieces of hardware that let you connect to computers over serial lines. They are called dumb because they have only enough computational power to display, send, and receive text. You cannot run any programs on them. It is the computer to which you connect them that has all the power to run text editors, compilers, email, games, and so forth. There are hundreds of kinds of dumb terminals made by many manufacturers, including Digital Equipment Corporation's VT-100 and Wyse's WY-75. Just about any kind will work with FreeBSD. Some high-end terminals can even display graphics, but only certain software packages can take advantage of these advanced features. Dumb terminals are popular in work environments where workers do not need access to graphic applications such as those provided by the X Window System. PCs Acting As Terminals If a dumb terminal has just enough ability to display, send, and receive text, then certainly any spare personal computer can be a dumb terminal. All you need is the proper cable and some terminal emulation software to run on the computer. Such a configuration is popular in homes. For example, if your spouse is busy working on your FreeBSD system's console, you can do some text-only work at the same time from a less powerful personal computer hooked up as a terminal to the FreeBSD system. X Terminals X terminals are the most sophisticated kind of terminal available. Instead of connecting to a serial port, they usually connect to a network like Ethernet. Instead of being relegated to text-only applications, they can display any X application. We introduce X terminals just for the sake of completeness. However, this chapter does not cover setup, configuration, or use of X terminals. Configuration This section describes what you need to configure on your FreeBSD system to enable a login session on a terminal. It assumes you have already configured your kernel to support the serial port to which the terminal is connected—and that you have connected it. Recall from that the init process is responsible for all process control and initialization at system startup. One of the tasks performed by init is to read the /etc/ttys file and start a getty process on the available terminals. The getty process is responsible for reading a login name and starting the login program. Thus, to configure terminals for your FreeBSD system the following steps should be taken as root : Add a line to /etc/ttys for the entry in the /dev directory for the serial port if it is not already there. Specify that /usr/libexec/getty be run on the port, and specify the appropriate getty type from the /etc/gettytab file. Specify the default terminal type. Set the port to on. Specify whether the port should be secure. Force init to reread the /etc/ttys file. As an optional step, you may wish to create a custom getty type for use in step 2 by making an entry in /etc/gettytab. This chapter does not explain how to do so; you are encouraged to see the &man.gettytab.5; and the &man.getty.8; manual pages for more information. Adding an Entry to <filename>/etc/ttys</filename> The /etc/ttys file lists all of the ports on your FreeBSD system where you want to allow logins. For example, the first virtual console ttyv0 has an entry in this file. You can log in on the console using this entry. This file also contains entries for the other virtual consoles, serial ports, and pseudo-ttys. For a hardwired terminal, just list the serial port's /dev entry without the /dev part. A default FreeBSD install includes a /etc/ttys file with support for the first four serial ports: ttyd0 through ttyd3. If you are attaching a terminal to one of those ports, you do not need to add another entry. Adding Terminal Entries to <filename>/etc/ttys</filename> Suppose we would like to connect two terminals to the system: a Wyse-50 and an old 286 IBM PC running Procomm terminal software emulating a VT-100 terminal. We connect the Wyse to the second serial port and the 286 to the sixth serial port (a port on a multiport serial card). The corresponding entries in the /etc/ttys file would look like this: ttyd1 "/usr/libexec/getty std.38400" wy50 on insecure ttyd5 "/usr/libexec/getty std.19200" vt100 on insecure The first field normally specifies the name of the terminal special file as it is found in /dev. The second field is the command to execute for this line, which is usually &man.getty.8;. getty initializes and opens the line, sets the speed, prompts for a user name and then executes the &man.login.1; program. The getty program accepts one (optional) parameter on its command line, the getty type. A getty type tells about characteristics on the terminal line, like bps rate and parity. The getty program reads these characteristics from the file /etc/gettytab. The file /etc/gettytab contains lots of entries for terminal lines both old and new. In almost all cases, the entries that start with the text std will work for hardwired terminals. These entries ignore parity. There is a std entry for each bps rate from 110 to 115200. Of course, you can add your own entries to this file. The &man.gettytab.5; manual page provides more information. When setting the getty type in the /etc/ttys file, make sure that the communications settings on the terminal match. For our example, the Wyse-50 uses no parity and connects at 38400 bps. The 286 PC uses no parity and connects at 19200 bps. The third field is the type of terminal usually connected to that tty line. For dial-up ports, unknown or dialup is typically used in this field since users may dial up with practically any type of terminal or software. For hardwired terminals, the terminal type does not change, so you can put a real terminal type from the &man.termcap.5; database file in this field. For our example, the Wyse-50 uses the real terminal type while the 286 PC running Procomm will be set to emulate at VT-100. The fourth field specifies if the port should be enabled. Putting on here will have the init process start the program in the second field, getty. If you put off in this field, there will be no getty, and hence no logins on the port. The final field is used to specify whether the port is secure. Marking a port as secure means that you trust it enough to allow the root account (or any account with a user ID of 0) to login from that port. Insecure ports do not allow root logins. On an insecure port, users must login from unprivileged accounts and then use &man.su.1; or a similar mechanism to gain superuser privileges. It is highly recommended that you use "insecure" even for terminals that are behind locked doors. It is quite easy to login and use su if you need superuser privileges. Force <command>init</command> to Reread <filename>/etc/ttys</filename> After making the necessary changes to the /etc/ttys file you should send a SIGHUP (hangup) signal to the init process to force it to re-read its configuration file. For example : &prompt.root; kill -HUP 1 If everything is set up correctly, all cables are in place, and the terminals are powered up, then a getty process should be running on each terminal and you should see login prompts on your terminals at this point. Troubleshooting Your Connection Even with the most meticulous attention to detail, something could still go wrong while setting up a terminal. Here is a list of symptoms and some suggested fixes. No login prompt appears Make sure the terminal is plugged in and powered up. If it is a personal computer acting as a terminal, make sure it is running terminal emulation software on the correct serial port. Make sure the cable is connected firmly to both the terminal and the FreeBSD computer. Make sure it is the right kind of cable. Make sure the terminal and FreeBSD agree on the bps rate and parity settings. If you have a video display terminal, make sure the contrast and brightness controls are turned up. If it is a printing terminal, make sure paper and ink are in good supply. Make sure that a getty process is running and serving the terminal. For example, to get a list of running getty processes with ps, type: &prompt.root; ps -axww|grep getty You should see an entry for the terminal. For example, the following display shows that a getty is running on the second serial port ttyd1 and is using the std.38400 entry in /etc/gettytab: 22189 d1 Is+ 0:00.03 /usr/libexec/getty std.38400 ttyd1 If no getty process is running, make sure you have enabled the port in /etc/ttys. Also remember to run kill -HUP 1 after modifying the ttys file. Garbage appears instead of a login prompt Make sure the terminal and FreeBSD agree on the bps rate and parity settings. Check the getty processes to make sure the correct getty type is in use. If not, edit /etc/ttys and run kill -HUP 1. Characters appear doubled; the password appears when typed Switch the terminal (or the terminal emulation software) from half duplex or local echo to full duplex. Guy Helmer Contributed by Sean Kelly Additions by Dial-in Service dial-in service Configuring your FreeBSD system for dial-in service is very similar to connecting terminals except that you are dealing with modems instead of terminals. External v.s. Internal Modems External modems seem to be more convenient for dial-up, because external modems often can be semi-permanently configured via parameters stored in non-volatile RAM and they usually provide lighted indicators that display the state of important RS-232 signals. Blinking lights impress visitors, but lights are also very useful to see whether a modem is operating properly. Internal modems usually lack non-volatile RAM, so their configuration may be limited only to setting DIP switches. If your internal modem has any signal indicator lights, it is probably difficult to view the lights when the system's cover is in place. Modems and Cables modem If you are using an external modem, then you will of course need the proper cable. A standard RS-232C serial cable should suffice as long as all of the normal signals are wired : Transmitted Data (SD) Received Data (RD) Request to Send (RTS) Clear to Send (CTS) Data Set Ready (DSR) Data Terminal Ready (DTR) Carrier Detect (CD) Signal Ground (SG) FreeBSD needs the RTS and CTS signals for flow-control at speeds above 2400bps, the CD signal to detect when a call has been answered or the line has been hung up, and the DTR signal to reset the modem after a session is complete. Some cables are wired without all of the needed signals, so if you have problems, such as a login session not going away when the line hangs up, you may have a problem with your cable. Like other Unix-like operating systems, FreeBSD uses the hardware signals to find out when a call has been answered or a line has been hung up and to hangup and reset the modem after a call. FreeBSD avoids sending commands to the modem or watching for status reports from the modem. If you are familiar with connecting modems to PC-based bulletin board systems, this may seem awkward. Serial Interface Considerations FreeBSD supports NS8250-, NS16450-, NS16550-, and NS16550A-based EIA RS-232C (CCITT V.24) communications interfaces. The 8250 and 16450 devices have single-character buffers. The 16550 device provides a 16-character buffer, which allows for better system performance. (Bugs in plain 16550's prevent the use of the 16-character buffer, so use 16550A's if possible). Because single-character-buffer devices require more work by the operating system than the 16-character-buffer devices, 16550A-based serial interface cards are much preferred. If the system has many active serial ports or will have a heavy load, 16550A-based cards are better for low-error-rate communications. Quick Overview getty As with terminals, init spawns a getty process for each configured serial port for dial-in connections. For example, if a modem is attached to /dev/ttyd0, the command ps ax might show this: 4850 ?? I 0:00.09 /usr/libexec/getty V19200 ttyd0 When a user dials the modem's line and the modems connect, the CD line is asserted by the modem. The kernel notices that carrier has been detected and completes getty's open of the port. getty sends a login: prompt at the specified initial line speed. getty watches to see if legitimate characters are received, and, in a typical configuration, if it finds junk (probably due to the modem's connection speed being different than getty's speed), getty tries adjusting the line speeds until it receives reasonable characters. /usr/bin/login After the user enters his/her login name, getty executes /usr/bin/login, which completes the login by asking for the user's password and then starting the user's shell. Configuration Files There are three system configuration files in the /etc directory that you will probably need to edit to allow dial-up access to your FreeBSD system. The first, /etc/gettytab, contains configuration information for the /usr/libexec/getty daemon. Second, /etc/ttys holds information that tells /sbin/init what tty devices should have getty processes running on them. Lastly, you can place port initialization commands in the /etc/rc.serial script. There are two schools of thought regarding dial-up modems on Unix. One group likes to configure their modems and systems so that no matter at what speed a remote user dials in, the local computer-to-modem RS-232 interface runs at a locked speed. The benefit of this configuration is that the remote user always sees a system login prompt immediately. The downside is that the system does not know what a user's true data rate is, so full-screen programs like Emacs will not adjust their screen-painting methods to make their response better for slower connections. The other school configures their modems' RS-232 interface to vary its speed based on the remote user's connection speed. For example, V.32bis (14.4 Kbps) connections to the modem might make the modem run its RS-232 interface at 19.2 Kbps, while 2400 bps connections make the modem's RS-232 interface run at 2400 bps. Because getty does not understand any particular modem's connection speed reporting, getty gives a login: message at an initial speed and watches the characters that come back in response. If the user sees junk, it is assumed that they know they should press the Enter key until they see a recognizable prompt. If the data rates do not match, getty sees anything the user types as junk, tries going to the next speed and gives the login: prompt again. This procedure can continue ad nauseam, but normally only takes a keystroke or two before the user sees a good prompt. Obviously, this login sequence does not look as clean as the former locked-speed method, but a user on a low-speed connection should receive better interactive response from full-screen programs. The authors will try to give balanced configuration information, but is biased towards having the modem's data rate follow the connection rate. <filename>/etc/gettytab</filename> /etc/gettytab /etc/gettytab is a &man.termcap.5;-style file of configuration information for &man.getty.8;. Please see the &man.gettytab.5; manual page for complete information on the format of the file and the list of capabilities. Locked-Speed Config If you are locking your modem's data communications rate at a particular speed, you probably will not need to make any changes to /etc/gettytab. Matching-Speed Config You will need to setup an entry in /etc/gettytab to give getty information about the speeds you wish to use for your modem. If you have a 2400 bps modem, you can probably use the existing D2400 entry. # # Fast dialup terminals, 2400/1200/300 rotary (can start either way) # D2400|d2400|Fast-Dial-2400:\ :nx=D1200:tc=2400-baud: 3|D1200|Fast-Dial-1200:\ :nx=D300:tc=1200-baud: 5|D300|Fast-Dial-300:\ :nx=D2400:tc=300-baud: If you have a higher speed modem, you will probably need to add an entry in /etc/gettytab; here is an entry you could use for a 14.4 Kbps modem with a top interface speed of 19.2 Kbps: # # Additions for a V.32bis Modem # um|V300|High Speed Modem at 300,8-bit:\ :nx=V19200:tc=std.300: un|V1200|High Speed Modem at 1200,8-bit:\ :nx=V300:tc=std.1200: uo|V2400|High Speed Modem at 2400,8-bit:\ :nx=V1200:tc=std.2400: up|V9600|High Speed Modem at 9600,8-bit:\ :nx=V2400:tc=std.9600: uq|V19200|High Speed Modem at 19200,8-bit:\ :nx=V9600:tc=std.19200: This will result in 8-bit, no parity connections. The example above starts the communications rate at 19.2 Kbps (for a V.32bis connection), then cycles through 9600 bps (for V.32), 2400 bps, 1200 bps, 300 bps, and back to 19.2 Kbps. Communications rate cycling is implemented with the nx= (next table) capability. Each of the lines uses a tc= (table continuation) entry to pick up the rest of the standard settings for a particular data rate. If you have a 28.8 Kbps modem and/or you want to take advantage of compression on a 14.4 Kbps modem, you need to use a higher communications rate than 19.2 Kbps. Here is an example of a gettytab entry starting a 57.6 Kbps: # # Additions for a V.32bis or V.34 Modem # Starting at 57.6 Kbps # vm|VH300|Very High Speed Modem at 300,8-bit:\ :nx=VH57600:tc=std.300: vn|VH1200|Very High Speed Modem at 1200,8-bit:\ :nx=VH300:tc=std.1200: vo|VH2400|Very High Speed Modem at 2400,8-bit:\ :nx=VH1200:tc=std.2400: vp|VH9600|Very High Speed Modem at 9600,8-bit:\ :nx=VH2400:tc=std.9600: vq|VH57600|Very High Speed Modem at 57600,8-bit:\ :nx=VH9600:tc=std.57600: If you have a slow CPU or a heavily loaded system and you do not have 16550A-based serial ports, you may receive sio silo errors at 57.6 Kbps. <filename>/etc/ttys</filename> /etc/ttys Configuration of the /etc/ttys file was covered in . Configuration for modems is similar but we must pass a different argument to getty and specify a different terminal type. The general format for both locked-speed and matching-speed configurations is: ttyd0 "/usr/libexec/getty xxx" dialup on The first item in the above line is the device special file for this entry — ttyd0 means /dev/ttyd0 is the file that this getty will be watching. The second item, "/usr/libexec/getty xxx" (xxx will be replaced by the initial gettytab capability) is the process init will run on the device. The third item, dialup, is the default terminal type. The fourth parameter, on, indicates to init that the line is operational. There can be a fifth parameter, secure, but it should only be used for terminals which are physically secure (such as the system console). The default terminal type (dialup in the example above) may depend on local preferences. dialup is the traditional default terminal type on dial-up lines so that users may customize their login scripts to notice when the terminal is dialup and automatically adjust their terminal type. However, the author finds it easier at his site to specify vt102 as the default terminal type, since the users just use VT102 emulation on their remote systems. After you have made changes to /etc/ttys, you may send the init process a HUP signal to re-read the file. You can use the command &prompt.root; kill -HUP 1 to send the signal. If this is your first time setting up the system, though, you may want to wait until your modem(s) are properly configured and connected before signaling init. Locked-Speed Config For a locked-speed configuration, your ttys entry needs to have a fixed-speed entry provided to getty. For a modem whose port speed is locked at 19.2 Kbps, the ttys entry might look like this: ttyd0 "/usr/libexec/getty std.19200" dialup on If your modem is locked at a different data rate, substitute the appropriate value for std.speed instead of std.19200. Make sure that you use a valid type listed in /etc/gettytab. Matching-Speed Config In a matching-speed configuration, your ttys entry needs to reference the appropriate beginning auto-baud (sic) entry in /etc/gettytab. For example, if you added the above suggested entry for a matching-speed modem that starts at 19.2 Kbps (the gettytab entry containing the V19200 starting point), your ttys entry might look like this: ttyd0 "/usr/libexec/getty V19200" dialup on <filename>/etc/rc.serial</filename> rc files rc.serial High-speed modems, like V.32, V.32bis, and V.34 modems, need to use hardware (RTS/CTS) flow control. You can add stty commands to /etc/rc.serial to set the hardware flow control flag in the FreeBSD kernel for the modem ports. For example to set the termios flag crtscts on serial port #1's (COM2:) dial-in and dial-out initialization devices, the following lines could be added to /etc/rc.serial : # Serial port initial configuration stty -f /dev/ttyid1 crtscts stty -f /dev/cuai01 crtscts Modem Settings If you have a modem whose parameters may be permanently set in non-volatile RAM, you will need to use a terminal program (such as Telix under MS-DOS or tip under FreeBSD) to set the parameters. Connect to the modem using the same communications speed as the initial speed getty will use and configure the modem's non-volatile RAM to match these requirements: CD asserted when connected DTR asserted for operation; dropping DTR hangs up line and resets modem CTS transmitted data flow control Disable XON/XOFF flow control RTS received data flow control Quiet mode (no result codes) No command echo Please read the documentation for your modem to find out what commands and/or DIP switch settings you need to give it. For example, to set the above parameters on a USRobotics Sportster 14,400 external modem, one could give these commands to the modem: ATZ AT&C1&D2&H1&I0&R2&W You might also want to take this opportunity to adjust other settings in the modem, such as whether it will use V.42bis and/or MNP5 compression. The USR Sportster 14,400 external modem also has some DIP switches that need to be set; for other modems, perhaps you can use these settings as an example: Switch 1: UP — DTR Normal Switch 2: Do not care (Verbal Result Codes/Numeric Result Codes) Switch 3: UP — Suppress Result Codes Switch 4: DOWN — No echo, offline commands Switch 5: UP — Auto Answer Switch 6: UP — Carrier Detect Normal Switch 7: UP — Load NVRAM Defaults Switch 8: Do not care (Smart Mode/Dumb Mode) Result codes should be disabled/suppressed for dial-up modems to avoid problems that can occur if getty mistakenly gives a login: prompt to a modem that is in command mode and the modem echoes the command or returns a result code. This sequence can result in a extended, silly conversation between getty and the modem. Locked-speed Config For a locked-speed configuration, you will need to configure the modem to maintain a constant modem-to-computer data rate independent of the communications rate. On a USR Sportster 14,400 external modem, these commands will lock the modem-to-computer data rate at the speed used to issue the commands: ATZ AT&B1&W Matching-speed Config For a variable-speed configuration, you will need to configure your modem to adjust its serial port data rate to match the incoming call rate. On a USR Sportster 14,400 external modem, these commands will lock the modem's error-corrected data rate to the speed used to issue the commands, but allow the serial port rate to vary for non-error-corrected connections: ATZ AT&B2&W Checking the Modem's Configuration Most high-speed modems provide commands to view the modem's current operating parameters in a somewhat human-readable fashion. On the USR Sportster 14,400 external modems, the command ATI5 displays the settings that are stored in the non-volatile RAM. To see the true operating parameters of the modem (as influenced by the USR's DIP switch settings), use the commands ATZ and then ATI4. If you have a different brand of modem, check your modem's manual to see how to double-check your modem's configuration parameters. Troubleshooting Here are a few steps you can follow to check out the dial-up modem on your system. Checking out the FreeBSD System Hook up your modem to your FreeBSD system, boot the system, and, if your modem has status indication lights, watch to see whether the modem's DTR indicator lights when the login: prompt appears on the system's console — if it lights up, that should mean that FreeBSD has started a getty process on the appropriate communications port and is waiting for the modem to accept a call. If the DTR indicator does not light, login to the FreeBSD system through the console and issue a ps ax to see if FreeBSD is trying to run a getty process on the correct port. You should see a lines like this among the processes displayed: 114 ?? I 0:00.10 /usr/libexec/getty V19200 ttyd0 115 ?? I 0:00.10 /usr/libexec/getty V19200 ttyd1 If you see something different, like this: 114 d0 I 0:00.10 /usr/libexec/getty V19200 ttyd0 and the modem has not accepted a call yet, this means that getty has completed its open on the communications port. This could indicate a problem with the cabling or a mis-configured modem, because getty should not be able to open the communications port until CD (carrier detect) has been asserted by the modem. If you do not see any getty processes waiting to open the desired ttydN port, double-check your entries in /etc/ttys to see if there are any mistakes there. Also, check the log file /var/log/messages to see if there are any log messages from init or getty regarding any problems. If there are any messages, triple-check the configuration files /etc/ttys and /etc/gettytab, as well as the appropriate device special files /dev/ttydN, for any mistakes, missing entries, or missing device special files. Try Dialing In Try dialing into the system; be sure to use 8 bits, no parity, 1 stop bit on the remote system. If you do not get a prompt right away, or get garbage, try pressing Enter about once per second. If you still do not see a login: prompt after a while, try sending a BREAK. If you are using a high-speed modem to do the dialing, try dialing again after locking the dialing modem's interface speed (via AT&B1 on a USR Sportster, for example). If you still cannot get a login: prompt, check /etc/gettytab again and double-check that The initial capability name specified in /etc/ttys for the line matches a name of a capability in /etc/gettytab Each nx= entry matches another gettytab capability name Each tc= entry matches another gettytab capability name If you dial but the modem on the FreeBSD system will not answer, make sure that the modem is configured to answer the phone when DTR is asserted. If the modem seems to be configured correctly, verify that the DTR line is asserted by checking the modem's indicator lights (if it has any). If you have gone over everything several times and it still does not work, take a break and come back to it later. If it still does not work, perhaps you can send an electronic mail message to the &a.questions;describing your modem and your problem, and the good folks on the list will try to help. Dial-out Service dial-out service The following are tips to getting your host to be able to connect over the modem to another computer. This is appropriate for establishing a terminal session with a remote host. This is useful to log onto a BBS. This kind of connection can be extremely helpful to get a file on the Internet if you have problems with PPP. If you need to FTP something and PPP is broken, use the terminal session to FTP it. Then use zmodem to transfer it to your machine. My Stock Hayes Modem Is Not Supported, What Can I Do? Actually, the manual page for tip is out of date. There is a generic Hayes dialer already built in. Just use at=hayes in your /etc/remote file. The Hayes driver is not smart enough to recognize some of the advanced features of newer modems—messages like BUSY, NO DIALTONE, or CONNECT 115200 will just confuse it. You should turn those messages off when you use tip (using ATX0&W). Also, the dial timeout for tip is 60 seconds. Your modem should use something less, or else tip will think there is a communication problem. Try ATS7=45&W. Actually, as shipped tip does not yet support it fully. The solution is to edit the file tipconf.h in the directory /usr/src/usr.bin/tip/tip Obviously you need the source distribution to do this. Edit the line #define HAYES 0 to #define HAYES 1. Then make and make install. Everything works nicely after that. How Am I Expected to Enter These AT Commands? /etc/remote Make what is called a direct entry in your /etc/remote file. For example, if your modem is hooked up to the first serial port, /dev/cuaa0, then put in the following line: cuaa0:dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#19200:pa=none Use the highest bps rate your modem supports in the br capability. Then, type tip cuaa0 and you will be connected to your modem. If there is no /dev/cuaa0 on your system, do this: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; MAKEDEV cuaa0 Or use cu as root with the following command: &prompt.root; cu -lline -sspeed line is the serial port (e.g./dev/cuaa0) and speed is the speed (e.g.57600). When you are done entering the AT commands hit ~. to exit. The <literal>@</literal> Sign for the pn Capability Does Not Work! The @ sign in the phone number capability tells tip to look in /etc/phones for a phone number. But the @ sign is also a special character in capability files like /etc/remote. Escape it with a backslash: pn=\@ How Can I Dial a Phone Number on the Command Line? Put what is called a generic entry in your /etc/remote file. For example: tip115200|Dial any phone number at 115200 bps:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#115200:at=hayes:pa=none:du: tip57600|Dial any phone number at 57600 bps:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#57600:at=hayes:pa=none:du: Then you can things like: &prompt.root; tip -115200 5551234 If you prefer cu over tip, use a generic cu entry: cu115200|Use cu to dial any number at 115200bps:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa1:br#57600:at=hayes:pa=none:du: and type: &prompt.root; cu 5551234 -s 115200 Do I Have to Type in the bps Rate Every Time I Do That? Put in an entry for tip1200 or cu1200, but go ahead and use whatever bps rate is appropriate with the br capability. tip thinks a good default is 1200 bps which is why it looks for a tip1200 entry. You do not have to use 1200 bps, though. I Access a Number of Hosts through a Terminal Server. Rather than waiting until you are connected and typing CONNECT <host> each time, use tip's cm capability. For example, these entries in /etc/remote: pain|pain.deep13.com|Forrester's machine:\ :cm=CONNECT pain\n:tc=deep13: muffin|muffin.deep13.com|Frank's machine:\ :cm=CONNECT muffin\n:tc=deep13: deep13:Gizmonics Institute terminal server:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa2:br#38400:at=hayes:du:pa=none:pn=5551234: will let you type tip pain or tip muffin to connect to the hosts pain or muffin; and tip deep13 to get to the terminal server. Can Tip Try More Than one Line for each Site? This is often a problem where a university has several modem lines and several thousand students trying to use them... Make an entry for your university in /etc/remote and use @ for the pn capability: big-university:\ :pn=\@:tc=dialout dialout:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa3:br#9600:at=courier:du:pa=none: Then, list the phone numbers for the university in /etc/phones: big-university 5551111 big-university 5551112 big-university 5551113 big-university 5551114 tip will try each one in the listed order, then give up. If you want to keep retrying, run tip in a while loop. Why Do I Have to Hit - <keycombo action="simul"> - <keycap>Ctrl</keycap><keycap>P</keycap> - </keycombo> - Twice to Send - <keycombo action="simul"> - <keycap>Ctrl</keycap><keycap>P</keycap> - </keycombo> - Once? + + Ctrl + P + + Twice to Send + + Ctrl + P + + Once? CtrlP is the default force character, used to tell tip that the next character is literal data. You can set the force character to any other character with the ~s escape, which means set a variable. Type ~sforce=single-char followed by a newline. single-char is any single character. If you leave out single-char, then the force character is the nul character, which you can get by typing Ctrl2 or - CtrlSPACE + CtrlSpace . A pretty good value for single-char is Shift Ctrl 6 , which is only used on some terminal servers. You can have the force character be whatever you want by specifying the following in your $HOME/.tiprc file: force=<single-char> Suddenly Everything I Type Is in UPPER CASE?? You must have pressed Ctrl A , tip's raise character, specially designed for people with broken caps-lock keys. Use ~s as above and set the variable raisechar to something reasonable. In fact, you can set it to the same as the force character, if you never expect to use either of these features. Here is a sample .tiprc file perfect for Emacs users who need to type Ctrl2 and CtrlA a lot: force=^^ raisechar=^^ The ^^ is ShiftCtrl6 . How Can I Do File Transfers with <command>tip</command>? If you are talking to another Unix system, you can send and receive files with ~p (put) and ~t (take). These commands run cat and echo on the remote system to accept and send files. The syntax is: ~p local-file remote-file ~t remote-file local-file There is no error checking, so you probably should use another protocol, like zmodem. How Can I Run zmodem with <command>tip</command>? To receive files, start the sending program on the remote end. Then, type ~C rz to begin receiving them locally. To send files, start the receiving program on the remote end. Then, type ~C sz files to send them to the remote system. Kazutaka YOKOTA Contributed by Bill Paul Based on a document by Setting Up the Serial Console serial console Introduction FreeBSD boot on a system with only a dumb terminal on a serial port as a console. Such a configuration should be useful for two classes of people: system administrators who wish to install FreeBSD on machines that have no keyboard or monitor attached, and developers who want to debug the kernel or device drivers. As described in , FreeBSD employs a three stage bootstrap. The first two stages are in the boot block code which is stored at the beginning of the FreeBSD slice on the boot disk. The boot block will then load and run the boot loader (/boot/loader) as the third stage code. In order to set up the serial console you must configure the boot block code, the boot loader code and the kernel. Serial Console Configuration Prepare a serial cable. null-modem cable You will need either a null-modem cable or a standard serial cable and a null-modem adapter. See for a discussion on serial cables. Unplug your keyboard. Most PC systems probe for the keyboard during the Power-On Self-Test (POST) and will generate an error if the keyboard is not detected. Some machines complain loudly about the lack of a keyboard and will not continue to boot until it is plugged in. If your computer complains about the error, but boots anyway, then you do not have to do anything special. (Some machines with Phoenix BIOS installed merely say Keyboard failed and continue to boot normally.) If your computer refuses to boot without a keyboard attached then you will have to configure the BIOS so that it ignores this error (if it can). Consult your motherboard's manual for details on how to do this. Setting the keyboard to Not installed in the BIOS setup does not mean that you will not be able to use your keyboard. All this does is tell the BIOS not to probe for a keyboard at power-on so that it will not complain if the keyboard is not plugged in. You can leave the keyboard plugged in even with this flag set to Not installed and the keyboard will still work. If your system has a PS/2 mouse, chances are very good that you may have to unplug your mouse as well as your keyboard. This is because PS/2 mice share some hardware with the keyboard, and leaving the mouse plugged in can fool the keyboard probe into thinking the keyboard is still there. It is said that a Gateway 2000 Pentium 90MHz system with an AMI BIOS that behaves this way. In general this is not a problem since the mouse is not much good without the keyboard anyway. Plug a dumb terminal into COM1: (sio0). If you do not have a dumb terminal, you can use an old PC/XT with a modem program, or the serial port on another Unix box. If you do not have a COM1: (sio0), get one. At this time, there is no way to select a port other than COM1: for the boot blocks without recompiling the boot blocks. If you are already using COM1: for another device, you will have to temporarily remove that device and install a new boot block and kernel once you get FreeBSD up and running. (It is assumed that COM1: will be available on a file/compute/terminal server anyway; if you really need COM1: for something else (and you cannot switch that something else to COM2: (sio1)), then you probably should not even be bothering with all this in the first place.) Make sure the configuration file of your kernel has appropriate flags set for COM1: (sio0). Relevant flags are: 0x10 Enables console support for this unit. The other console flags are ignored unless this is set. Currently, at most one unit can have console support; the first one (in config file order) with this flag set is preferred. This option alone will not make the serial port the console. Set the following flag or use the option described below, together with this flag. 0x20 Forces this unit to be the console (unless there is another higher priority console), regardless of the option discussed below. This flag replaces the COMCONSOLE option in FreeBSD versions 2.X. The flag 0x20 must be used together with the flag. 0x40 Reserves this unit (in conjunction with 0x10) and makes the unit unavailable for normal access. You should not set this flag to the serial port unit which you want to use as the serial console. The only use of this flag is to designate the unit for kernel remote debugging. See The Developer's Handbook for more information on remote debugging. In FreeBSD 4.0-CURRENT or later the semantics of the flag 0x40 are slightly different and there is another flag to specify a serial port for remote debugging. Example: device sio0 at isa? port "IO_COM1" tty flags 0x10 irq 4 See the &man.sio.4; manual page for more details. If the flags were not set, you need to run UserConfig (on a different console) or recompile the kernel. Create boot.config in the root directory of the a partition on the boot drive. This file will instruct the boot block code how you would like to boot the system. In order to activate the serial console, you need one or more of the following options—if you want multiple options, include them all on the same line: Toggles internal and serial consoles. You can use this to switch console devices. For instance, if you boot from the internal (video) console, you can use to direct the boot loader and the kernel to use the serial port as its console device. Alternatively, if you boot from the serial port, you can use the to tell the boot loader and the kernel to use the video display as the console instead. Toggles single and dual console configurations. In the single configuration the console will be either the internal console (video display) or the serial port, depending on the state of the option above. In the dual console configuration, both the video display and the serial port will become the console at the same time, regardless of the state of the option. However, that the dual console configuration takes effect only during the boot block is running. Once the boot loader gets control, the console specified by the option becomes the only console. Makes the boot block probe the keyboard. If no keyboard is found, the and options are automatically set. Due to space constraints in the current version of the boot blocks, the option is capable of detecting extended keyboards only. Keyboards with less than 101 keys (and without F11 and F12 keys) may not be detected. Keyboards on some laptop computers may not be properly found because of this limitation. If this is to be the case with your system, you have to abandon using the option. Unfortunately there is no workaround for this problem. Use either the option to select the console automatically, or the option to activate the serial console. You may include other options described in &man.boot.8; as well. The options, except for , will be passed to the boot loader (/boot/loader). The boot loader will determine which of the internal video or the serial port should become the console by examining the state of the option alone. This means that if you specify the option but not the option in /boot.config, you can use the serial port as the console only during the boot block; the boot loader will use the internal video display as the console. Boot the machine. When you start your FreeBSD box, the boot blocks will echo the contents of /boot.config to the console. For example; /boot.config: -P Keyboard: no The second line appears only if you put in /boot.config and indicates presence/absence of the keyboard. These messages go to either serial or internal console, or both, depending on the option in /boot.config. Options Message goes to none internal console serial console serial and internal consoles serial and internal consoles , keyboard present internal console , keyboard absent serial console After the above messages, there will be a small pause before the boot blocks continue loading the boot loader and before any further messages printed to the console. Under normal circumstances, you do not need to interrupt the boot blocks, but you may want to do so in order to make sure things are set up correctly. Hit any key, other than Enter, at the console to interrupt the boot process. The boot blocks will then prompt you for further action. You should now see something like: >> FreeBSD/i386 BOOT Default: 0:wd(0,a)/boot/loader boot: Verify the above message appears on either the serial or internal console or both, according to the options you put in /boot.config. If the message appears in the correct console, hit Enter to continue the boot process. If you want the serial console but you do not see the prompt on the serial terminal, something is wrong with your settings. In the meantime, you enter and hit Enter/Return (if possible) to tell the boot block (and then the boot loader and the kernel) to choose the serial port for the console. Once the system is up, go back and check what went wrong. After the boot loader is loaded and you are in the third stage of the boot process you can still switch between the internal console and the serial console by setting appropriate environment variables in the boot loader. See . Summary Here is the summary of various settings discussed in this section and the console eventually selected. Case 1: You Set the flags to 0x10 for sio0 device sio0 at isa? port "IO_COM1" tty flags 0x10 irq 4 Options in /boot.config Console during boot blocks Console during boot loader Console in kernel nothing internal internal internal serial serial serial serial and internal internal internal serial and internal serial serial , keyboard present internal internal internal , keyboard absent serial and internal serial serial Case 2: You Set the flags to 0x30 for sio0 device sio0 at isa? port "IO_COM1" tty flags 0x30 irq 4 Options in /boot.config Console during boot blocks Console during boot loader Console in kernel nothing internal internal serial serial serial serial serial and internal internal serial serial and internal serial serial , keyboard present internal internal serial , keyboard absent serial and internal serial serial Tips for the Serial Console Setting a Faster Serial Port Speed By default the serial port settings are set to 9600 baud, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stop bit. If you wish to change the speed, you need to recompile at least the boot blocks. Add the following line to /etc/make.conf and compile new boot blocks: BOOT_COMCONSOLE_SPEED=19200 If the serial console is configured in some other way than by booting with , or if the serial console used by the kernel is different from the one used by the boot blocks, then you must also add the following option to the kernel configuration file and compile a new kernel: options CONSPEED=19200 Using Serial Port Other Than <devicename>sio0</devicename> for the Console Using a port other than sio0 as the console requires some recompiling. If you want to use another serial port for whatever reasons, recompile the boot blocks, the boot loader and the kernel as follows. Get the kernel source. Edit /etc/make.conf and set BOOT_COMCONSOLE_PORT to the address of the port you want to use (0x3F8, 0x2F8, 0x3E8 or 0x2E8). Only sio0 through sio3 (COM1: through COM4:) can be used; multiport serial cards will not work. No interrupt setting is needed. Create a custom kernel configuration file and add appropriate flags for the serial port you want to use. For example, if you want to make sio1 (COM2:) the console: device sio1 at isa? port "IO_COM2" tty flags 0x10 irq 3 or device sio1 at isa? port "IO_COM2" tty flags 0x30 irq 3 The console flags for the other serial ports should not be set. Recompile and install the boot blocks: &prompt.root; cd /sys/boot/i386/boot2 &prompt.root; make &prompt.root; make install Recompile and install the boot loader: &prompt.root; cd /sys/boot/i386/loader &prompt.root; make &prompt.root; make install Rebuild and install the kernel. Write the boot blocks to the boot disk with &man.disklabel.8; and boot from the new kernel. Entering the DDB Debugger from the Serial Line If you wish to drop into the kernel debugger from the serial console (useful for remote diagnostics, but also dangerous if you generate a spurious BREAK on the serial port!) then you should compile your kernel with the following options: options BREAK_TO_DEBUGGER options DDB Getting a Login Prompt on the Serial Console While this is not required, you may wish to get a login prompt over the serial line, now that you can see boot messages and can enter the kernel debugging session through the serial console. Here is how to do it. Open the file /etc/ttys with an editor and locate the lines: ttyd0 "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" unknown off secure ttyd1 "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" unknown off secure ttyd2 "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" unknown off secure ttyd3 "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" unknown off secure ttyd0 through ttyd3 corresponds to COM1 through COM4. Change off to on for the desired port. If you have changed the speed of the serial port, you need to change std.9600 to match the current setting, e.g. std.19200. You may also want to change the terminal type from unknown to the actual type of your serial terminal. After editing the file, you must kill -HUP 1 to make this change take effect. Changing Console from the Boot Loader Previous sections described how to set up the serial console by tweaking the boot block. This section shows that you can specify the console by entering some commands and environment variables in the boot loader. As the boot loader is invoked as the third stage of the boot process, after the boot block, the settings in the boot loader will override the settings in the boot block. Setting up the Serial Console You can easily specify the boot loader and the kernel to use the serial console by writing just one line in /boot/loader.rc: set console=comconsole This will take effect regardless of the settings in the boot block discussed in the previous section. You had better put the above line as the first line of /boot/loader.rc so as to see boot messages on the serial console as early as possible. Likewise, you can specify the internal console as: set console=vidconsole If you do not set the boot loader environment variable console, the boot loader, and subsequently the kernel, will use whichever console indicated by the option in the boot block. In versions 3.2 or later, you may specify the console in /boot/loader.conf.local or /boot/loader.conf, rather than in /boot/loader.rc. In this method your /boot/loader.rc should look like: include /boot/loader.4th start Then, create /boot/loader.conf.local and put the following line there. console=comconsole or console=vidconsole See &man.loader.conf.5; for more information. At the moment, the boot loader has no option equivalent to the option in the boot block, and there is no provision to automatically select the internal console and the serial console based on the presence of the keyboard. Using Serial Port Other than <devicename>sio0</devicename> for the Console You need to recompile the boot loader to use a serial port other than sio0 for the serial console. Follow the procedure described in . Caveats The idea here is to allow people to set up dedicated servers that require no graphics hardware or attached keyboards. Unfortunately, while most systems will let you boot without a keyboard, there are quite a few that will not let you boot without a graphics adapter. Machines with AMI BIOSes can be configured to boot with no graphics adapter installed simply by changing the `graphics adapter' setting in the CMOS configuration to `Not installed.' However, many machines do not support this option and will refuse to boot if you have no display hardware in the system. With these machines, you will have to leave some kind of graphics card plugged in, (even if it is just a junky mono board) although you will not have to attach a monitor into it. You might also try installing an AMI BIOS. diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11/chapter.sgml index 9d738eb88f..eb737e6673 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11/chapter.sgml @@ -1,1394 +1,1395 @@ The X Window System Synopsis FreeBSD uses XFree86 to provide users with a powerful graphical user interface. XFree86 is a open-source implementation of the X Window System. The following chapter will cover installation and configuration of XFree86 on your FreeBSD system. For more information on X11 and to see whether your video card is supported, check the XFree86 web site. After reading this chapter you will know: How to install and configure XFree86. The various components of the X window system, and how they interoperate. How to install and use different window managers. How to use TrueType fonts in XFree86. How to setup your system for graphical logins (XDM). Before reading this chapter you should: Know how to install additional third-party software (). Installing XFree86 XFree86 is available as a port and as a package, making it easy to install. You can also download the binaries directly from the XFree86 organization and install them by hand, following the instructions provided by the XFree86 group. Your only decision is which version of XFree86 to run. XFree86 3.X is the maintenance branch of XFree86 development. It is very stable, and it supports a huge number of graphics cards. However, no new development is happening there. XFree86 4.X is a redesign of XFree86. As well as introducing many new features (including much better support for fonts and anti-aliasing), XFree86 4.X supports slightly fewer graphics cards. If your card is supported we recommend you run 4.X. If it is not then run 3.X. The rest of this chapter will explain how to configure XFree86, and suggest various programs for X that you might want to try. Christopher Shumway Contributed by XFree86 Configuration Introduction This chapter will introduce the steps necessary to install and configure the XFree86 X Windows System under FreeBSD. Once the server is installed and configured properly. The user can read to setup their desktop environment. XFree86 4.X XFree86 Before You Start Before the user is to start configuration of XFree86-4, the the following information will need to be known about the target system: Monitor specifications Video Adapter chipset Video Adapter memory horizontal scan rate vertical scan rate The specifications for the target system's monitor are used by XFree86 to determine the resolution and refresh rate to run at. These specifications can usually be obtained from the documentation that came with the target system's monitor or from the manufacturer's website. There are two ranges of numbers that are needed, the horizontal scan rate and the vertical synchronization rate. The video adapter's chipset defines what driver module XFree86 uses to talk to the graphics hardware. With most chipsets, this can be automatically determined, but it is still useful to know in case the automatic detection does not work correctly. Video memory on the graphic adapter determines the resolution and color depth the target system can run at. This is important to know so the user knows the limitations of the target system. Installing XFree86 4.X Software XFree86 4 can be installed using the FreeBSD ports system or using &man.pkg.add.1;. If the user is building XFree86-4 from source and has USA_RESIDENT set in /etc/make.conf, the user may first have to fetch Wraphelp.c if XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 support is desired. This file is to be placed in the port's files/ sub-directory before the port is built. Configuring XFree86 4.X Configuration of XFree86 4.X is a several step process. The first step is to build an initial configuration file with the configure option to XFree86. As the super user, simply run: &prompt.root; XFree86 -configure This will generate a skeleton XFree86 configuration file in the current working directory called XF86Config.new. The XFree86 program will attempt to probe the graphics hardware on the system and will write a configuration file to load the proper drivers for the detected hardware on the target system. The next step is to test the currently existing configuration to verify that XFree86 can work with the graphics hardware on the target system. To preform this task, the user needs to run: &prompt.root; XFree86 -xf86config XF86Config.new If the user is presented with a black and grey grid and an X mouse cursor, then the configuration was successful. To exit - the test, just press ctrl, alt and backspace simultaneously. + the test, just press Ctrl, Alt + and Backspace simultaneously. XFree86 4 Tuning Next, the user needs to tune the XF86Config.new configuration file to their personal taste. Open up the file in a text editor such as &man.emacs.1; or &man.ee.1;. The first thing the user will want to do is add the frequencies for the target system's monitor. These are usually expressed as a horizontal and vertical synchronization rate. These values are added to the XF86Config.new file under the "Monitor" section as such: Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" VendorName "Monitor Vendor" ModelName "Monitor Model" Horizsync 30-107 VertRefresh 48-120 EndSection The Horizsync and VertRefresh keywords may not exist in the user's configuration file. If they do not, they need to be added, with the correct horizontal synchronization rate placed after the Horizsync keyword and the vertical synchronization rate after the VertRefresh keyword. In the example above the target monitor's rates where entered. XF86Config While the XF86Config.new configuration file is still open in an editor, next the user needs to select what the default resolution and color depth is desired. This is defined in the Screen section. Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Card0" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultColorDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1024x768" EndSubSection EndSection The DefaultColorDepth keyword describes the color depth the user wishes to run at by default. This can be overridden with the -bpp command line switch to XFree86 1. The Modes keyword describes the resolution the user wishes to run at for the given color depth. In the example above, the default color depth is twenty four bits per pixel. At this color depth, the accepted resolution is one thousand twenty four pixels by seven hundred and sixty eight pixels. If a user wants to run at a resolution of one thousand twenty four pixels by seven hundred sixty eight pixels at twenty four bits per pixel, then the user needs to add the DefaultColorDepth keyword with the value of twenty four, and add to the "Display" subsection with the desired Depth the Modes keyword with the resolution the user wishes to run at. Note that only VESA standard modes are supported as defined by the target system's graphics hardware. Finally, the user can write out the configuration file and test it using the test mode given above. If all is well, then the configuration file needs to be installed in a common location where XFree86 1 can source it in the future. This is typically /etc/X11/XF86Config or /usr/X11R6/etc/X11/XF86Config. &prompt.root; cp XF86Config.new /etc/X11/XF86Config Once the configuration file has been placed in a common location, XFree86 can then be used through &man.xdm.1;. In order to use startx 1 the user will have to install the X11/wrapper port. Advanced Configuration Topics Configuration with Intel i810 Graphics Chipsets Intel i810 graphic chipset Configuration with Intel i810 integrated chipsets requires the agpgart AGP programming interface for XFree86 to be able to drive the card. To enable the agpgart programming interface, the agp.ko kernel loadable module needs to be loaded into the kernel with &man.kldload.8;. This can be done automatically with the &man.loader.8;. Simply add this line to /boot/loader.conf to have the loader load agp.ko at boot time: agp_load="YES" Next, a device node needs to be created for the programming interface. To create the AGP device node, run &man.MAKEDEV.8; in the /dev directory as such: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV agpgart This will allow the user to configure the graphics hardware as any other graphics board. Understanding X If you are familiar with using windowing systems that ship with other operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, or MacOS, then you may find your first introduction to X to be something of a culture shock. Today, as Unix desktop environments such as KDE and GNOME become more prevalent it is less necessary to understand all the behind-the-scenes interaction between the various X components, or what those components actually are. However, one of X's strengths is its underlying design, which lends a great deal of flexibility, and makes it possible to do things with X that are impossible with other, more rigid, systems. Why X? X is not the first window system written for Unix, but it is the most popular. X's original development team had worked on another window system before writing X. That system's name was W (for Window, obviously). X is just the next letter in the Roman alphabet. X can be referred to variously as X, X Window System, X11, and other terms. X Windows is to be avoided wherever possible; see &man.X.1; for more information. The X Client/Server Model X was designed from the beginning to be network-centric, and adopts a client-server model. In the X model, the X server runs on the computer that has the keyboard, monitor, and mouse attached. The server is responsible for managing the display, handling input from the keyboard and mouse, and so on. Each X application (such as XTerm, or Netscape) is a client. A client sends messages to the server such as Please draw a window at these coordinates, and the server sends back messages such as The user just clicked on your OK button. If you are using FreeBSD in a home or small office environment where you only have one computer then you will be running the X server and the X clients on the same computer. However, if you have many machines running FreeBSD it is perfectly possible to run the X server on the computer by your desk (which might be quite a low specification machine) and run your X applications (the clients) on the powerful expensive server that serves your office. In this scenario the communication between the X client and server takes place over the network. This confuses a lot of people, because the X terminology is exactly backward to what they expect. They expect the X server to be the big powerful machine down the hall, and the X client to be the machine on their desk. As long as you remember that the X server is the machine with the monitor and keyboard, and the X clients are the programs that display the windows you will not get confused. There is an interesting side-effect to this design. There is nothing in the forces the client and server machines to be running the same operating system, or even to be running on the same type of computer. It is perfectly feasible to run an X server on Microsoft Windows or Apple's MacOS, and there are various free and commercial applications available that do exactly that. The X server that ships with FreeBSD is called XFree86, and is available for free, under a license very similar to the FreeBSD license. Commercial X servers for FreeBSD are also available, should you want one. The Window Manager The X design philosophy is much like the Unix design philosophy, tools, not policy. By this we mean that X (and Unix) does not try to dictate to the end user how they should accomplish whatever task they are trying to solve. Instead, they aim to provide the user tools to do the job, and it is the user's responsibility to decide how to use those tools. This philosophy extends to X not dictating what windows should look like on screen, how you move them around with your mouse, what keystrokes you should use to move between windows (i.e., Alt Tab , if you are familiar with Windows), what the title bars on each window should look like, whether or not they have close buttons on them, and so on. Instead, X delegates this responsibility to an application called the Window Manager. There are dozens of window managers available for X; AfterStep, Enlightenment, ctwm, ftwm, sawfish, twm, WindowMaker and more. Each of these window managers provides a different look and feel; some of them support virtual desktops some of them allow you to completely customize the keystrokes you can use to manage your desktop; some have a Start button, or similar device; some are themeable, allowing you to completely change the look-and-feel of your desktop by applying a new theme. These window managers, and many more, are available in the x11-wm category of the Ports Collection. In addition, the KDE and GNOME desktop environments both have their own window managers which integrate tightly with the desktop, although both of them allow you to replace the default window manager with your own choice. Each window manager also has a different configuration mechanism; some expect you to write a configuration file by hand; others feature GUI tools for carrying most of the configuration tasks; at least one (sawfish) has a configuration file written in a dialect of the Lisp language, which is very powerful (if you are in to that sort of thing). As you can imagine, this flexibility comes with a price. It can be very difficult for documents such as this one to guide you through choosing and configuring a window manager because the available choice is so wide. Focus Policy Another feature the window manager is responsible for is the mouse focus policy. Each windowing system, be it X, Microsoft Windows, or some other has an abstraction called the focus, and at any one time only one window can have the focus. The window that has the focus is the window that will receive all your key presses and mouse clicks. You are probably familiar with a focus policy commonly called click-to-focus. This means that you must click on the window you want to have the focus. The window may then come to the top of the stack, and all your key presses will now be directed to this window, even if you move the mouse outside the window. To give the focus to another window you must first click in it. X does not support any particular focus policy. Instead, the window manager controls which window has the focus at any one time. Different window managers will support different focus methods. All of them support click to focus, and the majority of them support several others. The two other most popular focus policies are: focus-follows-mouse With this policy, the window that is under the mouse pointer is the window that has the focus. This may not necessarily be the window that is on top of all the other windows. You can change the focus by pointing at another window, there is no need to click in it as well. After getting used to this policy it can be very disorientating going back to another system that uses click-to-focus. sloppy-focus This policy is a small extension to focus-follows-mouse. With focus-follows-mouse, if you move the mouse over the background (or desktop, also called the root window) then no window has the focus, and your key presses go nowhere. If you use sloppy-focus and move the mouse pointer on the root window then the last window that had the focus will keep it. Your window manager will almost certainly support other policies, and variations on these two, so make sure you read the documentation it is supplied with. Widgets The X approach of providing tools and not policy extends to the widgets that you see on screen in each application. Widget is a GUI term for all the items in the user interface that you can click on and manipulate in some way; buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, icons, lists, and so on. Microsoft Windows Developer documentation calls these things controls. Microsoft Windows and Apple's MacOS both have a very rigid widget policy. Application developers are supposed to ensure that their applications share a common look and feel. X was designed long before either of these windowing systems, when research into GUI systems was in its infancy, and it was felt that it would not be sensible to mandate a particular graphical style, or set of widgets that have to be adhered to. If you examine the evolution of the Windows or MacOS GUI over the past ten years you will see many examples of how the interfaces have been altered over time to reflect new thinking in the art of Human/Computer Interaction. The upshot of this is that you can not expect X applications to have a common look and feel. There are several popular widget sets (and variations), including the original Athena widget set (developed at MIT), Motif (on which the widget set in Microsoft Windows was modeled, all bevelled edges and three shades of grey), OpenLook, and others. Most newer X applications today will use a modern-looking widget set, probably either Qt, used by KDE, or GTK, used by the GNOME project. In this respect we are beginning to see a convergence in look-and-feel on the Unix desktop, which certainly makes things easier for the novice user. However, the sudden rise in popularity of theming, where window managers make it possible to dramatically personally your desktop and alter the look and feel of the widgets risks confusing the issue once more. Murray Stokely Contributed by Using Fonts in XFree86 Type1 Fonts The default fonts that ship with XFree86 are less than ideal for typical desktop publishing applications. Large presentation fonts show up jagged and unprofessional looking and small fonts in Netscape are almost completely unintelligible. However, there are several free, high quality Type1 (PostScript) fonts available which can be readily used with XFree86, either version 3.X or version 4.X. For instance, the URW font collection (x11-fonts/urwfonts) includes high quality versions of standard type1 fonts (Times Roman, Helvetica, Palatino and others). The Freefont collection (x11-fonts/freefont) includes many more fonts, but most of them are intended for use in graphics software such as the Gimp, and are not complete enough to serve as screen fonts. In addition, XFree86 can be configured to use TrueType fonts with a minimum of effort: see the section on TrueType fonts later. To install the above Type1 font collections from the ports collection you can run the following commands. &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/x11-fonts/urwfonts &prompt.root; make install clean And likewise with the freefont or other collections. To tell the X server that these fonts exist, you can add an appropriate line to your XF86Config file (in /etc/ for XFree86 version 3, or in /etc/X11/ for version 4), which reads: FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/URW/" Alternatively, at the command line in your X session you can write: &prompt.user; xset fp+ /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/URW &prompt.user; xset fp rehash This will work but will be lost when you log out from this session, unless you add it to your startup file (~/.xinitrc for a normal startx session, or ~/.xsession when logging in through a graphical login manager like XDM). A third way is to use the new XftConfig file: see the section on anti-aliasing, later. TrueType Fonts XFree86 4.0 has built in support for rendering TrueType fonts. There are two different modules that can enable this functionality. The "freetype" module is used in this example because it is more consistent with the other font rendering back-ends. To enable the freetype module just add the following line to the module section of your /etc/X11/XF86Config file. Load "freetype" For XFree86 3.3.X you will need to run a separate TrueType font server. Xfstt is commonly used for this purpose. To install x11-servers/Xfstt on your FreeBSD system simply install the port from /usr/ports/x11-servers/Xfstt You should now make a directory for your TrueType fonts (e.g. /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType) and copy all of your TrueType fonts into this directory. Keep in mind that you cannot take TrueType fonts directly from a Macintosh; they must be in Unix/DOS/Windows format for use by XFree86. Once you have copied the files into this directory you need to use ttmkfdir to create a fonts.dir file so that the X font renderer knows that you have installed these new files. There is a FreeBSD port for x11-fonts/ttmkfdir in /usr/ports/x11-fonts/ttmkfdir. &prompt.root; cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType &prompt.root; ttmkfdir > fonts.dir Now you need to add your TrueType directory to your fonts path. This is just the same as described above for Type1 fonts, that is, use &prompt.user; xset fp+ /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType &prompt.user; xset fp rehash or add a line to the XF86Config file. That's it. Now Netscape, Gimp, StarOffice, and all of your other X applications should now recognize your installed TrueType fonts. Extremely small fonts (as with text in a high resolution display on a web page) and extremely large fonts (within StarOffice) will look much better now. Anti-Aliasing Your Fonts Starting with version 4.0.2, XFree86 supports anti-aliased fonts. Currently, most software has not been updated to take advantage of this new functionality. However, Qt (the toolkit for the KDE desktop) does; so if you are running XFree86 4.0.2 (or higher), Qt 2.3 (or higher) and KDE, all your KDE/Qt applications can be made to use anti-aliased fonts. To configure anti-aliasing, you need to create (or edit, if it already exists) the file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XftConfig. Several advanced things can be done with this file; this section describes only the simplest possibilities. First, you need to tell the X server about the fonts which you want anti-aliased. To do that, for each font directory you have a line, which looks like this: dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/Type1" And likewise for the other font directories (URW, truetype, etc) containing fonts you would like anti-aliased. Anti-aliasing makes sense only for scalable fonts (basically, Type1 and TrueType) so do not include bitmap font directories here. The directories which you included here can now be commented out of your XF86Config file. Next, you may not want to anti-alias normal-sized text. (Antialiasing makes borders slightly fuzzy, which makes very small text more readable and removes "staircases" from large text, but can cause eyestrain if applied to normal text.) To exclude point sizes between 9 and 13 from anti-aliasing, include these lines: match any size > 8 any size < 14 edit antialias = false; You may also find that the spacing for some monospaced fonts gets messed up when you turn on anti-aliasing. This seems to be an issue with KDE, in particular. One possible fix for this is to force the spacing for such fonts to be 100: add the following lines: match any family == "fixed" edit family =+ "mono"; match any family == "console" edit family =+ "mono"; (this aliases the other common names for fixed fonts as "mono"), and then add: match any family == "mono" edit spacing = 100; Supposing you want to use the Lucidux fonts whenever monospaced fonts are required (these look nice, and do not seem to suffer from the spacing problem), you could replace that last line with these: match any family == "mono" edit family += "LuciduxMono"; match any family == "Lucidux Mono" edit family += "LuciduxMono"; match any family == "LuciduxMono" edit family =+ "Lucidux Mono"; (the last lines alias different equivalent family names). Finally, you want to allow users to add commands to this file, via their personal .xftconfig files. To do this, add a last line: includeif "~/.xftconfig" That's all; anti-aliasing should be enabled the next time you start the X server. However, note that your programs must know how to take advantage of it. At the present time, the toolkit Qt does, so the entire KDE environment can use anti-aliased fonts (see on KDE for details); there are patches for gtk+ to do the same, so if compiled against such a patched gtk+, the GNOME environment and Mozilla can also use anti-aliased fonts. Anti-aliasing is still new to FreeBSD and XFree86; configuring it should get easier with time, and it will soon be supported by many more applications. Seth Kingsley Contributed by The X Display Manager Overview The X Display Manager (XDM) is an optional part of the X Window System that is used for login session management. This is useful for several types of situations, including minimal X Terminals (see ), desktops, and large network display servers. Since the X Window System is network and protocol independent, there are a wide variety of possible configurations for running X clients and servers on different machines connected by a network. XDM provides a graphical interface for choosing which display server to connect to, and entering authorization information such as a login and password combination. You may think of XDM as providing the same functionality to the user as the &man.getty.8; utility (see for details). That is, it performs system logins to the display being connected to and then runs a session manager on behalf of the user (usually an X window manager). XDM then waits for this program to exit, signaling that the user is done and should be logged out of the display. At this point, XDM can display the login and display chooser screens for the next user to login. Using XDM The XDM daemon program is located in /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm. You can run this program at any time as root and it will start managing the X display on the local machine. If you want XDM to run in the background every time the machine boots up, a convenient way to do this is by adding an entry to /etc/ttys. For more information about the format and usage of this file, see . There is a line in the default /etc/ttys file for running the XDM daemon on a virtual terminal: ttyv8 "/usr/X11R6/bin/xdm -nodaemon" xterm off secure By default this entry is disabled, and in order to enable it you will need to change field 5 from off to on and then restart &man.init.8; using the directions in . The first field, the name of the terminal this program will manage, is ttyv8. This means that XDM will start running on the 9th virtual terminal. Configuring XDM The XDM configuration directory is located in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm. In this directory you will see several files used to change the behavior and appearance of XDM. Typically you will find these files: File Description Xaccess Client authorization ruleset. Xresources Default X resource values. Xservers List of remote and local displays to manage. Xsession Default session script for logins. Xsetup_* xdm-config Global configuration for all displays running on this machine. xdm-errors Errors generated by the server program. xdm-pid The process ID of the currently running XDM. Also in this directory are a few scripts and programs used to setup the desktop when XDM is running. In the next few sections I will briefly describe the purpose of each of these files. The exact syntax and usage of all of these files is described in &man.xdm.1; The default configuration is a simple rectangular login window with the hostname of the machine displayed at the top in a large font and Login: and Password: prompts below. This is a good starting point if you are planning to design your own look and feel for the XDM screens. Xaccess The protocol for connecting to XDM controlled displays is called the X Display Manager Connection Protocol (XDMCP). This file is basically just a ruleset for controlling XDMCP connections from remote machines. By default, it allows any client to connect, but you will see this will not matter because the default xdm-config file does not listen for remote connections. Xresources This is an application-defaults file for the display chooser and the login screens. This is where you can customize the appearance of the login program. The format is identical to the app-defaults file described in the XFree86 documentation. Xservers This is a list of the remote displays the chooser should provide as choices. Xsession This is the default session script for XDM to run after a user has logged in. Normally each user will have a customized session script in ~/.xsessionrc that overrides this script. Xsetup_* These files contain scripts that will be run automatically before displaying the chooser or login interfaces. There is a script for each display being used, named Xsetup_followed by the local display number (for instance Xsetup_0). Typically these scripts will run one or two programs in the background such as xconsole. xdm-config This file contains settings in the form of app-defaults that are applicable to every display that this installation manages. xdm-errors This file contains the output of the X servers that XDM is trying to run. If a display that XDM is trying to start hangs for some reason, this is a good place to look for error messages. These messages are also written to the user's ~/.xsession-errors file on a per-session basis Running a Network Display Server In order for other clients to connect to your display server, you will need to edit the access control rules, and enable the connection listener. By default these are set to conservative values, which is a good decision security-wise. To get XDM to listen for connections first comment out a line in the xdm-config file: ! SECURITY: do not listen for XDMCP or Chooser requests ! Comment out this line if you want to manage X terminals with xdm DisplayManager.requestPort: 0 and then restart XDM. Remember that comments in app-defaults files begin with a ! character, not a #. After this, you may need to put more strict access controls in place. Look at the example entries in Xaccess file, and refer to the &man.xdm.1; manual page. Replacements for XDM Several replacements for the default XDM program exist. One of them, KDM (bundled with KDE) is described in a later section. Apart from various visual improvements and cosmetic frills, it can be easily configured to let users choose their window manager of choice at the time they log in. Valentino Vaschetto Contributed by Desktop Environments This section describes the different desktop environments available for X-Windows on FreeBSD. For our purposes a "desktop environment" will mean anything ranging from a simple window manager, to a complete suite of desktop applications such as KDE or GNOME. GNOME About GNOME GNOME is a user-friendly desktop environment that enables users to easily use and configure their computers. GNOME includes a panel (for starting applications and displaying status), a desktop (where data and applications can be placed), a set of standard desktop tools and applications, and a set of conventions that make it easy for applications to cooperate and be consistent with each other. Users of other operating systems or environments should feel right at home using the powerful graphics-driven environment that GNOME provides. Installing GNOME To install GNOME from the network, simply type: &prompt.root; pkg_add -r gnome If you would rather build GNOME from source, then use the ports tree: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome &prompt.root; make install clean Once GNOME is installed, we must have the X server start GNOME instead of a default window manager. If you have already customized your .xinitrc file then you should simply replace the line that starts your current window manager with one that starts /usr/X11R6/bin/gnome-session instead. If you have not added anything special to your configuration file, then it is enough to simply type: &prompt.root; echo "/usr/X11R6/bin/gnome-session" > ~/.xinitrc That's it. Type startx and you will be in the GNOME desktop environment. If you are running a display manager like XDM, this will not work. Instead, you should create an executable .xsession file with the same command in it. To do this, edit your file (if you already have one) and replace the existing window manager command with /usr/X11R6/bin/gnome-session; or else, &prompt.root; echo "#!/bin/sh" > ~/.xsession &prompt.root; echo "/usr/X11R6/bin/gnome-session" >> ~/.xsession &prompt.root; chmod +x ~/.xsession Another option is to configure your display manager to allow choosing the window manager at login time; the section on KDE2 details explains how to do this for kdm, the display manager of KDE. KDE2 About KDE2 KDE is an easy to use contemporary desktop environment. Some of the things that KDE brings to the user are: A beautiful contemporary desktop A desktop exhibiting complete network transparency An integrated help system allowing for convenient, consistent access to help on the use of the KDE desktop and its applications Consistent look and feel of all KDE applications Standardized menu and toolbars, keybindings, color-schemes, etc. Internationalization: KDE is available in more than 40 languages Centralized consisted dialog driven desktop configuration A great number of useful KDE applications KDE has an office application suite based on KDE's KParts technology consisting of a spread-sheet, a presentation application, an organizer, a news client and more. KDE is also comes with a web browser called Konqeuror, which represents already a solid competitor to other existing web browsers on Unix systems. More information on KDE can be found on the KDE website Installing KDE2 At the time of writing, a package for kde2 does not exist yet. No problem! The ports tree hides all the complexity of building a package from source. To install KDE2, do this : &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/x11/kde2 &prompt.root; make install clean This command will fetch all the necessary files from the Internet, configure and compile KDE2, install the applications, and then clean up after itself. Now you are going to have to tell the X server to launch KDE2 instead of a default window manager. Do this by typing this: &prompt.root; echo "/usr/X11R6/bin/startkde" > ~/.xinitrc Now, whenever you go into X-Windows, KDE2 will be your desktop. (Note: this will not work if you are logging in via a display manager like xdm. In that case you have two options: create an .xsession file as described in the section on GNOME, but with the /usr/X11R6/bin/startkde command instead of the gnome-session command; or, configure your display manager to allow choosing a desktop at login time. Below it is explained how to do this for kdm, KDE's display manager.) More Details on KDE2 Now that KDE2 is installed on your system, you will find that you can learn a lot from its help pages, or just by pointing and clicking at various menus. Windows or Mac users will feel quite at home. The best reference for KDE is the on-line documentation. KDE comes with its own web browser, Konqueror, dozens of useful applications, and extensive documentation. This section only discusses somewhat technical things which are difficult to learn just by random exploration. The KDE display manager If you are an administrator on a multi-user system, you may like to have a graphical login screen to welcome users. You can use xdm, as described earlier. However, KDE includes an alternative, KDM, which is designed to look more attractive and include more login-time options. In particular, users can easily choose (via a menu) which desktop environment (KDE2, GNOME, or something else) to run after logging on. If you are slightly adventurous and you want this added flexibility and visual appeal, read on. To begin with, run the KDE2 control panel, kcontrol, as root. Note: it is generally considered unsafe to run your entire X environment as root. Instead, run your window manager as a normal user, open a terminal window (such as xterm or KDE's konsole, become root with su (you need to be in the wheel group in /etc/group for this), and then type kcontrol. Click on the icon on the left marked "System", then on "Login manager". On the right you will see various configurable options, which the KDE manual will explain in greater detail. Click on "sessions" on the right. Depending on what window managers or desktop environments you have currently installed, you can type their names in "New type" and add them. (These are just labels so far, not commands, so you can write KDE and GNOME rather than startkde or gnome-session.) Include a label failsafe. Play with the other menus as you like (those are mainly cosmetic and self-explanatory). When you are done, click on "Apply" at the bottom, and quit the control center. To make sure kdm understands what your above labels (KDE, GNOME etc) mean, you need to edit some more files: the same ones used by xdm. In your terminal window, as root, edit the file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xsession. You will come across a section in the middle looking like this (by default): case $# in 1) case $1 in failsafe) exec xterm -geometry 80x24-0-0 ;; esac esac You will need to add a few lines to this section. Assuming the labels you gave earlier were KDE2 and GNOME, the following will do: case $# in 1) case $1 in KDE2) exec /usr/X11R6/bin/startkde ;; GNOME) exec /usr/X11R6/bin/gnome-session ;; failsafe) exec xterm -geometry 80x24-0-0 ;; esac esac To make sure your KDE choice of a login-time desktop background is also honored, you will need to add the following line to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0: /usr/X11R6/bin/kdmdesktop Now, you need only to make sure kdm is started at the next bootup. To learn how to do this, read the section on xdm, and do the same thing replacing references to the xdm program by kdm. That's it. Your next login screen should have a pretty face and lots of menus. Anti-aliased Fonts Tired of blocky staircase edges to your fonts under X11? Tired of unreadable text in web browsers? Well, no more. Starting with version 4.0.2, XFree86 supports anti-aliasing via its "RENDER" extension, and starting with version 2.3, Qt (the toolkit used by KDE) supports this extension. Configuring this is described in on antialiasing X11 fonts. So if you are running up-to-date software, anti-aliasing is possible on your KDE2 desktop. Just go to your KDE2 menu, go to Preferences -> Look and Feel -> Style, and click on the checkbox "Use Anti-Aliasing for Fonts and Icons". That's all. If you are running a Qt application which is not part of KDE, you may need to set the environment variable QT_XFT to true before starting your program. XFCE About XFCE XFCE is based on the gtk+ toolkit used by GNOME, but is much more lightweight and meant for those who want a simple, efficient desktop which is nevertheless easy to use and configure. Visually, it looks very much like CDE, found on commercial Unix systems. Some of XFCE's features are: A simple, easy-to-handle desktop Fully configurable via mouse, with drag and drop, etc Main panel similar to CDE, with menus, applets and app launchers Integrated window manager, file manager, sound manager, GNOME compliance module, and other things Themeable (since it uses gtk+) Fast, light and efficient: ideal for older/slower machines or machines with memory limitations More information on XFCE can be found on the XFCE website. Installing XFCE A binary package for xfce exists (at the time of writing). To install, simply do this: &prompt.root; pkg_add -r xfce Alternatively, you may prefer to build from source. The ports tree comes to the rescue again: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/x11-wm/xfce &prompt.root; make install clean All necessary source packages (including dependencies) will be automagically fetched, built and installed, and the build areas cleaned up afterwards. Now you want to tell the X server to launch XFCE the next time you start X. Simply type this: &prompt.root; echo "/usr/X11R6/bin/startxfce" > ~/.xinitrc The next time you start X, XFCE will be your desktop. (Note, as before: if you are logging in via a display manager like xdm, you should either create an .xsession, as described in the section on GNOME, but with the /usr/X11R6/bin/startxfce command; or, configure your display manager to allow choosing a desktop at login time, as explained in the section on kdm.)