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Committer's Guide The FreeBSD Documentation Project $FreeBSD$ 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 The FreeBSD Documentation Project &tm-attrib.freebsd; &tm-attrib.cvsup; &tm-attrib.ibm; &tm-attrib.intel; &tm-attrib.sparc; &tm-attrib.general; This document provides information for the FreeBSD committer community. All new committers should read this document before they start, and existing committers are strongly encouraged to review it from time to time. Administrative Details Main Repository Host ncvs.FreeBSD.org Login Methods &man.ssh.1;, protocol 2 only Main CVSROOT ncvs.FreeBSD.org:/home/ncvs (although also see ). Main &a.cvs; &a.peter; and &a.markm;, as well as &a.joe; for ports/ Mailing Lists &a.doc-developers;, &a.doc-committers;; &a.ports-developers;, &a.ports-committers;; &a.src-developers;, &a.src-committers;. (Each project repository has its own -developers and -committers mailing lists. Archives for these lists may be found in files /home/mail/repository-name-developers-archive and /home/mail/repository-name-committers-archive on the FreeBSD.org cluster.) Core Team monthly reports /home/core/public/monthly-report on the FreeBSD.org cluster. Noteworthy CVS Tags RELENG_4 (4.X-STABLE), HEAD (-CURRENT) It is required that you use &man.ssh.1; or &man.telnet.1; with Kerberos 5 to connect to the project hosts. For &man.ssh.1; only protocol 2 is allowed. These are generally more secure than plain &man.telnet.1; or &man.rlogin.1; since credential negotiation will always be encrypted. All traffic is encrypted by default with &man.ssh.1;. With utilities like &man.ssh-agent.1; and &man.scp.1; also available, &man.ssh.1; is also far more convenient. If you do not know anything about &man.ssh.1;, please see . Commit Bit Types The FreeBSD CVS repository has a number of components which, when combined, support the basic operating system source, documentation, third party application ports infrastructure, and various maintained utilities. When FreeBSD commit bits are allocated, the areas of the tree where the bit may be used are specified. Generally, the areas associated with a bit reflect who authorized the allocation of the commit bit. Additional areas of authority may be added at a later date: when this occurs, the committer should follow normal commit bit allocation procedures for that area of the tree, seeking approval from the appropriate entity and possibly getting a mentor for that area for some period of time. Committer Type Responsible Tree Components src core@ src/, doc/ subject to appropriate review doc doceng@ doc/, www/, src/ documentation ports portmgr@ ports/ Commit bits allocated prior to the development of the notion of areas of authority may be appropriate for use in many parts of the tree. However, common sense dictates that a committer who has not previously worked in an area of the tree seek review prior to committing, seek approval from the appropriate responsible party, and/or work with a mentor. Since the rules regarding code maintenance differ by area of the tree, this is as much for the benefit of the committer working in an area of less familiarity as it is for others working on the tree. Committers are encouraged to seek review for their work as part of the normal development process, regardless of the area of the tree where the work is occurring. CVS Operations It is assumed that you are already familiar with the basic operation of CVS. The &a.cvs; are the owners of the CVS repository and are responsible for direct modification of it for the purposes of cleanup or fixing some grievous abuse of CVS by a committer. Should you cause some repository accident, say a bad cvs import or cvs tag operation, mail the &a.cvs; (or call one of them) and report the problem to one of them. The only ones able to directly fiddle the repository bits on the repository hosts are the repomeisters. To enforce this, there are no login shells available on the repository machines, except to the repomeisters. The CVS tree is currently split into four distinct repositories, namely doc, ports, projects and src. These are combined under a single CVSROOT when distributed via CVSup for the convenience of our users. Note that the www module containing sources for the FreeBSD website is contained within the doc repository. The CVS repositories are hosted on the repository machines. Currently, each of the repositories above reside on the same physical machine, ncvs.FreeBSD.org, but to allow for the possibility of placing each on a separate machine in the future, there is a separate hostname for each that committers should use. Additionally, each repository is stored in a separate directory. The following table summarizes the situation. &os; CVS Repositories, Hosts and Directories Repository Host Directory doc dcvs.FreeBSD.org /home/dcvs ports pcvs.FreeBSD.org /home/pcvs projects projcvs.FreeBSD.org /home/projcvs src ncvs.FreeBSD.org /home/ncvs
CVS operations are done remotely by setting the CVSROOT environment variable to the appropriate host and top-level directory (for example, ncvs.FreeBSD.org:/home/ncvs), the CVS_RSH variable to ssh, and then doing the appropriate check-out/check-in operations. Many committers define aliases which expand to the correct cvs invocation for the appropriate repository. For example, a &man.tcsh.1; user may add the following to their .cshrc for this purpose: alias dcvs env CVS_RSH=ssh cvs -d user@dcvs.FreeBSD.org:/home/dcvs alias pcvs env CVS_RSH=ssh cvs -d user@pcvs.FreeBSD.org:/home/pcvs alias projcvs env CVS_RSH=ssh cvs -d user@projcvs.FreeBSD.org:/home/projcvs alias scvs env CVS_RSH=ssh cvs -d user@ncvs.FreeBSD.org:/home/ncvs This way they can do all CVS operations locally and use Xcvs commit for committing to the official CVS tree. If you wish to add something which is wholly new (like contrib-ified sources, etc), cvs import should be used. Refer to the &man.cvs.1; manual page for usage. Please do not use cvs checkout or update with the official repository machine set as the CVS Root for keeping your source tree up to date. Remote CVS is not optimized for network distribution and requires a big work/administrative overhead on the server side. Please use our advanced cvsup distribution method for obtaining the repository bits, and only do the actual commit operation on the repository host. We provide an extensive cvsup replication network for this purpose, as well as give access to cvsup-master if you really need to stay current to the latest changes. cvsup-master has got the horsepower to deal with this, the repository master server does not. &a.kuriyama; is in charge of cvsup-master. If you need to use CVS add and delete operations in a manner that is effectively a &man.mv.1; operation, then a repository copy is in order rather than using CVS add and delete. In a repository copy, a CVS Meister will copy the file(s) to their new name and/or location and let you know when it is done. The purpose of a repository copy is to preserve file change history, or logs. We in the FreeBSD Project greatly value the change history that CVS gives to the project. CVS reference information, tutorials, and FAQs can be found at: . The information in Karl Fogel's chapters from Open Source Development with CVS is also very useful. &a.des; also supplied the following mini primer for CVS. Check out a module with the co or checkout command. &prompt.user; cvs checkout shazam This checks out a copy of the shazam module. If there is no shazam module in the modules file, it looks for a top-level directory named shazam instead. Useful <command>cvs checkout</command> options Do not create empty directories Check out a single level, no subdirectories Check out revision, branch or tag rev Check out the sources as they were on date date
Practical FreeBSD examples: Check out the miscfs module, which corresponds to src/sys/miscfs: &prompt.user; cvs co miscfs You now have a directory named miscfs with subdirectories CVS, deadfs, devfs, and so on. One of these (linprocfs) is empty. Check out the same files, but with full path: &prompt.user; cvs co src/sys/miscfs You now have a directory named src, with subdirectories CVS and sys. The src/sys directory has subdirectories CVS and miscfs, etc. Check out the same files, but prunes empty directories: &prompt.user; cvs co -P miscfs You now have a directory named miscfs with subdirectories CVS, deadfs, devfs... but note that there is no linprocfs subdirectory, because there are no files in it. Check out the directory miscfs, but none of the subdirectories: &prompt.user; cvs co -l miscfs You now have a directory named miscfs with just one subdirectory named CVS. Check out the miscfs module as it is in the 4.X branch: &prompt.user; cvs co -rRELENG_4 miscfs You can modify the sources and commit along this branch. Check out the miscfs module as it was in 3.4-RELEASE. &prompt.user; cvs co -rRELENG_3_4_0_RELEASE miscfs You will not be able to commit modifications, since RELENG_3_4_0_RELEASE is a point in time, not a branch. Check out the miscfs module as it was on Jan 15 2000. &prompt.user; cvs co -D'01/15/2000' miscfs You will not be able to commit modifications. Check out the miscfs module as it was one week ago. &prompt.user; cvs co -D'last week' miscfs You will not be able to commit modifications. Note that cvs stores metadata in subdirectories named CVS. Arguments to and are sticky, which means cvs will remember them later, e.g. when you do a cvs update. Check the status of checked-out files with the status command. &prompt.user; cvs status shazam This displays the status of the file shazam or of every file in the shazam directory. For every file, the status is given as one of: Up-to-date File is up-to-date and unmodified. Needs Patch File is unmodified, but there is a newer revision in the repository. Locally Modified File is up-to-date, but modified. Needs Merge File is modified, and there is a newer revision in the repository. File had conflicts on merge There were conflicts the last time this file was updated, and they have not been resolved yet. You will also see the local revision and date, the revision number of the newest applicable version (newest applicable because if you have a sticky date, tag or branch, it may not be the actual newest revision), and any sticky tags, dates or options. Once you have checked something out, you can update it with the update command. &prompt.user; cvs update shazam This updates the file shazam or the contents of the shazam directory to the latest version along the branch you checked out. If you checked out a point in time, does nothing unless the tags have moved in the repository or some other weird stuff is going on. Useful options, in addition to those listed above for checkout: Check out any additional missing directories. Update to head of main branch. More magic (see below). If you checked out a module with or , running cvs update with a different or argument or with will select a new branch, revision or date. The option clears all sticky tags, dates or revisions whereas and set new ones. Theoretically, specifying HEAD as the argument to will give you the same result as , but that is just theory. The option is useful if: somebody has added subdirectories to the module you have checked out after you checked it out. you checked out with , and later change your mind and want to check out the subdirectories as well. you deleted some subdirectories and want to check them all back out. Watch the output of the cvs update with care. The letter in front of each filename indicates what was done with it: U The file was updated without trouble. P The file was updated without trouble (you will only see this when working against a remote repository). M The file had been modified, and was merged without conflicts. C The file had been modified, and was merged with conflicts. Merging is what happens if you check out a copy of some source code, modify it, then someone else commits a change, and you run cvs update. CVS notices that you have made local changes, and tries to merge your changes with the changes between the version you originally checked out and the one you updated to. If the changes are to separate portions of the file, it will almost always work fine (though the result might not be syntactically or semantically correct). CVS will print an M in front of every locally modified file even if there is no newer version in the repository, so cvs update is handy for getting a summary of what you have changed locally. If you get a C, then your changes conflicted with the changes in the repository (the changes were to the same lines, or neighboring lines, or you changed the local file so much that cvs can not figure out how to apply the repository's changes). You will have to go through the file manually and resolve the conflicts; they will be marked with rows of <, = and > signs. For every conflict, there will be a marker line with seven < signs and the name of the file, followed by a chunk of what your local file contained, followed by a separator line with seven = signs, followed by the corresponding chunk in the repository version, followed by a marker line with seven > signs and the revision number you updated to. The option is slightly voodoo. It updates the local file to the specified revision as if you used , but it does not change the recorded revision number or branch of the local file. It is not really useful except when used twice, in which case it will merge the changes between the two specified versions into the working copy. For instance, say you commit a change to shazam/shazam.c in &os.current; and later want to MFC it. The change you want to MFC was revision 1.15: Check out the &os.stable; version of the shazam module: &prompt.user; cvs co -rRELENG_4 shazam Apply the changes between rev 1.14 and 1.15: &prompt.user; cvs update -j1.14 -j1.15 shazam/shazam.c You will almost certainly get a conflict because - of the $Id: article.sgml,v 1.196 2004-07-01 18:58:14 maxim Exp $ (or in FreeBSD's case, + of the $Id: article.sgml,v 1.197 2004-07-06 14:25:53 den Exp $ (or in FreeBSD's case, $FreeBSD$) lines, so you will have to edit the file to resolve the conflict - (remove the marker lines and the second $Id: article.sgml,v 1.196 2004-07-01 18:58:14 maxim Exp $ line, - leaving the original $Id: article.sgml,v 1.196 2004-07-01 18:58:14 maxim Exp $ line intact). + (remove the marker lines and the second $Id: article.sgml,v 1.197 2004-07-06 14:25:53 den Exp $ line, + leaving the original $Id: article.sgml,v 1.197 2004-07-06 14:25:53 den Exp $ line intact). View differences between the local version and the repository version with the diff command. &prompt.user; cvs diff shazam shows you every modification you have made to the shazam file or module. Useful <command>cvs diff</command> options Uses the unified diff format. Uses the context diff format. Shows missing or added files.
You always want to use , since unified diffs are much easier to read than almost any other diff format (in some circumstances, context diffs generated with the option may be better, but they are much bulkier). A unified diff consists of a series of hunks. Each hunk begins with a line that starts with two @ signs and specifies where in the file the differences are and how many lines they span. This is followed by a number of lines; some (preceded by a blank) are context; some (preceded by a - sign) are outtakes and some (preceded by a +) are additions. You can also diff against a different version than the one you checked out by specifying a version with or as in checkout or update, or even view the diffs between two arbitrary versions (without regard for what you have locally) by specifying two versions with or . View log entries with the log command. &prompt.user; cvs log shazam If shazam is a file, this will print a header with information about this file, such as where in the repository this file is stored, which revision is the HEAD for this file, what branches this file is in, and any tags that are valid for this file. Then, for each revision of this file, a log message is printed. This includes the date and time of the commit, who did the commit, how many lines were added and/or deleted, and finally the log message that the committer who did the change wrote. If shazam is a directory, then the log information described above is printed for each file in the directory in turn. Unless you give the to log, the log for all subdirectories of shazam is printed too, in a recursive manner. Use the log command to view the history of one or more files, as it is stored in the CVS repository. You can even use it to view the log message of a specific revision, if you add the to the log command: &prompt.user; cvs log -r1.2 shazam This will print only the log message for revision 1.2 of file shazam if it is a file, or the log message for revision 1.2 of each file under shazam if it is a directory. See who did what with the annotate command. This command shows you each line of the specified file or files, along with which user most recently changed that line. &prompt.user; cvs annotate shazam Add new files with the add command. Create the file, cvs add it, then cvs commit it. Similarly, you can add new directories by creating them and then cvs adding them. Note that you do not need to commit directories. Remove obsolete files with the remove command. Remove the file, then cvs rm it, then cvs commit it. Commit with the commit or checkin command. Useful <command>cvs commit</command> options Force a commit of an unmodified file. Specify a commit message on the command line rather than invoking an editor.
Use the option if you realize that you left out important information from the commit message. Good commit messages are important. They tell others why you did the changes you did, not just right here and now, but months or years from now when someone wonders why some seemingly illogical or inefficient piece of code snuck into your source file. It is also an invaluable aid to deciding which changes to MFC and which not to MFC. Commit messages should be clear, concise and provide a reasonable summary to give an indication of what was changed and why. Commit messages should provide enough information to enable a third party to decide if the change is relevant to them and if they need to read the change itself. Avoid committing several unrelated changes in one go. It makes merging difficult, and also makes it harder to determine which change is the culprit if a bug crops up. Avoid committing style or whitespace fixes and functionality fixes in one go. It makes merging difficult, and also makes it harder to understand just what functional changes were made. In the case of documentation files, it can make the job of the translation teams more complicated, as it becomes difficult for them to determine exactly what content changes need to be translated. Avoid committing changes to multiple files in one go with a generic, vague message. Instead, commit each file (or small, related groups of files) with tailored commit messages. Before committing, always: verify which branch you are committing to, using cvs status. review your diffs, using cvs diff Also, ALWAYS specify which files to commit explicitly on the command line, so you do not accidentally commit other files than the ones you intended - cvs commit without any arguments will commit every modification in your current working directory and every subdirectory. Additional tips and tricks: You can place commonly used options in your ~/.cvsrc, like this: cvs -z3 diff -Nu update -Pd checkout -P This example says: always use compression level 3 when talking to a remote server. This is a life-saver when working over a slow connection. always use the (show added or removed files) and (unified diff format) options to &man.diff.1;. always use the (prune empty directories) and (check out new directories) options when updating. always use the (prune empty directories) option when checking out. Use Eivind Eklund's cdiff script to view unidiffs. It is a wrapper for &man.less.1; that adds ANSI color codes to make hunk headers, outtakes and additions stand out; context and garbage are unmodified. It also expands tabs properly (tabs often look wrong in diffs because of the extra character in front of each line). Simply use it instead of &man.more.1; or &man.less.1;: &prompt.user; cvs diff -Nu shazam | cdiff Alternatively some editors like &man.vim.1; (editors/vim5) have color support and when used as a pager with color syntax highlighting switched on will highlight many types of file, including diffs, patches, and CVS/RCS logs. &prompt.user; echo "syn on" >> ~/.vimrc &prompt.user; cvs diff -Nu shazam | vim - &prompt.user; cvs log shazam | vim - CVS is old, arcane, crufty and buggy, and sometimes exhibits non-deterministic behavior which some claim as proof that it is actually merely the Newtonian manifestation of a sentient transdimensional entity. It is not humanly possible to know its every quirk inside out, so do not be afraid to ask the resident AI (&a.cvs;) for help. Do not leave the cvs commit command in commit message editing mode for too long (more than 2–3 minutes). It locks the directory you are working with and will prevent other developers from committing into the same directory. If you have to type a long commit message, type it before executing cvs commit, and insert it into the commit message. Conventions and Traditions As a new committer there are a number of things you should do first. Add your author entity to doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/share/sgml/authors.ent; this should be done first since an omission of this commit will cause the next commits to break the doc/ build. This is a relatively easy task, but remains a good first test of your CVS skills. + Add yourself to the Developers section of the Contributors List and remove yourself from the Additional Contributors section. Add an entry for yourself to www/en/news/news.xml. Look for the other entries that look like A new committer and follow the format. You should add your PGP or GnuPG key to doc/share/pgpkeys (and if you do not have a key, you should create one). Do not forget to commit the updated doc/share/pgpkeys/pgpkeys.ent. &a.des; has written a shell script to make this extremely simple. See the README file for more information. It is important to have an up-to-date PGP/GnuPG key in the Handbook, since the key may be required for positive identification of a committer, e.g. by the &a.admins; for account recovery. Some people add an entry for themselves to ports/astro/xearth/files/freebsd.committers.markers. Some people add an entry for themselves to src/usr.bin/calendar/calendars/calendar.freebsd. Introduce yourself to the other committers, otherwise no one will have any idea who you are or what you are working on. You do not have to write a comprehensive biography, just write a paragraph or two about who you are and what you plan to be working on as a committer in FreeBSD. Email this to the &a.developers; and you will be on your way! Log into hub.FreeBSD.org and create a /var/forward/user (where user is your username) file containing the e-mail address where you want mail addressed to yourusername@FreeBSD.org to be forwarded. This includes all of the commit messages as well as any other mail addressed to the &a.committers; and the &a.developers;. Really large mailboxes which have taken up permanent residence on hub often get accidentally truncated without warning, so forward it or read it and you will not lose it. Due to the severe load dealing with SPAM places on the central mail servers that do the mailing list processing the front-end server does do some basic checks and will drop some messages based on these checks. At the moment proper DNS information for the connecting host is the only check in place but that may change. Some people blame these checks for bouncing valid email. If you want these checks turned off for your email you can place a file named ~/.spam_lover in your home directory on freefall.FreeBSD.org to disable the checks for your email. If you are subscribed to the &a.cvsall;, you will probably want to unsubscribe to avoid receiving duplicate copies of commit messages and their followups. All new committers also have a mentor assigned to them for the first few months. Your mentor is responsible for teaching you the rules and conventions of the project and guiding your first steps in the committer community. He or she is also personally responsible for your actions during this initial period. Until your mentor decides (and announces with a forced commit to access) that you have learned the ropes and are ready to commit on your own, you should not commit anything without first getting your mentor's review and approval, and you should document that approval with an Approved by: line in the commit message. All src commits should go to &os.current; first before being merged to &os.stable;. No major new features or high-risk modifications should be made to the &os.stable; branch. Preferred License for New Files Currently the &os; Project suggests and uses the following text as the preferred license scheme: Copyright © <Year> <Author>. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL AUTHOR OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. The &os; project strongly discourages the so called advertising clause in new code. Due to the large number of contributors to the &os; project, complying with this clause for many commercial vendors has become difficult. If you have code in the tree with the advertising clause, please consider removing it. In fact, please consider using the above license for your code. The &os; project discourages completely new licenses and variations on the standard licenses. New licenses require the approval of core@FreeBSD.org to reside in the main repository. The more different licenses that are used in the tree, the more problems that this causes to those wishing to utilize this code, typically from unintended consequences from a poorly worded license. Developer Relations If you are working directly on your own code or on code which is already well established as your responsibility, then there is probably little need to check with other committers before jumping in with a commit. If you see a bug in an area of the system which is clearly orphaned (and there are a few such areas, to our shame), the same applies. If, however, you are about to modify something which is clearly being actively maintained by someone else (and it is only by watching the cvs-committers mailing list that you can really get a feel for just what is and is not) then consider sending the change to them instead, just as you would have before becoming a committer. For ports, you should contact the listed MAINTAINER in the Makefile. For other parts of the repository, if you are unsure who the active maintainer might be, it may help to scan the output of cvs log to see who has committed changes in the past. &a.fenner; has written a nice shell script that can help determine who the active maintainer might be. It lists each person who has committed to a given file along with the number of commits each person has made. It can be found on freefall at ~fenner/bin/whodid. If your queries go unanswered or the committer otherwise indicates a lack of proprietary interest in the area affected, go ahead and commit it. If you are unsure about a commit for any reason at all, have it reviewed by -hackers before committing. Better to have it flamed then and there rather than when it is part of the CVS repository. If you do happen to commit something which results in controversy erupting, you may also wish to consider backing the change out again until the matter is settled. Remember – with CVS we can always change it back. Do not impugn the intentions of someone you disagree with. If they see a different solution to a problem than you, or even a different problem, it is not because they are stupid, because they have questionable parentage, or because they are trying to destroy your hard work, personal image, or FreeBSD, but simply because they have a different outlook on the world. Different is good. Disagree honestly. Argue your position from its merits, be honest about any shortcomings it may have, and be open to seeing their solution, or even their vision of the problem, with an open mind. Accept correction. We are all fallible. When you have made a mistake, apologize and get on with life. Do not beat up yourself, and certainly do not beat up others for your mistake. Do not waste time on embarrassment or recrimination, just fix the problem and move on. Ask for help. Seek out (and give) peer reviews. One of the ways open source software is supposed to excel is in the number of eyeballs applied to it; this does not apply if nobody will review code. GNATS The FreeBSD Project utilizes GNATS for tracking bugs and change requests. Be sure that if you commit a fix or suggestion found in a GNATS PR, you use edit-pr pr-number on freefall to close it. It is also considered nice if you take time to close any PRs associated with your commits, if appropriate. You can also make use of &man.send-pr.1; yourself for proposing any change which you feel should probably be made, pending a more extensive peer-review first. You can find out more about GNATS at: http://www.FreeBSD.org/support.html &man.send-pr.1; You can run a local copy of GNATS, and then integrate the FreeBSD GNATS tree in to it using CVSup. Then you can run GNATS commands locally, or use other interfaces, such as tkgnats. This lets you query the PR database without needing to be connected to the Internet. Using a local GNATS tree If you are not already downloading the GNATS tree, add this line to your supfile, and re-sup. Note that since GNATS is not under CVS control it has no tag, so if you are adding it to your existing supfile it should appear before any tag= entry as these remain active once set. gnats release=current prefix=/usr This will place the FreeBSD GNATS tree in /usr/gnats. You can use a refuse file to control which categories to receive. For example, to only receive docs PRs, put this line in /usr/local/etc/cvsup/sup/refuse The precise path depends on the *default base setting in your supfile. . gnats/[a-ce-z]* The rest of these examples assume you have only supped the docs category. Adjust them as necessary, depending on the categories you are syncing. Install the GNATS port from ports/databases/gnats. This will place the various GNATS directories under $PREFIX/share/gnats. Symlink the GNATS directories you are supping under the version of GNATS you have installed. &prompt.root; cd /usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db &prompt.root; ln -s /usr/gnats/docs Repeat as necessary, depending on how many GNATS categories you are syncing. Update the GNATS categories file with these categories. The file is $PREFIX/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/categories. # This category is mandatory pending:Category for faulty PRs:gnats-admin: # # FreeBSD categories # docs:Documentation Bug:freebsd-doc: Run $PREFIX/libexec/gnats/gen-index to recreate the GNATS index. The output has to be redirected to $PREFIX/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/index. You can do this periodically from &man.cron.8;, or run &man.cvsup.1; from a shell script that does this as well. &prompt.root; /usr/local/libexec/gnats/gen-index \ > /usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/index Test the configuration by querying the PR database. This command shows open docs PRs. &prompt.root; query-pr -c docs -s open Other interfaces, such as that provided by the databases/tkgnats port should also work nicely. Pick a PR and close it. This procedure only works to allow you to view and query the PRs locally. To edit or close them you will still have to log in to freefall and do it from there. Who's Who Besides the repository meisters, there are other FreeBSD project members and teams whom you will probably get to know in your role as a committer. Briefly, and by no means all-inclusively, these are: &a.jhb; John is the manager of the SMPng Project, and has authority over the architectural design and implementation of the move to fine-grained kernel threading and locking. He's also the editor of the SMPng Architecture Document. If you are working on fine-grained SMP and locking, please coordinate with John. You can learn more about the SMPng Project on its home page: &a.jake;, &a.tmm; Jake and Thomas are the maintainers of the &sparc64; hardware port. &a.doceng; doceng is the group responsible for the documentation build infrastructure, approving new documentation committers, and ensuring that the FreeBSD website and documentation on the FTP site is up to date with respect to the CVS tree. It is not a conflict resolution body. The vast majority of documentation related discussion takes place on the &a.doc;. Committers interested in contributing to the documentation should familiarize themselves with the Documentation Project Primer. &a.ru; Ruslan is Mister &man.mdoc.7;. If you are writing a manual page and need some advice on the structure, or the markup, ask Ruslan. &a.bde; Bruce is the Style Police-Meister. When you do a commit that could have been done better, Bruce will be there to tell you. Be thankful that someone is. Bruce is also very knowledgeable on the various standards applicable to FreeBSD. &a.gallatin; &a.mjacob; &a.dfr; &a.obrien; These are the primary developers and overseers of the DEC Alpha AXP platform. &a.dg; David is the overseer of the VM system. If you have a VM system change in mind, coordinate it with David. &a.dfr; &a.marcel; &a.peter; &a.ps; These are the primary developers and overseers of the Intel IA-64 platform, officially known as the &itanium; Processor Family (IPF). &a.murray; &a.steve; &a.rwatson; &a.jhb; &a.scottl; &a.kensmith; &a.hrs; These are the members of the &a.re;. This team is responsible for setting release deadlines and controlling the release process. During code freezes, the release engineers have final authority on all changes to the system for whichever branch is pending release status. If there is something you want merged from &os.current; to &os.stable; (whatever values those may have at any given time), these are the people to talk to about it. Hiroki is also the keeper of the release documentation (src/release/doc/*). If you commit a change that you think is worthy of mention in the release notes, please make sure he knows about it. Better still, send him a patch with your suggested commentary. &a.benno; Benno is the official maintainer of the &powerpc; port. &a.brian; Official maintainer of /usr/sbin/ppp. &a.nectar; Jacques is the FreeBSD Security Officer and oversees the &a.security-officer;. &a.wollman; If you need advice on obscure network internals or are not sure of some potential change to the networking subsystem you have in mind, Garrett is someone to talk to. Garrett is also very knowledgeable on the various standards applicable to FreeBSD. &a.committers; cvs-committers is the entity that CVS uses to send you all your commit messages. You should never send email directly to this list. You should only send replies to this list when they are short and are directly related to a commit. &a.developers; All committers are subscribed to -developers. This list was created to be a forum for the committers community issues. Examples are Core voting, announcements, etc. This list is not intended as a place for code reviews or a replacement for the &a.arch; or the &a.audit;. In fact using it as such hurts the FreeBSD Project as it gives a sense of a closed list where general decisions affecting all of the FreeBSD using community are made without being open. Last, but not least never, never ever, email the &a.developers; and CC:/BCC: another FreeBSD list. Never, ever email another FreeBSD email list and CC:/BCC: the &a.developers;. Doing so can greatly diminish the benefits of this list. Also, never publicly post or forward emails sent to the &a.developers;. The act of sending to the &a.developers; vs. a public list means the information in the email is not for public consumption. SSH Quick-Start Guide If you are using FreeBSD 4.0 or later, OpenSSH is included in the base system. If you are using an earlier release, update and install one of the SSH ports. In general, you will probably want to get OpenSSH from the security/openssh port. You may also wish to check out the original ssh1 in the security/ssh port, but make certain you pay attention to its license. Note that both of these ports cannot be installed at the same time. If you do not wish to type your password in every time you use &man.ssh.1;, and you use RSA or DSA keys to authenticate, &man.ssh-agent.1; is there for your convenience. If you want to use &man.ssh-agent.1;, make sure that you run it before running other applications. X users, for example, usually do this from their .xsession or .xinitrc file. See &man.ssh-agent.1; for details. Generate a key pair using &man.ssh-keygen.1;. The key pair will wind up in your $HOME/.ssh/ directory. Send your public key ($HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub or $HOME/.ssh/id_rsa.pub) to the person setting you up as a committer so it can be put into yourlogin file in /c/ssh-keys/ on freefall. Now you should be able to use &man.ssh-add.1; for authentication once per session. This will prompt you for your private key's pass phrase, and then store it in your authentication agent (&man.ssh-agent.1;). If you no longer wish to have your key stored in the agent, issuing ssh-add -d will remove it. Test by doing something such as ssh freefall.FreeBSD.org ls /usr. For more information, see security/openssh, &man.ssh.1;, &man.ssh-add.1;, &man.ssh-agent.1;, &man.ssh-keygen.1;, and &man.scp.1;. The FreeBSD Committers' Big List of Rules Respect other committers. Respect other contributors. Discuss any significant change before committing. Respect existing maintainers (if listed in the MAINTAINER field in Makefile or in the MAINTAINER file in the top-level directory). Any disputed change must be backed out pending resolution of the dispute if requested by a maintainer. Security related changes may override a maintainer's wishes at the Security Officer's discretion. Changes go to &os.current; before &os.stable; unless specifically permitted by the release engineer or unless they are not applicable to &os.current;. Any non-trivial or non-urgent change which is applicable should also be allowed to sit in &os.current; for at least 3 days before merging so that it can be given sufficient testing. The release engineer has the same authority over the &os.stable; branch as outlined for the maintainer in rule #5. Do not fight in public with other committers; it looks bad. If you must strongly disagree about something, do so only in private. Respect all code freezes and read the committers and developers mailing lists in a timely manner so you know when a code freeze is in effect. When in doubt on any procedure, ask first! Test your changes before committing them. Do not commit to anything under the src/contrib, src/crypto, and src/sys/contrib trees without explicit approval from the respective maintainer(s). As noted, breaking some of these rules can be grounds for suspension or, upon repeated offense, permanent removal of commit privileges. Individual members of core have the power to temporarily suspend commit privileges until core as a whole has the chance to review the issue. In case of an emergency (a committer doing damage to the repository), a temporary suspension may also be done by the repository meisters. Only a 2/3 majority of core has the authority to suspend commit privileges for longer than a week or to remove them permanently. This rule does not exist to set core up as a bunch of cruel dictators who can dispose of committers as casually as empty soda cans, but to give the project a kind of safety fuse. If someone is out of control, it is important to be able to deal with this immediately rather than be paralyzed by debate. In all cases, a committer whose privileges are suspended or revoked is entitled to a hearing by core, the total duration of the suspension being determined at that time. A committer whose privileges are suspended may also request a review of the decision after 30 days and every 30 days thereafter (unless the total suspension period is less than 30 days). A committer whose privileges have been revoked entirely may request a review after a period of 6 months has elapsed. This review policy is strictly informal and, in all cases, core reserves the right to either act on or disregard requests for review if they feel their original decision to be the right one. In all other aspects of project operation, core is a subset of committers and is bound by the same rules. Just because someone is in core this does not mean that they have special dispensation to step outside any of the lines painted here; core's special powers only kick in when it acts as a group, not on an individual basis. As individuals, the core team members are all committers first and core second. Details Respect other committers. This means that you need to treat other committers as the peer-group developers that they are. Despite our occasional attempts to prove the contrary, one does not get to be a committer by being stupid and nothing rankles more than being treated that way by one of your peers. Whether we always feel respect for one another or not (and everyone has off days), we still have to treat other committers with respect at all times, on public forums and in private email. Being able to work together long term is this project's greatest asset, one far more important than any set of changes to the code, and turning arguments about code into issues that affect our long-term ability to work harmoniously together is just not worth the trade-off by any conceivable stretch of the imagination. To comply with this rule, do not send email when you are angry or otherwise behave in a manner which is likely to strike others as needlessly confrontational. First calm down, then think about how to communicate in the most effective fashion for convincing the other person(s) that your side of the argument is correct, do not just blow off some steam so you can feel better in the short term at the cost of a long-term flame war. Not only is this very bad energy economics, but repeated displays of public aggression which impair our ability to work well together will be dealt with severely by the project leadership and may result in suspension or termination of your commit privileges. The project leadership will take into account both public and private communications brought before it. It will not seek the disclosure of private communications, but it will take it into account if it is volunteered by the committers involved in the complaint. All of this is never an option which the project's leadership enjoys in the slightest, but unity comes first. No amount of code or good advice is worth trading that away. Respect other contributors. You were not always a committer. At one time you were a contributor. Remember that at all times. Remember what it was like trying to get help and attention. Do not forget that your work as a contributor was very important to you. Remember what it was like. Do not discourage, belittle, or demean contributors. Treat them with respect. They are our committers in waiting. They are every bit as important to the project as committers. Their contributions are as valid and as important as your own. After all, you made many contributions before you became a committer. Always remember that. Consider the points raised under and apply them also to contributors. Discuss any significant change before committing. The CVS repository is not where changes should be initially submitted for correctness or argued over, that should happen first in the mailing lists and the commit should only happen once something resembling consensus has been reached. This does not mean that you have to ask permission before correcting every obvious syntax error or manual page misspelling, simply that you should try to develop a feel for when a proposed change is not quite such a no-brainer and requires some feedback first. People really do not mind sweeping changes if the result is something clearly better than what they had before, they just do not like being surprised by those changes. The very best way of making sure that you are on the right track is to have your code reviewed by one or more other committers. When in doubt, ask for review! Respect existing maintainers if listed. Many parts of FreeBSD are not owned in the sense that any specific individual will jump up and yell if you commit a change to their area, but it still pays to check first. One convention we use is to put a maintainer line in the Makefile for any package or subtree which is being actively maintained by one or more people; see for documentation on this. Where sections of code have several maintainers, commits to affected areas by one maintainer need to be reviewed by at least one other maintainer. In cases where the maintainer-ship of something is not clear, you can also look at the CVS logs for the file(s) in question and see if someone has been working recently or predominantly in that area. Other areas of FreeBSD fall under the control of someone who manages an overall category of FreeBSD evolution, such as internationalization or networking. See http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributors/staff-who.html for more information on this. Any disputed change must be backed out pending resolution of the dispute if requested by a maintainer. Security related changes may override a maintainer's wishes at the Security Officer's discretion. This may be hard to swallow in times of conflict (when each side is convinced that they are in the right, of course) but CVS makes it unnecessary to have an ongoing dispute raging when it is far easier to simply reverse the disputed change, get everyone calmed down again and then try to figure out what is the best way to proceed. If the change turns out to be the best thing after all, it can be easily brought back. If it turns out not to be, then the users did not have to live with the bogus change in the tree while everyone was busily debating its merits. People very very rarely call for back-outs in the repository since discussion generally exposes bad or controversial changes before the commit even happens, but on such rare occasions the back-out should be done without argument so that we can get immediately on to the topic of figuring out whether it was bogus or not. Changes go to &os.current; before &os.stable; unless specifically permitted by the release engineer or unless they are not applicable to &os.current;. Any non-trivial or non-urgent change which is applicable should also be allowed to sit in &os.current; for at least 3 days before merging so that it can be given sufficient testing. The release engineer has the same authority over the &os.stable; branch as outlined in rule #5. This is another do not argue about it issue since it is the release engineer who is ultimately responsible (and gets beaten up) if a change turns out to be bad. Please respect this and give the release engineer your full cooperation when it comes to the &os.stable; branch. The management of &os.stable; may frequently seem to be overly conservative to the casual observer, but also bear in mind the fact that conservatism is supposed to be the hallmark of &os.stable; and different rules apply there than in &os.current;. There is also really no point in having &os.current; be a testing ground if changes are merged over to &os.stable; immediately. Changes need a chance to be tested by the &os.current; developers, so allow some time to elapse before merging unless the &os.stable; fix is critical, time sensitive or so obvious as to make further testing unnecessary (spelling fixes to manual pages, obvious bug/typo fixes, etc.) In other words, apply common sense. Changes to the security branches (for example, RELENG_4_5) must be approved by a member of the &a.security-officer;, or in some cases, by a member of the &a.re;. Do not fight in public with other committers; it looks bad. If you must strongly disagree about something, do so only in private. This project has a public image to uphold and that image is very important to all of us, especially if we are to continue to attract new members. There will be occasions when, despite everyone's very best attempts at self-control, tempers are lost and angry words are exchanged. The best thing that can be done in such cases is to minimize the effects of this until everyone has cooled back down. That means that you should not air your angry words in public and you should not forward private correspondence to public mailing lists or aliases. What people say one-to-one is often much less sugar-coated than what they would say in public, and such communications therefore have no place there - they only serve to inflame an already bad situation. If the person sending you a flame-o-gram at least had the grace to send it privately, then have the grace to keep it private yourself. If you feel you are being unfairly treated by another developer, and it is causing you anguish, bring the matter up with core rather than taking it public. Core will do its best to play peace makers and get things back to sanity. In cases where the dispute involves a change to the codebase and the participants do not appear to be reaching an amicable agreement, core may appoint a mutually-agreeable 3rd party to resolve the dispute. All parties involved must then agree to be bound by the decision reached by this 3rd party. Respect all code freezes and read the committers and developers mailing list on a timely basis so you know when a code freeze is in effect. Committing unapproved changes during a code freeze is a really big mistake and committers are expected to keep up-to-date on what is going on before jumping in after a long absence and committing 10 megabytes worth of accumulated stuff. People who abuse this on a regular basis will have their commit privileges suspended until they get back from the FreeBSD Happy Reeducation Camp we run in Greenland. When in doubt on any procedure, ask first! Many mistakes are made because someone is in a hurry and just assumes they know the right way of doing something. If you have not done it before, chances are good that you do not actually know the way we do things and really need to ask first or you are going to completely embarrass yourself in public. There is no shame in asking how in the heck do I do this? We already know you are an intelligent person; otherwise, you would not be a committer. Test your changes before committing them. This may sound obvious, but if it really were so obvious then we probably would not see so many cases of people clearly not doing this. If your changes are to the kernel, make sure you can still compile both GENERIC and LINT. If your changes are anywhere else, make sure you can still make world. If your changes are to a branch, make sure your testing occurs with a machine which is running that code. If you have a change which also may break another architecture, be sure and test on all supported architectures. Please refer to the FreeBSD Internal Page for a list of available resources. As other architectures are added to the FreeBSD supported platforms list, the appropriate shared testing resources will be made available. Do not commit to anything under the src/contrib, src/crypto, and src/sys/contrib trees without explicit approval from the respective maintainer(s). The trees mentioned above are for contributed software usually imported onto a vendor branch. Committing something there, even if it does not take the file off the vendor branch, may cause unnecessary headaches for those responsible for maintaining that particular piece of software. Thus, unless you have explicit approval from the maintainer (or you are the maintainer), do not commit there! Please note that this does not mean you should not try to improve the software in question; you are still more than welcome to do so. Ideally, you should submit your patches to the vendor. If your changes are FreeBSD-specific, talk to the maintainer; they may be willing to apply them locally. But whatever you do, do not commit there by yourself! Contact the &a.core; if you wish to take up maintainership of an unmaintained part of the tree. Policy on Multiple Architectures FreeBSD has added several new arch ports during the 5.0 release cycle and is truly no longer an &i386; centric operating system. In an effort to make it easier to keep FreeBSD portable across the platforms we support, core has developed the following mandate:
Our 32 bit reference platform is i386, and our 64 bit reference platform is Sparc64. Major design work (including major API and ABI changes) must prove itself on at least one 32 bit and at least one 64 bit platform, preferably the primary reference platforms, before it may be committed to the source tree.
The i386 and Sparc64 platforms were chosen due to being more readily available to developers and as representatives of more diverse processor and system designs - big vs little endian, register file vs register stack, different DMA and cache implementations, hardware page tables vs software TLB management etc. While the Alpha is a 64 bit processor, it is a more traditional processor design and does not provide as good a testbed for many of the challenges that the other 64 bit platform ports face. The ia64 platform has many of the same complications that Sparc64 has, but is still limited in availability to developers. We will continue to re-evaluate this policy as cost and availability of the 64 bit platforms change. Developers should also be aware of our Tier Policy for the long term support of hardware architectures. The rules here are intended to provide guidance during the development process, and are distinct from the requirements for features and architectures listed in that section. The Tier rules for feature support on architectures at release-time are more strict than the rules for changes during the development process. Other Suggestions When committing documentation changes, use a spell checker before committing. For all SGML docs, you should also verify that your formatting directives are correct by running make lint. For all on-line manual pages, run manck (from ports) over the manual page to verify all of the cross references and file references are correct and that the man page has all of the appropriate MLINKs installed. Do not mix style fixes with new functionality. A style fix is any change which does not modify the functionality of the code. Mixing the changes obfuscates the functionality change when using cvs diff, which can hide any new bugs. Do not include whitespace changes with content changes in commits to doc/ or www/. The extra clutter in the diffs makes the translators' job much more difficult. Instead, make any style or whitespace changes in separate commits that are clearly labeled as such in the commit message. Deprecating Features When it is necessary to remove functionality from software in the base system the following guidelines should be followed whenever possible: Mention is made in the manual page and possibly the release notes that the option, utility, or interface is deprecated. Use of the deprecated feature generates a warning. The option, utility, or interface is preserved until the next major (point zero) release. The option, utility, or interface is removed and no longer documented. It is now obsolete. It is also generally a good idea to note its removal in the release notes. Support for Multiple Architectures FreeBSD is a highly portable operating system intended to function on many different types of hardware architectures. Maintaining clean separation of Machine Dependent (MD) and Machine Independent (MI) code, as well as minimizing MD code, is an important part of our strategy to remain agile with regards to current hardware trends. Each new hardware architecture supported by FreeBSD adds substantially to the cost of code maintenance, toolchain support, and release engineering. It also dramatically increases the cost of effective testing of kernel changes. As such, there is strong motivation to differentiate between classes of support for various architectures while remaining strong in a few key architectures that are seen as the FreeBSD "target audience". Statement of General Intent The FreeBSD Project targets "production quality commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) workstation, server, and high-end embedded systems". By retaining a focus on a narrow set of architectures of interest in these environments, the FreeBSD Project is able to maintain high levels of quality, stability, and performance, as well as minimize the load on various support teams on the project, such as the ports team, documentation team, security officer, and release engineering teams. Diversity in hardware support broadens the options for FreeBSD consumers by offering new features and usage opportunities (such as support for 64-bit CPUs, use in embedded environments, etc.), but these benefits must always be carefully considered in terms of the real-world maintenance cost associated with additional platform support. The FreeBSD Project differentiates platform targets into four tiers. Each tier includes a specification of the requirements for an architecture to be in that tier, as well as specifying the obligations of developers with regards to the platform. In addition, a policy is defined regarding the circumstances required to change the tier of an architecture. Tier 1: Fully Supported Architectures Tier 1 platforms are fully supported by the security officer, release engineering, and toolchain maintenance staff. New features added to the operating system must be fully functional across all Tier 1 architectures for every release (features which are inherently architecture-specific, such as support for hardware device drivers, may be exempt from this requirement). In general, all Tier 1 platforms must have build and tinderbox support either in the FreeBSD.org cluster, or easily available for all developers. Tier 1 architectures are expected to be Production Quality with respects to all aspects of the FreeBSD operating system, including installation and development environments. Current Tier 1 platforms are i386, Sparc64, AMD64, and PC98. Tier 2: Developmental Architectures Tier 2 platforms are not supported by the security officer and release engineering teams. At the discretion of the toolchain maintainer, they may be supported in the toolchain. New features added to FreeBSD should be feasible to implement on these platforms, but an implementation is not required before the feature may be added to the FreeBSD source tree. The implementation of a Tier 2 architecture may be committed to the main FreeBSD tree as long as it does not interfere with production work on Tier 1 platforms, or substantially with other Tier 2 platforms. Before a Tier 2 platform can be added to the FreeBSD base source tree, the platform must be able to boot to at least single-user mode on real world commodity hardware. Some exceptions to these rules may be made for new hardware that is under development by hardware vendors, but not yet available to the project. Tier 2 architectures are usually systems targeted at Tier 1 support, but that are still under development. Architectures reaching end of life may also be moved from Tier 1 status to Tier 2 status as the availability of resources to continue to maintain the system in a Production Quality state diminishes. Current Tier 2 platforms are Alpha, PowerPC and ia64. Tier 3: Experimental Architectures Tier 3 platforms are not supported by the security officer and release engineering teams. At the discretion of the toolchain maintainer, they may be supported in the toolchain. Tier 3 platforms are architectures for which hardware is not or will not be available to the project in the foreseeable future, for which there are two or fewer active developers, that can not boot to at least single-user mode on real hardware (or a simulator for new hardware platforms), or which are considered legacy systems unlikely to see broad future use. Tier 3 systems will not be committed to the base source tree, although support for Tier 3 systems may be worked on in the FreeBSD Perforce Repository, providing source control and easier change integration from the main FreeBSD tree. Current Tier 3 platforms are &s390;. Tier 4: Unsupported Architectures Tier 4 systems are not supported in any form by the project. All systems not otherwise classified into a support tier are Tier 4 systems. Policy on Changing the Tier of an Architecture Systems may only be moved from one tier to another by approval of the FreeBSD Core Team, which shall make that decision in collaboration with the Security Officer, Release Engineering, and toolchain maintenance teams. Ports Specific FAQ Adding a New Port How do I add a new port? First, please read the section about repository copies. The easiest way to add a new port is to use the addport script on freefall. It will add a port from the directory you specify, determining the category automatically from the port Makefile. It will also add an entry to the CVSROOT/modules file and the port's category Makefile. It was written by &a.mharo; and &a.will;, but Will is the current maintainer so please send questions/patches about addport to him. Any other things I need to know when I add a new port? Check the port, preferably to make sure it compiles and packages correctly. This is the recommended sequence: &prompt.root; make install &prompt.root; make package &prompt.root; make deinstall &prompt.root; pkg_add package you built above &prompt.root; make deinstall &prompt.root; make reinstall &prompt.root; make package The Porters Handbook contains more detailed instructions. Use &man.portlint.1; to check the syntax of the port. You do not necessarily have to eliminate all warnings but make sure you have fixed the simple ones. If the port came from a submitter who has not contributed to the project before, add that person's name to the Additional Contributors section of the FreeBSD Contributors List. Close the PR if the port came in as a PR. To close a PR, just do edit-pr PR# on freefall and change the state from open to closed. You will be asked to enter a log message and then you are done. Repository Copies When do we need a repository copy? When you want to add a port that is related to any port that is already in the tree in a separate directory, you have to do a repository copy. Here related means it is a different version or a slightly modified version. Examples are print/ghostscript* (different versions) and x11-wm/windowmaker* (English-only and internationalized version). Another example is when a port is moved from one subdirectory to another, or when you want to change the name of a directory because the author(s) renamed their software even though it is a descendant of a port already in a tree. When do we not need a repository copy? When there is no history to preserve. If a port is added into a wrong category and is moved immediately, it suffices to simply cvs remove the old one and addport the new one. What do I need to do? File a PR in GNATS, listing the reasons for the repository copy request. Assign it to portmgr and set state to repocopy. If &a.portmgr; approves it, it will be reassigned to cvs. &a.cvs; will do a repository copy from the old to the new location, and reassign the PR back to you. Once everything is done, perform the following: When a port has been repo copied: Upgrade the copied port to the new version (remember to change the PORTNAME so there are not duplicate ports with the same name). Add the new subdirectory to the SUBDIR listing in the parent directory Makefile. You can run make checksubdirs in the parent directory to check this. If the port changed categories, modify the CATEGORIES line of the port's Makefile accordingly Add the new module entry. Add an entry to ports/MOVED. When removing a port: Perform a thorough check of the ports collection for any dependencies on the old port location/name, and update them. Running grep on INDEX is not enough because some ports have dependencies enabled by compile-time options. A full grep -r of the ports collection is recommended. Remove the old port, the old SUBDIR entry and the old module entry. Add an entry to ports/MOVED. After repo moves (rename operations where a port is copied and the old location is removed): Follow the same steps that are outlined in the previous two entries, to activate the new location of the port and remove the old one. Ports Freeze What is a ports freeze? Before a release, it is necessary to restrict commits to the ports tree for a short period of time while the packages and the release itself are being built. This is to ensure consistency among the various parts of the release, and is called the ports freeze. How long is a ports freeze? Usually an hour or two. What does it mean to me? During the ports freeze, you are not allowed to commit anything to the tree without explicit approval from the ports manager. Explicit approval here means either of the following: You asked the ports manager and got a reply saying, Go ahead and commit it. The ports manager sent a mail to you or the mailing lists during the ports freeze pointing out that the port is broken and has to be fixed. Note that you do not have implicit permission to fix a port during the freeze just because it is broken. How do I know when the ports freeze starts? The ports manager will send out warning messages to the &a.ports; and &a.committers; announcing the start of the impending release, usually two or three weeks in advance. The exact starting time will not be determined until a few days before the actual release. This is because the ports freeze has to be synchronized with the release, and it is usually not known until then when exactly the release will be rolled. When the freeze starts, there will be another announcement to the &a.committers;, of course. How do I know when the ports freeze ends? A few hours after the release, the ports manager will send out a mail to the &a.ports; and &a.committers; announcing the end of the ports freeze. Note that the release being cut does not automatically end the freeze. We have to make sure there will not be any last minute snafus that result in an immediate re-rolling of the release. Creating a New Category What is the procedure for creating a new category? A developer who wishes to propose a new category should submit a detailed rationale for the new category, including why existing categories are not sufficient, and the list of ports proposed to move. Before submitting, keep in mind that there is a fair amount of work involved from multiple parties; that the changes affect everyone who wants to keep up-to-date with the entire ports tree; and that such proposals tend to attract controversy. What do I need to do? The procedure is a strict superset of the one to repocopy individual ports (see above). File a PR in GNATS, listing the reasons for the category request. Preferably, this should also include patches for Makefiles for the old ports, the Makefiles for their old categories, and the VALID_CATEGORIES definition in ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk. Assign the PR to the &a.portmgr; (as portmgr). If they approve it, it will be reassigned to &a.cvs; (as cvs), who will do a repository copy from the old to the new locations and reassign the PR back to you. Once everything is done, perform the following steps: Upgrade each copied port's Makefile. Do not connect the new category to the build yet. To do this, you will need to: Change the port's CATEGORIES (this was the point of the exercise, remember?) The new category should be listed first. This will help to ensure that the the PKGORIGIN is correct. Run a make describe. Since the top-level make index that you will be running in a few steps is an iteration of make describe over the entire ports hierarchy, catching any errors here will save you having to re-run that step later on. If you want to be really thorough, now might be a good time to run &man.portlint.1;. Check that the PKGORIGINs are correct. The ports system uses each port's CATEGORIES entry to create its PKGORIGIN, which is used to connect installed packages to the port directory they were built from. If this entry is wrong, common port tools like &man.pkg.version.1; and &man.portupgrade.1; fail. To do this, use the chkorigin.sh tool, as follows: env PORTSDIR=/path/to/ports sh -e /path/to/ports/Tools/scripts/chkorigin.sh . This will check every port in the ports tree, even those not connected to the build, so you can run it directly after the repocopy. Hint: do not forget to look at the PKGORIGINs of any slave ports of the ports you just repocopied! On your own local system, test the proposed changes: first, comment out the SUBDIR entries in the old ports' categories' Makefiles; then enable building the new category in ports/Makefile. Run make checksubdirs in the affected category directories to check the SUBDIR entries. Next, in the ports/ directory, run make index. This can take over 40 minutes on even modern systems; however, it is a necessary step to prevent problems for other people. Once this is done, you can commit the updated ports/Makefile to connect the new category to the build and also commit the Makefile changes for the old category or categories. Change all the affected module entries in CVSROOT-ports/modules. Add appropriate entries to ports/MOVED. Update the instructions for &man.cvsup.1; by modifying distrib/cvsup/sup/README and adding the following files into cvsup/sup/ports-categoryname: list.cvs and releases. (Note: these are in the src, not the ports, repository). Submit a docs PR to add the new category to both the Porter's Handbook and to www/en/ports/categories. The procedure to update the ports web pages to reflect the new category is not yet defined. Only once all the above have been done, and no one is any longer reporting problems with the new ports, should the old ports be deleted from their previous locations in the repository. Miscellaneous Questions How do I know if my port is building correctly or not? First, go check . There you will find error logs from the latest package building runs on all supported platforms for the most recent branches. However, just because the port does not show up there does not mean it is building correctly. (One of the dependencies may have failed, for instance.) Here are the relevant directories on bento, so feel free to dig around. /a/asami/portbuild/<arch>/<major_version>/errors error logs from latest <major_version> run on <arch> /logs all logs from latest <major_version> run on <arch> /packages packages from latest <major_version> run on <arch> /bak/errors error logs from last complete <major_version> run on <arch> /bak/logs all logs from last complete <major_version> run on <arch> /bak/packages packages from last complete <major_version> run on <arch> Basically, if the port shows up in packages, or it is in logs but not in errors, it built fine. (The errors directories are what you get from the web page.) I added a new port. Do I need to add it to the INDEX? No. The ports manager will regenerate the INDEX and commit it for each &os; release. Are there any other files I am not allowed to touch? Any file directly under ports/, or any file under a subdirectory that starts with an uppercase letter (Mk/, Tools/, etc.). In particular, the ports manager is very protective of ports/Mk/bsd.port*.mk so do not commit changes to those files unless you want to face his wra(i)th. What is the proper procedure for updating the checksum for a port's distfile when the file changes without a version change? When the checksum for a port's distfile is updated due to the author updating the file without changing the port's revision, the commit message should include a summary of the relevant diffs between the original and new distfile to ensure that the distfile has not been corrupted or maliciously altered. If the current version of the port has been in the ports tree for a while, a copy of the old distfile will usually be available on the ftp servers; otherwise the author or maintainer should be contacted to find out why the distfile has changed. Perks of the Job Unfortunately, there are not many perks involved with being a committer. Recognition as a competent software engineer is probably the only thing that will be of benefit in the long run. However, there are at least some perks: Direct access to cvsup-master As a committer, you may apply to &a.kuriyama; for direct access to cvsup-master.FreeBSD.org, providing the public key output from cvpasswd yourusername@FreeBSD.org freefall.FreeBSD.org. Please note: you must specify freefall.FreeBSD.org on the cvpasswd command line even though the actual server is cvsup-master. Access to cvsup-master should not be overused as it is a busy machine. A Free 4-CD Set or DVD Subscription FreeBSD Mall, Inc. offers a free subscription of the 4-CD set or the DVD product to all FreeBSD committers. Information about how to obtain your free media is mailed to developers@FreeBSD.org following each major release. Miscellaneous Questions Why are trivial or cosmetic changes to files on a vendor branch a bad idea? From now on, every new vendor release of that file will need to have patches merged in by hand. From now on, every new vendor release of that file will need to have patches verified by hand. The option does not work very well. Ask &a.obrien; for horror stories. How do I add a new file to a CVS branch? To add a file onto a branch, simply checkout or update to the branch you want to add to and then add the file using cvs add as you normally would. For example, if you wanted to MFC the file src/sys/alpha/include/smp.h from HEAD to RELENG_4 and it does not exist in RELENG_4 yet, you would use the following steps: MFC'ing a New File &prompt.user; cd sys/alpha/include &prompt.user; cvs update -rRELENG_4 cvs update: Updating . U clockvar.h U console.h ... &prompt.user; cvs update -kk -Ap smp.h > smp.h =================================================================== Checking out smp.h RCS: /usr/cvs/src/sys/alpha/include/smp.h,v VERS: 1.1 *************** &prompt.user; cvs add smp.h cvs add: scheduling file `smp.h' for addition on branch `RELENG_4' cvs add: use 'cvs commit' to add this file permanently &prompt.user; cvs commit What meta information should I include in a commit message? As well as including an informative message with each commit you may need to include some additional information as well. This information consists of one or more lines containing the key word or phrase, a colon, tabs for formatting, and then the additional information. The key words or phrases are: PR: The problem report (if any) which is affected (typically, by being closed) by this commit. Submitted by: The name and e-mail address of the person that submitted the fix; for committers, just the username on the FreeBSD cluster. Reviewed by: The name and e-mail address of the person or people that reviewed the change; for committers, just the username on the FreeBSD cluster. If a patch was submitted to a mailing list for review, and the review was favorable, then just include the list name. Approved by: The name and e-mail address of the person or people that approved the change; for committers, just the username on the FreeBSD cluster. It is customary to get prior approval for a commit if it is to an area of the tree to which you do not usually commit. In addition, during the run up to a new release all commits must be approved by the release engineering team. If these are your first commits then you should have passed them past your mentor first, and you should list your mentor, as in ``username-of-mentor (mentor)''. Obtained from: The name of the project (if any) from which the code was obtained. MFC after: If you wish to receive an e-mail reminder to MFC at a later date, specify the number of days, weeks, or months after which an MFC is planned. Commit log for a commit based on a PR You want to commit a change based on a PR submitted by John Smith containing a patch. The end of the commit message should look something like this. ... PR: foo/12345 Submitted by: John Smith <John.Smith@example.com> Commit log for a commit needing review You want to change the virtual memory system. You have posted patches to the appropriate mailing list (in this case, freebsd-arch) and the changes have been approved. ... Reviewed by: -arch Commit log for a commit needing approval You want to commit a change to a section of the tree with a MAINTAINER assigned. You have collaborated with the listed MAINTAINER, who has told you to go ahead and commit. ... Approved by: abc Where abc is the account name of the person who approved. Commit log for a commit bringing in code from OpenBSD You want to commit some code based on work done in the OpenBSD project. ... Obtained from: OpenBSD Commit log for a change to &os.current; with a planned commit to &os.stable; to follow at a later date. You want to commit some code which will be merged from &os.current; into the &os.stable; branch after two weeks. ... MFC after: 2 weeks Where 2 is the number of days, weeks, or months after which an MFC is planned. The weeks option may be day, days, week, weeks, month, months, or may be left off (in which case, days will be assumed). In some cases you may need to combine some of these. Consider the situation where a user has submitted a PR containing code from the NetBSD project. You are looking at the PR, but it is not an area of the tree you normally work in, so you have decided to get the change reviewed by the arch mailing list. Since the change is complex, you opt to MFC after one month to allow adequate testing. The extra information to include in the commit would look something like PR: foo/54321 Submitted by: John Smith <John.Smith@example.com> Reviewed by: -arch Obtained from: NetBSD MFC after: 1 month How do I access people.FreeBSD.org to put up personal or project information? people.FreeBSD.org is the same as freefall.FreeBSD.org. Just create a public_html directory. Anything you place in that directory will automatically be visible under . Where are the mailing list archives stored? The mailing lists are archived under /g/mail which will show up as /hub/g/mail with &man.pwd.1;. This location is accessible from any machine on the FreeBSD cluster.
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/console-server/article.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/console-server/article.sgml index 7ea375b2f5..bfc3cc7627 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/console-server/article.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/console-server/article.sgml @@ -1,1660 +1,1661 @@ %man; %freebsd; %authors; %trademark; ]>
Console Server Gregory Bond
gnb@itga.com.au
 $FreeBSD$ &tm-attrib.freebsd; &tm-attrib.cisco; &tm-attrib.intel; &tm-attrib.lantronix; &tm-attrib.microsoft; &tm-attrib.opengroup; &tm-attrib.sun; &tm-attrib.general; This document describes how you can use &os;, hardware and software that runs on &os; to set up a console server; a machine that you can use to monitor the consoles of many other machines, instead of a bunch of serial terminals. console-server The Problem You have a computer room with lots of &unix; server machines and lots of communications hardware. Each of these machines needs a serial console. But serial terminals are hard to find and quite expensive (especially compared to a much more capable PC). And they take up a lot of precious space in the computer room. You need access to the console because when things break, that is where error messages go. And some tasks have to be done on the console (e.g. boot problems or OS installs/upgrades). Some &unix; systems allow the console to break out to the ROM monitor which can sometimes be the only way to unstick a hung machine. This is often done with a LINE BREAK sent on the console serial port. If we are going to play about with consoles, then there are a couple of other things that would be great: Remote access. Even in the same office, it would be convenient to access all the consoles from your desk without walking into the computer room. But often the machines are off-site, perhaps even in another country. Logging. If something has gone wrong, you would like to be able to have a look at the previous console output to see what is up. Ordinary console screens give you the last 25 lines. More would be better. Network Independence. The solution needs to work even if the network is down. After all, a failed network is when you need consoles the most! Even better is network independence with remote access. No single-point failure. A console system that crashes every machine when it fails is no use. This is particularly tricky with Sun &unix; hosts as they will interpret a powered-off terminal as a BREAK, and drop back to the ROM monitor. Interface with a pager or some similar alerter device. Ability to power-cycle machines remotely. Not be too expensive. Free is even better! Possible Solutions If you use PC hardware for your servers, then a so-called KVM switch is one possible solution. A KVM switch allows the use of a single keyboard, video screen and mouse for multiple boxes. This cuts down on the space problem, but only works for PC hardware (not any communications gear you might have), and is not accessible from outside the computer room. Nor does it have much scroll-back or logging, and you have to handle alerting some other way. The big downside is that it will not work for serial-only devices, such as communications hardware. This means that even with a room full of PC-based servers, you are probably still going to need some sort of serial console solution. Actually, Doug Schache has pointed out that you can get KVM switches that also do serial consoles or Sun compatible KVM switching as well as PCs, but they are expensive. See Avocent for example.) You might be tempted to do without a console terminal, but when things go pear-shaped you really need to see what is on the console. And you have to use the console to boot the machine and do things like OS upgrades or installs. You might try having a single console terminal and switching from server to server as needed, either with a serial switch or just by patching it into the required machine. Serial switches are also hard to come by and not cheap, and may cause problems with sending BREAK when they switch. And (if your computer room is anything like ours) you never seem to have the right combination of patch leads to connect to the machine you need to, and even if the leads are there you can never work out exactly which combination of DTE/DCE headshells goes with which lead goes with which hardware. So you spend the first 10 minutes fooling around with breakout boxes and a box of leads, all while the server is down and the users are screaming. Of course this does not deal with the logging or remote access requirements. And inevitably the console is not switched to the machine you need so you lose all the console messages that might tell you what is going on. One popular solution is to use terminal server hardware. Typically, the serial ports are connected to the various machine consoles, and set up for reverse telnet access. This means a user can telnet to a given IP/port and be connected to the appropriate console. This can be very cost-effective, as suitable old terminal servers can be picked up fairly cheaply (assuming you do not have a couple lying around). And it is of course network-accessible so suitable for remote access. But it suffers from one major drawback: if the network is down, then you have no access to any console, even if you are standing right next to the machine. (This may be partially alleviated by having a suitable terminal connected to one of the terminal server ports and connecting from there, but the terminal server software may not support that.) Also there is no logging or replay of console messages. But with a bit of work, and the addition of some software such as conserver (described below), this can be made to work pretty well. A possibility suggested by Bron Gondwana is similar to the above solution. If you use servers with multiple serial ports, you can connect each spare serial port to the console port of the next server, creating a ring of console connections (in some sort of order). This can be made to work reasonably well with the aid of the conserver software, but can be a bit confusing otherwise (i.e. remembering which port is connected to which console). And you are stuck if you need to use serial ports for other things (such as modems) or you have machines without spare ports. Or, if your budget exceeds your willingness to hack, you can buy an off-the-shelf solution. These vary in price and capability. See, for example, Lightwave, Perle, Avocent or Black Box. These solutions can be quite expensive - typically $USD100 - $USD400 per port. Our Solution In light of the above requirements, we chose a solution based on a dedicated PC running &unix; with a multiport serial card, and some software designed to handle serial consoles. It includes the following elements: A surplus PC. We used a &pentium; 166, with a PCI bus, 2Gbyte hard disk and 64Mb of RAM. This is a massive overkill for this task, and P-100, 500Mb, 32Mb would be more than enough. A PC &unix; system. We used &os; 4.3 as that is used for other tasks within our office. A multi-port serial card. We chose the &easyio; PCI 8-port card from Stallion Technologies. This cost us about $AUD740, or under $100/port, from Harris Technologies (which has lots of stuff but is by no means the cheapest place in town - shop around and you might get it a lot cheaper). This card has a big DB80 connector on the back, and a cable plugs into that which has a block with 8 RJ-45 sockets on it. (We chose the RJ-45 version as our entire cable plant is RJ-45. This allows us to patch connections from the required box to the console server without any special cables.) This is the only thing we needed to buy to make this all happen. We build two servers, one for each computer room, with 8 ports in one and 16 ports (via two &easyio; PCI cards) in the other. If we needed more than 16 ports, then another of the Stallion cards would be more cost-effective. We could conceivably support 128 ports in each server (with 2 EasyConnect 8/64 host cards and 8 16 port RJ-45 modules) for about $AUD12,000. A modem for remote access to the console server host when the network is down. We have not done this yet as the computer room is next door, but when we put a server in Sydney we will add the modem. The idea is that when the network is down, you can dial up and log into the server machine and run the console program locally. For security, we will probably leave the modem powered off and ask the gopher in Sydney to turn on the well-labelled button when we need it. A program called conserver. This program does all the magic required to enable remote access to consoles, and do the replaying and logging etc. It comes in two parts: a server called conserver that runs as a daemon and connects to the serial ports, handles logging etc, and a client program called console that can connect to the server, display console messages, send keystrokes (and BREAK), etc. This design covers all the major requirements except remote power cycling: Remote access comes because the console client program works across the network. Logging is handled by the conserver program. If the network is down, then we can use the console on the PC to run the console client locally. For remote sites, we can add a modem for dial-in access to the the server command line to run the client. By patching the &solaris; servers (see ), we can avoid pranging the whole computer room when the console server PC crashes (or the power supply fails, or whatever). We already have pager alerts from another system we have installed, but the console server has all the required log info so that could easily be implemented if we needed. And it even has a modem for calling the pager company! We do not currently support remote power cycling. Some versions of the conserver program support this, but it does require specialised serial-controlled power boards. We have no immediate need for remote power cycling (we have a gopher in each remote office who can do it by remote control) so this is not a major problem, and we could add it easily should we ever see the need and get the appropriate hardware. This solution was very cheap. Total cost for the 9-port server was $AUD750 for the IO card, as we re-used a surplus PC and already owned the hardware for the special cables. If we had to buy everything, then it would still only cost around $AUD1500 for the 8-port server. Setting Up The Server Patching the Stallion driver The only hitch with setting up the server PC is getting the device drivers for the Stallion card. &os; has supported Stallion ISA cards for many years, but unfortunately the driver has not been actively maintained for some years, and does not support the newer Stallion cards (such as the &easyio; PCI card or some of the other ISA cards with newer UART chips). I have put together a patch file for &os; 4.3 (based on the work of many other people) that will update the system to support these newer cards. Hopefully, this patch will be committed to the &os; tree in time for the 4.4 release. If you are running &os; 4 from prior to this time, you will need to download and apply this patch (instructions are included at the top of the patch file). If you are running &os; 3, then you had probably best upgrade. Configuring a new kernel The Stallion driver is not included in the default GENERIC kernel, so you will need to create a kernel config file with the appropriate entries. See &man.stl.4; and the appropriate section of the &os; Handbook. Building World After applying the patch you will certainly need to update the whole system, including all the user programs and the kernel. See the documentation in /usr/src/UPDATING and the &os; Handbook. Making The Devices You will need to make the device notes for the Stallion card (which are not made by default). A new version of /dev/MAKEDEV with Stallion support will have been created by the mergemaster run during the above procedure. If you have a Stallion card with more than 8 ports, then you will need to edit /dev/MAKEDEV and change the definition of maxport at about line 250. By default, MAKEDEV only makes device nodes for 8 ports to keep the size of the /dev directory down. Run a command like: &prompt.root; cd /dev/ && sh MAKEDEV cuaE0 to create dial-out devices for the first Stallion card. See the comments in MAKEDEV and the &man.stl.4; man page for more details. Compiling conserver See the section on conserver versions ; the version I use is not the one available in the &os; ports collection.) There are two ways to install conserver. You can either compile from the source or use the &os; ports framework. Using the ports framework Using the ports is a bit cleaner, as the package system can then keep track of installed software and cleanly delete them when not being used. Download the port framework from here, unpack it to create a directory called conserver-port. Change into that directory and (as root) type: &prompt.root; make DEFAULTHOST=consolehost install where consolehost is the name of the machine running the console server. Specifying this when the binary is compiled will avoid having to either specify it each time the program is run on remote hosts or having to maintain a conserver.cf file on every host. This command will fetch, patch, configure, compile and install the conserver application. You can then run make package to create a binary package that can be installed on all the other &os; hosts with &man.pkg.add.1;. For extra style points, you can make a two versions of the package: one for the console server machine without a DEFAULTHOST argument, and one for all the other hosts with a DEFAULTHOST argument. This will mean the console client program on the console server machine will default to localhost, which will work in the absence of name servers when the network is busted, and also allow trusted (i.e. no password required) connections via the localhost IP address for users logged into the console server machine (either via the console screen or the emergency backup modem). The version for the other machines with a DEFAULTHOST argument means users can just use the console client without specifying a hostname every time, and without needing to configure the conserver.cf file on every machine. From the source tarball If you prefer, you can download conserver and compile it yourself. You might need to do this if you want to install the console client on non-&os; systems. We run the client on our &solaris; hosts and it inter-operates with the &os;-hosted server with no problems. This allows anyone in the whole company (many of whom have PCs and no &os; host access on their desk) to access the console server. Download the file from the conserver.com FTP site. Extract it into a handy directory then configure it by running &prompt.user; ./configure The argument avoids having to specify the master server every time the client is run remotely (or keeping up-to-date config files on all remote hosts). The argument avoids having to update on every machine. Then type make and, as root, make install. Configuring conserver The conserver program is configured via a file called conserver.cf. This file usually lives in /usr/local/etc and is documented in the &man.conserver.cf.5; manual page. Our config file looks like this: LOGDIR=/var/log/consoles gallows:/dev/cuaE0:9600p:&: roo:/dev/cuaE1:9600p:&: kanga:/dev/cuaE2:9600p:&: %% allow: itga.com.au trusted: 127.0.0.1 buzz The first line means all the console log files by default go into the /var/log/consoles directory. The & in each line says the log file for that machine will be /var/log/consoles/machine. The next three lines show three machines to which we need to connect. We use the cuaEx devices rather than the ttyEx devices because console ports typically do not show carrier. This means that opening ttyEx would hang and conserver would never connect. Using the cuaEx device avoids this problem. Another solution would be to use the ttyEx devices and enable soft carrier on these ports, perhaps by setting this using the ttyiEx device in the /etc/rc.serial file. See the comments in this file for more details. Also see &man.sio.4; for information on the initial-state and locked-state devices. (The Stallion driver also supports these conventions). And see the &man.stty.1; for details on setting device modes. The last section shows that any user logged into the server machine has passwordless access to all consoles. We do this because there are no user accounts on this machine and it is safely isolated from the wide world behind our firewall. The allow line allows anyone on a machine inside our organisation to access the console server if they provide their password, which is recorded in the conserver.passwd file (see next section). Setting conserver passwords The conserver.passwd file contains the encrypted version of the password that each user. The file is documented in the conserver.cf(5) manual page. The only tricky bit is loading the file with encoded passwords. It appeared in &os; that was is no obvious way to generate an encrypted password for inclusion in another file (but see below). So I put together a quick hack perl script to do this: @rands = (); foreach (0..4) { push(@rands, rand 64); } $salt = join '', ('.', '/', 0..9, 'A'..'Z', 'a'..'z')[@rands]; $salt = '$1$' . $salt . '$'; print 'Enter password: '; `stty -echo`; $cleartext = <>; `stty echo`; chop($cleartext); print crypt($cleartext, $salt), "\n"; This uses the &os; MD5-style encrypted passwords. Running this on other &unix; variants, or on &os; with DES passwords, will likely need a different style of salt. &a.kris; has since pointed out you can get the same effect using the openssl passwd command: &prompt.user; openssl passwd -1 Password: password $1$VTd27V2G$eFu23iHpLvCBM5nQtNlKj/ Starting <application>conserver</application> at system boot time There are two ways this can be done. Firstly, you could start up conserver from init by including an entry in /etc/ttys that is similar to this: cuaE0 "/usr/local/sbin/conserver" unknown on insecure This has two advantages: init will restart the master console server if it ever crashes for any reason (but we have not noticed any crashes so far), and it arranges for standard output of the conserver process to be directed to the named tty (in this case cuaE0). This is useful because you can plug a terminal into this port, and the conserver program will show all console output not otherwise captured by a client console connection. This is useful as a general monitoring tool to see if anything is going on. We set this terminal up in the computer room but visible from the main office. It is a very handy feature. The downside of running conserver from the ttys file is that it cannot run in daemon mode (else &man.init.8; would continually restart it). This means conserver will not write a PID file, which makes it hard to rotate the log files. So we start conserver from an rc.d script. If you installed conserver via the port, there will be a conserver.sh.sample file installed in /usr/local/etc/rc.d. Copy and/or rename this to conserver.sh to enable conserver to start at boot time. In fact we use a modified version of this script which also connects conserver to a terminal via a tty device so we can monitor unwatched console output. Our conserver.sh script looks like this: #!/bin/sh # # Startup for conserver # PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin case "$1" in 'start') TTY=/dev/cuaE7 conserver -d > $TTY # get NL->CR+NL mapping so msgs look right stty < /dev/cuaE7 opost onlcr echo -n ' conserver' ;; 'stop') kill `cat /var/run/conserver.pid` && echo -n ' conserver' ;; *) echo "Usage: $0 { start | stop }" ;; esac exit 0 Note the use of cuaE0 device and the need to set tty modes for proper NL-<CR handling). Keeping the log files trimmed &os; has a program called newsyslog that will automatically handle log file trimming. Just add some lines to the configuration file /etc/newsyslog.conf for the console logs: # # The log files from conserver /var/log/consoles/gallows 644 10 1000 * Z /var/run/conserver.pid /var/log/consoles/kanga 644 10 1000 * Z /var/run/conserver.pid /var/log/consoles/roo 644 10 1000 * Z /var/run/conserver.pid This tells newsyslog (which is run from cron every hour on the hour) that the console log files should be archived and compressed once they reach 1Mb, that we should keep 10 of them, and that to signal the server program you send a SIGHUP to the process whose PID is in the conserver.pid file. This is the master server, and it will arrange to signal all the child processes. Yes, this will send a HUP to all clients whenever a single log file needs rotating, but that is quite cheap. See &man.newsyslog.8; for details. Cabling This is always the hardest part of this kind of problem. We had only a dozen or so cables/headshells to build, and we already had a collection of the appropriate crimping tools and hardware, so we did it ourselves. But if you are not set up for this, or you have a large number of cables to make, then you might consider getting some cables custom made. Look in the yellow pages, there are a surprising number of places that do this! Getting custom-made cabling is good, and you can get much more professional results, but can be expensive. For example, the RJ-45 to DB-25 adapter kits described below are about $10 each; custom-made headshells are about twice that (and take a couple of weeks to arrive). Similarly, crimping custom RJ-45 to RJ-45 leads is quite cheap (say, $5 each) but it takes a fair amount of time. Custom made RJ-45 socket to RJ-45 plug converters cost about $25 each. We have settled on RJ-45 Cat-V cabling for all our office and computer room cabling needs. This included patching between racks in the computer room. For serial connections, we use patchable headshells that have RJ-45 sockets on the back. This allows us to patch whatever RJ-45–DB-25 connections we need. Which is just as well, because there are many incompatible ways to represent serial connections on the RJ-45 plug. So the cabling has to be very careful to use the right mapping. RJ-45 colors RJ-45 cables and plugs have 8 pins/conductors. These are used as 4 matched pairs. There are a couple of conventions about how the pairs are mapped onto pins, but 100baseT uses the most common (known as EIA 586B). There are three common color-coding conventions for the individual conductors in RJ-45 cables. They are: <!-- XXX: Add title for this table --> Pin Scheme 1 Scheme 2 (EIA 568B) Scheme 3 (EIA 568A) Pair 1 Blue White+Green White+Orange 2+ 2 Orange Green Orange 2- 3 Black White+Orange White+Green 3+ 4 Red Blue Blue 1+ 5 Green White+Blue White+Blue 1- 6 Yellow Orange Green 3- 7 Brown White+Brown White+Brown 4+ 8 White or Grey Brown Brown 4-
Note EIA 468A and EIA 568B are very similar, simply swapping the colors assigned to pair 2 and pair 3. See for example the Cabletron Tech Support Site for more details. The pins in the RJ-45 plug are numbered from 1 to 8. Holding a patch lead with the cable pointing down and the clip away from you, pin 1 is at the left. Or, looking into an RJ-45 socket with the clip to the top, pin 1 is on the right. The following illustration (shamelessly lifted from the Cabletron web site above) shows it pretty well: We have four classes of equipment to deal with in our setup: Sun servers Sun servers operate as DTE (i.e. send data on TxD and read RxD, and assert DTR) with a female DB-25 socket on board. So we need to create a headshell for the Stallion that operates as DCE and has a male DB-25 plug (i.e. acts as a null modem cable as well as converts from RJ-45 to DB-25). We use headshells that have an RJ-45 socket in them and 8 short flyleads with DB-25 pins on the end. These pins can be inserted into the DB-25 plug as required. This allows us to create a custom RJ-45-DB-25 mapping. We used a couple of different sorts, including the MOD-TAP part no. 06-9888-999-00 and the FA730 series from Black Box. On our version of the headshells, these flyleads had the following colours (from Pin 1-8): Blue, Orange, Black, Red, Green, Yellow, Brown, White. (Looking into an RJ-45 socket, with the clip towards the top, pin 1 is on the right.) This is how they are connected to the DB-25 socket: <!-- XXX: Add a title here --> Stallion RJ-45 Pin Colour Signal Sun DB-25 Male Pin RS232 Signal 1 Blue DCD 20 DTR 2 Orange RTS 5 CTS 3 Black Chassis Gnd 1 Chassis Gnd 4 Red TxD 3 RxD 5 Green RxD 2 TxD 6 Yellow Signal Gnd 7 Signal Gnd 7 Brown CTS 4 RTS 8 White RTS 8 DCD
Note that colours may be different for your cables/headshells. In particular, pin 8 may be grey instead of white. Remember to label the headshell clearly, in a way that will not fade/fall off/rub off with time! Cisco 16xx/26xx/36xx Routers I think that all Cisco gear that has RJ-45 console ports and runs &os;will have the same cable requirements. But best to check first. We have tried this on 1600s and 2600s only. Both the Stallion card and the 2600 have RJ-45 connections, but of course they are not compatible. So you need to crimp up a special RJ-45-RJ-45 cable. And this cable must be plugged in the right way round! We use normal RJ-45 flyleads from the router to the patch panel, then the special flylead from the patch panel to the Stallion card. We built two special Stallion-Cisco leads by cutting in half a 2m flylead and crimping an RJ-45 with the appropriate pinouts to each free end. The original connector will be the Cisco end of the cable, the new crimped connector will be the Stallion end. Holding the RJ-45 connector on the flylead with the cable pointing down and the clip pointing away, this is the order of the colours of the cables in our flylead (pins 1-8, from L to R): white/green, green, white/orange, blue, white/blue, orange, white/brown, brown. For the Stallion end, trim and discard the brown/white+brown and green/white+green pairs. Then holding the RJ-45 plug in the same manner (cable down, clip away), the connections should be (from L to R): None, None, Blue, Orange, White/Orange, White/Blue, None, None, as shown: <!-- XXX: add title for this table --> Cisco RJ-45 Pin Colour Cisco Signal Stallion RJ-45 Pin Stallion Signal 1 White/Green RTS N/C   2 Green DTR N/C   3 White/Orange TxD 5 RxD 4 Blue Gnd 3 Gnd 5 White/Blue Gnd 6 Gnd 6 Orange RxD 4 TxD 7 White/Brown DSR N/C   8 Brown CTS N/C  
Note again that colours may be different for your cables/headshells. Carefully label the cable, and each end of the cable, and test it. If it does not work, testing is really hard as they do not make RJ-45 serial line testers! Let me state this more stongly: Be very sure that you label this cable in a way that is easily, instantly and permanently recognisable as a special cable and not easily confused with normal drop cables. Some suggestions (from Hugh Irvine): Make them out of different coloured cable. For marking the ends, clear heat-shrink tubing slipped over printed labels *before* putting on the connectors is the best way I have seen for marking what they are. You can also use Panduit or similar tags that you put on with nylon tie straps, but I find the ink wears off the tags. Cisco &catalyst; switches Astoundingly, the pinout on the console ports of the &catalyst; switches is actually different to the pinout used on the 26xx-series Cisco hardware. I think the way to tell which is which is by considering the operating software. If it uses &ios;, then the previous pinout is required. If it uses the switch software, then this pinout is required. Fortunately, while the pinouts are different, the &catalyst; pinout is simply a mirror image of the pinout for the 2600. Even more fortunately, the Ciscos (both &catalyst; switches and 2600s) seem to ship with a special rollover cable, which is exactly what is required in this case. We use the rollover cable from the &catalyst; switches to the patch panel, then the same cable as above for the 2600s from the patch panel to the Stallion card, and it all works just fine. This rollover cable is an RJ-45-RJ-45 cable and is intended to be used with the shipped (hardwired) RJ-45 - DB-25 and RJ-45–DB-9 headshells for console connections. Ours are 2m long, either light blue or black, and are quite flat. Attempts to use them for 100baseT ethernet will fail miserably! You can tell it is a rollover cable by holding both ends with the cable pointing down and the clip pointing away from you. Check the colour of the leads in each pin in the two connectors, they should be mirror images. (In our case, one goes grey-orange-black-red-green-yellow-blue-brown, the other brown-blue-yellow-green-red-black-orange-grey). This is a rollover cable. If you do not have a rollover cable present, then you can use the same cable as for the 26xx except plug it in the other way around (i.e. original 8-pin plug goes into the Stallion, the new crimped plug with only 4 active wires goes into the &catalyst; switch). &os; servers (or any other &i386; PC systems using a serial console) We run &os; 4 on a couple of &i386; PCs for various peripheral uses. &os; usually uses a screen and keyboard for the console, but can be configured to use a serial port (usually the first serial port known as COM1 in DOS/&windows; or ttyd0 in &unix;). The cabling for these servers depends on the PC harware. If the PC has DB-25 female socket on board (as most older PCs do), then the same headshell as works for the Sun server above will work fine. If the PC has DB-9 male plug on board (as more recent PCs tend to do), then there are two choices. Either use a DB-9 to DB-25 converter (this is not recommended as it can lead to unreliable connections over the long term as the adapter is bumped/works loose), or build an RJ-45 to DB-9 cable as follows: <!-- XXX: add title for this table --> Stallion RJ-45 Pin Colour Signal PC DB-9 Female Pin RS232 Signal 1 Blue DCD 4 DTR 2 Orange RTS 8 CTS 3 Black Chassis Gnd N/C   4 Red TxD 2 RxD 5 Green RxD 3 TxD 6 Yellow Signal Gnd 5 Signal Gnd 7 Brown CTS 7 RTS 8 White RTS 1 DCD
See for tips on configuring &os; to use a serial console. On Sun Systems And Break Anyone who has turned off a terminal used as a console for a Sun system will know what happens and why this is a problem. Sun hardware recognises a serial BREAK as a command to halt the OS and return to the ROM monitor prompt. A serial BREAK is an out-of-band signal on an RS-232 serial port that involves making the TX DATA line active (i.e. pulled down to less than -5v) for more than two whole character times (or about 2ms on a 9600bps line). Alas, this BREAK signal is all to easily generated by serial hardware during power-on or power-off. And the Stallion card does, in fact, generate breaks when the power to the PC fails. Unless fixed, this problem would mean that every Sun box connected to the console server would be halted whenever the power failed (due to dead power supplies, or fat-fingered operators unplugging it, or whatever). This is clearly not an acceptable situation. Fortunately, Sun have come up with a set of fixes for this. For &solaris; 2.6 and later, the kbd(1) command can be used to disable the ROM-on-BREAK behaviour. This is a good start, but leaves you out of luck in the situation where a break is needed to get into a broken machine. Starting with &solaris; 8, the kbd command can also be used to enable an alternate break sequence using the kbd -a alternate command. When this is set, the key sequence ReturnTildeCtrlB (within 5 seconds) will drop to the ROM. You can enable this permanently by editing the /etc/default/kbd file; see the kbd(1) man page. Note that this alternate break sequence is only active once the kernel has started running multiuser and processed the default file. While the ROM is active (during power-on and during the boot process) and while running single-user, you still need to use a BREAK to get to the ROM prompt. The console client can cause the server to send a BREAK using the escape sequence Esccl1. If you have a Sun software support contract, there are patches available for &solaris; 2.6 and 2.7 that add the alternate break capability integrated into &solaris; 2.8. &solaris; 2.6 requires patch 105924-10 or higher. &solaris; 2.7 requires patch 107589-02 or higher. We have added this patch to all our &solaris; 2.6 servers, and added it (and the entry in the /etc/default/kbd file) to our jumpstart configuration so it will automatically be added to every new install. We have confirmed by direct testing that neither the Cisco 16xx, 26xx, or &catalyst; hardware suffers from the BREAK sent when the Stallion card loses power. Using a Serial Console on &os; The procedure for doing this is described in detail in the &os; Handbook. This is a quick summary. Check the kernel configuration Check that the kernel configuration file has flags 0x10 in the config line for the sio0 device. This signals this device (known as COM1 in DOS/&windows; or /dev/ttyd0 in &os;) can be used as a console. This flag is set on the GENERIC and LINT sample configs, so is likely to be set in your kernel. Create the <filename>/boot.conf</filename> file This file should be created containing a single line containing just -h (minus the quotes). This tells the &os; boot blocks to use the serial console. Edit <filename>/etc/ttys</filename> Edit this file and make the following changes. If you are not going to have any keyboard/video screen on this server at all, you should find all the lines for ttyv0 through ttyv8: ttyv1 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure Change the on to off. This will stop login screens being run on the useless video consoles. Find the line containing ttyd0. Change it from ttyd0 "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" dialup off secure to ttyd0 "/usr/libexec/getty std.9600" vt100 on secure (replacing vt100 with the term type of your console. The xterms terminal type might be a good choice). This allows you to log in to the console port once the system is running multi-user. Reboot and off you go! Security Implications The client-server protocol for conserver requires the user of the console client to enter a password. This password is passed across the net in cleartext! This means conserver is not really suitable for use across untrusted networks (such as the Internet). Use of conserver-only passwords (in the conserver.passwd file) slightly mitigate this problem, but anyone sniffing a conserver connection can easily get console access, and from there prang your machine using the console break sequence. For operating across the Internet, use something secure like SSH to log into to the server machine, and run the console client there. On Conserver Versions The conserver program has fractured into a number of versions. The home page referenced below seems to be the latest and most featureful version around, and carries a version number of 7.0.2. This is maintained by Bryan Stansell bryan@conserver.com, who has brought together the work of many people (listed on his webpage). The &os; ports collection contains a port for version 8.5 of conserver. This seems to be older and less featureful than the 7.0.2 version (in particular, it does not support consoles connected to terminal server ports and does not support a conserver.passwd file), and is written in a fairly idiosyncratic manner (using a preprocessor to generate C code). Version 8.5 is maintained by Kevin S. Braunsdorf ksb+conserver@sa.fedex.com who did most of the original work on conserver, and whose work Bryan Stansell is building on. The 8.5 version does support one feature not in the 7.0.2 version (controlling power to remote machines via a specific serial-interfaced power controller hardware). As shipped with &os;, the 8.5 version does not authenticate against &os; servers using &man.md5.1; passwords. There is a patch in the &os; GNATS system (which you can view at ports/28432) that fixes this problem. Kevin has indicated this patch will be included in future versions of conserver from him. There are a couple of other problems with the 8.5 version as well. It is hard to rotate log files, as conserver does not create a PID file and killing the parent conserver process does not kill the children (which have the logfiles open). Compiling it (on anything other than &os;) is a pain because it depends on a couple of other large programs to compile. This is because it is not written in C but in a macro language that produces C code, and so depends on these macro processors. The intent of this macro language is to hide system dependencies. The 7.0.2 version uses GNU configure for the same task, and compiling this version on &solaris; is a breeze. (Compiling 8.5 is easier on &os; as the ports framework takes care of all this for you). After compiling on &solaris;, the console program would not authenticate against the conserver program on &os;, because it used getpass on &solaris; that silently truncates passwords to 8 characters. &os; uses MD5 passwords that can be (and in our case, are) longer than 8 characters. There was some confusion about the role of groups in conserver. When replaying log messages in 8.5, it seemed to replay messages from all consoles in the group, whereas 7.0.2 seems to do the obvious thing and keep output from individual consoles separate. (This may well have just been boneheaded setup mistakes on my part however.) The upshot was that the 8.5 version needed a new group (and process) per console, whereas the 7.0.2 version will happily support multiple ports per process. + Links http://www.conserver.com/ Homepage for the latest version of conserver. ftp://ftp.conserver.com/conserver/conserver-7.0.2.tar.gz The source tarball for version 7.0.2 of conserver. http://www.stallion.com/ Homepage of Stallion Technologies. http://www.conserver.com/consoles/msock.html Davis Harris' Minor Scroll of Console Knowledge contains a heap of useful information on serial consoles and serial communications in general. http://www.conserver.com/consoles/ The Greater Scroll of Console Knowledge contains even more specific information on connecting devices to various other devices. Oh the joy of standards! http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/doug/console.html Doug Hughes has a similar console server, based on the screen program and an old &sunos; host. http://www.realweasel.com/ The Real Weasel company makes a ISA or PCI video card that looks like a PC video card but actually talks to a serial port. This can be used to implement serial consoles on PC hardware for operating systems that can not be forced to use serial console ports early enough. Files stal-jumbo-patch. Stallion Jumbo Patch for &os; 4 (unzipped, 400 KB). stal-jumbo-patch.gz. Stallion Jumbo Patch for &os; 4 (gzipped, 140 KB). conserver-port.tar.gz. A &os; port framework for conserver 7.0.2. conserver-port.shar. The port framework as a SHAR file. Manual Pages console(8) conserver(8) conserver.cf(5) Change Log 10 July, 2001 Initial version announced on &os; and Sage-AU mailing lists. 12 July, 2001 Notes on some commercial console servers from Doug Schache. Grrr. Fixed the pinout for the Cisco - Stallion RJ-45 cable. The cable would have worked but was backwards. The new table now reflects the description. Noted that &catalyst; cable is a 26xx cable plugged in the other way around. Added notes about RJ-45 pin numberring and color coding conventions. Added notes about serial console on &os;/i386 platforms. Now in RCS. 13 July, 2001 Notes on cable marking from Hugh Irvine. Notes on custom-made cables, source for headshells. 18 July, 2001 Links to Black Box adapters. Fix dates. It is July, already! Pointers to commercial solutions and serial-port-on-other-server setup. Pointer to openssl passwd command.
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/fbsd-from-scratch/article.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/fbsd-from-scratch/article.sgml index 4bd3cf121b..e9c4b949e8 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/fbsd-from-scratch/article.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/fbsd-from-scratch/article.sgml @@ -1,646 +1,646 @@ %man; %freebsd; %trademarks; FreeBSD From Scratch"> ]>
FreeBSD From Scratch Jens Schweikhardt
schweikh@FreeBSD.org
 2002,2003,2004 Jens Schweikhardt $FreeBSD$ &tm-attrib.freebsd; &tm-attrib.adobe; &tm-attrib.general; This article describes my efforts at &scratch.ap;: a fully automated installation of a customized &os; system compiled from source, including compilation of all your favorite ports and configured to match your idea of the perfect system. If you think make world is a wonderful concept, &scratch.ap; extends it to make evenmore. Introduction Have you ever upgraded your system with make world? There is a problem if you have only one system on your disks. If the installworld fails partway through, you are left with a broken system that might not even boot any longer. Or maybe the installworld runs smoothly but the new kernel does not boot. Then it is time to reach for the Fixit CD and dig for those backups you have taken half a year ago. I believe in the wipe your disks when upgrading systems paradigm. Wiping disks, or rather partitions, makes sure there is no old cruft left lying around, something which most upgrade procedures just do not care about. But wiping the partitions means you have to also recompile/reinstall all your ports and packages and then redo all your carefully crafted configuration tweaks. If you think that this task should be automated as well, read on. Why would I (not) want &scratch.ap;? This is a legitimate question. We have sysinstall and the well known way to compile the kernel and the userland tools. The problem with sysinstall is that it is severely limited in what, where and how it can install. It is normally used to install pre-built distribution sets and packages from some other source (CD, DVD, FTP). It cannot install the result of a make buildworld. It cannot install a second system under a directory in a running system. It cannot install in Vinum partitions. It cannot compile ports, only install precompiled packages. It is hard to script or to make arbitrary post-installation changes. Last but not least, sysinstall is semi-officially at its End-Of-Life. The well known way to build and install the world, as described in the Handbook, by default replaces the existing system. Only the kernel and modules are saved. System binaries, headers and a lot of other files are overwritten; obsolete files are still present and can cause surprises. If the upgrade fails for any reason, it may be hard or even impossible to restore the previous state of the system. &scratch.ap; solves all these problems. The strategy is simple: use a running system to install a new system under an empty directory tree, while new partitions are mounted appropriately in that tree. Many config files can be copied to the appropriate place and &man.mergemaster.8; can take care of those that cannot. Arbitrary post-configuration of the new system can be done from within the old system, up to the point where you can chroot to the new system. In other words, we go through three stages, where each stage consists of either running a shell script or invoke make: stage_1.sh: Create a new bootable system under an empty directory and merge or copy as many files as are necessary. Then boot the new system. stage_2.sh: Install desired ports. stage_3.mk: Do post-configuration for software installed in previous stage. Once you have used &scratch.ap; to build a second system and found it works satisfactorily for a couple of weeks, you can then use it again to reinstall the original system. From now on, whenever you feel like an update is in order, you simply toggle the partitions you want to wipe and reinstall. Maybe you have heard of or even tried Linux From Scratch, or LFS for short. LFS also describes how to build and install a system from scratch in empty partitions using a running system. The focus in LFS seems to be to show the role of each system component (such as kernel, compiler, devices, shell, terminal database, etc) and the details of each component's installation. &scratch.ap; does not go into that much detail. My goal is to provide an automated and complete installation, not explaining all the gory details that go on under the hood when making the world. In case you want to explore &os; at this level of detail, start looking at /usr/src/Makefile and follow the actions of a make buildworld. There are also downsides in the approach taken by &scratch.ap; that you should bear in mind. While compiling the ports during stage two the system can not be used for its usual duties. If you run a production server you have to consider the downtime caused by stage two. The ports compiled by stage_2.conf.default below require about 4 hours to build on an AMD1800+ SCSI system with 10krpm disks and 1GB of RAM. If you prefer to install packages instead of ports, you can significantly reduce the downtime to about 10 minutes. Prerequisites For going the &scratch.ap; way, you need to have: A running &os; system with sources and a ports tree. At least one unused partition where the new system will be installed. Experience with running &man.mergemaster.8;. Or at least no fear doing so. If you have no or only a slow link to the Internet: the distfiles for your favorite ports. Basic knowledge of shell scripting with the Bourne shell, &man.sh.1;. Finally, you should also be able to tell your boot loader how to boot the new system, either interactively, or by means of a config file. Stage One: System Installation The first version of this article used a single shell script for stage one where all your customization had to be done by editing the script. After valuable user feedback I have decided to separate the code and data in the scripts. This allows to have different configuration data sets to install different systems without changing any of the code scripts. The code script for stage one is stage_1.sh and when run with exactly one argument, like &prompt.root; ./stage_1.sh default will read its configuration from stage_1.conf.default and write a log to stage_1.log.default. Further below you find my stage_1.conf.default. You need to customize it in various places to match your idea of the perfect system. I have tried to extensively comment the places you should adapt. The configuration script must provide four shell functions, create_file_systems, create_etc_fstab, copy_files and all_remaining_customization (in case it matters: this is also the sequence in which they will be called - from stage_1.sh). + from stage_1.sh). The points to ponder are: Partition layout. I do not subscribe to the idea of a single huge partition for the whole system. My systems generally have at least one partition for /, /usr and /var with /tmp symlinked to /var/tmp. In addition I share the file systems for /home (user homes), /home/ncvs (&os; CVS repository replica), /usr/ports (the ports tree), /src (various checked out src trees) and /share (other shared data without the need for backups, like the news spool). Luxury items. What you want immediately after booting the new system and even before starting stage two. The reason for not simply chrooting to the new system during stage one and installing all my beloved ports is that in theory and in practice there are bootstrap and consistency issues: stage one has your old kernel running, but the chrooted environment consists of new binaries and headers. If the new binaries use a new system call, these binaries will die with SIGSYS, Bad system call, because the old kernel does not have that system call. I have seen other issues when I tried building lang/perl5. Before you run stage_1.sh make sure you have completed the usual tasks in preparation for make installworld installkernel, like: configured your kernel config file successfully completed make buildworld successfully completed make buildkernel KERNCONF=whatever When you run stage_1.sh for the first time, and the config files copied from your running system to the new system are not up-to-date with respect to what is under /usr/src, mergemaster will ask you how to proceed. I recommend merging the changes. If you get tired of going through the dialogues you can simply update the files on your running system once (Only if this is an option. You probably do not want to do this if one of your systems runs -STABLE and the other -CURRENT. The changes may be incompatible). Subsequent mergemaster invocations will detect that the RCS version IDs match those under /usr/src and skip the file. The stage_1.sh script will stop at the first command that fails (returns a non-zero exit status) due to set -e, so you cannot overlook errors. It will also stop if you use an unset environment variable, probably due to a typo. You should correct any errors in your version of stage_1.conf.default before you go on. In stage_1.sh we invoke mergemaster. Even if none of the files requires a merge, it will display and ask at the end *** Comparison complete Do you wish to delete what is left of /var/tmp/temproot.stage1? [no] no Please answer no or just hit Enter. The reason is that mergemaster will have left a few zero sized files below /var/tmp/temproot.stage1 which will be copied to the new system later (unless already there). After that it will list the files it installed, making use of a pager, &man.more.1; by default, optionally &man.less.1;: *** You chose the automatic install option for files that did not exist on your system. The following were installed for you: /newroot/etc/defaults/rc.conf ... /newroot/COPYRIGHT (END) Type q to quit the pager. Then you will be informed about login.conf: *** You installed a login.conf file, so make sure that you run '/usr/bin/cap_mkdb /newroot/etc/login.conf' to rebuild your login.conf database Would you like to run it now? y or n [n] The answer does not matter since we will run &man.cap.mkdb.1; in any case. Here is the author's stage_1.conf.default, which you need to modify substantially. The comments give you enough information what to change. Please pay attention to the &man.newfs.8; commands. While you can not create new file systems on mounted partitions, the script will happily erase any unmounted /dev/da0s1a, /dev/da0s1e and /dev/da2s1e. This can be enough to ruin your day, so be sure to modify the device names. Download stage_1.conf.default . Running this script installs a system that when booted provides: Inherited users and groups. Firewalled Internet connectivity over Ethernet and PPP. Correct time zone and NTP. Some more minor configuration, like /etc/ttys and inetd. Other areas are prepared for configuration, but will not work until stage two is completed. For example we have copied files to configure printing and X11. Printing however is likely to need applications not found in the base system, like &postscript; utilities. X11 will not run before we have compiled the server, libraries and programs. Stage Two: Ports Installation It is also possible to install the (precompiled) packages at this stage, instead of compiling ports. In this case, stage_2.sh would be nothing more than a list of pkg_add commands. I trust you know how to write such a script. Here we concentrate on the more flexible and traditional way of using the ports. The following stage_2.sh script is how I install my favorite ports. It can be run any number of times and will skip all ports that are already installed. It supports the dryrun option () to just show what would be done. You run it like stage_1.sh with exactly one argument to denote a config file, e.g. &prompt.root; ./stage_2.sh default which will read the list of ports from stage_2.conf.default. The list of ports consists of lines with two or more space separated words: the category and the port, optionally followed by an installation command that will compile and install the port (default: make install). Empty lines and lines starting with # are ignored. Most of the time it suffices to only name category and port. A few ports however can be fine tuned by specifying make variables, e.g.: www mozilla make WITHOUT_MAILNEWS=yes WITHOUT_CHATZILLA=yes install mail procmail make BATCH=yes install In fact you can specify arbitrary shell commands, so you are not restricted to simple make invocations: java linux-sun-jdk13 yes | make install news inn-stable CONFIGURE_ARGS="--enable-uucp-rnews --enable-setgid-inews" make install Note that the line for news/inn-stable is an example for a one-shot shell variable assignment to CONFIGURE_ARGS. The port Makefile will use this as an initial value and augment some other essential args. The difference to specifying a make variable on the command line with news inn-stable make CONFIGURE_ARGS="--enable-uucp-rnews --enable-setgid-inews" install is that the latter will override instead of augment. It depends on the particular port which method you want. Be careful that your ports do not use an interactive install, i.e. they should not try to read from stdin other than what you explicitly give them on stdin. If they do, they will read the next line(s) from your list of ports in the here-document and get confused. If stage_2.sh mysteriously skips a port or stops processing, this is likely the reason. Below is stage_2.conf.default. A log file named LOGDIR/category+port is created for each port it actually installs. Download stage_2.conf.default. Stage Three You have installed your beloved ports during stage two. Some ports require a little bit of configuration. This is what stage three, the post-configuration is for. I could have integrated this post-configuration at the end of the stage_2.sh script. However, I think there is a conceptual difference between installing a port and modifying its out-of-the-box configuration that warrants a separate stage. I have chosen to implement stage three as a Makefile because this allows easy selection of what you want to configure simply by running: &prompt.root; make -f stage_3.mk target As with stage_2.sh make sure you have stage_3.mk available after booting the new system, either by putting it on a shared partition or copying it somewhere on the new system. Limitations The automated installation of a port may prove difficult if it is interactive and does not support make BATCH=YES install. For a few ports the interaction is nothing more than typing yes when asked to accept some license. If such input is read from the standard input, we simply pipe the appropriate answers to the installation command (usually make install; this is how I deal with java/linux-sun-jdk14 in stage_2.conf.default). This strategy for example does not work for editors/staroffice52, which requires that X11 is running. The installation procedure involves a fair amount of clicking and typing, so it cannot be automated like other ports can. However the following workaround does the trick for me: first I create a staroffice package on the old system with &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/editors/staroffice52 &prompt.root; make package ===> Building package for staroffice-5.2_1 Creating package /usr/ports/editors/staroffice52/staroffice-5.2_1.tbz Registering depends:. Creating bzip'd tar ball in '/usr/ports/editors/staroffice52/staroffice-5.2_1.tbz' and during stage two I simply use: &prompt.root; pkg_add /usr/ports/editors/staroffice52/staroffice-5.2_1.tbz You should also be aware of upgrade issues for config files. In general you do not know when and if the format or contents of a config file changes. A new group may be added to /etc/group, or /etc/passwd may gain another field. All of this has happened in the past. Simply copying a config file from the old to the new system may be enough most of the time, but in these cases it was not. If you update a system the canonical way (by overwriting the old files) you are expected to use mergemaster to deal with changes where you effectively want to merge your local config with potentially new items. Unfortunately, mergemaster is only available for base system files, not for anything installed by ports. Some third party software seems to be especially designed to keep me on my toes by changing the config file format every fortnight. To detect such silent changes, I keep a copy of the modified config files in the same place where I keep stage_3.mk and compare the result with a make rule, e.g. for apache's httpd.conf in target config_apache with @if ! cmp -s /usr/local/etc/apache2/httpd.conf httpd.conf; then \ echo "ATTENTION: the httpd.conf has changed. Please examine if"; \ echo "the modifications are still correct. Here is the diff:"; \ diff -u /usr/local/etc/apache2/httpd.conf httpd.conf; \ fi If the diff is innocuous I can make the message go away with cp /usr/local/etc/apache2/httpd.conf httpd.conf. I have used &scratch.ap; several times to update a 5-CURRENT to 5-CURRENT, i.e. I have never tried to install a 5-CURRENT from a 4-STABLE system or vice versa. Due to the number of changes between different major release numbers I would expect this process to be a bit more involved. Using &scratch.ap; for upgrades within the realm of 4-STABLE should work painlessly (although I have not yet tried it.) Users of 4-STABLE may want to consider the following areas: If you do not use the device file system, &man.devfs.5;, you may want to create devices for some of your hardware with &man.MAKEDEV.8; in all_remaining_customization. The Files Here are the three files you need beside the config files already shown above. This is the stage_1.sh script, which you should not need to modify. Download stage_1.sh. This is the stage_2.sh script. You may want to modify the variables at the beginning. Download stage_2.sh. This is my stage_3.mk to give you an idea how to automate all reconfiguration. Download stage_3.mk.
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/new-users/article.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/new-users/article.sgml index d6c6f0664d..8f9e6e549e 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/new-users/article.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/new-users/article.sgml @@ -1,1067 +1,1067 @@ %man; %mailing-lists; %freebsd; %trademarks; %urls; ]>
For People New to Both FreeBSD and &unix; Annelise Anderson
andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu
 August 15, 1997 &tm-attrib.freebsd; &tm-attrib.ibm; &tm-attrib.microsoft; &tm-attrib.netscape; &tm-attrib.opengroup; &tm-attrib.general; Congratulations on installing FreeBSD! This introduction is for people new to both FreeBSD and &unix;—so it starts with basics. It assumes you are using version 2.0.5 or later of &os; as distributed by &os;.org, your system (for now) has a single user (you)—and you are probably pretty good with DOS/&windows; or &os2;. Logging in and Getting Out Log in (when you see login:) as a user you created during installation or as root. (Your FreeBSD installation will already have an account for root; who can go anywhere and do anything, including deleting essential files, so be careful!) The symbols &prompt.user; and &prompt.root; in the following stand for the prompt (yours may be different), with &prompt.user; indicating an ordinary user and &prompt.root; indicating root. To log out (and get a new login: prompt) type &prompt.root; exit as often as necessary. Yes, press enter after commands, and remember that &unix; is case-sensitive—exit, not EXIT. To shut down the machine type &prompt.root; /sbin/shutdown -h now Or to reboot type &prompt.root; /sbin/shutdown -r now or &prompt.root; /sbin/reboot You can also reboot with CtrlAltDelete. Give it a little time to do its work. This is equivalent to /sbin/reboot in recent releases of FreeBSD and is much, much better than hitting the reset button. You do not want to have to reinstall this thing, do you? Adding A User with Root Privileges If you did not create any users when you installed the system and are thus logged in as root, you should probably create a user now with &prompt.root; adduser The first time you use adduser, it might ask for some defaults to save. You might want to make the default shell &man.csh.1; instead of &man.sh.1;, if it suggests sh as the default. Otherwise just press enter to accept each default. These defaults are saved in /etc/adduser.conf, an editable file. Suppose you create a user jack with full name Jack Benimble. Give jack a password if security (even kids around who might pound on the keyboard) is an issue. When it asks you if you want to invite jack into other groups, type wheel Login group is ``jack''. Invite jack into other groups: wheel This will make it possible to log in as jack and use the &man.su.1; command to become root. Then you will not get scolded any more for logging in as root. You can quit adduser any time by typing CtrlC, and at the end you will have a chance to approve your new user or simply type n for no. You might want to create a second new user so that when you edit jack's login files, you will have a hot spare in case something goes wrong. Once you have done this, use exit to get back to a login prompt and log in as jack. In general, it is a good idea to do as much work as possible as an ordinary user who does not have the power—and risk—of root. If you already created a user and you want the user to be able to su to root, you can log in as root and edit the file /etc/group, adding jack to the first line (the group wheel). But first you need to practice &man.vi.1;, the text editor—or use the simpler text editor, &man.ee.1;, installed on recent versions of FreeBSD. To delete a user, use the rmuser command. Looking Around Logged in as an ordinary user, look around and try out some commands that will access the sources of help and information within FreeBSD. Here are some commands and what they do: id Tells you who you are! pwd Shows you where you are—the current working directory. ls Lists the files in the current directory. ls Lists the files in the current directory with a * after executables, a / after directories, and an @ after symbolic links. ls Lists the files in long format—size, date, permissions. ls Lists hidden dot files with the others. If you are root, the dot files show up without the switch. cd Changes directories. cd .. backs up one level; note the space after cd. cd /usr/local goes there. cd ~ goes to the home directory of the person logged in—e.g., /usr/home/jack. Try cd /cdrom, and then ls, to find out if your CDROM is mounted and working. view filename Lets you look at a file (named filename) without changing it. Try view /etc/fstab. Type :q to quit. cat filename Displays filename on screen. If it is too long and you can see only the end of it, press ScrollLock and use the up-arrow to move backward; you can use ScrollLock with manual pages too. Press ScrollLock again to quit scrolling. You might want to try cat on some of the dot files in your home directory—cat .cshrc, cat .login, cat .profile. You will notice aliases in .cshrc for some of the ls commands (they are very convenient). You can create other aliases by editing .cshrc. You can make these aliases available to all users on the system by putting them in the system-wide csh configuration file, /etc/csh.cshrc. Getting Help and Information Here are some useful sources of help. Text stands for something of your choice that you type in—usually a command or filename. apropos text Everything containing string text in the whatis database. man text The manual page for text. The major source of documentation for &unix; systems. man ls will tell you all the ways to use the ls command. Press Enter to move through text, CtrlB to go back a page, CtrlF to go forward, q or CtrlC to quit. which text Tells you where in the user's path the command text is found. locate text All the paths where the string text is found. whatis text Tells you what the command text does and its manual page. Typing whatis * will tell you about all the binaries in the current directory. whereis text Finds the file text, giving its full path. You might want to try using whatis on some common useful commands like cat, more, grep, mv, find, tar, chmod, chown, date, and script. more lets you read a page at a time as it does in DOS, e.g., ls -l | more or more filename. The * works as a wildcard—e.g., ls w* will show you files beginning with w. Are some of these not working very well? Both &man.locate.1; and &man.whatis.1; depend on a database that is rebuilt weekly. If your machine is not going to be left on over the weekend (and running FreeBSD), you might want to run the commands for daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance now and then. Run them as root and, for now, give each one time to finish before you start the next one. &prompt.root; periodic daily output omitted &prompt.root; periodic weekly output omitted &prompt.root; periodic monthly output omitted If you get tired of waiting, press AltF2 to get another virtual console, and log in again. After all, it is a multi-user, multi-tasking system. Nevertheless these commands will probably flash messages on your screen while they are running; you can type clear at the prompt to clear the screen. Once they have run, you might want to look at /var/mail/root and /var/log/messages. Running such commands is part of system administration—and as a single user of a &unix; system, you are your own system administrator. Virtually everything you need to be root to do is system administration. Such responsibilities are not covered very well even in those big fat books on &unix;, which seem to devote a lot of space to pulling down menus in windows managers. You might want to get one of the two leading books on systems administration, either Evi Nemeth et.al.'s UNIX System Administration Handbook (Prentice-Hall, 1995, ISBN 0-13-15051-7)—the second edition with the red cover; or Æleen Frisch's Essential System Administration (O'Reilly & Associates, 2002, ISBN 0-596-00343-9). I used Nemeth. Editing Text To configure your system, you need to edit text files. Most of them will be in the /etc directory; and you will need to su to root to be able to change them. You can use the easy ee, but in the long run the text editor vi is worth learning. There is an excellent tutorial on vi in /usr/src/contrib/nvi/docs/tutorial, if you have the system sources installed. Before you edit a file, you should probably back it up. Suppose you want to edit /etc/rc.conf. You could just use cd /etc to get to the /etc directory and do: &prompt.root; cp rc.conf rc.conf.orig This would copy rc.conf to rc.conf.orig, and you could later copy rc.conf.orig to rc.conf to recover the original. But even better would be moving (renaming) and then copying back: &prompt.root; mv rc.conf rc.conf.orig &prompt.root; cp rc.conf.orig rc.conf because the mv command preserves the original date and owner of the file. You can now edit rc.conf. If you want the original back, you would then mv rc.conf rc.conf.myedit (assuming you want to preserve your edited version) and then &prompt.root; mv rc.conf.orig rc.conf to put things back the way they were. To edit a file, type &prompt.root; vi filename Move through the text with the arrow keys. Esc (the escape key) puts vi in command mode. Here are some commands: x delete letter the cursor is on dd delete the entire line (even if it wraps on the screen) i insert text at the cursor a insert text after the cursor Once you type i or a, you can enter text. Esc puts you back in command mode where you can type :w to write your changes to disk and continue editing :wq to write and quit :q! to quit without saving changes /text to move the cursor to text; /Enter (the enter key) to find the next instance of text. G to go to the end of the file nG to go to line n in the file, where n is a number CtrlL to redraw the screen Ctrlb and Ctrlf go back and forward a screen, as they do with more and view. Practice with vi in your home directory by creating a new file with vi filename and adding and deleting text, saving the file, and calling it up again. vi delivers some surprises because it is really quite complex, and sometimes you will inadvertently issue a command that will do something you do not expect. (Some people actually like vi—it is more powerful than DOS EDIT—find out about the :r command.) Use Esc one or more times to be sure you are in command mode and proceed from there when it gives you trouble, save often with :w, and use :q! to get out and start over (from your last :w) when you need to. Now you can cd to /etc, su to root, use vi to edit the file /etc/group, and add a user to wheel so the user has root privileges. Just add a comma and the user's login name to the end of the first line in the file, press Esc, and use :wq to write the file to disk and quit. Instantly effective. (You did not put a space after the comma, did you?) Printing Files from DOS At this point you probably do not have the printer working, so here is a way to create a file from a manual page, move it to a floppy, and then print it from DOS. Suppose you want to read carefully about changing permissions on files (pretty important). You can use man chmod to read about it. The command &prompt.user; man chmod | col -b > chmod.txt will remove formatting codes and send the manual page to the chmod.txt file instead of showing it on your screen. Now put a dos-formatted diskette in your floppy drive a, su to root, and type &prompt.root; /sbin/mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt to mount the floppy drive on /mnt. Now (you no longer need to be root, and you can type exit to get back to being user jack) you can go to the directory where you created chmod.txt and copy the file to the floppy with: &prompt.user; cp chmod.txt /mnt and use ls /mnt to get a directory listing of /mnt, which should show the file chmod.txt. You might especially want to make a file from /sbin/dmesg by typing &prompt.user; /sbin/dmesg > dmesg.txt and copying dmesg.txt to the floppy. /sbin/dmesg is the boot log record, and it is useful to understand it because it shows what FreeBSD found when it booted up. If you ask questions on the &a.questions; or on a USENET group—like FreeBSD is not finding my tape drive, what do I do?—people will want to know what dmesg has to say. You can now unmount the floppy drive (as root) to get the disk out with &prompt.root; /sbin/umount /mnt and reboot to go to DOS. Copy these files to a DOS directory, call them up with DOS EDIT, &windows; Notepad or Wordpad, or a word processor, make a minor change so the file has to be saved, and print as you normally would from DOS or Windows. Hope it works! manual pages come out best if printed with the DOS print command. (Copying files from FreeBSD to a mounted DOS partition is in some cases still a little risky.) Getting the printer printing from FreeBSD involves creating an appropriate entry in /etc/printcap and creating a matching spool directory in /var/spool/output. If your printer is on lpt0 (what DOS calls LPT1), you may only need to go to /var/spool/output and (as root) create the directory lpd by typing: mkdir lpd, if it does not already exist. Then the printer should respond if it is turned on when the system is booted, and lp or lpr should send a file to the printer. Whether or not the file actually prints depends on configuring it, which is covered in the FreeBSD handbook. Other Useful Commands df shows file space and mounted systems. ps aux shows processes running. ps ax is a narrower form. rm filename remove filename. rm -R dir removes a directory dir and all subdirectories—careful! ls -R lists files in the current directory and all subdirectories; I used a variant, ls -AFR > where.txt, to get a list of all the files in / and (separately) /usr before I found better ways to find files. passwd to change user's password (or root's password) man hier manual page on the &unix; filesystem Use find to locate filename in /usr or any of its subdirectories with &prompt.user; find /usr -name "filename" You can use * as a wildcard in "filename" (which should be in quotes). If you tell find to search in / instead of /usr it will look for the file(s) on all mounted filesystems, including the CDROM and the DOS partition. An excellent book that explains &unix; commands and utilities is Abrahams & Larson, Unix for the Impatient (2nd ed., Addison-Wesley, 1996). - There is also a lot of &unix; information on the Internet. + There is also a lot of &unix; information on the Internet. Next Steps You should now have the tools you need to get around and edit files, so you can get everything up and running. There is a great deal of information in the FreeBSD handbook (which is probably on your hard drive) and FreeBSD's web site. A wide variety of packages and ports are on the CDROM as well as the web site. The handbook tells you more about how to use them (get the package if it exists, with pkg_add /cdrom/packages/All/packagename, where packagename is the filename of the package). The CDROM has lists of the packages and ports with brief descriptions in cdrom/packages/index, cdrom/packages/index.txt, and cdrom/ports/index, with fuller descriptions in /cdrom/ports/*/*/pkg/DESCR, where the *s represent subdirectories of kinds of programs and program names respectively. If you find the handbook too sophisticated (what with lndir and all) on installing ports from the CDROM, here is what usually works: Find the port you want, say kermit. There will be a directory for it on the CDROM. Copy the subdirectory to /usr/local (a good place for software you add that should be available to all users) with: &prompt.root; cp -R /cdrom/ports/comm/kermit /usr/local This should result in a /usr/local/kermit subdirectory that has all the files that the kermit subdirectory on the CDROM has. Next, create the directory /usr/ports/distfiles if it does not already exist using mkdir. Now check /cdrom/ports/distfiles for a file with a name that indicates it is the port you want. Copy that file to /usr/ports/distfiles; in recent versions you can skip this step, as FreeBSD will do it for you. In the case of kermit, there is no distfile. Then cd to the subdirectory of /usr/local/kermit that has the file Makefile. Type &prompt.root; make all install During this process the port will FTP to get any compressed files it needs that it did not find on the CDROM or in /usr/ports/distfiles. If you do not have your network running yet and there was no file for the port in /cdrom/ports/distfiles, you will have to get the distfile using another machine and copy it to /usr/ports/distfiles from a floppy or your DOS partition. Read Makefile (with cat or more or view) to find out where to go (the master distribution site) to get the file and what its name is. Its name will be truncated when downloaded to DOS, and after you get it into /usr/ports/distfiles you will have to rename it (with the mv command) to its original name so it can be found. (Use binary file transfers!) Then go back to /usr/local/kermit, find the directory with Makefile, and type make all install. The other thing that happens when installing ports or packages is that some other program is needed. If the installation stops with a message can't find unzip or whatever, you might need to install the package or port for unzip before you continue. Once it is installed type rehash to make FreeBSD reread the files in the path so it knows what is there. (If you get a lot of path not found messages when you use whereis or which, you might want to make additions to the list of directories in the path statement in .cshrc in your home directory. The path statement in &unix; does the same kind of work it does in DOS, except the current directory is not (by default) in the path for security reasons; if the command you want is in the directory you are in, you need to type ./ before the command to make it work; no space after the slash.) You might want to get the most recent version of &netscape; from their FTP site. (&netscape; requires the X Window System.) There is now a FreeBSD version, so look around carefully. Just use gunzip filename and tar xvf filename on it, move the binary to /usr/local/bin or some other place binaries are kept, rehash, and then put the following lines in .cshrc in each user's home directory or (easier) in /etc/csh.cshrc, the system-wide csh start-up file: setenv XKEYSYMDB /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB setenv XNLSPATH /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/nls This assumes that the file XKeysymDB and the directory nls are in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11; if they are not, find them and put them there. If you originally got &netscape; as a port using the CDROM (or FTP), do not replace /usr/local/bin/netscape with the new netscape binary; this is just a shell script that sets up the environment variables for you. Instead rename the new binary to netscape.bin and replace the old binary, which is /usr/local/netscape/netscape. Your Working Environment Your shell is the most important part of your working environment. In DOS, the usual shell is command.com. The shell is what interprets the commands you type on the command line, and thus communicates with the rest of the operating system. You can also write shell scripts, which are like DOS batch files: a series of commands to be run without your intervention. Two shells come installed with FreeBSD: csh and sh. csh is good for command-line work, but scripts should be written with sh (or bash). You can find out what shell you have by typing echo $SHELL. The csh shell is okay, but tcsh does everything csh does and more. It allows you to recall commands with the arrow keys and edit them. It has tab-key completion of filenames (csh uses the Esc key), and it lets you switch to the directory you were last in with cd -. It is also much easier to alter your prompt with tcsh. It makes life a lot easier. Here are the three steps for installing a new shell: Install the shell as a port or a package, just as you would any other port or package. Use rehash and which tcsh (assuming you are installing tcsh) to make sure it got installed. As root, edit /etc/shells, adding a line in the file for the new shell, in this case /usr/local/bin/tcsh, and save the file. (Some ports may do this for you.) Use the chsh command to change your shell to tcsh permanently, or type tcsh at the prompt to change your shell without logging in again. It can be dangerous to change root's shell to something other than sh or csh on early versions of FreeBSD and many other versions of &unix;; you may not have a working shell when the system puts you into single user mode. The solution is to use su -m to become root, which will give you the tcsh as root, because the shell is part of the environment. You can make this permanent by adding it to your .tcshrc file as an alias with: alias su su -m When tcsh starts up, it will read the /etc/csh.cshrc and /etc/csh.login files, as does csh. It will also read the .login file in your home directory and the .cshrc file as well, unless you provide a .tcshrc file. This you can do by simply copying .cshrc to .tcshrc. Now that you have installed tcsh, you can adjust your prompt. You can find the details in the manual page for tcsh, but here is a line to put in your .tcshrc that will tell you how many commands you have typed, what time it is, and what directory you are in. It also produces a > if you are an ordinary user and a # if you are root, but tsch will do that in any case: set prompt = "%h %t %~ %# " This should go in the same place as the existing set prompt line if there is one, or under "if($?prompt) then" if not. Comment out the old line; you can always switch back to it if you prefer it. Do not forget the spaces and quotes. You can get the .tcshrc reread by typing source .tcshrc. You can get a listing of other environmental variables that have been set by typing env at the prompt. The result will show you your default editor, pager, and terminal type, among possibly many others. A useful command if you log in from a remote location and can not run a program because the terminal is not capable is setenv TERM vt100. Other As root, you can unmount the CDROM with /sbin/umount /cdrom, take it out of the drive, insert another one, and mount it with /sbin/mount_cd9660 /dev/cd0a /cdrom assuming cd0a is the device name for your CDROM drive. The most recent versions of FreeBSD let you mount the CDROM with just /sbin/mount /cdrom. Using the live filesystem—the second of FreeBSD's CDROM disks—is useful if you have got limited space. What is on the live filesystem varies from release to release. You might try playing games from the CDROM. This involves using lndir, which gets installed with the X Window System, to tell the program(s) where to find the necessary files, because they are in the /cdrom file system instead of in /usr and its subdirectories, which is where they are expected to be. Read man lndir. Comments Welcome If you use this guide I would be interested in knowing where it was unclear and what was left out that you think should be included, and if it was helpful. My thanks to Eugene W. Stark, professor of computer science at SUNY-Stony Brook, and John Fieber for helpful comments. Annelise Anderson, andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/problem-reports/article.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/problem-reports/article.sgml index 988b197b0f..af12cc544b 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/problem-reports/article.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/problem-reports/article.sgml @@ -1,884 +1,885 @@ %man; %mailing-lists; %trademarks; %freebsd; ]>
Writing &os; Problem Reports $FreeBSD$ &tm-attrib.freebsd; &tm-attrib.cvsup; &tm-attrib.ibm; &tm-attrib.intel; &tm-attrib.sparc; &tm-attrib.sun; &tm-attrib.general; This article describes how to best formulate and submit a problem report to the &os; Project. Dag-Erling Smørgrav Contributed by problem reports
Introduction One of the most frustrating experiences one can have as a software user is to submit a problem report only to have it summarily closed with a terse and unhelpful explanation like not a bug or bogus PR. Similarly, one of the most frustrating experiences as a software developer is to be flooded with problem reports that are not really problem reports but requests for support, or that contain little or no information about what the problem is and how to reproduce it. This document attempts to describe how to write good problem reports. What, you ask, is a good problem report? Well, to go straight to the bottom line, a good problem report is one that can be analyzed and dealt with swiftly, to the mutual satisfaction of both user and developer. Although the primary focus of this article is on &os; problem reports, most of it should apply quite well to other software projects. Note that this article is organized thematically, not chronologically, so you should read through the entire document before submitting a problem report, rather than treat it as a step-by-step tutorial.
When to submit a problem report There are many types of problems, and not all of them should engender a problem report. Of course, nobody is perfect, and there will be times when you are convinced you have found a bug in a program when in fact you have misunderstood the syntax for a command or made a typographical error in a configuration file (though that in itself may sometimes be indicative of poor documentation or poor error handling in the application). There are still many cases where submitting a problem report is clearly not the right course of action, and will only serve to frustrate you and the developers. Conversely, there are cases where it might be appropriate to submit a problem report about something else than a bug—an enhancement or a feature request, for instance. So how do you determine what is a bug and what is not? As a simple rule of thumb your problem is not a bug if it can be expressed as a question (usually of the form How do I do X? or Where can I find Y?). It is not always quite so black and white, but the question rule covers a large majority of cases. If you are looking for an answer, consider posing your question to the &a.questions;. Some cases where it may be appropriate to submit a problem report about something that is not a bug are: Requests for feature enhancements. It is generally a good idea to air these on the mailing lists before submitting a problem report. Notification of updates to externally maintained software (mainly ports, but also externally maintained base system components such as BIND or various GNU utilities). Another thing is that if the system on which you experienced the bug is not fairly up-to-date, you should seriously consider upgrading and trying to reproduce the problem on an up-to-date system before submitting a problem report. There are few things that will annoy a developer more than receiving a problem report about a bug she has already fixed. Finally, a bug that can not be reproduced can rarely be fixed. If the bug only occurred once and you can not reproduce it, and it does not seem to happen to anybody else, chances are none of the developers will be able to reproduce it or figure out what is wrong. That does not mean it did not happen, but it does mean that the chances of your problem report ever leading to a bug fix are very slim. To make matters worse, often these kinds of bugs are actually caused by failing hard drives or overheating processors — you should always try to rule out these causes, whenever possible, before submitting a PR.
Preparations A good rule to follow is to always do a background search before submitting a problem report. Maybe your problem has already been reported; maybe it is being discussed on the mailing lists, or recently was; it may even already be fixed in a newer version than what you are running. You should therefore check all the obvious places before submitting your problem report. For &os;, this means: The &os; Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. The FAQ attempts to provide answers for a wide range of questions, such as those concerning hardware compatibility, user applications, and kernel configuration. The mailing lists—if you are not subscribed, use the searchable archives on the &os; web site. If your problem has not been discussed on the lists, you might try posting a message about it and waiting a few days to see if someone can spot something you have overlooked. Optionally, the entire web—use your favorite search engine to locate any references to your problem. You may even get hits from archived mailing lists or newsgroups you did not know of or had not thought to search through. Next, the searchable &os; PR database (GNATS). Unless your problem is recent or obscure, there is a fair chance it has already been reported. Most importantly, you should attempt to see if existing documentation in the source base addresses your problem. For the base &os; code, you should carefully study the contents of the /usr/src/UPDATING file on your system or its latest version at . (This is vital information if you are upgrading from one version to another—especially if you are upgrading to the &os.current; branch). However, if the problem is in something that was installed as a part of the &os; Ports Collection, you should refer to /usr/ports/UPDATING (for individual ports) or /usr/ports/CHANGES (for changes that affect the entire Ports Collection). and are also available via CVSweb. Next, you need to make sure your problem report goes to the right people. The first catch here is that if the problem is a bug in third-party software (a port or a package you have installed), you should report the bug to the original author, not to the &os; Project. There are two exceptions to this rule: the first is if the bug does not occur on other platforms, in which case the problem may lie in how the software was ported to &os;; the second is if the original author has already fixed the bug and released a patch or a new version of his software, and the &os; port has not been updated yet. The second catch is that &os;'s bug tracking system sorts problem reports according to the category the originator selected. Therefore, if you select the wrong category when you submit your problem report, there is a good chance that it will go unnoticed for a while, until someone re-categorizes it.
Writing the problem report Now that you have decided that your issue merits a problem report, and that it is a &os; problem, it is time to write the actual problem report. Before we get into the mechanics of the program used to generate and submit PRs, here are some tips and tricks to help make sure that your PR will be most effective.
Tips and tricks for writing a good problem report Do not leave the Synopsis line empty. The PRs go both onto a mailing list that goes all over the world (where the Synopsis is used for the Subject: line), but also into a database. Anyone who comes along later and browses the database by synopsis, and finds a PR with a blank subject line, tends just to skip over it. Remember that PRs stay in this database until they are closed by someone; an anonymous one will usually just disappear in the noise. Avoid using a weak Synopsis line. You should not assume that anyone reading your PR has any context for your submission, so the more you provide, the better. For instance, what part of the system does the problem apply to? Do you only see the problem while installing, or while running? To illustrate, instead of Synopsis: portupgrade is broken, see how much more informative this seems: Synopsis: port sysutils/portupgrade coredumps on -current. (In the case of ports, it is especially helpful to have both the category and portname in the Synopsis line.) If you have a patch, say so. A PR with a patch included is much more likely to be looked at than one without. If you are including one, put the string [patch] at the beginning of the Synopsis. (Although it is not mandatory to use that exact string, by convention, that is the one that is used.) If you are a maintainer, say so. If you are maintaining a part of the source code (for instance, a port), you might consider adding the string [maintainer update] at the beginning of your synopsis line, and you definitely should set the Class of your PR to maintainer-update. This way any committer that handles your PR will not have to check. Be specific. The more information you supply about what problem you are having, the better your chance of getting a response. Include the version of &os; you are running (there is a place to put that, see below) and on which architecture. You should include whether you are running from a release (e.g. from a CDROM or download), or from a system maintained by &man.cvsup.1; (and, if so, how recently you updated). If you are tracking the &os.current; branch, that is the very first thing someone will ask, because fixes (especially for high-profile problems) tend to get committed very quickly, and &os.current; users are expected to keep up. Include which global options you have specified in your make.conf. Note: specifying -O2 and above to &man.gcc.1; is known to be buggy in many situations. While the &os; developers will accept patches, they are generally unwilling to investigate such issues due to simple lack of time and volunteers, and may instead respond that this just is not supported. If this is a kernel problem, then be prepared to supply the following information. (You do not have to include these by default, which only tends to fill up the database, but you should include excerpts that you think might be relevant): your kernel configuration (including which hardware devices you have installed) whether or not you have debugging options enabled (such as WITNESS), and if so, whether the problem persists when you change the sense of that option a backtrace, if one was generated the fact that you have read src/UPDATING and that your problem is not listed there (someone is guaranteed to ask) whether or not you can run any other kernel as a fallback (this is to rule out hardware-related issues such as failing disks and overheating CPUs, which can masquerade as kernel problems) If this is a ports problem, then be prepared to supply the following information. (You do not have to include these by default, which only tends to fill up the database, but you should include excerpts that you think might be relevant): which ports you have installed any environment variables that override the defaults in bsd.port.mk, such as PORTSDIR the fact that you have read ports/UPDATING and that your problem is not listed there (someone is guaranteed to ask) + Avoid vague requests for features. PRs of the form someone should really implement something that does so-and-so are less likely to get results than very specific requests. Remember, the source is available to everyone, so if you want a feature, the best way to ensure it being included is to get to work! Also consider the fact that many things like this would make a better topic for discussion on freebsd-questions than an entry in the PR database, as discussed above. Make sure no one else has already submitted a similar PR. Although this has already been mentioned above, it bears repeating here. It only take a minute or two to use the web-based search engine at . (Of course, everyone is guilty of forgetting to do this now and then.) Avoid controversial requests. If your PR addresses an area that has been controversial in the past, you should probably be prepared to not only offer patches, but also justification for why the patches are The Right Thing To Do. As noted above, a careful search of the mailing lists using the archives at is always good preparation. Be polite. Almost anyone who would potentially work on your PR is a volunteer. No one likes to be told that they have to do something when they are already doing it for some motivation other than monetary gain. This is a good thing to keep in mind at all times on Open Source projects.
Before you begin Before running the &man.send-pr.1; program, make sure your VISUAL (or EDITOR if VISUAL is not set) environment variable is set to something sensible. You should also make sure that mail delivery works fine. &man.send-pr.1; uses mail messages for the submission and tracking of problem reports. If you cannot post mail messages from the machine you're running &man.send-pr.1; on, your problem report will not reach the GNATS database. For details on the setup of mail on &os;, see the Electronic Mail chapter of the &os; Handbook at .
Attaching patches or files The &man.send-pr.1; program has provisions for attaching files to a problem report. You can attach as many files as you want provided that each has a unique base name (i.e. the name of the file proper, without the path). Just use the command-line option to specify the names of the files you wish to attach: &prompt.user; send-pr -a /var/run/dmesg -a /tmp/errors Do not worry about binary files, they will be automatically encoded so as not to upset your mail agent. If you attach a patch, make sure you use the or option to &man.diff.1; to create a context or unified diff (unified is preferred), and make sure to specify the exact CVS revision numbers of the files you modified so the developers who read your report will be able to apply them easily. For problems with the kernel or the base utilities, a patch against &os.current; (the HEAD CVS branch) is preferred since all new code should be applied and tested there first. After appropriate or substantial testing has been done, the code will be merged/migrated to the &os.stable; branch. If you attach a patch inline, instead of as an attachment, note that the most common problem by far is the tendency of some email programs to render tabs as spaces, which will completely ruin anything intended to be part of a Makefile. Also note that while including small patches in a PR is generally all right—particularly when they fix the problem described in the PR—large patches and especially new code which may require substantial review before committing should be placed on a web or ftp server, and the URL should be included in the PR instead of the patch. Patches in email tend to get mangled, especially when GNATS is involved, and the larger the patch, the harder it will be for interested parties to unmangle it. Also, posting a patch on the web allows you to modify it without having to resubmit the entire patch in a followup to the original PR. You should also take note that unless you explicitly specify otherwise in your PR or in the patch itself, any patches you submit will be assumed to be licensed under the same terms as the original file you modified.
Filling out the template When you run &man.send-pr.1;, you are presented with a template. The template consists of a list of fields, some of which are pre-filled, and some of which have comments explaining their purpose or listing acceptable values. Do not worry about the comments; they will be removed automatically if you do not modify them or remove them yourself. At the top of the template, below the SEND-PR: lines, are the email headers. You do not normally need to modify these, unless you are sending the problem report from a machine or account that can send but not receive mail, in which case you will want to set the From: and Reply-To: to your real email address. You may also want to send yourself (or someone else) a carbon copy of the problem report by adding one or more email addresses to the Cc: header. Next comes a series of single-line fields: Submitter-Id: Do not change this. The default value of current-users is correct, even if you run &os.stable;. Originator: This is normally prefilled with the gecos field of the currently logged-in user. Please specify your real name, optionally followed by your email address in angle brackets. Organization: Whatever you feel like. This field is not used for anything significant. Confidential: This is prefilled to no. Changing it makes no sense as there is no such thing as a confidential &os; problem report—the PR database is distributed worldwide by CVSup. Synopsis: Fill this out with a short and accurate description of the problem. The synopsis is used as the subject of the problem report email, and is used in problem report listings and summaries; problem reports with obscure synopses tend to get ignored. As noted above, if your problem report includes a patch, please have the synopsis start with [patch]; if you are a maintainer, you may consider adding [maintainer update] and set the Class of your PR to maintainer-update. Severity: One of non-critical, serious or critical. Do not overreact; refrain from labeling your problem critical unless it really is (e.g. root exploit, easily reproducible panic) or serious unless it is something that will affect many users (problems with particular device drivers or system utilities). &os; developers will not neccesarily work on your problem faster if you inflate its importance since there are so many other people who have done exactly that — in fact, some developers pay little attention to this field, and the next, because of this. Priority: One of low, medium or high. high should be reserved for problems that will affect practically every user of &os; and medium for something that will affect many users. Category: Choose one of the following (taken from /usr/gnats/gnats-adm/categories): advocacy: problems relating to &os;'s public image. Rarely used. alpha: problems specific to the Alpha platform. amd64: problems specific to the AMD64 platform. bin: problems with userland programs in the base system. conf: problems with configuration files, default values etc. docs: problems with manual pages or on-line documentation. gnu: problems with GNU software such as &man.gcc.1; or &man.grep.1;. i386: problems specific to the &i386; platform. ia64: problems specific to the ia64 platform. java: problems related to &java;. kern: problems with the kernel or (non-platform-specific) device drivers. misc: anything that does not fit in any of the other categories. (Note that it is easy for things to get lost in this category). ports: problems relating to the ports tree. powerpc: problems specific to the &powerpc; platform. sparc64: problems specific to the &sparc64; platform. standards: Standards conformance issues. threads: problems related to the &os; threads implementation (especially on &os.current;). www: Changes or enhancements to the &os; website. Class: Choose one of the following: sw-bug: software bugs. doc-bug: errors in documentation. change-request: requests for additional features or changes in existing features. update: updates to ports or other contributed software. maintainer-update: updates to ports for which you are the maintainer. Release: The version of &os; that you are running. This is filled out automatically by &man.send-pr.1; and need only be changed if you are sending a problem report from a different system than the one that exhibits the problem. Finally, there is a series of multi-line fields: Environment: This should describe, as accurately as possible, the environment in which the problem has been observed. This includes the operating system version, the version of the specific program or file that contains the problem, and any other relevant items such as system configuration, other installed software that influences the problem, etc.—quite simply everything a developer needs to know to reconstruct the environment in which the problem occurs. Description: A complete and accurate description of the problem you are experiencing. Try to avoid speculating about the causes of the problem unless you are certain that you are on the right track, as it may mislead a developer into making incorrect assumptions about the problem. How-To-Repeat: A summary of the actions you need to take to reproduce the problem. Fix: Preferably a patch, or at least a workaround (which not only helps other people with the same problem work around it, but may also help a developer understand the cause for the problem), but if you do not have any firm ideas for either, it is better to leave this field blank than to speculate.
Sending off the problem report Once you are done filling out the template, have saved it, and exit your editor, &man.send-pr.1; will prompt you with s)end, e)dit or a)bort?. You can then hit s to go ahead and submit the problem report, e to restart the editor and make further modifications, or a to abort. If you choose the latter, your problem report will remain on disk (&man.send-pr.1; will tell you the filename before it terminates), so you can edit it at your leisure, or maybe transfer it to a system with better net connectivity, before sending it with the to &man.send-pr.1;: &prompt.user; send-pr -f ~/my-problem-report This will read the specified file, validate the contents, strip comments and send it off.
Follow-up Once your problem report has been filed, you will receive a confirmation by email which will include the tracking number that was assigned to your problem report and a URL you can use to check its status. With a little luck, someone will take an interest in your problem and try to address it, or, as the case may be, explain why it is not a problem. You will be automatically notified of any change of status, and you will receive copies of any comments or patches someone may attach to your problem report's audit trail. If someone requests additional information from you, or you remember or discover something you did not mention in the initial report, please use one of two methods to submit your followup: The easiest way is to use the followup link on the individual PR's web page, which you can reach from the PR search page. Clicking on this link will bring up an an email window with the correct To: and Subject: lines filled in (if your browser is configured to do this). Alternatively, you can just mail it to bug-followup@FreeBSD.org, making sure that the tracking number is included in the subject so the bug tracking system will know what problem report to attach it to. If you do not include the tracking number, GNATS will become confused and create an entirely new PR which it then assigns to the GNATS administrator, and then your followup will become lost until someone comes in to clean up the mess, which could be days or weeks afterwards. Wrong way: Subject: that PR I sent Right way: Subject: Re: ports/12345: compilation problem with foo/bar If the problem report remains open after the problem has gone away, just send a follow-up (in the manner prescribed above) saying that the problem report can be closed, and, if possible, explaining how or when the problem was fixed.
Further Reading This is a list of resources relevant to the proper writing and processing of problem reports. It is by no means complete. How to Report Bugs Effectively—an excellent essay by Simon G. Tatham on composing useful (non-&os;-specific) problem reports. Problem Report Handling Guidelines—valuable insight into how problem reports are handled by the &os; developers.
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml index 161e2085a1..61981801b4 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml @@ -1,12392 +1,12393 @@ %man; %freebsd; %authors; %teams; %bookinfo; %mailing-lists; %urls; %trademarks; ]> Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X, 3.X, 4.X and 5.X The FreeBSD Documentation Project $FreeBSD$ 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 The FreeBSD Documentation Project &bookinfo.legalnotice; &tm-attrib.freebsd; &tm-attrib.3com; &tm-attrib.adobe; &tm-attrib.creative; &tm-attrib.cvsup; &tm-attrib.ibm; &tm-attrib.ieee; &tm-attrib.intel; &tm-attrib.iomega; &tm-attrib.linux; &tm-attrib.microsoft; &tm-attrib.mips; &tm-attrib.netscape; &tm-attrib.opengroup; &tm-attrib.oracle; &tm-attrib.sgi; &tm-attrib.sparc; &tm-attrib.sun; &tm-attrib.usrobotics; &tm-attrib.xfree86; &tm-attrib.general; This is the FAQ for FreeBSD versions 2.X, 3.X, 4.X and 5.X. All entries are assumed to be relevant to FreeBSD 2.0.5 and later, unless otherwise noted. If you are interested in helping with this project, send email to the &a.doc;. The latest version of this document is always available from the FreeBSD World Wide Web server. It may also be downloaded as one large HTML file with HTTP or as plain text, &postscript;, PDF, etc. from the FreeBSD FTP server. You may also want to Search the FAQ. Introduction Welcome to the FreeBSD 2.X-5.X FAQ! As is usual with Usenet FAQs, this document aims to cover the most frequently asked questions concerning the FreeBSD operating system (and of course answer them!). Although originally intended to reduce bandwidth and avoid the same old questions being asked over and over again, FAQs have become recognized as valuable information resources. Every effort has been made to make this FAQ as informative as possible; if you have any suggestions as to how it may be improved, please feel free to mail them to the &a.doc;. What is FreeBSD? Briefly, FreeBSD is a &unix; like operating system for the &i386;, IA-64, PC-98, Alpha/AXP, and &ultrasparc; platforms based on U.C. Berkeley's 4.4BSD-Lite release, with some 4.4BSD-Lite2 enhancements. It is also based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's Net/2 to the &i386;, known as 386BSD, though very little of the 386BSD code remains. A fuller description of what FreeBSD is and how it can work for you may be found on the FreeBSD home page. FreeBSD is used by companies, Internet Service Providers, researchers, computer professionals, students and home users all over the world in their work, education and recreation. See some of them in the FreeBSD Gallery. For more detailed information on FreeBSD, please see the FreeBSD Handbook. What is the goal of the FreeBSD Project? The goal of the FreeBSD Project is to provide software that may be used for any purpose and without strings attached. Many of us have a significant investment in the code (and project) and would certainly not mind a little financial compensation now and then, but we definitely do not insist on it. We believe that our first and foremost mission is to provide code to any and all comers, and for whatever purpose, so that the code gets the widest possible use and provides the widest possible benefit. This is, we believe, one of the most fundamental goals of Free Software and one that we enthusiastically support. That code in our source tree which falls under the GNU General Public License (GPL) or GNU Library General Public License (LGPL) comes with slightly more strings attached, though at least on the side of enforced access rather than the usual opposite. Due to the additional complexities that can evolve in the commercial use of GPL software, we do, however, endeavor to replace such software with submissions under the more relaxed FreeBSD license whenever possible. Does the FreeBSD license have any restrictions? Yes. Those restrictions do not control how you use the code, merely how you treat the FreeBSD Project itself. If you have serious license concerns, read the actual license. For the simply curious, the license can be summarized like this. Do not claim that you wrote this. Do not sue us if it breaks. Can FreeBSD replace my current operating system? For most people, yes. But this question is not quite that cut-and-dried. Most people do not actually use an operating system. They use applications. The applications are what really use the operating system. FreeBSD is designed to provide a robust and full-featured environment for applications. It supports a wide variety of web browsers, office suites, email readers, graphics programs, programming environments, network servers, and just about everything else you might want. Most of these applications can be managed through the Ports Collection. If you need to use an application that is only available on one operating system, you simply cannot replace that operating system. Chances are there is a very similar application on FreeBSD, however. If you want a solid office or Internet server, a reliable workstation, or just the ability to do your job without interruptions, FreeBSD will almost certainly do everything you need. Many computer users across the world, including both novices and experienced &unix; administrators, use FreeBSD as their only desktop operating system. If you are migrating to FreeBSD from some other &unix; environment, you already know most of what you need to. If your background is in graphic-driven operating systems such as &windows; and older versions of &macos;, expect to invest additional time learning the &unix; way of doing things. This FAQ and the FreeBSD Handbook are excellent places to start. Why is it called FreeBSD? It may be used free of charge, even by commercial users. Full source for the operating system is freely available, and the minimum possible restrictions have been placed upon its use, distribution and incorporation into other work (commercial or non-commercial). Anyone who has an improvement or bug fix is free to submit their code and have it added to the source tree (subject to one or two obvious provisions). It is worth pointing out that the word free is being used in two ways here, one meaning at no cost, the other meaning you can do whatever you like. Apart from one or two things you cannot do with the FreeBSD code, for example pretending you wrote it, you can really do whatever you like with it. What are the differences between FreeBSD and NetBSD, OpenBSD, and other open source BSD operating systems? James Howard wrote a good explanation of the history and differences between the various projects for DaemonNews, called The BSD Family Tree which goes a fair way to answering this question. What is the latest version of FreeBSD? At this point in FreeBSD's development, there are two parallel development branches; releases are being made from both branches. The 4.X series of releases is being made from the -STABLE branch and the 5.X series of releases is being made from -CURRENT. Version &rel.current; is the latest release from the -CURRENT branch; it was released in &rel.current.date;. Version &rel2.current; is the latest release from the -STABLE branch; it was released in &rel2.current.date;. Briefly, -STABLE is aimed at the ISP, corporate user, or any user who wants stability and a minimal number of changes compared to the new (and possibly unstable) features of the latest -CURRENT snapshot. Releases can come from either branch, but -CURRENT should only be used if you are prepared for its increased volatility (relative to -STABLE, that is). Releases are made every few months. While many people stay more up-to-date with the FreeBSD sources (see the questions on FreeBSD-CURRENT and FreeBSD-STABLE) than that, doing so is more of a commitment, as the sources are a moving target. More information on FreeBSD releases can be found on the Release Engineering page on the FreeBSD Web site. What is FreeBSD-CURRENT? FreeBSD-CURRENT is the development version of the operating system, which will in due course become the new &os.stable; branch. This is expected to happen around 5.3-RELEASE. As such, it is really only of interest to developers working on the system and die-hard hobbyists. See the relevant section in the handbook for details on running -CURRENT. If you are not familiar with the operating system or are not capable of identifying the difference between a real problem and a temporary problem, you should not use FreeBSD-CURRENT. This branch sometimes evolves quite quickly and can be un-buildable for a number of days at a time. People that use FreeBSD-CURRENT are expected to be able to analyze any problems and only report them if they are deemed to be mistakes rather than glitches. Questions such as make world produces some error about groups on the -CURRENT mailing list may be treated with contempt. Every day, snapshot releases are made based on the current state of the -CURRENT and -STABLE branches. Distributions of the occasional snapshot are made available. The goals behind each snapshot release are: To test the latest version of the installation software. To give people who would like to run -CURRENT or -STABLE but who do not have the time or bandwidth to follow it on a day-to-day basis an easy way of bootstrapping it onto their systems. To preserve a fixed reference point for the code in question, just in case we break something really badly later. (Although CVS normally prevents anything horrible like this happening :) To ensure that all new features and fixes in need of testing have the greatest possible number of potential testers. No claims are made that any -CURRENT snapshot can be considered production quality for any purpose. If you want to run a stable and fully tested system, you will have to stick to full releases, or use the -STABLE snapshots. Snapshot releases are directly available from ftp://current.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/snapshots/. 3-STABLE snapshots are no longer being produced. Snapshots are generated, on the average, daily for all actively developed branches. What is the FreeBSD-STABLE concept? Back when FreeBSD 2.0.5 was released, FreeBSD development branched in two. One branch was named -STABLE, one -CURRENT. FreeBSD-STABLE is intended for Internet Service Providers and other commercial enterprises for whom sudden shifts or experimental features are quite undesirable. It receives only well-tested bug fixes and other small incremental enhancements. FreeBSD-CURRENT, on the other hand, has been one unbroken line since 2.0 was released, leading towards 5.2.1-RELEASE (and beyond). At 5.3-RELEASE, the 5-STABLE branch is expected to be created, and &os.current; will become 6-CURRENT. If a little ASCII art would help, this is how it looks: 2.0 | | | [2.1-STABLE] *BRANCH* 2.0.5 -> 2.1 -> 2.1.5 -> 2.1.6 -> 2.1.7.1 [2.1-STABLE ends] | (Mar 1997) | | | [2.2-STABLE] *BRANCH* 2.2.1 -> 2.2.2-RELEASE -> 2.2.5 -> 2.2.6 -> 2.2.7 -> 2.2.8 [end] | (Mar 1997) (Oct 97) (Apr 98) (Jul 98) (Dec 98) | | 3.0-SNAPs (started Q1 1997) | | 3.0-RELEASE (Oct 1998) | | [3.0-STABLE] *BRANCH* 3.1-RELEASE (Feb 1999) -> 3.2 -> 3.3 -> 3.4 -> 3.5 -> 3.5.1 | (May 1999) (Sep 1999) (Dec 1999) (June 2000) (July 2000) | | [4.0-STABLE] *BRANCH* 4.0 (Mar 2000) -> 4.1 -> 4.1.1 -> 4.2 -> 4.3 -> 4.4 -> ... later 4.X releases ... | | (July 2000) (Sep 2000) (Nov 2000) 5.0-RELEASE (Jan 2003) | | 5.1-RELEASE (Jun 2003) | | 5.2-RELEASE (Jan 2004) | | 5.2.1-RELEASE (Feb 2004) | \|/ + [5-CURRENT continues] The 2.2-STABLE branch was retired with the release of 2.2.8. The 3-STABLE branch has ended with the release of 3.5.1, the final 3.X release. The only changes made to either of these branches will be, for the most part, security-related bug fixes. 4-STABLE is the actively developed -STABLE branch. The latest release on the 4-STABLE branch is &rel2.current;-RELEASE, which was released in &rel2.current.date;. The 5-CURRENT branch is slowly progressing toward the creation of a 5-STABLE branch. See What is FreeBSD-CURRENT? for more information on this branch. When are FreeBSD releases made? The &a.re; releases a new version of FreeBSD about every four months, on average. Release dates are announced well in advance, so that the people working on the system know when their projects need to be finished and tested. A testing period precedes each release, in order to ensure that the addition of new features does not compromise the stability of the release. Many users regard this caution as one of the best things about FreeBSD, even though waiting for all the latest goodies to reach -STABLE can be a little frustrating. More information on the release engineering process (including a schedule of upcoming releases) can be found on the release engineering pages on the FreeBSD Web site. For people who need or want a little more excitement, binary snapshots are made daily as discussed above. Who is responsible for FreeBSD? The key decisions concerning the FreeBSD project, such as the overall direction of the project and who is allowed to add code to the source tree, are made by a core team of 8 people. There is a much larger team of more than 300 committers who are authorized to make changes directly to the FreeBSD source tree. However, most non-trivial changes are discussed in advance in the mailing lists, and there are no restrictions on who may take part in the discussion. Where can I get FreeBSD? Every significant release of FreeBSD is available via anonymous FTP from the FreeBSD FTP site: For the current 3.X-STABLE release, 3.5.1-RELEASE, see the 3.5.1-RELEASE directory. The latest 5.X release, &rel.current;-RELEASE can be found in the &rel.current;-RELEASE directory. The latest 4-STABLE release, &rel2.current;-RELEASE can be found in the &rel2.current;-RELEASE directory. 4.X snapshots are usually made daily. 5.X Snapshot releases are made daily for the -CURRENT branch, these being of service purely to bleeding-edge testers and developers. Information about obtaining FreeBSD on CD, DVD, and other media can be found in the Handbook. How do I set up a FreeBSD mirror? Information on setting up a FreeBSD mirror can be found in the Mirroring FreeBSD article. How do I access the Problem Report database? The Problem Report database of all user change requests may be queried by using our web-based PR query interface. The &man.send-pr.1; command can be used to submit problem reports and change requests via electronic mail. The web-based problem report submission interface is currently disabled due to persistent abuse. Before submitting a problem report, please read Writing FreeBSD Problem Reports, an article on how to write good problem reports. How do I become a FreeBSD Web mirror? There are multiple ways to mirror the Web pages. You can retrieve the formatted files from a FreeBSD CVSup server using the application net/cvsup. The file /usr/share/examples/cvsup/www-supfile contains an example CVSup configuration file for web mirrors. You can download the web site source code from any FreeBSD FTP server using your favorite ftp mirror tool. Keep in mind that you have to build these sources before publishing them. Start mirroring at . What other sources of information are there? Please check the Documentation list on the main FreeBSD web site. Documentation and Support What good books are there about FreeBSD? The project produces a wide range of documentation, available online from this link: . The same documents are available as packages, that you can easily install on your FreeBSD system. More details on documentation packages can be found in the next paragraphs. In addition, the Bibliography at the end of this FAQ, and the one in the Handbook reference other recommended books. Is the documentation available in other formats, such as plain text (ASCII), or &postscript;? Yes. The documentation is available in a number of different formats and compression schemes on the FreeBSD FTP site, in the /pub/FreeBSD/doc/ directory. The documentation is categorized in a number of different ways. These include: The document's name, such as faq, or handbook. The document's language and encoding. These are based on the locale names you will find under /usr/share/locale on your FreeBSD system. The current languages and encodings that we have for documentation are as follows: Name Meaning en_US.ISO8859-1 US English de_DE.ISO8859-1 German es_ES.ISO8859-1 Spanish fr_FR.ISO8859-1 French ja_JP.eucJP Japanese (EUC encoding) ru_RU.KOI8-R Russian (KOI8-R encoding) zh_TW.Big5 Chinese (Big5 encoding) Some documents may not be available in all languages. The document's format. We produce the documentation in a number of different output formats. Each format has its own advantages and disadvantages. Some formats are better suited for online reading, while others are meant to be aesthetically pleasing when printed on paper. Having the documentation available in any of these formats ensures that our readers will be able to read the parts they are interested in, either on their monitor, or on paper after printing the documents. The currently available formats are: Format Meaning html-split A collection of small, linked, HTML files. html One large HTML file containing the entire document pdb Palm Pilot database format, for use with the iSilo reader. pdf Adobe's Portable Document Format ps &postscript; rtf Microsoft's Rich Text Format Page numbers are not automatically updated when loading this format into Word. Press CTRLA, CTRLEND, F9 after loading the document, to update the page numbers. txt Plain text The compression and packaging scheme. There are three of these currently in use. Where the format is html-split, the files are bundled up using &man.tar.1;. The resulting .tar file is then compressed using the compression schemes detailed in the next point. All the other formats generate one file, called book.format (i.e., book.pdb, book.html, and so on). These files are then compressed using two compression schemes. Scheme Description zip The Zip format. If you want to uncompress this on FreeBSD you will need to install the archivers/unzip port first. bz2 The BZip2 format. Less widespread than Zip, but generally gives smaller files. Install the archivers/bzip2 port to uncompress these files. So the &postscript; version of the Handbook, compressed using BZip2 will be stored in a file called book.ps.bz2 in the handbook/ directory. After choosing the format and compression mechanism that you want to download, you must then decide whether or not you want to download the document as a FreeBSD package. The advantage of downloading and installing the package is that the documentation can then be managed using the normal FreeBSD package management comments, such as &man.pkg.add.1; and &man.pkg.delete.1;. If you decide to download and install the package then you must know the filename to download. The documentation-as-packages files are stored in a directory called packages. Each package file looks like document-name.lang.encoding.format.tgz. For example, the FAQ, in English, formatted as PDF, is in the package called faq.en_US.ISO8859-1.pdf.tgz. Knowing this, you can use the following command to install the English PDF FAQ package. &prompt.root; pkg_add ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/packages/faq.en_US.ISO8859-1.pdf.tgz Having done that, you can use &man.pkg.info.1; to determine where the file has been installed. &prompt.root; pkg_info -f faq.en_US.ISO8859-1.pdf Information for faq.en_US.ISO8859-1.pdf: Packing list: Package name: faq.en_US.ISO8859-1.pdf CWD to /usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq File: book.pdf CWD to . File: +COMMENT (ignored) File: +DESC (ignored) As you can see, book.pdf will have been installed into /usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq. If you do not want to use the packages then you will have to download the compressed files yourself, uncompress them, and then copy the appropriate documents into place. For example, the split HTML version of the FAQ, compressed using &man.bzip2.1;, can be found in the doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.html-split.tar.bz2 file. To download and uncompress that file you would have to do this. &prompt.root; fetch ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.html-split.tar.bz2 &prompt.root; bzip2 -d book.html-split.tar.bz2 &prompt.root; tar xvf book.html-split.tar You will be left with a collection of .html files. The main one is called index.html, which will contain the table of contents, introductory material, and links to the other parts of the document. You can then copy or move these to their final location as necessary. Where do I find info on the FreeBSD mailing lists? You can find full information in the Handbook entry on mailing-lists. Where do I find the FreeBSD Y2K info? You can find full information in the FreeBSD Y2K page. What FreeBSD news groups are available? You can find full information in the Handbook entry on newsgroups. Are there FreeBSD IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels? Yes, most major IRC networks host a FreeBSD chat channel: Channel #FreeBSD on EFNet is a FreeBSD forum, but do not go there for tech support or try to get folks there to help you avoid the pain of reading manual pages or doing your own research. It is a chat channel, first and foremost, and topics there are just as likely to involve sex, sports or nuclear weapons as they are FreeBSD. You Have Been Warned! Available at server irc.chat.org. Channel #FreeBSDhelp on EFNet is a channel dedicated to helping FreeBSD users. They are much more sympathetic to questions than #FreeBSD is. Channel #FreeBSD on DALNET is available at irc.dal.net in the US and irc.eu.dal.net in Europe. Channel #FreeBSD on UNDERNET is available at us.undernet.org in the US and eu.undernet.org in Europe. Since it is a help channel, be prepared to read the documents you are referred to. Channel #FreeBSD on HybNet. This channel is a help channel. A list of servers can be found on the HybNet web site. Each of these channels are distinct and are not connected to each other. Their chat styles also differ, so you may need to try each to find one suited to your chat style. As with all types of IRC traffic, if you are easily offended or cannot deal with lots of young people (and more than a few older ones) doing the verbal equivalent of jello wrestling, do not even bother with it. Where can I get commercial FreeBSD training and support? DaemonNews provides commercial training and support for FreeBSD. More information can be found at their BSD Mall site. FreeBSD Services Ltd provide commercial support for FreeBSD in the UK (as well as selling FreeBSD on DVD). See their web site for more information. The FreeBSD Mall provides commercial FreeBSD support. You can get more information at their web site. Any other organizations providing training and support should contact the project in order to be listed here. Nik Clayton
nik@FreeBSD.org
 Installation Which file do I download to get FreeBSD? Prior to release 3.1, you only needed one floppy image to install FreeBSD, namely floppies/boot.flp. However, since release 3.1 the Project has added out-of-the-box support for a wide variety of hardware, which takes up more space. For 3.X and later you need two floppy images: floppies/kernel.flp and floppies/mfsroot.flp. These images need to be copied onto floppies by tools like fdimage or &man.dd.1;. If you need to download the distributions yourself (for a DOS filesystem install, for instance), below are some recommendations for distributions to grab: bin/ manpages/ compat*/ doc/ src/ssys.* Full instructions on this procedure and a little bit more about installation issues in general can be found in the Handbook entry on installing FreeBSD. What do I do if the floppy images does not fit on a single floppy? A 3.5 inch (1.44MB) floppy can accommodate 1474560 bytes of data. The boot image is exactly 1474560 bytes in size. Common mistakes when preparing the boot floppy are: Not downloading the floppy image in binary mode when using FTP. Some FTP clients default their transfer mode to ascii and attempt to change any end-of-line characters received to match the conventions used by the client's system. This will almost invariably corrupt the boot image. Check the size of the downloaded boot image: if it is not exactly that on the server, then the download process is suspect. To workaround: type binary at the FTP command prompt after getting connected to the server and before starting the download of the image. Using the DOS copy command (or equivalent GUI tool) to transfer the boot image to floppy. Programs like copy will not work as the boot image has been created to be booted into directly. The image has the complete content of the floppy, track for track, and is not meant to be placed on the floppy as a regular file. You have to transfer it to the floppy raw, using the low-level tools (e.g. fdimage or rawrite) described in the installation guide to FreeBSD. Where are the instructions for installing FreeBSD? Installation instructions can be found in the Handbook entry on installing FreeBSD. What do I need in order to run FreeBSD? You will need a 386 or better PC, with 5 MB or more of RAM and at least 60 MB of hard disk space. It can run with a low end MDA graphics card but to run X11R6, a VGA or better video card is needed. See also . I have only 4 MB of RAM. Can I install FreeBSD? FreeBSD 2.1.7 was the last version of FreeBSD that could be installed on a 4MB system. FreeBSD 2.2 and later needs at least 5MB to install on a new system. All versions of FreeBSD will run in 4MB of RAM, they just cannot run the installation program in 4MB. You can add extra memory for the install process, if you like, and then after the system is up and running, go back to 4MB. Or you could swap your disk into a system which has >4MB, install onto the disk and then swap it back. After the installation, if you build a custom kernel, it will run in 4 MB. Someone has even successfully booted with 2 MB, although the system was almost unusable. How can I make my own custom install floppy? Currently there is no way to just make a custom install floppy. You have to cut a whole new release, which will include your install floppy. To make a custom release, follow the instructions in the Release Engineering article. Can I have more than one operating system on my PC? Have a look at the multi-OS page. Can &windows; 95/98 co-exist with FreeBSD? Install &windows; 95/98 first, after that FreeBSD. FreeBSD's boot manager will then manage to boot Win95/98 and FreeBSD. If you install &windows; 95/98 second, it will boorishly overwrite your boot manager without even asking. If that happens, see the next section. &windows; 95/98 killed my boot manager! How do I get it back? You can reinstall the boot manager FreeBSD comes with in one of three ways: Running DOS, go into the tools/ directory of your FreeBSD distribution and look for bootinst.exe. You run it like so: ...\TOOLS> bootinst.exe boot.bin and the boot manager will be reinstalled. Boot the FreeBSD boot floppy again and go to the Custom installation menu item. Choose Partition. Select the drive which used to contain your boot manager (likely the first one) and when you come to the partition editor for it, as the very first thing (e.g. do not make any changes) select (W)rite. This will ask for confirmation, say yes, and when you get the Boot Manager selection prompt, be sure to select Boot Manager. This will re-write the boot manager to disk. Now quit out of the installation menu and reboot off the hard disk as normal. Boot the FreeBSD boot floppy (or CDROM) and choose the Fixit menu item. Select either the Fixit floppy or CDROM #2 (the live filesystem option) as appropriate and enter the fixit shell. Then execute the following command: Fixit# fdisk -B -b /boot/boot0 bootdevice substituting bootdevice for your real boot device such as ad0 (first IDE disk), ad4 (first IDE disk on auxiliary controller), da0 (first SCSI disk), etc. My A, T, or X series IBM Thinkpad locks up when I first booted up my FreeBSD installation. How can I solve this? A bug in early revisions of IBM's BIOS on these machines mistakenly identifies the FreeBSD partition as a potential FAT suspend-to-disk partition. When the BIOS tries to parse the FreeBSD partition it hangs. According to IBMIn an e-mail from Keith Frechette kfrechet@us.ibm.com., the following model/BIOS release numbers incorporate the fix. Model BIOS revision T20 IYET49WW or later T21 KZET22WW or later A20p IVET62WW or later A20m IWET54WW or later A21p KYET27WW or later A21m KXET24WW or later A21e KUET30WW It has been reported that later IBM BIOS revisions may have reintroduced the bug. This message from Jacques Vidrine to the &a.mobile; describes a procedure which may work if your newer IBM laptop does not boot FreeBSD properly, and you can upgrade or downgrade the BIOS. If you have an earlier BIOS, and upgrading is not an option a workaround is to install FreeBSD, change the partition ID FreeBSD uses, and install new boot blocks that can handle the different partition ID. First, you will need to restore the machine to a state where it can get through its self-test screen. Doing this requires powering up the machine without letting it find a FreeBSD partition on its primary disk. One way is to remove the hard disk and temporarily move it to an older ThinkPad (such as a ThinkPad 600) or a desktop PC with an appropriate conversion cable. Once it is there, you can delete the FreeBSD partition and move the hard disk back. The ThinkPad should now be in a bootable state again. With the machine functional again, you can use the workaround procedure described here to get a working FreeBSD installation. Download boot1 and boot2 from . Put these files somewhere you will be able to retrieve them later. Install FreeBSD as normal on to the ThinkPad. Do not use Dangerously Dedicated mode. Do not reboot when the install has finished. Either switch to the Emergency Holographic Shell (ALT F4) or start a fixit shell. Use &man.fdisk.8; to change the FreeBSD partition ID from 165 to 166 (this is the type used by OpenBSD). Bring the boot1 and boot2 files to the local filesystem. Use &man.disklabel.8; to write boot1 and boot2 to your FreeBSD slice. &prompt.root; disklabel -B -b boot1 -s boot2 ad0sn n is the number of the slice where you installed FreeBSD. Reboot. At the boot prompt you will be given the option of booting OpenBSD. This will actually boot FreeBSD. Getting this to work in the case where you want to dual boot OpenBSD and FreeBSD on the same laptop is left as an exercise for the reader. Can I install on a disk with bad blocks? Prior to 3.0, FreeBSD included a utility known as bad144, which automatically remapped bad blocks. Because modern IDE drives perform this function themselves, bad144 has been removed from the FreeBSD source tree. If you wish to install FreeBSD 3.0 or later, we strongly suggest you purchase a newer disk drive. If you do not wish to do this, you must run FreeBSD 2.X. If you are seeing bad block errors with a modern IDE drive, chances are the drive is going to die very soon (the drive's internal remapping functions are no longer sufficient to fix the bad blocks, which means the disk is heavily corrupted); we suggest you buy a new hard drive. If you have a SCSI drive with bad blocks, see this answer. I have just upgraded from 3.X to 4.X, and my first boot failed with bad sector table not supported FreeBSD 3.X and earlier supported bad144, which automatically remapped bad blocks. FreeBSD 4.X and later do not support this, as modern IDE drives include this functionality. See this question for more information. To fix this after an upgrade, you need to physically place the drive in a working system and use &man.disklabel.8; as discussed in the following questions. How do I tell if a drive has bad144 information on it before I try to upgrade to FreeBSD 4.0 and it fails? Use &man.disklabel.8; for this. disklabel -r drive device will give you the contents of your disk label. Look for a flags field. If you see flags: badsect, this drive is using bad144. For example, the following drive has bad144 enabled.: &prompt.root; disklabel -r wd0 # /dev/rwd0c: type: ESDI disk: wd0s1 label: flags: badsect bytes/sector: 512 sectors/track: 63 How do I remove bad144 from my pre-4.X system so I can upgrade safely? Use disklabel -e -rwd0 to edit the disklabel in place. Just remove the word badsect from the flags field, save, and exit. The bad144 file will still take up some space on your drive, but the disk itself will be usable. We still recommend you purchase a new disk if you have a large number of bad blocks. Strange things happen when I boot the install floppy! What is happening? If you are seeing things like the machine grinding to a halt or spontaneously rebooting when you try to boot the install floppy, here are three questions to ask yourself:- Did you use a new, freshly-formatted, error-free floppy (preferably a brand-new one straight out of the box, as opposed to the magazine cover disk that has been lying under the bed for the last three years)? Did you download the floppy image in binary (or image) mode? (do not be embarrassed, even the best of us have accidentally downloaded a binary file in ASCII mode at least once!) If you are using &windows; 95 or 98 did you run fdimage or rawrite in pure DOS mode? These operating systems can interfere with programs that write directly to hardware, which the disk creation program does; even running it inside a DOS shell in the GUI can cause this problem. There have also been reports of &netscape; causing problems when downloading the boot floppy, so it is probably best to use a different FTP client if you can. I booted from my ATAPI CDROM, but the install program says no CDROM is found. Where did it go? The usual cause of this problem is a mis-configured CDROM drive. Many PCs now ship with the CDROM as the slave device on the secondary IDE controller, with no master device on that controller. This is illegal according to the ATAPI specification, but &windows; plays fast and loose with the specification, and the BIOS ignores it when booting. This is why the BIOS was able to see the CDROM to boot from it, but why FreeBSD cannot see it to complete the install. Reconfigure your system so that the CDROM is either the master device on the IDE controller it is attached to, or make sure that it is the slave on an IDE controller that also has a master device. Can I install on my laptop over PLIP (Parallel Line IP)? Yes. Use a standard Laplink cable. If necessary, you can check out the PLIP section of the Handbook for details on parallel port networking. If you are running FreeBSD 3.X or earlier, also look at the Mobile Computing page. Which geometry should I use for a disk drive? By the geometry of a disk, we mean the number of cylinders, heads and sectors/track on a disk. We will refer to this as C/H/S for convenience. This is how the PC's BIOS works out which area on a disk to read/write from. This causes a lot of confusion among new system administrators. First of all, the physical geometry of a SCSI drive is totally irrelevant, as FreeBSD works in term of disk blocks. In fact, there is no such thing as the physical geometry, as the sector density varies across the disk. What manufacturers claim is the physical geometry is usually the geometry that they have determined wastes the least space. For IDE disks, FreeBSD does work in terms of C/H/S, but all modern drives internally convert this into block references. All that matters is the logical geometry. This is the answer that the BIOS gets when it asks the drive what is your geometry? It then uses this geometry to access the disk. As FreeBSD uses the BIOS when booting, it is very important to get this right. In particular, if you have more than one operating system on a disk, they must all agree on the geometry. Otherwise you will have serious problems booting! For SCSI disks, the geometry to use depends on whether extended translation support is turned on in your controller (this is often referred to as support for DOS disks >1GB or something similar). If it is turned off, then use N cylinders, 64 heads and 32 sectors/track, where N is the capacity of the disk in MB. For example, a 2GB disk should pretend to have 2048 cylinders, 64 heads and 32 sectors/track. If it is turned on (it is often supplied this way to get around certain limitations in &ms-dos;) and the disk capacity is more than 1GB, use M cylinders, 63 sectors per track (not 64), and 255 heads, where 'M' is the disk capacity in MB divided by 7.844238 (!). So our example 2GB drive would have 261 cylinders, 63 sectors per track and 255 heads. If you are not sure about this, or FreeBSD fails to detect the geometry correctly during installation, the simplest way around this is usually to create a small DOS partition on the disk. The BIOS should then detect the correct geometry, and you can always remove the DOS partition in the partition editor if you do not want to keep it. You might want to leave it around for programming network cards and the like, however. Alternatively, there is a freely available utility distributed with FreeBSD called pfdisk.exe. You can find it in the tools subdirectory on the FreeBSD CDROM or on the various FreeBSD FTP sites. This program can be used to work out what geometry the other operating systems on the disk are using. You can then enter this geometry in the partition editor. Are there any restrictions on how I divide the disk up? Yes. You must make sure that your root partition is below 1024 cylinders so the BIOS can boot the kernel from it. (Note that this is a limitation in the PC's BIOS, not FreeBSD). For a SCSI drive, this will normally imply that the root partition will be in the first 1024MB (or in the first 4096MB if extended translation is turned on - see previous question). For IDE, the corresponding figure is 504MB. Is FreeBSD compatible with any disk managers? FreeBSD recognizes the Ontrack Disk Manager and makes allowances for it. Other disk managers are not supported. If you just want to use the disk with FreeBSD you do not need a disk manager. Just configure the disk for as much space as the BIOS can deal with (usually 504 megabytes), and FreeBSD should figure out how much space you really have. If you are using an old disk with an MFM controller, you may need to explicitly tell FreeBSD how many cylinders to use. If you want to use the disk with FreeBSD and another operating system, you may be able to do without a disk manager: just make sure the FreeBSD boot partition and the slice for the other operating system are in the first 1024 cylinders. If you are reasonably careful, a 20 megabyte boot partition should be plenty. When I boot FreeBSD I get Missing Operating System. What is happening? This is classically a case of FreeBSD and DOS or some other OS conflicting over their ideas of disk geometry. You will have to reinstall FreeBSD, but obeying the instructions given above will almost always get you going. Why can I not get past the boot manager's F? prompt? This is another symptom of the problem described in the preceding question. Your BIOS geometry and FreeBSD geometry settings do not agree! If your controller or BIOS supports cylinder translation (often marked as >1GB drive support), try toggling its setting and reinstalling FreeBSD. Do I need to install the complete sources? In general, no. However, we would strongly recommend that you install, at a minimum, the base source kit, which includes several of the files mentioned here, and the sys (kernel) source kit, which includes sources for the kernel. There is nothing in the system which requires the presence of the sources to operate, however, except for the kernel-configuration program &man.config.8;. With the exception of the kernel sources, our build structure is set up so that you can read-only mount the sources from elsewhere via NFS and still be able to make new binaries (due to the kernel-source restriction, we recommend that you not mount this on /usr/src directly, but rather in some other location with appropriate symbolic links to duplicate the top-level structure of the source tree). Having the sources on-line and knowing how to build a system with them will make it much easier for you to upgrade to future releases of FreeBSD. To actually select a subset of the sources, use the Custom menu item when you are in the Distributions menu of the system installation tool. Do I need to build a kernel? Building a new kernel was originally pretty much a required step in a FreeBSD installation, but more recent releases have benefited from the introduction of a much friendlier kernel configuration tool. When at the FreeBSD boot prompt (boot:), use the flag and you will be dropped into a visual configuration screen which allows you to configure the kernel's settings for most common ISA cards. It is still recommended that you eventually build a new kernel containing just the drivers that you need, just to save a bit of RAM, but it is no longer a strict requirement for most systems. Should I use DES, Blowfish, or MD5 passwords and how do I specify which form my users receive? The default password format on FreeBSD is to use MD5-based passwords. These are believed to be more secure than the traditional &unix; password format, which used a scheme based on the DES algorithm. DES passwords are still available if you need to share your password file with legacy operating systems which still use the less secure password format (they are available if you choose to install the crypto distribution in sysinstall, or by installing the crypto sources if building from source). Installing the crypto libraries will also allow you to use the Blowfish password format, which is more secure. Which password format to use for new passwords is controlled by the passwd_format login capability in /etc/login.conf, which takes values of des, blf (if these are available) or md5. See the &man.login.conf.5; manual page for more information about login capabilities. Why does the boot floppy start, but hang at the Probing Devices... screen? If you have a IDE &iomegazip; or &jaz; drive installed, remove it and try again. The boot floppy can get confused by the drives. After the system is installed you can reconnect the drive. Hopefully this will be fixed in a later release. Why do I get a panic: can't mount root error when rebooting the system after installation? This error comes from confusion between the boot block's and the kernel's understanding of the disk devices. The error usually manifests on two-disk IDE systems, with the hard disks arranged as the master or single device on separate IDE controllers, with FreeBSD installed on the secondary IDE controller. The boot blocks think the system is installed on wd1 (the second BIOS disk) while the kernel assigns the first disk on the secondary controller device wd2. After the device probing, the kernel tries to mount what the boot blocks think is the boot disk, wd1, while it is really wd2, and fails. To fix the problem, do one of the following: For FreeBSD 3.3 and later, reboot the system and hit Enter at the Booting kernel in 10 seconds; hit [Enter] to interrupt prompt. This will drop you into the boot loader. Then type set root_disk_unit="disk_number" . disk_number will be 0 if FreeBSD is installed on the master drive on the first IDE controller, 1 if it is installed on the slave on the first IDE controller, 2 if it is installed on the master of the second IDE controller, and 3 if it is installed on the slave of the second IDE controller. Then type boot, and your system should boot correctly. To make this change permanent (ie so you do not have to do this every time you reboot or turn on your FreeBSD machine), put the line root_disk_unit="disk_number" in /boot/loader.conf.local . If using FreeBSD 3.2 or earlier, at the Boot: prompt, enter 1:wd(2,a)kernel and press Enter. If the system starts, then run the command echo "1:wd(2,a)kernel" > /boot.config to make it the default boot string. Move the FreeBSD disk onto the primary IDE controller, so the hard disks are consecutive. Rebuild your kernel, modify the wd configuration lines to read: controller wdc0 at isa? port "IO_WD1" bio irq 14 vector wdintr disk wd0 at wdc0 drive 0 # disk wd1 at wdc0 drive 1 # comment out this line controller wdc1 at isa? port "IO_WD2" bio irq 15 vector wdintr disk wd1 at wdc1 drive 0 # change from wd2 to wd1 disk wd2 at wdc1 drive 1 # change from wd3 to wd2 Install the new kernel. If you moved your disks and wish to restore the previous configuration, replace the disks in the desired configuration and reboot. Your system should boot successfully. What are the limits for memory? For memory, the limit is 4 gigabytes. If you plan to install this much memory into a machine, you need to be careful. You will probably want to use ECC memory and to reduce capacitive loading use 9 chip memory modules versus 18 chip memory modules. What are the limits for ffs filesystems? For ffs filesystems, the maximum theoretical limit is 8 terabytes (2G blocks), or 16TB for the default block size of 8K. In practice, there is a soft limit of 1 terabyte, but with modifications filesystems with 4 terabytes are possible (and exist). The maximum size of a single ffs file is approximately 1G blocks, or 4TB with a block size of 4K. Maximum file sizes fs block size 2.2.7-stable 3.0-current works should work 4K 4T-1 4T-1 4T-1 >4T 8K >32G 8T-1 >32G 32T-1 16K >128G 16T-1 >128G 32T-1 32K >512G 32T-1 >512G 64T-1 64K >2048G 64T-1 >2048G 128T-1
When the fs block size is 4K, triple indirect blocks work and everything should be limited by the maximum fs block number that can be represented using triple indirect blocks (approx. 1K^3 + 1K^2 + 1K), but everything is limited by a (wrong) limit of 1G-1 on fs block numbers. The limit on fs block numbers should be 2G-1. There are some bugs for fs block numbers near 2G-1, but such block numbers are unreachable when the fs block size is 4K. For block sizes of 8K and larger, everything should be limited by the 2G-1 limit on fs block numbers, but is actually limited by the 1G-1 limit on fs block numbers, except under -STABLE triple indirect blocks are unreachable, so the limit is the maximum fs block number that can be represented using double indirect blocks (approx. (blocksize/4)^2 + (blocksize/4)), and under -CURRENT exceeding this limit may cause problems. Using the correct limit of 2G-1 blocks does cause problems. Why do I get an error message, archsw.readin.failed after compiling and booting a new kernel? You can boot by specifying the kernel directly at the second stage, pressing any key when the | shows up before loader is started. More specifically, you have upgraded the source for your kernel, and installed a new kernel builtin from them without making world. This is not supported. Make world. What are these security profiles? 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. For full details, see the Security Profile section of the Handbook's post-install chapter. Hardware compatibility General I want to get a piece of hardware for my FreeBSD system. Which model/brand/type is best? This is discussed continually on the FreeBSD mailing lists. Since hardware changes so quickly, however, we expect this. We still strongly recommend that you read through the Hardware notes for &os; &rel.current; or &rel2.current; and search the mailing list archives before asking about the latest and greatest hardware. Chances are a discussion about the type of hardware you are looking for took place just last week. If you are looking for a laptop, check the FreeBSD-mobile mailing list archives. Otherwise, you probably want the archives for FreeBSD-questions, or possibly a specific mailing list for a particular hardware type. + Architectures and processors Does FreeBSD support architectures other than the x86? Yes. FreeBSD currently runs on the Intel x86 and DEC (now Compaq) Alpha architectures. As of FreeBSD 5.0, the IA-64, AMD-64 and &sparc64; architectures are also supported. Upcoming platforms are &mips; and &powerpc;, join the &a.ppc; or the &a.mips; respectively for more information about ongoing work on these platforms. For general discussion on new architectures, join the &a.platforms;. If your machine has a different architecture and you need something right now, we suggest you look at NetBSD or OpenBSD. Does FreeBSD support Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP)? Yes. SMP is not enabled in the GENERIC kernel, so you must recompile your kernel to enable SMP. Take a look at /sys/i386/conf/LINT to learn what options to put in your kernel config file. I do not have a math co-processor - is that bad? This will only affect 386/486SX/486SLC owners - other machines will have one built into the CPU. In general this will not cause any problems, but there are circumstances where you will take a hit, either in performance or accuracy of the math emulation code (see the section on FP emulation). In particular, drawing arcs in X will be VERY slow. It is highly recommended that you buy a math co-processor; it is well worth it. Some math co-processors are better than others. It pains us to say it, but nobody ever got fired for buying Intel. Unless you are sure it works with FreeBSD, beware of clones. Hard drives, tape drives, and CD and DVD drives What kind of hard drives does FreeBSD support? FreeBSD supports EIDE and SCSI drives (with a compatible controller; see the next section), and all drives using the original Western Digital interface (MFM, RLL, ESDI, and of course IDE). A few ESDI controllers that use proprietary interfaces may not work: stick to WD1002/3/6/7 interfaces and clones. Which SCSI controllers are supported? See the complete list in the Hardware Notes for &os; &rel.current; or &rel2.current;. What types of tape drives are supported? FreeBSD supports SCSI and QIC-36 (with a QIC-02 interface). This includes 8-mm (aka Exabyte) and DAT drives. Some of the early 8-mm drives are not quite compatible with SCSI-2, and may not work well with FreeBSD. Does FreeBSD support tape changers? FreeBSD supports SCSI changers using the &man.ch.4; device and the &man.chio.1; command. The details of how you actually control the changer can be found in the &man.chio.1; manual page. If you are not using AMANDA or some other product that already understands changers, remember that they only know how to move a tape from one point to another, so you need to keep track of which slot a tape is in, and which slot the tape currently in the drive needs to go back to. Which CDROM drives are supported by FreeBSD? Any SCSI drive connected to a supported controller is supported. The following proprietary CDROM interfaces are also supported: Mitsumi LU002 (8bit), LU005 (16bit) and FX001D (16bit 2x Speed). Sony CDU 31/33A Sound Blaster Non-SCSI CDROM Matsushita/Panasonic CDROM ATAPI compatible IDE CDROMs All non-SCSI cards are known to be extremely slow compared to SCSI drives, and some ATAPI CDROMs may not work. The official FreeBSD CDROM ISO, and CDROMs from Daemon News and FreeBSD Mall, support booting directly from the CD. Which CD-RW drives are supported by FreeBSD? FreeBSD supports any ATAPI-compatible IDE CD-R or CD-RW drive. For FreeBSD versions 4.0 and later, see the manual page for &man.burncd.8;. For earlier FreeBSD versions, see the examples in /usr/share/examples/atapi. FreeBSD also supports any SCSI CD-R or CD-RW drives. Install and use the cdrecord command from the ports or packages system, and make sure that you have the pass device compiled in your kernel. Does FreeBSD support &iomegazip; drives? FreeBSD supports SCSI and ATAPI (IDE) &iomegazip; drives out of the box, of course. SCSI ZIP drives can only be set to run at SCSI target IDs 5 or 6, but if your SCSI host adapter's BIOS supports it you can even boot from it. It is not clear which host adapters support booting from targets other than 0 or 1, so you will have to consult your adapter's documentation if you would like to use this feature. FreeBSD also supports Parallel Port Zip Drives. Check that your kernel contains the scbus0, da0, ppbus0, and vp0 drivers (the GENERIC kernel contains everything except vp0). With all these drivers present, the Parallel Port drive should be available as /dev/da0s4. Disks can be mounted using mount /dev/da0s4 /mnt OR (for dos disks) mount_msdos /dev/da0s4 /mnt as appropriate. Also check out the FAQ on removable drives later in this chapter, and the note on formattingin the Administration chapter. Does FreeBSD support &jaz;, EZ and other removable drives? Apart from the IDE version of the EZ drive, these are all SCSI devices, so they should all look like SCSI disks to FreeBSD, and the IDE EZ should look like an IDE drive. I am not sure how well FreeBSD supports changing the media out while running. You will of course need to dismount the drive before swapping media, and make sure that any external units are powered on when you boot the system so FreeBSD can see them. See this note on formatting. Keyboards and mice Does FreeBSD support my USB keyboard? FreeBSD 4.X and later supports USB keyboards out-of-the-box. Preliminary USB device support appeared in FreeBSD 3.1, but might not always work as of version 3.2. If you want to experiment with the USB keyboard support in FreeBSD 3.X, follow the procedure described below. Use a version of FreeBSD 3.X later than 3.2. Add the following lines to your kernel configuration file, and rebuild the kernel. controller uhci0 controller ohci0 controller usb0 controller ukbd0 options KBD_INSTALL_CDEV Go to the /dev directory and create device nodes as follows: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; ./MAKEDEV kbd0 kbd1 Edit /etc/rc.conf and add the following lines: usbd_enable="YES" usbd_flags="" If you want to use a USB keyboard in FreeBSD 4.X or later, you just need to enable USB support in /etc/rc.conf. Once you have USB keyboard support enabled on your system, the AT keyboard becomes /dev/kbd0 and the USB keyboard becomes /dev/kbd1, if both are connected to the system. If there is the USB keyboard only, it will be /dev/ukbd0. If you want to use the USB keyboard in the console, you have to explicitly tell the console driver to use the existing USB keyboard. This can be done by running the following command as a part of system initialization. &prompt.root; kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd1 < /dev/ttyv0 > /dev/null Note that if the USB keyboard is the only keyboard, it is accessed as /dev/kbd0, thus, the command should look like: &prompt.root; kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd0 < /dev/ttyv0 > /dev/null /etc/rc.i386 is a good place to add the above command. Once this is done, the USB keyboard should work in the X environment as well without any special settings. Hot-plugging and unplugging of the USB keyboard may not work quite right yet. We recommend connecting the keyboard before starting the system and leaving it connected until the system is shutdown to avoid troubles. See the &man.ukbd.4; manual page for more information. I have an unusual bus mouse. How do I set it up? FreeBSD supports the bus mouse and the InPort bus mouse from such manufactures as Microsoft, Logitech and ATI. The bus device driver is compiled in the GENERIC kernel by default in FreeBSD versions 2.X, but not included in version 3.0 or later. If you are building a custom kernel with the bus mouse driver, make sure to add the following line to the kernel config file In FreeBSD 3.0 or before, add: device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c tty irq5 vector mseintr In FreeBSD 3.X, the line should be: device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c tty irq5 And in FreeBSD 4.X and later, the line should read: device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c irq5 Bus mice usually comes with dedicated interface cards. These cards may allow you to set the port address and the IRQ number other than shown above. Refer to the manual of your mouse and the &man.mse.4; manual page for more information. How do I use my PS/2 (mouse port or keyboard) mouse? The PS/2 mouse is supported out-of-the-box in all recent versions of FreeBSD. The necessary device driver, psm, is included in the GENERIC kernel. If your custom kernel does not have this, add the appropriate following line to your kernel configuration file and compile a new kernel. In FreeBSD 3.0 or earlier, the line should be: device psm0 at isa? port "IO_KBD" conflicts tty irq 12 vector psmintr In FreeBSD 3.1 or later, the line should be: device psm0 at isa? tty irq 12 In FreeBSD 4.0 or later, the line should be: device psm0 at atkbdc? irq 12 Once the kernel detects psm0 correctly at boot time, make sure that an entry for psm0 exists in /dev. You can do this by typing: &prompt.root; cd /dev; sh MAKEDEV psm0 when logged in as root. You can omit this step if you are running FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE or newer with &man.devfs.5; enabled, since the proper device nodes will be created automatically under /dev. Is it possible to use a mouse in any way outside the X Window system? If you are using the default console driver, &man.syscons.4;, you can use a mouse pointer in text consoles to cut & paste text. Run the mouse daemon, &man.moused.8;, and turn on the mouse pointer in the virtual console: &prompt.root; moused -p /dev/xxxx -t yyyy &prompt.root; vidcontrol -m on Where xxxx is the mouse device name and yyyy is a protocol type for the mouse. The mouse daemon can automatically determine the protocol type of most mice, except old serial mice. Specify the auto protocol to invoke automatic detection. If automatic detection does not work, see the &man.moused.8; manual page for a list of supported protocol types. If you have a PS/2 mouse, just add moused_enable="YES" to /etc/rc.conf to start the mouse daemon at boot-time. Additionally, if you would like to use the mouse daemon on all virtual terminals instead of just the console, add allscreens_flags="-m on" to /etc/rc.conf. When the mouse daemon is running, access to the mouse must be coordinated between the mouse daemon and other programs such as X Windows. Refer to the FAQ Why does my mouse not work with X? for more details on this issue. How do I cut and paste text with a mouse in the text console? Once you get the mouse daemon running (see the previous section), hold down the button 1 (left button) and move the mouse to select a region of text. Then, press the button 2 (middle button) to paste it at the text cursor. Pressing button 3 (right button) will extend the selected region of text. If your mouse does not have a middle button, you may wish to emulate one or remap buttons using mouse daemon options. See the &man.moused.8; manual page for details. Does FreeBSD support any USB mice? Preliminary USB device support was added to FreeBSD 3.1. It did not always work through early versions of 3.X. As of FreeBSD 4.0, USB devices should work out of the box. If you want to experiment with the USB mouse support under FreeBSD 3.X, follow the procedure described below. Use FreeBSD 3.2 or later. Add the following lines to your kernel configuration file, and rebuild the kernel. device uhci device ohci device usb device ums In versions of FreeBSD before 4.0, use this instead: controller uhci0 controller ohci0 controller usb0 device ums0 Go to the /dev directory and create a device node as follows: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; ./MAKEDEV ums0 You can omit this step if you are running FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE or newer with &man.devfs.5; enabled, since the proper device nodes will be created automatically under /dev. Edit /etc/rc.conf and add the following lines: moused_enable="YES" moused_type="auto" moused_port="/dev/ums0" moused_flags="" usbd_enable="YES" usbd_flags="" See the previous section for more detailed discussion on moused. In order to use the USB mouse in the X session, edit XF86Config. If you are using &xfree86; 3.3.2 or later, be sure to have the following lines in the Pointer section: Device "/dev/sysmouse" Protocol "Auto" If you are using earlier versions of &xfree86;, be sure to have the following lines in the Pointer section: Device "/dev/sysmouse" Protocol "SysMouse" Refer to another section on the mouse support in the X environment. Hot-plugging and unplugging of the USB mouse may not work quite right yet. It is a good idea connect the mouse before you start the system and leave it connected until the system is shutdown to avoid trouble. My mouse has a fancy wheel and buttons. Can I use them in FreeBSD? The answer is, unfortunately, It depends. These mice with additional features require specialized driver in most cases. Unless the mouse device driver or the user program has specific support for the mouse, it will act just like a standard two, or three button mouse. For the possible usage of wheels in the X Window environment, refer to that section. How do I use the mouse/trackball/touchpad on my laptop? Please refer to the answer to the previous question. Also check out the Mobile Computing page. Networking and serial devices Which network cards does FreeBSD support? See the Hardware Notes supplied with each release of FreeBSD for a more complete list. Why is FreeBSD not finding my internal Plug & Play modem? You will need to add the modem's PnP ID to the PnP ID list in the serial driver. To enable Plug & Play support, compile a new kernel with controller pnp0 in the configuration file, then reboot the system. The kernel will print the PnP IDs of all the devices it finds. Copy the PnP ID from the modem to the table in /sys/i386/isa/sio.c, at about line 2777. Look for the string SUP1310 in the structure siopnp_ids[] to find the table. Build the kernel again, install, reboot, and your modem should be found. You may have to manually configure the PnP devices using the pnp command in the boot-time configuration with a command like pnp 1 0 enable os irq0 3 drq0 0 port0 0x2f8 to make the modem show. Does FreeBSD support software modems, such as Winmodems? FreeBSD supports many software modems via add-on software. The comms/ltmdm port adds support for modems based on the very popular Lucent LT chipset. The comms/mwavem port supports the modem in IBM Thinkpad 600 and 700 laptops. You cannot install FreeBSD via a software modem; this software must be installed after the OS is installed. Is there a native driver for the Broadcom 43xx cards? No, and there is not likely to be. Broadcom refuses to publically release programming information for their wireless chipsets, most likely because they use software controlled radios. In order to get FCC type acceptance for their parts, they have to ensure that users cannot arbitrarily set things like operating frequencies, modulation parameters and power output. But without knowing how to program the chipsets, it is nearly impossible to write a driver. Which multi-port serial cards are supported by FreeBSD? There is a list of these in the Miscellaneous devices section of the handbook. Some unnamed clone cards have also been known to work, especially those that claim to be AST compatible. Check the &man.sio.4; manual page to get more information on configuring such cards. How do I get the boot: prompt to show on the serial console? Build a kernel with options COMCONSOLE. Create /boot.config and place as the only text in the file. Unplug the keyboard from the system. See /usr/src/sys/i386/boot/biosboot/README.serial for information. Sound devices Which sound cards are supported by FreeBSD? FreeBSD supports the &soundblaster;, &soundblaster; Pro, &soundblaster; 16, Pro Audio Spectrum 16, AdLib and Gravis UltraSound sound cards. There is also limited support for MPU-401 and compatible MIDI cards. Cards conforming to the µsoft; Sound System specification are also supported through the pcm driver. This is only for sound! This driver does not support CDROMs, SCSI or joysticks on these cards, except for the &soundblaster;. The &soundblaster; SCSI interface and some non-SCSI CDROMs are supported, but you cannot boot off this device. Workarounds for no sound from es1370 with pcm driver? You can run the following command every time the machine booted up: &prompt.root; mixer pcm 100 vol 100 cd 100 Other hardware What other devices does FreeBSD support? See the Handbook for the list of other devices supported. Does FreeBSD support power management on my laptop? FreeBSD supports APM on certain machines. Please look in the LINT kernel config file, searching for the APM keyword. Further information can be found in &man.apm.4;. Why does my Micron system hang at boot time? Certain Micron motherboards have a non-conforming PCI BIOS implementation that causes grief when FreeBSD boots because PCI devices do not get configured at their reported addresses. Disable the Plug and Play Operating System flag in the BIOS to work around this problem. More information can be found at http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html#micron The boot floppy hangs on a system with an ASUS K7V motherboard. How do I fix this? Go into the BIOS setup and disable the boot virus protection. Why does my &tm.3com; PCI network card not work with my Micron computer? Certain Micron motherboards have a non-conforming PCI BIOS implementation that does not configure PCI devices at the addresses reported. This causes grief when FreeBSD boots. To work around this problem, disable the Plug and Play Operating System flag in the BIOS. More information on this problem is available at URL: Troubleshooting What do I do when I have bad blocks on my hard drive? With SCSI drives, the drive should be capable of re-mapping these automatically. However, many drives are shipped with this feature disabled, for some mysterious reason... To enable this, you will need to edit the first device page mode, which can be done on FreeBSD by giving the command (as root) &prompt.root; camcontrol modepage sd0 -m 1 -e -P 3 and changing the values of AWRE and ARRE from 0 to 1:- AWRE (Auto Write Reallocation Enbld): 1 ARRE (Auto Read Reallocation Enbld): 1 The following paragraphs were submitted by Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com: For IDE drives, any bad block is usually a sign of potential trouble. All modern IDE drives come with internal bad-block remapping turned on. All IDE hard drive manufacturers today offer extensive warranties and will replace drives with bad blocks on them. If you still want to attempt to rescue an IDE drive with bad blocks, you can attempt to download the IDE drive manufacturer's IDE diagnostic program, and run this against the drive. Sometimes these programs can be set to force the drive electronics to rescan the drive for bad blocks and lock them out. For ESDI, RLL and MFM drives, bad blocks are a normal part of the drive and are no sign of trouble, generally. With a PC, the disk drive controller card and BIOS handle the task of locking out bad sectors. This is fine for operating systems like DOS that use BIOS code to access the disk. However, FreeBSD's disk driver does not go through BIOS, therefore a mechanism, bad144, exists that replaces this functionality. bad144 only works with the wd driver (which means it is not supported in FreeBSD 4.0), it is NOT able to be used with SCSI. bad144 works by entering all bad sectors found into a special file. One caveat with bad144 - the bad block special file is placed on the last track of the disk. As this file may possibly contain a listing for a bad sector that would occur near the beginning of the disk, where the /kernel file might be located, it therefore must be accessible to the bootstrap program that uses BIOS calls to read the kernel file. This means that the disk with bad144 used on it must not exceed 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors. This places an effective limit of 500MB on a disk that is mapped with bad144. To use bad144, simply set the Bad Block scanning to ON in the FreeBSD fdisk screen during the initial install. This works up through FreeBSD 2.2.7. The disk must have less than 1024 cylinders. It is generally recommended that the disk drive has been in operation for at least 4 hours prior to this to allow for thermal expansion and track wandering. If the disk has more than 1024 cylinders (such as a large ESDI drive) the ESDI controller uses a special translation mode to make it work under DOS. The wd driver understands about these translation modes, IF you enter the translated geometry with the set geometry command in fdisk. You must also NOT use the dangerously dedicated mode of creating the FreeBSD partition, as this ignores the geometry. Also, even though fdisk will use your overridden geometry, it still knows the true size of the disk, and will attempt to create a too large FreeBSD partition. If the disk geometry is changed to the translated geometry, the partition MUST be manually created with the number of blocks. A quick trick to use is to set up the large ESDI disk with the ESDI controller, boot it with a DOS disk and format it with a DOS partition. Then, boot the FreeBSD install and in the fdisk screen, read off and write down the blocksize and block numbers for the DOS partition. Then, reset the geometry to the same that DOS uses, delete the DOS partition, and create a cooperative FreeBSD partition using the blocksize you recorded earlier. Then, set the partition bootable and turn on bad block scanning. During the actual install, bad144 will run first, before any filesystems are created (you can view this with an AltF2). If it has any trouble creating the badsector file, you have set too large a disk geometry - reboot the system and start all over again (including repartitioning and reformatting with DOS). If remapping is enabled and you are seeing bad blocks, consider replacing the drive. The bad blocks will only get worse as time goes on. Why does FreeBSD not recognize my Bustek 742a EISA SCSI controller? This info is specific to the 742a but may also cover other Buslogic cards. (Bustek = Buslogic) There are 2 general versions of the 742a card. They are hardware revisions A-G, and revisions H - onwards. The revision letter is located after the Assembly number on the edge of the card. The 742a has 2 ROM chips on it, one is the BIOS chip and the other is the Firmware chip. FreeBSD does not care what version of BIOS chip you have but it does care about what version of firmware chip. Buslogic will send upgrade ROMs out if you call their tech support dept. The BIOS and Firmware chips are shipped as a matched pair. You must have the most current Firmware ROM in your adapter card for your hardware revision. The REV A-G cards can only accept BIOS/Firmware sets up to 2.41/2.21. The REV H- up cards can accept the most current BIOS/Firmware sets of 4.70/3.37. The difference between the firmware sets is that the 3.37 firmware supports round robin. The Buslogic cards also have a serial number on them. If you have an old hardware revision card you can call the Buslogic RMA department and give them the serial number and attempt to exchange the card for a newer hardware revision. If the card is young enough they will do so. FreeBSD 2.1 only supports Firmware revisions 2.21 onward. If you have a Firmware revision older than this your card will not be recognized as a Buslogic card. It may be recognized as an &adaptec; 1540, however. The early Buslogic firmware contains an AHA1540 emulation mode. This is not a good thing for an EISA card, however. If you have an old hardware revision card and you obtain the 2.21 firmware for it, you will need to check the position of jumper W1 to B-C, the default is A-B. Why does FreeBSD not detect my HP Netserver's SCSI controller? This is basically a known problem. The EISA on-board SCSI controller in the HP Netserver machines occupies EISA slot number 11, so all the true EISA slots are in front of it. Alas, the address space for EISA slots >= 10 collides with the address space assigned to PCI, and FreeBSD's auto-configuration currently cannot handle this situation very well. So now, the best you can do is to pretend there is no address range clash :), by bumping the kernel option EISA_SLOTS to a value of 12. Configure and compile a kernel, as described in the Handbook entry on configuring the kernel. Of course, this does present you with a chicken-and-egg problem when installing on such a machine. In order to work around this problem, a special hack is available inside UserConfig. Do not use the visual interface, but the plain command-line interface there. Simply type eisa 12 quit at the prompt, and install your system as usual. While it is recommended you compile and install a custom kernel anyway. Hopefully, future versions will have a proper fix for this problem. You cannot use a dangerously dedicated disk with an HP Netserver. See this note for more info. I keep seeing messages like ed1: timeout. What do these messages mean? This is usually caused by an interrupt conflict (e.g., two boards using the same IRQ). FreeBSD prior to 2.0.5R used to be tolerant of this, and the network driver would still function in the presence of IRQ conflicts. However, with 2.0.5R and later, IRQ conflicts are no longer tolerated. Boot with the -c option and change the ed0/de0/... entry to match your board. If you are using the BNC connector on your network card, you may also see device timeouts because of bad termination. To check this, attach a terminator directly to the NIC (with no cable) and see if the error messages go away. Some NE2000 compatible cards will give this error if there is no link on the UTP port or if the cable is disconnected. Why did my &tm.3com; 3C509 card stop working for no apparent reason? This card has a bad habit of losing its configuration information. Refresh your card's settings with the DOS utility 3c5x9.exe. My parallel printer is ridiculously slow. What can I do? If the only problem is that the printer is terribly slow, try changing your printer port mode as discussed in the Printer Setup section of the Handbook. Why do my programs occasionally die with Signal 11 errors? Signal 11 errors are caused when your process has attempted to access memory which the operating system has not granted it access to. If something like this is happening at seemingly random intervals then you need to start investigating things very carefully. These problems can usually be attributed to either: If the problem is occurring only in a specific application that you are developing yourself it is probably a bug in your code. If it is a problem with part of the base FreeBSD system, it may also be buggy code, but more often than not these problems are found and fixed long before us general FAQ readers get to use these bits of code (that is what -current is for). In particular, a dead giveaway that this is not a FreeBSD bug is if you see the problem when you are compiling a program, but the activity that the compiler is carrying out changes each time. For example, suppose you are running make buildworld, and the compile fails while trying to compile ls.c into ls.o. If you then run make buildworld again, and the compile fails in the same place then this is a broken build -- try updating your sources and try again. If the compile fails elsewhere then this is almost certainly hardware. What you should do: In the first case you can use a debugger e.g. gdb to find the point in the program which is attempting to access a bogus address and then fix it. In the second case you need to verify that it is not your hardware at fault. Common causes of this include: Your hard disks might be overheating: Check the fans in your case are still working, as your disk (and perhaps other hardware might be overheating). The processor running is overheating: This might be because the processor has been overclocked, or the fan on the processor might have died. In either case you need to ensure that you have hardware running at what it is specified to run at, at least while trying to solve this problem. i.e. Clock it back to the default settings. If you are overclocking then note that it is far cheaper to have a slow system than a fried system that needs replacing! Also the wider community is not often sympathetic to problems on overclocked systems, whether you believe it is safe or not. Dodgy memory: If you have multiple memory SIMMS/DIMMS installed then pull them all out and try running the machine with each SIMM or DIMM individually and narrow the problem down to either the problematic DIMM/SIMM or perhaps even a combination. Over-optimistic Motherboard settings: In your BIOS settings, and some motherboard jumpers you have options to set various timings, mostly the defaults will be sufficient, but sometimes, setting the wait states on RAM too low, or setting the RAM Speed: Turbo option, or similar in the BIOS will cause strange behavior. A possible idea is to set to BIOS defaults, but it might be worth noting down your settings first! Unclean or insufficient power to the motherboard. If you have any unused I/O boards, hard disks, or CDROMs in your system, try temporarily removing them or disconnecting the power cable from them, to see if your power supply can manage a smaller load. Or try another power supply, preferably one with a little more power (for instance, if your current power supply is rated at 250 Watts try one rated at 300 Watts). You should also read the SIG11 FAQ (listed below) which has excellent explanations of all these problems, albeit from a &linux; viewpoint. It also discusses how memory testing software or hardware can still pass faulty memory. Finally, if none of this has helped it is possible that you have just found a bug in FreeBSD, and you should follow the instructions to send a problem report. There is an extensive FAQ on this at the SIG11 problem FAQ My system crashes with either Fatal trap 12: page fault in kernel mode, or panic:, and spits out a bunch of information. What should I do? The FreeBSD developers are very interested in these errors, but need some more information than just the error you see. Copy your full crash message. Then consult the FAQ section on kernel panics, build a debugging kernel, and get a backtrace. This might sound difficult, but you do not need any programming skills; you just have to follow the instructions. Why does the screen go black and lose sync when I boot? This is a known problem with the ATI Mach 64 video card. The problem is that this card uses address 2e8, and the fourth serial port does too. Due to a bug (feature?) in the &man.sio.4; driver it will touch this port even if you do not have the fourth serial port, and even if you disable sio3 (the fourth port) which normally uses this address. Until the bug has been fixed, you can use this workaround: Enter at the boot prompt. (This will put the kernel into configuration mode). Disable sio0, sio1, sio2 and sio3 (all of them). This way the sio driver does not get activated -> no problems. Type exit to continue booting. If you want to be able to use your serial ports, you will have to build a new kernel with the following modification: in /usr/src/sys/i386/isa/sio.c find the one occurrence of the string 0x2e8 and remove that string and the preceding comma (keep the trailing comma). Now follow the normal procedure of building a new kernel. Even after applying these workarounds, you may still find that the X Window System does not work properly. If this is the case, make sure that the &xfree86; version you are using is at least &xfree86; 3.3.3 or higher. This version and upwards has built-in support for the Mach64 cards and even a dedicated X server for those cards. Why does FreeBSD only use 64 MB of RAM when my system has 128 MB of RAM installed? Due to the manner in which FreeBSD gets the memory size from the BIOS, it can only detect 16 bits worth of Kbytes in size (65535 Kbytes = 64MB) (or less... some BIOSes peg the memory size to 16M). If you have more than 64MB, FreeBSD will attempt to detect it; however, the attempt may fail. To work around this problem, you need to use the kernel option specified below. There is a way to get complete memory information from the BIOS, but we do not have room in the bootblocks to do it. Someday when lack of room in the bootblocks is fixed, we will use the extended BIOS functions to get the full memory information...but for now we are stuck with the kernel option. options "MAXMEM=n" Where n is your memory in Kilobytes. For a 128 MB machine, you would want to use 131072. Why does FreeBSD 2.0 panic with kmem_map too small!? The message may also be mb_map too small! The panic indicates that the system ran out of virtual memory for network buffers (specifically, mbuf clusters). You can increase the amount of VM available for mbuf clusters by adding: options "NMBCLUSTERS=n" to your kernel config file, where n is a number in the range 512-4096, depending on the number of concurrent TCP connections you need to support. I would recommend trying 2048 - this should get rid of the panic completely. You can monitor the number of mbuf clusters allocated/in use on the system with netstat -m (see &man.netstat.1;). The default value for NMBCLUSTERS is 512 + MAXUSERS * 16. Why do I get the error /kernel: proc: table is full? The FreeBSD kernel will only allow a certain number of processes to exist at one time. The number is based on the MAXUSERS option in the kernel configuration. MAXUSERS also affects various other in-kernel limits, such as network buffers (see this earlier question). If your machine is heavily loaded, you probably want to increase MAXUSERS. This will increase these other system limits in addition to the maximum number of processes. After FreeBSD 4.4, MAXUSERS became a tunable value that could be set with kern.maxusers in /boot/loader.conf. In earlier versions of FreeBSD, you need to adjust MAXUSERS in your kernel configuration. If your machine is lightly loaded, and you are simply running a very large number of processes, you can adjust this with the kern.maxproc sysctl. If these processes are being run by a single user, you will also need to adjust kern.maxprocperuid to be one less than your new kern.maxproc value. (It must be at least one less because one system program, &man.init.8;, must always be running.) To make a sysctl permanent across reboots, set this in /etc/sysctl.conf in recent versions of FreeBSD, or /etc/rc.local in older versions. Why do I get an error reading CMAP busy when rebooting with a new kernel? The logic that attempts to detect an out of date /var/db/kvm_*.db files sometimes fails and using a mismatched file can sometimes lead to panics. If this happens, reboot single-user and do: &prompt.root; rm /var/db/kvm_*.db What does the message ahc0: brkadrint, Illegal Host Access at seqaddr 0x0 mean? This is a conflict with an Ultrastor SCSI Host Adapter. During the boot process enter the kernel configuration menu and disable uha0, which is causing the problem. When I boot my system, I get the error ahc0: illegal cable configuration. My cabling is correct. What is going on? Your motherboard lacks the external logic to support automatic termination. Switch your SCSI BIOS to specify the correct termination for your configuration rather than automatic termination. The AIC7XXX driver cannot determine if the external logic for cable detection (and thus auto-termination) is available. The driver simply assumes that this support must exist if the configuration contained in the serial EEPROM is set to "automatic termination". Without the external cable detection logic the driver will often configure termination incorrectly, which can compromise the reliability of the SCSI bus. Why does Sendmail give me an error reading mail loops back to myself? This is answered in the sendmail FAQ as follows:- * I'm getting "Local configuration error" messages, such as: 553 relay.domain.net config error: mail loops back to myself 554 <user@domain.net>... Local configuration error How can I solve this problem? You have asked mail to the domain (e.g., domain.net) to be forwarded to a specific host (in this case, relay.domain.net) by using an MX record, but the relay machine does not recognize itself as domain.net. Add domain.net to /etc/mail/local-host-names (if you are using FEATURE(use_cw_file)) or add "Cw domain.net" to /etc/mail/sendmail.cf. The current version of the sendmail FAQ is no longer maintained with the sendmail release. It is however regularly posted to comp.mail.sendmail, comp.mail.misc, comp.mail.smail, comp.answers, and news.answers. You can also receive a copy via email by sending a message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the command send usenet/news.answers/mail/sendmail-faq as the body of the message. Why do full screen applications on remote machines misbehave? The remote machine may be setting your terminal type to something other than the cons25 terminal type required by the FreeBSD console. There are a number of possible work-arounds for this problem: After logging on to the remote machine, set your TERM shell variable to ansi or sco if the remote machine knows about these terminal types. Use a VT100 emulator like screen at the FreeBSD console. screen offers you the ability to run multiple concurrent sessions from one terminal, and is a neat program in its own right. Each screen window behaves like a VT100 terminal, so the TERM variable at the remote end should be set to vt100. Install the cons25 terminal database entry on the remote machine. The way to do this depends on the operating system on the remote machine. The system administration manuals for the remote system should be able to help you here. Fire up an X server at the FreeBSD end and login to the remote machine using an X based terminal emulator such as xterm or rxvt. The TERM variable at the remote host should be set to xterm or vt100. Why does my machine print calcru: negative time...? This can be caused by various hardware or software ailments relating to interrupts. It may be due to bugs but can also happen by nature of certain devices. Running TCP/IP over the parallel port using a large MTU is one good way to provoke this problem. Graphics accelerators can also get you here, in which case you should check the interrupt setting of the card first. A side effect of this problem are dying processes with the message SIGXCPU exceeded cpu time limit. For FreeBSD 3.0 and later from Nov 29, 1998 forward: If the problem cannot be fixed otherwise the solution is to set this sysctl variable: &prompt.root; sysctl -w kern.timecounter.method=1 The option of &man.sysctl.8; is deprecated and silently ignored in &os; 4.4-RELEASE and all newer versions. You can safely ommit it when setting options with sysctl as shown above. This means a performance impact, but considering the cause of this problem, you probably will not notice. If the problem persists, keep the sysctl set to one and set the NTIMECOUNTER option in your kernel to increasingly large values. If by the time you have reached NTIMECOUNTER=20 the problem is not solved, interrupts are too hosed on your machine for reliable time keeping. I see pcm0 not found or my sound card is found as pcm1 but I have device pcm0 in my kernel config file. What is going on? This occurs in FreeBSD 3.X with PCI sound cards. The pcm0 device is reserved exclusively for ISA-based cards so, if you have a PCI card, then you will see this error, and your card will appear as pcm1. You cannot remove the warning by simply changing the line in the kernel config file to device pcm1 as this will result in pcm1 being reserved for ISA cards and your PCI card being found as pcm2 (along with the warning pcm1 not found). If you have a PCI sound card you will also have to make the snd1 device rather than snd0: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; ./MAKEDEV snd1 You can omit this step if you are running FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE or newer with &man.devfs.5; enabled, since the proper device nodes will be created automatically under /dev. This situation does not arise in FreeBSD 4.X as a lot of work has been done to make it more PnP-centric and the pcm0 device is no longer reserved exclusively for ISA cards Why is my PnP card no longer found (or found as unknown) since upgrading to FreeBSD 4.X? FreeBSD 4.X is now much more PnP-centric and this has had the side effect of some PnP devices (e.g. sound cards and internal modems) not working even though they worked under FreeBSD 3.X. The reasons for this behavior are explained by the following e-mail, posted to the freebsd-questions mailing list by Peter Wemm, in answer to a question about an internal modem that was no longer found after an upgrade to FreeBSD 4.X (the comments in [] have been added to clarify the context. The contents of this quotation has been updated from its original text.
The PNP bios preconfigured it [the modem] and left it laying around in port space, so [in 3.X] the old-style ISA probes found it there. Under 4.0, the ISA code is much more PnP-centric. It was possible [in 3.X] for an ISA probe to find a stray device and then for the PNP device id to match and then fail due to resource conflicts. So, it disables the programmable cards first so this double probing cannot happen. It also means that it needs to know the PnP id's for supported PnP hardware. Making this more user tweakable is on the TODO list.
To get the device working again requires finding its PnP id and adding it to the list that the ISA probes use to identify PnP devices. This is obtained using &man.pnpinfo.8; to probe the device, for example this is the output from &man.pnpinfo.8; for an internal modem: &prompt.root; pnpinfo Checking for Plug-n-Play devices... Card assigned CSN #1 Vendor ID PMC2430 (0x3024a341), Serial Number 0xffffffff PnP Version 1.0, Vendor Version 0 Device Description: Pace 56 Voice Internal Plug & Play Modem Logical Device ID: PMC2430 0x3024a341 #0 Device supports I/O Range Check TAG Start DF I/O Range 0x3f8 .. 0x3f8, alignment 0x8, len 0x8 [16-bit addr] IRQ: 4 - only one type (true/edge) [more TAG lines elided] TAG End DF End Tag Successfully got 31 resources, 1 logical fdevs -- card select # 0x0001 CSN PMC2430 (0x3024a341), Serial Number 0xffffffff Logical device #0 IO: 0x03e8 0x03e8 0x03e8 0x03e8 0x03e8 0x03e8 0x03e8 0x03e8 IRQ 5 0 DMA 4 0 IO range check 0x00 activate 0x01 The information you require is in the Vendor ID line at the start of the output. The hexadecimal number in parentheses (0x3024a341 in this example) is the PnP id and the string immediately before this (PMC2430) is a unique ASCII id. Alternatively, if &man.pnpinfo.8; does not list the card in question, &man.pciconf.8; can be used instead. This is part of the output from pciconf -vl for an onboard sound chip: &prompt.root; pciconf -vl chip1@pci0:31:5: class=0x040100 card=0x00931028 chip=0x24158086 rev=0x02 hdr=0x00 vendor = 'Intel Corporation' device = '82801AA 8xx Chipset AC'97 Audio Controller' class = multimedia subclass = audio Here, you would use the chip value, 0x24158086. This information (Vendor ID or chip value) needs adding to the file /usr/src/sys/isa/sio.c. You should first make a backup of sio.c just in case things go wrong. You will also need it to make the patch to submit with your PR (you are going to submit a PR, are you not?) then edit sio.c and search for the line static struct isa_pnp_id sio_ids[] = { then scroll down to find the correct place to add the entry for your device. The entries look like this, and are sorted on the ASCII Vendor ID string which should be included in the comment to the right of the line of code along with all (if it will fit) or part of the Device Description from the output of &man.pnpinfo.8;: {0x0f804f3f, NULL}, /* OZO800f - Zoom 2812 (56k Modem) */ {0x39804f3f, NULL}, /* OZO8039 - Zoom 56k flex */ {0x3024a341, NULL}, /* PMC2430 - Pace 56 Voice Internal Modem */ {0x1000eb49, NULL}, /* ROK0010 - Rockwell ? */ {0x5002734a, NULL}, /* RSS0250 - 5614Jx3(G) Internal Modem */ Add the hexadecimal Vendor ID for your device in the correct place, save the file, rebuild your kernel, and reboot. Your device should now be found as an sio device as it was under FreeBSD 3.X Why do I get the error nlist failed when running, for example, top or systat? The problem is that the application you are trying to run is looking for a specific kernel symbol, but, for whatever reason, cannot find it; this error stems from one of two problems: Your kernel and userland are not synchronized (i.e., you built a new kernel but did not do an installworld, or vice versa), and thus the symbol table is different from what the user application thinks it is. If this is the case, simply complete the upgrade process (see /usr/src/UPDATING for the correct sequence). You are not using /boot/loader to load your kernel, but doing it directly from boot2 (see &man.boot.8;). While there is nothing wrong with bypassing /boot/loader, it generally does a better job of making the kernel symbols available to user applications. Why does it take so long to connect to my computer via ssh or telnet? The symptom: there is a long delay between the time the TCP connection is established and the time when the client software asks for a password (or, in &man.telnet.1;'s case, when a login prompt appears). The problem: more likely than not, the delay is caused by the server software trying to resolve the client's IP address into a hostname. Many servers, including the Telnet and SSH servers that come with FreeBSD, do this in order to, among other things, store the hostname in a log file for future reference by the administrator. The remedy: if the problem occurs whenever you connect from your computer (the client) to any server, the problem is with the client; likewise, if the problem only occurs when someone connects to your computer (the server) the problem is with the server. If the problem is with the client, the only remedy is to fix the DNS so the server can resolve it. If this is on a local network, consider it a server problem and keep reading; conversely, if this is on the global Internet, you will most likely need to contact your ISP and ask them to fix it for you. If the problem is with the server, and this is on a local network, you need to configure the server to be able to resolve address-to-hostname queries for your local address range. See the &man.hosts.5; and &man.named.8; manual pages for more information. If this is on the global Internet, the problem may be that your server's resolver is not functioning correctly. To check, try to look up another host--say, www.yahoo.com. If it does not work, that is your problem. What does stray IRQ mean? Stray IRQs are indications of hardware IRQ glitches, mostly from hardware that removes its interrupt request in the middle of the interrupt request acknowledge cycle. One has three options for dealing with this: Live with the warnings. All except the first 5 per irq are suppressed anyway. Break the warnings by changing 5 to 0 in isa_strayintr() so that all the warnings are suppressed. Break the warnings by installing parallel port hardware that uses irq 7 and the PPP driver for it (this happens on most systems), and install an ide drive or other hardware that uses irq 15 and a suitable driver for it. Why does file: table is full show up repeatedly in dmesg? This error message indicates you have exhausted the number of available file descriptors on your system. Please see the kern.maxfiles section of the Tuning Kernel Limits section of the Handbook for a discussion and solution. Why does the clock on my laptop keep incorrect time? Your laptop has two or more clocks, and FreeBSD has chosen to use the wrong one. Run &man.dmesg.8;, and check for lines that contain Timecounter. The last line printed is the one that FreeBSD chose, and will almost certainly be TSC. &prompt.root; dmesg | grep Timecounter Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz Timecounter "TSC" frequency 595573479 Hz You can confirm this by checking the kern.timecounter.hardware &man.sysctl.3;. &prompt.root; sysctl kern.timecounter.hardware kern.timecounter.hardware: TSC The BIOS may modify the TSC clock—perhaps to change the speed of the processor when running from batteries, or going into a power saving mode, but FreeBSD is unaware of these adjustments, and appears to gain or lose time. In this example, the i8254 clock is also available, and can be selected by writing its name to the kern.timecounter.hardware &man.sysctl.3;. &prompt.root; sysctl -w kern.timecounter.hardware=i8254 kern.timecounter.hardware: TSC -> i8254 Your laptop should now start keeping more accurate time. To have this change automatically run at boot time, add the following line to /etc/sysctl.conf. kern.timecounter.hardware=i8254 Why did my laptop fail to correctly probe PC cards? This problem is common on laptops that boot more than one operating system. Some non-BSD operating systems leave PC card hardware in an inconsistent state. pccardd will detect the card as "(null)""(null)" instead of its actual model. You must remove all power from the PC card slot to fully reset the hardware. Completely power off the laptop. (Don't suspend it, don't let it go into standby; the power needs to be completely off.) Wait a few moments, and reboot. Your PC card should work now. Some laptop hardware lies when it claims to be off. If the above does not work shut down, remove the battery, wait a moment, replace the battery, and reboot. Why does FreeBSD's boot loader display Read error and stop after the BIOS screen? FreeBSD's boot loader is incorrectly recognizing the hard drive's geometry. This must be manually set within fdisk when creating or modifying FreeBSD's slice. The correct drive geometry values can be found within the machine's BIOS. Look for the number of cylinders, heads and sectors for the particular drive. Within &man.sysinstall.8;'s fdisk, hit G to set the drive geometry. A dialog will pop up requesting the number of cylinders, heads and sectors. Type the numbers found from the BIOS separates by forward slashes. 5000 cylinders, 250 sectors and 60 sectors would be entered as 5000/250/60 Press enter to set the values, and hit W to write the new partition table to the drive. Another operating system destroyed my Boot Manager. How do I get it back? Enter &man.sysinstall.8; and choose Configure, then Fdisk. Select the disk the Boot Manager resided on with the space key. Press W to write changes to the drive. A prompt will appear asking which boot loader to install. Select this, and it will be restored. What does the error swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer: mean? This means that a process is trying to page memory to disk, and the page attempt has hung trying to access the disk for more than 20 seconds. It might be caused by bad blocks on the disk drive, disk wiring, cables, or any other disk I/O-related hardware. If the drive itself is actually bad, you will also see disk errors in /var/log/messages and in the output of dmesg. Otherwise, check your cables and connections. What are UDMA ICRC errors, and how do I fix them? The &man.ata.4; driver reports UDMA ICRC errors when a DMA transfer to or from a drive is corrupted. The driver will retry the operation a few times. Should the retries fail, it will switch from DMA to the slower PIO mode of communication with the device. The problem can be caused by many factors, although perhaps the most common cause is faulty or incorrect cabling. Check that the ATA cables are undamaged and rated for the Ultra DMA mode in use. If you're using removable drive trays, they must also be compatible. Be sure that all connections are making good contact. Problems have also been noticed when an old drive is installed on the same ATA channel as an Ultra DMA 66 (or faster) drive. Lastly, these errors can indicate that the drive is failing. Most drive vendors provide testing software for their drives, so test your drive, and, if necessary, back up your data and replace it. The &man.atacontrol.8; utility can be used to show and select the DMA or PIO modes used for each ATA device. In particular, atacontrol mode channel will show the modes in use on a particular ATA channel, where the primary channel is numbered 0, and so on. Commercial Applications This section is still very sparse, though we are hoping, of course, that companies will add to it! :) The FreeBSD group has no financial interest in any of the companies listed here but simply lists them as a public service (and feels that commercial interest in FreeBSD can have very positive effects on FreeBSD's long-term viability). We encourage commercial software vendors to send their entries here for inclusion. See the Vendors page for a longer list. Where can I get an Office Suite for FreeBSD? The FreeBSD Mall offers a FreeBSD native version of VistaSource ApplixWare 5. ApplixWare is a rich full-featured, commercial Office Suite for FreeBSD containing a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, vector drawing package, and other applications. ApplixWare is offered as part of the FreeBSD Mall's BSD Desktop Edition. The &linux; version of StarOffice works flawlessly on FreeBSD. The easiest way to install the &linux; version of StarOffice is through the FreeBSD Ports collection. Future versions of the open-source OpenOffice suite should work as well. Where can I get &motif; for FreeBSD? The Open Group has released the source code to &motif; 2.1.30. You can install the open-motif package, or compile it from ports. Refer to the ports section of the Handbook for more information on how to do this. The Open &motif; distribution only allows redistribution if it is running on an open source operating system. In addition, there are commercial distributions of the &motif; software available. These, however, are not for free, but their license allows them to be used in closed-source software. Contact Apps2go for the least expensive ELF &motif; 2.1.20 distribution for FreeBSD (either &i386; or Alpha). There are two distributions, the development edition and the runtime edition (for much less). These distributions includes: OSF/&motif; manager, xmbind, panner, wsm. Development kit with uil, mrm, xm, xmcxx, include and Imake files. Static and dynamic ELF libraries (for use with FreeBSD 3.0 and above). Demonstration applets. Be sure to specify that you want the FreeBSD version of &motif; when ordering (do not forget to mention the architecture you want too)! Versions for NetBSD and OpenBSD are also sold by Apps2go. This is currently a FTP only download. More info Apps2go WWW page or sales@apps2go.com or support@apps2go.com or phone (817) 431 8775 or +1 817 431-8775 Contact Metro Link for an either ELF or a.out &motif; 2.1 distribution for FreeBSD. This distribution includes: OSF/&motif; manager, xmbind, panner, wsm. Development kit with uil, mrm, xm, xmcxx, include and Imake files. Static and dynamic libraries (specify ELF for use with FreeBSD 3.0 and later; or a.out for use with FreeBSD 2.2.8 and earlier). Demonstration applets. Preformatted manual pages. Be sure to specify that you want the FreeBSD version of &motif; when ordering! Versions for &linux; are also sold by Metro Link. This is available on either a CDROM or for FTP download. Contact Xi Graphics for an a.out &motif; 2.0 distribution for FreeBSD. This distribution includes: OSF/&motif; manager, xmbind, panner, wsm. Development kit with uil, mrm, xm, xmcxx, include and Imake files. Static and dynamic libraries (for use with FreeBSD 2.2.8 and earlier). Demonstration applets. Preformatted manual pages. Be sure to specify that you want the FreeBSD version of &motif; when ordering! Versions for BSDI and &linux; are also sold by Xi Graphics. This is currently a 4 diskette set... in the future this will change to a unified CD distribution like their CDE. Where can I get CDE for FreeBSD? Xi Graphics used to sell CDE for FreeBSD, but no longer do. KDE is an open source X11 desktop which is similar to CDE in many respects. You might also like the look and feel of xfce. KDE and xfce are both in the ports system. Are there any commercial high-performance X servers? Yes, Xi Graphics and Metro Link sell Accelerated-X product for FreeBSD and other Intel based systems. The Metro Link offering is a high performance X Server that offers easy configuration using the FreeBSD Package suite of tools, support for multiple concurrent video boards and is distributed in binary form only, in a convenient FTP download. Not to mention the Metro Link offering is available at the very reasonable price of $39. Metro Link also sells both ELF and a.out &motif; for FreeBSD (see above). More info Metro Link WWW page or sales@metrolink.com or tech@metrolink.com or phone (954) 938-0283 or +1 954 938-0283 The Xi Graphics offering is a high performance X Server that offers easy configuration, support for multiple concurrent video boards and is distributed in binary form only, in a unified diskette distribution for FreeBSD and &linux;. Xi Graphics also offers a high performance X Server tailored for laptop support. There is a free compatibility demo of version 5.0 available. Xi Graphics also sells &motif; and CDE for FreeBSD (see above). More info Xi Graphics WWW page or sales@xig.com or support@xig.com or phone (800) 946 7433 or +1 303 298-7478. Are there any Database systems for FreeBSD? Yes! See the Commercial Vendors section of FreeBSD's Web site. Also see the Databases section of the Ports collection. Can I run &oracle; on FreeBSD? Yes. The following pages tell you exactly how to set up &linux;-&oracle; on FreeBSD: http://www.scc.nl/~marcel/howto-oracle.html http://www.lf.net/lf/pi/oracle/install-linux-oracle-on-freebsd User Applications So, where are all the user applications? Please take a look at the ports page for info on software packages ported to FreeBSD. The list currently tops &os.numports; and is growing daily, so come back to check often or subscribe to the freebsd-announce mailing list for periodic updates on new entries. Most ports should work on the 4.X and 5.X branches. Each time a FreeBSD release is made, a snapshot of the ports tree at the time of release in also included in the ports/ directory. We also support the concept of a package, essentially no more than a gzipped binary distribution with a little extra intelligence embedded in it for doing whatever custom installation work is required. A package can be installed and uninstalled again easily without having to know the gory details of which files it includes. Use the package installation menu in /stand/sysinstall (under the post-configuration menu item) or invoke the &man.pkg.add.1; command on the specific package files you are interested in installing. Package files can usually be identified by their .tgz suffix and CDROM distribution people will have a packages/All directory on their CD which contains such files. They can also be downloaded over the net for various versions of FreeBSD at the following locations: for 4.X-RELEASE/4-STABLE ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4-stable/ for 5.X-CURRENT ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5-current or your nearest local mirror site. Note that all ports may not be available as packages since new ones are constantly being added. It is always a good idea to check back periodically to see which packages are available at the ftp.FreeBSD.org master site. Why does ghostscript give lots of errors with my 386/486SX? You do not have a math co-processor, right? You will need to add the alternative math emulator to your kernel; you do this by adding the following to your kernel config file and it will be compiled in. options GPL_MATH_EMULATE You will need to remove the MATH_EMULATE option when you do this. How do I configure INN (Internet News) for my machine? After installing the news/inn package or port, an excellent place to start is Dave Barr's INN Page where you will find the INN FAQ. What version of µsoft; FrontPage should I get? Use the Port, Luke! A pre-patched version of Apache, www/apache13-fp, is available in the ports tree. Does FreeBSD support &java;? Yes. Please see http://www.FreeBSD.org/java/. Why can I not build this port on my 3.X-STABLE machine? If you are running a FreeBSD version that lags significantly behind -CURRENT or -STABLE, you may need a ports upgrade kit from http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/. If you are up to date, then someone might have committed a change to the port which works for -CURRENT but which broke the port for -STABLE. Please submit a bug report on this with the &man.send-pr.1; command, since the ports collection is supposed to work for both the -CURRENT and -STABLE branches. I just tried to build INDEX using make index, and it failed. Why? First, always make sure that you have a completely up-to-date Ports Collection. Errors that affect building INDEX from an up-to-date copy of the Ports Collection are high-visibility and are thus almost always fixed immediately. However, if you are up-to-date, perhaps you are seeing another problem. make index has a known bug in dealing with incomplete copies of the Ports Collection. It assumes that you have a local copy of every single port that every other port that you have a local copy of depends on. To explain, if you have a copy of foo/bar on your disk, and foo/bar depends on baz/quux, then you must also have a copy of baz/quux on your disk, and the ports baz/quux depends on, and so on. Otherwise, make index has insufficient information to create its dependency tree. This is particularly a problem for &os; users who utilize &man.cvsup.1; to track the Ports Collection but choose not to install certain categories by specifying them in refuse. In theory, one should be able to refuse categories, but in practice there are too many ports that depend on ports in other categories. Until someone comes up with a solution for this problem, the general rule is is that if you want to build INDEX, you must have a complete copy of the Ports Collection. There are rare cases where INDEX will not build due to odd cases involving WITH_* or WITHOUT_* variables being set in make.conf. If you suspect that this is the case, please try to make INDEX with those Makevars turned off before reporting it to &a.ports;. Where do I find ld.so? a.out applications like &netscape.navigator; require a.out libraries. A version of FreeBSD built with ELF libraries does not install them by default. You will get complaints about not having /usr/libexec/ld.so if this is the case on your system. These libraries are available as an add-on in the compat22 distribution. Use &man.sysinstall.8; to install them. You can also install them from the FreeBSD source code: &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/lib/compat/compat22 &prompt.root; make install clean If you want to install the latest compat22 libraries whenever you run make world, edit /etc/make.conf to include COMPAT22=YES. Old compatibility libraries change rarely, if ever, so this is not generally needed. Also see the ERRATAs for 3.1-RELEASE and 3.2-RELEASE. I updated the sources, now how do I update my installed ports? FreeBSD does not include a port upgrading tool, but it does have some tools to make the upgrade process somewhat easier. You can also install additional tools to simplify port handling. The &man.pkg.version.1; command can generate a script that will update installed ports to the latest version in the ports tree. &prompt.root; pkg_version -c > /tmp/myscript The output script must be edited by hand before you use it. Recent versions of &man.pkg.version.1; force this by inserting an &man.exit.1; at the beginning of the script. You should save the output of the script, as it will note packages that depend on the one that has been updated. These may or may not need to be updated as well. The usual case where they need to be updated is that a shared library has changed version numbers, so the ports that used that library need to be rebuilt to use the new version. Beginning with FreeBSD 5.0 (and higher revisions), &man.pkg.version.1; no longer supports the option. If you have the disk space, you can use the portupgrade tool to automate all of this. portupgrade includes various tools to simplify package handling. It is available under sysutils/portupgrade. Since it is written in Ruby, portupgrade is an unlikely candidate for integration with the main FreeBSD tree. That should not stop anyone from using it, however. If your system is up full time, the &man.periodic.8; system can be used to generate a weekly list of ports that might need updating by setting weekly_status_pkg_enable="YES" in /etc/periodic.conf. Why is /bin/sh so minimal? Why does FreeBSD not use bash or another shell? Because &posix; says that there shall be such a shell. The more complicated answer: many people need to write shell scripts which will be portable across many systems. That is why &posix; specifies the shell and utility commands in great detail. Most scripts are written in Bourne shell, and because several important programming interfaces (&man.make.1;, &man.system.3;, &man.popen.3;, and analogues in higher-level scripting languages like Perl and Tcl) are specified to use the Bourne shell to interpret commands. Because the Bourne shell is so often and widely used, it is important for it to be quick to start, be deterministic in its behavior, and have a small memory footprint. The existing implementation is our best effort at meeting as many of these requirements simultaneously as we can. In order to keep /bin/sh small, we have not provided many of the convenience features that other shells have. That is why the Ports Collection includes more featureful shells like bash, scsh, tcsh, and zsh. (You can compare for yourself the memory utilization of all these shells by looking at the VSZ and RSS columns in a ps -u listing.) Why do &netscape; and Opera take so long to start? The usual answer is that DNS on your system is misconfigured. Both &netscape; and Opera perform DNS checks when starting up. The browser will not appear on your desktop until the program either gets a response or determines that the system has no network connection. I updated parts of the Ports Collection using CVSup, and now many ports fail to build with mysterious error messages! What happened? Is the Ports Collection broken in some major way? If you only update parts of the Ports Collection, using one of its CVSup subcollections and not the ports-all CVSup collection, you should always update the ports-base subcollection too! The reasons are described in the Handbook. How do I create audio CDs from my MIDI files? To create audio CDs from MIDI files, first install audio/timidity++ from ports then install manually the GUS patches set by Eric A. Welsh, available at . After timidity++ has been installed properly, midi files may be converted to wav's with the following command line: &prompt.user; timidity -Ow -s 44100 -o /tmp/juke/01.wav 01.mid The wav files can then be converted to other formats or burned onto audio CDs, as described in the FreeBSD Handbook. Kernel Configuration I would like to customize my kernel. Is it difficult? Not at all! Check out the kernel config section of the Handbook. We recommend that you make a dated snapshot of your new /kernel called /kernel.YYMMDD after you get it working properly. Also back up your new /modules directory to /modules.YYMMDD. That way, if you make a mistake the next time you play with your configuration you can boot the backup kernel instead of having to fall back to kernel.GENERIC. This is particularly important if you are now booting from a controller that GENERIC does not support. My kernel compiles fail because _hw_float is missing. How do I solve this problem? Let me guess. You removed npx0 (see &man.npx.4;) from your kernel configuration file because you do not have a math co-processor, right? Wrong! :-) The npx0 is MANDATORY. Even if you do not have a mathematic co-processor, you must include the npx0 device. Why is my kernel so big (over 10MB)? Chances are, you compiled your kernel in debug mode. Kernels built in debug mode contain many symbols that are used for debugging, thus greatly increasing the size of the kernel. Note that if you running a FreeBSD 3.0 or later system, there will be little or no performance decrease from running a debug kernel, and it is useful to keep one around in case of a system panic. However, if you are running low on disk space, or you simply do not want to run a debug kernel, make sure that both of the following are true: You do not have a line in your kernel configuration file that reads: makeoptions DEBUG=-g You are not running &man.config.8; with the option. Both of the above situations will cause your kernel to be built in debug mode. As long as you make sure you follow the steps above, you can build your kernel normally, and you should notice a fairly large size decrease; most kernels tend to be around 1.5MB to 2MB. Why do I get interrupt conflicts with multi-port serial code? When I compile a kernel with multi-port serial code, it tells me that only the first port is probed and the rest skipped due to interrupt conflicts. How do I fix this? The problem here is that FreeBSD has code built-in to keep the kernel from getting trashed due to hardware or software conflicts. The way to fix this is to leave out the IRQ settings on all but one port. Here is an example: # # Multiport high-speed serial line - 16550 UARTS # device sio2 at isa? port 0x2a0 tty irq 5 flags 0x501 vector siointr device sio3 at isa? port 0x2a8 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr device sio4 at isa? port 0x2b0 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr device sio5 at isa? port 0x2b8 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr Why does every kernel I try to build fail to compile, even GENERIC? There are a number of possible causes for this problem. They are, in no particular order: You are not using the new make buildkernel and make installkernel targets, and your source tree is different from the one used to build the currently running system (e.g., you are compiling 4.3-RELEASE on a 4.0-RELEASE system). If you are attempting an upgrade, please read the /usr/src/UPDATING file, paying particular attention to the COMMON ITEMS section at the end. You are using the new make buildkernel and make installkernel targets, but you failed to assert the completion of the make buildworld target. The make buildkernel target relies on files generated by the make buildworld target to complete its job correctly. Even if you are trying to build FreeBSD-STABLE, it is possible that you fetched the source tree at a time when it was either being modified, or broken for other reasons; only releases are absolutely guaranteed to be buildable, although FreeBSD-STABLE builds fine the majority of the time. If you have not already done so, try re-fetching the source tree and see if the problem goes away. Try using a different server in case the one you are using is having problems. How can I verify which scheduler is in use on a running system? Just type: &prompt.root; sysctl kern.quantum If you see unknown oid 'kern.quantum' it means that the current scheduler is SCHED_ULE, however, if you see kern.quantum: 100000 then the original scheduler SCHED_4BSD is the current selection. What is 'kern.quantum'? kern.quantum is the maximum number of ticks a process can run without being preempted. It is specific to the 4BSD scheduler, so you can use its presence or absence to determine which scheduler is in use. Disks, Filesystems, and Boot Loaders How can I add my new hard disk to my FreeBSD system? See the Disk Formatting Tutorial at www.FreeBSD.org. How do I move my system over to my huge new disk? The best way is to reinstall the OS on the new disk, then move the user data over. This is highly recommended if you have been tracking -STABLE for more than one release, or have updated a release instead of installing a new one. You can install booteasy on both disks with &man.boot0cfg.8;, and dual boot them until you are happy with the new configuration. Skip the next paragraph to find out how to move the data after doing this. Should you decide not to do a fresh install, you need to partition and label the new disk with either /stand/sysinstall, or &man.fdisk.8; and &man.disklabel.8;. You should also install booteasy on both disks with &man.boot0cfg.8;, so that you can dual boot to the old or new system after the copying is done. See the formatting-media article for details on this process. Now you have the new disk set up, and are ready to move the data. Unfortunately, you cannot just blindly copy the data. Things like device files (in /dev), flags, and links tend to screw that up. You need to use tools that understand these things, which means &man.dump.8;. Although it is suggested that you move the data in single user mode, it is not required. You should never use anything but &man.dump.8; and &man.restore.8; to move the root filesystem. The &man.tar.1; command may work - then again, it may not. You should also use &man.dump.8; and &man.restore.8; if you are moving a single partition to another empty partition. The sequence of steps to use dump to move a partitions data to a new partition is: newfs the new partition. mount it on a temporary mount point. cd to that directory. dump the old partition, piping output to the new one. For example, if you are going to move root to /dev/ad1s1a, with /mnt as the temporary mount point, it is: &prompt.root; newfs /dev/ad1s1a &prompt.root; mount /dev/ad1s1a /mnt &prompt.root; cd /mnt &prompt.root; dump 0af - / | restore xf - Rearranging your partitions with dump takes a bit more work. To merge a partition like /var into its parent, create the new partition large enough for both, move the parent partition as described above, then move the child partition into the empty directory that the first move created: &prompt.root; newfs /dev/ad1s1a &prompt.root; mount /dev/ad1s1a /mnt &prompt.root; cd /mnt &prompt.root; dump 0af - / | restore xf - &prompt.root; cd var &prompt.root; dump 0af - /var | restore xf - To split a directory from its parent, say putting /var on its own partition when it was not before, create both partitions, then mount the child partition on the appropriate directory in the temporary mount point, then move the old single partition: &prompt.root; newfs /dev/ad1s1a &prompt.root; newfs /dev/ad1s1d &prompt.root; mount /dev/ad1s1a /mnt &prompt.root; mkdir /mnt/var &prompt.root; mount /dev/ad1s1d /mnt/var &prompt.root; cd /mnt &prompt.root; dump 0af - / | restore xf - You might prefer &man.cpio.1;, &man.pax.1;, &man.tar.1; to &man.dump.8; for user data. At the time of this writing, these are known to lose file flag information, so use them with caution. Will a dangerously dedicated disk endanger my health? The installation procedure allows you to chose two different methods in partitioning your hard disk(s). The default way makes it compatible with other operating systems on the same machine, by using fdisk table entries (called slices in FreeBSD), with a FreeBSD slice that employs partitions of its own. Optionally, one can chose to install a boot-selector to switch between the possible operating systems on the disk(s). The alternative uses the entire disk for FreeBSD, and makes no attempt to be compatible with other operating systems. So why it is called dangerous? A disk in this mode does not contain what normal PC utilities would consider a valid fdisk table. Depending on how well they have been designed, they might complain at you once they are getting in contact with such a disk, or even worse, they might damage the BSD bootstrap without even asking or notifying you. In addition, the dangerously dedicated disk's layout is known to confuse many BIOSes, including those from AWARD (e.g. as found in HP Netserver and Micronics systems as well as many others) and Symbios/NCR (for the popular 53C8xx range of SCSI controllers). This is not a complete list, there are more. Symptoms of this confusion include the read error message printed by the FreeBSD bootstrap when it cannot find itself, as well as system lockups when booting. Why have this mode at all then? It only saves a few kbytes of disk space, and it can cause real problems for a new installation. Dangerously dedicated mode's origins lie in a desire to avoid one of the most common problems plaguing new FreeBSD installers - matching the BIOS geometry numbers for a disk to the disk itself. Geometry is an outdated concept, but one still at the heart of the PC's BIOS and its interaction with disks. When the FreeBSD installer creates slices, it has to record the location of these slices on the disk in a fashion that corresponds with the way the BIOS expects to find them. If it gets it wrong, you will not be able to boot. Dangerously dedicated mode tries to work around this by making the problem simpler. In some cases, it gets it right. But it is meant to be used as a last-ditch alternative - there are better ways to solve the problem 99 times out of 100. So, how do you avoid the need for DD mode when you are installing? Start by making a note of the geometry that your BIOS claims to be using for your disks. You can arrange to have the kernel print this as it boots by specifying at the boot: prompt, or using boot -v in the loader. Just before the installer starts, the kernel will print a list of BIOS geometries. Do not panic - wait for the installer to start and then use scrollback to read the numbers. Typically the BIOS disk units will be in the same order that FreeBSD lists your disks, first IDE, then SCSI. When you are slicing up your disk, check that the disk geometry displayed in the FDISK screen is correct (ie. it matches the BIOS numbers); if it is wrong, use the g key to fix it. You may have to do this if there is absolutely nothing on the disk, or if the disk has been moved from another system. Note that this is only an issue with the disk that you are going to boot from; FreeBSD will sort itself out just fine with any other disks you may have. Once you have got the BIOS and FreeBSD agreeing about the geometry of the disk, your problems are almost guaranteed to be over, and with no need for DD mode at all. If, however, you are still greeted with the dreaded read error message when you try to boot, it is time to cross your fingers and go for it - there is nothing left to lose. To return a dangerously dedicated disk for normal PC use, there are basically two options. The first is, you write enough NULL bytes over the MBR to make any subsequent installation believe this to be a blank disk. You can do this for example with &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rda0 count=15 Alternatively, the undocumented DOS feature C:\> fdisk /mbr will to install a new master boot record as well, thus clobbering the BSD bootstrap. Which partitions can safely use Soft Updates? I have heard that Soft Updates on / can cause problems. Short answer: you can usually use Soft Updates safely on all partitions. Long answer: There used to be some concern over using Soft Updates on the root partition. Soft Updates has two characteristics that caused this. First, a Soft Updates partition has a small chance of losing data during a system crash. (The partition will not be corrupted; the data will simply be lost.) Also, Soft Updates can cause temporary space shortages. When using Soft Updates, the kernel can take up to thirty seconds to actually write changes to the physical disk. If you delete a large file, the file still resides on disk until the kernel actually performs the deletion. This can cause a very simple race condition. Suppose you delete one large file and immediately create another large file. The first large file is not yet actually removed from the physical disk, so the disk might not have enough room for the second large file. You get an error that the partition does not have enough space, although you know perfectly well that you just released a large chunk of space! When you try again mere seconds later, the file creation works as you expect. This has left more than one user scratching his head and doubting his sanity, the FreeBSD filesystem, or both. If a system should crash after the kernel accepts a chunk of data for writing to disk, but before that data is actually written out, data could be lost or corrupted. This risk is extremely small, but generally manageable. Use of IDE write caching greatly increases this risk; it is strongly recommended that you disable IDE write caching when using Soft Updates. These issues affect all partitions using Soft Updates. So, what does this mean for the root partition? Vital information on the root partition changes very rarely. Files such as /kernel and the contents of /etc only change during system maintenance, or when users change their passwords. If the system crashed during the thirty-second window after such a change is made, it is possible that data could be lost. This risk is negligible for most applications, but you should be aware that it exists. If your system cannot tolerate this much risk, do not use Soft Updates on the root filesystem! / is traditionally one of the smallest partitions. By default, FreeBSD puts the /tmp directory on /. If you have a busy /tmp, you might see intermittent space problems. Symlinking /tmp to /var/tmp will solve this problem. What is inappropriate about my ccd? The symptom of this is: &prompt.root; ccdconfig -C ccdconfig: ioctl (CCDIOCSET): /dev/ccd0c: Inappropriate file type or format This usually happens when you are trying to concatenate the c partitions, which default to type unused. The ccd driver requires the underlying partition type to be FS_BSDFFS. Edit the disklabel of the disks you are trying to concatenate and change the types of partitions to 4.2BSD. Why can I not edit the disklabel on my ccd? The symptom of this is: &prompt.root; disklabel ccd0 (it prints something sensible here, so let us try to edit it) &prompt.root; disklabel -e ccd0 (edit, save, quit) disklabel: ioctl DIOCWDINFO: No disk label on disk; use "disklabel -r" to install initial label This is because the disklabel returned by ccd is actually a fake one that is not really on the disk. You can solve this problem by writing it back explicitly, as in: &prompt.root; disklabel ccd0 > /tmp/disklabel.tmp &prompt.root; disklabel -Rr ccd0 /tmp/disklabel.tmp &prompt.root; disklabel -e ccd0 (this will work now) Can I mount other foreign filesystems under FreeBSD? Digital UNIX UFS CDROMs can be mounted directly on FreeBSD. Mounting disk partitions from Digital UNIX and other systems that support UFS may be more complex, depending on the details of the disk partitioning for the operating system in question. &linux; FreeBSD supports ext2fs partitions. See &man.mount.ext2fs.8; for more information. &windowsnt; FreeBSD includes a read-only NTFS driver. For more information, see &man.mount.ntfs.8;. Any other information on this subject would be appreciated. How do I mount a secondary DOS partition? The secondary DOS partitions are found after ALL the primary partitions. For example, if you have an E partition as the second DOS partition on the second SCSI drive, you need to create the special files for slice 5 in /dev, then mount /dev/da1s5: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV da1s5 &prompt.root; mount -t msdos /dev/da1s5 /dos/e You can omit this step if you are running FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE or newer with &man.devfs.5; enabled. Is there a cryptographic filesystem for &os;? Yes; see the security/cfs port. How can I use the &windowsnt; loader to boot FreeBSD? The general idea is that you copy the first sector of your native root FreeBSD partition into a file in the DOS/&windowsnt; partition. Assuming you name that file something like c:\bootsect.bsd (inspired by c:\bootsect.dos), you can then edit the c:\boot.ini file to come up with something like this: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows NT" C:\BOOTSECT.BSD="FreeBSD" C:\="DOS" If FreeBSD is installed on the same disk as the &windowsnt; boot partition simply copy /boot/boot1 to C:\BOOTSECT.BSD. However, if FreeBSD is installed on a different disk /boot/boot1 will not work, /boot/boot0 is needed. /boot/boot0 needs to be installed using sysinstall by selecting the FreeBSD boot manager on the screen which asks if you wish to use a boot manager. This is because /boot/boot0 has the partition table area filled with NULL characters but sysinstall copies the partition table before copying /boot/boot0 to the MBR. Do not simply copy /boot/boot0 instead of /boot/boot1; you will overwrite your partition table and render your computer un-bootable! When the FreeBSD boot manager runs it records the last OS booted by setting the active flag on the partition table entry for that OS and then writes the whole 512-bytes of itself back to the MBR so if you just copy /boot/boot0 to C:\BOOTSECT.BSD then it writes an empty partition table, with the active flag set on one entry, to the MBR. How do I boot FreeBSD and &linux; from LILO? If you have FreeBSD and &linux; on the same disk, just follow LILO's installation instructions for booting a non-&linux; operating system. Very briefly, these are: Boot &linux;, and add the following lines to /etc/lilo.conf: other=/dev/hda2 table=/dev/hda label=FreeBSD (the above assumes that your FreeBSD slice is known to &linux; as /dev/hda2; tailor to suit your setup). Then, run lilo as root and you should be done. If FreeBSD resides on another disk, you need to add loader=/boot/chain.b to the LILO entry. For example: other=/dev/dab4 table=/dev/dab loader=/boot/chain.b label=FreeBSD In some cases you may need to specify the BIOS drive number to the FreeBSD boot loader to successfully boot off the second disk. For example, if your FreeBSD SCSI disk is probed by BIOS as BIOS disk 1, at the FreeBSD boot loader prompt you need to specify: Boot: 1:da(0,a)/kernel On FreeBSD 2.2.5 and later, you can configure &man.boot.8; to automatically do this for you at boot time. The &linux;+FreeBSD mini-HOWTO is a good reference for FreeBSD and &linux; interoperability issues. How do I boot FreeBSD and &linux; using BootEasy? Install LILO at the start of your &linux; boot partition instead of in the Master Boot Record. You can then boot LILO from BootEasy. If you are running &windows; 95 and &linux; this is recommended anyway, to make it simpler to get &linux; booting again if you should need to reinstall &windows; 95 (which is a Jealous Operating System, and will bear no other Operating Systems in the Master Boot Record). How do I change the boot prompt from ??? to something more meaningful? You can not do that with the standard boot manager without rewriting it. There are a number of other boot managers in the sysutils ports category that provide this functionality. I have a new removable drive, how do I use it? Whether it is a removable drive like a &iomegazip; or an EZ drive (or even a floppy, if you want to use it that way), or a new hard disk, once it is installed and recognized by the system, and you have your cartridge/floppy/whatever slotted in, things are pretty much the same for all devices. (this section is based on Mark Mayo's ZIP FAQ) If it is a ZIP drive or a floppy, you have already got a DOS filesystem on it, you can use a command like this: &prompt.root; mount -t msdos /dev/fd0c /floppy if it is a floppy, or this: &prompt.root; mount -t msdos /dev/da2s4 /zip for a ZIP disk with the factory configuration. For other disks, see how they are laid out using &man.fdisk.8; or &man.sysinstall.8;. The rest of the examples will be for a ZIP drive on da2, the third SCSI disk. Unless it is a floppy, or a removable you plan on sharing with other people, it is probably a better idea to stick a BSD filesystem on it. You will get long filename support, at least a 2X improvement in performance, and a lot more stability. First, you need to redo the DOS-level partitions/filesystems. You can either use &man.fdisk.8; or /stand/sysinstall, or for a small drive that you do not want to bother with multiple operating system support on, just blow away the whole FAT partition table (slices) and just use the BSD partitioning: &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rda2 count=2 &prompt.root; disklabel -Brw da2 auto You can use disklabel or /stand/sysinstall to create multiple BSD partitions. You will certainly want to do this if you are adding swap space on a fixed disk, but it is probably irrelevant on a removable drive like a ZIP. Finally, create a new filesystem, this one is on our ZIP drive using the whole disk: &prompt.root; newfs /dev/rda2c and mount it: &prompt.root; mount /dev/da2c /zip and it is probably a good idea to add a line like this to /etc/fstab (see &man.fstab.5;) so you can just type mount /zip in the future: /dev/da2c /zip ffs rw,noauto 0 0 Why do I get Incorrect super block when mounting a CDROM? You have to tell &man.mount.8; the type of the device that you want to mount. This is described in the Handbook section on optical media, specifically the section Using Data CDs. Why do I get Device not configured when mounting a CDROM? This generally means that there is no CDROM in the CDROM drive, or the drive is not visible on the bus. Please see the Using Data CDs section of the Handbook for a detailed discussion of this issue. Why do all non-English characters in filenames show up as ? on my CDs when mounted in FreeBSD? Your CDROM probably uses the Joliet extension for storing information about files and directories. This is discussed in the Handbook chapter on creating and using CDROMs, specifically the section on Using Data CDROMs. I burned a CD under FreeBSD and now I can not read it under any other operating system. Why? You most likely burned a raw file to your CD, rather than creating an ISO 9660 filesystem. Take a look at the Handbook chapter on creating CDROMs, particularly the section on burning raw data CDs. How can I create an image of a data CD? This is discussed in the Handbook section on duplicating data CDs. For more on working with CDROMs, see the Creating CDs Section in the Storage chapter in the Handbook. Why can I not mount an audio CD? If you try to mount an audio CD, you will get an error like cd9660: /dev/acd0c: Invalid argument. This is because mount only works on filesystems. Audio CDs do not have filesystems; they just have data. You need a program that reads audio CDs, such as the audio/xmcd port. How do I mount a multi-session CD? By default, &man.mount.8; will attempt to mount the last data track (session) of a CD. If you would like to load an earlier session, you must use the command line argument. Please see &man.mount.cd9660.8; for specific examples. How do I let ordinary users mount floppies, CDROMs and other removable media? Ordinary users can be permitted to mount devices. Here is how: As root set the sysctl variable vfs.usermount to 1. &prompt.root; sysctl -w vfs.usermount=1 As root assign the appropriate permissions to the block device associated with the removable media. For example, to allow users to mount the first floppy drive, use: &prompt.root; chmod 666 /dev/fd0 To allow users in the group operator to mount the CDROM drive, use: &prompt.root; chgrp operator /dev/cd0c &prompt.root; chmod 640 /dev/cd0c Finally, add the line vfs.usermount=1 to the file /etc/sysctl.conf so that it is reset at system boot time. All users can now mount the floppy /dev/fd0 onto a directory that they own: &prompt.user; mkdir ~/my-mount-point &prompt.user; mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 ~/my-mount-point Users in group operator can now mount the CDROM /dev/cd0c onto a directory that they own: &prompt.user; mkdir ~/my-mount-point &prompt.user; mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0c ~/my-mount-point Unmounting the device is simple: &prompt.user; umount ~/my-mount-point Enabling vfs.usermount, however, has negative security implications. A better way to access &ms-dos; formatted media is to use the mtools package in the ports collection. The du and df commands show different amounts of disk space available. What is going on? You need to understand what du and df really do. du goes through the directory tree, measures how large each file is, and presents the totals. df just asks the filesystem how much space it has left. They seem to be the same thing, but a file without a directory entry will affect df but not du. When a program is using a file, and you delete the file, the file is not really removed from the filesystem until the program stops using it. The file is immediately deleted from the directory listing, however. You can see this easily enough with a program such as more. Assume you have a file large enough that its presence affects the output of du and df. (Since disks can be so large today, this might be a very large file!) If you delete this file while using more on it, more does not immediately choke and complain that it cannot view the file. The entry is simply removed from the directory so no other program or user can access it. du shows that it is gone — it has walked the directory tree and the file is not listed. df shows that it is still there, as the filesystem knows that more is still using that space. Once you end the more session, du and df will agree. Note that Soft Updates can delay the freeing of disk space; you might need to wait up to 30 seconds for the change to be visible! This situation is common on web servers. Many people set up a FreeBSD web server and forget to rotate the log files. The access log fills up /var. The new administrator deletes the file, but the system still complains that the partition is full. Stopping and restarting the web server program would free the file, allowing the system to release the disk space. To prevent this from happening, set up &man.newsyslog.8;. How can I add more swap space? In the Configuration and Tuning section of the Handbook, you will find a section describing how to do this. How is it possible for a partition to be more than 100% full? A portion of each UFS partition (8%, by default) is reserved for use by the operating system and the root user. &man.df.1; does not count that space when calculating the Capacity column, so it can exceed 100%. Also, you'll notice that the Blocks column is always greater than the sum of the Used and Avail columns, usually by a factor of 8%. For more details, look up the option in &man.tunefs.8;. System Administration Where are the system start-up configuration files? The primary configuration file is /etc/defaults/rc.conf (see &man.rc.conf.5;) System startup scripts such as /etc/rc and /etc/rc.d (see &man.rc.8;) just include this file. Do not edit this file! Instead, if there is any entry in /etc/defaults/rc.conf that you want to change, you should copy the line into /etc/rc.conf and change it there. For example, if you wish to start named, the included DNS server, all you need to do is: &prompt.root; echo named_enable="YES" >> /etc/rc.conf To start up local services, place shell scripts in the /usr/local/etc/rc.d directory. These shell scripts should be set executable, and end with a .sh. How do I add a user easily? Use the &man.adduser.8; command, or the &man.pw.8; command for more complicated situations. To remove the user, use the &man.rmuser.8; command or, if necessary, &man.pw.8;. Why do I keep getting messages like root: not found after editing my crontab file? This is normally caused by editing the system crontab (/etc/crontab) and then using &man.crontab.1; to install it: &prompt.root; crontab /etc/crontab This is not the correct way to do things. The system crontab has a different format to the per-user crontabs which &man.crontab.1; updates (the &man.crontab.5; manual page explains the differences in more detail). If this is what you did, the extra crontab is simply a copy of /etc/crontab in the wrong format it. Delete it with the command: &prompt.root; crontab -r Next time, when you edit /etc/crontab, you should not do anything to inform &man.cron.8; of the changes, since it will notice them automatically. If you want something to be run once per day, week, or month, it is probably better to add shell scripts /usr/local/etc/periodic, and let the &man.periodic.8; command run from the system cron schedule it with the other periodic system tasks. The actual reason for the error is that the system crontab has an extra field, specifying which user to run the command as. In the default system crontab provided with FreeBSD, this is root for all entries. When this crontab is used as the root user's crontab (which is not the same as the system crontab), &man.cron.8; assumes the string root is the first word of the command to execute, but no such command exists. Why do I get the error, you are not in the correct group to su root when I try to su to root? This is a security feature. In order to su to root (or any other account with superuser privileges), you must be in the wheel group. If this feature were not there, anybody with an account on a system who also found out root's password would be able to gain superuser level access to the system. With this feature, this is not strictly true; &man.su.1; will prevent them from even trying to enter the password if they are not in wheel. To allow someone to su to root, simply put them in the wheel group. I made a mistake in rc.conf, or another startup file, and now I cannot edit it because the filesystem is read-only. What should I do? When you get the prompt to enter the shell pathname, simply press ENTER, and run mount / to re-mount the root filesystem in read/write mode. You may also need to run mount -a -t ufs to mount the filesystem where your favourite editor is defined. If your favourite editor is on a network filesystem, you will need to either configure the network manually before you can mount network filesystems, or use an editor which resides on a local filesystem, such as &man.ed.1;. If you intend to use a full screen editor such as &man.vi.1; or &man.emacs.1;, you may also need to run export TERM=cons25 so that these editors can load the correct data from the &man.termcap.5; database. Once you have performed these steps, you can edit /etc/rc.conf as you usually would to fix the syntax error. The error message displayed immediately after the kernel boot messages should tell you the number of the line in the file which is at fault. Why am I having trouble setting up my printer? Please have a look at the Handbook entry on printing. It should cover most of your problem. See the Handbook entry on printing. Some printers require a host-based driver to do any kind of printing. These so-called WinPrinters are not natively supported by FreeBSD. If your printer does not work in DOS or &windowsnt; 4.0, it is probably a WinPrinter. Your only hope of getting one of these to work is to check if the print/pnm2ppa port supports it. How can I correct the keyboard mappings for my system? Please see the Handbook section on using localization, specifically the section on console setup. Why do I get messages like: unknown: <PNP0303> can't assign resources on boot? The following is an excerpt from a post to the freebsd-current mailing list.
&a.wollman;, 24 April 2001 The can't assign resources messages indicate that the devices are legacy ISA devices for which a non-PnP-aware driver is compiled into the kernel. These include devices such as keyboard controllers, the programmable interrupt controller chip, and several other bits of standard infrastructure. The resources cannot be assigned because there is already a driver using those addresses.
Why can I not get user quotas to work properly? Do not turn on quotas on /, Put the quota file on the filesystem that the quotas are to be enforced on. ie: Filesystem Quota file /usr /usr/admin/quotas /home /home/admin/quotas … … Does FreeBSD support System V IPC primitives? Yes, FreeBSD supports System V-style IPC, including shared memory, messages and semaphores. Versions of FreeBSD later than 3.2 support System V IPC in the GENERIC kernel. In earlier versions of FreeBSD, enable this support by adding the following lines to your kernel config. options SYSVSHM # enable shared memory options SYSVSEM # enable for semaphores options SYSVMSG # enable for messaging Recompile and install your kernel. What other mail-server software can I use, instead of Sendmail? Sendmail is the default mail-server software for FreeBSD, but you can easily replace it with one of the other MTA (for instance, an MTA installed from the ports). There are various alternative MTA's in the ports tree already, with mail/exim, mail/postfix, mail/qmail, mail/zmailer, being some of the most popular choices. Diversity is nice, and the fact that you have many different mail-servers to chose from is considered a good thing; therefore try to avoid asking questions like Is Sendmail better than Qmail? in the mailing lists. If you do feel like asking, first check the mailing list archives. The advantages and disadvantages of each and every one of the available MTA's have already been discussed a few times. I have forgotten the root password! What do I do? Do not Panic! Simply restart the system, type boot -s at the Boot: prompt (just -s for FreeBSD releases before 3.2) to enter Single User mode. At the question about the shell to use, hit ENTER. You will be dropped to a &prompt.root; prompt. Enter mount -u / to remount your root filesystem read/write, then run mount -a to remount all the filesystems. Run passwd root to change the root password then run &man.exit.1; to continue booting. How do I keep ControlAltDelete from rebooting the system? If you are using syscons (the default console driver) build and install a new kernel with the following option. options SC_DISABLE_REBOOT in the configuration file. If you use the PCVT console driver, use the following kernel configuration line instead. options PCVT_CTRL_ALT_DEL How do I reformat DOS text files to &unix; ones? Simply use this perl command: &prompt.user; perl -i.bak -npe 's/\r\n/\n/g' file ... file is the file(s) to process. The modification is done in-place, with the original file stored with a .bak extension. Alternatively you can use the &man.tr.1; command: &prompt.user; tr -d '\r' < dos-text-file > unix-file dos-text-file is the file containing DOS text while unix-file will contain the converted output. This can be quite a bit faster than using perl. How do I kill processes by name? Use &man.killall.1;. Why is su bugging me about not being in root's ACL? The error comes from the Kerberos distributed authentication system. The problem is not fatal but annoying. You can either run su with the -K option, or uninstall Kerberos as described in the next question. How do I uninstall Kerberos? To remove Kerberos from the system, reinstall the bin distribution for the release you are running. If you have the CDROM, you can mount the cd (we will assume on /cdrom) and run &prompt.root; cd /cdrom/bin &prompt.root; ./install.sh Alternately, you can remove all MAKE_KERBEROS options from /etc/make.conf and rebuild world. What happened to /dev/MAKEDEV? FreeBSD 5.X uses the &man.devfs.8; device-on-demand system. Device drivers automatically create new device nodes as they are needed, obsoleting /dev/MAKEDEV. If you are running FreeBSD 4.X or earlier and /dev/MAKEDEV is missing, then you really do have a problem. Grab a copy from the system source code, probably in /usr/src/etc/MAKEDEV. How do I add pseudoterminals to the system? If you have lots of telnet, ssh, X, or screen users, you will probably run out of pseudoterminals. Here is how to add more: Build and install a new kernel with the line pseudo-device pty 256 in the configuration file. Run the commands &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV pty{1,2,3,4,5,6,7} to make 256 device nodes for the new terminals. Edit /etc/ttys and add lines for each of the 256 terminals. They should match the form of the existing entries, i.e. they look like ttyqc none network The order of the letter designations is tty[pqrsPQRS][0-9a-v], using a regular expression. Reboot the system with the new kernel and you are ready to go. Why can I not create the snd0 device? There is no snd device. The name is used as a shorthand for the various devices that make up the FreeBSD sound driver, such as mixer, sequencer, and dsp. To create these devices you should &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV snd0 You can omit this step if you are running FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE or newer with &man.devfs.5; enabled. How do I re-read /etc/rc.conf and re-start /etc/rc without a reboot? Go into single user mode and then back to multi user mode. On the console do: &prompt.root; shutdown now (Note: without -r or -h) &prompt.root; return &prompt.root; exit I tried to update my system to the latest -STABLE, but got -RC or -PRERELEASE! What is going on? Short answer: it is just a name. RC stands for Release Candidate. It signifies that a release is imminent. In FreeBSD, -PRERELEASE is typically synonymous with the code freeze before a release. (For some releases, the -BETA label was used in the same way as -PRERELEASE.) Long answer: FreeBSD derives its releases from one of two places. Major, dot-zero, releases, such as 3.0-RELEASE and 4.0-RELEASE, are branched from the head of the development stream, commonly referred to as -CURRENT. Minor releases, such as 3.1-RELEASE or 4.2-RELEASE, have been snapshots of the active -STABLE branch. Starting with 4.3-RELEASE, each release also now has its own branch which can be tracked by people requiring an extremely conservative rate of development (typically only security advisories). When a release is about to be made, the branch from which it will be derived from has to undergo a certain process. Part of this process is a code freeze. When a code freeze is initiated, the name of the branch is changed to reflect that it is about to become a release. For example, if the branch used to be called 4.5-STABLE, its name will be changed to 4.6-PRERELEASE to signify the code freeze and signify that extra pre-release testing should be happening. Bug fixes can still be committed to be part of the release. When the source code is in shape for the release the name will be changed to 4.6-RC to signify that a release is about to be made from it. Once in the RC stage, only the most critical bugs found can be fixed. Once the release (4.6-RELEASE in this example) and release branch have been made, the branch will be renamed to 4.6-STABLE. For more information on version numbers and the various CVS branches, refer to the Release Engineering article. I tried to install a new kernel, and the chflags failed. How do I get around this? Short answer: You are probably at security level greater than 0. Reboot directly to single user mode to install the kernel. Long answer: FreeBSD disallows changing system flags at security levels greater than 0. You can check your security level with the command: &prompt.root; sysctl kern.securelevel You cannot lower the security level; you have to boot to single mode to install the kernel, or change the security level in /etc/rc.conf then reboot. See the &man.init.8; manual page for details on securelevel, and see /etc/defaults/rc.conf and the &man.rc.conf.5; manual page for more information on rc.conf. I cannot change the time on my system by more than one second! How do I get around this? Short answer: You are probably at security level greater than 1. Reboot directly to single user mode to change the date. Long answer: FreeBSD disallows changing the time by more that one second at security levels greater than 1. You can check your security level with the command: &prompt.root; sysctl kern.securelevel You cannot lower the security level; you have to boot to single mode to change the date, or change the security level in /etc/rc.conf then reboot. See the &man.init.8; manual page for details on securelevel, and see /etc/defaults/rc.conf and the &man.rc.conf.5; manual page for more information on rc.conf. Why is rpc.statd using 256 megabytes of memory? No, there is no memory leak, and it is not using 256 Mbytes of memory. It simply likes to (i.e., always does) map an obscene amount of memory into its address space for convenience. There is nothing terribly wrong with this from a technical standpoint; it just throws off things like &man.top.1; and &man.ps.1;. &man.rpc.statd.8; maps its status file (resident on /var) into its address space; to save worrying about remapping it later when it needs to grow, it maps it with a generous size. This is very evident from the source code, where one can see that the length argument to &man.mmap.2; is 0x10000000, or one sixteenth of the address space on an IA32, or exactly 256MB. Why can I not unset the schg file flag? You are running at an elevated (i.e., greater than 0) securelevel. Lower the securelevel and try again. For more information, see the FAQ entry on securelevel and the &man.init.8; manual page. Why does SSH authentication through .shosts not work by default in recent versions of FreeBSD? The reason why .shosts authentication does not work by default in more recent versions of FreeBSD is because &man.ssh.1; is not installed suid root by default. To fix this, you can do one of the following: As a permanent fix, set ENABLE_SUID_SSH to true in /etc/make.conf and rebuild ssh (or run make world). As a temporary fix, change the mode on /usr/bin/ssh to 4555 by running chmod 4555 /usr/bin/ssh as root. Then add ENABLE_SUID_SSH= true to /etc/make.conf so the change takes effect the next time make world is run. What is vnlru? vnlru flushes and frees vnodes when the system hits the kern.maxvnodes limit. This kernel thread sits mostly idle, and only activates if you have a huge amount of RAM and are accessing tens of thousands of tiny files. What do the various memory states displayed by top mean? Active: pages recently statistically used. Inactive: pages recently statistically unused. Cache: (most often) pages that have percolated from inactive to a status where they maintain their data, but can often be immediately reused (either with their old association, or reused with a new association.) There can be certain immediate transition from active to 'cache' state if the page is known to be clean (unmodified), but that transition is a matter of policy, depending upon the algorithm choice of the VM system maintainer. Free: pages without data content, and can be immediately used in certain circumstances where cache pages might be ineligible. Free pages can be reused at interrupt or process state. Wired: pages that are fixed into memory, usually for kernel purposes, but also sometimes for special use in processes. Pages are most often written to disk (sort of a VM sync) when they are in the 'inactive' state, but 'active' pages can also be synced (but requires the availability of certain CPU features.) This depends upon the CPU tracking of the 'modified' bit being available, and in certain situations there can be an advantage for a block of VM pages to be synced, whether they are active or inactive. In most common cases, it is best to think of the 'inactive' queue to be a queue of relatively unused pages that might or might not be in the process of being written to disk. 'Cached' pages are already 'synced', not mapped, but available for immediate process use with their old association or with a new association. Free pages are available at interrupt level, but cached or free pages can be used at process state for reuse. Cache pages aren't adequately locked to be available at interrupt level. There are some other flags (e.g. Busy flag or busy count) that might modify some of the rules that I described. How much free memory is available? There are a couple of kinds of free memory. One kind is the amount of memory immediately available without paging anything else out. That is approximately the size of cache queue + size of free queue (with a derating factor, depending upon system tuning.) Another kind of free memory is the total amount of VM space. That can be complex, but is dependent upon the amount of swap space and memory. Other kinds of free memory descriptions are also possible, but it is relatively useless to define these, but rather it is important to make sure that the paging rate is kept low, and to avoid running out of swap space. What is /var/empty? I can not delete it! /var/empty is a directory that the &man.sshd.8; program uses when performing privilege separation. The /var/empty directory is empty, owned by root and has the schg flag set. Although it is not recommended to delete this directory, to do so you will need to unset the schg flag first. See the &man.chflags.1; manual page for more information (and bear in mind the answer to the question on unsetting the schg flag). The X Window System and Virtual Consoles What is the X Window System? The X Window System is the most widely available windowing system capable of running on &unix; or &unix; like systems, including &os;. X.org administers the X protocol standards. The current release of the specification is 11.6, so you will often see references shortened to X11R6 or even just X11. Many implementations are available for different architectures and operating systems. For instance, an implementation of the server-side code is properly known as an X server. Which X servers are available for &os;? In the past, if you wanted to run X on &os;, you were basically restricted to running an X implementation called &xfree86; which is maintained by The XFree86 Project, Inc. This software was installed by default on &os; versions up until 4.10 and 5.2. Although X.org itself maintained an implementation during that time period, it was basically only provided as a reference platform, as it had suffered greatly from bitrot over the years. However, early in 2004, the XFree86 Project split over issues including the pace of code changes, future directions, and a licensing change. X.org updated its source tree to the last &xfree86; release before the licensing change (XFree86 version 4.3.99.903), incorporated many changes that had previously been maintained separately, and has released that software as X11R6.7.0. A separate but related project, freedesktop.org (or fd.o for short), is working on rearchitecting the original &xfree86; code to reflect modern graphics card technology (with the goal of greatly increased performance) and modern software practices (with the goal of incresed maintainability, and thus faster releases as well as easier configuration). X.org intends to incorporate the freedesktop.org changes in its future releases. The current technology roadmap for &os; includes replacing &xfree86; with freedesktop.org as the default server sometime later in 2004 under the assumption that the pace of its development will more closely match that of &os; itself. The &xfree86; ports (x11/XFree86-4 and subports) will remain in the ports collection and be supported as developer interest permits. It is not currently possible to mix-and-match pieces of each implementation; work is under way to correct this problem. The following paragraphs refer to the existing &xfree86; implementation, but most should also be applicable to the freedesktop.org implementation as well. While the default configuration filename for the freedesktop.org implementation is xorg.conf, it will search for XF86Config if it cannot find it. I want to run X, how do I go about it? The easiest way is to simply specify that you want to run X during the installation process. Then read and follow the documentation on the xf86config tool, which assists you in configuring &xfree86; for your particular graphics card/mouse/etc. You may also wish to investigate the Xaccel server. See the section on Xi Graphics or Metro Link for more details. I tried to run X, but I get an KDENABIO failed (Operation not permitted) error when I type startx. What do I do now? Your system is probably running at a raised securelevel. It is not possible to start X at a raised securelevel. To see why, look at the &man.init.8; manual page. So the question is what else you should do instead, and you basically have two choices: set your securelevel back down to zero (usually from /etc/rc.conf), or run &man.xdm.1; at boot time (before the securelevel is raised). See for more information about running &man.xdm.1; at boot time. Why does my mouse not work with X? If you are using syscons (the default console driver), you can configure FreeBSD to support a mouse pointer on each virtual screen. In order to avoid conflicting with X, syscons supports a virtual device called /dev/sysmouse. All mouse events received from the real mouse device are written to the sysmouse device via moused. If you wish to use your mouse on one or more virtual consoles, and use X, see and set up moused. Then edit /etc/XF86Config and make sure you have the following lines. Section Pointer Protocol "SysMouse" Device "/dev/sysmouse" ..... The above example is for &xfree86; 3.3.2 or later. For earlier versions, the Protocol should be MouseSystems. Some people prefer to use /dev/mouse under X. To make this work, /dev/mouse should be linked to /dev/sysmouse (see &man.sysmouse.4;): &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; rm -f mouse &prompt.root; ln -s sysmouse mouse My mouse has a fancy wheel. Can I use it in X? Yes. But you need to customize X client programs. See Colas Nahaboo's web page (http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas/mouse-wheel-scroll/) . If you want to use the imwheel program, just follow these simple steps. Translate the Wheel Events The imwheel program works by translating mouse button 4 and mouse button 5 events into key events. Thus, you have to get the mouse driver to translate mouse wheel events to button 4 and 5 events. There are two ways of doing this, the first way is to have &man.moused.8; do the translation. The second way is for the X server itself to do the event translation. Using &man.moused.8; to Translate Wheel Events To have &man.moused.8; perform the event translations, simply add to the command line used to start &man.moused.8;. For example, if you normally start &man.moused.8; via moused -p /dev/psm0 you would start it by entering moused -p /dev/psm0 -z 4 instead. If you start &man.moused.8; automatically during bootup via /etc/rc.conf, you can simply add to the moused_flags variable in /etc/rc.conf. You now need to tell X that you have a 5 button mouse. To do this, simply add the line Buttons 5 to the Pointer section of /etc/XF86Config. For example, you might have the following Pointer section in /etc/XF86Config. <quote>Pointer</quote> Section for Wheeled Mouse in &xfree86; 3.3.x series XF86Config with moused Translation Section "Pointer" Protocol "SysMouse" Device "/dev/sysmouse" Buttons 5 EndSection <quote>InputDevice</quote> Section for Wheeled Mouse in &xfree86; 4.x series XF86Config with X Server Translation Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Mouse1" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "auto" Option "Device" "/dev/sysmouse" Option "Buttons" "5" EndSection <quote>.emacs</quote> example for naive page scrolling with Wheeled Mouse ;; wheel mouse (global-set-key [mouse-4] 'scroll-down) (global-set-key [mouse-5] 'scroll-up) Using Your X Server to Translate the Wheel Events If you are not running &man.moused.8;, or if you do not want &man.moused.8; to translate your wheel events, you can have the X server do the event translation instead. This requires a couple of modifications to your /etc/XF86Config file. First, you need to choose the proper protocol for your mouse. Most wheeled mice use the &intellimouse; protocol. However, &xfree86; does support other protocols, such as MouseManPlusPS/2 for the Logitech MouseMan+ mice. Once you have chosen the protocol you will use, you need to add a Protocol line to the Pointer section. Secondly, you need to tell the X server to remap wheel scroll events to mouse buttons 4 and 5. This is done with the ZAxisMapping option. For example, if you are not using &man.moused.8;, and you have an &intellimouse; attached to the PS/2 mouse port you would use the following in /etc/XF86Config. <quote>Pointer</quote> Section for Wheeled Mouse in <filename>XF86Config</filename> with X Server Translation Section "Pointer" Protocol "IntelliMouse" Device "/dev/psm0" ZAxisMapping 4 5 EndSection <quote>InputDevice</quote> Section for Wheeled Mouse in &xfree86; 4.x series XF86Config with X Server Translation Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Mouse1" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "auto" Option "Device" "/dev/psm0" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" EndSection <quote>.emacs</quote> example for naive page scrolling with Wheeled Mouse ;; wheel mouse (global-set-key [mouse-4] 'scroll-down) (global-set-key [mouse-5] 'scroll-up) Install imwheel Next, install imwheel from the Ports collection. It can be found in the x11 category. This program will map the wheel events from your mouse into keyboard events. For example, it might send Page Up to a program when you scroll the wheel forwards. Imwheel uses a configuration file to map the wheel events to key presses so that it can send different keys to different applications. The default imwheel configuration file is installed in /usr/X11R6/etc/imwheelrc. You can copy it to ~/.imwheelrc and then edit it if you wish to customize imwheel's configuration. The format of the configuration file is documented in &man.imwheel.1;. Configure Emacs to Work with Imwheel (optional) If you use emacs or XEmacs, then you need to add a small section to your ~/.emacs file. For emacs, add the following: <application>Emacs</application> Configuration for <application>Imwheel</application> ;;; For imwheel (setq imwheel-scroll-interval 3) (defun imwheel-scroll-down-some-lines () (interactive) (scroll-down imwheel-scroll-interval)) (defun imwheel-scroll-up-some-lines () (interactive) (scroll-up imwheel-scroll-interval)) (global-set-key [?\M-\C-\)] 'imwheel-scroll-up-some-lines) (global-set-key [?\M-\C-\(] 'imwheel-scroll-down-some-lines) ;;; end imwheel section For XEmacs, add the following to your ~/.emacs file instead: <application>XEmacs</application> Configuration for <application>Imwheel</application> ;;; For imwheel (mwheel-install) (setq mwheel-follow-mouse t) ;;; end imwheel section Run Imwheel You can just type imwheel in an xterm to start it up once it is installed. It will background itself and take effect immediately. If you want to always use imwheel, simply add it to your .xinitrc or .xsession file. You can safely ignore any warnings imwheel displays about PID files. Those warnings only apply to the &linux; version of imwheel. How do I use remote X displays? For security reasons, the default setting is to not allow a machine to remotely open a window. To enable this feature, simply start X with the optional argument: &prompt.user; startx -listen_tcp Why do X Window menus and dialog boxes not work right? Try turning off the Num Lock key. If your Num Lock key is on by default at boot-time, you may add the following line in the Keyboard section of the XF86Config file. # Let the server do the NumLock processing. This should only be # required when using pre-R6 clients ServerNumLock What is a virtual console and how do I make more? Virtual consoles, put simply, enable you to have several simultaneous sessions on the same machine without doing anything complicated like setting up a network or running X. When the system starts, it will display a login prompt on the monitor after displaying all the boot messages. You can then type in your login name and password and start working (or playing!) on the first virtual console. At some point, you will probably wish to start another session, perhaps to look at documentation for a program you are running or to read your mail while waiting for an FTP transfer to finish. Just do AltF2 (hold down the Alt key and press the F2 key), and you will find a login prompt waiting for you on the second virtual console! When you want to go back to the original session, do AltF1. The default FreeBSD installation has three virtual consoles enabled (8 starting with 3.3-RELEASE), and AltF1, AltF2, and AltF3 will switch between these virtual consoles. To enable more of them, edit /etc/ttys (see &man.ttys.5;) and add entries for ttyv4 to ttyvc after the comment on Virtual terminals: # Edit the existing entry for ttyv3 in /etc/ttys and change # "off" to "on". ttyv3 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv4 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv5 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv6 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv7 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv8 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv9 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyva "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure Use as many or as few as you want. The more virtual terminals you have, the more resources that are used; this can be important if you have 8MB RAM or less. You may also want to change the secure to insecure. If you want to run an X server you must leave at least one virtual terminal unused (or turned off) for it to use. That is to say that if you want to have a login prompt pop up for all twelve of your Alt-function keys, you are out of luck - you can only do this for eleven of them if you also want to run an X server on the same machine. The easiest way to disable a console is by turning it off. For example, if you had the full 12 terminal allocation mentioned above and you wanted to run X, you would change settings for virtual terminal 12 from: ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure to: ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure If your keyboard has only ten function keys, you would end up with: ttyv9 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure ttyva "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure (You could also just delete these lines.) Once you have edited /etc/ttys, the next step is to make sure that you have enough virtual terminal devices. The easiest way to do this is: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV vty12 On FreeBSD 5.X you do not have to create devices manually if you are using DEVFS, since the proper device nodes will be automatically created under /dev. Next, the easiest (and cleanest) way to activate the virtual consoles is to reboot. However, if you really do not want to reboot, you can just shut down the X Window system and execute (as root): &prompt.root; kill -HUP 1 It is imperative that you completely shut down X Window if it is running, before running this command. If you do not, your system will probably appear to hang/lock up after executing the kill command. How do I access the virtual consoles from X? Use Ctrl Alt Fn to switch back to a virtual console. Ctrl Alt F1 would return you to the first virtual console. Once you are back to a text console, you can then use Alt Fn as normal to move between them. To return to the X session, you must switch to the virtual console running X. If you invoked X from the command line, (e.g., using startx) then the X session will attach to the next unused virtual console, not the text console from which it was invoked. If you have eight active virtual terminals then X will be running on the ninth, and you would use Alt F9 to return. How do I start XDM on boot? There are two schools of thought on how to start xdm. One school starts xdm from /etc/ttys (see &man.ttys.5;) using the supplied example, while the other simply runs xdm from rc.local (see &man.rc.8;) or from a X.sh script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d. Both are equally valid, and one may work in situations where the other does not. In both cases the result is the same: X will pop up a graphical login: prompt. The ttys method has the advantage of documenting which vty X will start on and passing the responsibility of restarting the X server on logout to init. The rc.local method makes it easy to kill xdm if there is a problem starting the X server. If loaded from rc.local, xdm should be started without any arguments (i.e., as a daemon). xdm must start AFTER getty runs, or else getty and xdm will conflict, locking out the console. The best way around this is to have the script sleep 10 seconds or so then launch xdm. If you are to start xdm from /etc/ttys, there still is a chance of conflict between xdm and &man.getty.8;. One way to avoid this is to add the vt number in the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers file. :0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X vt4 The above example will direct the X server to run in /dev/ttyv3. Note the number is offset by one. The X server counts the vty from one, whereas the FreeBSD kernel numbers the vty from zero. Why do I get Couldn't open console when I run xconsole? If you start X with startx, the permissions on /dev/console will not get changed, resulting in things like xterm -C and xconsole not working. This is because of the way console permissions are set by default. On a multi-user system, one does not necessarily want just any user to be able to write on the system console. For users who are logging directly onto a machine with a VTY, the &man.fbtab.5; file exists to solve such problems. In a nutshell, make sure an uncommented line of the form /dev/ttyv0 0600 /dev/console is in /etc/fbtab (see &man.fbtab.5;) and it will ensure that whomever logs in on /dev/ttyv0 will own the console. Before, I was able to run &xfree86; as a regular user. Why does it now say that I must be root? All X servers need to be run as root in order to get direct access to your video hardware. Older versions of &xfree86; (<= 3.3.6) installed all bundled servers to be automatically run as root (setuid to root). This is obviously a security hazard because X servers are large, complicated programs. Newer versions of &xfree86; do not install the servers setuid to root for just this reason. Obviously, running an X server as the root user is not acceptable, nor a good idea security-wise. There are two ways to be able to use X as a regular user. The first is to use xdm or another display manager (e.g., kdm); the second is to use the Xwrapper. xdm is a daemon that handles graphical logins. It is usually started at boot time, and is responsible for authenticating users and starting their sessions; it is essentially the graphical counterpart of &man.getty.8; and &man.login.1;. For more information on xdm see the &xfree86; documentation, and the the FAQ entry on it. Xwrapper is the X server wrapper; it is a small utility to enable one to manually run an X server while maintaining reasonable safety. It performs some sanity checks on the command line arguments given, and if they pass, runs the appropriate X server. If you do not want to run a display manger for whatever reason, this is for you. If you have installed the complete ports collection, you can find the port in /usr/ports/x11/wrapper. Why does my PS/2 mouse misbehave under X? Your mouse and the mouse driver may have somewhat become out of synchronization. In rare cases the driver may erroneously report synchronization problem and you may see the kernel message: psmintr: out of sync (xxxx != yyyy) and notice that your mouse does not work properly. If this happens, disable the synchronization check code by setting the driver flags for the PS/2 mouse driver to 0x100. Enter UserConfig by giving the option at the boot prompt: boot: -c Then, in the UserConfig command line, type: UserConfig> flags psm0 0x100 UserConfig> quit Why does my PS/2 mouse from MouseSystems not work? There have been some reports that certain model of PS/2 mouse from MouseSystems works only if it is put into the high resolution mode. Otherwise, the mouse cursor may jump to the upper-left corner of the screen every so often. Specify the flags 0x04 to the PS/2 mouse driver to put the mouse into the high resolution mode. Enter UserConfig by giving the option at the boot prompt: boot: -c Then, in the UserConfig command line, type: UserConfig> flags psm0 0x04 UserConfig> quit See the previous section for another possible cause of mouse problems. When building an X app, imake cannot find Imake.tmpl. Where is it? Imake.tmpl is part of the Imake package, a standard X application building tool. Imake.tmpl, as well as several header files that are required to build X apps, is contained in the X prog distribution. You can install this from sysinstall or manually from the X distribution files. An X app I am building depends on &xfree86; 3.3.X, but I have &xfree86; 4.X installed. What should I do? To tell the port build to link to the &xfree86; 4.X libraries, add the following to /etc/make.conf, (if you do not have this file, create it): XFREE86_VERSION= 4 How do I reverse the mouse buttons? Run the command xmodmap -e "pointer = 3 2 1" from your .xinitrc or .xsession. How do I install a splash screen and where do I find them? Just prior to the release of FreeBSD 3.1, a new feature was added to allow the display of splash screens during the boot messages. The splash screens currently must be a 256 color bitmap (*.BMP) or ZSoft PCX (*.PCX) file. In addition, they must have a resolution of 320x200 or less to work on standard VGA adapters. If you compile VESA support into your kernel, then you can use larger bitmaps up to 1024x768. The actual VESA support can either be compiled directly into the kernel with the VESA kernel config option or by loading the VESA kld module during bootup. To use a splash screen, you need to modify the startup files that control the boot process for FreeBSD. The files for this changed prior to the release of FreeBSD 3.2, so there are now two ways of loading a splash screen: FreeBSD 3.1 The first step is to find a bitmap version of your splash screen. Release 3.1 only supports &windows; bitmap splash screens. Once you have found your splash screen of choice copy it to /boot/splash.bmp. Next, you need to have a /boot/loader.rc file that contains the following lines: load kernel load -t splash_image_data /boot/splash.bmp load splash_bmp autoboot FreeBSD 3.2+ In addition to adding support for PCX splash screens, FreeBSD 3.2 includes a nicer way of configuring the boot process. If you wish, you can use the method listed above for FreeBSD 3.1. If you do and you want to use PCX, replace splash_bmp with splash_pcx. If, on the other hand, you want to use the newer boot configuration, you need to create a /boot/loader.rc file that contains the following lines: include /boot/loader.4th start and a /boot/loader.conf that contains the following: splash_bmp_load="YES" bitmap_load="YES" This assumes you are using /boot/splash.bmp for your splash screen. If you would rather use a PCX file, copy it to /boot/splash.pcx, create a /boot/loader.rc as instructed above, and create a /boot/loader.conf that contains: splash_pcx_load="YES" bitmap_load="YES" bitmap_name="/boot/splash.pcx" Now all you need is a splash screen. For that you can surf on over to the gallery at . Can I use the &windows; keys on my keyboard in X? Yes. All you need to do is use &man.xmodmap.1; to define what function you wish them to perform. Assuming all &windows; keyboards are standard then the keycodes for the 3 keys are 115 - &windows; key, between the left-hand Ctrl and Alt keys 116 - &windows; key, to the right of the AltGr key 117 - Menu key, to the left of the right-hand Ctrl key To have the left &windows; key print a comma, try this. &prompt.root; xmodmap -e "keycode 115 = comma" You will probably have to re-start your window manager to see the result. To have the &windows; key-mappings enabled automatically every time you start X either put the xmodmap commands in your ~/.xinitrc file or, preferably, create a file ~/.xmodmaprc and include the xmodmap options, one per line, then add the line xmodmap $HOME/.xmodmaprc to your ~/.xinitrc. For example, you could map the 3 keys to be F13, F14, and F15, respectively. This would make it easy to map them to useful functions within applications or your window manager, as demonstrated further down. To do this put the following in ~/.xmodmaprc. keycode 115 = F13 keycode 116 = F14 keycode 117 = F15 If you use fvwm2, for example, you could map the keys so that F13 iconifies (or de-iconifies) the window the cursor is in, F14 brings the window the cursor is in to the front or, if it is already at the front, pushes it to the back, and F15 pops up the main Workplace (application) menu even if the cursor is not on the desktop, which is useful if you do not have any part of the desktop visible (and the logo on the key matches its functionality). The following entries in ~/.fvwmrc implement the aforementioned setup: Key F13 FTIWS A Iconify Key F14 FTIWS A RaiseLower Key F15 A A Menu Workplace Nop How can I get 3D hardware acceleration for &opengl;? The availability of 3D acceleration depends on the version of &xfree86; you are using and the type of video chip you have. If you have an NVIDIA chip, you can use the binary drivers provided for FreeBSD 4.7 on the Drivers section of their website. For other cards with &xfree86;-4, including the Matrox G200/G400, ATI Rage 128/Radeon, and 3dfx Voodoo 3, 4, 5, and Banshee, information on hardware acceleration is available on the XFree86-4 Direct Rendering on FreeBSD page. Users of &xfree86; version 3.3 can use the Utah-GLX port found in graphics/utah-glx to get limited accelerated &opengl; on the Matrox Gx00, ATI Rage Pro, SiS 6326, i810, Savage, and older NVIDIA chips. Networking Where can I get information on diskless booting? Diskless booting means that the FreeBSD box is booted over a network, and reads the necessary files from a server instead of its hard disk. For full details, please read the Handbook entry on diskless booting Can a FreeBSD box be used as a dedicated network router? Yes. Please see the Handbook entry on advanced networking, specifically the section on routing and gateways. Can I connect my &windows; box to the Internet via FreeBSD? Typically, people who ask this question have two PC's at home, one with FreeBSD and one with some version of &windows; the idea is to use the FreeBSD box to connect to the Internet and then be able to access the Internet from the &windows; box through the FreeBSD box. This is really just a special case of the previous question and works perfectly well. If you're using dialup to connect to the Internet user-mode &man.ppp.8; contains a option. If you run &man.ppp.8; with the option, set gateway_enable to YES in /etc/rc.conf, and configure your &windows; machine correctly, this should work fine. For more information, please see the &man.ppp.8; manual page or the Handbook entry on user PPP. If you are using kernel-mode PPP or have an Ethernet connection to the Internet, you need to use &man.natd.8;. Please look at the natd section of the Handbook for a tutorial. Does FreeBSD support SLIP and PPP? Yes. See the manual pages for &man.slattach.8;, &man.sliplogin.8;, &man.ppp.8;, and &man.pppd.8;. &man.ppp.8; and &man.pppd.8; provide support for both incoming and outgoing connections, while &man.sliplogin.8; deals exclusively with incoming connections, and &man.slattach.8; deals exclusively with outgoing connections. For more information on how to use these, please see the Handbook chapter on PPP and SLIP. If you only have access to the Internet through a shell account, you may want to have a look at the net/slirp package. It can provide you with (limited) access to services such as ftp and http direct from your local machine. Does FreeBSD support NAT or Masquerading? Yes. If you want to use NAT over a user PPP connection, please see the Handbook entry on user PPP. If you want to use NAT over some other sort of network connection, please look at the natd section of the Handbook. How do I connect two FreeBSD systems over a parallel line using PLIP? Please see the PLIP section of the Handbook. Why can I not create a /dev/ed0 device? Because they aren't necessary. In the Berkeley networking framework, network interfaces are only directly accessible by kernel code. Please see the /etc/rc.network file and the manual pages for the various network programs mentioned there for more information. If this leaves you totally confused, then you should pick up a book describing network administration on another BSD-related operating system; with few significant exceptions, administering networking on FreeBSD is basically the same as on &sunos; 4.0 or Ultrix. How can I set up Ethernet aliases? If the alias is on the same subnet as an address already configured on the interface, then add netmask 0xffffffff to your &man.ifconfig.8; command-line, as in the following: &prompt.root; ifconfig ed0 alias 192.0.2.2 netmask 0xffffffff Otherwise, just specify the network address and netmask as usual: &prompt.root; ifconfig ed0 alias 172.16.141.5 netmask 0xffffff00 How do I get my 3C503 to use the other network port? If you want to use the other ports, you will have to specify an additional parameter on the &man.ifconfig.8; command line. The default port is link0. To use the AUI port instead of the BNC one, use link2. These flags should be specified using the ifconfig_* variables in /etc/rc.conf (see &man.rc.conf.5;). Why am I having trouble with NFS and FreeBSD? Certain PC network cards are better than others (to put it mildly) and can sometimes cause problems with network intensive applications like NFS. See the Handbook entry on NFS for more information on this topic. Why can I not NFS-mount from a &linux; box? Some versions of the &linux; NFS code only accept mount requests from a privileged port; try &prompt.root; mount -o -P linuxbox:/blah /mnt Why can I not NFS-mount from a Sun box? &sun; workstations running &sunos; 4.X only accept mount requests from a privileged port; try &prompt.root; mount -o -P sunbox:/blah /mnt Why does mountd keep telling me it can't change attributes and that I have a bad exports list on my FreeBSD NFS server? The most frequent problem is not understanding the correct format of /etc/exports. Please review &man.exports.5; and the NFS entry in the Handbook, especially the section on configuring NFS. Why am I having problems talking PPP to NeXTStep machines? Try disabling the TCP extensions in /etc/rc.conf (see &man.rc.conf.5;) by changing the following variable to NO: tcp_extensions=NO Xylogic's Annex boxes are also broken in this regard and you must use the above change to connect through them. How do I enable IP multicast support? FreeBSD supports multicast host operations by default. If you want your box to run as a multicast router, you need to recompile your kernel with the MROUTING option and run &man.mrouted.8;. FreeBSD will start &man.mrouted.8; at boot time if the flag mrouted_enable is set to "YES" in /etc/rc.conf. MBONE tools are available in their own ports category, mbone. If you are looking for the conference tools vic and vat, look there! Which network cards are based on the DEC PCI chipset? Here is a list compiled by Glen Foster gfoster@driver.nsta.org, with some more modern additions: Network cards based on the DEC PCI chipset Vendor Model ASUS PCI-L101-TB Accton ENI1203 Cogent EM960PCI Compex ENET32-PCI D-Link DE-530 Dayna DP1203, DP2100 DEC DE435, DE450 Danpex EN-9400P3 JCIS Condor JC1260 Linksys EtherPCI Mylex LNP101 SMC EtherPower 10/100 (Model 9332) SMC EtherPower (Model 8432) TopWare TE-3500P Znyx (2.2.x) ZX312, ZX314, ZX342, ZX345, ZX346, ZX348 Znyx (3.x) ZX345Q, ZX346Q, ZX348Q, ZX412Q, ZX414, ZX442, ZX444, ZX474, ZX478, ZX212, ZX214 (10mbps/hd)
Why do I have to use the FQDN for hosts on my site? You will probably find that the host is actually in a different domain; for example, if you are in foo.example.org and you wish to reach a host called mumble in the example.org domain, you will have to refer to it by the fully-qualified domain name, mumble.example.org, instead of just mumble. Traditionally, this was allowed by BSD BIND resolvers. However the current version of bind (see &man.named.8;) that ships with FreeBSD no longer provides default abbreviations for non-fully qualified domain names other than the domain you are in. So an unqualified host mumble must either be found as mumble.foo.example.org, or it will be searched for in the root domain. This is different from the previous behavior, where the search continued across mumble.example.org, and mumble.edu. Have a look at RFC 1535 for why this was considered bad practice, or even a security hole. As a good workaround, you can place the line search foo.example.org example.org instead of the previous domain foo.example.org into your /etc/resolv.conf file (see &man.resolv.conf.5;). However, make sure that the search order does not go beyond the boundary between local and public administration, as RFC 1535 calls it. Why do I get an error, Permission denied, for all networking operations? If you have compiled your kernel with the IPFIREWALL option, you need to be aware that the default policy is to deny all packets that are not explicitly allowed. If you had unintentionally misconfigured your system for firewalling, you can restore network operability by typing the following while logged in as root: &prompt.root; ipfw add 65534 allow all from any to any You can also set firewall_type="open" in /etc/rc.conf. For further information on configuring a FreeBSD firewall, see the Handbook section. How much overhead does IPFW incur? Please see the Handbook's Firewalls section, specifically the section on IPFW Overhead & Optimization. Why is my ipfw fwd rule to redirect a service to another machine not working? Possibly because you want to do network address translation (NAT) and not just forward packets. A fwd rule does exactly what it says; it forwards packets. It does not actually change the data inside the packet. Say we have a rule like: 01000 fwd 10.0.0.1 from any to foo 21 When a packet with a destination address of foo arrives at the machine with this rule, the packet is forwarded to 10.0.0.1, but it still has the destination address of foo! The destination address of the packet is not changed to 10.0.0.1. Most machines would probably drop a packet that they receive with a destination address that is not their own. Therefore, using a fwd rule does not often work the way the user expects. This behavior is a feature and not a bug. See the FAQ about redirecting services, the &man.natd.8; manual, or one of the several port redirecting utilities in the ports collection for a correct way to do this. How can I redirect service requests from one machine to another? You can redirect FTP (and other service) request with the socket package, available in the ports tree in category sysutils. Simply replace the service's command line to call socket instead, like so: ftp stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/local/bin/socket socket ftp.example.com ftp where ftp.example.com and ftp are the host and port to redirect to, respectively. Where can I get a bandwidth management tool? There are three bandwidth management tools available for FreeBSD. &man.dummynet.4; is integrated into FreeBSD (or more specifically, &man.ipfw.4;); ALTQ is available for free; Bandwidth Manager from Emerging Technologies is a commercial product. Why do I get /dev/bpf0: device not configured? You are running a program that requires the Berkeley Packet Filter (&man.bpf.4;), but it is not in your kernel. Add this to your kernel config file and build a new kernel: pseudo-device bpf # Berkeley Packet Filter On FreeBSD 4.X and earlier, you must also create the device node. After rebooting, go to the /dev directory and run: &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV bpf0 Please see the Handbook entry on device nodes for more information on managing devices. How do I mount a disk from a &windows; machine that is on my network, like smbmount in &linux;? Use the SMBFS toolset. It includes a set of kernel modifications and a set of userland programs. The programs and information are available as net/smbfs in the ports collection, or in the base system as of 4.5-RELEASE and later. What are these messages about icmp-response bandwidth limit 300/200 pps in my log files? This is the kernel telling you that some activity is provoking it to send more ICMP or TCP reset (RST) responses than it thinks it should. ICMP responses are often generated as a result of attempted connections to unused UDP ports. TCP resets are generated as a result of attempted connections to unopened TCP ports. Among others, these are the kinds of activities which may cause these messages: Brute-force denial of service (DoS) attacks (as opposed to single-packet attacks which exploit a specific vulnerability). Port scans which attempt to connect to a large number of ports (as opposed to only trying a few well-known ports). The first number in the message tells you how many packets the kernel would have sent if the limit was not in place, and the second number tells you the limit. You can control the limit using the net.inet.icmp.icmplim sysctl variable like this, where 300 is the limit in packets per second: &prompt.root; sysctl -w net.inet.icmp.icmplim=300 If you do not want to see messages about this in your log files, but you still want the kernel to do response limiting, you can use the net.inet.icmp.icmplim_output sysctl variable to disable the output like this: &prompt.root; sysctl -w net.inet.icmp.icmplim_output=0 Finally, if you want to disable response limiting, you can set the net.inet.icmp.icmplim sysctl variable (see above for an example) to 0. Disabling response limiting is discouraged for the reasons listed above. What are these arp: unknown hardware address format error messages? This means that some device on your local Ethernet is using a MAC address in a format that FreeBSD does not recognize. This is probably caused by someone experimenting with an Ethernet card somewhere else on the network. You will see this most commonly on cable modem networks. It is harmless, and should not affect the performance of your FreeBSD machine. I've just installed CVSup but trying to execute it produces errors. What is wrong? First, see if the error message you are receiving is like the one shown below. /usr/libexec/ld-elf.so.1: Shared object "libXaw.so.6" not found Errors like these are caused by installing the net/cvsup port on a machine which does not have the &xfree86; suite. If you want to use the GUI included with CVSup you will need to install &xfree86; now. Alternatively if you just wish to use CVSup from a command line you should delete the package previously installed. Then install the net/cvsup-without-gui port. This is covered in more detail in the CVSup section of the Handbook. Security What is a sandbox? Sandbox is a security term. It can mean two things: A process which is placed inside a set of virtual walls that are designed to prevent someone who breaks into the process from being able to break into the wider system. The process is said to be able to play inside the walls. That is, nothing the process does in regards to executing code is supposed to be able to breech the walls so you do not have to do a detailed audit of its code to be able to say certain things about its security. The walls might be a userid, for example. This is the definition used in the security and named man pages. Take the ntalk service, for example (see /etc/inetd.conf). This service used to run as userid root. Now it runs as userid tty. The tty user is a sandbox designed to make it more difficult for someone who has successfully hacked into the system via ntalk from being able to hack beyond that user id. A process which is placed inside a simulation of the machine. This is more hard-core. Basically it means that someone who is able to break into the process may believe that he can break into the wider machine but is, in fact, only breaking into a simulation of that machine and not modifying any real data. The most common way to accomplish this is to build a simulated environment in a subdirectory and then run the processes in that directory chroot'd (i.e. / for that process is this directory, not the real / of the system). Another common use is to mount an underlying filesystem read-only and then create a filesystem layer on top of it that gives a process a seemingly writeable view into that filesystem. The process may believe it is able to write to those files, but only the process sees the effects - other processes in the system do not, necessarily. An attempt is made to make this sort of sandbox so transparent that the user (or hacker) does not realize that he is sitting in it. &unix; implements two core sandboxes. One is at the process level, and one is at the userid level. Every &unix; process is completely firewalled off from every other &unix; process. One process cannot modify the address space of another. This is unlike &windows; where a process can easily overwrite the address space of any other, leading to a crash. A &unix; process is owned by a particular userid. If the userid is not the root user, it serves to firewall the process off from processes owned by other users. The userid is also used to firewall off on-disk data. What is securelevel? The securelevel is a security mechanism implemented in the kernel. Basically, when the securelevel is positive, the kernel restricts certain tasks; not even the superuser (i.e., root) is allowed to do them. At the time of this writing, the securelevel mechanism is capable of, among other things, limiting the ability to, unset certain file flags, such as schg (the system immutable flag), write to kernel memory via /dev/mem and /dev/kmem, load kernel modules, and alter &man.ipfirewall.4; rules. To check the status of the securelevel on a running system, simply execute the following command: &prompt.root; sysctl kern.securelevel The output will contain the name of the &man.sysctl.8; variable (in this case, kern.securelevel) and a number. The latter is the current value of the securelevel. If it is positive (i.e., greater than 0), at least some of the securelevel's protections are enabled. You cannot lower the securelevel of a running system; being able to do that would defeat its purpose. If you need to do a task that requires that the securelevel be non-positive (e.g., an installworld or changing the date), you will have to change the securelevel setting in /etc/rc.conf (you want to look for the kern_securelevel and kern_securelevel_enable variables) and reboot. For more information on securelevel and the specific things all the levels do, please consult the &man.init.8; manual page. Securelevel is not a silver bullet; it has many known deficiencies. More often than not, it provides a false sense of security. One of its biggest problems is that in order for it to be at all effective, all files used in the boot process up until the securelevel is set must be protected. If an attacker can get the system to execute their code prior to the securelevel being set (which happens quite late in the boot process since some things the system must do at start-up cannot be done at an elevated securelevel), its protections are invalidated. While this task of protecting all files used in the boot process is not technically impossible, if it is achieved, system maintenance will become a nightmare since one would have to take the system down, at least to single-user mode, to modify a configuration file. This point and others are often discussed on the mailing lists, particularly the &a.security;. Please search the archives here for an extensive discussion. Some people are hopeful that securelevel will soon go away in favor of a more fine-grained mechanism, but things are still hazy in this respect. Consider yourself warned. BIND (named) is listening on port 53 and some other high-numbered port. What is going on? FreeBSD 3.0 and later use a version of BIND that uses a random high-numbered port for outgoing queries. If you want to use port 53 for outgoing queries, either to get past a firewall or to make yourself feel better, you can try the following in /etc/namedb/named.conf: options { query-source address * port 53; }; You can replace the * with a single IP address if you want to tighten things further. Congratulations, by the way. It is good practice to read your &man.sockstat.1; output and notice odd things! Sendmail is listening on port 587 as well as the standard port 25! What is going on? Recent versions of Sendmail support a mail submission feature that runs over port 587. This is not yet widely supported, but is growing in popularity. What is this UID 0 toor account? Have I been compromised? Do not worry. toor is an alternative superuser account (toor is root spelt backwards). Previously it was created when the &man.bash.1; shell was installed but now it is created by default. It is intended to be used with a non-standard shell so you do not have to change root's default shell. This is important as shells which are not part of the base distribution (for example a shell installed from ports or packages) are likely to be installed in /usr/local/bin which, by default, resides on a different filesystem. If root's shell is located in /usr/local/bin and /usr (or whatever filesystem contains /usr/local/bin) is not mounted for some reason, root will not be able to log in to fix a problem (although if you reboot into single user mode you will be prompted for the path to a shell). Some people use toor for day-to-day root tasks with a non-standard shell, leaving root, with a standard shell, for single user mode or emergencies. By default you cannot log in using toor as it does not have a password, so log in as root and set a password for toor if you want to use it. Why is suidperl not working properly? For security reasons, suidperl is installed without the suid bit by default. The system administrator can enable suid behavior with the following command. &prompt.root; chmod u+s /usr/bin/suidperl If you want suidperl to be built suid during upgrades from source, edit /etc/make.conf and add ENABLE_SUIDPERL=true before you run make buildworld. PPP I cannot make &man.ppp.8; work. What am I doing wrong? You should first read the &man.ppp.8; manual page and the PPP section of the handbook. Enable logging with the command set log Phase Chat Connect Carrier lcp ipcp ccp command This command may be typed at the &man.ppp.8; command prompt or it may be entered in the /etc/ppp/ppp.conf configuration file (the start of the default section is the best place to put it). Make sure that /etc/syslog.conf (see &man.syslog.conf.5;) contains the lines !ppp *.* /var/log/ppp.log and that the file /var/log/ppp.log exists. You can now find out a lot about what is going on from the log file. Do not worry if it does not all make sense. If you need to get help from someone, it may make sense to them. If your version of &man.ppp.8; does not understand the set log command, you should download the latest version. It will build on FreeBSD version 2.1.5 and higher. Why does &man.ppp.8; hang when I run it? This is usually because your hostname will not resolve. The best way to fix this is to make sure that /etc/hosts is consulted by your resolver first by editing /etc/host.conf and putting the hosts line first. Then, simply put an entry in /etc/hosts for your local machine. If you have no local network, change your localhost line: 127.0.0.1 foo.example.com foo localhost Otherwise, simply add another entry for your host. Consult the relevant manual pages for more details. You should be able to successfully ping -c1 `hostname` when you are done. Why will &man.ppp.8; not dial in -auto mode? First, check that you have got a default route. By running netstat -rn (see &man.netstat.1;), you should see two entries like this: Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif Expire default 10.0.0.2 UGSc 0 0 tun0 10.0.0.2 10.0.0.1 UH 0 0 tun0 This is assuming that you have used the addresses from the handbook, the manual page or from the ppp.conf.sample file. If you do not have a default route, it may be because you are running an old version of &man.ppp.8; that does not understand the word HISADDR in the ppp.conf file. If your version of &man.ppp.8; is from before FreeBSD 2.2.5, change the add 0 0 HISADDR line to one saying add 0 0 10.0.0.2 Another reason for the default route line being missing is that you have mistakenly set up a default router in your /etc/rc.conf (see &man.rc.conf.5;) file (this file was called /etc/sysconfig prior to release 2.2.2), and you have omitted the line saying delete ALL from ppp.conf. If this is the case, go back to the Final system configuration section of the handbook. What does No route to host mean? This error is usually due to a missing MYADDR: delete ALL add 0 0 HISADDR section in your /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup file. This is only necessary if you have a dynamic IP address or do not know the address of your gateway. If you are using interactive mode, you can type the following after entering packet mode (packet mode is indicated by the capitalized PPP in the prompt): delete ALL add 0 0 HISADDR Refer to the PPP and Dynamic IP addresses section of the handbook for further details. Why does my connection drop after about 3 minutes? The default PPP timeout is 3 minutes. This can be adjusted with the line set timeout NNN where NNN is the number of seconds of inactivity before the connection is closed. If NNN is zero, the connection is never closed due to a timeout. It is possible to put this command in the ppp.conf file, or to type it at the prompt in interactive mode. It is also possible to adjust it on the fly while the line is active by connecting to ppp's server socket using &man.telnet.1; or &man.pppctl.8;. Refer to the &man.ppp.8; man page for further details. Why does my connection drop under heavy load? If you have Link Quality Reporting (LQR) configured, it is possible that too many LQR packets are lost between your machine and the peer. Ppp deduces that the line must therefore be bad, and disconnects. Prior to FreeBSD version 2.2.5, LQR was enabled by default. It is now disabled by default. LQR can be disabled with the line disable lqr Why does my connection drop after a random amount of time? Sometimes, on a noisy phone line or even on a line with call waiting enabled, your modem may hang up because it thinks (incorrectly) that it lost carrier. There is a setting on most modems for determining how tolerant it should be to temporary losses of carrier. On a USR &sportster; for example, this is measured by the S10 register in tenths of a second. To make your modem more forgiving, you could add the following send-expect sequence to your dial string: set dial "...... ATS10=10 OK ......" Refer to your modem manual for details. Why does my connection hang after a random amount of time? Many people experience hung connections with no apparent explanation. The first thing to establish is which side of the link is hung. If you are using an external modem, you can simply try using &man.ping.8; to see if the TD light is flashing when you transmit data. If it flashes (and the RD light does not), the problem is with the remote end. If TD does not flash, the problem is local. With an internal modem, you will need to use the set server command in your ppp.conf file. When the hang occurs, connect to &man.ppp.8; using &man.pppctl.8;. If your network connection suddenly revives (PPP was revived due to the activity on the diagnostic socket) or if you cannot connect (assuming the set socket command succeeded at startup time), the problem is local. If you can connect and things are still hung, enable local async logging with set log local async and use &man.ping.8; from another window or terminal to make use of the link. The async logging will show you the data being transmitted and received on the link. If data is going out and not coming back, the problem is remote. Having established whether the problem is local or remote, you now have two possibilities: If the problem is remote, read on entry . If the problem is local, read on entry . The remote end is not responding. What can I do? There is very little you can do about this. Most ISPs will refuse to help if you are not running a Microsoft OS. You can enable lqr in your ppp.conf file, allowing &man.ppp.8; to detect the remote failure and hang up, but this detection is relatively slow and therefore not that useful. You may want to avoid telling your ISP that you are running user-PPP... First, try disabling all local compression by adding the following to your configuration: disable pred1 deflate deflate24 protocomp acfcomp shortseq vj deny pred1 deflate deflate24 protocomp acfcomp shortseq vj Then reconnect to ensure that this makes no difference. If things improve or if the problem is solved completely, determine which setting makes the difference through trial and error. This will provide good ammunition when you contact your ISP (although it may make it apparent that you are not running a Microsoft product). Before contacting your ISP, enable async logging locally and wait until the connection hangs again. This may use up quite a bit of disk space. The last data read from the port may be of interest. It is usually ascii data, and may even describe the problem (Memory fault, core dumped?). If your ISP is helpful, they should be able to enable logging on their end, then when the next link drop occurs, they may be able to tell you why their side is having a problem. Feel free to send the details to &a.brian;, or even to ask your ISP to contact me directly. &man.ppp.8; has hung. What can I do? Your best bet here is to rebuild &man.ppp.8; by adding CFLAGS+=-g and STRIP= to the end of the Makefile, then doing a make clean && make && make install. When &man.ppp.8; hangs, find the &man.ppp.8; process id with ps ajxww | fgrep ppp and run gdb ppp PID. From the gdb prompt, you can then use bt to get a stack trace. Send the results to &a.brian;. Why does nothing happen after the Login OK! message? Prior to FreeBSD version 2.2.5, once the link was established, &man.ppp.8; would wait for the peer to initiate the Line Control Protocol (LCP). Many ISPs will not initiate negotiations and expect the client to do so. To force &man.ppp.8; to initiate the LCP, use the following line: set openmode active It usually does no harm if both sides initiate negotiation, so openmode is now active by default. However, the next section explains when it does do some harm. I keep seeing errors about magic being the same. What does it mean? Occasionally, just after connecting, you may see messages in the log that say magic is the same. Sometimes, these messages are harmless, and sometimes one side or the other exits. Most PPP implementations cannot survive this problem, and even if the link seems to come up, you will see repeated configure requests and configure acknowledgments in the log file until &man.ppp.8; eventually gives up and closes the connection. This normally happens on server machines with slow disks that are spawning a getty on the port, and executing &man.ppp.8; from a login script or program after login. I have also heard reports of it happening consistently when using slirp. The reason is that in the time taken between &man.getty.8; exiting and &man.ppp.8; starting, the client-side &man.ppp.8; starts sending Line Control Protocol (LCP) packets. Because ECHO is still switched on for the port on the server, the client &man.ppp.8; sees these packets reflect back. One part of the LCP negotiation is to establish a magic number for each side of the link so that reflections can be detected. The protocol says that when the peer tries to negotiate the same magic number, a NAK should be sent and a new magic number should be chosen. During the period that the server port has ECHO turned on, the client &man.ppp.8; sends LCP packets, sees the same magic in the reflected packet and NAKs it. It also sees the NAK reflect (which also means &man.ppp.8; must change its magic). This produces a potentially enormous number of magic number changes, all of which are happily piling into the server's tty buffer. As soon as &man.ppp.8; starts on the server, it is flooded with magic number changes and almost immediately decides it has tried enough to negotiate LCP and gives up. Meanwhile, the client, who no longer sees the reflections, becomes happy just in time to see a hangup from the server. This can be avoided by allowing the peer to start negotiating with the following line in your ppp.conf file: set openmode passive This tells &man.ppp.8; to wait for the server to initiate LCP negotiations. Some servers however may never initiate negotiations. If this is the case, you can do something like: set openmode active 3 This tells &man.ppp.8; to be passive for 3 seconds, and then to start sending LCP requests. If the peer starts sending requests during this period, &man.ppp.8; will immediately respond rather than waiting for the full 3 second period. LCP negotiations continue until the connection is closed. What is wrong? There is currently an implementation mis-feature in &man.ppp.8; where it does not associate LCP, CCP & IPCP responses with their original requests. As a result, if one PPP implementation is more than 6 seconds slower than the other side, the other side will send two additional LCP configuration requests. This is fatal. Consider two implementations, A and B. A starts sending LCP requests immediately after connecting and B takes 7 seconds to start. When B starts, A has sent 3 LCP REQs. We are assuming the line has ECHO switched off, otherwise we would see magic number problems as described in the previous section. B sends a REQ, then an ACK to the first of A's REQs. This results in A entering the OPENED state and sending and ACK (the first) back to B. In the meantime, B sends back two more ACKs in response to the two additional REQs sent by A before B started up. B then receives the first ACK from A and enters the OPENED state. A receives the second ACK from B and goes back to the REQ-SENT state, sending another (forth) REQ as per the RFC. It then receives the third ACK and enters the OPENED state. In the meantime, B receives the forth REQ from A, resulting in it reverting to the ACK-SENT state and sending another (second) REQ and (forth) ACK as per the RFC. A gets the REQ, goes into REQ-SENT and sends another REQ. It immediately receives the following ACK and enters OPENED. This goes on until one side figures out that they are getting nowhere and gives up. The best way to avoid this is to configure one side to be passive - that is, make one side wait for the other to start negotiating. This can be done with the set openmode passive command. Care should be taken with this option. You should also use the set stopped N command to limit the amount of time that &man.ppp.8; waits for the peer to begin negotiations. Alternatively, the set openmode active N command (where N is the number of seconds to wait before starting negotiations) can be used. Check the manual page for details. Why does &man.ppp.8; lock up shortly after connection? Prior to version 2.2.5 of FreeBSD, it was possible that your link was disabled shortly after connection due to &man.ppp.8; mis-handling Predictor1 compression negotiation. This would only happen if both sides tried to negotiate different Compression Control Protocols (CCP). This problem is now corrected, but if you are still running an old version of &man.ppp.8; the problem can be circumvented with the line disable pred1 Why does &man.ppp.8; lock up when I shell out to test it? When you execute the shell or ! command, &man.ppp.8; executes a shell (or if you have passed any arguments, &man.ppp.8; will execute those arguments). Ppp will wait for the command to complete before continuing. If you attempt to use the PPP link while running the command, the link will appear to have frozen. This is because &man.ppp.8; is waiting for the command to complete. If you wish to execute commands like this, use the !bg command instead. This will execute the given command in the background, and &man.ppp.8; can continue to service the link. Why does &man.ppp.8; over a null-modem cable never exit? There is no way for &man.ppp.8; to automatically determine that a direct connection has been dropped. This is due to the lines that are used in a null-modem serial cable. When using this sort of connection, LQR should always be enabled with the line enable lqr LQR is accepted by default if negotiated by the peer. Why does &man.ppp.8; dial for no reason in -auto mode? If &man.ppp.8; is dialing unexpectedly, you must determine the cause, and set up Dial filters (dfilters) to prevent such dialing. To determine the cause, use the following line: set log +tcp/ip This will log all traffic through the connection. The next time the line comes up unexpectedly, you will see the reason logged with a convenient timestamp next to it. You can now disable dialing under these circumstances. Usually, this sort of problem arises due to DNS lookups. To prevent DNS lookups from establishing a connection (this will not prevent &man.ppp.8; from passing the packets through an established connection), use the following: set dfilter 1 deny udp src eq 53 set dfilter 2 deny udp dst eq 53 set dfilter 3 permit 0/0 0/0 This is not always suitable, as it will effectively break your demand-dial capabilities - most programs will need a DNS lookup before doing any other network related things. In the DNS case, you should try to determine what is actually trying to resolve a host name. A lot of the time, &man.sendmail.8; is the culprit. You should make sure that you tell sendmail not to do any DNS lookups in its configuration file. See the section on using email with a dialup connection in the FreeBSD Handbook for details on how to create your own configuration file and what should go into it. You may also want to add the following line to your .mc file: define(`confDELIVERY_MODE', `d')dnl This will make sendmail queue everything until the queue is run (usually, sendmail is invoked with , telling it to run the queue every 30 minutes) or until a sendmail -q is done (perhaps from your ppp.linkup file). What do these CCP errors mean? I keep seeing the following errors in my log file: CCP: CcpSendConfigReq CCP: Received Terminate Ack (1) state = Req-Sent (6) This is because &man.ppp.8; is trying to negotiate Predictor1 compression, and the peer does not want to negotiate any compression at all. The messages are harmless, but if you wish to remove them, you can disable Predictor1 compression locally too: disable pred1 Why does &man.ppp.8; not log my connection speed? In order to log all lines of your modem conversation, you must enable the following: set log +connect This will make &man.ppp.8; log everything up until the last requested expect string. If you wish to see your connect speed and are using PAP or CHAP (and therefore do not have anything to chat after the CONNECT in the dial script - no set login script), you must make sure that you instruct &man.ppp.8; to expect the whole CONNECT line, something like this: set dial "ABORT BUSY ABORT NO\\sCARRIER TIMEOUT 4 \ \"\" ATZ OK-ATZ-OK ATDT\\T TIMEOUT 60 CONNECT \\c \\n" Here, we get our CONNECT, send nothing, then expect a line-feed, forcing &man.ppp.8; to read the whole CONNECT response. Why does &man.ppp.8; ignore the \ character in my chat script? Ppp parses each line in your config files so that it can interpret strings such as set phone "123 456 789" correctly and realize that the number is actually only one argument. In order to specify a " character, you must escape it using a backslash (\). When the chat interpreter parses each argument, it re-interprets the argument in order to find any special escape sequences such as \P or \T (see the manual page). As a result of this double-parsing, you must remember to use the correct number of escapes. If you wish to actually send a \ character to (say) your modem, you would need something like: set dial "\"\" ATZ OK-ATZ-OK AT\\\\X OK" resulting in the following sequence: ATZ OK AT\X OK or set phone 1234567 set dial "\"\" ATZ OK ATDT\\T" resulting in the following sequence: ATZ OK ATDT1234567 Why does &man.ppp.8; get a seg-fault, but I see no ppp.core file? Ppp (or any other program for that matter) should never dump core. Because &man.ppp.8; runs with an effective user id of 0, the operating system will not write &man.ppp.8;'s core image to disk before terminating it. If, however &man.ppp.8; is actually terminating due to a segmentation violation or some other signal that normally causes core to be dumped, and you are sure you are using the latest version (see the start of this section), then you should do the following: &prompt.user; tar xfz ppp-*.src.tar.gz &prompt.user; cd ppp*/ppp &prompt.user; echo STRIP= >>Makefile &prompt.user; echo CFLAGS+=-g >>Makefile &prompt.user; make clean all &prompt.user; su &prompt.root; make install &prompt.root; chmod 555 /usr/sbin/ppp You will now have a debuggable version of &man.ppp.8; installed. You will have to be root to run &man.ppp.8; as all of its privileges have been revoked. When you start &man.ppp.8;, take a careful note of what your current directory was at the time. Now, if and when &man.ppp.8; receives the segmentation violation, it will dump a core file called ppp.core. You should then do the following: &prompt.user; su &prompt.root; gdb /usr/sbin/ppp ppp.core (gdb) bt ..... (gdb) f 0 .... (gdb) i args .... (gdb) l ..... All of this information should be given alongside your question, making it possible to diagnose the problem. If you are familiar with gdb, you may wish to find out some other bits and pieces such as what actually caused the dump and the addresses & values of the relevant variables. Why does the process that forces a dial in auto mode never connect? This was a known problem with &man.ppp.8; set up to negotiate a dynamic local IP number with the peer in auto mode. It is fixed in the latest version - search the manual page for iface. The problem was that when that initial program calls &man.connect.2;, the IP number of the tun interface is assigned to the socket endpoint. The kernel creates the first outgoing packet and writes it to the tun device. &man.ppp.8; then reads the packet and establishes a connection. If, as a result of &man.ppp.8;'s dynamic IP assignment, the interface address is changed, the original socket endpoint will be invalid. Any subsequent packets sent to the peer will usually be dropped. Even if they are not, any responses will not route back to the originating machine as the IP number is no longer owned by that machine. There are several theoretical ways to approach this problem. It would be nicest if the peer would re-assign the same IP number if possible :-) The current version of &man.ppp.8; does this, but most other implementations do not. The easiest method from our side would be to never change the tun interface IP number, but instead to change all outgoing packets so that the source IP number is changed from the interface IP to the negotiated IP on the fly. This is essentially what the iface-alias option in the latest version of &man.ppp.8; is doing (with the help of &man.libalias.3; and &man.ppp.8;'s switch) - it is maintaining all previous interface addresses and NATing them to the last negotiated address. Another alternative (and probably the most reliable) would be to implement a system call that changes all bound sockets from one IP to another. &man.ppp.8; would use this call to modify the sockets of all existing programs when a new IP number is negotiated. The same system call could be used by dhcp clients when they are forced to re-bind() their sockets. Yet another possibility is to allow an interface to be brought up without an IP number. Outgoing packets would be given an IP number of 255.255.255.255 up until the first SIOCAIFADDR ioctl is done. This would result in fully binding the socket. It would be up to &man.ppp.8; to change the source IP number, but only if it is set to 255.255.255.255, and only the IP number and IP checksum would need to change. This, however is a bit of a hack as the kernel would be sending bad packets to an improperly configured interface, on the assumption that some other mechanism is capable of fixing things retrospectively. Why do most games not work with the -nat switch? The reason games and the like do not work when libalias is in use is that the machine on the outside will try to open a connection or send (unsolicited) UDP packets to the machine on the inside. The NAT software does not know that it should send these packets to the interior machine. To make things work, make sure that the only thing running is the software that you are having problems with, then either run tcpdump on the tun interface of the gateway or enable &man.ppp.8; tcp/ip logging (set log +tcp/ip) on the gateway. When you start the offending software, you should see packets passing through the gateway machine. When something comes back from the outside, it will be dropped (that is the problem). Note the port number of these packets then shut down the offending software. Do this a few times to see if the port numbers are consistent. If they are, then the following line in the relevant section of /etc/ppp/ppp.conf will make the software functional: nat port proto internalmachine:port port where proto is either tcp or udp, internalmachine is the machine that you want the packets to be sent to and port is the destination port number of the packets. You will not be able to use the software on other machines without changing the above command, and running the software on two internal machines at the same time is out of the question - after all, the outside world is seeing your entire internal network as being just a single machine. If the port numbers are not consistent, there are three more options: Submit support in libalias. Examples of special cases can be found in /usr/src/lib/libalias/alias_*.c (alias_ftp.c is a good prototype). This usually involves reading certain recognised outgoing packets, identifying the instruction that tells the outside machine to initiate a connection back to the internal machine on a specific (random) port and setting up a route in the alias table so that the subsequent packets know where to go. This is the most difficult solution, but it is the best and will make the software work with multiple machines. Use a proxy. The application may support socks5 for example, or (as in the cvsup case) may have a passive option that avoids ever requesting that the peer open connections back to the local machine. Redirect everything to the internal machine using nat addr. This is the sledge-hammer approach. Has anybody made a list of useful port numbers? Not yet, but this is intended to grow into such a list (if any interest is shown). In each example, internal should be replaced with the IP number of the machine playing the game. Asheron's Call nat port udp internal :65000 65000 Manually change the port number within the game to 65000. If you have got a number of machines that you wish to play on assign a unique port number for each (i.e. 65001, 65002, etc) and add a nat port line for each one. Half Life nat port udp internal:27005 27015 PCAnywhere 8.0 nat port udp internal:5632 5632 nat port tcp internal:5631 5631 Quake nat port udp internal:6112 6112 Alternatively, you may want to take a look at www.battle.net for Quake proxy support. Quake 2 nat port udp internal:27901 27910 nat port udp internal:60021 60021 nat port udp internal:60040 60040 Red Alert nat port udp internal:8675 8675 nat port udp internal:5009 5009 What are FCS errors? FCS stands for Frame Check Sequence. Each PPP packet has a checksum attached to ensure that the data being received is the data being sent. If the FCS of an incoming packet is incorrect, the packet is dropped and the HDLC FCS count is increased. The HDLC error values can be displayed using the show hdlc command. If your link is bad (or if your serial driver is dropping packets), you will see the occasional FCS error. This is not usually worth worrying about although it does slow down the compression protocols substantially. If you have an external modem, make sure your cable is properly shielded from interference - this may eradicate the problem. If your link freezes as soon as you have connected and you see a large number of FCS errors, this may be because your link is not 8 bit clean. Make sure your modem is not using software flow control (XON/XOFF). If your datalink must use software flow control, use the command set accmap 0x000a0000 to tell &man.ppp.8; to escape the ^Q and ^S characters. Another reason for seeing too many FCS errors may be that the remote end has stopped talking PPP. You may want to enable async logging at this point to determine if the incoming data is actually a login or shell prompt. If you have a shell prompt at the remote end, it is possible to terminate &man.ppp.8; without dropping the line by using the close lcp command (a following term command will reconnect you to the shell on the remote machine. If nothing in your log file indicates why the link might have been terminated, you should ask the remote administrator (your ISP?) why the session was terminated. Why do &macos; and &windows; 98 connections freeze when running PPPoE on the gateway? Thanks to Michael Wozniak mwozniak@netcom.ca for figuring this out and Dan Flemming danflemming@mac.com for the Mac solution: This is due to what is called a Black Hole router. &macos; and &windows; 98 (and maybe other Microsoft OSs) send TCP packets with a requested segment size too big to fit into a PPPoE frame (MTU is 1500 by default for Ethernet) and have the do not fragment bit set (default of TCP) and the Telco router is not sending ICMP must fragment back to the www site you are trying to load. (Alternatively, the router is sending the ICMP packet correctly, but the firewall at the www site is dropping it.) When the www server is sending you frames that do not fit into the PPPoE pipe the Telco router drops them on the floor and your page does not load (some pages/graphics do as they are smaller than a MSS.) This seems to be the default of most Telco PPPoE configurations (if only they knew how to program a router... sigh...) One fix is to use regedit on your 95/98 boxes to add the following registry entry... HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\NetTrans\0000\MaxMTU It should be a string with a value 1436, as some ADSL routers are reported to be unable to deal with packets larger than this. This registry key has been changed to Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\ID for adapter\MTU in &windows; 2000 and becomes a DWORD. Refer to the Microsoft Knowledge Base documents Q158474 - Windows TCPIP Registry Entries and Q120642 - TCPIP & NBT Configuration Parameters for &windowsnt; for more information on changing &windows; MTU to work with a NAT router. Another regedit possibility under &windows; 2000 is to set the Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\ID for adapter\EnablePMTUBHDetect DWORD to 1 as mentioned in the Microsoft document 120642 mentioned above. Unfortunately, &macos; does not provide an interface for changing TCP/IP settings. However, there is commercial software available, such as OTAdvancedTuner (OT for OpenTransport, the &macos; TCP/IP stack) by Sustainable Softworks, that will allow users to customize TCP/IP settings. &macos; NAT users should select ip_interface_MTU from the drop-down menu, enter 1450 instead of 1500 in the box, click the box next to Save as Auto Configure, and click Make Active. The latest version of &man.ppp.8; (2.3 or greater) has an enable tcpmssfixup command that will automatically adjust the MSS to an appropriate value. This facility is enabled by default. If you are stuck with an older version of &man.ppp.8;, you may want to look at the tcpmssd port. None of this helps - I am desperate! What can I do? If all else fails, send as much information as you can, including your config files, how you are starting &man.ppp.8;, the relevant parts of your log file and the output of the netstat -rn command (before and after connecting) to the &a.questions; or the comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc news group, and someone should point you in the right direction. Serial Communications This section answers common questions about serial communications with FreeBSD. PPP and SLIP are covered in the Networking section. How do I tell if FreeBSD found my serial ports? As the FreeBSD kernel boots, it will probe for the serial ports in your system for which the kernel was configured. You can either watch your system closely for the messages it prints or run the command &prompt.user; dmesg | grep sio after your system is up and running. Here is some example output from the above command: sio0 at 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 on isa sio0: type 16550A sio1 at 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa sio1: type 16550A This shows two serial ports. The first is on irq 4, is using port address 0x3f8, and has a 16550A-type UART chip. The second uses the same kind of chip but is on irq 3 and is at port address 0x2f8. Internal modem cards are treated just like serial ports---except that they always have a modem attached to the port. The GENERIC kernel includes support for two serial ports using the same irq and port address settings in the above example. If these settings are not right for your system, or if you have added modem cards or have more serial ports than your kernel is configured for, just reconfigure your kernel. See section about building a kernel for more details. How do I tell if FreeBSD found my modem cards? Refer to the answer to the previous question. How do I access the serial ports on FreeBSD? The third serial port, sio2 (see &man.sio.4;, known as COM3 in DOS), is on /dev/cuaa2 for dial-out devices, and on /dev/ttyd2 for dial-in devices. What is the difference between these two classes of devices? You use ttydX for dial-ins. When opening /dev/ttydX in blocking mode, a process will wait for the corresponding cuaaX device to become inactive, and then wait for the carrier detect line to go active. When you open the cuaaX device, it makes sure the serial port is not already in use by the ttydX device. If the port is available, it steals it from the ttydX device. Also, the cuaaX device does not care about carrier detect. With this scheme and an auto-answer modem, you can have remote users log in and you can still dial out with the same modem and the system will take care of all the conflicts. How do I enable support for a multiport serial card? Again, the section on kernel configuration provides information about configuring your kernel. For a multiport serial card, place an &man.sio.4; line for each serial port on the card in the kernel configuration file. But place the irq and vector specifiers on only one of the entries. All of the ports on the card should share one irq. For consistency, use the last serial port to specify the irq. Also, specify the COM_MULTIPORT option. The following example is for an AST 4-port serial card on irq 7: options "COM_MULTIPORT" device sio4 at isa? port 0x2a0 tty flags 0x781 device sio5 at isa? port 0x2a8 tty flags 0x781 device sio6 at isa? port 0x2b0 tty flags 0x781 device sio7 at isa? port 0x2b8 tty flags 0x781 irq 7 vector siointr The flags indicate that the master port has minor number 7 (0x700), diagnostics enabled during probe (0x080), and all the ports share an irq (0x001). Can FreeBSD handle multiport serial cards sharing irqs? Not yet. You will have to use a different irq for each card. Can I set the default serial parameters for a port? The ttydX (or cuaaX) 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 CLOCAL mode, 8 bits, and XON/XOFF flow control by default for ttyd5, do: &prompt.root; stty -f /dev/ttyid5 clocal cs8 ixon ixoff A good place to do this is in /etc/rc.serial. Now, an application will have these settings by default when it opens ttyd5. It can still change these settings to its liking, though. You can also prevent certain settings from being changed by an application by making adjustments to the lock state device. For example, to lock the speed of ttyd5 to 57600 bps, do &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. Naturally, you should make the initial state and lock state devices writable only by root. The &man.MAKEDEV.8; script does NOT do this when it creates the device entries. How can I enable dialup logins on my modem? So you want to become an Internet service provider, eh? First, you will need one or more modems that can auto-answer. Your modem will need to assert carrier-detect when it detects a carrier and not assert it all the time. It will need to hang up the phone and reset itself when the data terminal ready (DTR) line goes from on to off. It should probably use RTS/CTS flow control or no local flow control at all. Finally, it must use a constant speed between the computer and itself, but (to be nice to your callers) it should negotiate a speed between itself and the remote modem. For many Hayes command-set--compatible modems, this command will make these settings and store them in nonvolatile memory: AT &C1 &D3 &K3 &Q6 S0=1 &W See the section on sending AT commands below for information on how to make these settings without resorting to an &ms-dos; terminal program. Next, make an entry in /etc/ttys (see &man.ttys.5;) for the modem. This file lists all the ports on which the operating system will await logins. Add a line that looks something like this: ttyd1 "/usr/libexec/getty std.57600" dialup on insecure This line indicates that the second serial port (/dev/ttyd1) has a modem connected running at 57600 bps and no parity (std.57600, which comes from the file /etc/gettytab, see &man.gettytab.5;). The terminal type for this port is dialup. The port is on and is insecure---meaning root logins on the port are not allowed. For dialin ports like this one, use the ttydX entry. It is common practice to use dialup as the terminal type. Many users set up in their .profile or .login files a prompt for the actual terminal type if the starting type is dialup. The example shows the port as insecure. To become root on this port, you have to login as a regular user, then &man.su.1; to become root. If you use secure then root can login in directly. After making modifications to /etc/ttys, you need to send a hangup or HUP signal to the &man.init.8; process: &prompt.root; kill -HUP 1 This forces the &man.init.8; process to reread /etc/ttys. The init process will then start getty processes on all on ports. You can find out if logins are available for your port by typing &prompt.user; ps -ax | grep '[t]tyd1' You should see something like: 747 ?? I 0:00.04 /usr/libexec/getty std.57600 ttyd1 How can I connect a dumb terminal to my FreeBSD box? If you are using another computer as a terminal into your FreeBSD system, get a null modem cable to go between the two serial ports. If you are using an actual terminal, see its accompanying instructions. Then, modify /etc/ttys (see &man.ttys.5;), like above. For example, if you are hooking up a WYSE-50 terminal to the fifth serial port, use an entry like this: ttyd4 "/usr/libexec/getty std.38400" wyse50 on secure This example shows that the port on /dev/ttyd4 has a wyse50 terminal connected at 38400 bps with no parity (std.38400 from /etc/gettytab, see &man.gettytab.5;) and root logins are allowed (secure). Why can I not run tip or cu? On your system, the programs &man.tip.1; and &man.cu.1; are probably executable only by uucp and group dialer. You can use the group dialer to control who has access to your modem or remote systems. Just add yourself to group dialer. Alternatively, you can let everyone on your system run &man.tip.1; and &man.cu.1; by typing: &prompt.root; chmod 4511 /usr/bin/cu &prompt.root; chmod 4511 /usr/bin/tip My stock Hayes modem is not supported---what can I do? Actually, the manual page for &man.tip.1; is out of date. There is a generic Hayes dialer already built in. Just use at=hayes in your /etc/remote (see &man.remote.5;) 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 &man.tip.1; (using ATX0&W). Also, the dial timeout for &man.tip.1; 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 &man.tip.1; 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? Make what is called a direct entry in your /etc/remote file (see &man.remote.5;). 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 (see &man.tip.1;) 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; sh MAKEDEV cuaa0 Or use cu as root with the following command: &prompt.root; cu -lline -sspeed with line being the serial port (e.g. /dev/cuaa0) and speed being the speed (e.g.57600). When you are done entering the AT commands hit ~. to exit. Why does the <@> sign for the pn capability 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 (see &man.remote.5;). 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 do something like tip -115200 5551234. If you prefer &man.cu.1; over &man.tip.1;, 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 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. &man.tip.1; 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. How can I more easily 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 (see &man.remote.5;): 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 (see &man.remote.5;) 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 (see &man.phones.5;): big-university 5551111 big-university 5551112 big-university 5551113 big-university 5551114 &man.tip.1; will try each one in the listed order, then give up. If you want to keep retrying, run &man.tip.1; in a while loop. Why do I have to hit CTRLP twice to send CTRLP once? CTRLP is the default force character, used to tell &man.tip.1; 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. A pretty good value for single-char is SHIFTCTRL6, which I have seen 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 Why is everything I type suddenly in UPPER CASE? You must have pressed CTRLA, &man.tip.1; 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 tip? If you are talking to another &unix; system, you can send and receive files with ~p (put) and ~t (take). These commands run &man.cat.1; and &man.echo.1; 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 tip? First, install one of the zmodem programs from the ports collection (such as one of the two from the comms category, lrzsz or rzsz. To receive files, start the sending program on the remote end. Then, press enter and type ~C rz (or ~C lrz if you installed lrzsz) to begin receiving them locally. To send files, start the receiving program on the remote end. Then, press enter and type ~C sz files (or ~C lsz files) to send them to the remote system. Miscellaneous Questions FreeBSD uses far more swap space than &linux;. Why? FreeBSD only appears to use more swap than &linux;. In actual fact, it does not. The main difference between FreeBSD and &linux; in this regard is that FreeBSD will proactively move entirely idle, unused pages of main memory into swap in order to make more main memory available for active use. &linux; tends to only move pages to swap as a last resort. The perceived heavier use of swap is balanced by the more efficient use of main memory. Note that while FreeBSD is proactive in this regard, it does not arbitrarily decide to swap pages when the system is truly idle. Thus you will not find your system all paged out when you get up in the morning after leaving it idle overnight. Why does top show very little free memory even when I have very few programs running? The simple answer is that free memory is wasted memory. Any memory that your programs do not actively allocate is used within the FreeBSD kernel as disk cache. The values shown by &man.top.1; labeled as Inact, Cache, and Buf are all cached data at different aging levels. This cached data means the system does not have to access a slow disk again for data it has accessed recently, thus increasing overall performance. In general, a low value shown for Free memory in &man.top.1; is good, provided it is not very low. Why will chmod not change the permissions on symlinks? Symlinks do not have permissions, and by default, &man.chmod.1; will not follow symlinks to change the permissions on the target file. So if you have a file, foo, and a symlink to that file, bar, then this command will always succeed. &prompt.user; chmod g-w bar However, the permissions on foo will not have changed. You have to use either or together with the option to make this work. See the &man.chmod.1; and &man.symlink.7; manual pages for more info. The option does a RECURSIVE &man.chmod.1;. Be careful about specifying directories or symlinks to directories to &man.chmod.1;. If you want to change the permissions of a directory referenced by a symlink, use &man.chmod.1; without any options and follow the symlink with a trailing slash (/). For example, if foo is a symlink to directory bar, and you want to change the permissions of foo (actually bar), you would do something like: &prompt.user; chmod 555 foo/ With the trailing slash, &man.chmod.1; will follow the symlink, foo, to change the permissions of the directory, bar. Can I run DOS binaries under FreeBSD? Yes, you can use the integrated doscmd DOS emulation program to run a subset of DOS commands. If doscmd will not suffice, the add-on utility emulators/pcemu emulates an 8088 and enough BIOS services to run many DOS text mode applications. It requires the X Window System. What do I need to do to translate a FreeBSD document into my native language? See the Translation FAQ in the FreeBSD Documentation Project Primer. Why does my email to any address at FreeBSD.org bounce? The FreeBSD.org mail system implements some of the stricter Postfix checks on incoming mail and rejects mail that is either misconfigured or is potential spam. Your mail might bounce for one of the following reasons: The email is being sent from a known spam domain or IP block. The FreeBSD mail servers reject email from known spam sources. If you have service through a company or domain who generates or relays spam, please switch to a service provider who does not. The body of the email only contains HTML. Mail should be sent in plain text only. Please configure your mail user agent to send plain text. The mailer at FreeBSD.org cannot resolve the IP address of the connecting host back to a symbolic name. Working reverse DNS is a standard requirement for accepting mail from a host. Set up reverse DNS for your mail server's IP address. Many home services (DSL, cable, dialup, etc.) will not give you this option. In this case, relay your email through your service provider's mail server. The hostname given in the EHLO/HELO part of the SMTP exchange cannot be resolved to an IP address. A fully qualified, resolvable host name is necessary in this part of the SMTP dialogue before mail will be accepted. If you do not have a host name that is registered in the DNS, then you should use your service provider's mail server to relay your mail. Your message had a message ID ending with the string localhost. Some mail user agents generate bad message IDs which will not be accepted. You will need to persuade your mail user agent to generate a valid message ID or else configure your mail transfer agent to rewrite them. Where can I find a free FreeBSD account? While FreeBSD does not provide open access to any of their servers, others do provide open access &unix; systems. The charge varies and limited services may be available. Arbornet, Inc, also known as M-Net, has been providing open access to &unix; systems since 1983. Starting on an Altos running System III, the site switched to BSD/OS in 1991. In June of 2000, the site switched again to FreeBSD. M-Net can be accessed via telnet and SSH and provides basic access to the entire FreeBSD software suite. However, network access is limited to members and patrons who donate to the system, which is run as a non-profit organization. M-Net also provides an bulletin board system and interactive chat. Grex provides a site very similar to M-Net including the same bulletin board and interactive chat software. However, the machine is a &sun; 4M and is running &sunos;. What is sup, and how do I use it? SUP stands for Software Update Protocol, and was developed by CMU for keeping their development trees in sync. We used it to keep remote sites in sync with our central development sources. SUP is not bandwidth friendly, and has been retired. The current recommended method to keep your sources up to date is CVSup What is the cute little red guy's name? He does not have one, and is just called the BSD daemon. If you insist upon using a name, call him beastie. Note that beastie is pronounced BSD. You can learn more about the BSD daemon on his home page. Can I use the BSD daemon image? Perhaps. The BSD daemon is copyrighted by Marshall Kirk McKusick. You will want to check his Statement on the Use of the BSD Daemon Figure for detailed usage terms. In summary, you are free to use the image in a tasteful manner, for personal use, so long as appropriate credit is given. If you want to use him commercially, you must contact Kirk McKusick. More details are available on the BSD Daemon's home page. Do you have any BSD daemon images I could use? You will find eps and Xfig drawings under /usr/share/examples/BSD_daemon/. What does MFC mean? MFC is an acronym for Merged From -CURRENT. It is used in the CVS logs to denote when a change was migrated from the CURRENT to the STABLE branches. What does BSD mean? It stands for something in a secret language that only members can know. It does not translate literally but it is ok to tell you that BSD's translation is something between, Formula-1 Racing Team, Penguins are tasty snacks, and We have a better sense of humor than &linux;. :-) Seriously, BSD is an acronym for Berkeley Software Distribution, which is the name the Berkeley CSRG (Computer Systems Research Group) chose for their &unix; distribution way back when. What does POLA mean? Principle of Least Astonishment. It means that as FreeBSD evolves, changes visible to the user should be kept as unsurprising as possible. For example, arbitrarily rearranging system startup variables in /etc/defaults/rc.conf violates POLA. Developers consider POLA when contemplating user-visible system changes. What is a repo-copy? A repo-copy (which is a short form of repository copy) refers to the direct copying of files within the CVS repository. Without a repo-copy, if a file needed to be copied or moved to another place in the repository, the committer would run cvs add to put the file in its new location, and then cvs rm on the old file if the old copy was being removed. The disadvantage of this method is that the history (i.e. the entries in the CVS logs) of the file would not be copied to the new location. As the FreeBSD Project considers this history very useful, a repository copy is often used instead. This is a process where one of the repository meisters will copy the files directly within the repository, rather than using the &man.cvs.1; program. Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? The really, really short answer is that you should not. The somewhat longer answer is that just because you are capable of building a bikeshed does not mean you should stop others from building one just because you do not like the color they plan to paint it. This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change. The longer and more complete answer is that after a very long argument about whether &man.sleep.1; should take fractional second arguments, &a.phk; posted a long message entitled A bike shed (any colour will do) on greener grass.... The appropriate portions of that message are quoted below.
&a.phk; on freebsd-hackers, October 2, 1999 What is it about this bike shed? Some of you have asked me. It is a long story, or rather it is an old story, but it is quite short actually. C. Northcote Parkinson wrote a book in the early 1960s, called Parkinson's Law, which contains a lot of insight into the dynamics of management. [snip a bit of commentary on the book] In the specific example involving the bike shed, the other vital component is an atomic power-plant, I guess that illustrates the age of the book. Parkinson shows how you can go into the board of directors and get approval for building a multi-million or even billion dollar atomic power plant, but if you want to build a bike shed you will be tangled up in endless discussions. Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast, so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody else checked all the details before it got this far. Richard P. Feynmann gives a couple of interesting, and very much to the point, examples relating to Los Alamos in his books. A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one of those over a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is here. In Denmark we call it setting your fingerprint. It is about personal pride and prestige, it is about being able to point somewhere and say There! I did that. It is a strong trait in politicians, but present in most people given the chance. Just think about footsteps in wet cement.
The FreeBSD Funnies How cool is FreeBSD? Q. Has anyone done any temperature testing while running FreeBSD? I know &linux; runs cooler than DOS, but have never seen a mention of FreeBSD. It seems to run really hot. A. No, but we have done numerous taste tests on blindfolded volunteers who have also had 250 micrograms of LSD-25 administered beforehand. 35% of the volunteers said that FreeBSD tasted sort of orange, whereas &linux; tasted like purple haze. Neither group mentioned any significant variances in temperature. We eventually had to throw the results of this survey out entirely anyway when we found that too many volunteers were wandering out of the room during the tests, thus skewing the results. We think most of the volunteers are at Apple now, working on their new scratch and sniff GUI. It is a funny old business we are in! Seriously, both FreeBSD and &linux; use the HLT (halt) instruction when the system is idle thus lowering its energy consumption and therefore the heat it generates. Also if you have APM (advanced power management) configured, then FreeBSD can also put the CPU into a low power mode. Who is scratching in my memory banks?? Q. Is there anything odd that FreeBSD does when compiling the kernel which would cause the memory to make a scratchy sound? When compiling (and for a brief moment after recognizing the floppy drive upon startup, as well), a strange scratchy sound emanates from what appears to be the memory banks. A. Yes! You will see frequent references to daemons in the BSD documentation, and what most people do not know is that this refers to genuine, non-corporeal entities that now possess your computer. The scratchy sound coming from your memory is actually high-pitched whispering exchanged among the daemons as they best decide how to deal with various system administration tasks. If the noise gets to you, a good fdisk /mbr from DOS will get rid of them, but do not be surprised if they react adversely and try to stop you. In fact, if at any point during the exercise you hear the satanic voice of Bill Gates coming from the built-in speaker, take off running and do not ever look back! Freed from the counterbalancing influence of the BSD daemons, the twin demons of DOS and &windows; are often able to re-assert total control over your machine to the eternal damnation of your soul. Now that you know, given a choice you would probably prefer to get used to the scratchy noises, no? How many FreeBSD hackers does it take to change a lightbulb? One thousand, one hundred and sixty-nine: Twenty-three to complain to -CURRENT about the lights being out; Four to claim that it is a configuration problem, and that such matters really belong on -questions; Three to submit PRs about it, one of which is misfiled under doc and consists only of it's dark; One to commit an untested lightbulb which breaks buildworld, then back it out five minutes later; Eight to flame the PR originators for not including patches in their PRs; Five to complain about buildworld being broken; Thirty-one to answer that it works for them, and they must have cvsupped at a bad time; One to post a patch for a new lightbulb to -hackers; One to complain that he had patches for this three years ago, but when he sent them to -CURRENT they were just ignored, and he has had bad experiences with the PR system; besides, the proposed new lightbulb is non-reflexive; Thirty-seven to scream that lightbulbs do not belong in the base system, that committers have no right to do things like this without consulting the Community, and WHAT IS -CORE DOING ABOUT IT!? Two hundred to complain about the color of the bicycle shed; Three to point out that the patch breaks &man.style.9;; Seventeen to complain that the proposed new lightbulb is under GPL; Five hundred and eighty-six to engage in a flame war about the comparative advantages of the GPL, the BSD license, the MIT license, the NPL, and the personal hygiene of unnamed FSF founders; Seven to move various portions of the thread to -chat and -advocacy; One to commit the suggested lightbulb, even though it shines dimmer than the old one; Two to back it out with a furious flame of a commit message, arguing that FreeBSD is better off in the dark than with a dim lightbulb; Forty-six to argue vociferously about the backing out of the dim lightbulb and demanding a statement from -core; Eleven to request a smaller lightbulb so it will fit their Tamagotchi if we ever decide to port FreeBSD to that platform; Seventy-three to complain about the SNR on -hackers and -chat and unsubscribe in protest; Thirteen to post unsubscribe, How do I unsubscribe?, or Please remove me from the list, followed by the usual footer; One to commit a working lightbulb while everybody is too busy flaming everybody else to notice; Thirty-one to point out that the new lightbulb would shine 0.364% brighter if compiled with TenDRA (although it will have to be reshaped into a cube), and that FreeBSD should therefore switch to TenDRA instead of GCC; One to complain that the new lightbulb lacks fairings; Nine (including the PR originators) to ask what is MFC?; Fifty-seven to complain about the lights being out two weeks after the bulb has been changed. &a.nik; adds: I was laughing quite hard at this. And then I thought, Hang on, shouldn't there be '1 to document it.' in that list somewhere? And then I was enlightened :-) Where does data written to /dev/null go? It goes into a special data sink in the CPU where it is converted to heat which is vented through the heatsink / fan assembly. This is why CPU cooling is increasingly important; as people get used to faster processors, they become careless with their data and more and more of it ends up in /dev/null, overheating their CPUs. If you delete /dev/null (which effectively disables the CPU data sink) your CPU may run cooler but your system will quickly become constipated with all that excess data and start to behave erratically. If you have a fast network connection you can cool down your CPU by reading data out of /dev/random and sending it off somewhere; however you run the risk of overheating your network connection and / or angering your ISP, as most of the data will end up getting converted to heat by their equipment, but they generally have good cooling, so if you do not overdo it you should be OK. Paul Robinson adds: There are other methods. As every good sysadmin knows, it is part of standard practise to send data to the screen of interesting variety to keep all the pixies that make up your picture happy. Screen pixies (commonly mis-typed or re-named as 'pixels') are categorised by the type of hat they wear (red, green or blue) and will hide or appear (thereby showing the colour of their hat) whenever they receive a little piece of food. Video cards turn data into pixie-food, and then send them to the pixies - the more expensive the card, the better the food, so the better behaved the pixies are. They also need constant stimulation - this is why screen savers exist. To take your suggestions further, you could just throw the random data to console, thereby letting the pixies consume it. This causes no heat to be produced at all, keeps the pixies happy and gets rid of your data quite quickly, even if it does make things look a bit messy on your screen. Incidentally, as an ex-admin of a large ISP who experienced many problems attempting to maintain a stable temperature in a server room, I would strongly discourage people sending the data they do not want out to the network. The fairies who do the packet switching and routing get annoyed by it as well. Advanced Topics How can I learn more about FreeBSD's internals? At this time, there is no book on FreeBSD-specific OS internals. Much general &unix; knowledge is directly applicable to FreeBSD, however. Additionally, there are BSD-specific books that are still relevant. For a list, please check the Handbook's Operating System Internals Bibliography. How can I contribute to FreeBSD? Please see the article on Contributing to FreeBSD for specific advice on how to do this. Assistance is more than welcome! What are SNAPs and RELEASEs? There are currently three active/semi-active branches in the FreeBSD CVS Repository. (Earlier branches are only changed very rarely, which is why there are only three active branches of development): RELENG_3 AKA 3.X-STABLE RELENG_4 AKA 4-STABLE HEAD AKA -CURRENT AKA 5.X-CURRENT HEAD is not an actual branch tag, like the other two; it is simply a symbolic constant for the current, non-branched development stream which we simply refer to as -CURRENT. Right now, -CURRENT is the 5.X development stream and the 4-STABLE branch, RELENG_4, forked off from -CURRENT in Mar 2000. How do I make my own custom release? Please see the Release Engineering article. Why does make world clobber my existing installed binaries? Yes, this is the general idea; as its name might suggest, make world rebuilds every system binary from scratch, so you can be certain of having a clean and consistent environment at the end (which is why it takes so long). If the environment variable DESTDIR is defined while running make world or make install, the newly-created binaries will be deposited in a directory tree identical to the installed one, rooted at ${DESTDIR}. Some random combination of shared libraries modifications and program rebuilds can cause this to fail in make world however. Why isn't cvsup.FreeBSD.org a round robin DNS entry to share the load amongst the various CVSup servers? While CVSup mirrors update from the master CVSup server hourly, this update might happen at any time during the hour. This means that some servers have newer code than others, even though all servers have code that is less than an hour old. If cvsup.FreeBSD.org was a round robin DNS entry that simply redirected users to a random CVSup server, running CVSup twice in a row could download code older than the code already on the system. Why does my system say (bus speed defaulted) when it boots? The Adaptec 1542 SCSI host adapters allow the user to configure their bus access speed in software. Previous versions of the 1542 driver tried to determine the fastest usable speed and set the adapter to that. We found that this breaks some users' systems, so you now have to define the TUNE_1542 kernel configuration option in order to have this take place. Using it on those systems where it works may make your disks run faster, but on those systems where it does not, your data could be corrupted. Can I follow -CURRENT with limited Internet access? Yes, you can do this without downloading the whole source tree by using the CTM facility. How did you split the distribution into 240k files? Newer BSD based systems have a option to &man.split.1; that allows them to split files on arbitrary byte boundaries. Here is an example from /usr/src/Makefile. bin-tarball: (cd ${DISTDIR}; \ tar cf - . \ gzip --no-name -9 -c | \ split -b 240640 - \ ${RELEASEDIR}/tarballs/bindist/bin_tgz.) I have written a kernel extension, who do I send it to? Please take a look at the article on Contributing to FreeBSD to learn how to submit code. And thanks for the thought! How are Plug N Play ISA cards detected and initialized? By: Frank Durda IV uhclem@nemesis.lonestar.org In a nutshell, there a few I/O ports that all of the PnP boards respond to when the host asks if anyone is out there. So when the PnP probe routine starts, it asks if there are any PnP boards present, and all the PnP boards respond with their model # to a I/O read of the same port, so the probe routine gets a wired-OR yes to that question. At least one bit will be on in that reply. Then the probe code is able to cause boards with board model IDs (assigned by Microsoft/Intel) lower than X to go off-line. It then looks to see if any boards are still responding to the query. If the answer was 0, then there are no boards with IDs above X. Now probe asks if there are any boards below X. If so, probe knows there are boards with a model numbers below X. Probe then asks for boards greater than X-(limit/4) to go off-line. If repeats the query. By repeating this semi-binary search of IDs-in-range enough times, the probing code will eventually identify all PnP boards present in a given machine with a number of iterations that is much lower than what 2^64 would take. The IDs are two 32-bit fields (hence 2ˆ64) + 8 bit checksum. The first 32 bits are a vendor identifier. They never come out and say it, but it appears to be assumed that different types of boards from the same vendor could have different 32-bit vendor ids. The idea of needing 32 bits just for unique manufacturers is a bit excessive. The lower 32 bits are a serial #, Ethernet address, something that makes this one board unique. The vendor must never produce a second board that has the same lower 32 bits unless the upper 32 bits are also different. So you can have multiple boards of the same type in the machine and the full 64 bits will still be unique. The 32 bit groups can never be all zero. This allows the wired-OR to show non-zero bits during the initial binary search. Once the system has identified all the board IDs present, it will reactivate each board, one at a time (via the same I/O ports), and find out what resources the given board needs, what interrupt choices are available, etc. A scan is made over all the boards to collect this information. This info is then combined with info from any ECU files on the hard disk or wired into the MLB BIOS. The ECU and BIOS PnP support for hardware on the MLB is usually synthetic, and the peripherals do not really do genuine PnP. However by examining the BIOS info plus the ECU info, the probe routines can cause the devices that are PnP to avoid those devices the probe code cannot relocate. Then the PnP devices are visited once more and given their I/O, DMA, IRQ and Memory-map address assignments. The devices will then appear at those locations and remain there until the next reboot, although there is nothing that says you cannot move them around whenever you want. There is a lot of oversimplification above, but you should get the general idea. Microsoft took over some of the primary printer status ports to do PnP, on the logic that no boards decoded those addresses for the opposing I/O cycles. I found a genuine IBM printer board that did decode writes of the status port during the early PnP proposal review period, but MS said tough. So they do a write to the printer status port for setting addresses, plus that use that address + 0x800, and a third I/O port for reading that can be located anywhere between 0x200 and 0x3ff. Can you assign a major number for a device driver I have written? &os.current; after February 2003 has a facility for dynamically and automatically allocating major numbers for device drivers at runtime. This mechanism is highly preferred to the older procedure of statically allocating device numbers. Some comments on this subject can be found in src/sys/conf/majors. If you are forced for some reason to use a static major number, the procedure for obtaining one depends on whether or not you plan on making the driver publicly available. If you do, then please send us a copy of the driver source code, plus the appropriate modifications to files.i386, a sample configuration file entry, and the appropriate &man.MAKEDEV.8; code to create any special files your device uses. If you do not, or are unable to because of licensing restrictions, then character major number 32 and block major number 8 have been reserved specifically for this purpose; please use them. In any case, we would appreciate hearing about your driver on the &a.hackers;. What about alternative layout policies for directories? In answer to the question of alternative layout policies for directories, the scheme that is currently in use is unchanged from what I wrote in 1983. I wrote that policy for the original fast filesystem, and never revisited it. It works well at keeping cylinder groups from filling up. As several of you have noted, it works poorly for find. Most filesystems are created from archives that were created by a depth first search (aka ftw). These directories end up being striped across the cylinder groups thus creating a worst possible scenario for future depth first searches. If one knew the total number of directories to be created, the solution would be to create (total / fs_ncg) per cylinder group before moving on. Obviously, one would have to create some heuristic to guess at this number. Even using a small fixed number like say 10 would make an order of magnitude improvement. To differentiate restores from normal operation (when the current algorithm is probably more sensible), you could use the clustering of up to 10 if they were all done within a ten second window. Anyway, my conclusion is that this is an area ripe for experimentation. Kirk McKusick, September 1998 How can I make the most of the data I see when my kernel panics? [This section was extracted from a mail written by &a.wpaul; on the freebsd-current mailing list by &a.des;, who fixed a few typos and added the bracketed comments] From: Bill Paul <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> Subject: Re: the fs fun never stops To: Ben Rosengart Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 15:22:50 -0400 (EDT) Cc: current@FreeBSD.org Ben Rosengart posted the following panic message] > Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode > fault virtual address = 0x40 > fault code = supervisor read, page not present > instruction pointer = 0x8:0xf014a7e5 ^^^^^^^^^^ > stack pointer = 0x10:0xf4ed6f24 > frame pointer = 0x10:0xf4ed6f28 > code segment = base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b > = DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1 > processor eflags = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0 > current process = 80 (mount) > interrupt mask = > trap number = 12 > panic: page fault [When] you see a message like this, it is not enough to just reproduce it and send it in. The instruction pointer value that I highlighted up there is important; unfortunately, it is also configuration dependent. In other words, the value varies depending on the exact kernel image that you are using. If you are using a GENERIC kernel image from one of the snapshots, then it is possible for somebody else to track down the offending function, but if you are running a custom kernel then only you can tell us where the fault occurred. What you should do is this: Write down the instruction pointer value. Note that the 0x8: part at the beginning is not significant in this case: it is the 0xf0xxxxxx part that we want. When the system reboots, do the following: &prompt.user; nm -n /kernel.that.caused.the.panic | grep f0xxxxxx where f0xxxxxx is the instruction pointer value. The odds are you will not get an exact match since the symbols in the kernel symbol table are for the entry points of functions and the instruction pointer address will be somewhere inside a function, not at the start. If you do not get an exact match, omit the last digit from the instruction pointer value and try again, i.e.: &prompt.user; nm -n /kernel.that.caused.the.panic | grep f0xxxxx If that does not yield any results, chop off another digit. Repeat until you get some sort of output. The result will be a possible list of functions which caused the panic. This is a less than exact mechanism for tracking down the point of failure, but it is better than nothing. I see people constantly show panic messages like this but rarely do I see someone take the time to match up the instruction pointer with a function in the kernel symbol table. The best way to track down the cause of a panic is by capturing a crash dump, then using &man.gdb.1; to generate a stack trace on the crash dump. In any case, the method I normally use is this: Set up a kernel config file, optionally adding options DDB if you think you need the kernel debugger for something. (I use this mainly for setting breakpoints if I suspect an infinite loop condition of some kind.) Use config -g KERNELCONFIG to set up the build directory. cd /sys/compile/ KERNELCONFIG; make Wait for kernel to finish compiling. make install reboot The &man.make.1; process will have built two kernels. kernel and kernel.debug. kernel was installed as /kernel, while kernel.debug can be used as the source of debugging symbols for &man.gdb.1;. To make sure you capture a crash dump, you need edit /etc/rc.conf and set dumpdev to point to your swap partition. This will cause the &man.rc.8; scripts to use the &man.dumpon.8; command to enable crash dumps. You can also run &man.dumpon.8; manually. After a panic, the crash dump can be recovered using &man.savecore.8;; if dumpdev is set in /etc/rc.conf, the &man.rc.8; scripts will run &man.savecore.8; automatically and put the crash dump in /var/crash. FreeBSD crash dumps are usually the same size as the physical RAM size of your machine. That is, if you have 64MB of RAM, you will get a 64MB crash dump. Therefore you must make sure there is enough space in /var/crash to hold the dump. Alternatively, you run &man.savecore.8; manually and have it recover the crash dump to another directory where you have more room. It is possible to limit the size of the crash dump by using options MAXMEM=(foo) to set the amount of memory the kernel will use to something a little more sensible. For example, if you have 128MB of RAM, you can limit the kernel's memory usage to 16MB so that your crash dump size will be 16MB instead of 128MB. Once you have recovered the crash dump, you can get a stack trace with &man.gdb.1; as follows: &prompt.user; gdb -k /sys/compile/KERNELCONFIG/kernel.debug /var/crash/vmcore.0 (gdb) where Note that there may be several screens worth of information; ideally you should use &man.script.1; to capture all of them. Using the unstripped kernel image with all the debug symbols should show the exact line of kernel source code where the panic occurred. Usually you have to read the stack trace from the bottom up in order to trace the exact sequence of events that lead to the crash. You can also use &man.gdb.1; to print out the contents of various variables or structures in order to examine the system state at the time of the crash. Now, if you are really insane and have a second computer, you can also configure &man.gdb.1; to do remote debugging such that you can use &man.gdb.1; on one system to debug the kernel on another system, including setting breakpoints, single-stepping through the kernel code, just like you can do with a normal user-mode program. I have not played with this yet as I do not often have the chance to set up two machines side by side for debugging purposes. [Bill adds: "I forgot to mention one thing: if you have DDB enabled and the kernel drops into the debugger, you can force a panic (and a crash dump) just by typing 'panic' at the ddb prompt. It may stop in the debugger again during the panic phase. If it does, type 'continue' and it will finish the crash dump." -ed] Why has dlsym() stopped working for ELF executables? The ELF toolchain does not, by default, make the symbols defined in an executable visible to the dynamic linker. Consequently dlsym() searches on handles obtained from calls to dlopen(NULL, flags) will fail to find such symbols. If you want to search, using dlsym(), for symbols present in the main executable of a process, you need to link the executable using the option to the ELF linker (&man.ld.1;). How can I increase or reduce the kernel address space? By default, the kernel address space is 256 MB on FreeBSD 3.X and 1 GB on FreeBSD 4.X. If you run a network-intensive server (e.g. a large FTP or HTTP server), you might find that 256 MB is not enough. So how do you increase the address space? There are two aspects to this. First, you need to tell the kernel to reserve a larger portion of the address space for itself. Second, since the kernel is loaded at the top of the address space, you need to lower the load address so it does not bump its head against the ceiling. The first goal is achieved by increasing the value of NKPDE in src/sys/i386/include/pmap.h. Here is what it looks like for a 1 GB address space: #ifndef NKPDE #ifdef SMP #define NKPDE 254 /* addressable number of page tables/pde's */ #else #define NKPDE 255 /* addressable number of page tables/pde's */ #endif /* SMP */ #endif To find the correct value of NKPDE, divide the desired address space size (in megabytes) by four, then subtract one for UP and two for SMP. To achieve the second goal, you need to compute the correct load address: simply subtract the address space size (in bytes) from 0x100100000; the result is 0xc0100000 for a 1 GB address space. Set LOAD_ADDRESS in src/sys/i386/conf/Makefile.i386 to that value; then set the location counter in the beginning of the section listing in src/sys/i386/conf/kernel.script to the same value, as follows: OUTPUT_FORMAT("elf32-i386", "elf32-i386", "elf32-i386") OUTPUT_ARCH(i386) ENTRY(btext) SEARCH_DIR(/usr/lib); SEARCH_DIR(/usr/obj/elf/home/src/tmp/usr/i386-unknown-freebsdelf/lib); SECTIONS { /* Read-only sections, merged into text segment: */ . = 0xc0100000 + SIZEOF_HEADERS; .interp : { *(.interp) } Then reconfig and rebuild your kernel. You will probably have problems with &man.ps.1; &man.top.1; and the like; make world should take care of it (or a manual rebuild of libkvm, &man.ps.1; and &man.top.1; after copying the patched pmap.h to /usr/include/vm/. NOTE: the size of the kernel address space must be a multiple of four megabytes. [&a.dg; adds: I think the kernel address space needs to be a power of two, but I am not certain about that. The old(er) boot code used to monkey with the high order address bits and I think expected at least 256MB granularity.] Acknowledgments
FreeBSD Core Team If you see a problem with this FAQ, or wish to submit an entry, please mail the &a.doc;. We appreciate your feedback, and cannot make this a better FAQ without your help!
&a.jkh; Occasional fits of FAQ-reshuffling and updating. &a.dwhite; Services above and beyond the call of duty on freebsd-questions &a.joerg; Services above and beyond the call of duty on Usenet &a.wollman; Networking and formatting Jim Lowe Multicast information &a.pds; FreeBSD FAQ typing machine slavey The FreeBSD Team Kvetching, moaning, submitting data And to any others we have forgotten, apologies and heartfelt thanks! &bibliography; diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/config/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/config/chapter.sgml index d6cd0fc13b..2b73594095 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/config/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/config/chapter.sgml @@ -1,2884 +1,2886 @@ Chern Lee Written by Mike Smith Based on a tutorial written by Matt Dillon Also based on tuning(7) written by Configuration and Tuning Synopsis system configuration system optimization One of the important aspects of &os; is system configuration. Correct system configuration will help prevent headaches during future upgrades. This chapter will explain much of the &os; configuration process, including some of the parameters which can be set to tune a &os; system. After reading this chapter, you will know: How to efficiently work with file systems and swap partitions. The basics of rc.conf configuration and /usr/local/etc/rc.d startup systems. How to configure and test a network card. How to configure virtual hosts on your network devices. How to use the various configuration files in /etc. How to tune &os; using sysctl variables. How to tune disk performance and modify kernel limitations. Before reading this chapter, you should: Understand &unix; and &os; basics (). Be familiar with keeping &os; sources up to date (), and the basics of kernel configuration/compilation (). Initial Configuration Partition Layout partition layout /etc /var /usr Base Partitions When laying out file systems with &man.disklabel.8; or &man.sysinstall.8;, remember that hard drives transfer data faster from the outer tracks to the inner. Thus smaller and heavier-accessed file systems should be closer to the outside of the drive, while larger partitions like /usr should be placed toward the inner. It is a good idea to create partitions in a similar order to: root, swap, /var, /usr. The size of /var reflects the intended machine usage. /var is used to hold mailboxes, log files, and printer spools. Mailboxes and log files can grow to unexpected sizes depending on how many users exist and how long log files are kept. Most users would never require a gigabyte, but remember that /var/tmp must be large enough to contain packages. The /usr partition holds much of the files required to support the system, the &man.ports.7; collection (recommended) and the source code (optional). Both of which are optional at install time. At least 2 gigabytes would be recommended for this partition. When selecting partition sizes, keep the space requirements in mind. Running out of space in one partition while barely using another can be a hassle. Some users have found that &man.sysinstall.8;'s Auto-defaults partition sizer will sometimes select smaller than adequate /var and / partitions. Partition wisely and generously. Swap Partition swap sizing swap partition As a rule of thumb, the swap partition should be about double the size of system memory (RAM). For example, if the machine has 128 megabytes of memory, the swap file should be 256 megabytes. Systems with less memory may perform better with more swap. Less than 256 megabytes of swap is not recommended and memory expansion should be considered. The kernel's VM paging algorithms are tuned to perform best when the swap partition is at least two times the size of main memory. Configuring too little swap can lead to inefficiencies in the VM page scanning code and might create issues later if more memory is added. On larger systems with multiple SCSI disks (or multiple IDE disks operating on different controllers), it is recommend that a swap is configured on each drive (up to four drives). The swap partitions should be approximately the same size. The kernel can handle arbitrary sizes but internal data structures scale to 4 times the largest swap partition. Keeping the swap partitions near the same size will allow the kernel to optimally stripe swap space across disks. Large swap sizes are fine, even if swap is not used much. It might be easier to recover from a runaway program before being forced to reboot. Why Partition? Several users think a single large partition will be fine, but there are several reasons why this is a bad idea. First, each partition has different operational characteristics and separating them allows the file system to tune accordingly. For example, the root and /usr partitions are read-mostly, without much writing. While a lot of reading and writing could occur in /var and /var/tmp. By properly partitioning a system, fragmentation introduced in the smaller write heavy partitions will not bleed over into the mostly-read partitions. Keeping the write-loaded partitions closer to the disk's edge, will increase I/O performance in the partitions where it occurs the most. Now while I/O performance in the larger partitions may be needed, shifting them more toward the edge of the disk will not lead to a significant performance improvement over moving /var to the edge. Finally, there are safety concerns. A smaller, neater root partition which is mostly read-only has a greater chance of surviving a bad crash. Core Configuration rc files rc.conf The principal location for system configuration information is within /etc/rc.conf. This file contains a wide range of configuration information, principally used at system startup to configure the system. Its name directly implies this; it is configuration information for the rc* files. An administrator should make entries in the rc.conf file to override the default settings from /etc/defaults/rc.conf. The defaults file should not be copied verbatim to /etc - it contains default values, not examples. All system-specific changes should be made in the rc.conf file itself. A number of strategies may be applied in clustered applications to separate site-wide configuration from system-specific configuration in order to keep administration overhead down. The recommended approach is to place site-wide configuration into another file, such as /etc/rc.conf.site, and then include this file into /etc/rc.conf, which will contain only system-specific information. As rc.conf is read by &man.sh.1; it is trivial to achieve this. For example: rc.conf: . rc.conf.site hostname="node15.example.com" network_interfaces="fxp0 lo0" ifconfig_fxp0="inet 10.1.1.1" rc.conf.site: defaultrouter="10.1.1.254" saver="daemon" blanktime="100" The rc.conf.site file can then be distributed to every system using rsync or a similar program, while the rc.conf file remains unique. Upgrading the system using &man.sysinstall.8; or make world will not overwrite the rc.conf file, so system configuration information will not be lost. Application Configuration Typically, installed applications have their own configuration files, with their own syntax, etc. It is important that these files be kept separate from the base system, so that they may be easily located and managed by the package management tools. /usr/local/etc Typically, these files are installed in /usr/local/etc. In the case where an application has a large number of configuration files, a subdirectory will be created to hold them. Normally, when a port or package is installed, sample configuration files are also installed. These are usually identified with a .default suffix. If there are no existing configuration files for the application, they will be created by copying the .default files. For example, consider the contents of the directory /usr/local/etc/apache: -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2184 May 20 1998 access.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2184 May 20 1998 access.conf.default -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 9555 May 20 1998 httpd.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 9555 May 20 1998 httpd.conf.default -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 12205 May 20 1998 magic -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 12205 May 20 1998 magic.default -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2700 May 20 1998 mime.types -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2700 May 20 1998 mime.types.default -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 7980 May 20 1998 srm.conf -rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 7933 May 20 1998 srm.conf.default The file sizes show that only the srm.conf file has been changed. A later update of the Apache port would not overwrite this changed file. Starting Services services It is common for a system to host a number of services. These may be started in several different fashions, each having different advantages. /usr/local/etc/rc.d Software installed from a port or the packages collection will often place a script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d which is invoked at system startup with a argument, and at system shutdown with a argument. This is the recommended way for starting system-wide services that are to be run as root, or that expect to be started as root. These scripts are registered as part of the installation of the package, and will be removed when the package is removed. A generic startup script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d looks like: #!/bin/sh echo -n ' FooBar' case "$1" in start) /usr/local/bin/foobar ;; stop) kill -9 `cat /var/run/foobar.pid` ;; *) echo "Usage: `basename $0` {start|stop}" >&2 exit 64 ;; esac exit 0 The startup scripts of &os; will look in /usr/local/etc/rc.d for scripts that have an .sh extension and are executable by root. Those scripts that are found are called with an option at startup, and at shutdown to allow them to carry out their purpose. So if you wanted the above sample script to be picked up and run at the proper time during system startup, you should save it to a file called FooBar.sh in /usr/local/etc/rc.d and make sure it is executable. You can make a shell script executable with &man.chmod.1; as shown below: &prompt.root; chmod 755 FooBar.sh Some services expect to be invoked by &man.inetd.8; when a connection is received on a suitable port. This is common for mail reader servers (POP and IMAP, etc.). These services are enabled by editing the file /etc/inetd.conf. See &man.inetd.8; for details on editing this file. Some additional system services may not be covered by the toggles in /etc/rc.conf. These are traditionally enabled by placing the command(s) to invoke them in /etc/rc.local. As of &os; 3.1 there is no default /etc/rc.local; if it is created by the administrator it will however be honored in the normal fashion. Note that rc.local is generally regarded as the location of last resort; if there is a better place to start a service, do it there. Do not place any commands in /etc/rc.conf. To start daemons, or run any commands at boot time, place a script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d instead. It is also possible to use the &man.cron.8; daemon to start system services. This approach has a number of advantages, not least being that because &man.cron.8; runs these processes as the owner of the crontab, services may be started and maintained by non-root users. This takes advantage of a feature of &man.cron.8;: the time specification may be replaced by @reboot, which will cause the job to be run when &man.cron.8; is started shortly after system boot. Tom Rhodes Contributed by Configuring the <command>cron</command> Utility cron configuration One of the most useful utilities in &os; is &man.cron.8;. The cron utility runs in the background and constantly checks the /etc/crontab file. The cron utility also checks the /var/cron/tabs directory, in search of new crontab files. These crontab files store information about specific functions which cron is supposed to perform at certain times. The cron utility uses two different types of configuration files, the system crontab and user crontabs. The only difference between these two formats is the sixth field. In the system crontab, the sixth field is the name of a user for the command to run as. This gives the system crontab the ability to run commands as any user. In a user crontab, the sixth field is the command to run, and all commands run as the user who created the crontab; this is an important security feature. User crontabs allow individual users to schedule tasks without the need for root privileges. Commands in a user's crontab run with the permissions of the user who owns the crontab. The root user can have a user crontab just like any other user. This one is different from /etc/crontab (the system crontab). Because of the system crontab, there's usually no need to create a user crontab for root. Let us take a look at the /etc/crontab file (the system crontab): # /etc/crontab - root's crontab for &os; # # $&os;: src/etc/crontab,v 1.32 2002/11/22 16:13:39 tom Exp $ # # SHELL=/bin/sh PATH=/etc:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin HOME=/var/log # # #minute hour mday month wday who command # # */5 * * * * root /usr/libexec/atrun Like most &os; configuration files, the # character represents a comment. A comment can be placed in the file as a reminder of what and why a desired action is performed. Comments cannot be on the same line as a command or else they will be interpreted as part of the command; they must be on a new line. Blank lines are ignored. First, the environment must be defined. The equals (=) character is used to define any environment settings, as with this example where it is used for the SHELL, PATH, and HOME options. If the shell line is omitted, cron will use the default, which is sh. If the PATH variable is omitted, no default will be used and file locations will need to be absolute. If HOME is omitted, cron will use the invoking users home directory. This line defines a total of seven fields. Listed here are the values minute, hour, mday, month, wday, who, and command. These are almost all self explanatory. minute is the time in minutes the command will be run. hour is similar to the minute option, just in hours. mday stands for day of the month. month is similar to hour and minute, as it designates the month. The wday option stands for day of the week. All these fields must be numeric values, and follow the twenty-four hour clock. The who field is special, and only exists in the /etc/crontab file. This field specifies which user the command should be run as. When a user installs his or her crontab file, they will not have this option. Finally, the command option is listed. This is the last field, so naturally it should designate the command to be executed. This last line will define the values discussed above. Notice here we have a */5 listing, followed by several more * characters. These * characters mean first-last, and can be interpreted as every time. So, judging by this line, it is apparent that the atrun command is to be invoked by root every five minutes regardless of what day or month it is. For more information on the atrun command, see the &man.atrun.8; manual page. Commands can have any number of flags passed to them; however, commands which extend to multiple lines need to be broken with the backslash \ continuation character. This is the basic set up for every crontab file, although there is one thing different about this one. Field number six, where we specified the username, only exists in the system /etc/crontab file. This field should be omitted for individual user crontab files. Installing a Crontab You must not use the procedure described here to edit/install the system crontab. Simply use your favorite editor: the cron utility will notice that the file has changed and immediately begin using the updated version. See this FAQ entry for more information. To install a freshly written user crontab, first use your favorite editor to create a file in the proper format, and then use the crontab utility. The most common usage is: &prompt.user; crontab crontab-file In this example, crontab-file is the filename of a crontab that was previously created. There is also an option to list installed crontab files: just pass the option to crontab and look over the output. For users who wish to begin their own crontab file from scratch, without the use of a template, the crontab -e option is available. This will invoke the selected editor with an empty file. When the file is saved, it will be automatically installed by the crontab command. If you later want to remove your user crontab completely, use crontab with the option. Tom Rhodes Contributed by Using rc under FreeBSD 5.X rcNG &os; has recently integrated the NetBSD rc.d system for system initialization. Users should notice the files listed in the /etc/rc.d directory. Many of these files are for basic services which can be controlled with the , , and options. For instance, &man.sshd.8; can be restarted with the following command: &prompt.root; /etc/rc.d/sshd restart This procedure is similar for other services. Of course, services are usually started automatically as specified in &man.rc.conf.5;. For example, enabling the Network Address Translation daemon at startup is as simple as adding the following line to /etc/rc.conf: natd_enable="YES" If a line is already present, then simply change the to . The rc scripts will automatically load any other dependent services during the next reboot, as described below. Since the rc.d system is primarily intended to start/stop services at system startup/shutdown time, the standard , and options will only perform their action if the appropriate /etc/rc.conf variables are set. For instance the above sshd restart command will only work if sshd_enable is set to in /etc/rc.conf. To , or a service regardless of the settings in /etc/rc.conf, the commands should be prefixed with force. For instance to restart sshd regardless of the current /etc/rc.conf setting, execute the following command: &prompt.root; /etc/rc.d/sshd forcerestart It is easy to check if a service is enabled in /etc/rc.conf by running the appropriate rc.d script with the option . Thus, an administrator can check that sshd is in fact enabled in /etc/rc.conf by running: &prompt.root; /etc/rc.d/sshd rcvar # sshd $sshd_enable=YES The second line (# sshd) is the output from the sshd command, not a root console. To determine if a service is running, a option is available. For instance to verify that sshd is actually started: &prompt.root; /etc/rc.d/sshd status sshd is running as pid 433. It is also possible to a service. This will attempt to send a signal to an individual service, forcing the service to reload its configuration files. In most cases this means sending the service a SIGHUP signal. The rcNG structure is not only used for network services, it also contributes to most of the system initialization. For instance, consider the bgfsck file. When this script is executed, it will print out the following message: Starting background file system checks in 60 seconds. Therefore this file is used for background file system checks, which are done only during system initialization. Many system services depend on other services to function properly. For example, NIS and other RPC-based services may fail to start until after the rpcbind (portmapper) service has started. To resolve this issue, information about dependencies and other meta-data is included in the comments at the top of each startup script. The &man.rcorder.8; program is then used to parse these comments during system initialization to determine the order in which system services should be invoked to satisfy the dependencies. The following words may be included at the top of each startup file: PROVIDE: Specifies the services this file provides. REQUIRE: Lists services which are required for this service. This file will run after the specified services. BEFORE: Lists services which depend on this service. This file will run before the specified services. KEYWORD: &os; or NetBSD. This is used for *BSD dependent features. By using this method, an administrator can easily control system services without the hassle of runlevels like some other &unix; operating systems. Additional information about the &os; 5.X rc.d system can be found in the &man.rc.8; and &man.rc.subr.8; manual pages. Marc Fonvieille Contributed by Setting Up Network Interface Cards network card configuration Nowadays we can not think about a computer without thinking about a network connection. Adding and configuring a network card is a common task for any &os; administrator. Locating the Correct Driver network card configuration locating the driver Before you begin, you should know the model of the card you have, the chip it uses, and whether it is a PCI or ISA card. &os; supports a wide variety of both PCI and ISA cards. Check the Hardware Compatibility List for your release to see if your card is supported. Once you are sure your card is supported, you need to determine the proper driver for the card. The file /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/LINT will give you the list of network interfaces drivers with some information about the supported chipsets/cards. If you have doubts about which driver is the correct one, read the manual page of the driver. The manual page will give you more information about the supported hardware and even the possible problems that could occur. If you own a common card, most of the time you will not have to look very hard for a driver. Drivers for common network cards are present in the GENERIC kernel, so your card should show up during boot, like so: dc0: <82c169 PNIC 10/100BaseTX> port 0xa000-0xa0ff mem 0xd3800000-0xd38 000ff irq 15 at device 11.0 on pci0 dc0: Ethernet address: 00:a0:cc:da:da:da miibus0: <MII bus> on dc0 ukphy0: <Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface> on miibus0 ukphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto dc1: <82c169 PNIC 10/100BaseTX> port 0x9800-0x98ff mem 0xd3000000-0xd30 000ff irq 11 at device 12.0 on pci0 dc1: Ethernet address: 00:a0:cc:da:da:db miibus1: <MII bus> on dc1 ukphy1: <Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface> on miibus1 ukphy1: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto In this example, we see that two cards using the &man.dc.4; driver are present on the system. To use your network card, you will need to load the proper driver. This may be accomplished in one of two ways. The easiest way is to simply load a kernel module for your network card with &man.kldload.8;. A module is not available for all network card drivers (ISA cards and cards using the &man.ed.4; driver, for example). Alternatively, you may statically compile the support for your card into your kernel. Check /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/LINT and the manual page of the driver to know what to add in your kernel configuration file. For more information about recompiling your kernel, please see . If your card was detected at boot by your kernel (GENERIC) you do not have to build a new kernel. Configuring the Network Card Network card configuration configuration Once the right driver is loaded for the network card, the card needs to be configured. As with many other things, the network card may have been configured at installation time by sysinstall. To display the configuration for the network interfaces on your system, enter the following command: &prompt.user; ifconfig dc0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet 192.168.1.3 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255 ether 00:a0:cc:da:da:da media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>) status: active dc1: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet 10.0.0.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.0.255 ether 00:a0:cc:da:da:db media: Ethernet 10baseT/UTP status: no carrier lp0: flags=8810<POINTOPOINT,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 tun0: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 Old versions of &os; may require the option following &man.ifconfig.8;, for more details about the correct syntax of &man.ifconfig.8;, please refer to the manual page. Note also that entries concerning IPv6 (inet6 etc.) were omitted in this example. In this example, the following devices were displayed: dc0: The first Ethernet interface dc1: The second Ethernet interface lp0: The parallel port interface lo0: The loopback device tun0: The tunnel device used by ppp &os; uses the driver name followed by the order in which one the card is detected at the kernel boot to name the network card. For example sis2 would be the third network card on the system using the &man.sis.4; driver. In this example, the dc0 device is up and running. The key indicators are: UP means that the card is configured and ready. The card has an Internet (inet) address (in this case 192.168.1.3). It has a valid subnet mask (netmask; 0xffffff00 is the same as 255.255.255.0). It has a valid broadcast address (in this case, 192.168.1.255). The MAC address of the card (ether) is 00:a0:cc:da:da:da The physical media selection is on autoselection mode (media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)). We see that dc1 was configured to run with 10baseT/UTP media. For more information on available media types for a driver, please refer to its manual page. The status of the link (status) is active, i.e. the carrier is detected. For dc1, we see status: no carrier. This is normal when an ethernet cable is not plugged into the card. If the &man.ifconfig.8; output had shown something similar to: dc0: flags=8843<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 ether 00:a0:cc:da:da:da it would indicate the card has not been configured. To configure your card, you need root privileges. The network card configuration can be done from the command line with &man.ifconfig.8; but you would have to do it after each reboot of the system. The file /etc/rc.conf is where to add the network card's configuration. Open /etc/rc.conf in your favorite editor. You need to add a line for each network card present on the system, for example in our case, we added these lines: ifconfig_dc0="inet 192.168.1.3 netmask 255.255.255.0" ifconfig_dc1="inet 10.0.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 media 10baseT/UTP" You have to replace dc0, dc1, and so on, with the correct device for your cards, and the addresses with the proper ones. You should read the card driver and &man.ifconfig.8; manual pages for more details about the allowed options and also &man.rc.conf.5; manual page for more information on the syntax of /etc/rc.conf. If you configured the network during installation, some lines about the network card(s) may be already present. Double check /etc/rc.conf before adding any lines. You will also have to edit the file /etc/hosts to add the names and the IP addresses of various machines of the LAN, if they are not already there. For more information please refer to &man.hosts.5; and to /usr/share/examples/etc/hosts. Testing and Troubleshooting Once you have made the necessary changes in /etc/rc.conf, you should reboot your system. This will allow the change(s) to the interface(s) to be applied, and verify that the system restarts without any configuration errors. Once the system has been rebooted, you should test the network interfaces. Testing the Ethernet Card network card configuration testing the card To verify that an Ethernet card is configured correctly, you have to try two things. First, ping the interface itself, and then ping another machine on the LAN. First test the local interface: &prompt.user; ping -c5 192.168.1.3 PING 192.168.1.3 (192.168.1.3): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.082 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.074 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.076 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.108 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.076 ms --- 192.168.1.3 ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.074/0.083/0.108/0.013 ms Now we have to ping another machine on the LAN: &prompt.user; ping -c5 192.168.1.2 PING 192.168.1.2 (192.168.1.2): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.726 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.766 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.700 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.747 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.2: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.704 ms --- 192.168.1.2 ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.700/0.729/0.766/0.025 ms You could also use the machine name instead of 192.168.1.2 if you have set up the /etc/hosts file. Troubleshooting network card configuration troubleshooting Troubleshooting hardware and software configurations is always a pain, and a pain which can be alleviated by checking the simple things first. Is your network cable plugged in? Have you properly configured the network services? Did you configure the firewall correctly? Is the card you are using supported by &os;? Always check the hardware notes before sending off a bug report. Update your version of &os; to the latest STABLE version. Check the mailing list archives, or perhaps search the Internet. If the card works, yet performance is poor, it would be worthwhile to read over the &man.tuning.7; manual page. You can also check the network configuration as incorrect network settings can cause slow connections. Some users experience one or two device timeouts, which is normal for some cards. If they continue, or are bothersome, you may wish to be sure the device is not conflicting with another device. Double check the cable connections. Perhaps you may just need to get another card. At times, users see a few watchdog timeout errors. The first thing to do here is to check your network cable. Many cards require a PCI slot which supports Bus Mastering. On some old motherboards, only one PCI slot allows it (usually slot 0). Check the network card and the motherboard documentation to determine if that may be the problem. No route to host messages occur if the system is unable to route a packet to the destination host. This can happen if no default route is specified, or if a cable is unplugged. Check the output of netstat -rn and make sure there is a valid route to the host you are trying to reach. If there is not, read on to . ping: sendto: Permission denied error messages are often caused by a misconfigured firewall. If ipfw is enabled in the kernel but no rules have been defined, then the default policy is to deny all traffic, even ping requests! Read on to for more information. Sometimes performance of the card is poor, or below average. In these cases it is best to set the media selection mode from autoselect to the correct media selection. While this usually works for most hardware, it may not resolve this issue for everyone. Again, check all the network settings, and read over the &man.tuning.7; manual page. Virtual Hosts virtual hosts IP aliases A very common use of &os; is virtual site hosting, where one server appears to the network as many servers. This is achieved by assigning multiple network addresses to a single interface. A given network interface has one real address, and may have any number of alias addresses. These aliases are normally added by placing alias entries in /etc/rc.conf. An alias entry for the interface fxp0 looks like: ifconfig_fxp0_alias0="inet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" Note that alias entries must start with alias0 and proceed upwards in order, (for example, _alias1, _alias2, and so on). The configuration process will stop at the first missing number. The calculation of alias netmasks is important, but fortunately quite simple. For a given interface, there must be one address which correctly represents the network's netmask. Any other addresses which fall within this network must have a netmask of all 1s. For example, consider the case where the fxp0 interface is connected to two networks, the 10.1.1.0 network with a netmask of 255.255.255.0 and the 202.0.75.16 network with a netmask of 255.255.255.240. We want the system to appear at 10.1.1.1 through 10.1.1.5 and at 202.0.75.17 through 202.0.75.20. The following entries configure the adapter correctly for this arrangement: ifconfig_fxp0="inet 10.1.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0" ifconfig_fxp0_alias0="inet 10.1.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.255" ifconfig_fxp0_alias1="inet 10.1.1.3 netmask 255.255.255.255" ifconfig_fxp0_alias2="inet 10.1.1.4 netmask 255.255.255.255" ifconfig_fxp0_alias3="inet 10.1.1.5 netmask 255.255.255.255" ifconfig_fxp0_alias4="inet 202.0.75.17 netmask 255.255.255.240" ifconfig_fxp0_alias5="inet 202.0.75.18 netmask 255.255.255.255" ifconfig_fxp0_alias6="inet 202.0.75.19 netmask 255.255.255.255" ifconfig_fxp0_alias7="inet 202.0.75.20 netmask 255.255.255.255" Configuration Files <filename>/etc</filename> Layout There are a number of directories in which configuration information is kept. These include: /etc Generic system configuration information; data here is system-specific. /etc/defaults Default versions of system configuration files. /etc/mail Extra &man.sendmail.8; configuration, other MTA configuration files. /etc/ppp Configuration for both user- and kernel-ppp programs. /etc/namedb Default location for &man.named.8; data. Normally named.conf and zone files are stored here. /usr/local/etc Configuration files for installed applications. May contain per-application subdirectories. /usr/local/etc/rc.d Start/stop scripts for installed applications. /var/db Automatically generated system-specific database files, such as the package database, the locate database, and so on Hostnames hostname DNS <filename>/etc/resolv.conf</filename> resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf dictates how &os;'s resolver accesses the Internet Domain Name System (DNS). The most common entries to resolv.conf are: nameserver The IP address of a name server the resolver should query. The servers are queried in the order listed with a maximum of three. search Search list for hostname lookup. This is normally determined by the domain of the local hostname. domain The local domain name. A typical resolv.conf: search example.com nameserver 147.11.1.11 nameserver 147.11.100.30 Only one of the search and domain options should be used. If you are using DHCP, &man.dhclient.8; usually rewrites resolv.conf with information received from the DHCP server. <filename>/etc/hosts</filename> hosts /etc/hosts is a simple text database reminiscent of the old Internet. It works in conjunction with DNS and NIS providing name to IP address mappings. Local computers connected via a LAN can be placed in here for simplistic naming purposes instead of setting up a &man.named.8; server. Additionally, /etc/hosts can be used to provide a local record of Internet names, reducing the need to query externally for commonly accessed names. # $&os;$ # # Host Database # This file should contain the addresses and aliases # for local hosts that share this file. # In the presence of the domain name service or NIS, this file may # not be consulted at all; see /etc/nsswitch.conf for the resolution order. # # ::1 localhost localhost.my.domain myname.my.domain 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.my.domain myname.my.domain # # Imaginary network. #10.0.0.2 myname.my.domain myname #10.0.0.3 myfriend.my.domain myfriend # # According to RFC 1918, you can use the following IP networks for # private nets which will never be connected to the Internet: # # 10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 # 172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 # 192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 # # In case you want to be able to connect to the Internet, you need # real official assigned numbers. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not try # to invent your own network numbers but instead get one from your # network provider (if any) or from the Internet Registry (ftp to # rs.internic.net, directory `/templates'). # /etc/hosts takes on the simple format of: [Internet address] [official hostname] [alias1] [alias2] ... For example: 10.0.0.1 myRealHostname.example.com myRealHostname foobar1 foobar2 Consult &man.hosts.5; for more information. Log File Configuration log files <filename>syslog.conf</filename> syslog.conf syslog.conf is the configuration file for the &man.syslogd.8; program. It indicates which types of syslog messages are logged to particular log files. # $&os;$ # # Spaces ARE valid field separators in this file. However, # other *nix-like systems still insist on using tabs as field # separators. If you are sharing this file between systems, you # may want to use only tabs as field separators here. # Consult the syslog.conf(5) manual page. *.err;kern.debug;auth.notice;mail.crit /dev/console *.notice;kern.debug;lpr.info;mail.crit;news.err /var/log/messages security.* /var/log/security mail.info /var/log/maillog lpr.info /var/log/lpd-errs cron.* /var/log/cron *.err root *.notice;news.err root *.alert root *.emerg * # uncomment this to log all writes to /dev/console to /var/log/console.log #console.info /var/log/console.log # uncomment this to enable logging of all log messages to /var/log/all.log #*.* /var/log/all.log # uncomment this to enable logging to a remote log host named loghost #*.* @loghost # uncomment these if you're running inn # news.crit /var/log/news/news.crit # news.err /var/log/news/news.err # news.notice /var/log/news/news.notice !startslip *.* /var/log/slip.log !ppp *.* /var/log/ppp.log Consult the &man.syslog.conf.5; manual page for more information. <filename>newsyslog.conf</filename> newsyslog.conf newsyslog.conf is the configuration file for &man.newsyslog.8;, a program that is normally scheduled to run by &man.cron.8;. &man.newsyslog.8; determines when log files require archiving or rearranging. logfile is moved to logfile.0, logfile.0 is moved to logfile.1, and so on. Alternatively, the log files may be archived in &man.gzip.1; format causing them to be named: logfile.0.gz, logfile.1.gz, and so on. newsyslog.conf indicates which log files are to be managed, how many are to be kept, and when they are to be touched. Log files can be rearranged and/or archived when they have either reached a certain size, or at a certain periodic time/date. # configuration file for newsyslog # $&os;$ # # filename [owner:group] mode count size when [ZB] [/pid_file] [sig_num] /var/log/cron 600 3 100 * Z /var/log/amd.log 644 7 100 * Z /var/log/kerberos.log 644 7 100 * Z /var/log/lpd-errs 644 7 100 * Z /var/log/maillog 644 7 * @T00 Z /var/log/sendmail.st 644 10 * 168 B /var/log/messages 644 5 100 * Z /var/log/all.log 600 7 * @T00 Z /var/log/slip.log 600 3 100 * Z /var/log/ppp.log 600 3 100 * Z /var/log/security 600 10 100 * Z /var/log/wtmp 644 3 * @01T05 B /var/log/daily.log 640 7 * @T00 Z /var/log/weekly.log 640 5 1 $W6D0 Z /var/log/monthly.log 640 12 * $M1D0 Z /var/log/console.log 640 5 100 * Z Consult the &man.newsyslog.8; manual page for more information. <filename>sysctl.conf</filename> sysctl.conf sysctl sysctl.conf looks much like rc.conf. Values are set in a variable=value form. The specified values are set after the system goes into multi-user mode. Not all variables are settable in this mode. A sample sysctl.conf turning off logging of fatal signal exits and letting Linux programs know they are really running under &os;: kern.logsigexit=0 # Do not log fatal signal exits (e.g. sig 11) compat.linux.osname=&os; compat.linux.osrelease=4.3-STABLE Tuning with sysctl sysctl tuning with sysctl &man.sysctl.8; is an interface that allows you to make changes to a running &os; system. This includes many advanced options of the TCP/IP stack and virtual memory system that can dramatically improve performance for an experienced system administrator. Over five hundred system variables can be read and set using &man.sysctl.8;. At its core, &man.sysctl.8; serves two functions: to read and to modify system settings. To view all readable variables: &prompt.user; sysctl -a To read a particular variable, for example, kern.maxproc: &prompt.user; sysctl kern.maxproc kern.maxproc: 1044 To set a particular variable, use the intuitive variable=value syntax: &prompt.root; sysctl kern.maxfiles=5000 kern.maxfiles: 2088 -> 5000 Settings of sysctl variables are usually either strings, numbers, or booleans (a boolean being 1 for yes or a 0 for no). If you want to set automatically some variables each time the machine boots, add them to the /etc/sysctl.conf file. For more information see the &man.sysctl.conf.5; manual page and the . Tom Rhodes Contributed by &man.sysctl.8; Read-only In some cases it may be desirable to modify read-only &man.sysctl.8; values. While this is not recommended, it is also sometimes unavoidable. For instance on some laptop models the &man.cardbus.4; device will not probe memory ranges, and fail with errors which look similar to: cbb0: Could not map register memory device_probe_and_attach: cbb0 attach returned 12 Cases like the one above usually require the modification of some default &man.sysctl.8; settings which are set read only. To overcome these situations a user can put &man.sysctl.8; OIDs in their local /boot/loader.conf. Default settings are located in the /boot/defaults/loader.conf file. Fixing the problem mentioned above would require a user to set in the aforementioned file. Now &man.cardbus.4; will work properly. Tuning Disks Sysctl Variables <varname>vfs.vmiodirenable</varname> vfs.vmiodirenable The vfs.vmiodirenable sysctl variable may be set to either 0 (off) or 1 (on); it is 1 by default. This variable controls how directories are cached by the system. Most directories are small, using just a single fragment (typically 1 K) in the file system and less (typically 512 bytes) in the buffer cache. However, when operating in the default mode the buffer cache will only cache a fixed number of directories even if you have a huge amount of memory. Turning on this sysctl allows the buffer cache to use the VM Page Cache to cache the directories, making all the memory available for caching directories. However, the minimum in-core memory used to cache a directory is the physical page size (typically 4 K) rather than 512  bytes. We recommend turning this option on if you are running any services which manipulate large numbers of files. Such services can include web caches, large mail systems, and news systems. Turning on this option will generally not reduce performance even with the wasted memory but you should experiment to find out. <varname>vfs.write_behind</varname> vfs.write_behind The vfs.write_behind sysctl variable defaults to 1 (on). This tells the file system to issue media writes as full clusters are collected, which typically occurs when writing large sequential files. The idea is to avoid saturating the buffer cache with dirty buffers when it would not benefit I/O performance. However, this may stall processes and under certain circumstances you may wish to turn it off. <varname>vfs.hirunningspace</varname> vfs.hirunningspace The vfs.hirunningspace sysctl variable determines how much outstanding write I/O may be queued to disk controllers system-wide at any given instance. The default is usually sufficient but on machines with lots of disks you may want to bump it up to four or five megabytes. Note that setting too high a value (exceeding the buffer cache's write threshold) can lead to extremely bad clustering performance. Do not set this value arbitrarily high! Higher write values may add latency to reads occurring at the same time. There are various other buffer-cache and VM page cache related sysctls. We do not recommend modifying these values. As of &os; 4.3, the VM system does an extremely good job of automatically tuning itself. <varname>vm.swap_idle_enabled</varname> vm.swap_idle_enabled The vm.swap_idle_enabled sysctl variable is useful in large multi-user systems where you have lots of users entering and leaving the system and lots of idle processes. Such systems tend to generate a great deal of continuous pressure on free memory reserves. Turning this feature on and tweaking the swapout hysteresis (in idle seconds) via vm.swap_idle_threshold1 and vm.swap_idle_threshold2 allows you to depress the priority of memory pages associated with idle processes more quickly then the normal pageout algorithm. This gives a helping hand to the pageout daemon. Do not turn this option on unless you need it, because the tradeoff you are making is essentially pre-page memory sooner rather than later; thus eating more swap and disk bandwidth. In a small system this option will have a determinable effect but in a large system that is already doing moderate paging this option allows the VM system to stage whole processes into and out of memory easily. <varname>hw.ata.wc</varname> hw.ata.wc &os; 4.3 flirted with turning off IDE write caching. This reduced write bandwidth to IDE disks but was considered necessary due to serious data consistency issues introduced by hard drive vendors. The problem is that IDE drives lie about when a write completes. With IDE write caching turned on, IDE hard drives not only write data to disk out of order, but will sometimes delay writing some blocks indefinitely when under heavy disk loads. A crash or power failure may cause serious file system corruption. &os;'s default was changed to be safe. Unfortunately, the result was such a huge performance loss that we changed write caching back to on by default after the release. You should check the default on your system by observing the hw.ata.wc sysctl variable. If IDE write caching is turned off, you can turn it back on by setting the kernel variable back to 1. This must be done from the boot loader at boot time. Attempting to do it after the kernel boots will have no effect. For more information, please see &man.ata.4;. <option>SCSI_DELAY</option> (<varname>kern.cam.scsi_delay</varname>) kern.cam.scsi_delay The kernel config may be used to reduce system boot times. The defaults are fairly high and can be responsible for 15+ seconds of delay in the boot process. Reducing it to 5 seconds usually works (especially with modern drives). Newer versions of &os; (5.0+) should use the kern.cam.scsi_delay boot time tunable. The tunable, and kernel config option accept values in terms of milliseconds and not seconds. Soft Updates Soft Updates tunefs The &man.tunefs.8; program can be used to fine-tune a file system. This program has many different options, but for now we are only concerned with toggling Soft Updates on and off, which is done by: &prompt.root; tunefs -n enable /filesystem &prompt.root; tunefs -n disable /filesystem A filesystem cannot be modified with &man.tunefs.8; while it is mounted. A good time to enable Soft Updates is before any partitions have been mounted, in single-user mode. As of &os; 4.5, it is possible to enable Soft Updates at filesystem creation time, through use of the -U option to &man.newfs.8;. Soft Updates drastically improves meta-data performance, mainly file creation and deletion, through the use of a memory cache. We recommend to use Soft Updates on all of your file systems. There are two downsides to Soft Updates that you should be aware of: First, Soft Updates guarantees filesystem consistency in the case of a crash but could very easily be several seconds (even a minute!) behind updating the physical disk. If your system crashes you may lose more work than otherwise. Secondly, Soft Updates delays the freeing of filesystem blocks. If you have a filesystem (such as the root filesystem) which is almost full, performing a major update, such as make installworld, can cause the filesystem to run out of space and the update to fail. More Details about Soft Updates Soft Updates details There are two traditional approaches to writing a file systems meta-data back to disk. (Meta-data updates are updates to non-content data like inodes or directories.) Historically, the default behavior was to write out meta-data updates synchronously. If a directory had been changed, the system waited until the change was actually written to disk. The file data buffers (file contents) were passed through the buffer cache and backed up to disk later on asynchronously. The advantage of this implementation is that it operates safely. If there is a failure during an update, the meta-data are always in a consistent state. A file is either created completely or not at all. If the data blocks of a file did not find their way out of the buffer cache onto the disk by the time of the crash, &man.fsck.8; is able to recognize this and repair the filesystem by setting the file length to 0. Additionally, the implementation is clear and simple. The disadvantage is that meta-data changes are slow. An rm -r, for instance, touches all the files in a directory sequentially, but each directory change (deletion of a file) will be written synchronously to the disk. This includes updates to the directory itself, to the inode table, and possibly to indirect blocks allocated by the file. Similar considerations apply for unrolling large hierarchies (tar -x). The second case is asynchronous meta-data updates. This is the default for Linux/ext2fs and mount -o async for *BSD ufs. All meta-data updates are simply being passed through the buffer cache too, that is, they will be intermixed with the updates of the file content data. The advantage of this implementation is there is no need to wait until each meta-data update has been written to disk, so all operations which cause huge amounts of meta-data updates work much faster than in the synchronous case. Also, the implementation is still clear and simple, so there is a low risk for bugs creeping into the code. The disadvantage is that there is no guarantee at all for a consistent state of the filesystem. If there is a failure during an operation that updated large amounts of meta-data (like a power failure, or someone pressing the reset button), the filesystem will be left in an unpredictable state. There is no opportunity to examine the state of the filesystem when the system comes up again; the data blocks of a file could already have been written to the disk while the updates of the inode table or the associated directory were not. It is actually impossible to implement a fsck which is able to clean up the resulting chaos (because the necessary information is not available on the disk). If the filesystem has been damaged beyond repair, the only choice is to use &man.newfs.8; on it and restore it from backup. The usual solution for this problem was to implement dirty region logging, which is also referred to as journaling, although that term is not used consistently and is occasionally applied to other forms of transaction logging as well. Meta-data updates are still written synchronously, but only into a small region of the disk. Later on they will be moved to their proper location. Because the logging area is a small, contiguous region on the disk, there are no long distances for the disk heads to move, even during heavy operations, so these operations are quicker than synchronous updates. Additionally the complexity of the implementation is fairly limited, so the risk of bugs being present is low. A disadvantage is that all meta-data are written twice (once into the logging region and once to the proper location) so for normal work, a performance pessimization might result. On the other hand, in case of a crash, all pending meta-data operations can be quickly either rolled-back or completed from the logging area after the system comes up again, resulting in a fast filesystem startup. Kirk McKusick, the developer of Berkeley FFS, solved this problem with Soft Updates: all pending meta-data updates are kept in memory and written out to disk in a sorted sequence (ordered meta-data updates). This has the effect that, in case of heavy meta-data operations, later updates to an item catch the earlier ones if the earlier ones are still in memory and have not already been written to disk. So all operations on, say, a directory are generally performed in memory before the update is written to disk (the data blocks are sorted according to their position so that they will not be on the disk ahead of their meta-data). If the system crashes, this causes an implicit log rewind: all operations which did not find their way to the disk appear as if they had never happened. A consistent filesystem state is maintained that appears to be the one of 30 to 60 seconds earlier. The algorithm used guarantees that all resources in use are marked as such in their appropriate bitmaps: blocks and inodes. After a crash, the only resource allocation error that occurs is that resources are marked as used which are actually free. &man.fsck.8; recognizes this situation, and frees the resources that are no longer used. It is safe to ignore the dirty state of the filesystem after a crash by forcibly mounting it with mount -f. In order to free resources that may be unused, &man.fsck.8; needs to be run at a later time. This is the idea behind the background fsck: at system startup time, only a snapshot of the filesystem is recorded. The fsck can be run later on. All file systems can then be mounted dirty, so the system startup proceeds in multiuser mode. Then, background fscks will be scheduled for all file systems where this is required, to free resources that may be unused. (File systems that do not use Soft Updates still need the usual foreground fsck though.) The advantage is that meta-data operations are nearly as fast as asynchronous updates (i.e. faster than with logging, which has to write the meta-data twice). The disadvantages are the complexity of the code (implying a higher risk for bugs in an area that is highly sensitive regarding loss of user data), and a higher memory consumption. Additionally there are some idiosyncrasies one has to get used to. After a crash, the state of the filesystem appears to be somewhat older. In situations where the standard synchronous approach would have caused some zero-length files to remain after the fsck, these files do not exist at all with a Soft Updates filesystem because neither the meta-data nor the file contents have ever been written to disk. Disk space is not released until the updates have been written to disk, which may take place some time after running rm. This may cause problems when installing large amounts of data on a filesystem that does not have enough free space to hold all the files twice. Tuning Kernel Limits tuning kernel limits File/Process Limits <varname>kern.maxfiles</varname> kern.maxfiles kern.maxfiles can be raised or lowered based upon your system requirements. This variable indicates the maximum number of file descriptors on your system. When the file descriptor table is full, file: table is full will show up repeatedly in the system message buffer, which can be viewed with the dmesg command. Each open file, socket, or fifo uses one file descriptor. A large-scale production server may easily require many thousands of file descriptors, depending on the kind and number of services running concurrently. kern.maxfile's default value is dictated by the option in your kernel configuration file. kern.maxfiles grows proportionally to the value of . When compiling a custom kernel, it is a good idea to set this kernel configuration option according to the uses of your system. From this number, the kernel is given most of its pre-defined limits. Even though a production machine may not actually have 256 users connected at once, the resources needed may be similar to a high-scale web server. As of &os; 4.5, setting to 0 in your kernel configuration file will choose a reasonable default value based on the amount of RAM present in your system. <varname>kern.ipc.somaxconn</varname> kern.ipc.somaxconn The kern.ipc.somaxconn sysctl variable limits the size of the listen queue for accepting new TCP connections. The default value of 128 is typically too low for robust handling of new connections in a heavily loaded web server environment. For such environments, it is recommended to increase this value to 1024 or higher. The service daemon may itself limit the listen queue size (e.g. &man.sendmail.8;, or Apache) but will often have a directive in its configuration file to adjust the queue size. Large listen queues also do a better job of avoiding Denial of Service (DoS) attacks. Network Limits The kernel configuration option dictates the amount of network Mbufs available to the system. A heavily-trafficked server with a low number of Mbufs will hinder &os;'s ability. Each cluster represents approximately 2 K of memory, so a value of 1024 represents 2 megabytes of kernel memory reserved for network buffers. A simple calculation can be done to figure out how many are needed. If you have a web server which maxes out at 1000 simultaneous connections, and each connection eats a 16 K receive and 16 K send buffer, you need approximately 32 MB worth of network buffers to cover the web server. A good rule of thumb is to multiply by 2, so 2x32 MB / 2 KB = 64 MB / 2 kB = 32768. We recommend values between 4096 and 32768 for machines with greater amounts of memory. Under no circumstances should you specify an arbitrarily high value for this parameter as it could lead to a boot time crash. The option to &man.netstat.1; may be used to observe network cluster use. kern.ipc.nmbclusters loader tunable should be used to tune this at boot time. Only older versions of &os; will require you to use the kernel &man.config.8; option. For busy servers that make extensive use of the &man.sendfile.2; system call, it may be necessary to increase the number of &man.sendfile.2; buffers via the kernel configuration option or by setting its value in /boot/loader.conf (see &man.loader.8; for details). A common indicator that this parameter needs to be adjusted is when processes are seen in the sfbufa state. The sysctl variable kern.ipc.nsfbufs is a read-only glimpse at the kernel configured variable. This parameter nominally scales with kern.maxusers, however it may be necessary to tune accordingly. Even though a socket has been marked as non-blocking, calling &man.sendfile.2; on the non-blocking socket may result in the &man.sendfile.2; call blocking until enough struct sf_buf's are made available. <varname>net.inet.ip.portrange.*</varname> net.inet.ip.portrange.* The net.inet.ip.portrange.* sysctl variables control the port number ranges automatically bound to TCP and UDP sockets. There are three ranges: a low range, a default range, and a high range. Most network programs use the default range which is controlled by the net.inet.ip.portrange.first and net.inet.ip.portrange.last, which default to 1024 and 5000, respectively. Bound port ranges are used for outgoing connections, and it is possible to run the system out of ports under certain circumstances. This most commonly occurs when you are running a heavily loaded web proxy. The port range is not an issue when running servers which handle mainly incoming connections, such as a normal web server, or has a limited number of outgoing connections, such as a mail relay. For situations where you may run yourself out of ports, it is recommended to increase net.inet.ip.portrange.last modestly. A value of 10000, 20000 or 30000 may be reasonable. You should also consider firewall effects when changing the port range. Some firewalls may block large ranges of ports (usually low-numbered ports) and expect systems to use higher ranges of ports for outgoing connections — for this reason it is recommended that net.inet.ip.portrange.first be lowered. TCP Bandwidth Delay Product TCP Bandwidth Delay Product Limiting net.inet.tcp.inflight_enable The TCP Bandwidth Delay Product Limiting is similar to TCP/Vegas in NetBSD. It can be enabled by setting net.inet.tcp.inflight_enable sysctl variable to 1. The system will attempt to calculate the bandwidth delay product for each connection and limit the amount of data queued to the network to just the amount required to maintain optimum throughput. This feature is useful if you are serving data over modems, Gigabit Ethernet, or even high speed WAN links (or any other link with a high bandwidth delay product), especially if you are also using window scaling or have configured a large send window. If you enable this option, you should also be sure to set net.inet.tcp.inflight_debug to 0 (disable debugging), and for production use setting net.inet.tcp.inflight_min to at least 6144 may be beneficial. However, note that setting high minimums may effectively disable bandwidth limiting depending on the link. The limiting feature reduces the amount of data built up in intermediate route and switch packet queues as well as reduces the amount of data built up in the local host's interface queue. With fewer packets queued up, interactive connections, especially over slow modems, will also be able to operate with lower Round Trip Times. However, note that this feature only effects data transmission (uploading / server side). It has no effect on data reception (downloading). Adjusting net.inet.tcp.inflight_stab is not recommended. This parameter defaults to 20, representing 2 maximal packets added to the bandwidth delay product window calculation. The additional window is required to stabilize the algorithm and improve responsiveness to changing conditions, but it can also result in higher ping times over slow links (though still much lower than you would get without the inflight algorithm). In such cases, you may wish to try reducing this parameter to 15, 10, or 5; and may also have to reduce net.inet.tcp.inflight_min (for example, to 3500) to get the desired effect. Reducing these parameters should be done as a last resort only. Adding Swap Space No matter how well you plan, sometimes a system does not run as you expect. If you find you need more swap space, it is simple enough to add. You have three ways to increase swap space: adding a new hard drive, enabling swap over NFS, and creating a swap file on an existing partition. Swap on a New Hard Drive The best way to add swap, of course, is to use this as an excuse to add another hard drive. You can always use another hard drive, after all. If you can do this, go reread the discussion of swap space from the Initial Configuration section of the Handbook for some suggestions on how to best arrange your swap. Swapping over NFS Swapping over NFS is only recommended if you do not have a local hard disk to swap to. Swapping over NFS is slow and inefficient in versions of &os; prior to 4.X. It is reasonably fast and efficient in 4.0-RELEASE and newer. Even with newer versions of &os;, NFS swapping will be limited by the available network bandwidth and puts an additional burden on the NFS server. Swapfiles You can create a file of a specified size to use as a swap file. In our example here we will use a 64MB file called /usr/swap0. You can use any name you want, of course. Creating a Swapfile on &os; 4.X Be certain that your kernel configuration includes the vnode driver. It is not in recent versions of GENERIC. pseudo-device vn 1 #Vnode driver (turns a file into a device) Create a vn-device: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV vn0 Create a swapfile (/usr/swap0): &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/swap0 bs=1024k count=64 Set proper permissions on (/usr/swap0): &prompt.root; chmod 0600 /usr/swap0 Enable the swap file in /etc/rc.conf: swapfile="/usr/swap0" # Set to name of swapfile if aux swapfile desired. Reboot the machine or to enable the swap file immediately, type: &prompt.root; vnconfig -e /dev/vn0b /usr/swap0 swap Creating a Swapfile on &os; 5.X Be certain that your kernel configuration includes the memory disk driver (&man.md.4;). It is default in GENERIC kernel. device md # Memory "disks" Create a swapfile (/usr/swap0): &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/swap0 bs=1024k count=64 Set proper permissions on (/usr/swap0): &prompt.root; chmod 0600 /usr/swap0 Enable the swap file in /etc/rc.conf: swapfile="/usr/swap0" # Set to name of swapfile if aux swapfile desired. Reboot the machine or to enable the swap file immediately, type: &prompt.root; mdconfig -a -t vnode -f /usr/swap0 -u 0 && swapon /dev/md0 Hiten Pandya Written by Tom Rhodes Power and Resource Management It is very important to utilize hardware resources in an efficient manner. Before ACPI was introduced, it was very difficult and inflexible for operating systems to manage the power usage and thermal properties of a system. The hardware was controlled by some sort of BIOS embedded interface, such as Plug and Play BIOS (PNPBIOS), or Advanced Power Management (APM) and so on. Power and Resource Management is one of the key components of a modern operating system. For example, you may want an operating system to monitor system limits (and possibly alert you) in case your system temperature increased unexpectedly. In this section of the &os; Handbook, we will provide comprehensive information about ACPI. References will be provided for further reading at the end. Please be aware that ACPI is available on &os; 5.X and above systems as a default kernel module. For &os; 4.9, ACPI can be enabled by adding the line device acpica to a kernel configuration and rebuilding. What Is ACPI? Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) is a standard written by an alliance of vendors to provide a standard interface for hardware resources and power management (hence the name). It is a key element in Operating System-directed configuration and Power Management, i.e.: it provides more control and flexibility to the operating system (OS). Modern systems stretched the limits of the current Plug and Play interfaces (such as APM, which is used in &os; 4.X), prior to the introduction of ACPI. ACPI is the direct successor to APM (Advanced Power Management). Shortcomings of Advanced Power Management (APM) The Advanced Power Management (APM) facility control's the power usage of a system based on its activity. The APM BIOS is supplied by the (system) vendor and it is specific to the hardware platform. An APM driver in the OS mediates access to the APM Software Interface, which allows management of power levels. There are four major problems in APM. Firstly, power management is done by the (vendor-specific) BIOS, and the OS does not have any knowledge of it. One example of this, is when the user sets idle-time values for a hard drive in the APM BIOS, that when exceeded, it (BIOS) would spin down the hard drive, without the consent of the OS. Secondly, the APM logic is embedded in the BIOS, and it operates outside the scope of the OS. This means users can only fix problems in their APM BIOS by flashing a new one into the ROM; which, is a very dangerous procedure, and if it fails, it could leave the system in an unrecoverable state. Thirdly, APM is a vendor-specific technology, which, means that there is a lot or parity (duplication of efforts) and bugs found in one vendor's BIOS, may not be solved in others. Last but not the least, the APM BIOS did not have enough room to implement a sophisticated power policy, or one that can adapt very well to the purpose of the machine. Plug and Play BIOS (PNPBIOS) was unreliable in many situations. PNPBIOS is 16-bit technology, so the OS has to use 16-bit emulation in order to interface with PNPBIOS methods. The &os; APM driver is documented in the &man.apm.4; manual page. Configuring <acronym>ACPI</acronym> The acpi.ko driver is loaded by default at start up by the &man.loader.8; and should not be compiled into the kernel. The reasoning behind this is that modules are easier to work with, say if switching to another acpi.ko without doing a kernel rebuild. This has the advantage of making testing easier. Another reason is that starting ACPI after a system has been brought up is not too useful, and in some cases can be fatal. In doubt, just disable ACPI all together. This driver should not and can not be unloaded because the system bus uses it for various hardware interactions. ACPI can be disabled with the &man.acpiconf.8; utility. In fact most of the interaction with ACPI can be done via &man.acpiconf.8;. Basically this means, if anything about ACPI is in the &man.dmesg.8; output, then most likely it is already running. ACPI and APM cannot coexist and should be used separately. The last one to load will terminate if the driver notices the other running. In the simplest form, ACPI can be used to put the system into a sleep mode with &man.acpiconf.8;, the flag, and a 1-5 option. Most users will only need 1. Option 5 will do a soft-off which is the same action as: &prompt.root; halt -p The other options are available. Check out the &man.acpiconf.8; manual page for more information. Nate Lawson Written by Peter Schultz With contributions from Tom Rhodes Using and Debugging &os; <acronym>ACPI</acronym> ACPI is a fundamentally new way of discovering devices, managing power usage, and providing standardized access to various hardware previously managed by the BIOS. Progress is being made toward ACPI working on all systems, but bugs in some motherboards' ACPI Machine Language (AML) bytecode, incompleteness in &os;'s kernel subsystems, and bugs in the Intel ACPI-CA interpreter continue to appear. This document is intended to help you assist the &os; ACPI maintainers in identifying the root cause of problems you observe and debugging and developing a solution. Thanks for reading this and we hope we can solve your system's problems. Submitting Debugging Information Before submitting a problem, be sure you are running the latest BIOS version and, if available, embedded controller firmware version. For those of you that want to submit a problem right away, please send the following information to freebsd-acpi@FreeBSD.org Description of the buggy behavior, including system type and model and anything that causes the bug to appear. Also, please note as accurately as possible when the bug began occurring if it is new for you. The dmesg output after boot , including any error messages generated by you exercising the bug. dmesg output from boot with ACPI disabled, if disabling it helps fix the problem. Output from sysctl hw.acpi. This is also a good way of figuring out what features your system offers. URL where your ACPI Source Language (ASL) can be found. Do not send the ASL directly to the list as it can be very large. Generate a copy of your ASL by running this command: &prompt.root; acpidump -t -d > name-system.asl (Substitute your login name for name and manufacturer/model for system. Example: njl-FooCo6000.asl) Most of the developers watch the &a.current; but please submit problems to &a.acpi.name; to be sure it is seen. Please be patient, all of us have full-time jobs elsewhere. If your bug is not immediately apparent, we will probably ask you to submit a PR via &man.send-pr.1;. When entering a PR, please include the same information as requested above. This will help us track the problem and resolve it. Do not send a PR without emailing &a.acpi.name; first as we use PRs as reminders of existing problems, not a reporting mechanism. It is likely that your problem has been reported by someone before. Background ACPI is present in all modern computers that conform to the ia32 (x86), ia64 (Itanium), and amd64 (AMD) architectures. The full standard has many features including CPU performance management, power planes control, thermal zones, various battery systems, embedded controllers, and bus enumeration. Most systems implement less than the full standard. For instance, a desktop system usually only implements the bus enumeration parts while a laptop might have cooling and battery management support as well. Laptops also have suspend and resume, with their own associated complexity. An ACPI-compliant system has various components. The BIOS and chipset vendors provide various fixed tables (e.g., FADT) in memory that specify things like the APIC map (used for SMP), config registers, and simple configuration values. Additionally, a table of bytecode (the Differentiated System Description Table DSDT) is provided that specifies a tree-like name space of devices and methods. The ACPI driver must parse the fixed tables, implement an interpreter for the bytecode, and modify device drivers and the kernel to accept information from the ACPI subsystem. For &os;, Intel has provided an interpreter (ACPI-CA) that is shared with Linux and NetBSD. The path to the ACPI-CA source code is src/sys/contrib/dev/acpica. The glue code that allows ACPI-CA to work on &os; is in src/sys/dev/acpica/Osd. Finally, drivers that implement various ACPI devices are found in src/sys/dev/acpica. Common Problems For ACPI to work correctly, all the parts have to work correctly. Here are some common problems, in order of frequency of appearance, and some possible workarounds or fixes. Suspend/Resume ACPI has three suspend to RAM (STR) states, S1-S3, and one suspend to disk state (STD), called S4. S5 is soft off and is the normal state your system is in when plugged in but not powered up. S4 can actually be implemented two separate ways. S4BIOS is a BIOS-assisted suspend to disk. S4OS is implemented entirely by the operating system. Start by checking sysctl for the suspend-related items. Here are the results for my Thinkpad: hw.acpi.supported_sleep_state: S3 S4 S5 hw.acpi.s4bios: 0 This means that I can use acpiconf -s to test S3, S4OS, and S5. If was one (1), I would have S4BIOS support instead of S4 OS. When testing suspend/resume, start with S1, if supported. This state is most likely to work since it doesn't require much driver support. No one has implemented S2 but if you have it, it's similar to S1. The next thing to try is S3. This is the deepest STR state and requires a lot of driver support to properly reinitialize your hardware. If you have problems resuming, feel free to email the &a.acpi.name; list but do not expect the problem to be resolved since there are a lot of drivers/hardware that need more testing and work. To help isolate the problem, remove as many drivers from your kernel as possible. If it works, you can narrow down which driver is the problem by loading drivers until it fails again. Typically binary drivers like nvidia.ko, X11 display drivers, and USB will have the most problems while Ethernet interfaces usually work fine. If you can load/unload the drivers ok, you can automate this by putting the appropriate commands in /etc/rc.suspend and /etc/rc.resume. There is a commented-out example for unloading and loading a driver. Try setting to zero (0) if your display is messed up after resume. Try setting longer or shorter values for to see if that helps. Another thing to try is load a recent Linux distribution with ACPI support and test their suspend/resume support on the same hardware. If it works on Linux, it's likely a &os; driver problem and narrowing down which driver causes the problems will help us fix the problem. Note that the ACPI maintainers do not usually maintain other drivers (e.g sound, ATA, etc.) so any work done on tracking down a driver problem should probably eventually be posted to the &a.current.name; list and mailed to the driver maintainer. If you are feeling adventurous, go ahead and start putting some debugging &man.printf.3;s in a problematic driver to track down where in its resume function it hangs. Finally, try disabling ACPI and enabling APM instead. If suspend/resume works with APM, you may be better off sticking with APM, especially on older hardware (pre-2000). It took vendors a while to get ACPI support correct and older hardware is more likely to have BIOS problems with ACPI. System Hangs (temporary or permanent) Most system hangs are a result of lost interrupts or an interrupt storm. Chipsets have a lot of problems based on how the BIOS configures interrupts before boot, correctness of the APIC (MADT) table, and routing of the System Control Interrupt (SCI). Interrupt storms can be distinguished from lost interrupts by checking the output of vmstat -i and looking at the line that has acpi0. If the counter is increasing at more than a couple per second, you have an interrupt storm. If the system appears hung, try breaking to DDB (CTRL ALTESC on console) and type . Your best hope when dealing with interrupt problems is to try disabling APIC support with hint.apic.0.disabled="1" in loader.conf. Panics Panics are relatively rare for ACPI and are the top priority to be fixed. The first step is to isolate the steps to reproduce the panic (if possible) and get a backtrace. Follow the advice for enabling and setting up a serial console (see ) or setting up a &man.dump.8; partition. You can get a backtrace in DDB with . If you have to handwrite the backtrace, be sure to at least get the lowest five (5) and top five (5) lines in the trace. Then, try to isolate the problem by booting with ACPI disabled. If that works, you can isolate the ACPI subsystem by using various values of . See the &man.acpi.4; manual page for some examples. System Powers Up After Suspend or Shutdown First, try setting 0 in &man.loader.conf.5;. This keeps ACPI from disabling various events during the shutdown process. Some systems need this value set to 1 (the default) for the same reason. This usually fixes the problem of a system powering up spontaneously after a suspend or poweroff. Other Problems If you have other problems with ACPI (working with a docking station, devices not detected, etc.), please email a description to the mailing list as well; however, some of these issues may be related to unfinished parts of the ACPI subsystem so they might take a while to be implemented. Please be patient and prepared to test patches we may send you. <acronym>ASL</acronym>, <command>acpidump</command>, and <acronym>IASL</acronym> The most common problem is the BIOS vendors providing incorrect (or outright buggy!) bytecode. This is usually manifested by kernel console messages like this: ACPI-1287: *** Error: Method execution failed [\\_SB_.PCI0.LPC0.FIGD._STA] (Node 0xc3f6d160), AE_NOT_FOUND Often, you can resolve these problems by updating your BIOS to the latest revision. Most console messages are harmless but if you have other problems like battery status not working, they're a good place to start looking for problems in the AML. The bytecode, known as AML, is compiled from a source language called ASL. The AML is found in the table known as the DSDT. To get a copy of your ASL, use &man.acpidump.8;. You should use both the (show contents of the fixed tables) and (disassemble AML to ASL) options. See the Submitting Debugging Information section for an example syntax. The simplest first check you can do is to recompile your ASL to check for errors. Warnings can usually be ignored but errors are bugs that will usually prevent ACPI from working correctly. To recompile your ASL, issue the following command: &prompt.root; iasl your.asl Fixing Your <acronym>ASL</acronym> In the long run, our goal is for almost everyone to have ACPI work without any user intervention. At this point, however, we are still developing workarounds for common mistakes made by the BIOS vendors. The Microsoft interpreter (acpi.sys and acpiec.sys) does not strictly check for adherence to the standard, and thus many BIOS vendors who only test ACPI under Windows never fix their ASL. We hope to continue to identify and document exactly what non-standard behavior is allowed by Microsoft's interpreter and replicate it so &os; can work without forcing users to fix the ASL. As a workaround and to help us identify behavior, you can fix the ASL manually. If this works for you, please send a &man.diff.1; of the old and new ASL so we can possibly work around the buggy behavior in ACPI-CA and thus make your fix unnecessary. Here is a list of common error messages, their cause, and how to fix them: _OS dependencies Some AML assumes the world consists of various Windows versions. You can tell &os; to claim it is any OS to see if this fixes problems you may have. An easy way to override this is to set =Windows 2001 in /boot/loader.conf or other similar strings you find in the ASL. + Missing Return statements Some methods do not explicitly return a value as the standard requires. While ACPI-CA does not handle this, &os; has a workaround that allows it to return the value implicitly. You can also add explicit Return statements where required if you know what value should be returned. To force iasl to compile the ASL, use the flag. Overriding the Default <acronym>AML</acronym> After you customize your.asl, you will want to compile it, run: &prompt.root; iasl your.asl You can add the flag to force creation of the AML, even if there are errors during compilation. Remember that some errors (e.g., missing Return statements) are automatically worked around by the interpreter. DSDT.aml is the default output filename for iasl. You can load this instead of your BIOS's buggy copy (which is still present in flash memory) by editing /boot/loader.conf as follows: acpi_dsdt_load="YES" acpi_dsdt_name="/boot/DSDT.aml" Be sure to copy your DSDT.aml to the /boot directory. + Getting Debugging Output From <acronym>ACPI</acronym> The ACPI driver has a very flexible debugging facility. It allows you to specify a set of subsystems as well as the level of verbosity. The subsystems you wish to debug are specified as layers and are broken down into ACPI-CA components (ACPI_ALL_COMPONENTS) and ACPI hardware support (ACPI_ALL_DRIVERS). The verbosity of debugging output is specified as the level and ranges from ACPI_LV_ERROR (just report errors) to ACPI_LV_VERBOSE (everything). The level is a bitmask so multiple options can be set at once, separated by spaces. In practice, you will want to use a serial console to log the output if it is so long it flushes the console message buffer. A full list of the individual layers and levels is found in the &man.acpi.4; manual page. Debugging output is not enabled by default. To enable it, add to your kernel config if ACPI is compiled into the kernel. You can add to your /etc/make.conf to enable it globally. If it is a module, you can recompile just your acpi.ko module as follows: &prompt.root; cd /sys/modules/acpi/acpi && make clean && make ACPI_DEBUG=1 Install acpi.ko in /boot/kernel and add your desired level and layer to loader.conf. This example enables debug messages for all ACPI-CA components and all ACPI hardware drivers (CPU, LID, etc.) It will only output error messages, the least verbose level. debug.acpi.layer="ACPI_ALL_COMPONENTS ACPI_ALL_DRIVERS" debug.acpi.level="ACPI_LV_ERROR" If the information you want is triggered by a specific event (say, a suspend and then resume), you can leave out changes to loader.conf and instead use sysctl to specify the layer and level after booting and preparing your system for the specific event. The sysctls are named the same as the tunables in loader.conf. References More information about ACPI may be found in the following locations: The &a.acpi; The ACPI Mailing List Archives The old ACPI Mailing List Archives The ACPI 2.0 Specification &os; Manual pages: &man.acpi.4;, &man.acpi.thermal.4;, &man.acpidump.8;, &man.iasl.8;, &man.acpidb.8; DSDT debugging resource. (Uses Compaq as an example but generally useful.) diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mac/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mac/chapter.sgml index 7a68c8b64f..1988970327 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mac/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mac/chapter.sgml @@ -1,2115 +1,2115 @@ Tom Rhodes Written by Mandatory Access Control Synopsis MAC Mandatory Access Controls With security requirements on a rise throughout much of the world, the demand for a more secure environment has increased. It is from this demand that the TrustedBSD project was founded with nothing more than security in mind. The TrustedBSD project aims at developing userland utilities and kernel interfaces, based on the &posix;.1e draft, and merging them back to &os; 5.X. While still in the development stage, many of the features are nearing production stability. Some of those include file system Access Control Lists (ACLs) and Mandatory Access Control (MAC) mechanisms. So what is MAC? Mandatory Access Controls are rules that control how users access a system in order to prohibit the unauthorized disclosure of any system or user data; or provide for the indefinite integrity of system objects or subjects. For a definition of what objects and subjects are, see below. The mandatory part of the definition comes from the fact that the enforcement of the controls is done by administrators and the system, and is not left up to the discretion of users as is done with discretionary access controls (DAC, the normal access method). This entire chapter will focus primarily on the Mandatory Access Control framework, hereon referred to simply as MAC, features. As more features are brought into &os; 5.X, they will be added here. After reading this chapter, you will know: What MAC modules are currently included in &os; and their associated policies. What MAC policies are capable of implementing, the difference between a label and non-labeled policy. How to efficiently configure a system to use the MAC framework. How to configure the different policies used by the MAC modules. How to implement a secure environment using the MAC framework and the examples shown. How to test the MAC configuration to ensure the system is properly accepting it. Before reading this chapter, you should: Understand &unix; and &os; basics (). Be familiar with keeping &os; sources up to date (), and the basics of kernel configuration/compilation (). Have some familiarity with security and how it pertains to &os; (). Please take notice that the improper use of the following information may cause loss of access to the system, aggravation of users, inability to access the features provided by &xfree86;, and should not be believed to completely secure a system. The MAC framework only augments security: without a good security policy and regular security checks, believing the system to be totally secure would be completely irrational. It should also be noted that the examples contained within this chapter are just that, examples. It is not recommended that these particular settings be rolled out on a production system. Implementing these policies takes a good deal of thought. One who does not fully understand exactly how everything works may find him or herself going back through the entire system and reconfiguring many files or directories. What Will Not Be Covered This chapter covers a broad range of security in respect to the MAC framework. It is important to note that the development of MAC policies will not be covered. Writing new policies is completely beyond the initial scope of this document. As such, some policies included with the MAC framework are not covered. These include the &man.mac.test.4;, &man.mac.stub.4; and &man.mac.none.4; modules/policies. Each of these modules have specific characteristics which are provided for both testing and new module development. For more information on these modules and the various mechanisms they provide, review the manual pages provided. Key Terms in this Chapter Before reading this chapter, a few key terms must be explained. This will hopefully clear up any confusion that may occur and avoid the abrupt introduction of new terms and information. The following terms will be used throughout this chapter: compartment: A compartment is a a set of programs and data to be partitioned or separated, where users are given certain access to specific components of a system. Also, a compartment represents a grouping, such as a work group, department, project, or topic. Access to compartments is granted on a need-to-know basis. label: A label is a security feature which can be applied to files, directories, and other items in the system. It could be considered to be a confidentiality stamp; when a label is placed on a file it describes the level of security for that specific file and will only permit access by files, users, resources, etc. with a similar or lesser security setting. Some of the policies can handle labels in different ways; this will be discussed in the policy sections later. multilabel: The is a file system option which can be set in single user mode using the &man.tunefs.8; utility; set during the boot operation using the &man.fstab.5; file; or during the creation of a new file system. This option will permit multiple MAC labels to be placed on files and directories in the file system. This option only applies to policies which use label operations for enhanced security. object: An object or system object is an entity through which information flows under the direction of a subject. This includes directories, files, fields, screens, keyboards, memory, magnetic storage, printers or any other data storage/moving device. Basically a data container, or a system resource; access to an object effectively means access to the data. policy: A collection of rules which defines how objectives are to be achieved. A policy usually documents how certain items are to be handled. This chapter will consider the term policy in this context as a security policy. single label: A single label is when the entire file system uses one label to enforce access control over the flow of data. When a file system has this set, which is any time when the option is not set, all files must conform to the same label setting. subject: a subject is any active entity that causes information to flow between objects; e.g. a user, user processor, system process, etc. Explanation of MAC With all of these new terms in mind, consider how the MAC framework augments the security of the system as a whole. The various policies provided by the MAC framework could be used to protect the network and file systems, block users from accessing certain ports and sockets, and more. Perhaps the best use of the policies is to blend them together for a multi-layered security environment. The only downside is administrative overhead in cases of multiple file system labels, setting network access control user by user, etc. These downsides are minimal when compared to the lasting effect of the framework. A good implementation would hand total control over to the system administrator, who then could control various aspects of these policies using the &man.sysctl.8; utility. Thus a system utilizing MAC features should at least guarantee that a user will not be permitted to change security attributes at will; all user utilities, programs and scripts must work within the constraints of the access rules provided by the selected policies; and that total control of the MAC access rules are in the hands of the system administrator. It is the sole duty of the system administrator to carefully select the correct policies. Some environments may need to limit access control over the network; in these cases, the &man.mac.portacl.4;, &man.mac.ifoff.4; and even &man.mac.biba.4; might be a good starting point. In other cases, the need to secret items on the file system might be required. Policies such as &man.mac.bsdextended.4; and &man.mac.mls.4; exist for this purpose. Policy decisions could be made based on network configuration. Perhaps only certain users should be permitted access to facilities provided by &man.ssh.1; to access the network or the Internet. The &man.mac.portacl.4; would be the policy of choice for these situations. But what should be done in the case of file systems? Should all access to certain directories be severed from other groups or specific users? Or should we limit user or utility access to specific files by setting certain objects as classified? In the file system case, access to objects might be considered confidential to some users but not to others. For an example, a large development team might be broken off into smaller groups of individuals. Developers in project A might not be permitted to access objects written by developers in project B. Yet they might need to access objects created by developers in project C; that is quite a situation indeed. Using the different policies provided by the MAC framework; users could be divided into these groups and then given access to the appropriate areas without the fear of information leakage. Thus, each policy has a unique way of dealing with information flow. Policy selection should be completely based on a well thought out security policy. In many cases, the overall policy may need to be revised and reimplemented across the network. Understanding the different policies offered by the MAC framework will help administrators to choose the best policies for their situations. Also, understanding the implications involved with implementing the MAC framework into a specific environment; the following configuration must be completed before trying any of the examples or applying the information in the rest of this chapter to any environment. The default &os; kernel does not include the option for the MAC framework; thus the following kernel option must be added: options MAC And the kernel will require a rebuild and a reinstall. While the various manual pages for MAC modules state that they may be built into the kernel, it is possible to lock the system out of the network and more. Therefore, this is not recommended to those who are new the framework. Understanding MAC Labels A MAC label is virtually a security stamp which may be applied to subjects and objects throughout the system. When setting a label, the user must be able to comprehend what it is, exactly, that is being done. Setting the label too high or too low may jeopardize the entire security structure of their directory or file system. The label specifies exactly what type of access control should be enforced on the object or subject. Formatting of the label is simple, taking the policy name and a qualifier, or setting, for that object or subject. For instance, setting the label of biba/low on a file will give that file a basic low access control policy. These labels are what helps to partition, or divide into groups, several objects from each other based on their security profile. With every policy which supports the labeling feature in &os;, three specific predefined labels are offered, they are the low, high and equal labels. Although they enforce access control in a different manner with each policy, you can be sure that the low label will be the lowest setting, the equal label will set the subject or object to be disabled or unaffected, and the high label will enforce the highest setting available. Within single label environments, only one label may be used on objects and subjects. This will enforce one set of access permissions across the entire system and in many environments may be all that is required. There are a few cases; however, where multiple labels may be set on objects or subjects in the system. For those cases, the option may be passed to &man.tunefs.8;. In other cases still, a numeric label may be set to indicate the precise level of hierarchical control. This numeric compartment is used to partition or sort information into different groups of say, classification only permitting access to that group or a higher group level. In most cases the administrator will only be setting up a single label to use throughout the file system; indeed this limits the need for the soon to be discussed option. That option should only be enabled if the situation requires it. Hey wait, this is similar to DAC! I thought MAC gave control strictly to the administrator. That statement still holds true, root is the one in control and who configures the policy so that users are placed in the appropriate categories/access levels. Basic control over objects will then be released to the group but root may revoke or modify the settings at any time. This is the hierarchal/clearance model discussed earlier in this chapter. Label Configuration Virtually all aspects of label policy configuration will be performed using a set of four commands. These commands provide a simple interface for object or subject configuration or the manipulation and verification of the configuration. All configuration may be done by use of the &man.setfmac.8; and &man.setpmac.8; utilities respectively. The setfmac command is used to set MAC labels on system objects while the setpmac command is used to set the labels on system subjects. Observe: &prompt.root; setfmac biba/high test If no errors occurred with the command above a prompt will be returned. The only time these commands are not quiescent is when an error occurred. In some cases this error may be a Permission denied and is usually obtained when the label is being set or modified on an object which is restricted. The system administrator may use the following commands to overcome this: &prompt.root; setfmac biba/high test Permission denied &prompt.root; setpmac biba/low setfmac biba/high test &prompt.root; getfmac test test: biba/high As can be observed, setpmac can be used to override the policy's settings by assigning a different label to the invoked process. The getpmac utility is usually used with currently running processes, such as sendmail: although it takes a process ID in place of a command the logic is extremely similar. It should be pointed out that users will only be able to override policy labels if they themselves own the object or subject. If users would attempt to manipulate a file not in their access levels, the Operation not permitted error will be displayed by the mac_set_link function. Users and Label Settings Users themselves are required to have labels so that their files and processes may properly. This is configured through the login.conf file by use of login classes. Every policy that uses labels will enforce the user class setting. An example entry containing every policy is listed below: default:\ :copyright=/etc/COPYRIGHT:\ :welcome=/etc/motd:\ :setenv=MAIL=/var/mail/$,BLOCKSIZE=K:\ :path=~/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:\ :manpath=/usr/share/man /usr/local/man:\ :nologin=/usr/sbin/nologin:\ :cputime=1h30m:\ :datasize=8M:\ :vmemoryuse=100M:\ :stacksize=2M:\ :memorylocked=4M:\ :memoryuse=8M:\ :filesize=8M:\ :coredumpsize=8M:\ :openfiles=24:\ :maxproc=32:\ :priority=0:\ :requirehome:\ :passwordtime=91d:\ :umask=022:\ :ignoretime@:\ :label=partition/13,mls/5,biba/low,lomac10[2]: The label option is used to set the user class default label which will be enforced by MAC. Users will never be permitted to modify this value, thus it can be considered not optional in the user case. In a real configuration, however, the administrator will never wish to enable every policy. It is recommended that the rest of this chapter be reviewed before any of this configuration is implemented. In all cases, after a change to login.conf, the login class capability database must be rebuilt using cap_mkdb and this will be reflected throughout every forthcoming example or discussion. It is useful to note that many sites may have a particularly large number of users requiring several different user classes. In depth planning is required as this may get extremely difficult to manage. Network Interfaces and Label Settings Labels may also be set on network interfaces to help control the flow of data across the network. In all cases they function in the same way the policies function with respect to objects. Users at high settings in biba, for example, will not be permitted to access network interfaces with a label of low. The may be passed to ifconfig when setting the MAC label on network interfaces. For example: &prompt.root; ifconfig bge0 maclabel biba/equal will set the MAC label of biba/equal on the &man.bge.4; interface. When using a setting similar to biba/high(low-high) the entire label should be quoted; otherwise an error will be returned. Each policy which supports labeling has some tunable which may be used to disable the MAC label on network interfaces. Setting the label to will have a similar effect. Review the output from sysctl, the policy manual pages, or even the information found later in this chapter for those tunables. Singlelabel or Multilabel? By default the system will use the option. But what does this mean to the administrator? There are several differences which, in their own right, offer pros and cons to the flexibility in the systems security model. The only permits for one label, for instance biba/high to be used for each subject or object. It provides for lower administration overhead but decreases the flexibility of policies which support labeling. Many administrators may want to use the option in their security policy. The option will permit each subject or object to have its own independent MAC label in place of the standard option which will allow only one label throughout the partition. The and label options are only required for the policies which implement the labeling feature, including the Biba, Lomac, MLS and SEBSD policies. In many cases, the may not need to be set at all. Consider the following situation and security model: &os; web-server using the MAC framework and a mix of the various policies. This machine only requires one label, biba/high, for everything in the system. Here the file system would not require the option as a single label will always be in effect. But, this machine will be a web server and should have the web server run at biba/low to prevent write up capabilities. The Biba policy and how it works will be discussed later, so if the previous comment was difficult to interpret just continue reading and return. The server could use a separate partition set at biba/low for most if not all of its runtime state. Much is lacking from this example, for instance the restrictions on data, configuration and user settings; however, this is just a quick example to prove the aforementioned point. If any of the non-labeling policies are to be used, then the option would never be required. These include the seeotheruids, portacl and partition policies. It should also be noted that using with a partition and establishing a security model based on functionality could open the doors for higher administrative overhead as everything in the file system would have a label. This includes directories, files, and even device nodes. The following command will set on the file systems to have multiple labels. This may only be done in single user mode: &prompt.root; tunefs -l enable / This is not a requirement for the swap file system. Some users have experienced problems with setting the flag on the root partition. If this is the case, please review the of this chapter. Controlling MAC with Tunables Without any modules loaded, there are still some parts of MAC which may be configured using the sysctl interface. These tunables are described below and in all cases the number one (1) means enabled while the number zero (0) means disabled: security.mac.enforce_fs defaults to one (1) and enforces MAC file system policies on the file systems. security.mac.enforce_kld defaults to one (1) and enforces MAC kernel linking policies on the dynamic kernel linker (see &man.kld.4;). security.mac.enforce_network defaults to one (1) and enforces MAC network policies. security.mac.enforce_pipe defaults to one (1) and enforces MAC policies on pipes. security.mac.enforce_process defaults to one (1) and enforces MAC policies on processes which utilize inter-process communication. security.mac.enforce_socket defaults to one (1) and enforces MAC policies on sockets (see the &man.socket.2; manual page). security.mac.enforce_system defaults to one (1) and enforces MAC policies on system activities such as accounting and rebooting. security.mac.enforce_vm defaults to one (1) and enforces MAC policies on the virtual memory system. Every policy or MAC option supports tunables. These usually hang off of the security.mac.<policyname> tree. To view all of the tunables from MAC use the following command: &prompt.root; sysctl -da | grep mac This should be interpreted as all of the basic MAC policies are enforced by default. If the modules were built into the kernel the system would be extremely locked down and most likely unable to communicate with the local network or connect to the Internet, etc. This is why building the modules into the kernel is not completely recommended. Not because it limits the ability to disable features on the fly with sysctl, but it permits the administrator to instantly switch the policies of a system without the requirement of rebuilding and reinstalling a new system. Module Configuration Every module included with the MAC framework may be either compiled into the kernel as noted above or loaded as a run-time kernel module. The recommended method is to add the module name to the /boot/loader.conf file so that it will load during the initial boot operation. The following sections will discuss the various MAC modules and cover their features. Implementing them into a specific environment will also be a consideration of this chapter. Some modules support the use of labeling, which is controlling access by enforcing a label such as this is allowed and this is not. A label configuration file may control how files may be accessed, network communication can be exchanged, and more. The previous section showed how the flag could be set on file systems to enable per-file or per-partition access control. A single label configuration would enforce only one label across the system, that is why the tunefs option is called . The MAC seeotheruids Module MAC See Other UIDs Policy Module name: mac_seeotheruids.ko Kernel configuration line: options MAC_SEEOTHERUIDS Boot option: mac_seeotheruids_load="YES" The &man.mac.seeotheruids.4; module mimics and extends the security.bsd.see_other_uids and security.bsd.see_other_gids sysctl tunables. This option does not require any labels to be set before configuration and can operate transparently with the other modules. After loading the module, the following sysctl tunables may be used to control the features: security.mac.seeotheruids.enabled will enable the module's features and use the default settings. These default settings will deny users the ability to view processes and sockets owned by other users. security.mac.seeotheruids.specificgid_enabled will allow a certain group to be exempt from this policy. To exempt specific groups from this policy, use the security.mac.seeotheruids.specificgid=XXX sysctl tunable. In the above example, the XXX should be replaced with the numeric group ID to be exempted. security.mac.seeotheruids.primarygroup_enabled is used to exempt specific primary groups from this policy. When using this tunable, the security.mac.seeotheruids.specificgid_enabled may not be set. It should be noted that the root user is not exempt from this policy. This is one of the large differences between the MAC version and the standard tunable version included by default: security.bsd.seeotheruids. The MAC bsdextended Module MAC File System Firewall Policy Module name: mac_bsdextended.ko Kernel configuration line: options MAC_BSDEXTENDED Boot option: mac_bsdextended_load="YES" The &man.mac.bsdextended.4; module enforces the file system firewall. This module's policy provides an extension to the standard file system permissions model, permitting an administrator to create a firewall-like ruleset to protect files, utilities, and directories in the file system hierarchy. The policy may be created using a utility, &man.ugidfw.8;, that has a syntax similar to that of &man.ipfw.8;. More tools can be written by using the functions in the &man.libugidfw.3; library. Extreme caution should be taken when working with this module; incorrect use could block access to certain parts of the file system. Examples After the &man.mac.bsdextended.4; module has been loaded, the following command may be used to list the current rule configuration: &prompt.root; ugidfw list 0 slots, 0 rules As expected, there are no rules defined. This means that everything is still completely accessible. To create a rule which will block all access by users but leave root unaffected, simply run the following command: &prompt.root; ugidfw add subject not uid root new object not uid root mode n This is a very bad idea as it will block all users from issuing even the most simple commands, such as ls. A more patriotic list of rules might be: &prompt.root; ugidfw set 2 subject uid user object uid trhodes mode n &prompt.root; ugidfw set 3 subject uid user object gid trhodes mode n This will block any and all access, including directory listings, to trhodes's home directory from the username user. In place of user, the could be passed. This will enforce the same access restrictions above for all users in place of just one user. The root user will be unaffected by these changes. This should give a general idea of how the &man.mac.bsdextended.4; module may be used to help fortify a file system. For more information, see the &man.mac.bsdextended.4; and the &man.ugidfw.8; manual pages. The MAC ifoff Module MAC Interface Silencing Policy Module name: mac_ifoff.ko Kernel configuration line: options MAC_IFOFF Boot option: mac_ifoff_load="YES" The &man.mac.ifoff.4; module exists solely to disable network interfaces on the fly and keep network interfaces from being brought up during the initial system boot. It does not require any labels to be set up on the system, nor does it have a dependency on other MAC modules. Most of the control is done through the sysctl tunables listed below. security.mac.ifoff.lo_enabled will enable/disable all traffic on the loopback (&man.lo.4;) interface. security.mac.ifoff.bpfrecv_enabled will enable/disable all traffic on the Berkeley Packet Filter interface (&man.bpf.4;) security.mac.ifoff.other_enabled will enable/disable traffic on all other interfaces. One of the most common uses of &man.mac.ifoff.4; is network monitoring in an environment where network traffic should not be permitted during the boot sequence. Another suggested use would be to write a script which uses security/aide to automatically block network traffic if it finds new or altered files in protected directories. The MAC portacl Module MAC Port Access Control List Policy Module name: mac_portacl.ko Kernel configuration line: MAC_PORTACL Boot option: mac_portacl_load="YES" The &man.mac.portacl.4; module is used to limit binding to local TCP and UDP ports using a variety of sysctl variables. In essence &man.mac.portacl.4; makes it possible to allow non-root users to bind to specified privileged ports, i.e. ports fewer than 1024. Once loaded, this module will enable the MAC policy on all sockets. The following tunables are available: security.mac.portacl.enabled will enable/disable the policy completely.Due to a bug the security.mac.portacl.enabled sysctl variable will not work on &os; 5.2 or previous releases. security.mac.portacl.port_high will set the highest port number that &man.mac.portacl.4; will enable protection for. security.mac.portacl.suser_exempt will, when set to a non-zero value, exempt the root user from this policy. security.mac.portacl.rules will specify the actual mac_portacl policy; see below. The actual mac_portacl policy, as specified in the security.mac.portacl.rules sysctl, is a text string of the form: rule[,rule,...] with as many rules as needed. Each rule is of the form: idtype:id:protocol:port. The idtype parameter can be uid or gid and used to interpret the id parameter as either a user id or group id, respectively. The protocol parameter is used to determine if the rule should apply to TCP or UDP by setting the parameter to tcp or udp. The final port parameter is the port number to allow the specified user or group to bind to. Since the ruleset is interpreted directly by the kernel only numeric values can be used for the user ID, group ID, and port parameters. I.e. user, group, and port service names cannot be used. By default, on &unix;-like systems, ports fewer than 1024 can only be used by/bound to privileged processes, i.e. those run as root. For &man.mac.portacl.4; to allow non-privileged processes to bind to ports below 1024 this standard &unix; restriction has to be disabled. This can be accomplished by setting the &man.sysctl.8; variables net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedlow and net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedhigh to zero. See the examples below or review the &man.mac.portacl.4; manual page for further information. Examples The following examples should illuminate the above discussion a little better: &prompt.root; sysctl security.mac.portacl.port_high=1023 &prompt.root; sysctl net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedlow=0 net.inet.ip.portrange.reservedhigh=0 First we set &man.mac.portacl.4; to cover the standard privileged ports and disable the normal &unix; bind restrictions. &prompt.root; sysctl security.mac.portacl.suser_exempt=1 The root user should not be crippled by this policy, thus set the security.mac.portacl.suser_exempt to a non-zero value. The &man.mac.portacl.4; module has now been set up to behave the same way &unix;-like systems behave by default. &prompt.root; sysctl security.mac.portacl.rules=uid:80:tcp:80 Allow the user with UID 80 (normally the www user) to bind to port 80. This can be used to allow the www user to run a web server without ever having root privilege. &prompt.root; sysctl security.mac.portacl.rules=uid:1001:tcp:110,uid:1001:tcp:995 Permit the user with the UID of 1001 to bind to the TCP ports 110 (pop3) and 995 (pop3s). This will permit this user to start a server that accepts connections on ports 110 and 995. MAC Policies with Labeling Features The next few sections will discuss MAC policies which use labels. From here on this chapter will focus on the features of &man.mac.biba.4;, &man.mac.lomac.4;, &man.mac.partition.4;, and &man.mac.mls.4;. This is an example configuration only and should not be considered for a production implementation. The goal is to document and show the syntax as well as examples for implementation and testing. For these policies to work correctly several preparations must be made. Preparation for Labeling Policies The following changes are required in the login.conf file: An insecure class, or another class of similar type, must be added. The login class of insecure is not required and just used as an example here; different configurations may use another class name. The insecure class should have the following settings and definitions. Several of these can be altered but the line which defines the default label is a requirement and must remain. insecure:\ :copyright=/etc/COPYRIGHT:\ :welcome=/etc/motd:\ :setenv=MAIL=/var/mail/$,BLOCKSIZE=K:\ :path=~/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:\ :manpath=/usr/share/man /usr/local/man:\ :nologin=/usr/sbin/nologin:\ :cputime=1h30m:\ :datasize=8M:\ :vmemoryuse=100M:\ :stacksize=2M:\ :memorylocked=4M:\ :memoryuse=8M:\ :filesize=8M:\ :coredumpsize=8M:\ :openfiles=24:\ :maxproc=32:\ :priority=0:\ :requirehome:\ :passwordtime=91d:\ :umask=022:\ :ignoretime@:\ :label=partition/13,mls/5,biba/low: The &man.cap.mkdb.1; command needs to be ran on &man.login.conf.5; before any of the users can be switched over to the new class. The root should also be placed into a login class; otherwise, almost every command executed by root will require the use of setpmac. Rebuilding the login.conf database may cause some errors later with the daemon class. Simply uncommenting the daemon account and rebuilding the database should alleviate these issues. Ensure that all partitions on which MAC labeling will be implemented support the . We must do this because many of the examples here contain different labels for testing purposes. Review the output from the mount command as a precautionary measure. Switch any users who will have the higher security mechanisms enforced over to the new user class. A quick run of &man.pw.8; or &man.vipw.8; should do the trick. The MAC partition Module MAC Process Partition Policy Module name: mac_partition.ko Kernel configuration line: options MAC_PARTITION Boot option: mac_partition_load="YES" The &man.mac.partition.4; policy will drop processes into specific partitions based on their MAC label. Think of it as a special type of &man.jail.8;, though that is hardly a worthy comparison. This is one module that should be added to the &man.loader.conf.5; file so that it loads and enables the policy during the boot process. Most configuration for this policy is done using the &man.setpmac.8; utility which will be explained below. The following sysctl tunable is available for this policy: security.mac.partition.enabled will enable the enforcement of MAC process partitions. When this policy is enabled, users will only be permitted to see their processes but will not be permitted to work with certain utilities. For instance, a user in the insecure class above will not be permitted to access the top command as well as many other commands that must spawn a process. To set or drop utilities into a partition label, use the setpmac utility: &prompt.root; setpmac partition/13 top This will add the top command to the label set on users in the insecure class. Note that all processes spawned by users in the insecure class will stay in the partition/13 label. Examples The following command will show you the partition label and the process list: &prompt.root; ps Zax This next command will allow the viewing of another user's process partition label and that user's currently running processes: &prompt.root; ps -ZU trhodes Users can see processes in root's label unless the &man.mac.seeotheruids.4; policy is loaded. A really crafty implementation could have all of the services disabled in /etc/rc.conf and started by a script that starts them with the proper labeling set. The following policies support integer settings in place of the three default labels offered. These options, including their limitations, are further explained in the module manual pages. The MAC Multi-Level Security Module MAC Multi-Level Security Policy Module name: mac_mls.ko Kernel configuration line: options MAC_MLS Boot option: mac_mls_load="YES" The &man.mac.mls.4; policy controls access between subjects and objects in the system by enforcing a strict information flow policy. In MLS environments, a clearance level is set in each subject or objects label, along with compartments. Since these clearance or sensibility levels can reach numbers greater than six thousand; it would be a daunting task for any system administrator to thoroughly configure each subject or object. Thankfully, three instant labels are already included in this policy. These labels are mls/low, mls/equal and mls/high. Since these labels are described in depth in the manual page, they will only get a brief description here: The mls/low label contains a low configuration which permits it to be dominated by all other objects. Anything labeled with mls/low will have a low clearance level and not be permitted to access information of a higher level. In addition, this label will prevent objects of a higher clearance level from writing or passing information on to them. The mls/equal label should be placed on objects considered to be exempt from the policy. The mls/high label is the highest level of clearance possible. Objects assigned this label will hold dominance over all other objects in the system; however, they will not permit the leaking of information to objects of a lower class. MLS provides for: A hierarchical security level with a set of non hierarchical categories; Fixed rules: no read up, no write down (a subject can have read access to objects on its own level or below, but not above. Similarly, a subject can have write access to objects on its own level or above but not beneath.); Secrecy (preventing inappropriate disclosure of data); Basis for the design of systems that concurrently handle data at multiple sensitivity levels (without leaking information between secret and confidential). The following sysctl tunables are available for the configuration of special services and interfaces: security.mac.mls.enabled is used to enable/disable the MLS policy. security.mac.mls.ptys_equal will label all &man.pty.4; devices as mls/equal during creation. security.mac.mls.revocation_enabled is used to revoke access to objects after their label changes to a label of a lower grade. security.mac.mls.max_compartments is used to set the maximum number of compartment levels with objects; basically the maximum compartment number allowed on a system. To manipulate the MLS labels, the &man.setfmac.8; command has been provided. To assign a label to an object, issue the following command: &prompt.root; setfmac mls/5 test To get the MLS label for the file test issue the following command: &prompt.root; getfmac test This is a summary of the MLS policy's features. Another approach is to create a master policy file in /etc which specifies the MLS policy information and to feed that file into the setfmac command. This method will be explained after all policies are covered. Observations: an object with lower clearance is unable to observe higher clearance processes. A basic policy would be to enforce mls/high on everything not to be read, even if it needs to be written. Enforce mls/low on everything not to be written, even if it needs to be read. And finally enforce mls/equal on the rest. All users marked insecure should be set at mls/low. The MAC Biba Module MAC Biba Integrity Policy Module name: mac_biba.ko Kernel configuration line: options MAC_BIBA Boot option: mac_biba_load="YES" The &man.mac.biba.4; module loads the MAC Biba policy. This policy works much like that of the MLS policy with the exception that the rules for information flow are slightly reversed. This is said to prevent the downward flow of sensitive information whereas the MLS policy prevents the upward flow of sensitive information; thus, much of this section can apply to both policies. In Biba environments, an integrity label is set on each subject or object. These labels are made up of hierarchal grades, and non-hierarchal components. As an object's or subject's grade ascends, so does its integrity. Supported labels are biba/low, biba/equal, and biba/high; as explained below: The biba/low label is considered the lowest integrity an object or subject may have. Setting this on objects or subjects will block their write access to objects or subjects marked high. They still have read access though. The biba/equal label should only be placed on objects considered to be exempt from the policy. The biba/high label will permit writing to objects set at a lower label but not permit reading that object. It is recommended that this label be placed on objects that affect the integrity of the entire system. Biba provides for: Hierarchical integrity level with a set of non hierarchical integrity categories; Fixed rules: no write up, no read down (opposite of MLS). A subject can have write access to objects on its own level but not above. Similarly, a subject can have read access to objects on its own level above but not below; Integrity (preventing inappropriate modification of data); Integrity levels (instead of MLS sensitivity levels). The following sysctl tunables can be used to manipulate the Biba policy. security.mac.biba.enabled may be used to enable/disable enforcement of the Biba policy on the target machine. security.mac.biba.ptys_equal may be used to disable the Biba policy on &man.pty.4; devices. security.mac.biba.revocation_enabled will force the revocation of access to objects if the label is changed to dominate the subject. To access the Biba policy setting on system objects, use the setfmac and getfmac commands: &prompt.root; setfmac biba/low test &prompt.root; getfmac test test: biba/low Observations: a lower integrity subject is unable to write to a higher integrity subject; a higher integrity subject cannot observe or read a lower integrity object. The MAC LOMAC Module MAC LOMAC Module name: mac_lomac.ko Kernel configuration line: options MAC_LOMAC Boot option: mac_lomac_load="YES" Unlike the MAC Biba policy, the &man.mac.lomac.4; policy permits access to lower integrity objects only after decreasing the integrity level to not disrupt any integrity rules. The MAC version of the Low-watermark integrity policy, not to be confused with the older &man.lomac.4; implementation, works almost identically to Biba but with the exception of using floating labels to support subject demotion via an auxiliary grade compartment. This secondary compartment takes the form of [auxgrade]. When assigning a lomac policy with an auxiliary grade, it should look a little bit like: lomac/10[2] where the number two (2) is the auxiliary grade. The MAC LOMAC policy relies on the ubiquitous labeling of all system objects with integrity labels, permitting subjects to read from low integrity objects and then downgrading the label on the subject to prevent future writes to high integrity objects. This is the [auxgrade] option discussed above, thus the policy may provide for greater compatibility and require less initial configuration than Biba. Examples Like the Biba and MLS policies; the setfmac and setpmac utilities may be used to place labels on system objects: &prompt.root; setfmac /usr/home/trhodes lomac/high[low] &prompt.root; getfmac /usr/home/trhodes lomac/high[low] Notice the auxiliary grade here is low, this is a feature provided only by the MAC LOMAC policy. Implementing a Secure Environment with MAC MAC Example Implementation The following demonstration will implement a secure environment using various MAC modules with properly configured policies. This is only a test and should not be considered the complete answer to everyone's security woes. Just implementing a policy and ignoring it never works and could be disastrous in a production environment. Before beginning this process, the multilabel option must be set on each file system as stated at the beginning of this chapter. Not doing so will result in errors. Create an insecure User Class Begin the procedure by adding the following user class to the /etc/login.conf file: insecure:\ :copyright=/etc/COPYRIGHT:\ :welcome=/etc/motd:\ :setenv=MAIL=/var/mail/$,BLOCKSIZE=K:\ :path=~/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin :manpath=/usr/share/man /usr/local/man:\ :nologin=/usr/sbin/nologin:\ :cputime=1h30m:\ :datasize=8M:\ :vmemoryuse=100M:\ :stacksize=2M:\ :memorylocked=4M:\ :memoryuse=8M:\ :filesize=8M:\ :coredumpsize=8M:\ :openfiles=24:\ :maxproc=32:\ :priority=0:\ :requirehome:\ :passwordtime=91d:\ :umask=022:\ :ignoretime@:\ :label=partition/13,mls/5: And adding the following line to the default user class: :label=mls/equal,biba/equal,partition/equal: Once this is completed, the following command must be issued to rebuild the database: &prompt.root; cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf Boot with the Correct Modules Add the following lines to /boot/loader.conf so the required modules will load during system initialization: mac_biba_load="YES" mac_mls_load="YES" mac_seeotheruids_load="YES" mac_partition_load="YES" Set All Users to Insecure All user accounts that are not root or system users will now require a login class. The login class is required otherwise users will be refused access to common commands such as &man.vi.1;. The following sh script should do the trick: &prompt.root; for x in `awk -F: '($3 >= 1001) && ($3 != 65534) { print $1 }' \ /etc/passwd`; do pw usermod $x -L insecure; done; The cap_mkdb command will need to be run on /etc/master.passwd after this change. Complete the Configuration A contexts file should now be created; the following example was taken from Robert Watson's example policy and should be placed in /etc/policy.contexts. # This is the default BIBA/MLS policy for this system. .* biba/high,mls/high /sbin/dhclient biba/high(low),mls/high(low) /dev(/.*)? biba/equal,mls/equal # This is not an exhaustive list of all "privileged" devices. /dev/mdctl biba/high,mls/high /dev/pci biba/high,mls/high /dev/k?mem biba/high,mls/high /dev/io biba/high,mls/high /dev/agp.* biba/high,mls/high (/var)?/tmp(/.*)? biba/equal,mls/equal /tmp/\.X11-unix biba/high(equal),mls/high(equal) /tmp/\.X11-unix/.* biba/equal,mls/equal /proc(/.*)? biba/equal,mls/equal /mnt.* biba/low,mls/low (/usr)?/home biba/high(low),mls/high(low) (/usr)?/home/.* biba/low,mls/low /var/mail(/.*)? biba/low,mls/low /var/spool/mqueue(/.*)? biba/low,mls/low (/mnt)?/cdrom(/.*)? biba/high,mls/high (/usr)?/home/(ftp|samba)(/.*)? biba/high,mls/high /var/log/sendmail\.st biba/low,mls/low /var/run/utmp biba/equal,mls/equal /var/log/(lastlog|wtmp) biba/equal,mls/equal This policy will enforce security by setting restrictions on both the downward and upward flow of information with regards to the directories and utilities listed on the left. This can now be read into our system by issuing the following command: &prompt.root; setfsmac -ef /etc/policy.contexts / &prompt.root; setfsmac -ef /etc/policy.contexts /usr The above file system layout may be different depending on environment. The /etc/mac.conf file requires the following modifications in the main section: default_labels file ?biba,?mls default_labels ifnet ?biba,?mls default_labels process ?biba,?mls,?partition default_labels socket ?biba,?mls Testing the Configuration MAC Configuration Testing Add a user with the adduser command and place that user in the insecure class for these tests. The examples below will show a mix of root and regular user tests; use the prompt to distinguish between the two. Basic Labeling Tests &prompt.user; getpmac biba/15(15-15),mls/15(15-15),partition/15 &prompt.root; setpmac partition/15,mls/equal top The top process will be killed before we start another top process. MAC Seeotheruids Tests &prompt.user; ps Zax biba/15(15-15),mls/15(15-15),partition/15 1096 #C: S 0:00.03 -su (bash) biba/15(15-15),mls/15(15-15),partition/15 1101 #C: R+ 0:00.01 ps Zax We should not be permitted to see any processes owned by other users. MAC Partition Test Disable the MAC seeotheruids policy for the rest of these tests: &prompt.root; sysctl security.mac.seeotheruids.enabled=0 &prompt.user; ps Zax LABEL PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND biba/equal(low-high),mls/equal(low-high),partition/15 1122 #C: S+ 0:00.02 top biba/15(15-15),mls/15(15-15),partition/15 1096 #C: S 0:00.05 -su (bash) biba/15(15-15),mls/15(15-15),partition/15 1123 #C: R+ 0:00.01 ps Zax All users should be permitted to see every process in their partition. Testing Biba and MLS Labels &prompt.root; setpmac partition/15,mls/equal,biba/high\(high-high\) top &prompt.user; ps Zax LABEL PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND biba/high(high-high),mls/equal(low-high),partition/15 1251 #C: S+ 0:00.02 top biba/15(15-15),mls/15(15-15),partition/15 1096 #C: S 0:00.06 -su (bash) biba/15(15-15),mls/15(15-15),partition/15 1157 #C: R+ 0:00.00 ps Zax The Biba policy allows us to read higher-labeled objects. &prompt.root; setpmac partition/15,mls/equal,biba/low top &prompt.user; ps Zax LABEL PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND biba/15(15-15),mls/15(15-15),partition/15 1096 #C: S 0:00.07 -su (bash) biba/15(15-15),mls/15(15-15),partition/15 1226 #C: R+ 0:00.01 ps Zax The Biba policy does not allow lower-labeled objects to be read; however, MLS does. &prompt.user; ifconfig bge0 | grep maclabel maclabel biba/low(low-low),mls/low(low-low) &prompt.user; ping -c 1 192.0.34.166 PING 192.0.34.166 (192.0.34.166): 56 data bytes ping: sendto: Permission denied Users are unable to ping example.com, or any domain for that matter. To prevent this error from occurring, run the following command: &prompt.root; sysctl security.mac.biba.trust_all_interfaces=1 This sets the default interface label to insecure mode, so the default Biba policy label will not be enforced. &prompt.root; ifconfig bge0 maclabel biba/equal\(low-high\),mls/equal\(low-high\) &prompt.user; ping -c 1 192.0.34.166 PING 192.0.34.166 (192.0.34.166): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 192.0.34.166: icmp_seq=0 ttl=50 time=204.455 ms --- 192.0.34.166 ping statistics --- 1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 204.455/204.455/204.455/0.000 ms By setting a more correct label, we can issue ping requests. Now to create a few files for some read and write testing procedures: &prompt.root; touch test1 test2 test3 test4 test5 &prompt.root; getfmac test1 test1: biba/equal,mls/equal &prompt.root; setfmac biba/low test1 test2; setfmac biba/high test4 test5; \ setfmac mls/low test1 test3; setfmac mls/high test2 test4 &prompt.root; setfmac mls/equal,biba/equal test3 && getfmac test? test1: biba/low,mls/low test2: biba/low,mls/high test3: biba/equal,mls/equal test4: biba/high,mls/high test5: biba/high,mls/equal &prompt.root; chown testuser:testuser test? All of these files should now be owned by our testuser user. And now for some read tests: &prompt.user; ls test1 test2 test3 test4 test5 &prompt.user; ls test? ls: test1: Permission denied ls: test2: Permission denied ls: test4: Permission denied test3 test5 We should not be permitted to observe pairs; e.g.: (biba/low,mls/low), (biba/low,mls/high) and (biba/high,mls/high). And of course, read access should be denied. Now for some write tests: &prompt.user; for i in `echo test*`; do echo 1 > $i; done -su: test1: Permission denied -su: test4: Permission denied -su: test5: Permission denied Like with the read tests, write access should not be permitted to write pairs; e.g.: (biba/low,mls/high) and (biba/equal,mls/equal). &prompt.user; cat test? cat: test1: Permission denied cat: test2: Permission denied 1 cat: test4: Permission denied And now as root: &prompt.root; cat test2 1 Another Example: Using MAC to Constrain a Web Server A separate location for the web data which users must be capable of accessing will be appointed. This will permit biba/high processes access rights to the web data. Begin by creating a directory to store the web data in: &prompt.root; mkdir /usr/home/cvs Now initialize it with cvs: &prompt.root; cvs -d /usr/home/cvs init The first goal is to enable the biba policy, thus the mac_biba_enable="YES" should be placed in /boot/loader.conf. This assumes that support for MAC has been enabled in the kernel. From this point on everything in the system should be set at biba/high by default. The following modification must be made to the login.conf file, under the default user class: :ignoretime@:\ :umask=022:\ :label=biba/high: Every user should now be placed in the default class; a command such as: &prompt.root; for x in `awk -F: '($3 >= 1001) && ($3 != 65534) { print $1 }' \ /etc/passwd`; do pw usermod $x -L default; done; will accomplish this task in a few moments. Now create another class, web, a copy of default, - with the label setting of biba/low. + with the label setting of biba/low. Create a user who will be used to work with the main web data stored in a cvs repository. This user must be placed in our new login class, web. Since the default is biba/high everywhere, the repository will be the same. The web data must also be the same for users to have read/write access to it; however, since our web server will be serving data that biba/high users must access, we will need to downgrade the data as a whole. The perfect tools for this are &man.sh.1; and &man.cron.8; and are already provided in &os;. The following script should do everything we want: PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin; export PATH; CVSROOT=/home/repo; export CVSROOT; cd /home/web; cvs -qR checkout -P htdocs; exit; In many cases the cvs ID tags must be placed into the web site data files. This script may now be placed into web's home directory and the following &man.crontab.1; entry added: # Check out the web data as biba/low every twelve hours: * 12 * * * web /home/web/checkout.sh This will check out the HTML sources every twelve hours on the machine. The default startup method for the web server must also be modified to start the process as biba/low. This can be done by making the following modification to the /usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache.sh script: command="setpmac biba/low /usr/local/sbin/httpd" The Apache configuration must be altered to work with the biba/low policy. In this case the software must be configured to append to the log files in a directory set at biba/low or else access denied errors will be returned. Following this example requires that the docroot directive be set to /home/web/htdocs; otherwise, Apache will fail when trying to locate the directory to serve documents from. Other configuration variables must be altered as well, including the PID file, Scoreboardfile, DocumentRoot, log file locations, or any other variable which requires write access. When using biba, all write access will be denied to the server in areas not set at biba/low. An Example of a MAC Sandbox An example of placing users in a sandbox using MAC should go here. Troubleshooting the MAC Framework MAC Troubleshooting During the development stage, a few users reported problems with normal configuration. Some of these problems are listed below: The <option>multilabel</option> option cannot be enabled on <filename>/</filename> The flag does not stay enabled on my root (/) partition! It seems that one out of every fifty users has this problem, indeed, we had this problem during our initial configuration. Further observation of this so called bug has lead me to believe that it is a result of either incorrect documentation or misinterpretation of the documentation. Regardless of why it happened, the following steps may be taken to resolve it: Edit /etc/fstab and set the root partition at for read-only. Reboot into single user mode. Run tunefs on /. Reboot the system into normal mode. Run mount / and change the back to in /etc/fstab and reboot the system again. Double-check the output from the mount to ensure that has been properly set on the root file system. Cannot start &xfree86; after <acronym>MAC</acronym> After establishing a secure environment with MAC, I am no longer able to start &xfree86;! This could be caused by the MAC partition policy or by a mislabeling in one of the MAC labeling policies. To debug, try the following: Check the error message; if the user is in the insecure class, the partition policy may be the culprit. Try setting the user's class back to the default class and rebuild the database with the cap_mkdb command. If this does not alleviate the problem, go to step two. Double-check the label policies. Ensure that the policies are set correctly for the user in question, the &xfree86; application, and the /dev entries. If neither of these resolve the problem, send the error message and a description of your environment to the TrustedBSD discussion lists located at the TrustedBSD website or to the &a.questions; mailing list. diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail/chapter.sgml index da8964413e..bf94061505 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mail/chapter.sgml @@ -1,2295 +1,2295 @@ Bill Lloyd Original work by Jim Mock Rewritten by Electronic Mail Synopsis email electronic mail Electronic Mail, better known as email, is one of the most widely used forms of communication today. This chapter provides a basic introduction to running a mail server on &os;, as well as an introduction to sending and receiving email using &os;; however, it is not a complete reference and in fact many important considerations are omitted. For more complete coverage of the subject, the reader is referred to the many excellent books listed in . After reading this chapter, you will know: What software components are involved in sending and receiving electronic mail. Where basic sendmail configuration files are located in FreeBSD. The difference between remote and local mailboxes. How to block spammers from illegally using your mail server as a relay. How to install and configure an alternate Mail Transfer Agent on your system, replacing sendmail. How to troubleshoot common mail server problems. How to use SMTP with UUCP. How to set up the system to send mail only. How to use mail with a dialup connection. How to configure SMTP Authentication for added security. How to install and use a Mail User Agent, such as mutt to send and receive email. How to download your mail from a remote POP or IMAP server. How to automatically apply filters and rules to incoming email. Before reading this chapter, you should: Properly set up your network connection (). Properly set up the DNS information for your mail host (). Know how to install additional third-party software (). Using Electronic Mail POP IMAP DNS There are five major parts involved in an email exchange. They are: the user program, the server daemon, DNS, a remote or local mailbox, and of course, the mailhost itself. The User Program This includes command line programs such as mutt, pine, elm, and mail, and GUI programs such as balsa, xfmail to name a few, and something more sophisticated like a WWW browser. These programs simply pass off the email transactions to the local mailhost, either by calling one of the server daemons available, or delivering it over TCP. Mailhost Server Daemon mail server daemons sendmail mail server daemons postfix mail server daemons qmail mail server daemons exim &os; ships with sendmail by default, but also support numerous other mail server daemons, just some of which include: exim; postfix; qmail. The server daemon usually has two functions—it is responsible for receiving incoming mail as well as delivering outgoing mail. It is not responsible for the collection of mail using protocols such as POP or IMAP to read your email, nor does it allow connecting to local mbox or Maildir mailboxes. You may require an additional daemon for that. Older versions of sendmail have some serious security issues which may result in an attacker gaining local and/or remote access to your machine. Make sure that you are running a current version to avoid these problems. Optionally, install an alternative MTA from the &os; Ports Collection. Email and DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) and its daemon named play a large role in the delivery of email. In order to deliver mail from your site to another, the server daemon will look up the remote site in the DNS to determine the host that will receive mail for the destination. This process also occurs when mail is sent from a remote host to your mail server. MX record DNS is responsible for mapping hostnames to IP addresses, as well as for storing information specific to mail delivery, known as MX records. The MX (Mail eXchanger) record specifies which host, or hosts, will receive mail for a particular domain. If you do not have an MX record for your hostname or domain, the mail will be delivered directly to your host provided you have an A record pointing your hostname to your IP address. You may view the MX records for any domain by using the &man.host.1; command, as seen in the example below: &prompt.user; host -t mx FreeBSD.org FreeBSD.org mail is handled (pri=10) by mx1.FreeBSD.org Receiving Mail email receiving Receiving mail for your domain is done by the mail host. It will collect all mail sent to your domain and store it either in mbox (the default method for storing mail) or Maildir format, depending on your configuration. Once mail has been stored, it may either be read locally using applications such as &man.mail.1; or mutt, or remotely accessed and collected using protocols such as POP or IMAP. This means that should you only wish to read mail locally, you are not required to install a POP or IMAP server. Accessing remote mailboxes using <acronym>POP</acronym> and <acronym>IMAP</acronym> POP IMAP In order to access mailboxes remotely, you are required to have access to a POP or IMAP server. These protocols allow users to connect to their mailboxes from remote locations with ease. Though both POP and IMAP allow users to remotely access mailboxes, IMAP offers many advantages, some of which are: IMAP can store messages on a remote - server as well as fetch them. + server as well as fetch them. IMAP supports concurrent updates. IMAP can be extremely useful over low-speed links as it allows users to fetch the structure of messages without downloading them; it can also perform tasks such as searching on the server in order to minimize data transfer between clients and servers. In order to install a POP or IMAP server, the following steps should be performed: Choose an IMAP or POP server that best suits your needs. The following POP and IMAP servers are well known and serve as some good examples: qpopper; teapop; imap-uw; courier-imap; Install the POP or IMAP daemon of your choosing from the ports collection. Where required, modify /etc/inetd.conf to load the POP or IMAP server. It should be noted that both POP and IMAP transmit information, including username and password credentials in clear-text. This means that if you wish to secure the transmission of information across these protocols, you should consider tunneling sessions over &man.ssh.1;. Tunneling sessions is described in . Accessing local mailboxes Mailboxes may be accessed locally by directly utilizing MUAs on the server on which the mailbox resides. This can be done using applications such as mutt or &man.mail.1;. The Mail Host mail host The mail host is the name given to a server that is responsible for delivering and receiving mail for your host, and possibly your network. Christopher Shumway Contributed by <application>sendmail</application> Configuration sendmail &man.sendmail.8; is the default Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) in FreeBSD. sendmail's job is to accept mail from Mail User Agents (MUA) and deliver it to the appropriate mailer as defined by its configuration file. sendmail can also accept network connections and deliver mail to local mailboxes or deliver it to another program. sendmail uses the following configuration files: /etc/mail/access /etc/mail/aliases /etc/mail/local-host-names /etc/mail/mailer.conf /etc/mail/mailertable /etc/mail/sendmail.cf /etc/mail/virtusertable Filename Function /etc/mail/access sendmail access database file /etc/mail/aliases Mailbox aliases /etc/mail/local-host-names Lists of hosts sendmail accepts mail for /etc/mail/mailer.conf Mailer program configuration /etc/mail/mailertable Mailer delivery table /etc/mail/sendmail.cf sendmail master configuration file /etc/mail/virtusertable Virtual users and domain tables <filename>/etc/mail/access</filename> The access database defines what host(s) or IP addresses have access to the local mail server and what kind of access they have. Hosts can be listed as , , or simply passed to sendmail's error handling routine with a given mailer error. Hosts that are listed as , which is the default, are allowed to send mail to this host as long as the mail's final destination is the local machine. Hosts that are listed as are rejected for all mail connections. Hosts that have the option for their hostname are allowed to send mail for any destination through this mail server. Configuring the <application>sendmail</application> Access Database cyberspammer.com 550 We don't accept mail from spammers FREE.STEALTH.MAILER@ 550 We don't accept mail from spammers another.source.of.spam REJECT okay.cyberspammer.com OK 128.32 RELAY In this example we have five entries. Mail senders that match the left hand side of the table are affected by the action on the right side of the table. The first two examples give an error code to sendmail's error handling routine. The message is printed to the remote host when a mail matches the left hand side of the table. The next entry rejects mail from a specific host on the Internet, another.source.of.spam. The next entry accepts mail connections from a host okay.cyberspammer.com, which is more exact than the cyberspammer.com line above. More specific matches override less exact matches. The last entry allows relaying of electronic mail from hosts with an IP address that begins with 128.32. These hosts would be able to send mail through this mail server that are destined for other mail servers. When this file is updated, you need to run make in /etc/mail/ to update the database. <filename>/etc/mail/aliases</filename> The aliases database contains a list of virtual mailboxes that are expanded to other user(s), files, programs or other aliases. Here are a few examples that can be used in /etc/mail/aliases: Mail Aliases root: localuser ftp-bugs: joe,eric,paul bit.bucket: /dev/null procmail: "|/usr/local/bin/procmail" The file format is simple; the mailbox name on the left side of the colon is expanded to the target(s) on the right. The first example simply expands the mailbox root to the mailbox localuser, which is then looked up again in the aliases database. If no match is found, then the message is delivered to the local user localuser. The next example shows a mail list. Mail to the mailbox ftp-bugs is expanded to the three local mailboxes joe, eric, and paul. Note that a remote mailbox could be specified as user@example.com. The next example shows writing mail to a file, in this case /dev/null. The last example shows sending mail to a program, in this case the mail message is written to the standard input of /usr/local/bin/procmail through a &unix; pipe. When this file is updated, you need to run make in /etc/mail/ to update the database. <filename>/etc/mail/local-host-names</filename> This is a list of hostnames &man.sendmail.8; is to accept as the local host name. Place any domains or hosts that sendmail is to be receiving mail for. For example, if this mail server was to accept mail for the domain example.com and the host mail.example.com, its local-host-names might look something like this: example.com mail.example.com When this file is updated, &man.sendmail.8; needs to be restarted to read the changes. <filename>/etc/mail/sendmail.cf</filename> sendmail's master configuration file, sendmail.cf controls the overall behavior of sendmail, including everything from rewriting e-mail addresses to printing rejection messages to remote mail servers. Naturally, with such a diverse role, this configuration file is quite complex and its details are a bit out of the scope of this section. Fortunately, this file rarely needs to be changed for standard mail servers. The master sendmail configuration file can be built from &man.m4.1; macros that define the features and behavior of sendmail. Please see /usr/src/contrib/sendmail/cf/README for some of the details. When changes to this file are made, sendmail needs to be restarted for the changes to take effect. <filename>/etc/mail/virtusertable</filename> The virtusertable maps mail addresses for virtual domains and mailboxes to real mailboxes. These mailboxes can be local, remote, aliases defined in /etc/mail/aliases or files. Example Virtual Domain Mail Map root@example.com root postmaster@example.com postmaster@noc.example.net @example.com joe In the above example, we have a mapping for a domain example.com. This file is processed in a first match order down the file. The first item maps root@example.com to the local mailbox root. The next entry maps postmaster@example.com to the mailbox postmaster on the host noc.example.net. Finally, if nothing from example.com has matched so far, it will match the last mapping, which matches every other mail message addressed to someone at example.com. This will be mapped to the local mailbox joe. Andrew Boothman Written by Gregory Neil Shapiro Information taken from e-mails written by Changing Your Mail Transfer Agent email change mta As already mentioned, FreeBSD comes with sendmail already installed as your MTA (Mail Transfer Agent). Therefore by default it is in charge of your outgoing and incoming mail. However, for a variety of reasons, some system administrators want to change their system's MTA. These reasons range from simply wanting to try out another MTA to needing a specific feature or package which relies on another mailer. Fortunately, whatever the reason, FreeBSD makes it easy to make the change. Install a New MTA You have a wide choice of MTAs available. A good starting point is the FreeBSD Ports Collection where you will be able to find many. Of course you are free to use any MTA you want from any location, as long as you can make it run under FreeBSD. Start by installing your new MTA. Once it is installed it gives you a chance to decide if it really fulfills your needs, and also gives you the opportunity to configure your new software before getting it to take over from sendmail. When doing this, you should be sure that installing the new software will not attempt to overwrite system binaries such as /usr/bin/sendmail. Otherwise, your new mail software has essentially been put into service before you have configured it. Please refer to your chosen MTA's documentation for information on how to configure the software you have chosen. Disable <application>sendmail</application> The procedure used to start sendmail changed significantly between 4.5-RELEASE and 4.6-RELEASE. Therefore, the procedure used to disable it is subtly different. FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE before 2002/4/4 and Earlier (Including 4.5-RELEASE and Earlier) Enter: sendmail_enable="NO" into /etc/rc.conf. This will disable sendmail's incoming mail service, but if /etc/mail/mailer.conf (see below) is not changed, sendmail will still be used to send e-mail. FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE after 2002/4/4 (Including 4.6-RELEASE and Later) In order to completely disable sendmail you must use sendmail_enable="NONE" in /etc/rc.conf. If you disable sendmail's outgoing mail service in this way, it is important that you replace it with a fully working alternative mail delivery system. If you choose not to, system functions such as &man.periodic.8; will be unable to deliver their results by e-mail as they would normally expect to. Many parts of your system may expect to have a functional sendmail-compatible system. If applications continue to use sendmail's binaries to try to send e-mail after you have disabled them, mail could go into an inactive sendmail queue, and never be delivered. If you only want to disable sendmail's incoming mail service, you should set sendmail_enable="NO" in /etc/rc.conf. More information on sendmail's startup options is available from the &man.rc.sendmail.8; manual page. Running Your New MTA on Boot You may have a choice of two methods for running your new MTA on boot, again depending on what version of FreeBSD you are running. FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE before 2002/4/11 (Including 4.5-RELEASE and Earlier) Add a script to /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ that ends in .sh and is executable by root. The script should accept start and stop parameters. At startup time the system scripts will execute the command /usr/local/etc/rc.d/supermailer.sh start which you can also use to manually start the server. At shutdown time, the system scripts will use the stop option, running the command /usr/local/etc/rc.d/supermailer.sh stop which you can also use to manually stop the server while the system is running. FreeBSD 4.5-STABLE after 2002/4/11 (Including 4.6-RELEASE and Later) With later versions of FreeBSD, you can use the above method or you can set mta_start_script="filename" in /etc/rc.conf, where filename is the name of some script that you want executed at boot to start your MTA. Replacing <application>sendmail</application> as the System's Default Mailer The program sendmail is so ubiquitous as standard software on &unix; systems that some software just assumes it is already installed and configured. For this reason, many alternative MTA's provide their own compatible implementations of the sendmail command-line interface; this facilitates using them as drop-in replacements for sendmail. Therefore, if you are using an alternative mailer, you will need to make sure that software trying to execute standard sendmail binaries such as /usr/bin/sendmail actually executes your chosen mailer instead. Fortunately, FreeBSD provides a system called &man.mailwrapper.8; that does this job for you. When sendmail is operating as installed, you will find something like the following in /etc/mail/mailer.conf: sendmail /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail send-mail /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail mailq /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail newaliases /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail hoststat /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail purgestat /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail This means that when any of these common commands (such as sendmail itself) are run, the system actually invokes a copy of mailwrapper named sendmail, which checks mailer.conf and executes /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail instead. This system makes it easy to change what binaries are actually executed when these default sendmail functions are invoked. Therefore if you wanted /usr/local/supermailer/bin/sendmail-compat to be run instead of sendmail, you could change /etc/mail/mailer.conf to read: sendmail /usr/local/supermailer/bin/sendmail-compat send-mail /usr/local/supermailer/bin/sendmail-compat mailq /usr/local/supermailer/bin/mailq-compat newaliases /usr/local/supermailer/bin/newaliases-compat hoststat /usr/local/supermailer/bin/hoststat-compat purgestat /usr/local/supermailer/bin/purgestat-compat Finishing Once you have everything configured the way you want it, you should either kill the sendmail processes that you no longer need and start the processes belonging to your new software, or simply reboot. Rebooting will also give you the opportunity to ensure that you have correctly configured your system to start your new MTA automatically on boot. Troubleshooting email troubleshooting Why do I have to use the FQDN for hosts on my site? You will probably find that the host is actually in a different domain; for example, if you are in foo.bar.edu and you wish to reach a host called mumble in the bar.edu domain, you will have to refer to it by the fully-qualified domain name, mumble.bar.edu, instead of just mumble. BIND Traditionally, this was allowed by BSD BIND resolvers. However the current version of BIND that ships with FreeBSD no longer provides default abbreviations for non-fully qualified domain names other than the domain you are in. So an unqualified host mumble must either be found as mumble.foo.bar.edu, or it will be searched for in the root domain. This is different from the previous behavior, where the search continued across mumble.bar.edu, and mumble.edu. Have a look at RFC 1535 for why this was considered bad practice, or even a security hole. As a good workaround, you can place the line: search foo.bar.edu bar.edu instead of the previous: domain foo.bar.edu into your /etc/resolv.conf. However, make sure that the search order does not go beyond the boundary between local and public administration, as RFC 1535 calls it. MX record sendmail says mail loops back to myself This is answered in the sendmail FAQ as follows: I'm getting these error messages: 553 MX list for domain.net points back to relay.domain.net 554 <user@domain.net>... Local configuration error How can I solve this problem? You have asked mail to the domain (e.g., domain.net) to be forwarded to a specific host (in this case, relay.domain.net) by using an MX record, but the relay machine does not recognize itself as domain.net. Add domain.net to /etc/mail/local-host-names [known as /etc/sendmail.cw prior to version 8.10] (if you are using FEATURE(use_cw_file)) or add Cw domain.net to /etc/mail/sendmail.cf. The sendmail FAQ can be found at and is recommended reading if you want to do any tweaking of your mail setup. PPP How can I run a mail server on a dial-up PPP host? You want to connect a FreeBSD box on a LAN to the Internet. The FreeBSD box will be a mail gateway for the LAN. The PPP connection is non-dedicated. UUCP MX record There are at least two ways to do this. One way is to use UUCP. Another way is to get a full-time Internet server to provide secondary MX services for your domain. For example, if your company's domain is example.com and your Internet service provider has set example.net up to provide secondary MX services to your domain: example.com. MX 10 example.com. MX 20 example.net. Only one host should be specified as the final recipient (add Cw example.com in /etc/mail/sendmail.cf on example.com). When the sending sendmail is trying to deliver the mail it will try to connect to you (example.com) over the modem link. It will most likely time out because you are not online. The program sendmail will automatically deliver it to the secondary MX site, i.e. your Internet provider (example.net). The secondary MX site will then periodically try to connect to your host and deliver the mail to the primary MX host (example.com). You might want to use something like this as a login script: #!/bin/sh # Put me in /usr/local/bin/pppmyisp ( sleep 60 ; /usr/sbin/sendmail -q ) & /usr/sbin/ppp -direct pppmyisp If you are going to create a separate login script for a user you could use sendmail -qRexample.com instead in the script above. This will force all mail in your queue for example.com to be processed immediately. A further refinement of the situation is as follows: Message stolen from the &a.isp;. > we provide the secondary MX for a customer. The customer connects to > our services several times a day automatically to get the mails to > his primary MX (We do not call his site when a mail for his domains > arrived). Our sendmail sends the mailqueue every 30 minutes. At the > moment he has to stay 30 minutes online to be sure that all mail is > gone to the primary MX. > > Is there a command that would initiate sendmail to send all the mails > now? The user has not root-privileges on our machine of course. In the privacy flags section of sendmail.cf, there is a definition Opgoaway,restrictqrun Remove restrictqrun to allow non-root users to start the queue processing. You might also like to rearrange the MXs. We are the 1st MX for our customers like this, and we have defined: # If we are the best MX for a host, try directly instead of generating # local config error. OwTrue That way a remote site will deliver straight to you, without trying the customer connection. You then send to your customer. Only works for hosts, so you need to get your customer to name their mail machine customer.com as well as hostname.customer.com in the DNS. Just put an A record in the DNS for customer.com. Why do I keep getting Relaying Denied errors when sending mail from other hosts? In default FreeBSD installations, sendmail is configured to only send mail from the host it is running on. For example, if a POP server is available, then users will be able to check mail from school, work, or other remote locations but they still will not be able to send outgoing emails from outside locations. Typically, a few moments after the attempt, an email will be sent from MAILER-DAEMON with a 5.7 Relaying Denied error message. There are several ways to get around this. The most straightforward solution is to put your ISP's address in a relay-domains file at /etc/mail/relay-domains. A quick way to do this would be: &prompt.root; echo "your.isp.example.com" > /etc/mail/relay-domains After creating or editing this file you must restart sendmail. This works great if you are a server administrator and do not wish to send mail locally, or would like to use a point and click client/system on another machine or even another ISP. It is also very useful if you only have one or two email accounts set up. If there is a large number of addresses to add, you can simply open this file in your favorite text editor and then add the domains, one per line: your.isp.example.com other.isp.example.net users-isp.example.org www.example.org Now any mail sent through your system, by any host in this list (provided the user has an account on your system), will succeed. This is a very nice way to allow users to send mail from your system remotely without allowing people to send SPAM through your system. Advanced Topics The following section covers more involved topics such as mail configuration and setting up mail for your entire domain. Basic Configuration email configuration Out of the box, you should be able to send email to external hosts as long as you have set up /etc/resolv.conf or are running your own name server. If you would like to have mail for your host delivered to the MTA (e.g., sendmail) on your own FreeBSD host, there are two methods: Run your own name server and have your own domain. For example, FreeBSD.org Get mail delivered directly to your host. This is done by delivering mail directly to the current DNS name for your machine. For example, example.FreeBSD.org. SMTP Regardless of which of the above you choose, in order to have mail delivered directly to your host, it must have a permanent static IP address (not a dynamic address, as with most PPP dial-up configurations). If you are behind a firewall, it must pass SMTP traffic on to you. If you want to receive mail directly at your host, you need to be sure of either of two things: MX record Make sure that the (lowest-numbered) MX record in your DNS points to your host's IP address. Make sure there is no MX entry in your DNS for your host. Either of the above will allow you to receive mail directly at your host. Try this: &prompt.root; hostname example.FreeBSD.org &prompt.root; host example.FreeBSD.org example.FreeBSD.org has address 204.216.27.XX If that is what you see, mail directly to yourlogin@example.FreeBSD.org should work without problems (assuming sendmail is running correctly on example.FreeBSD.org). If instead you see something like this: &prompt.root; host example.FreeBSD.org example.FreeBSD.org has address 204.216.27.XX example.FreeBSD.org mail is handled (pri=10) by hub.FreeBSD.org All mail sent to your host (example.FreeBSD.org) will end up being collected on hub under the same username instead of being sent directly to your host. The above information is handled by your DNS server. The DNS record that carries mail routing information is the Mail eXchange entry. If no MX record exists, mail will be delivered directly to the host by way of its IP address. The MX entry for freefall.FreeBSD.org at one time looked like this: freefall MX 30 mail.crl.net freefall MX 40 agora.rdrop.com freefall MX 10 freefall.FreeBSD.org freefall MX 20 who.cdrom.com As you can see, freefall had many MX entries. The lowest MX number is the host that receives mail directly if available; if it is not accessible for some reason, the others (sometimes called backup MXes) accept messages temporarily, and pass it along when a lower-numbered host becomes available, eventually to the lowest-numbered host. Alternate MX sites should have separate Internet connections from your own in order to be most useful. Your ISP or another friendly site should have no problem providing this service for you. Mail for Your Domain In order to set up a mailhost (a.k.a. mail server) you need to have any mail sent to various workstations directed to it. Basically, you want to claim any mail for any hostname in your domain (in this case *.FreeBSD.org) and divert it to your mail server so your users can receive their mail on the master mail server. DNS To make life easiest, a user account with the same username should exist on both machines. Use &man.adduser.8; to do this. The mailhost you will be using must be the designated mail exchanger for each workstation on the network. This is done in your DNS configuration like so: example.FreeBSD.org A 204.216.27.XX ; Workstation MX 10 hub.FreeBSD.org ; Mailhost This will redirect mail for the workstation to the mailhost no matter where the A record points. The mail is sent to the MX host. You cannot do this yourself unless you are running a DNS server. If you are not, or cannot run your own DNS server, talk to your ISP or whoever provides your DNS. If you are doing virtual email hosting, the following information will come in handy. For this example, we will assume you have a customer with his own domain, in this case customer1.org, and you want all the mail for customer1.org sent to your mailhost, mail.myhost.com. The entry in your DNS should look like this: customer1.org MX 10 mail.myhost.com You do not need an A record for customer1.org if you only want to handle email for that domain. Be aware that pinging customer1.org will not work unless an A record exists for it. The last thing that you must do is tell sendmail on your mailhost what domains and/or hostnames it should be accepting mail for. There are a few different ways this can be done. Either of the following will work: Add the hosts to your /etc/mail/local-host-names file if you are using the FEATURE(use_cw_file). If you are using a version of sendmail earlier than 8.10, the file is /etc/sendmail.cw. Add a Cwyour.host.com line to your /etc/sendmail.cf or /etc/mail/sendmail.cf if you are using sendmail 8.10 or higher. SMTP with UUCP The sendmail configuration that ships with FreeBSD is designed for sites that connect directly to the Internet. Sites that wish to exchange their mail via UUCP must install another sendmail configuration file. Tweaking /etc/mail/sendmail.cf manually is an advanced topic. sendmail version 8 generates config files via &man.m4.1; preprocessing, where the actual configuration occurs on a higher abstraction level. The &man.m4.1; configuration files can be found under /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf. If you did not install your system with full sources, the sendmail configuration set has been broken out into a separate source distribution tarball. Assuming you have your FreeBSD source code CDROM mounted, do: &prompt.root; cd /cdrom/src &prompt.root; cat scontrib.?? | tar xzf - -C /usr/src/contrib/sendmail This extracts to only a few hundred kilobytes. The file README in the cf directory can serve as a basic introduction to &man.m4.1; configuration. The best way to support UUCP delivery is to use the mailertable feature. This creates a database that sendmail can use to make routing decisions. First, you have to create your .mc file. The directory /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf contains a few examples. Assuming you have named your file foo.mc, all you need to do in order to convert it into a valid sendmail.cf is: &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf &prompt.root; make foo.cf &prompt.root; cp foo.cf /etc/mail/sendmail.cf A typical .mc file might look like: VERSIONID(`Your version number') OSTYPE(bsd4.4) FEATURE(accept_unresolvable_domains) FEATURE(nocanonify) FEATURE(mailertable, `hash -o /etc/mail/mailertable') define(`UUCP_RELAY', your.uucp.relay) define(`UUCP_MAX_SIZE', 200000) define(`confDONT_PROBE_INTERFACES') MAILER(local) MAILER(smtp) MAILER(uucp) Cw your.alias.host.name Cw youruucpnodename.UUCP The lines containing accept_unresolvable_domains, nocanonify, and confDONT_PROBE_INTERFACES features will prevent any usage of the DNS during mail delivery. The UUCP_RELAY clause is needed to support UUCP delivery. Simply put an Internet hostname there that is able to handle .UUCP pseudo-domain addresses; most likely, you will enter the mail relay of your ISP there. Once you have this, you need an /etc/mail/mailertable file. If you have only one link to the outside that is used for all your mails, the following file will suffice: # # makemap hash /etc/mail/mailertable.db < /etc/mail/mailertable . uucp-dom:your.uucp.relay A more complex example might look like this: # # makemap hash /etc/mail/mailertable.db < /etc/mail/mailertable # horus.interface-business.de uucp-dom:horus .interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus .heep.sax.de smtp8:%1 horus.UUCP uucp-dom:horus if-bus.UUCP uucp-dom:if-bus . uucp-dom: The first three lines handle special cases where domain-addressed mail should not be sent out to the default route, but instead to some UUCP neighbor in order to shortcut the delivery path. The next line handles mail to the local Ethernet domain that can be delivered using SMTP. Finally, the UUCP neighbors are mentioned in the .UUCP pseudo-domain notation, to allow for a uucp-neighbor !recipient override of the default rules. The last line is always a single dot, matching everything else, with UUCP delivery to a UUCP neighbor that serves as your universal mail gateway to the world. All of the node names behind the uucp-dom: keyword must be valid UUCP neighbors, as you can verify using the command uuname. As a reminder that this file needs to be converted into a DBM database file before use. The command line to accomplish this is best placed as a comment at the top of the mailertable file. You always have to execute this command each time you change your mailertable file. Final hint: if you are uncertain whether some particular mail routing would work, remember the option to sendmail. It starts sendmail in address test mode; simply enter 3,0, followed by the address you wish to test for the mail routing. The last line tells you the used internal mail agent, the destination host this agent will be called with, and the (possibly translated) address. Leave this mode by typing CtrlD. &prompt.user; sendmail -bt ADDRESS TEST MODE (ruleset 3 NOT automatically invoked) Enter <ruleset> <address> > 3,0 foo@example.com canonify input: foo @ example . com ... parse returns: $# uucp-dom $@ your.uucp.relay $: foo < @ example . com . > > ^D Bill Moran Contributed by Setting up to send only There are many instances where you may only want to send mail through a relay. Some examples are: Your computer is a desktop machine, but you want to use programs such as &man.send-pr.1;. To do so, you should use your ISP's mail relay. The computer is a server that does not handle mail locally, but needs to pass off all mail to a relay for processing. Just about any MTA is capable of filling this particular niche. Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to properly configure a full-featured MTA just to handle offloading mail. Programs such as sendmail and postfix are largely overkill for this use. Additionally, if you are using a typical Internet access service, your agreement may forbid you from running a mail server. The easiest way to fulfill those needs is to install the mail/ssmtp port. Execute the following commands as root: &prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/mail/ssmtp &prompt.root; make install replace clean Once installed, mail/ssmtp can be configured with a four-line file located at /usr/local/etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf: root=yourrealemail@example.com mailhub=mail.example.com rewriteDomain=example.com hostname=_HOSTNAME_ Make sure you use your real email address for root. Enter your ISP's outgoing mail relay in place of mail.example.com (some ISPs call this the outgoing mail server or SMTP server). Make sure you disable sendmail by setting sendmail_enable="NONE" in /etc/rc.conf. mail/ssmtp has some other options available. See the example configuration file in /usr/local/etc/ssmtp or the manual page of ssmtp for some examples and more information. Setting up ssmtp in this manner will allow any software on your computer that needs to send mail to function properly, while not violating your ISP's usage policy or allowing your computer to be hijacked for spamming. Using Mail with a Dialup Connection If you have a static IP address, you should not need to adjust anything from the defaults. Set your host name to your assigned Internet name and sendmail will do the rest. If you have a dynamically assigned IP number and use a dialup PPP connection to the Internet, you will probably have a mailbox on your ISPs mail server. Let's assume your ISP's domain is example.net, and that your user name is user, you have called your machine bsd.home, and your ISP has told you that you may use relay.example.net as a mail relay. In order to retrieve mail from your mailbox, you must install a retrieval agent. The fetchmail utility is a good choice as it supports many different protocols. This program is available as a package or from the ports collection (mail/fetchmail). Usually, your ISP will provide POP. If you are using user PPP, you can automatically fetch your mail when an Internet connection is established with the following entry in /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup: MYADDR: !bg su user -c fetchmail If you are using sendmail (as shown below) to deliver mail to non-local accounts, you probably want to have sendmail process your mailqueue as soon as your Internet connection is established. To do this, put this command after the fetchmail command in /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup: !bg su user -c "sendmail -q" Assume that you have an account for user on bsd.home. In the home directory of user on bsd.home, create a .fetchmailrc file: poll example.net protocol pop3 fetchall pass MySecret This file should not be readable by anyone except user as it contains the password MySecret. In order to send mail with the correct from: header, you must tell sendmail to use user@example.net rather than user@bsd.home. You may also wish to tell sendmail to send all mail via relay.example.net, allowing quicker mail transmission. The following .mc file should suffice: VERSIONID(`bsd.home.mc version 1.0') OSTYPE(bsd4.4)dnl FEATURE(nouucp)dnl MAILER(local)dnl MAILER(smtp)dnl Cwlocalhost Cwbsd.home MASQUERADE_AS(`example.net')dnl FEATURE(allmasquerade)dnl FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl FEATURE(nocanonify)dnl FEATURE(nodns)dnl define(`SMART_HOST', `relay.example.net') Dmbsd.home define(`confDOMAIN_NAME',`bsd.home')dnl define(`confDELIVERY_MODE',`deferred')dnl Refer to the previous section for details of how to turn this .mc file into a sendmail.cf file. Also, do not forget to restart sendmail after updating sendmail.cf. James Gorham Written by SMTP Authentication Having SMTP Authentication in place on your mail server has a number of benefits. SMTP Authentication can add another layer of security to sendmail, and has the benefit of giving mobile users who switch hosts the ability to use the same mail server without the need to reconfigure their mail client settings each time. Install security/cyrus-sasl from the ports. You can find this port in security/cyrus-sasl. security/cyrus-sasl has a number of compile time options to choose from and, for the method we will be using here, make sure to select the option. After installing security/cyrus-sasl, edit /usr/local/lib/sasl/Sendmail.conf (or create it if it does not exist) and add the following line: pwcheck_method: passwd This method will enable sendmail to authenticate against your FreeBSD passwd database. This saves the trouble of creating a new set of usernames and passwords for each user that needs to use SMTP authentication, and keeps the login and mail password the same. Now edit /etc/make.conf and add the following lines: SENDMAIL_CFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include/sasl1 -DSASL SENDMAIL_LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/lib SENDMAIL_LDADD=-lsasl These lines will give sendmail the proper configuration options for linking to cyrus-sasl at compile time. Make sure that cyrus-sasl has been installed before recompiling sendmail. Recompile sendmail by executing the following commands: &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail &prompt.root; make cleandir &prompt.root; make obj &prompt.root; make &prompt.root; make install The compile of sendmail should not have any problems if /usr/src has not been changed extensively and the shared libraries it needs are available. After sendmail has been compiled and reinstalled, edit your /etc/mail/freebsd.mc file (or whichever file you use as your .mc file. Many administrators choose to use the output from &man.hostname.1; as the .mc file for uniqueness). Add these lines to it: dnl set SASL options TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN')dnl define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS', `GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN')dnl define(`confDEF_AUTH_INFO', `/etc/mail/auth-info')dnl These options configure the different methods available to sendmail for authenticating users. If you would like to use a method other than pwcheck, please see the included documentation. Finally, run &man.make.1; while in /etc/mail. That will run your new .mc file and create a .cf file named freebsd.cf (or whatever name you have used for your .mc file). Then use the command make install restart, which will copy the file to sendmail.cf, and will properly restart sendmail. For more information about this process, you should refer to /etc/mail/Makefile. If all has gone correctly, you should be able to enter your login information into the mail client and send a test message. For further investigation, set the of sendmail to 13 and watch /var/log/maillog for any errors. You may wish to add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf so this service will be available after every system boot: sasl_pwcheck_enable="YES" sasl_pwcheck_program="/usr/local/sbin/pwcheck" This will ensure the initialization of SMTP_AUTH upon system boot. For more information, please see the sendmail page regarding SMTP authentication. Marc Silver Contributed by Mail User Agents Mail User Agents A Mail User Agent (MUA) is an application that is used to send and receive email. Furthermore, as email evolves and becomes more complex, MUA's are becoming increasingly powerful in the way they interact with email; this gives users increased functionality and flexibility. &os; contains support for numerous mail user agents, all of which can be easily installed using the FreeBSD Ports Collection. Users may choose between graphical email clients such as evolution or balsa, console based clients such as mutt, pine or mail, or the web interfaces used by some large organizations. mail &man.mail.1; is the default Mail User Agent (MUA) in &os;. It is a console based MUA that offers all the basic functionality required to send and receive text-based email, though it is limited in interaction abilities with attachments and can only support local mailboxes. Although mail does not natively support interaction with POP or IMAP servers, these mailboxes may be downloaded to a local mbox file using an application such as fetchmail, which will be discussed later in this chapter (). In order to send and receive email, simply invoke the mail command as per the following example: &prompt.user; mail The contents of the user mailbox in /var/mail are automatically read by the mail utility. Should the mailbox be empty, the utility exits with a message indicating that no mails could be found. Once the mailbox has been read, the application interface is started, and a list of messages will be displayed. Messages are automatically numbered, as can be seen in the following example: Mail version 8.1 6/6/93. Type ? for help. "/var/mail/marcs": 3 messages 3 new >N 1 root@localhost Mon Mar 8 14:05 14/510 "test" N 2 root@localhost Mon Mar 8 14:05 14/509 "user account" N 3 root@localhost Mon Mar 8 14:05 14/509 "sample" Messages can now be read by using the t mail command, suffixed by the message number that should be displayed. In this example, we will read the first email: & t 1 Message 1: From root@localhost Mon Mar 8 14:05:52 2004 X-Original-To: marcs@localhost Delivered-To: marcs@localhost To: marcs@localhost Subject: test Date: Mon, 8 Mar 2004 14:05:52 +0200 (SAST) From: root@localhost (Charlie Root) This is a test message, please reply if you receive it. As can be seen in the example above, the t key will cause the message to be displayed with full headers. To display the list of messages again, the h key should be used. If the email requires a response, you may use mail to reply, by using either the R or r mail keys. The R key instructs mail to reply only to the sender of the email, while r replies not only to the sender, but also to other recipients of the message. You may also suffix these commands with the mail number which you would like make a reply to. Once this has been done, the response should be entered, and the end of the message should be marked by a single . on a new line. An example can be seen below: & R 1 To: root@localhost Subject: Re: test Thank you, I did get your email. . EOT In order to send new email, the m key should be used, followed by the recipient email address. Multiple recipients may also be specified by separating each address with the , delimiter. The subject of the message may then be entered, followed by the message contents. The end of the message should be specified by putting a single . on a new line. & mail root@localhost Subject: I mastered mail Now I can send and receive email using mail ... :) . EOT While inside the mail utility, the ? command may be used to display help at any time, the &man.mail.1; manual page should also be consulted for more help with mail. As previously mentioned, the &man.mail.1; command was not originally designed to handle attachments, and thus deals with them very poorly. Newer MUAs such as mutt handle attachments in a much more intelligent way. But should you still wish to use the mail command, the converters/mpack port may be of considerable use. mutt mutt is a small yet very powerful Mail User Agent, with excellent features, just some of which include: The ability to thread messages; PGP support for digital signing and encryption of email; MIME Support; Maildir Support; Highly customizable. All of these features help to make mutt one of the most advanced mail user agents available. See for more information on mutt. The stable version of mutt may be installed using the mail/mutt port, while the current development version may be installed via the mail/mutt-devel port. After the port has been installed, mutt can be started by issuing the following command: &prompt.user; mutt mutt will automatically read the contents of the user mailbox in /var/mail and display the contents if applicable. If no mails are found in the user mailbox, then mutt will wait for commands from the user. The example below shows mutt displaying a list of messages: In order to read an email, simply select it using the cursor keys, and press the Enter key. An example of mutt displaying email can be seen below: As with the &man.mail.1; command, mutt allows users to reply only to the sender of the message as well as to all recipients. To reply only to the sender of the email, use the r keyboard shortcut. To send a group reply, which will be sent to the original sender as well as all the message recipients, use the g shortcut. mutt makes use of the &man.vi.1; command as an editor for creating and replying to emails. This may be customized by the user by creating or editing their own .muttrc file in their home directory and setting the editor variable. In order to compose a new mail message, press m. After a valid subject has been given, mutt will start &man.vi.1; and the mail can be written. Once the contents of the mail are complete, save and quit from vi and mutt will resume, displaying a summary screen of the mail that is to be delivered. In order to send the mail, press y. An example of the summary screen can be seen below: mutt also contains extensive help, which can be accessed from most of the menus by pressing the ? key. The top line also displays the keyboard shortcuts where appropriate. pine pine is aimed at a beginner user, but also includes some advanced features. The pine software has had several remote vulnerabilities discovered in the past, which allowed remote attackers to execute arbitrary code as users on the local system, by the action of sending a specially-prepared email. All such known problems have been fixed, but the pine code is written in a very insecure style and the &os; Security Officer believes there are likely to be other undiscovered vulnerabilities. You install pine at your own risk. The current version of pine may be installed using the mail/pine4 port. Once the port has installed, pine can be started by issuing the following command: &prompt.user; pine The first time that pine is run it displays a greeting page with a brief introduction, as well as a request from the pine development team to send an anonymous email message allowing them to judge how many users are using their client. To send this anonymous message, press Enter, or alternatively press E to exit the greeting without sending an anonymous message. An example of the greeting page can be seen below: Users are then presented with the main menu, which can be easily navigated using the cursor keys. This main menu provides shortcuts for the composing new mails, browsing of mail directories, and even the administration of address book entries. Below the main menu, relevant keyboard shortcuts to perform functions specific to the task at hand are shown. The default directory opened by pine is the inbox. To view the message index, press I, or select the MESSAGE INDEX option as seen below: The message index shows messages in the current directory, and can be navigated by using the cursor keys. Highlighted messages can be read by pressing the Enter key. In the screenshot below, a sample message is displayed by pine. Keyboard shortcuts are displayed as a reference at the bottom of the screen. An example of one of these shortcuts is the r key, which tells the MUA to reply to the current message being displayed. Replying to an email in pine is done using the pico editor, which is installed by default with pine. The pico utility makes it easy to navigate around the message and is slightly more forgiving on novice users than &man.vi.1; or &man.mail.1;. Once the reply is complete, the message can be sent by pressing CtrlX . The pine application will ask for confirmation. The pine application can be customized using the SETUP option from the main menu. Consult for more information. Marc Silver Contributed by Using fetchmail Using fetchmail fetchmail is a full-featured IMAP and POP client which allows users to automatically download mail from remote IMAP and POP servers and save it into local mailboxes; there it can be accessed more easily. fetchmail can be installed using the mail/fetchmail port, and offers various features, some of which include: Support of POP3, APOP, KPOP, IMAP, ETRN and ODMR protocols. Ability to forward mail using SMTP, which allows filtering, forwarding, and aliasing to function normally. May be run in daemon mode to check periodically for new messages. Can retrieve multiple mailboxes and forward them based on configuration, to different local users. While it is outside the scope of this document to explain all of fetchmail's features, some basic features will be explained. The fetchmail utility requires a configuration file known as .fetchmailrc, in order to run correctly. This file includes server information as well as login credentials. Due to the sensitive nature of the contents of this file, it is advisable to make it readable only by the owner, with the following command: &prompt.user; chmod 600 .fetchmailrc The following .fetchmailrc serves as an example for downloading a single user mailbox using POP. It tells fetchmail to connect to example.com using a username of joesoap and a password of XXX. This example assumes that the user joesoap is also a user on the local system. poll example.com protocol pop3 username "joesoap" password "XXX" The next example connects to multiple POP and IMAP servers and redirects to different local usernames where applicable: poll example.com proto pop3: user "joesoap", with password "XXX", is "jsoap" here; user "andrea", with password "XXXX"; poll example2.net proto imap: user "john", with password "XXXXX", is "myth" here; The fetchmail utility can be run in daemon mode by running it with the flag, followed by the interval (in seconds) that fetchmail should poll servers listed in the .fetchmailrc file. The following example would cause fetchmail to poll every 60 seconds: &prompt.user; fetchmail -d 60 More information on fetchmail can be found at . Marc Silver Contributed by Using procmail Using procmail The procmail utility is an incredibly powerful application used to filter incoming mail. It allows users to define rules which can be matched to incoming mails to perform specific functions or to reroute mail to alternative mailboxes and/or email addresses. procmail can be installed using the mail/procmail port. Once installed, it can be directly integrated into most MTAs; consult your MTA documentation for more information. Alternatively, procmail can be integrated by adding the following line to a .forward in the home directory of the user utilizing procmail features: "|exec /usr/local/bin/procmail || exit 75" The following section will display some basic procmail rules, as well as brief descriptions on what they do. These rules, and others must be inserted into a .procmailrc file, which - must reside in the user's home directory. + must reside in the user's home directory. The majority of these rules can also be found in the &man.procmailex.5; manual page. Forward all mail from user@example.com to an external address of goodmail@example2.com: :0 * ^From.*user@example.com ! goodmail@example2.com Forward all mails shorter than 1000 bytes to an external address of goodmail@example2.com: :0 * < 1000 ! goodmail@example2.com Send all mail sent to alternate@example.com into a mailbox called alternate: :0 * ^TOalternate@example.com alternate Send all mail with a subject of Spam to /dev/null: :0 ^Subject:.*Spam /dev/null A useful recipe that parses incoming &os;.org mailing lists and places each list in its own mailbox: :0 * ^Sender:.owner-freebsd-\/[^@]+@FreeBSD.ORG { LISTNAME=${MATCH} :0 * LISTNAME??^\/[^@]+ FreeBSD-${MATCH} } diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/preface/preface.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/preface/preface.sgml index 07cb1f1b14..1bc5bc6f78 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/preface/preface.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/preface/preface.sgml @@ -1,485 +1,486 @@ Preface Intended Audience The FreeBSD newcomer will find that the first section of this book guides the user through the FreeBSD installation process and gently introduces the concepts and conventions that underpin &unix;. Working through this section requires little more than the desire to explore, and the ability to take on board new concepts as they are introduced. Once you have travelled this far, the second, far larger, section of the Handbook is a comprehensive reference to all manner of topics of interest to FreeBSD system administrators. Some of these chapters may recommend that you do some prior reading, and this is noted in the synopsis at the beginning of each chapter. For a list of additional sources of information, please see . Changes from the First Edition This second edition is the culmination of over two years of work by the dedicated members of the FreeBSD Documentation Project. The following are the major changes in this new edition: A complete Index has been added. All ASCII figures have been replaced by graphical diagrams. A standard synopsis has been added to each chapter to give a quick summary of what information the chapter contains, and what the reader is expected to know. The content has been logically reorganized into three parts: Getting Started, System Administration, and Appendices. (Installing FreeBSD) was completely rewritten with many screenshots to make it much easier for new users to grasp the text. (&unix; Basics) has been expanded to contain additional information about processes, daemons, and signals. (Installing Applications) has been expanded to contain additional information about binary package management. (The X Window System) has been completely rewritten with an emphasis on using modern desktop technologies such as KDE and GNOME on &xfree86; 4.X. (The FreeBSD Booting Process) has been expanded. (Storage) has been written from what used to be two separate chapters on Disks and Backups. We feel that the topics are easier to comprehend when presented as a single chapter. A section on RAID (both hardware and software) has also been added. (Serial Communications) has been completely reorganized and updated for FreeBSD 4.X/5.X. (PPP and SLIP) has been substantially updated. Many new sections have been added to (Advanced Networking). (Electronic Mail) has been expanded to include more information about configuring sendmail. (Linux Compatibility) has been expanded to include information about installing &oracle; and &sap.r3;. The following new topics are covered in this second edition: Configuration and Tuning (). Multimedia () Organization of This Book This book is split into three logically distinct sections. The first section, Getting Started, covers the installation and basic usage of FreeBSD. It is expected that the reader will follow these chapters in sequence, possibly skipping chapters covering familiar topics. The second section, System Administration, covers a broad collection of subjects that are of interest to more advanced FreeBSD users. Each section begins with a succinct synopsis that describes what the chapter covers and what the reader is expected to already know. This is meant to allow the casual reader to skip around to find chapters of interest. The third section contains appendices of reference information. , Introduction Introduces FreeBSD to a new user. It describes the history of the FreeBSD Project, its goals and development model. , Installation Walks a user through the entire installation process. Some advanced installation topics, such as installing through a serial console, are also covered. , &unix; Basics Covers the basic commands and functionality of the FreeBSD operating system. If you are familiar with Linux or another flavor of &unix; then you can probably skip this chapter. , Installing Applications Covers the installation of third-party software with both FreeBSD's innovative Ports Collection and standard binary packages. , The X Window System Describes the X Window System in general and using &xfree86; on FreeBSD in particular. Also describes common desktop environments such as KDE and GNOME. , Configuration and Tuning Describes the parameters available for system administrators to tune a FreeBSD system for optimum performance. Also describes the various configuration files used in FreeBSD and where to find them. , Booting Process Describes the FreeBSD boot process and explains how to control this process with configuration options. , Users and Basic Account Management Describes the creation and manipulation of user accounts. Also discusses resource limitations that can be set on users and other account management tasks. , Configuring the FreeBSD Kernel Explains why you might need to configure a new kernel and provides detailed instructions for configuring, building, and installing a custom kernel. , Security Describes many different tools available to help keep your FreeBSD system secure, including Kerberos, IPsec, OpenSSH, and network firewalls. , Printing Describes managing printers on FreeBSD, including information about banner pages, printer accounting, and initial setup. , Storage Describes how to manage storage media and filesystems with FreeBSD. This includes physical disks, RAID arrays, optical and tape media, memory-backed disks, and network filesystems. , Vinum Describes how to use Vinum, a logical volume manager which provides device-independent logical disks, and software RAID-0, RAID-1 and RAID-5. , Localization Describes how to use FreeBSD in languages other than English. Covers both system and application level localization. , Desktop Applications Lists some common desktop applications, such as web browsers and productivity suites, and describes how to install them on FreeBSD. , Multimedia Shows how to set up sound and video playback support for your system. Also describes some sample audio and video applications. , Serial Communications Explains how to connect terminals and modems to your FreeBSD system for both dial in and dial out connections. , PPP and SLIP Describes how to use PPP, SLIP, or PPP over Ethernet to connect to remote systems with FreeBSD. , Advanced Networking Describes many networking topics, including sharing an Internet connection with other computers on your LAN, using network filesystems, sharing account information via NIS, setting up a name server, and much more. , Electronic Mail Explains the different components of an email server and dives into simple configuration topics for the most popular mail server software: sendmail. , The Cutting Edge Explains the differences between FreeBSD-STABLE, FreeBSD-CURRENT, and FreeBSD releases. Describes which users would benefit from tracking a development system and outlines that process. , Linux Binary Compatibility Describes the Linux compatibility features of FreeBSD. Also provides detailed installation instructions for many popular Linux applications such as &oracle;, &sap.r3;, and &mathematica;. , Obtaining FreeBSD Lists different sources for obtaining FreeBSD media on CDROM or DVD as well as different sites on the Internet that allow you to download and install FreeBSD. , Bibliography This book touches on many different subjects that may leave you hungry for a more detailed explanation. The bibliography lists many excellent books that are referenced in the text. , Resources on the Internet Describes the many forums available for FreeBSD users to post questions and engage in technical conversations about FreeBSD. , PGP Keys Lists the PGP fingerprints of several FreeBSD Developers. Conventions used in this book To provide a consistent and easy to read text, several conventions are followed throughout the book. Typographic Conventions Italic An italic font is used for filenames, URLs, emphasized text, and the first usage of technical terms. Monospace A monospaced font is used for error messages, commands, environment variables, names of ports, hostnames, user names, group names, device names, variables, and code fragments. Bold A bold font is used for applications, commands, and keys. User Input Keys are shown in bold to stand out from other text. Key combinations that are meant to be typed simultaneously are shown with `+' between the keys, such as: Ctrl Alt Del Meaning the user should type the Ctrl, - Alt,and Del keys at the same time. + Alt,and Del keys at the same + time. Keys that are meant to be typed in sequence will be separated with commas, for example: Ctrl X , Ctrl S Would mean that the user is expected to type the Ctrl and X keys simultaneously and then to type the Ctrl and S keys simultaneously. Examples Examples starting with E:\> indicate a &ms-dos; command. Unless otherwise noted, these commands may be executed from a Command Prompt window in a modern µsoft.windows; environment. E:\> tools\fdimage floppies\kern.flp A: Examples starting with &prompt.root; indicate a command that must be invoked as the superuser in FreeBSD. You can login as root to type the command, or login as your normal account and use &man.su.1; to gain superuser privileges. &prompt.root; dd if=kern.flp of=/dev/fd0 Examples starting with &prompt.user; indicate a command that should be invoked from a normal user account. Unless otherwise noted, C-shell syntax is used for setting environment variables and other shell commands. &prompt.user; top Acknowledgments The book you are holding represents the efforts of many hundreds of people around the world. Whether they sent in fixes for typos, or submitted complete chapters, all the contributions have been useful. Several companies have supported the development of this document by paying authors to work on it full-time, paying for publication, etc. In particular, BSDi (subsequently acquired by Wind River Systems) paid members of the FreeBSD Documentation Project to work on improving this book full time leading up to the publication of the first printed edition in March 2000 (ISBN 1-57176-241-8). Wind River Systems then paid several additional authors to make a number of improvements to the print-output infrastructure and to add additional chapters to the text. This work culminated in the publication of the second printed edition in November 2001 (ISBN 1-57176-303-1). diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/book.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/book.sgml index 39345184f4..9231e57e46 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/book.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/book.sgml @@ -1,7726 +1,7727 @@ %man; %bookinfo; %authors; %teams; %mailing-lists; %freebsd; ]> FreeBSD Porter's Handbook The FreeBSD Documentation Project April 2000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 The FreeBSD Documentation Project &bookinfo.trademarks; &bookinfo.legalnotice; Introduction The FreeBSD ports collection is the way almost everyone installs applications ("ports") on FreeBSD. Like everything else about FreeBSD, it is primarily a volunteer effort. It is important to keep this in mind when reading this document. In FreeBSD, anyone may submit a new port, or volunteer to maintain an existing port if it is unmaintained—you do not need any special commit privileges to do so. Making a port yourself So, you are interested in making your own port or upgrading an existing one? Great! What follows are some guidelines for creating a new port for FreeBSD. If you want to upgrade an existing port, you should read this and then read . When this document is not sufficiently detailed, you should refer to /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk, which all port Makefiles include. Even if you do not hack Makefiles daily, it is well commented, and you will still gain much knowledge from it. Additionally, you may send specific questions to the &a.ports;. Only a fraction of the variables (VAR) that can be overridden are mentioned in this document. Most (if not all) are documented at the start of /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk; the others probably ought to be. Note that this file uses a non-standard tab setting: Emacs and Vim should recognize the setting on loading the file. Both &man.vi.1; and &man.ex.1; can be set to use the correct value by typing :set tabstop=4 once the file has been loaded. Quick Porting This section tells you how to do a quick port. In many cases, it is not sufficient, so you will have to read further on into the document. First, get the original tarball and put it into DISTDIR, which defaults to /usr/ports/distfiles. The following assumes that the software compiled out-of-the-box, i.e., there was absolutely no change required for the port to work on your FreeBSD box. If you needed to change something, you will have to refer to the next section too. Writing the <filename>Makefile</filename> The minimal Makefile would look something like this: # New ports collection makefile for: oneko # Date created: 5 December 1994 # Whom: asami # # $FreeBSD$ # PORTNAME= oneko PORTVERSION= 1.1b CATEGORIES= games MASTER_SITES= ftp://ftp.cs.columbia.edu/archives/X11R5/contrib/ MAINTAINER= asami@FreeBSD.org COMMENT= A cat chasing a mouse all over the screen MAN1= oneko.1 MANCOMPRESSED= yes USE_IMAKE= yes .include <bsd.port.mk> See if you can figure it out. Do not worry about the contents of the $FreeBSD$ line, it will be filled in automatically by CVS when the port is imported to our main ports tree. You can find a more detailed example in the sample Makefile section. Writing the description files There are two description files that are required for any port, whether they actually package or not. They are pkg-descr and pkg-plist. Their pkg- prefix distinguishes them from other files. <filename>pkg-descr</filename> This is a longer description of the port. One to a few paragraphs concisely explaining what the port does is sufficient. This is not a manual or an in-depth description on how to use or compile the port! Please be careful if you are copying from the README or manpage; too often they are not a concise description of the port or are in an awkward format (e.g., manpages have justified spacing). If the ported software has an official WWW homepage, you should list it here. Prefix one of the websites with WWW: so that automated tools will work correctly. It is recommended that you sign your name at the end of this file, as in: This is a port of oneko, in which a cat chases a poor mouse all over the screen. : (etc.) WWW: http://www.oneko.org/ - Satoshi asami@cs.berkeley.edu <filename>pkg-plist</filename> This file lists all the files installed by the port. It is also called the packing list because the package is generated by packing the files listed here. The pathnames are relative to the installation prefix (usually /usr/local or /usr/X11R6). If you are using the MANn variables (as you should be), do not list any manpages here. Here is a small example: bin/oneko lib/X11/app-defaults/Oneko lib/X11/oneko/cat1.xpm lib/X11/oneko/cat2.xpm lib/X11/oneko/mouse.xpm @dirrm lib/X11/oneko Refer to the &man.pkg.create.1; manual page for details on the packing list. You should list all the files, but not the name directories, in the list. Also, if the port creates directories for itself during installation, make sure to add @dirrm lines as necessary to remove them when the port is deleted. It is recommended that you keep all the filenames in this file sorted alphabetically. It will make verifying the changes when you upgrade the port much easier. Creating a packing list manually can be a very tedious task. If the port installs a large numbers of files, creating the packing list automatically might save time. There is only one case when pkg-plist can be omitted from a port. If the port installs just a handful of files, and perhaps directories, the files and directories may be listed in the variables PLIST_FILES and PLIST_DIRS, respectively, within the port's Makefile. For instance, we could get along without pkg-plist in the above oneko port by adding the following lines to the Makefile: PLIST_FILES= bin/oneko \ lib/X11/app-defaults/Oneko \ lib/X11/oneko/cat1.xpm \ lib/X11/oneko/cat2.xpm \ lib/X11/oneko/mouse.xpm PLIST_DIRS= lib/X11/oneko Of course, PLIST_DIRS should be left unset if a port installs no directories of its own. The price for this way of listing port's files and directories is that you cannot use command sequences described in &man.pkg.create.1;. Therefore, it is suitable only for simple ports and makes them even simpler. At the same time, it has the advantage of reducing the number of files in the ports collection. Please consider using this technique before you resort to pkg-plist. Later we will see how pkg-plist and PLIST_FILES can be used to fulfil more sophisticated tasks. Creating the checksum file Just type make makesum. The ports make rules will automatically generate the file distinfo. Testing the port You should make sure that the port rules do exactly what you want them to do, including packaging up the port. These are the important points you need to verify. pkg-plist does not contain anything not installed by your port pkg-plist contains everything that is installed by your port Your port can be installed multiple times using the reinstall target Your port cleans up after itself upon deinstall Recommended test ordering make install make package make deinstall pkg_add package-name make deinstall make reinstall make package Make sure that there are not any warnings issued in any of the package and deinstall stages. After step 3, check to see if all the new directories are correctly deleted. Also, try using the software after step 4, to ensure that it works correctly when installed from a package. Checking your port with <command>portlint</command> Please use portlint to see if your port conforms to our guidelines. The portlint program is part of the ports collection. In particular, you may want to check if the Makefile is in the right shape and the package is named appropriately. Submitting the port First, make sure you have read the DOs and DON'Ts section. Now that you are happy with your port, the only thing remaining is to put it in the main FreeBSD ports tree and make everybody else happy about it too. We do not need your work directory or the pkgname.tgz package, so delete them now. Next, simply include the output of shar `find port_dir` in a bug report and send it with the &man.send-pr.1; program (see Bug Reports and General Commentary for more information about &man.send-pr.1;). If the uncompressed port is larger than 20KB, you should compress it into a tarfile and use &man.uuencode.1; before including it in the bug report (uuencoded tarfiles are acceptable even if the bug report is smaller than 20KB but are not preferred). Be sure to classify the bug report as category ports and class change-request (Do not mark the report confidential!). Also add a short description of the program you ported to the Description field of the PR and the shar or uuencoded tarfile to the Fix field. You can make our work a lot easier, if you use a good description in the synopsis of the problem report. We prefer something like New port: <category>/<portname> <short description of the port> for new ports and Update port: <category>/<portname> <short description of the update> for port updates. If you stick to this scheme, the chance that someone will take a look at your PR soon is much better. One more time, do not include the original source distfile, the work directory, or the package you built with make package. After you have submitted your port, please be patient. Sometimes it can take a few months before a port is included in FreeBSD, although it might only take a few days. You can view the list of ports waiting to be committed to FreeBSD. Once we have looked at your port, we will get back to you if necessary, and put it in the tree. Your name will also appear in the list of Additional FreeBSD Contributors and other files. Isn't that great?!? :-) Slow Porting Ok, so it was not that simple, and the port required some modifications to get it to work. In this section, we will explain, step by step, how to modify it to get it to work with the ports paradigm. How things work First, this is the sequence of events which occurs when the user first types make in your port's directory. You may find that having bsd.port.mk in another window while you read this really helps to understand it. But do not worry if you do not really understand what bsd.port.mk is doing, not many people do... :-> The fetch target is run. The fetch target is responsible for making sure that the tarball exists locally in DISTDIR. If fetch cannot find the required files in DISTDIR it will look up the URL MASTER_SITES, which is set in the Makefile, as well as our main FTP site at , where we put sanctioned distfiles as backup. It will then attempt to fetch the named distribution file with FETCH, assuming that the requesting site has direct access to the Internet. If that succeeds, it will save the file in DISTDIR for future use and proceed. The extract target is run. It looks for your port's distribution file (typically a gzip'd tarball) in DISTDIR and unpacks it into a temporary subdirectory specified by WRKDIR (defaults to work). The patch target is run. First, any patches defined in PATCHFILES are applied. Second, if any patch files named patch-* are found in PATCHDIR (defaults to the files subdirectory), they are applied at this time in alphabetical order. The configure target is run. This can do any one of many different things. If it exists, scripts/configure is run. If HAS_CONFIGURE or GNU_CONFIGURE is set, WRKSRC/configure is run. If USE_IMAKE is set, XMKMF (default: xmkmf -a) is run. The build target is run. This is responsible for descending into the port's private working directory (WRKSRC) and building it. If USE_GMAKE is set, GNU make will be used, otherwise the system make will be used. The above are the default actions. In addition, you can define targets pre-something or post-something, or put scripts with those names, in the scripts subdirectory, and they will be run before or after the default actions are done. For example, if you have a post-extract target defined in your Makefile, and a file pre-build in the scripts subdirectory, the post-extract target will be called after the regular extraction actions, and the pre-build script will be executed before the default build rules are done. It is recommended that you use Makefile targets if the actions are simple enough, because it will be easier for someone to figure out what kind of non-default action the port requires. The default actions are done by the bsd.port.mk targets do-something. For example, the commands to extract a port are in the target do-extract. If you are not happy with the default target, you can fix it by redefining the do-something target in your Makefile. The main targets (e.g., extract, configure, etc.) do nothing more than make sure all the stages up to that one are completed and call the real targets or scripts, and they are not intended to be changed. If you want to fix the extraction, fix do-extract, but never ever change the way extract operates! Now that you understand what goes on when the user types make, let us go through the recommended steps to create the perfect port. Getting the original sources Get the original sources (normally) as a compressed tarball (foo.tar.gz or foo.tar.Z) and copy it into DISTDIR. Always use mainstream sources when and where you can. You will need to set the variable MASTER_SITES to reflect where the original tarball resides. You will find convenient shorthand definitions for most mainstream sites in bsd.sites.mk. Please use these sites—and the associated definitions—if at all possible, to help avoid the problem of having the same information repeated over again many times in the source base. As these sites tend to change over time, this becomes a maintenance nightmare for everyone involved. If you cannot find a FTP/HTTP site that is well-connected to the net, or can only find sites that have irritatingly non-standard formats, you might want to put a copy on a reliable FTP or HTTP server that you control (e.g., your home page). If you cannot find somewhere convenient and reliable to put the distfile we can house it ourselves on ftp.FreeBSD.org; however, this is the least-preferred solution. The distfile must be placed into ~/public_distfiles/ of someone's freefall account. Ask the person who commits your port to do this. This person will also set MASTER_SITES to MASTER_SITE_LOCAL and MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR to their freefall username. If your port's distfile changes all the time without any kind of version update by the author, consider putting the distfile on your home page and listing it as the first MASTER_SITES. If you can, try to talk the port author out of doing this; it really does help to establish some kind of source code control. Hosting your own version will prevent users from getting checksum mismatch errors, and also reduce the workload of maintainers of our FTP site. Also, if there is only one master site for the port, it is recommended that you house a backup at your site and list it as the second MASTER_SITES. If your port requires some additional `patches' that are available on the Internet, fetch them too and put them in DISTDIR. Do not worry if they come from a site other than where you got the main source tarball, we have a way to handle these situations (see the description of PATCHFILES below). Modifying the port Unpack a copy of the tarball in a private directory and make whatever changes are necessary to get the port to compile properly under the current version of FreeBSD. Keep careful track of everything you do, as you will be automating the process shortly. Everything, including the deletion, addition, or modification of files should be doable using an automated script or patch file when your port is finished. If your port requires significant user interaction/customization to compile or install, you should take a look at one of Larry Wall's classic Configure scripts and perhaps do something similar yourself. The goal of the new ports collection is to make each port as plug-and-play as possible for the end-user while using a minimum of disk space. Unless explicitly stated, patch files, scripts, and other files you have created and contributed to the FreeBSD ports collection are assumed to be covered by the standard BSD copyright conditions. Patching In the preparation of the port, files that have been added or changed can be picked up with a recursive &man.diff.1; for later feeding to &man.patch.1;. Each set of patches you wish to apply should be collected into a file named patch-* where * denotes the sequence in which the patches will be applied — these are done in alphabetical order, thus aa first, ab second and so on. If you wish, you can use names that indicate the pathnames of the files that are patched, such as patch-Imakefile or patch-src-config.h. These files should be stored in PATCHDIR, from where they will be automatically applied. All patches should be relative to WRKSRC (generally the directory your port's tarball unpacks itself into, that being where the build is done). To make fixes and upgrades easier, you should avoid having more than one patch fix the same file (e.g., patch-aa and patch-ab both changing WRKSRC/foobar.c). Do not put RCS strings in patches. CVS will mangle them when we put the files into the ports tree, and when we check them out again, they will come out different and the patch will fail. RCS strings are surrounded by dollar ($) signs, and typically start with $Id or $RCS. Using the recurse () option to &man.diff.1; to generate patches is fine, but please take a look at the resulting patches to make sure you do not have any unnecessary junk in there. In particular, diffs between two backup files, Makefiles when the port uses Imake or GNU configure, etc., are unnecessary and should be deleted. If you had to edit configure.in and run autoconf to regenerate configure, do not take the diffs of configure (it often grows to a few thousand lines!); define USE_AUTOCONF_VER=213 and take the diffs of configure.in. Also, if you had to delete a file, then you can do it in the post-extract target rather than as part of the patch. Once you are happy with the resulting diff, please split it up into one source file per patch file. Configuring Include any additional customization commands in your configure script and save it in the scripts subdirectory. As mentioned above, you can also do this with Makefile targets and/or scripts with the name pre-configure or post-configure. Handling user input If your port requires user input to build, configure, or install, you must set IS_INTERACTIVE in your Makefile. This will allow overnight builds to skip your port if the user sets the variable BATCH in his environment (and if the user sets the variable INTERACTIVE, then only those ports requiring interaction are built). This will save a lot of wasted time on the set of machines that continually build ports (see below). It is also recommended that if there are reasonable default answers to the questions, you check the PACKAGE_BUILDING variable and turn off the interactive script when it is set. This will allow us to build the packages for CDROMs and FTP. Configuring the Makefile Configuring the Makefile is pretty simple, and again we suggest that you look at existing examples before starting. Also, there is a sample Makefile in this handbook, so take a look and please follow the ordering of variables and sections in that template to make your port easier for others to read. Now, consider the following problems in sequence as you design your new Makefile: The original source Does it live in DISTDIR as a standard gzip'd tarball named something like foozolix-1.2.tar.gz? If so, you can go on to the next step. If not, you should look at overriding any of the DISTNAME, EXTRACT_CMD, EXTRACT_BEFORE_ARGS, EXTRACT_AFTER_ARGS, EXTRACT_SUFX, or DISTFILES variables, depending on how alien a format your port's distribution file is. (The most common case is EXTRACT_SUFX=.tar.Z, when the tarball is condensed by regular compress, not gzip.) In the worst case, you can simply create your own do-extract target to override the default, though this should be rarely, if ever, necessary. Naming The first part of the port's Makefile names the port, describes its version number, and lists it in the correct category. <makevar>PORTNAME</makevar> and <makevar>PORTVERSION</makevar> You should set PORTNAME to the base name of your port, and PORTVERSION to the version number of the port. <makevar>PORTREVISION</makevar> and <makevar>PORTEPOCH</makevar> <makevar>PORTREVISION</makevar> The PORTREVISION variable is a monotonically increasing value which is reset to 0 with every increase of PORTVERSION (i.e. every time a new official vendor release is made), and appended to the package name if non-zero. Changes to PORTREVISION are used by automated tools (e.g. &man.pkg.version.1;) to highlight the fact that a new package is available. PORTREVISION should be increased each time a change is made to the port which significantly affects the content or structure of the derived package. Examples of when PORTREVISION should be bumped: Addition of patches to correct security vulnerabilities, bugs, or to add new functionality to the port. Changes to the port Makefile to enable or disable compile-time options in the package. Changes in the packing list or the install-time behavior of the package (e.g. change to a script which generates initial data for the package, like ssh host keys). Version bump of a port's shared library dependency (in this case, someone trying to install the old package after installing a newer version of the dependency will fail since it will look for the old libfoo.x instead of libfoo.(x+1)). Silent changes to the port distfile which have significant functional differences, i.e. changes to the distfile requiring a correction to distinfo with no corresponding change to PORTVERSION, where a diff -ru of the old and new versions shows non-trivial changes to the code. Examples of changes which do not require a PORTREVISION bump: Style changes to the port skeleton with no functional change to what appears in the resulting package. Changes to MASTER_SITES or other functional changes to the port which do not affect the resulting package. Trivial patches to the distfile such as correction of typos, which are not important enough that users of the package should go to the trouble of upgrading. Build fixes which cause a package to become compilable where it was previously failing (as long as the changes do not introduce any functional change on any other platforms on which the port did previously build). Since PORTREVISION reflects the content of the package, if the package was not previously buildable then there is no need to increase PORTREVISION to mark a change. A rule of thumb is to ask yourself whether a change committed to a port is something which everyone would benefit from having (either because of an enhancement, fix, or by virtue that the new package will actually work at all), and weigh that against that fact that it will cause everyone who regularly updates their ports tree to be compelled to update. If yes, the PORTREVISION should be bumped. <makevar>PORTEPOCH</makevar> From time to time a software vendor or FreeBSD porter will do something silly and release a version of their software which is actually numerically less than the previous version. An example of this is a port which goes from foo-20000801 to foo-1.0 (the former will be incorrectly treated as a newer version since 20000801 is a numerically greater value than 1). In situations such as this, the PORTEPOCH version should be increased. If PORTEPOCH is nonzero it is appended to the package name as described in section 0 above. PORTEPOCH must never be decreased or reset to zero, because that would cause comparison to a package from an earlier epoch to fail (i.e. the package would not be detected as out of date): the new version number (e.g. 1.0,1 in the above example) is still numerically less than the previous version (20000801), but the ,1 suffix is treated specially by automated tools and found to be greater than the implied suffix ,0 on the earlier package. Dropping or resetting PORTEPOCH incorrectly leads to no end of grief; if you do not understand the above discussion, please keep after it until you do, or ask questions on the mailing lists. It is expected that PORTEPOCH will not be used for the majority of ports, and that sensible use of PORTVERSION can often pre-empt it becoming necessary if a future release of the software should change the version structure. However, care is needed by FreeBSD porters when a vendor release is made without an official version number — such as a code snapshot release. The temptation is to label the release with the release date, which will cause problems as in the example above when a new official release is made. For example, if a snapshot release is made on the date 20000917, and the previous version of the software was version 1.2, the snapshot release should be given a PORTVERSION of 1.2.20000917 or similar, not 20000917, so that the succeeding release, say 1.3, is still a numerically greater value. Example of <makevar>PORTREVISION</makevar> and <makevar>PORTEPOCH</makevar> usage The gtkmumble port, version 0.10, is committed to the ports collection: PORTNAME= gtkmumble PORTVERSION= 0.10 PKGNAME becomes gtkmumble-0.10. A security hole is discovered which requires a local FreeBSD patch. PORTREVISION is bumped accordingly. PORTNAME= gtkmumble PORTVERSION= 0.10 PORTREVISION= 1 PKGNAME becomes gtkmumble-0.10_1 A new version is released by the vendor, numbered 0.2 (it turns out the author actually intended 0.10 to actually mean 0.1.0, not what comes after 0.9 - oops, too late now). Since the new minor version 2 is numerically less than the previous version 10, the PORTEPOCH must be bumped to manually force the new package to be detected as newer. Since it is a new vendor release of the code, PORTREVISION is reset to 0 (or removed from the Makefile). PORTNAME= gtkmumble PORTVERSION= 0.2 PORTEPOCH= 1 PKGNAME becomes gtkmumble-0.2,1 The next release is 0.3. Since PORTEPOCH never decreases, the version variables are now: PORTNAME= gtkmumble PORTVERSION= 0.3 PORTEPOCH= 1 PKGNAME becomes gtkmumble-0.3,1 If PORTEPOCH were reset to 0 with this upgrade, someone who had installed the gtkmumble-0.10_1 package would not detect the gtkmumble-0.3 package as newer, since 3 is still numerically less than 10. Remember, this is the whole point of PORTEPOCH in the first place. <makevar>PKGNAMEPREFIX</makevar> and <makevar>PKGNAMESUFFIX</makevar> Two optional variables, PKGNAMEPREFIX and PKGNAMESUFFIX, are combined with PORTNAME and PORTVERSION to form PKGNAME as ${PKGNAMEPREFIX}${PORTNAME}${PKGNAMESUFFIX}-${PORTVERSION}. Make sure this conforms to our guidelines for a good package name. In particular, you are not allowed to use a hyphen (-) in PORTVERSION. Also, if the package name has the language- or the -compiled.specifics part (see below), use PKGNAMEPREFIX and PKGNAMESUFFIX, respectively. Do not make them part of PORTNAME. Package Naming Conventions The following are the conventions you should follow in naming your packages. This is to have our package directory easy to scan, as there are already thousands of packages and users are going to turn away if they hurt their eyes! The package name should look like language_region-name-compiled.specifics-version.numbers. The package name is defined as ${PKGNAMEPREFIX}${PORTNAME}${PKGNAMESUFFIX}-${PORTVERSION}. Make sure to set the variables to conform to that format. FreeBSD strives to support the native language of its users. The language- part should be a two letter abbreviation of the natural language defined by ISO-639 if the port is specific to a certain language. Examples are ja for Japanese, ru for Russian, vi for Vietnamese, zh for Chinese, ko for Korean and de for German. If the port is specific to a certain region within the language area, add the two letter country code as well. Examples are en_US for US English and fr_CH for Swiss French. The language- part should be set in the PKGNAMEPREFIX variable. The first letter of name part should be lowercase. (The rest of the name can contain capital letters, so use your own discretion when you are converting a software name that has some capital letters in it.) There is a tradition of naming perl 5 modules by prepending p5- and converting the double-colon separator to a hyphen; for example, the Data::Dumper module becomes p5-Data-Dumper. If the software in question has numbers, hyphens, or underscores in its name, you may include them as well (like kinput2). If the port can be built with different hardcoded defaults (usually part of the directory name in a family of ports), the -compiled.specifics part should state the compiled-in defaults (the hyphen is optional). Examples are papersize and font units. The -compiled.specifics part should be set in the PKGNAMESUFFIX variable. The version string should follow a dash (-) and be a period-separated list of integers and single lowercase alphabetics. In particular, it is not permissible to have another dash inside the version string. The only exception is the string pl (meaning patchlevel), which can be used only when there are no major and minor version numbers in the software. If the software version has strings like alpha, beta, rc, or pre, take the first letter and put it immediately after a period. If the version string continues after those names, the numbers should follow the single alphabet without an extra period between them. The idea is to make it easier to sort ports by looking at the version string. In particular, make sure version number components are always delimited by a period, and if the date is part of the string, use the yyyy.mm.dd format, not dd.mm.yyyy or the non-Y2K compliant yy.mm.dd format. Here are some (real) examples on how to convert the name as called by the software authors to a suitable package name: Distribution Name PKGNAMEPREFIX PORTNAME PKGNAMESUFFIX PORTVERSION Reason mule-2.2.2 (empty) mule (empty) 2.2.2 No changes required XFree86-3.3.6 (empty) XFree86 (empty) 3.3.6 No changes required EmiClock-1.0.2 (empty) emiclock (empty) 1.0.2 No uppercase names for single programs rdist-1.3alpha (empty) rdist (empty) 1.3.a No strings like alpha allowed es-0.9-beta1 (empty) es (empty) 0.9.b1 No strings like beta allowed mailman-2.0rc3 (empty) mailman (empty) 2.0.r3 No strings like rc allowed v3.3beta021.src (empty) tiff (empty) 3.3 What the heck was that anyway? tvtwm (empty) tvtwm (empty) pl11 Version string always required piewm (empty) piewm (empty) 1.0 Version string always required xvgr-2.10pl1 (empty) xvgr (empty) 2.10.1 pl allowed only when no major/minor version numbers gawk-2.15.6 ja- gawk (empty) 2.15.6 Japanese language version psutils-1.13 (empty) psutils -letter 1.13 Papersize hardcoded at package build time pkfonts (empty) pkfonts 300 1.0 Package for 300dpi fonts If there is absolutely no trace of version information in the original source and it is unlikely that the original author will ever release another version, just set the version string to 1.0 (like the piewm example above). Otherwise, ask the original author or use the date string (yyyy.mm.dd) as the version. Categorization <makevar>CATEGORIES</makevar> When a package is created, it is put under /usr/ports/packages/All and links are made from one or more subdirectories of /usr/ports/packages. The names of these subdirectories are specified by the variable CATEGORIES. It is intended to make life easier for the user when he is wading through the pile of packages on the FTP site or the CDROM. Please take a look at the current list of categories and pick the ones that are suitable for your port. This list also determines where in the ports tree the port is imported. If you put more than one category here, it is assumed that the port files will be put in the subdirectory with the name in the first category. See below for more discussion about how to pick the right categories. If your port truly belongs to something that is different from all the existing ones, you can even create a new category name. In that case, please send mail to the &a.ports; to propose a new category. However, in general, until there are more than a handful of ports which could be reclassified into the category you propose, you will probably be turned down. Occasionally someone proposes reorganizing the categories with either a 2-level structure, or some other kind of keyword structure. To date, nothing has come of any of these proposals because, while they are very easy to make, the effort involved to retrofit the entire existing ports collection with any kind of reorganization is daunting to say the very least. Please read the history of these proposals in the mailing list archives before you post this idea; furthermore, you should be prepared to be challenged to offer a working prototype. Current list of categories Here is the current list of port categories. Those marked with an asterisk (*) are virtual categories—those that do not have a corresponding subdirectory in the ports tree. They are only used as secondary categories, and only for search purposes. For non-virtual categories, you will find a one-line description in the COMMENT in that subdirectory's Makefile. Category Description Notes accessibility Ports to help disabled users. afterstep* Ports to support the AfterStep window manager. arabic Arabic language support. archivers Archiving tools. astro Astronomical ports. audio Sound support. benchmarks Benchmarking utilities. biology Biology-related software. cad Computer aided design tools. chinese Chinese language support. comms Communication software. Mostly software to talk to your serial port. converters Character code converters. databases Databases. deskutils Things that used to be on the desktop before computers were invented. devel Development utilities. Do not put libraries here just because they are libraries—unless they truly do not belong anywhere else, they should not be in this category. dns DNS-related software. editors General editors. Specialized editors go in the section for those tools (e.g., a mathematical-formula editor will go in math). elisp* Emacs-lisp ports. emulators Emulators for other operating systems. Terminal emulators do not belong here—X-based ones should go to x11 and text-based ones to either comms or misc, depending on the exact functionality. finance Monetary, financial and related applications. french French language support. ftp FTP client and server utilities. If your port speaks both FTP and HTTP, put it in ftp with a secondary category of www. games Games. german German language support. gnome* Ports from the GNOME Project. graphics Graphics utilities. haskell* Software related to the Haskell language. hebrew Hebrew language support. hungarian Hungarian language support. ipv6* IPv6 related software. irc Internet Relay Chat utilities. japanese Japanese language support. java Software related to the Java language. kde* Ports from the K Desktop Environment (KDE) Project. korean Korean language support. lang Programming languages. linux* Linux applications and support utilities. lisp* Software related to the Lisp language. mail Mail software. math Numerical computation software and other utilities for mathematics. mbone MBone applications. misc Miscellaneous utilities Basically things that do not belong anywhere else. If at all possible, try to find a better category for your port than misc, as ports tend to get overlooked in here. multimedia Multimedia software. net Miscellaneous networking software. net-mgmt Networking management software. news USENET news software. offix* Ports from the OffiX suite. palm Software support for the Palm™ series. parallel* Applications dealing with parallelism in computing. pear* Ports related to the Pear PHP framework. perl5* Ports that require Perl version 5 to run. picobsd Ports to support PicoBSD. plan9* Various programs from Plan9. polish Polish language support. portuguese Portuguese language support. print Printing software. Desktop publishing tools (previewers, etc.) belong here too. python* Software related to the Python language. ruby* Software related to the Ruby language. russian Russian language support. science Scientific ports that do not fit into other categories such as astro, biology and math. security Security utilities. shells Command line shells. sysutils System utilities. tcl76* Ports that use Tcl version 7.6 to run. tcl80* Ports that use Tcl version 8.0 to run. tcl81* Ports that use Tcl version 8.1 to run. tcl82* Ports that use Tcl version 8.2 to run. tcl83* Ports that use Tcl version 8.3 to run. textproc Text processing utilities. It does not include desktop publishing tools, which go to print. tk42* Ports that use Tk version 4.2 to run. tk80* Ports that use Tk version 8.0 to run. tk81* Ports that use Tk version 8.1 to run. tk82* Ports that use Tk version 8.2 to run. tk83* Ports that use Tk version 8.3 to run. tkstep80* Ports that use TkSTEP version 8.0 to run. ukrainian Ukrainian language support. vietnamese Vietnamese language support. windowmaker* Ports to support the WindowMaker window manager. www Software related to the World Wide Web. HTML language support belongs here too. x11 The X Window System and friends. This category is only for software that directly supports the window system. Do not put regular X applications here; most of them should go into other x11-* categories (see below). If your port is an X application, define USE_XLIB (implied by USE_IMAKE) and put it in the appropriate category. x11-clocks X11 clocks. x11-fm X11 file managers. x11-fonts X11 fonts and font utilities. x11-servers X11 servers. x11-toolkits X11 toolkits. x11-wm X11 window managers. zope* Zope support. Choosing the right category As many of the categories overlap, you often have to choose which of the categories should be the primary category of your port. There are several rules that govern this issue. Here is the list of priorities, in decreasing order of precedence: The first category must be a physical category (see above). This is necessary to make the packaging work. Virtual categories and - physical categories may be intermixed after that. + physical categories may be intermixed after that. Language specific categories always come first. For example, if your port installs Japanese X11 fonts, then your CATEGORIES line would read japanese x11-fonts. Specific categories are listed before less-specific ones. For instance, an HTML editor should be listed as www editors, not the other way around. Also, you should not list net when the port belongs to any of irc, mail, mbone, news, security, or www, as net is included implicitly. x11 is used as a secondary category only when the primary category is a natural language. In particular, you should not put x11 in the category line for X applications. Emacs modes should be placed in the same ports category as the application supported by the mode, not in editors. For example, an Emacs mode to edit source files of some programming language should go into lang. misc should not appear with any other non-virtual category. If you have misc with something else in your CATEGORIES line, that means you can safely delete misc and just put the port in that other subdirectory! If your port truly does not belong anywhere else, put it in misc. If you are not sure about the category, please put a comment to that effect in your &man.send-pr.1; submission so we can discuss it before we import it. If you are a committer, send a note to the &a.ports; so we can discuss it first. Too often, new ports are imported to the wrong category only to be moved right away. This causes unnecessary and undesirable bloat in the master source repository. The distribution files The second part of the Makefile describes the files that must be downloaded in order to build the port, and where they can be downloaded from. <makevar>DISTNAME</makevar> DISTNAME is the name of the port as called by the authors of the software. DISTNAME defaults to ${PORTNAME}-${PORTVERSION}, so override it only if necessary. DISTNAME is only used in two places. First, the distribution file list (DISTFILES) defaults to ${DISTNAME}${EXTRACT_SUFX}. Second, the distribution file is expected to extract into a subdirectory named WRKSRC, which defaults to work/${DISTNAME}. PKGNAMEPREFIX and PKGNAMESUFFIX do not affect DISTNAME. Also note that if WRKSRC is equal to work/${PORTNAME}-${PORTVERSION} while the original source archive is named something other than ${PORTNAME}-${PORTVERSION}${EXTRACT_SUFX}, you should probably leave DISTNAME alone— you are better off defining DISTFILES than having to set both DISTNAME and WRKSRC (and possibly EXTRACT_SUFX). <makevar>MASTER_SITES</makevar> Record the directory part of the FTP/HTTP-URL pointing at the original tarball in MASTER_SITES. Do not forget the trailing slash (/)! The make macros will try to use this specification for grabbing the distribution file with FETCH if they cannot find it already on the system. It is recommended that you put multiple sites on this list, preferably from different continents. This will safeguard against wide-area network problems. We are even planning to add support for automatically determining the closest master site and fetching from there; having multiple sites will go a long way towards helping this effort. If the original tarball is part of one of the popular archives such as X-contrib, GNU, or Perl CPAN, you may be able refer to those sites in an easy compact form using MASTER_SITE_* (e.g., MASTER_SITE_XCONTRIB and MASTER_SITE_PERL_GNU). Simply set MASTER_SITES to one of these variables and MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR to the path within the archive. Here is an example: MASTER_SITES= ${MASTER_SITE_XCONTRIB} MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR= applications These variables are defined in /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.sites.mk. There are new entries added all the time, so make sure to check the latest version of this file before submitting a port. The user can also set the MASTER_SITE_* variables in /etc/make.conf to override our choices, and use their favorite mirrors of these popular archives instead. <makevar>EXTRACT_SUFX</makevar> If you have one distribution file, and it uses an odd suffix to indicate the compression mechanism, set EXTRACT_SUFX. For example, if the distribution file was named foo.tgz instead of the more normal foo.tar.gz, you would write: DISTNAME= foo EXTRACT_SUFX= .tgz The USE_BZIP2 and USE_ZIP variables automatically set EXTRACT_SUFX to .bz2 or .zip as necessary. If neither of these are set then EXTRACT_SUFX defaults to .tar.gz. You never need to set both EXTRACT_SUFX and DISTFILES. <makevar>DISTFILES</makevar> Sometimes the names of the files to be downloaded have no resemblance to the name of the port. For example, it might be called source.tar.gz or similar. In other cases the application's source code might be in several different archives, all of which must be downloaded. If this is the case, set DISTFILES to be a space separated list of all the files that must be downloaded. DISTFILES= source1.tar.gz source2.tar.gz If not explicitly set, DISTFILES defaults to ${DISTNAME}${EXTRACT_SUFX}. <makevar>EXTRACT_ONLY</makevar> If only some of the DISTFILES must be extracted—for example, one of them is the source code, while another is an uncompressed document—list the filenames that must be extracted in EXTRACT_ONLY. DISTFILES= source.tar.gz manual.html EXTRACT_ONLY= source.tar.gz If none of the DISTFILES should be uncompressed then set EXTRACT_ONLY to the empty string. EXTRACT_ONLY= <makevar>PATCHFILES</makevar> If your port requires some additional patches that are available by FTP or HTTP, set PATCHFILES to the names of the files and PATCH_SITES to the URL of the directory that contains them (the format is the same as MASTER_SITES). If the patch is not relative to the top of the source tree (i.e., WRKSRC) because it contains some extra pathnames, set PATCH_DIST_STRIP accordingly. For instance, if all the pathnames in the patch have an extra foozolix-1.0/ in front of the filenames, then set PATCH_DIST_STRIP=-p1. Do not worry if the patches are compressed; they will be decompressed automatically if the filenames end with .gz or .Z. If the patch is distributed with some other files, such as documentation, in a gzip'd tarball, you cannot just use PATCHFILES. If that is the case, add the name and the location of the patch tarball to DISTFILES and MASTER_SITES. Then, use the EXTRA_PATCHES variable to point to those files and bsd.port.mk will automatically apply them for you. In particular, do not copy patch files into the PATCHDIR directory—that directory may not be writable. The tarball will have been extracted alongside the regular source by then, so there is no need to explicitly extract it if it is a regular gzip'd or compress'd tarball. If you do the latter, take extra care not to overwrite something that already exists in that directory. Also, do not forget to add a command to remove the copied patch in the pre-clean target. Multiple distribution files or patches from different sites and subdirectories (<literal>MASTER_SITES:n</literal>) (Consider this to be a somewhat advanced topic; those new to this document may wish to skip this section at first). This section has information on the fetching mechanism known as both MASTER_SITES:n and MASTER_SITES_NN. We will refer to this mechanism as MASTER_SITES:n hereon. A little background first. OpenBSD has a neat feature inside both DISTFILES and PATCHFILES variables, both files and patches can be postfixed with :n identifiers where n both can be [0-9] and denote a group designation. For example: DISTFILES= alpha:0 beta:1 In OpenBSD, distribution file alpha will be associated with variable MASTER_SITES0 instead of our common MASTER_SITES and beta with MASTER_SITES1. This is a very interesting feature which can decrease that endless search for the correct download site. Just picture 2 files in DISTFILES and 20 sites in MASTER_SITES, the sites slow as hell where beta is carried by all sites in MASTER_SITES, and alpha can only be found in the 20th site. It would be such a waste to check all of them if maintainer knew this beforehand, would not it? Not a good start for that lovely weekend! Now that you got the picture, just imagine more DISTFILES and more MASTER_SITES. Surely our distfiles survey meister would appreciate the network strain relieve this would bring. In the next sections, information will follow on the FreeBSD implementation of this idea. We improved a bit on OpenBSD's concept. Simplified information This section tells you how to quickly prepare fine grained fetching of multiple distribution files and patches from different sites and subdirectories. We describe here a case of simplified MASTER_SITES:n usage. This will be sufficient for most scenarios. However, if you need further information, you will have to refer to the next section. Some applications consist of multiple distribution files that must be downloaded from a number of different sites. For example, Ghostscript consists of the core of the program, and then a large number of driver files that are used depending on the user's printer. Some of these driver files are supplied with the core, but many others must be downloaded from a variety of different sites. To support this, each entry in DISTFILES may be followed by a colon and a tag name. Each site listed in MASTER_SITES is then followed by a colon, and the tag that indicates which distribution files should be downloaded from this site. For example, consider an application with the source split in two parts, source1.tar.gz and source2.tar.gz, which must be downloaded from two different sites. The port's Makefile would include lines like . Simplified use of <literal>MASTER_SITES:n</literal> with 1 file per site MASTER_SITES= ftp://ftp.example1.com/:source1 \ ftp://ftp.example2.com/:source2 DISTFILES= source1.tar.gz:source1 \ source2.tar.gz:source2 Multiple distribution files can have the same tag. Continuing the previous example, suppose that there was a third distfile, source3.tar.gz, that should be downloaded from ftp.example2.com. The Makefile would then be written like . Simplified use of <literal>MASTER_SITES:n</literal> with more than 1 file per site MASTER_SITES= ftp://ftp.example1.com/:source1 \ ftp://ftp.example2.com/:source2 DISTFILES= source1.tar.gz:source1 \ source2.tar.gz:source2 \ source3.tar.gz:source2 Detailed information Okay, so the previous section example did not reflect your needs? In this section we will explain in detail how the fine grained fetching mechanism MASTER_SITES:n works and how you can modify your ports to use it. Elements can be postfixed with :n where n is [^:,]+, i.e., n could conceptually be any alphanumeric string but we will limit it to [a-zA-Z_][0-9a-zA-Z_]+ for now. Moreover, string matching is case sensitive; i.e., n is different from N. However, the following words cannot be used for postfixing purposes since they yield special meaning: default, all and ALL (they are used internally in item ). Furthermore, DEFAULT is a special purpose word (check item ). Elements postfixed with :n belong to the group n, :m belong to group m and so forth. Elements without a postfix are groupless, i.e., they all belong to the special group DEFAULT. If you postfix any elements with DEFAULT, you are just being redundant unless you want to have an element belonging to both DEFAULT and other groups at the same time (check item ). The following examples are equivalent but the first one is preferred: MASTER_SITES= alpha MASTER_SITES= alpha:DEFAULT Groups are not exclusive, an element may belong to several different groups at the same time and a group can either have either several different elements or none at all. Repeated elements within the same group will be simply that, repeated elements. When you want an element to belong to several groups at the same time, you can use the comma operator (,). Instead of repeating it several times, each time with a different postfix, we can list several groups at once in a single postfix. For instance, :m,n,o marks an element that belongs to group m, n and o. All the following examples are equivalent but the last one is preferred: MASTER_SITES= alpha alpha:SOME_SITE MASTER_SITES= alpha:DEFAULT alpha:SOME_SITE MASTER_SITES= alpha:SOME_SITE,DEFAULT MASTER_SITES= alpha:DEFAULT,SOME_SITE All sites within a given group are sorted according to MASTER_SORT_AWK. All groups within MASTER_SITES and PATCH_SITES are sorted as well. Group semantics can be used in any of the following variables MASTER_SITES, PATCH_SITES, MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR, PATCH_SITE_SUBDIR, DISTFILES, and PATCHFILES according to the following syntax: All MASTER_SITES, PATCH_SITES, MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR and PATCH_SITE_SUBDIR elements must be terminated with the forward slash / character. If any elements belong to any groups, the group postfix :n must come right after the terminator /. The MASTER_SITES:n mechanism relies on the existence of the terminator / to avoid confusing elements where a :n is a valid part of the element with occurrences where :n denotes group n. For compatibility purposes, since the / terminator was not required before in both MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR and PATCH_SITE_SUBDIR elements, if the postfix immediate preceding character is not a / then :n will be considered a valid part of the element instead of a group postfix even if an element is postfixed with :n. See both and . Detailed use of <literal>MASTER_SITES:n</literal> in <makevar>MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR</makevar> MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR= old:n new/:NEW Directories within group DEFAULT -> old:n Directories within group NEW -> new Detailed use of <literal>MASTER_SITES:n</literal> with comma operator, multiple files, multiple sites and multiple subdirectories MASTER_SITES= http://site1/%SUBDIR%/ http://site2/:DEFAULT \ http://site3/:group3 http://site4/:group4 \ http://site5/:group5 http://site6/:group6 \ http://site7/:DEFAULT,group6 \ http://site8/%SUBDIR%/:group6,group7 \ http://site9/:group8 DISTFILES= file1 file2:DEFAULT file3:group3 \ file4:group4,group5,group6 file5:grouping \ file6:group7 MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR= directory-trial:1 directory-n/:groupn \ directory-one/:group6,DEFAULT \ directory The previous example results in the following fine grained fetching. Sites are listed in the exact order they will be used. file1 will be fetched from MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE http://site1/directory/ http://site1/directory-one/ http://site1/directory-trial:1/ http://site2/ http://site7/ MASTER_SITE_BACKUP file2 will be fetched exactly as file1 since they both belong to the same group MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE http://site1/directory/ http://site1/directory-one/ http://site1/directory-trial:1/ http://site2/ http://site7/ MASTER_SITE_BACKUP file3 will be fetched from MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE http://site3/ MASTER_SITE_BACKUP file4 will be fetched from MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE http://site4/ http://site5/ http://site6/ http://site7/ http://site8/directory-one/ MASTER_SITE_BACKUP file5 will be fetched from MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE MASTER_SITE_BACKUP file6 will be fetched from MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE http://site8/directory-one/ MASTER_SITE_BACKUP How do I group one of the special variables from bsd.sites.mk, e.g., MASTER_SITE_SOURCEFORGE? See . Detailed use of <literal>MASTER_SITES:n</literal> with <makevar>MASTER_SITE_SOURCEFORGE</makevar> MASTER_SITES= http://site1/ ${MASTER_SITE_SOURCEFORGE:S/$/:sourceforge,TEST/} DISTFILES= something.tar.gz:sourceforge something.tar.gz will be fetched from all sites within MASTER_SITE_SOURCEFORGE. How do I use this with PATCH* variables? All examples were done with MASTER* variables but they work exactly the same for PATCH* ones as can be seen in . Simplified use of <literal>MASTER_SITES:n</literal> with <makevar>PATCH_SITES</makevar>. PATCH_SITES= http://site1/ http://site2/:test PATCHFILES= patch1:test What does change for ports? What does not? All current ports remain the same. The MASTER_SITES:n feature code is only activated if there are elements postfixed with :n like elements according to the aforementioned syntax rules, especially as shown in item . The port targets remain the same: checksum, makesum, patch, configure, build, etc. With the obvious exceptions of do-fetch, fetch-list, master-sites and patch-sites. do-fetch: deploys the new grouping postfixed DISTFILES and PATCHFILES with their matching group elements within both MASTER_SITES and PATCH_SITES which use matching group elements within both MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR and PATCH_SITE_SUBDIR. Check . fetch-list: works like old fetch-list with the exception that it groups just like do-fetch. master-sites and patch-sites: (incompatible with older versions) only return the elements of group DEFAULT; in fact, they execute targets master-sites-default and patch-sites-default respectively. Furthermore, using target either master-sites-all or patch-sites-all is preferred to directly checking either MASTER_SITES or PATCH_SITES. Also, directly checking is not guaranteed to work in any future versions. Check item for more information on these new port targets. New port targets There are master-sites-n and patch-sites-n targets which will list the elements of the respective group n within MASTER_SITES and PATCH_SITES respectively. For instance, both master-sites-DEFAULT and patch-sites-DEFAULT will return the elements of group DEFAULT, master-sites-test and patch-sites-test of group test, and thereon. There are new targets master-sites-all and patch-sites-all which do the work of the old master-sites and patch-sites ones. They return the elements of all groups as if they all belonged to the same group with the caveat that it lists as many MASTER_SITE_BACKUP and MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE as there are groups defined within either DISTFILES or PATCHFILES; respectively for master-sites-all and patch-sites-all. <makevar>DIST_SUBDIR</makevar> Do not let your port clutter /usr/ports/distfiles. If your port requires a lot of files to be fetched, or contains a file that has a name that might conflict with other ports (e.g., Makefile), set DIST_SUBDIR to the name of the port (${PORTNAME} or ${PKGNAMEPREFIX}${PORTNAME} should work fine). This will change DISTDIR from the default /usr/ports/distfiles to /usr/ports/distfiles/DIST_SUBDIR, and in effect puts everything that is required for your port into that subdirectory. It will also look at the subdirectory with the same name on the backup master site at ftp.FreeBSD.org. (Setting DISTDIR explicitly in your Makefile will not accomplish this, so please use DIST_SUBDIR.) This does not affect the MASTER_SITES you define in your Makefile. <makevar>MAINTAINER</makevar> Set your mail-address here. Please. :-) Note that only a single address without the comment part is allowed as a MAINTAINER value. The format used should be user@hostname.domain. Please do not include any descriptive text such as your real name in this entry—that merely confuses bsd.port.mk. Instead, put that information into your pkg-descr. For a detailed description of the responsibilities of maintainers, refer to the MAINTAINER on Makefiles section. If the maintainer of a port does not respond to an update request from a user after two weeks (excluding major public holidays), then that is considered a maintainer timeout, and the update may be made without explicit maintainer approval. If the maintainer does not respond within three months, then that maintainer is considered absent without leave, and can be replaced as the maintainer of the particular port in question. Exceptions to this are anything maintained by the &a.portmgr;, or the &a.security-officer;. No unauthorized commits may ever be made to ports maintained by those groups. The &a.portmgr; reserves the right to revoke or override anyone's maintainership for any reason, and the &a.security-officer; reserves the right to revoke or override maintainership for security reasons. <makevar>COMMENT</makevar> This is a one-line description of the port. Please do not include the package name (or version number of the software) in the comment. The comment should begin with a capital and end without a period. Here is an example: COMMENT= A cat chasing a mouse all over the screen The COMMENT variable should immediately follow the MAINTAINER variable in the Makefile. Please try to keep the COMMENT line less than 70 characters, as it is displayed to users as a one-line summary of the port. Dependencies Many ports depend on other ports. There are seven variables that you can use to ensure that all the required bits will be on the user's machine. There are also some pre-supported dependency variables for common cases, plus a few more to control the behavior of dependencies. <makevar>LIB_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies the shared libraries this port depends on. It is a list of lib:dir:target tuples where lib is the name of the shared library, dir is the directory in which to find it in case it is not available, and target is the target to call in that directory. For example, LIB_DEPENDS= jpeg.9:${PORTSDIR}/graphics/jpeg:install will check for a shared jpeg library with major version 9, and descend into the graphics/jpeg subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. The target part can be omitted if it is equal to DEPENDS_TARGET (which defaults to install). The lib part is an argument given to ldconfig -r | grep -wF. There shall be no regular expressions in this variable. The dependency is checked twice, once from within the extract target and then from within the install target. Also, the name of the dependency is put into the package so that &man.pkg.add.1; will automatically install it if it is not on the user's system. <makevar>RUN_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies executables or files this port depends on during run-time. It is a list of path:dir:target tuples where path is the name of the executable or file, dir is the directory in which to find it in case it is not available, and target is the target to call in that directory. If path starts with a slash (/), it is treated as a file and its existence is tested with test -e; otherwise, it is assumed to be an executable, and which -s is used to determine if the program exists in the user's search path. For example, RUN_DEPENDS= ${LOCALBASE}/etc/innd:${PORTSDIR}/news/inn \ wish8.0:${PORTSDIR}/x11-toolkits/tk80 will check if the file or directory /usr/local/etc/innd exists, and build and install it from the news/inn subdirectory of the ports tree if it is not found. It will also see if an executable called wish8.0 is in your search path, and descend into the x11-toolkits/tk80 subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. In this case, innd is actually an executable; if an executable is in a place that is not expected to be in a normal user's search path, you should use the full pathname. The dependency is checked from within the install target. Also, the name of the dependency is put into the package so that &man.pkg.add.1; will automatically install it if it is not on the user's system. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET. <makevar>BUILD_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies executables or files this port requires to build. Like RUN_DEPENDS, it is a list of path:dir:target tuples. For example, BUILD_DEPENDS= unzip:${PORTSDIR}/archivers/unzip will check for an executable called unzip, and descend into the archivers/unzip subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. build here means everything from extraction to compilation. The dependency is checked from within the extract target. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET <makevar>FETCH_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies executables or files this port requires to fetch. Like the previous two, it is a list of path:dir:target tuples. For example, FETCH_DEPENDS= ncftp2:${PORTSDIR}/net/ncftp2 will check for an executable called ncftp2, and descend into the net/ncftp2 subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. The dependency is checked from within the fetch target. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET. <makevar>EXTRACT_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies executables or files this port requires for extraction. Like the previous, it is a list of path:dir:target tuples. For example, EXTRACT_DEPENDS= unzip:${PORTSDIR}/archivers/unzip will check for an executable called unzip, and descend into the archivers/unzip subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. The dependency is checked from within the extract target. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET. Use this variable only if the extraction does not already work (the default assumes gzip) and cannot be made to work using USE_ZIP or USE_BZIP2 described in . + linkend="use-vars">. <makevar>PATCH_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies executables or files this port requires to patch. Like the previous, it is a list of path:dir:target tuples. For example, PATCH_DEPENDS= ${NONEXISTENT}:${PORTSDIR}/java/jfc:extract will descend into the java/jfc subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. The dependency is checked from within the patch target. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET. <makevar>DEPENDS</makevar> If there is a dependency that does not fall into either of the above categories, or your port requires having the source of the other port extracted in addition to having it installed, then use this variable. This is a list of dir:target, as there is nothing to check, unlike the previous four. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET. <makevar>USE_<replaceable>*</replaceable></makevar> A number of variables exist in order to encapsulate common dependencies that many ports have. Although their use is optional, they can help to reduce the verbosity of the port Makefiles. Each of them is styled as USE_*. The usage of these variables is restricted to the port Makefiles and ports/Mk/bsd.*.mk and is not designed to encapsulate user-settable options — use WITH_* and WITHOUT_* for that purpose. It is always incorrect to set any USE_* in /etc/make.conf. For instance, setting USE_GCC=3.2 would adds a dependency on gcc32 for every port, including gcc32 itself! The <makevar>USE_<replaceable>*</replaceable></makevar> variables Variable Means USE_BZIP2 The port's tarballs are compressed with bzip2. USE_ZIP The port's tarballs are compressed with zip. USE_GMAKE The port requires gmake to build. USE_PERL5 The port requires perl 5 to build and install. See for additional variables that can be set relating to perl. USE_X_PREFIX The port installs in to X11BASE rather than PREFIX. See for additional variables that can be set relating to X11. USE_AUTOMAKE_VER The port uses GNU automake as part of its build process. See for additional variables that can be set relating to automake. USE_AUTOCONF_VER The port uses GNU autoconf as part of its build process. See for additional variables that can be set relating to autoconf. USE_LIBTOOL_VER The port uses GNU libtool as part of its build process. See for additional variables that can be set relating to libtool. GMAKE The full path for gmake if it is not in the PATH. USE_BISON The port uses bison for building. USE_SDL The port uses SDL for building and running. See on how to use USE_SDL. NO_INSTALL_MANPAGES Do not use the install.man target.
Define USE_XLIB=yes if your port requires the X Window System to be installed (it is implied by USE_IMAKE). Define USE_GMAKE=yes if your port requires GNU make instead of BSD make. Define USE_AUTOCONF_VER=213 if your port requires GNU autoconf to be run. Define USE_QT=yes if your port uses the latest qt toolkit. Use USE_PERL5=yes if your port requires version 5 of the perl language. (The last is especially important since some versions of FreeBSD have perl5 as part of the base system while others do not.) Notes on dependencies As mentioned above, the default target to call when a dependency is required is DEPENDS_TARGET. It defaults to install. This is a user variable; it is never defined in a port's Makefile. If your port needs a special way to handle a dependency, use the :target part of the *_DEPENDS variables instead of redefining DEPENDS_TARGET. When you type make clean, its dependencies are automatically cleaned too. If you do not wish this to happen, define the variable NOCLEANDEPENDS in your environment. This may be particularly desirable if the port has something that takes a long time to rebuild in its dependency list, such as KDE, GNOME or Mozilla. To depend on another port unconditionally, use the variable ${NONEXISTENT} as the first field of BUILD_DEPENDS or RUN_DEPENDS. Use this only when you need to get the source of the other port. You can often save compilation time by specifying the target too. For instance BUILD_DEPENDS= ${NONEXISTENT}:${PORTSDIR}/graphics/jpeg:extract will always descend to the jpeg port and extract it. Do not use DEPENDS unless there is no other way the behavior you want can be accomplished. It will cause the other port to always be built (and installed, by default), and the dependency will go into the packages as well. If this is really what you need, you should probably write it as BUILD_DEPENDS and RUN_DEPENDS instead—at least the intention will be clear. Circular dependencies are fatal Do not introduce any circular dependencies into the ports tree! The ports building technology does not tolerate circular dependencies. If you introduce one, you will have someone, somewhere in the world, whose FreeBSD installation will break almost immediately, with many others quickly to follow. These can really be hard to detect; if in doubt, before you make that change, make sure you have done the following: cd /usr/ports; make index. That process can be quite slow on older machines, but you may be able to save a large number of people—including yourself— a lot of grief in the process. Makefile Options Some large applications can be built in a number of configurations, adding functionality if one of a number of libraries or applications is available. Examples include choice of natural (human) language, GUI versus command-line, or type of database to support. Since not all users want those libraries or applications, the ports system provides hooks that the port author can use to control which configuration should be built. Supporting these properly will make users happy, and effectively provide 2 or more ports for the price of one. <makevar>WITH_<replaceable>*</replaceable></makevar> and <makevar>WITHOUT_<replaceable>*</replaceable></makevar> These variables are designed to be set by the system administrator. There are many that are standardized in ports/Mk/bsd.*.mk; others are not, which can be confusing. If you need to add such a configuration variable, please consider using one of the ones from the following list. You should not assume that a WITH_* necessarily has a corresponding WITHOUT_* variable and vice versa. In general, the default is simply assumed. Unless otherwise specified, these variables are only tested for being set or not set, rather than being set to some kind of variable such as YES or NO. The <makevar>WITH_<replaceable>*</replaceable></makevar> and <makevar>WITHOUT_<replaceable>*</replaceable></makevar> variables Variable Means WITH_APACHE2 If set, use www/apache2 instead of the default of www/apache. WITH_BERKELEY_DB Define this variable to specify the ability to use a variant of the Berkeley database package such as databases/db41. - An associated variable, - WITH_BDB_VER, may be + An associated variable, + WITH_BDB_VER, may be set to values such as 2, 3, 4, 41 or 42. WITH_MYSQL Define this variable to specify the ability to use a variant of the MySQL database package such as databases/mysql40-server. An associated variable, - WANT_MYSQL_VER, may be + WANT_MYSQL_VER, may be set to values such as 323, 40, 41, or 50. WITHOUT_NLS If set, says that internationalization is not needed, which can save compile time. By default, internalization is used. WITH_OPENSSL_BASE Use the version of OpenSSL in the base system. WITH_OPENSSL_PORT Use the version of OpenSSL from security/openssh, overwriting the version that was originally installed in the base system. WITH_POSTGRESQL Define this variable to specify the ability to use a variant of the PostGreSQL database package such as databases/postgresql72. WITHOUT_X11 If the port can be built both with and without X support, then it should normally be built with with X support. If this variable is defined, then then the version that does not have X support should be built instead.
Specifying the working directory Each port is extracted in to a working directory, which must be writable. The ports system defaults to having the DISTFILES unpack in to a directory called ${DISTNAME}. In other words, if you have set: PORTNAME= foo PORTVERSION= 1.0 then the port's distribution files contain a top-level directory, foo-1.0, and the rest of the files are located under that directory. There are a number of variables you can override if that is not the case. <makevar>WRKSRC</makevar> The variable lists the name of the directory that is created when the application's distfiles are extracted. If our previous example extracted into a directory called foo (and not foo-1.0) you would write: WRKSRC= ${WRKDIR}/foo or possibly WRKSRC= ${WRKDIR}/${PORTNAME} <makevar>NO_WRKSUBDIR</makevar> If the port does not extract in to a subdirectory at all then you should set NO_WRKSUBDIR to indicate that. NO_WRKSUBDIR= yes <makevar>CONFLICTS</makevar> If your package cannot coexist with other packages (because of file conflicts, runtime incompatibility, etc.), list the other package names in the CONFLICTS variable. You can use shell globs like * and ? here. Packages names should be enumerated the same way they appear in /var/db/pkg. Please make sure that CONFLICTS does not match this port's package itself, or else forcing its installation with FORCE_PKG_REGISTER will no longer work. Building mechanisms If your package uses GNU make, set USE_GMAKE=yes. If your package uses configure, set HAS_CONFIGURE=yes. If your package uses GNU configure, set GNU_CONFIGURE=yes (this implies HAS_CONFIGURE). If you want to give some extra arguments to configure (the default argument list --prefix=${PREFIX} for GNU configure and empty for non-GNU configure), set those extra arguments in CONFIGURE_ARGS. If your package uses GNU autoconf, set USE_AUTOCONF_VER=213. This implies GNU_CONFIGURE, and will cause autoconf to be run before configure. If your package uses GNU configure, and the resulting executable file has a strange name like i386-portbld-freebsd4.7-appname, you will need to additionally override the CONFIGURE_TARGET variable to specify the target in the way required by scripts generated by recent versions of autoconf. Add the following line immediately after the GNU_CONFIGURE=yes line in your Makefile: CONFIGURE_TARGET=--build=${MACHINE_ARCH}-portbld-freebsd${OSREL} If your package is an X application that creates Makefiles from Imakefiles using imake, then set USE_IMAKE=yes. This will cause the configure stage to automatically do an xmkmf -a. If the flag is a problem for your port, set XMKMF=xmkmf. If the port uses imake but does not understand the install.man target, NO_INSTALL_MANPAGES=yes should be set. In addition, the author of the original port should be shot. :-> If your port's source Makefile has something else than all as the main build target, set ALL_TARGET accordingly. Same goes for install and INSTALL_TARGET. Special considerations There are some more things you have to take into account when you create a port. This section explains the most common of those. Shared Libraries If your port installs one or more shared libraries, define a INSTALLS_SHLIB make variable, which will instruct a bsd.port.mk to run ${LDCONFIG} -m on the directory where the new library is installed (usually PREFIX/lib) during post-install target to register it into the shared library cache. This variable, when defined, will also facilitate addition of an appropriate @exec /sbin/ldconfig -m and @unexec /sbin/ldconfig -R pair into your pkg-plist file, so that a user who installed the package can start using the shared library immediately and de-installation will not cause the system to still believe the library is there. If you need, you can override the default location where the new library is installed by defining the LDCONFIG_DIRS make variable, which should contain a list of directories into which shared libraries are to be installed. For example if your port installs shared libraries into PREFIX/lib/foo and PREFIX/lib/bar directories you could use the following in your Makefile: INSTALLS_SHLIB= yes LDCONFIG_DIRS= %%PREFIX%%/lib/foo %%PREFIX%%/lib/bar Note that content of LDCONFIG_DIRS is passed through &man.sed.1; just like the rest of pkg-plist, so PLIST_SUB substitutions also apply here. It is recommended that you use %%PREFIX%% for PREFIX, %%LOCALBASE%% for LOCALBASE and %%X11BASE%% for X11BASE. Ports with distribution restrictions Licenses vary, and some of them place restrictions on how the application can be packaged, whether it can be sold for profit, and so on. It is your responsibility as a porter to read the licensing terms of the software and make sure that the FreeBSD project will not be held accountable for violating them by redistributing the source or compiled binaries either via FTP/HTTP or CD-ROM. If in doubt, please contact the &a.ports;. In situations like this, the variables described in the following sections can be set. <makevar>NO_PACKAGE</makevar> This variable indicates that we may not generate a binary package of the application. For instance, the license may disallow binary redistribution, or it may prohibit distribution of packages created from patched sources. However, the port's DISTFILES may be freely mirrored on FTP/HTTP. They may also be distributed on a CD-ROM (or similar media) unless NO_CDROM is set as well. NO_PACKAGE should also be used if the binary package is not generally useful, and the application should always be compiled from the source code. For example, if the application has configuration information that is site specific hard coded in to it at compile time, set NO_PACKAGE. NO_PACKAGE should be set to a string describing the reason why the package should not be generated. <makevar>NO_CDROM</makevar> This variable alone indicates that, although we are allowed to generate binary packages, we may put neither those packages nor the port's DISTFILES onto a CD-ROM (or similar media) for resale. However, the binary packages and the port's DISTFILES will still be available via FTP/HTTP. If this variable is set along with NO_PACKAGE, then only the port's DISTFILES will be available, and only via FTP/HTTP. NO_CDROM should be set to a string describing the reason why the port cannot be redistributed on CD-ROM. For instance, this should be used if the port's license is for non-commercial use only. <makevar>RESTRICTED</makevar> Set this variable alone if the application's license permits neither mirroring the application's DISTFILES nor distributing the binary package in any way. NO_CDROM or NO_PACKAGE should not be set along with RESTRICTED since the latter variable implies the former ones. RESTRICTED should be set to a string describing the reason why the port cannot be redistributed. Typically, this indicates that the port contains proprietary software and that the user will need to manually download the DISTFILES, possibly after registering for the software or agreeing to accept the terms of an EULA. <makevar>RESTRICTED_FILES</makevar> When RESTRICTED or NO_CDROM is set, this variable defaults to ${DISTFILES} ${PATCHFILES}, otherwise it is empty. If only some of the distribution files are restricted, then set this variable to list them. Note that the port committer should add an entry to /usr/ports/LEGAL for every listed distribution file, describing exactly what the restriction entails. Using <literal>perl</literal> Variables for ports that use <literal>perl</literal> Variable Means USE_PERL5 Says that the port uses perl 5 to build and run. USE_PERL5_BUILD Says that the port uses perl 5 to build. USE_PERL5_RUN Says that the port uses perl 5 to run. PERL The full path of perl 5, either in the system or installed from a port, but without the version number. Use this if you need to replace #!lines in scripts. PERL_CONFIGURE Configure using Perl's MakeMaker. It implies USE_PERL5. Read only variables PERL_VERSION The full version of perl installed (e.g., 5.00503). PERL_VER The short version of perl installed (e.g., 5.005). PERL_LEVEL The installed perl version as an integer of the form MNNNPP (e.g., 500503). PERL_ARCH Where perl stores architecture dependent libraries. Defaults to ${ARCH}-freebsd. PERL_PORT Name of the perl port that is installed (e.g., perl5). SITE_PERL Directory name where site specific perl packages go. This value is added to PLIST_SUB.
Using X11 Variables for ports that use X USE_X_PREFIX The port installs in X11BASE, not PREFIX. USE_XLIB The port uses the X libraries. USE_MOTIF The port uses the Motif toolkit. Implies USE_XPM. USE_IMAKE The port uses imake. Implies USE_X_PREFIX. XMKMF Set to the path of xmkmf if not in the PATH. Defaults to xmkmf -a.
Using <command>automake</command>, <command>autoconf</command>, and <command>libtool</command> Variables for ports that use automake, autoconf or libtool Variable Means AUTOMAKE The full path for automake if it is not in the PATH. USE_AUTOMAKE_VER The port uses automake. Valid values for this variable are 14 and 15, and sets the AUTOMAKE_DIR and ACLOCAL_DIR variables appropriately. AUTOMAKE_ARGS One or more command line arguments to pass to AUTOMAKE if USE_AUTOMAKE_VER is set. AUTOMAKE_ENV One or more environment variables to set (and their values) before running AUTOMAKE. ACLOCAL Set to the path of the GNU aclocal if it is not in the PATH. The default is set according to the USE_AUTOMAKE_VER variable. ACLOCAL_DIR Set to the path of the GNU aclocal shared directory. The default is set according to the USE_AUTOMAKE_VER variable. AUTOMAKE_DIR Set to the path of the GNU automake shared directory. The default is set according to the USE_AUTOMAKE_VER variable. USE_AUTOCONF_VER Specifies that the port uses autoconf. Implies GNU_CONFIGURE. The default value is 213. AUTOCONF Set to the path of GNU autoconf if it is not in the PATH. The default is set according to the USE_AUTOCONF_VER variable. AUTOCONF_ARGS Command line arguments to pass to autoconf. AUTOCONF_ENV Set these variable=value pairs in the environment before running autoconf. USE_AUTOHEADER_VER Specifies that the port uses autoheader. Implies USE_AUTOCONF_VER. The default value is 213. + AUTOHEADER Set to the path of GNU autoheader if it is not in the PATH. The default is set according to USE_AUTOCONF_VER. AUTORECONF Set to the path of GNU autoreconf if it is not in the PATH. The default is set according to USE_AUTOCONF_VER. AUTOSCAN Set to the path of GNU autoscan if it is not set in the PATH. The default is set according to USE_AUTOCONF_VER. AUTOIFNAMES Set to the path of GNU autoifnames if it is not set in the PATH. The default is set according to USE_AUTOCONF_VER. USE_LIBTOOL_VER The port uses libtool. Implies GNU_CONFIGURE. The default value is 13. LIBTOOL Set to the path of libtool if it is not set in the PATH. LIBTOOLFILES The files to patch for libtool. Defaults to aclocal.m4 if USE_AUTOCONF is defined, configure otherwise. LIBTOOLFLAGS Additional flags to pass to ltconfig. Defaults to --disable-ltlibs.
Using GNOME The FreeBSD/GNOME project uses its own set of variables to define which GNOME components a particular port uses. A comprehensive list of these variables exists within the FreeBSD/GNOME project's homepage. Using KDE Variables for ports that use KDE USE_QT_VER The port uses Qt toolkit. Possible values are 1, 2 and 3; each specify the major version of Qt to use. Sets both MOC and QTCPPFLAGSto default appropriate values. USE_KDELIBS_VER The port uses KDE libraries. Possible values are 1, 2 and 3; each specify the major version of KDE to use. Implies USE_QT_VER of the appropriate version. USE_KDEBASE_VER The port uses KDE base. Possible values are 1, 2 and 3; each specify the major version of KDE to use. Implies USE_KDELIBS_VER of the appropriate version. MOC Set to the path of moc. Default set according to USE_QT_VER value. QTCPPFLAGS Set the CPPFLAGS to use when processing Qt code. Default set according to USE_QT_VER value.
Using Bison This section is yet to be written. Using Java Variable definitions If your port needs a Java™ Development Kit (JDK) to either build, run or even extract the distfile, then it should define USE_JAVA. There are several JDKs in the ports collection, from various vendors, and in several versions. If your port must use one of these versions, you can define which one. The most current version is java/jdk14. Variables that may be set by ports that use Java Variable Means USE_JAVA Should be defined for the remaining variables to have any effect. JAVA_VERSION List of space-separated suitable Java versions for the port. An optional "+" allows you to specify a range of versions (allowed values: 1.1[+] 1.2[+] 1.3[+] 1.4[+]). JAVA_OS List of space-separated suitable JDK port operating systems for the port (allowed values: native linux). JAVA_VENDOR List of space-separated suitable JDK port vendors for the port (allowed values: freebsd bsdjava sun ibm blackdown). JAVA_BUILD When set, it means that the selected JDK port should be added to the build dependencies of the port. JAVA_RUN When set, it means that the selected JDK port should be added to the run dependencies of the port. JAVA_EXTRACT When set, it means that the selected JDK port should be added to the extract dependencies of the port. USE_JIKES Whether the port should or should not use the jikes bytecode compiler to build. When no value is set for this variable, the port will use jikes to build if available. You may also explicitely forbid or enforce the use of jikes (by setting 'no' or 'yes'). In the later case, devel/jikes will be added to build dependencies of the port.
Below is the list of all settings a port will receive after setting USE_JAVA: Variables provided to ports that use Java Variable Value JAVA_PORT The name of the JDK port (e.g. 'java/jdk14'). JAVA_PORT_VERSION The full version of the JDK port (e.g. '1.4.2'). If you only need the first two digits of this version number, use ${JAVA_PORT_VERSION:C/^([0-9])\.([0-9])(.*)$/\1.\2/}. JAVA_PORT_OS The operating system used by the JDK port (e.g. 'linux'). JAVA_PORT_VENDOR The vendor of the JDK port (e.g. 'sun'). JAVA_PORT_OS_DESCRIPTION Description of the operating system used by the JDK port (e.g. 'Linux'). JAVA_PORT_VENDOR_DESCRIPTION Description of the vendor of the JDK port (e.g. 'FreeBSD Foundation'). JAVA_HOME Path to the installation directory of the JDK (e.g. '/usr/local/jdk1.3.1'). JAVAC Path to the Java compiler to use (e.g. '/usr/local/jdk1.1.8/bin/javac' or '/usr/local/bin/jikes'). JAR Path to the jar tool to use (e.g. '/usr/local/jdk1.2.2/bin/jar' or '/usr/local/bin/fastjar'). APPLETVIEWER Path to the appletviewer utility (e.g. '/usr/local/linux-jdk1.2.2/bin/appletviewer'). JAVA Path to the java executable. Use this for executing Java programs (e.g. '/usr/local/jdk1.3.1/bin/java'). JAVADOC Path to the javadoc utility program. JAVAH Path to the javah program. JAVAP Path to the javap program. JAVA_KEYTOOL Path to the keytool utility program. This variable is availble only if the JDK is Java 1.2 or higher. JAVA_N2A Path to the native2ascii tool. JAVA_POLICYTOOL Path to the policytool program. This variable is available only if the JDK is Java 1.2 or higher. JAVA_SERIALVER Path to the serialver utility program. RMIC Path to the RMI stub/skeleton generator, rmic. RMIREGISTRY Path to the RMI registry program, rmiregistry. RMID Path to the RMI daemon program rmid. This variable is only available if the JDK is Java 1.2 or higher. JAVA_CLASSES Path to the archive that contains the JDK class files. On JDK 1.2 or later, this is ${JAVA_HOME}/jre/lib/rt.jar. Earlier JDKs used ${JAVA_HOME}/lib/classes.zip.
You may use the java-debug make target to get information for debugging your port. It will display the value of many of the forecited variables. Additionally, the following constants are defined so all Java ports may be installed in a consistent way: Constants defined for ports that use Java Constant Value JAVASHAREDIR The base directory for everything related to Java. Default: ${PREFIX}/share/java. JAVAJARDIR The directory where JAR files should be installed. Default: ${JAVASHAREDIR}/classes.
Best practices When porting a Java library, your port should install the JAR file(s) in ${JAVAJARDIR}, and everything else under ${JAVASHAREDIR}/${PORTNAME} (except for the documentation, see below). In order to reduce the packing file size, you may reference the JAR file(s) directly in the Makefile. Just use the following statement (where myport.jar is the name of the JAR file installed as part of the port): PLIST_FILES+= ${JAVAJARDIR:S,^${PREFIX}/,,}/myport.jar When porting a Java application, the port usually installs everything under a single directory (including its JAR dependencies). The use of ${JAVASHAREDIR}/${PORTNAME} is strongly encouraged in this regard. It is up the porter to decide whether the port should install the additional JAR dependencies under this directory or directly use the already installed ones (from ${JAVAJARDIR}). Regardless of the type of your port (library or application), the additional documentation should be installed in the same location as for any other port. The JavaDoc tool is known to produce a different set of files depending on the version of the JDK that is used. For ports that do not enforce the use of a particular JDK, it is therefore a complex task to specify the packing list (pkg-plist). This is one reason why porters are strongly encouraged to use the PORTDOCS macro. Moreover, even if you can predict the set of files that will be generated by javadoc, the size of the resulting pkg-plist advocates for the use of PORTDOCS. The default value for DATADIR is ${PREFIX}/share/${PORTNAME}. It is a good idea to override DATADIR to ${JAVASHAREDIR}/${PORTNAME} for Java ports. Indeed, DATADIR is automatically addded to PLIST_SUB (documented here) so you may use %%DATADIR%% directly in pkg-plist. As for the choice of building Java ports from source or directly installing them from a binary distribution, there is no defined policy at the time of writing. However, people from the &os; Java Project encourage porters to have their ports built from source whenever it is a trivial task. All the features that have been presented in this section are implemented in bsd.java.mk. If you ever think that your port needs more sophisticated Java support, please first have a look at the bsd.java.mk CVS log as it usually takes some time to document the latest features. Then, if you think the support you are lacking would be beneficial to many other Java ports, feel free to discuss it on the &a.java;. Although there is a java category for PRs, it refers to the JDK porting effort from the &os; Java project. Therefore, you should submit your Java port in the ports category as for any other port, unless the issue you are trying to resolve is related to either a JDK implementation or bsd.java.mk. Using Python This section is yet to be written. Using Emacs This section is yet to be written. Using Ruby This section is yet to be written. Using SDL The USE_SDL variable is used to autoconfigure the dependencies for ports which use an SDL based library like devel/sdl12 and x11-toolkits/sdl_gui. The following SDL libraries are recognized at the moment: sdl: devel/sdl12 gfx: graphics/sdl_gfx gui: x11-toolkits/sdl_gui image: graphics/sdl_image ldbad: devel/sdl_ldbad mixer: audio/sdl_mixer mm: devel/sdlmm net: net/sdl_net sound: audio/sdl_sound ttf: graphics/sdl_ttf Therefore, if a port has a dependency on net/sdl_net and audio/sdl_mixer, the syntax will be: USE_SDL= net mixer The dependency devel/sdl12, which is required by net/sdl_net and audio/sdl_mixer, is automatically added as well. If you use USE_SDL, it will automatically: Add a dependency on sdl12-config to BUILD_DEPENDS Add the variable SDL_CONFIG to CONFIGURE_ENV Add the dependencies of the selected libraries to the LIB_DEPENDS To check whether an SDL library is available, you can do it with the WANT_SDL variable: WANT_SDL=yes .include <bsd.port.pre.mk> .if ${HAVE_SDL:Mmixer}!="" USE_SDL+= mixer .endif .include <bsd.port.post.mk> <makevar>MASTERDIR</makevar> If your port needs to build slightly different versions of packages by having a variable (for instance, resolution, or paper size) take different values, create one subdirectory per package to make it easier for users to see what to do, but try to share as many files as possible between ports. Typically you only need a very short Makefile in all but one of the directories if you use variables cleverly. In the sole Makefile, you can use MASTERDIR to specify the directory where the rest of the files are. Also, use a variable as part of PKGNAMESUFFIX so the packages will have different names. This will be best demonstrated by an example. This is part of japanese/xdvi300/Makefile; PORTNAME= xdvi PORTVERSION= 17 PKGNAMEPREFIX= ja- PKGNAMESUFFIX= ${RESOLUTION} : # default RESOLUTION?= 300 .if ${RESOLUTION} != 118 && ${RESOLUTION} != 240 && \ ${RESOLUTION} != 300 && ${RESOLUTION} != 400 @${ECHO} "Error: invalid value for RESOLUTION: \"${RESOLUTION}\"" @${ECHO} "Possible values are: 118, 240, 300 (default) and 400." @${FALSE} .endif japanese/xdvi300 also has all the regular patches, package files, etc. If you type make there, it will take the default value for the resolution (300) and build the port normally. As for other resolutions, this is the entire xdvi118/Makefile: RESOLUTION= 118 MASTERDIR= ${.CURDIR}/../xdvi300 .include "${MASTERDIR}/Makefile" (xdvi240/Makefile and xdvi400/Makefile are similar). The MASTERDIR definition tells bsd.port.mk that the regular set of subdirectories like FILESDIR and SCRIPTDIR are to be found under xdvi300. The RESOLUTION=118 line will override the RESOLUTION=300 line in xdvi300/Makefile and the port will be built with resolution set to 118. Shared library versions Please read our policy on shared library versioning to understand what to do with shared library versions in general. Do not blindly assume software authors know what they are doing; many of them do not. It is very important that these details are carefully considered, as we have quite a unique situation where we are trying to have dozens of potentially incompatible software pairs co-exist. Careless port imports have caused great trouble regarding shared libraries in the past (ever wondered why the port jpeg-6b has a shared library version of 9?). If in doubt, send a message to the &a.ports;. Most of the time, your job ends by determining the right shared library version and making appropriate patches to implement it. Manpages The MAN[1-9LN] variables will automatically add any manpages to pkg-plist (this means you must not list manpages in the pkg-plist—see generating PLIST for more). It also makes the install stage automatically compress or uncompress manpages depending on the setting of NOMANCOMPRESS in /etc/make.conf. If your port tries to install multiple names for manpages using symlinks or hardlinks, you must use the MLINKS variable to identify these. The link installed by your port will be destroyed and recreated by bsd.port.mk to make sure it points to the correct file. Any manpages listed in MLINKS must not be listed in the pkg-plist. To specify whether the manpages are compressed upon installation, use the MANCOMPRESSED variable. This variable can take three values, yes, no and maybe. yes means manpages are already installed compressed, no means they are not, and maybe means the software already respects the value of NOMANCOMPRESS so bsd.port.mk does not have to do anything special. MANCOMPRESSED is automatically set to yes if USE_IMAKE is set and NO_INSTALL_MANPAGES is not set, and to no otherwise. You do not have to explicitly define it unless the default is not suitable for your port. If your port anchors its man tree somewhere other than PREFIX, you can use the MANPREFIX to set it. Also, if only manpages in certain sections go in a non-standard place, such as some perl modules ports, you can set individual man paths using MANsectPREFIX (where sect is one of 1-9, L or N). If your manpages go to language-specific subdirectories, set the name of the languages to MANLANG. The value of this variable defaults to "" (i.e., English only). Here is an example that puts it all together. MAN1= foo.1 MAN3= bar.3 MAN4= baz.4 MLINKS= foo.1 alt-name.8 MANLANG= "" ja MAN3PREFIX= ${PREFIX}/share/foobar MANCOMPRESSED= yes This states that six files are installed by this port; ${PREFIX}/man/man1/foo.1.gz ${PREFIX}/man/ja/man1/foo.1.gz ${PREFIX}/share/foobar/man/man3/bar.3.gz ${PREFIX}/share/foobar/man/ja/man3/bar.3.gz ${PREFIX}/man/man4/baz.4.gz ${PREFIX}/man/ja/man4/baz.4.gz Additionally ${PREFIX}/man/man8/alt-name.8.gz may or may not be installed by your port. Regardless, a symlink will be made to join the foo(1) manpage and alt-name(8) manpage. Ports that require Motif There are many programs that require a Motif library (available from several commercial vendors, while there is a free clone reported to be able to run many applications in x11-toolkits/lesstif) to compile. Since it is a popular toolkit and their licenses usually permit redistribution of statically linked binaries, we have made special provisions for handling ports that require Motif in a way that we can easily compile binaries linked either dynamically (for people who are compiling from the port) or statically (for people who distribute packages). <makevar>USE_MOTIF</makevar> If your port requires Motif, define this variable in the Makefile. This will prevent people who do not own a copy of Motif from even attempting to build it. <makevar>MOTIFLIB</makevar> This variable will be set by bsd.port.mk to be the appropriate reference to the Motif library. Please patch the source of your port to reference this wherever the Motif library is referenced in the Makefile or Imakefile. There are two common cases: If the port refers to the Motif library as -lXm in its Makefile or Imakefile, simply substitute ${MOTIFLIB} for it. If the port uses XmClientLibs in its Imakefile, change it to ${MOTIFLIB} ${XTOOLLIB} ${XLIB}. Note that MOTIFLIB (usually) expands to -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lXm or /usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.a, so there is no need to add -L or -l in front. X11 fonts If your port installs fonts for the X Window System, put them in X11BASE/lib/X11/fonts/local. This directory was new to XFree86 3.3.3. If it does not exist, please create it, and print out a message urging the user to update their XFree86 to 3.3.3 or newer, or at least add this directory to the font path in /etc/XF86Config. Info files If your package needs to install GNU info files, they should be listed in the INFO variable (without the trailing .info), and appropriate installation/de-installation code will be automatically added to the temporary pkg-plist before package registration. The <filename>pkg-<replaceable>*</replaceable></filename> files There are some tricks we have not mentioned yet about the pkg-* files that come in handy sometimes. <filename>pkg-message</filename> If you need to display a message to the installer, you may place the message in pkg-message. This capability is often useful to display additional installation steps to be taken after a &man.pkg.add.1; or to display licensing information. The pkg-message file does not need to be added to pkg-plist. Also, it will not get automatically printed if the user is using the port, not the package, so you should probably display it from the post-install target yourself. <filename>pkg-install</filename> If your port needs to execute commands when the binary package is installed with &man.pkg.add.1; you can do this via the pkg-install script. This script will automatically be added to the package, and will be run twice by &man.pkg.add.1;: the first time as ${SH} pkg-install ${PKGNAME} PRE-INSTALL and the second time as ${SH} pkg-install ${PKGNAME} POST-INSTALL. $2 can be tested to determine which mode the script is being run in. The PKG_PREFIX environmental variable will be set to the package installation directory. See &man.pkg.add.1; for additional information. This script is not run automatically if you install the port with make install. If you are depending on it being run, you will have to explicitly call it from your port's Makefile. <filename>pkg-deinstall</filename> This script executes when a package is removed. This script will be run twice by &man.pkg.delete.1;. The first time as ${SH} pkg-install ${PKGNAME} DEINSTALL and the second time as ${SH} pkg-install ${PKGNAME} POST-DEINSTALL. <filename>pkg-req</filename> If your port needs to determine if it should install or not, you can create a pkg-req requirements script. It will be invoked automatically at installation/de-installation time to determine whether or not installation/de-installation should proceed. The script will be run at installation time by &man.pkg.add.1; as pkg-req ${PKGNAME} INSTALL. At de-installation time it will be run by &man.pkg.delete.1; as pkg-req ${PKGNAME} DEINSTALL. Changing <filename>pkg-plist</filename> based on make variables Some ports, particularly the p5- ports, need to change their pkg-plist depending on what options they are configured with (or version of perl, in the case of p5- ports). To make this easy, any instances in the pkg-plist of %%OSREL%%, %%PERL_VER%%, and %%PERL_VERSION%% will be substituted for appropriately. The value of %%OSREL%% is the numeric revision of the operating system (e.g., 4.9). %%PERL_VERSION%% is the full version number of perl (e.g., 5.00502) and %%PERL_VER%% is the perl version number minus the patchlevel (e.g., 5.005). Several other %%VARS%% related to port's documentation files are described in the relevant section. If you need to make other substitutions, you can set the PLIST_SUB variable with a list of VAR=VALUE pairs and instances of %%VAR%% will be substituted with VALUE in the pkg-plist. For instance, if you have a port that installs many files in a version-specific subdirectory, you can put something like OCTAVE_VERSION= 2.0.13 PLIST_SUB= OCTAVE_VERSION=${OCTAVE_VERSION} in the Makefile and use %%OCTAVE_VERSION%% wherever the version shows up in pkg-plist. That way, when you upgrade the port, you will not have to change dozens (or in some cases, hundreds) of lines in the pkg-plist. This substitution (as well as addition of any manual pages) will be done between the pre-install and do-install targets, by reading from PLIST and writing to TMPPLIST (default: WRKDIR/.PLIST.mktmp). So if your port builds PLIST on the fly, do so in or before pre-install. Also, if your port needs to edit the resulting file, do so in post-install to a file named TMPPLIST. Another possibility to modify port's packing list is based on setting the variables PLIST_FILES and PLIST_DIRS. The value of each variable is regarded as a list of pathnames to write to TMPPLIST along with PLIST contents. Names listed in PLIST_FILES and PLIST_DIRS are subject to %%VAR%% substitution, as described above. Except for that, names from PLIST_FILES will appear in the final packing list unchanged, while @dirrm will be prepended to names from PLIST_DIRS. To take effect, PLIST_FILES and PLIST_DIRS must be set before TMPPLIST is written, i.e. in pre-install or earlier. Changing the names of <filename>pkg-<replaceable>*</replaceable></filename> files All the names of pkg-* files are defined using variables so you can change them in your Makefile if need be. This is especially useful when you are sharing the same pkg-* files among several ports or have to write to one of the above files (see writing to places other than WRKDIR for why it is a bad idea to write directly into the pkg-* subdirectory). Here is a list of variable names and their default values. (PKGDIR defaults to ${MASTERDIR}.) Variable Default value DESCR ${PKGDIR}/pkg-descr PLIST ${PKGDIR}/pkg-plist PKGINSTALL ${PKGDIR}/pkg-install PKGDEINSTALL ${PKGDIR}/pkg-deinstall PKGREQ ${PKGDIR}/pkg-req PKGMESSAGE ${PKGDIR}/pkg-message Please change these variables rather than overriding PKG_ARGS. If you change PKG_ARGS, those files will not correctly be installed in /var/db/pkg upon install from a port. Testing your port Running <command>make describe</command> Several of the &os; port maintainance tools, such as &man.portupgrade.1;, rely on a database called /usr/ports/INDEX which keeps track of such items as port dependencies. INDEX is created by the top-level ports/Makefile via make index, which descends into each port subdirectory and executes make describe there. Thus, if make describe fails in any port, no one can generate INDEX, and many people will quickly become unhappy. It is important to be able to generate this file no matter what options are present in make.conf, so please avoid doing things such as using .error statements when (for instance) a dependency is not satisfied. How to avoid using <literal>.error</literal> Assume that someone has the line USE_POINTYHAT=yes in make.conf. The first of the next two Makefile snippets will cause make index to fail, while the second one will not: .if USE_POINTYHAT .error "POINTYHAT is not supported" .endif .if USE_POINTYHAT IGNORE=POINTYHAT is not supported .endif If make describe produces a string rather than an error message, you are probably safe. See bsd.port.mk for the meaning of the string produced. Also note that running a recent version of portlint (as specified in the next section) will cause make describe to be run automatically. Portlint Do check your work with portlint before you submit or commit it. portlint warns you about many common errors, both functional and stylistic. For a new (or repocopied) port, portlint -A is the most thorough; for an existing port, portlint -C is sufficient. Since portlint uses heuristics to try to figure out errors, it can produce false positive warnings. In addition, occasionally something that is flagged as a problem really cannot be done in any other way due to limitations in the ports framework. When in doubt, the best thing to do is ask on &a.ports;. <makevar>PREFIX</makevar> Do try to make your port install relative to PREFIX. (The value of this variable will be set to LOCALBASE (default /usr/local), unless USE_X_PREFIX or USE_IMAKE is set, in which case it will be X11BASE (default /usr/X11R6). Avoiding the hard-coding of /usr/local or /usr/X11R6 anywhere in the source will make the port much more flexible and able to cater to the needs of other sites. For X ports that use imake, this is automatic; otherwise, this can often be done by simply replacing the occurrences of /usr/local (or /usr/X11R6 for X ports that do not use imake) in the various scripts/Makefiles in the port to read ${PREFIX}, as this variable is automatically passed down to every stage of the build and install processes. Make sure your application is not installing things in /usr/local instead of PREFIX. A quick test for this is to do this is: &prompt.root; make clean; make package PREFIX=/var/tmp/port-name If anything is installed outside of PREFIX, the package creation process will complain that it cannot find the files. This does not test for the existence of internal references, or correct use of LOCALBASE for references to files from other ports. Testing the installation in /var/tmp/port-name to do that while you have it installed would do that. Do not set USE_X_PREFIX unless your port truly requires it (i.e., it links against X libs or it needs to reference files in X11BASE). The variable PREFIX can be reassigned in your Makefile or in the user's environment. However, it is strongly discouraged for individual ports to set this variable explicitly in the Makefiles. Also, refer to programs/files from other ports with the variables mentioned above, not explicit pathnames. For instance, if your port requires a macro PAGER to be the full pathname of less, use the compiler flag: -DPAGER=\"${PREFIX}/bin/less\" or -DPAGER=\"${LOCALBASE}/bin/less\" if this is an X port, instead of -DPAGER=\"/usr/local/bin/less\". This way it will have a better chance of working if the system administrator has moved the whole /usr/local tree somewhere else. Upgrading When you notice that a port is out of date compared to the latest version from the original authors, you should first ensure that you have the latest port. You can find them in the ports/ports-current directory of the &os; FTP mirror sites. However, if you are working with more than a few ports, you will probably find it easier to use CVSup to keep your whole ports collection up-to-date, as described in the Handbook. This will have the added benefit of tracking all the ports' dependencies. The next step is to see if there is an update already pending. To do this, you have two options. There is a searchable interface to the FreeBSD Problem Report (PR) database (also known as GNATS). Select ports in the dropdown, and enter the name of the port. However, sometimes people forget to put the name of the port into the Synopsis field in an unambiguous fashion. In that case, you can try the FreeBSD Ports Monitoring System (also known as portsmon). This system attempts to classify port PRs by portname. To search for PRs about a particular port, use the Overview of One Port. If there is no pending PR, the next step is to send an email to the port's maintainer, as shown by make maintainer. That person may already be working on an upgrade, or have a reason to not upgrade the port right now (because of, for example, stability problems of the new version); you would not want to duplicate their work. Note that unmaintained ports are listed with a maintainer of ports@FreeBSD.org, which is just the general ports mailing list, so sending mail there probably will not help in this case. If the maintainer asks you to do the upgrade or there is no maintainer, then you have a chance to help out &os; by preparing the update yourself! Please make the changes and save the result of the recursive diff output of the new and old ports directories (e.g., if your modified port directory is called superedit and the original is in our tree as superedit.bak, then save the result of diff -ruN superedit.bak superedit). Either unified or context diff is fine, but port committers generally prefer unified diffs. Note the use of the -N option—this is the accepted way to force diff to properly deal with the case of new files being added or old files being deleted. Before sending us the diff, please examine the output to make sure all the changes make sense. To simplify common operations with patch files, you can use /usr/ports/Tools/scripts/patchtool.py. Before using it, please read /usr/ports/Tools/scripts/README.patchtool. If the port is unmaintained, and you are actively using it yourself, please consider volunteering to become its maintainer. &os; has over 2000 ports without maintainers, and this is an area where more volunteers are always needed. (For a detailed description of the responsibilities of maintainers, refer to the MAINTAINER on Makefiles section.) The best way to send us the diff is by including it via &man.send-pr.1; (category ports). If you are volunteering to maintain the port, be sure to put [maintainer update] at the beginning of your synopsis line and set the Class of your PR to maintainer-update. Otherwise, the Class of your PR should be change-request. Please mention any added or deleted files in the message, as they have to be explicitly specified to &man.cvs.1; when doing a commit. If the diff is more than about 20KB, please compress and uuencode it; otherwise, just include it in the PR as is. Before you &man.send-pr.1;, you should review the Writing the problem report section in the Problem Reports article; it contains far more information about how to write useful problem reports. If your upgrade is motivated by security concerns or a serious fault in the currently committed port, please notify the &a.portmgr; to request immediate rebuilding and redistribution of your port's package. Unsuspecting users of &man.pkg.add.1; will otherwise continue to install the old version via pkg_add -r for several weeks. Once again, please use &man.diff.1; and not &man.shar.1; to send updates to existing ports! Now that you have done all that, you will want to read about how to keep up-to-date in . Dos and Don'ts Introduction Here is a list of common dos and don'ts that you encounter during the porting process. You should check your own port against this list, but you can also check ports in the PR database that others have submitted. Submit any comments on ports you check as described in Bug Reports and General Commentary. Checking ports in the PR database will both make it faster for us to commit them, and prove that you know what you are doing. Stripping Binaries Do not strip binaries manually unless you have to. All binaries should be stripped, but the INSTALL_PROGRAM macro will install and strip a binary at the same time (see the next section). If you need to strip a file, but do not wish to use the INSTALL_PROGRAM macro, ${STRIP_CMD} will strip your program. This is typically done within the post-install target. For example: post-install: ${STRIP_CMD} ${PREFIX}/bin/xdl Use the &man.file.1; command on the installed executable to check whether the binary is stripped or not. If it does not say not stripped, it is stripped. Additionally, &man.strip.1; will not strip a previously stripped program; it will instead exit cleanly. INSTALL_* macros Do use the macros provided in bsd.port.mk to ensure correct modes and ownership of files in your own *-install targets. INSTALL_PROGRAM is a command to install binary executables. INSTALL_SCRIPT is a command to install executable scripts. INSTALL_DATA is a command to install sharable data. INSTALL_MAN is a command to install manpages and other documentation (it does not compress anything). These are basically the install command with all the appropriate flags. See below for an example on how to use them. <makevar>WRKDIR</makevar> Do not write anything to files outside WRKDIR. WRKDIR is the only place that is guaranteed to be writable during the port build (see installing ports from a CDROM for an example of building ports from a read-only tree). If you need to modify one of the pkg-* files, do so by redefining a variable, not by writing over it. <makevar>WRKDIRPREFIX</makevar> Make sure your port honors WRKDIRPREFIX. Most ports do not have to worry about this. In particular, if you are referring to a WRKDIR of another port, note that the correct location is WRKDIRPREFIXPORTSDIR/subdir/name/work not PORTSDIR/subdir/name/work or .CURDIR/../../subdir/name/work or some such. Also, if you are defining WRKDIR yourself, make sure you prepend ${WRKDIRPREFIX}${.CURDIR} in the front. Differentiating operating systems and OS versions You may come across code that needs modifications or conditional compilation based upon what version of Unix it is running under. If you need to make such changes to the code for conditional compilation, make sure you make the changes as general as possible so that we can back-port code to older FreeBSD systems and cross-port to other BSD systems such as 4.4BSD from CSRG, BSD/386, 386BSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. The preferred way to tell 4.3BSD/Reno (1990) and newer versions of the BSD code apart is by using the BSD macro defined in <sys/param.h>. Hopefully that file is already included; if not, add the code: #if (defined(__unix__) || defined(unix)) && !defined(USG) #include <sys/param.h> #endif to the proper place in the .c file. We believe that every system that defines these two symbols has sys/param.h. If you find a system that does not, we would like to know. Please send mail to the &a.ports;. Another way is to use the GNU Autoconf style of doing this: #ifdef HAVE_SYS_PARAM_H #include <sys/param.h> #endif Do not forget to add -DHAVE_SYS_PARAM_H to the CFLAGS in the Makefile for this method. Once you have sys/param.h included, you may use: #if (defined(BSD) && (BSD >= 199103)) to detect if the code is being compiled on a 4.3 Net2 code base or newer (e.g. FreeBSD 1.x, 4.3/Reno, NetBSD 0.9, 386BSD, BSD/386 1.1 and below). Use: #if (defined(BSD) && (BSD >= 199306)) to detect if the code is being compiled on a 4.4 code base or newer (e.g. FreeBSD 2.x, 4.4, NetBSD 1.0, BSD/386 2.0 or above). The value of the BSD macro is 199506 for the 4.4BSD-Lite2 code base. This is stated for informational purposes only. It should not be used to distinguish between versions of FreeBSD based only on 4.4-Lite vs. versions that have merged in changes from 4.4-Lite2. The __FreeBSD__ macro should be used instead. Use sparingly: __FreeBSD__ is defined in all versions of FreeBSD. Use it if the change you are making only affects FreeBSD. Porting gotchas like the use of sys_errlist[] vs strerror() are Berkeley-isms, not FreeBSD changes. In FreeBSD 2.x, __FreeBSD__ is defined to be 2. In earlier versions, it is 1. Later versions always bump it to match their major version number. If you need to tell the difference between a FreeBSD 1.x system and a FreeBSD 2.x or above system, usually the right answer is to use the BSD macros described above. If there actually is a FreeBSD specific change (such as special shared library options when using ld) then it is OK to use __FreeBSD__ and #if __FreeBSD__ > 1 to detect a FreeBSD 2.x and later system. If you need more granularity in detecting FreeBSD systems since 2.0-RELEASE you can use the following: #if __FreeBSD__ >= 2 #include <osreldate.h> # if __FreeBSD_version >= 199504 /* 2.0.5+ release specific code here */ # endif #endif In the hundreds of ports that have been done, there have only been one or two cases where __FreeBSD__ should have been used. Just because an earlier port screwed up and used it in the wrong place does not mean you should do so too. __FreeBSD_version values Here is a convenient list of __FreeBSD_version values as defined in sys/param.h: __FreeBSD_version values Release __FreeBSD_version 2.0-RELEASE 119411 2.1-CURRENT 199501, 199503 2.0.5-RELEASE 199504 2.2-CURRENT before 2.1 199508 2.1.0-RELEASE 199511 2.2-CURRENT before 2.1.5 199512 2.1.5-RELEASE 199607 2.2-CURRENT before 2.1.6 199608 2.1.6-RELEASE 199612 2.1.7-RELEASE 199612 2.2-RELEASE 220000 2.2.1-RELEASE 220000 (no change) 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.1-RELEASE 220000 (no change) 2.2-STABLE after texinfo-3.9 221001 2.2-STABLE after top 221002 2.2.2-RELEASE 222000 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.2-RELEASE 222001 2.2.5-RELEASE 225000 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.5-RELEASE 225001 2.2-STABLE after ldconfig -R merge 225002 2.2.6-RELEASE 226000 2.2.7-RELEASE 227000 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.7-RELEASE 227001 2.2-STABLE after &man.semctl.2; change 227002 2.2.8-RELEASE 228000 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.8-RELEASE 228001 3.0-CURRENT before &man.mount.2; change 300000 3.0-CURRENT after &man.mount.2; change 300001 3.0-CURRENT after &man.semctl.2; change 300002 3.0-CURRENT after ioctl arg changes 300003 3.0-CURRENT after ELF conversion 300004 3.0-RELEASE 300005 3.0-CURRENT after 3.0-RELEASE 300006 3.0-STABLE after 3/4 branch 300007 3.1-RELEASE 310000 3.1-STABLE after 3.1-RELEASE 310001 3.1-STABLE after C++ constructor/destructor order change 310002 3.2-RELEASE 320000 3.2-STABLE 320001 3.2-STABLE after binary-incompatible IPFW and socket changes 320002 3.3-RELEASE 330000 3.3-STABLE 330001 3.3-STABLE after adding &man.mkstemp.3; to libc 330002 3.4-RELEASE 340000 3.4-STABLE 340001 3.5-RELEASE 350000 3.5-STABLE 350001 4.0-CURRENT after 3.4 branch 400000 4.0-CURRENT after change in dynamic linker handling 400001 4.0-CURRENT after C++ constructor/destructor order change 400002 4.0-CURRENT after functioning &man.dladdr.3; 400003 4.0-CURRENT after __deregister_frame_info dynamic linker bug fix (also 4.0-CURRENT after EGCS 1.1.2 integration) 400004 4.0-CURRENT after &man.suser.9; API change (also 4.0-CURRENT after newbus) 400005 4.0-CURRENT after cdevsw registration change 400006 4.0-CURRENT after the addition of so_cred for socket level credentials 400007 4.0-CURRENT after the addition of a poll syscall wrapper to libc_r 400008 4.0-CURRENT after the change of the kernel's dev_t type to struct specinfo pointer 400009 4.0-CURRENT after fixing a hole in &man.jail.2; 400010 4.0-CURRENT after the sigset_t datatype change 400011 4.0-CURRENT after the cutover to the GCC 2.95.2 compiler 400012 4.0-CURRENT after adding pluggable linux-mode ioctl handlers 400013 4.0-CURRENT after importing OpenSSL 400014 4.0-CURRENT after the C++ ABI change in GCC 2.95.2 from -fvtable-thunks to -fno-vtable-thunks by default 400015 4.0-CURRENT after importing OpenSSH 400016 4.0-RELEASE 400017 4.0-STABLE after 4.0-RELEASE 400018 4.0-STABLE after the introduction of delayed checksums. 400019 4.0-STABLE after merging libxpg4 code into libc. 400020 4.0-STABLE after upgrading Binutils to 2.10.0, ELF branding changes, and tcsh in the base system. 400021 4.1-RELEASE 410000 4.1-STABLE after 4.1-RELEASE 410001 4.1-STABLE after &man.setproctitle.3; moved from libutil to libc. 410002 4.1.1-RELEASE 411000 4.1.1-STABLE after 4.1.1-RELEASE 411001 4.2-RELEASE 420000 4.2-STABLE after combining libgcc.a and libgcc_r.a, and associated GCC linkage changes. 420001 4.3-RELEASE 430000 4.3-STABLE after wint_t introduction. 430001 4.3-STABLE after PCI powerstate API merge. 430002 4.4-RELEASE 440000 4.4-STABLE after d_thread_t introduction. 440001 4.4-STABLE after mount structure changes (affects filesystem klds). 440002 4.4-STABLE after the userland components of smbfs were imported. 440003 4.5-RELEASE 450000 4.5-STABLE after the usb structure element rename. 450001 4.5-STABLE after the sendmail_enable &man.rc.conf.5; variable was made to take the value NONE. 450004 4.5-STABLE after moving to XFree86 4 by default for package builds. 450005 4.5-STABLE after accept filtering was fixed so that is no longer susceptible to an easy DoS. 450006 4.6-RELEASE 460000 4.6-STABLE &man.sendfile.2; fixed to comply with documentation, not to count any headers sent against the amount of data to be sent from the file. 460001 4.6.2-RELEASE 460002 4.6-STABLE 460100 4.6-STABLE after MFC of `sed -i'. 460101 4.6-STABLE after MFC of many new pkg_install features from the HEAD. 460102 4.7-RELEASE 470000 4.7-STABLE 470100 Start generated __std{in,out,err}p references rather than __sF. This changes std{in,out,err} from a compile time expression to a runtime one. 470101 4.7-STABLE after MFC of mbuf changes to replace m_aux mbufs by m_tag's 470102 4.7-STABLE gets OpenSSL 0.9.7 470103 4.8-RELEASE 480000 4.8-STABLE 480100 4.8-STABLE after &man.realpath.3; has been made thread-safe 480101 4.8-STABLE 3ware API changes to twe. 480102 4.9-RELEASE 490000 4.9-STABLE 490100 4.9-STABLE after e_sid was added to struct kinfo_eproc. 490101 4.9-STABLE after MFC of libmap functionality for rtld. 490102 4.10-RELEASE 491000 4.10-STABLE 491100 5.0-CURRENT 500000 5.0-CURRENT after adding addition ELF header fields, and changing our ELF binary branding method. 500001 5.0-CURRENT after kld metadata changes. 500002 5.0-CURRENT after buf/bio changes. 500003 5.0-CURRENT after binutils upgrade. 500004 5.0-CURRENT after merging libxpg4 code into libc and after TASKQ interface introduction. 500005 5.0-CURRENT after the addition of AGP interfaces. 500006 5.0-CURRENT after Perl upgrade to 5.6.0 500007 5.0-CURRENT after the update of KAME code to 2000/07 sources. 500008 5.0-CURRENT after ether_ifattach() and ether_ifdetach() changes. 500009 5.0-CURRENT after changing mtree defaults back to original variant, adding -L to follow symlinks. 500010 5.0-CURRENT after kqueue API changed. 500011 5.0-CURRENT after &man.setproctitle.3; moved from libutil to libc. 500012 5.0-CURRENT after the first SMPng commit. 500013 5.0-CURRENT after <sys/select.h> moved to <sys/selinfo.h>. 500014 5.0-CURRENT after combining libgcc.a and libgcc_r.a, and associated GCC linkage changes. 500015 5.0-CURRENT after change allowing libc and libc_r to be linked together, deprecating -pthread option. 500016 5.0-CURRENT after switch from struct ucred to struct xucred to stabilize kernel-exported API for mountd et al. 500017 5.0-CURRENT after addition of CPUTYPE make variable for controlling CPU-specific optimizations. 500018 5.0-CURRENT after moving machine/ioctl_fd.h to sys/fdcio.h 500019 5.0-CURRENT after locale names renaming. 500020 5.0-CURRENT after Bzip2 import. Also signifies removal of S/Key. 500021 5.0-CURRENT after SSE support. 500022 5.0-CURRENT after KSE Milestone 2. 500023 5.0-CURRENT after d_thread_t, and moving UUCP to ports. 500024 5.0-CURRENT after ABI change for descriptor and creds passing on 64 bit platforms. 500025 5.0-CURRENT after moving to XFree86 4 by default for package builds, and after the new libc strnstr() function was added. 500026 5.0-CURRENT after the new libc strcasestr() function was added. 500027 5.0-CURRENT after the userland components of smbfs were imported. 500028 5.0-CURRENT after the new C99 specific-width integer types were added. (Not incremented.) 5.0-CURRENT after a change was made in the return value of &man.sendfile.2;. 500029 5.0-CURRENT after the introduction of the type fflags_t, which is the appropriate size for file flags. 500030 5.0-CURRENT after the usb structure element rename. 500031 5.0-CURRENT after the introduction of Perl 5.6.1. 500032 5.0-CURRENT after the sendmail_enable &man.rc.conf.5; variable was made to take the value NONE. 500033 5.0-CURRENT after mtx_init() grew a third argument. 500034 5.0-CURRENT with Gcc 3.1. 500035 5.0-CURRENT without Perl in /usr/src 500036 5.0-CURRENT after the addition of &man.dlfunc.3; 500037 5.0-CURRENT after the types of some struct sockbuf members were changed and the structure was reordered. 500038 5.0-CURRENT after headers stopped using _BSD_FOO_T_ and started using _FOO_T_DECLARED. This value can also be used as a conservative estimate of the start of &man.bzip2.1; package support. 500039 5.0-CURRENT after various changes to disk functions were made in the name of removing dependency on disklabel structure internals. 500040 5.0-CURRENT after the addition of &man.getopt.long.3; to libc. 500041 5.0-CURRENT after Binutils 2.13 upgrade, which included new FreeBSD emulation, vec, and output format. 500042 5.0-CURRENT after adding weak pthread_XXX stubs to libc, obsoleting libXThrStub.so. 5.0-RELEASE. 500043 5.0-CURRENT after branching for RELENG_5_0 500100 <sys/dkstat.h> is empty and should not be included. 500101 5.0-CURRENT after the d_mmap_t interface change. 500102 5.0-CURRENT after taskqueue_swi changed to run without Giant, and taskqueue_swi_giant added to run with Giant. 500103 cdevsw_add() and cdevsw_remove() no longer exists. Appearance of MAJOR_AUTO allocation facility. 500104 5.0-CURRENT after new cdevsw initialization method. 500105 devstat_add_entry() has been replaced by devstat_new_entry() 500106 Devstat interface change; see sys/sys/param.h 1.149 500107 Token-Ring interface changes. 500108 Addition of vm_paddr_t. 500109 5.0-CURRENT after &man.realpath.3; has been made thread-safe 500110 5.0-CURRENT after &man.usbhid.3; has been synced with NetBSD 500111 5.0-CURRENT after new NSS implementation and addition of POSIX.1 getpw*_r, getgr*_r functions 500112 5.0-CURRENT after removal of the old rc system. 500113 5.1-RELEASE. 501000 5.1-CURRENT after branching for RELENG_5_1. 501100 5.1-CURRENT after correcting the semantics of sigtimedwait(2) and sigwaitinfo(2). 501101 5.1-CURRENT after adding the lockfunc and lockfuncarg fields to &man.bus.dma.tag.create.9;. 501102 5.1-CURRENT after GCC 3.3.1-pre 20030711 snapshot integration. 501103 5.1-CURRENT 3ware API changes to twe. 501104 5.1-CURRENT dynamically-linked /bin and /sbin support and movement of libraries to /lib. 501105 5.1-CURRENT after adding kernel support for Coda 6.x. 501106 5.1-CURRENT after 16550 UART constants moved from <dev/sio/sioreg.h> to <dev/ic/ns16550.h>. Also when libmap functionality was unconditionally supported by rtld. 501107 5.1-CURRENT after PFIL_HOOKS API update 501108 5.1-CURRENT after adding kiconv(3) 501109 5.1-CURRENT after changing default operations for open and close in cdevsw 501110 5.1-CURRENT after changed layout of cdevsw 501111 5.1-CURRENT after adding kobj multiple inheritance 501112 5.1-CURRENT after the if_xname change in struct ifnet 501113 5.1-CURRENT after changing /bin and /sbin to be dynamically linked 501114 5.2-RELEASE 502000 5.2.1-RELEASE 502010 5.2-CURRENT after branching for RELENG_5_2 502100 5.2-CURRENT after __cxa_atexit/__cxa_finalize functions were added to libc. 502101 5.2-CURRENT after change of default thread library from libc_r to libpthread. 502102 5.2-CURRENT after device driver API megapatch. 502103 5.2-CURRENT after getopt_long_only() addition. 502104 5.2-CURRENT after NULL is made into ((void *)0) for C, creating more warnings. 502105 5.2-CURRENT after pf is linked to the build and install. 502106 5.2-CURRENT after time_t is changed to a 64-bit value on sparc64. 502107 5.2-CURRENT after Intel C/C++ compiler support in some headers and execve(2) changes to be more strictly conforming to POSIX. 502108 5.2-CURRENT after the introduction of the bus_alloc_resource_any API 502109 5.2-CURRENT after the addition of UTF-8 locales 502110 5.2-CURRENT after the removal of the getvfsent(3) API 502111 5.2-CURRENT after the addition of the .warning directive for make. 502112 5.2-CURRENT after ttyioctl() was made mandatory for serial drivers. 502113 5.2-CURRENT after import of the ALTQ framework. 502114 5.2-CURRENT after changing sema_timedwait(9) to return 0 on success and a non-zero error code on failure. 502115 5.2-CURRENT after changing kernel dev_t to be pointer to struct cdev *. 502116 5.2-CURRENT after changing kernel udev_t to dev_t. 502117 5.2-CURRENT after adding support for CLOCK_VIRTUAL and CLOCK_PROF to clock_gettime(2) and clock_getres(2). 502118 5.2-CURRENT after changing network interface cloning overhaul. 502119 5.2-CURRENT after the update of the package tools to revision 20040629. 502120
Note that 2.2-STABLE sometimes identifies itself as 2.2.5-STABLE after the 2.2.5-RELEASE. The pattern used to be year followed by the month, but we decided to change it to a more straightforward major/minor system starting from 2.2. This is because the parallel development on several branches made it infeasible to classify the releases simply by their real release dates. If you are making a port now, you do not have to worry about old -CURRENTs; they are listed here just for your reference. Writing something after <filename>bsd.port.mk</filename> Do not write anything after the .include <bsd.port.mk> line. It usually can be avoided by including bsd.port.pre.mk somewhere in the middle of your Makefile and bsd.port.post.mk at the end. You need to include either the bsd.port.pre.mk/bsd.port.post.mk pair or bsd.port.mk only; do not mix these two usages. bsd.port.pre.mk only defines a few variables, which can be used in tests in the Makefile, bsd.port.post.mk defines the rest. Here are some important variables defined in bsd.port.pre.mk (this is not the complete list, please read bsd.port.mk for the complete list). Variable Description ARCH The architecture as returned by uname -m (e.g., i386) OPSYS The operating system type, as returned by uname -s (e.g., FreeBSD) OSREL The release version of the operating system (e.g., 2.1.5 or 2.2.7) OSVERSION The numeric version of the operating system; the same as __FreeBSD_version. PORTOBJFORMAT The object format of the system (elf or aout; note that for modern versions of FreeBSD, aout is deprecated.) LOCALBASE The base of the local tree (e.g., /usr/local/) X11BASE The base of the X11 tree (e.g., /usr/X11R6) PREFIX Where the port installs itself (see more on PREFIX). If you have to define the variables USE_IMAKE, USE_X_PREFIX, or MASTERDIR, do so before including bsd.port.pre.mk. Here are some examples of things you can write after bsd.port.pre.mk: # no need to compile lang/perl5 if perl5 is already in system .if ${OSVERSION} > 300003 BROKEN= perl is in system .endif # only one shlib version number for ELF .if ${PORTOBJFORMAT} == "elf" TCL_LIB_FILE= ${TCL_LIB}.${SHLIB_MAJOR} .else TCL_LIB_FILE= ${TCL_LIB}.${SHLIB_MAJOR}.${SHLIB_MINOR} .endif # software already makes link for ELF, but not for a.out post-install: .if ${PORTOBJFORMAT} == "aout" ${LN} -sf liblinpack.so.1.0 ${PREFIX}/lib/liblinpack.so .endif You did remember to use tab instead of spaces after BROKEN= and TCL_LIB_FILE=, did you not? :-). Install additional documentation If your software has some documentation other than the standard man and info pages that you think is useful for the user, install it under PREFIX/share/doc. This can be done, like the previous item, in the post-install target. Create a new directory for your port. The directory name should reflect what the port is. This usually means PORTNAME. However, if you think the user might want different versions of the port to be installed at the same time, you can use the whole PKGNAME. Make the installation dependent on the variable NOPORTDOCS so that users can disable it in /etc/make.conf, like this: post-install: .if !defined(NOPORTDOCS) ${MKDIR} ${DOCSDIR} ${INSTALL_MAN} ${WRKSRC}/docs/xvdocs.ps ${DOCSDIR} .endif Here are some handy variables and how they are expanded by default when used in the Makefile: DATADIR gets expanded to PREFIX/share/PORTNAME. DOCSDIR gets expanded to PREFIX/share/doc/PORTNAME. EXAMPLESDIR gets expanded to PREFIX/share/examples/PORTNAME. These variables are exported to PLIST_SUB. Their values will appear there as pathnames relative to PREFIX if possible. That is, share/doc/PORTNAME will be substituted for %%DOCSDIR%% in the packing list by default, and so on. (See more on pkg-plist substitution here.) All documentation files and directories installed should be included in pkg-plist with the %%PORTDOCS%% prefix, for example: %%PORTDOCS%%%%DOCSDIR%%/AUTHORS %%PORTDOCS%%%%DOCSDIR%%/CONTACT %%PORTDOCS%%@dirrm %%DOCSDIR%% As an alternative to enumerating the documentation files in pkg-plist, a port can set the variable PORTDOCS to a list of file names and shell glob patterns to add to the final packing list. The names will be relative to DOCSDIR. Therefore, a port that utilizes PORTDOCS and uses a non-default location for its documentation should set DOCSDIR accordingly. If a directory is listed in PORTDOCS or matched by a glob pattern from this variable, the entire subtree of contained files and directories will be registered in the final packing list. PORTDOCS should not be set if NOPORTDOCS is in effect. Installing the documentation at PORTDOCS as shown above remains up to the port itself. A typical example of utilizing PORTDOCS looks as follows: .if !defined(NOPORTDOCS) PORTDOCS= * .endif You can also use the pkg-message file to display messages upon installation. See the section on using pkg-message for details. The pkg-message file does not need to be added to pkg-plist. Subdirectories Try to let the port put things in the right subdirectories of PREFIX. Some ports lump everything and put it in the subdirectory with the port's name, which is incorrect. Also, many ports put everything except binaries, header files and manual pages in the a subdirectory of lib, which does not work well with the BSD paradigm. Many of the files should be moved to one of the following: etc (setup/configuration files), libexec (executables started internally), sbin (executables for superusers/managers), info (documentation for info browser) or share (architecture independent files). See &man.hier.7; for details; the rules governing /usr pretty much apply to /usr/local too. The exception are ports dealing with USENET news. They may use PREFIX/news as a destination for their files. Cleaning up empty directories Do make your ports clean up after themselves when they are de-installed. This is usually accomplished by adding @dirrm lines for all directories that are specifically created by the port. You need to delete subdirectories before you can delete parent directories. : lib/X11/oneko/pixmaps/cat.xpm lib/X11/oneko/sounds/cat.au : @dirrm lib/X11/oneko/pixmaps @dirrm lib/X11/oneko/sounds @dirrm lib/X11/oneko However, sometimes @dirrm will give you errors because other ports also share the same subdirectory. You can call rmdir from @unexec to remove only empty directories without warning. @unexec rmdir %D/share/doc/gimp 2>/dev/null || true This will neither print any error messages nor cause &man.pkg.delete.1; to exit abnormally even if PREFIX/share/doc/gimp is not empty due to other ports installing some files in there. UIDs If your port requires a certain user to be on the installed system, let the pkg-install script call pw to create it automatically. Look at net/cvsup-mirror for an example. If your port must use the same user/group ID number when it is installed as a binary package as when it was compiled, then you must choose a free UID from 50 to 999 and register it below. Look at japanese/Wnn6 for an example. Make sure you do not use a UID already used by the system or other ports. This is the current list of UIDs between 50 and 999. bind:*:53:53:Bind Sandbox:/:/sbin/nologin majordom:*:54:54:Majordomo Pseudo User:/usr/local/majordomo:/nonexistent rdfdb:*:55:55:rdfDB Daemon:/var/db/rdfdb:/bin/sh cyrus:*:60:60:the cyrus mail server:/nonexistent:/nonexistent gnats:*:61:1:GNATS database owner:/usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db:/bin/sh proxy:*:62:62:Packet Filter pseudo-user:/nonexistent:/nonexistent uucp:*:66:66:UUCP pseudo-user:/var/spool/uucppublic:/usr/libexec/uucp/uucico xten:*:67:67:X-10 daemon:/usr/local/xten:/nonexistent pop:*:68:6:Post Office Owner (popper):/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin wnn:*:69:7:Wnn:/nonexistent:/nonexistent pgsql:*:70:70:PostgreSQL pseudo-user:/usr/local/pgsql:/bin/sh oracle:*:71:71::0:0:Oracle:/usr/local/oracle7:/sbin/nologin ircd:*:72:72:IRC daemon:/nonexistent:/nonexistent ircservices:*:73:73:IRC services:/nonexistent:/nonexistent ifmail:*:75:66:Ifmail user:/nonexistent:/nonexistent www:*:80:80:World Wide Web Owner:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin alias:*:81:81:QMail user:/var/qmail/alias:/nonexistent qmaild:*:82:81:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmaill:*:83:81:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmailp:*:84:81:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmailq:*:85:82:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmailr:*:86:82:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmails:*:87:82:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent mysql:*:88:88:MySQL Daemon:/var/db/mysql:/sbin/nologin vpopmail:*:89:89:VPop Mail User:/usr/local/vpopmail:/nonexistent firebird:*:90:90:Firebird Database Administrator:/usr/local/firebird:/bin/sh mailman:*:91:91:Mailman User:/usr/local/mailman:/sbin/nologin gdm:*:92:92:GDM Sandbox:/:/sbin/nologin jabber:*:93:93:Jabber Daemon:/nonexistent:/nonexistent p4admin:*:94:94:Perforce admin:/usr/local/perforce:/sbin/nologin interch:*:95:95:Interchange user:/usr/local/interchange:/sbin/nologin squeuer:*:96:96:SQueuer Owner:/nonexistent:/bin/sh mud:*:97:97:MUD Owner:/usr/local/share/dgd:/bin/sh msql:*:98:98:mSQL-2 pseudo-user:/var/db/msqldb:/bin/sh rscsi:*:99:99:Remote SCSI:/usr/local/rscsi:/usr/local/sbin/rscsi squid:*:100:100:squid caching-proxy pseudo user:/usr/local/squid:/sbin/nologin quagga:*:101:101:Quagga route daemon pseudo user:/usr/local/etc/quagga:/sbin/nologin ganglia:*:102:102:Ganglia User:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin sgeadmin:*:103:103:Sun Grid Engine Admin:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin slimserv:*:104:104:Slim Devices SlimServer pseudo-user:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin dnetc:*:105:105:distributed.net client and proxy pseudo-user:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin clamav:*:106:106:Clamav Antivirus:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin cacti:*:107:107:Cacti Sandbox:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin webkit:*:108:108:WebKit Default User:/usr/local/www/webkit:/bin/sh quickml:*:109:109:quickml Server:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin fido:*:111:111:Fido System:/usr/local/fido:/bin/sh postfix:*:125:125:Postfix Mail System:/var/spool/postfix:/sbin/nologin rbldns:*:153:153:rbldnsd pseudo-user:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin sfs:*:171:171:Self-Certifying File System:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin agk:*:172:172:AquaGateKeeper:/nonexistent:/nonexistent moinmoin:*:192:192:MoinMoin User:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin ldap:*:389:389:OpenLDAP Server:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin drweb:*:426:426:Dr.Web Mail Scanner:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin courier:*:465:465:Courier Mail Server:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin qtss:*:554:554:Darwin Streaming Server:/nonexistent:/sbin/nologin ircdru:*:555:555:Russian hybrid IRC server:/nonexistent:/bin/sh bacula:*:910:910:Bacula Daemon:/var/db/bacula:/sbin/nologin This is the current list of reserved GIDs. bind:*:53: rdfdb:*:55: cyrus:*:60: proxy:*:62: authpf:*:63: uucp:*:66: dialer:*:68: network:*:69: pgsql:*:70: www:*:80: qnofiles:*:81: qmail:*:82: mailman:*:91: postfix:*:125: maildrop:*:126: rbldns:*:153: moinmoin:*:192: courier:*:465: qtss:*:554: ircdru:*:555: Please include a notice when you submit a port (or an upgrade) that reserves a new UID or GID in this range. This allows us to keep the list of reserved IDs up to date. Do things rationally The Makefile should do things simply and reasonably. If you can make it a couple of lines shorter or more readable, then do so. Examples include using a make .if construct instead of a shell if construct, not redefining do-extract if you can redefine EXTRACT* instead, and using GNU_CONFIGURE instead of CONFIGURE_ARGS += --prefix=${PREFIX}. If you find yourself having to write a lot of new code to try to do something, please go back and review bsd.port.mk to see if it contains an existing implementation of what you are trying to do. While hard to read, there are a great many seemingly-hard problems for which bsd.port.mk already provides a shorthand solution. Respect both <makevar>CC</makevar> and <makevar>CXX</makevar> The port should respect both CC and CXX variables. What we mean by this is that the port should not set the values of these variables absolutely, overriding existing values; instead, it should append whatever values it needs to the existing values. This is so that build options that affect all ports can be set globally. If the port does not respect these variables, please add NO_PACKAGE=ignores either cc or cxx to the Makefile. An example of a Makefile respecting both CC and CXX variables follows. Note the ?=: CC ?= gcc CXX ?= g++ Here is an example which respects neither CC nor CXX variables: CC = gcc CXX = g++ Both CC and CFLAGS variables can be defined on FreeBSD systems in /etc/make.conf. The first example defines a value if it was not previously set in /etc/make.conf, preserving any system-wide definitions. The second example clobbers anything previously defined. Respect <makevar>CFLAGS</makevar> The port should respect the CFLAGS variable. What we mean by this is that the port should not set the value of this variable absolutely, overriding the existing value; instead, it should append whatever values it needs to the existing value. This is so that build options that affect all ports can be set globally. If it does not, please add NO_PACKAGE=ignores cflags to the Makefile. An example of a Makefile respecting the CFLAGS variable follows. Note the +=: CFLAGS += -Wall -Werror Here is an example which does not respect the CFLAGS variable: CFLAGS = -Wall -Werror The CFLAGS variable is defined on FreeBSD systems in /etc/make.conf. The first example appends additional flags to the CFLAGS variable, preserving any system-wide definitions. The second example clobbers anything previously defined. Configuration files If your port requires some configuration files in PREFIX/etc, do not just install them and list them in pkg-plist. That will cause &man.pkg.delete.1; to delete files carefully edited by the user and a new installation to wipe them out. Instead, install sample files with a suffix (filename.sample will work well) and print out a message pointing out that the user has to copy and edit the file before the software can be made to work. Feedback Do send applicable changes/patches to the original author/maintainer for inclusion in next release of the code. This will only make your job that much easier for the next release. <filename>README.html</filename> Do not include the README.html file. This file is not part of the cvs collection but is generated using the make readme command. Marking a port <makevar>BROKEN</makevar>, <makevar>FORBIDDEN</makevar>, or otherwise Invariably there will come a time when a particular port will contain a security vulnerability, will be radically broken and needs many hours of tender loving care, or is generally obsoleted, but for one reason or another should remain in the tree (and get fixed, right?). To designate a port as broken, there are three make variables that can be used in a port's Makefile. The value of the following make variables will be the reason that is given back to users for why the port was marked as broken. Please use the correct make variable as each make variable conveys radically different meanings to both users, and to automated systems that parse Makefiles. BROKEN is reserved for ports that do not work and should not be installed by users. This will prevent users from installing the port. TRYBROKEN is used for ports if you want to attempt a build of a BROKEN port. Ports marked as TRYBROKEN will be also built by the Pointyhat cluster. FORBIDDEN is used for ports that do contain a security vulnerability or induce grave concern regarding the security of a FreeBSD system with a given port installed (ex: a reputably insecure program or a program that provides easily exploitable services). Ports should be marked as FORBIDDEN as soon as a particular piece of software has a vulnerability and there is no released upgrade. Ideally ports should be upgraded as soon as possible when a security vulnerability is discovered so as to reduce the number of vulnerable FreeBSD hosts (we like being known for being secure), however sometimes there is a noticeable time gap between disclosure of a vulnerability and an updated release of the vulnerable software. Do not mark a port FORBIDDEN for any reason other than security. IGNORE is reserved for ports that should not be built for one reason or another. Users and the Pointyhat cluster will not, under any circumstances, build ports marked as IGNORE. If in doubt, do use IGNORE to prevent a port from being built. Do remember that these variables are to be used as a last resort if a port is not upgradeable. Permanently broken ports should be removed from the tree entirely. Necessary workarounds Sometimes it is necessary to work around bugs in software included with older versions of &os;. Some versions of &man.make.1; were broken on at least 4.8 and 5.0 with respect to handling comparisons based on OSVERSION. This would often lead to failures during make describe (and thus, the overall ports make index). The workaround is to enclose the conditional comparison in spaces, e.g.: if ( ${OSVERSION} > 500023 ) Be aware that test-installing a port on 4.9 or 5.2 will not detect this problem. Miscellanea The files pkg-descr and pkg-plist should each be double-checked. If you are reviewing a port and feel they can be worded better, do so. Do not copy more copies of the GNU General Public License into our system, please. Please be careful to note any legal issues! Do not let us illegally distribute software! If you are stuck… Do look at existing examples and the bsd.port.mk file before asking us questions! ;-) Do ask us questions if you have any trouble! Do not just beat your head against a wall! :-) A Sample <filename>Makefile</filename> Here is a sample Makefile that you can use to create a new port. Make sure you remove all the extra comments (ones between brackets)! It is recommended that you follow this format (ordering of variables, empty lines between sections, etc.). This format is designed so that the most important information is easy to locate. We recommend that you use portlint to check the Makefile. [the header...just to make it easier for us to identify the ports.] # New ports collection makefile for: xdvi [the "version required" line is only needed when the PORTVERSION variable is not specific enough to describe the port.] # Date created: 26 May 1995 [this is the person who did the original port to FreeBSD, in particular, the person who wrote the first version of this Makefile. Remember, this should not be changed when upgrading the port later.] # Whom: Satoshi Asami <asami@FreeBSD.org> # # $FreeBSD$ [ ^^^^^^^^^ This will be automatically replaced with RCS ID string by CVS when it is committed to our repository. If upgrading a port, do not alter this line back to "$FreeBSD$". CVS deals with it automatically.] # [section to describe the port itself and the master site - PORTNAME and PORTVERSION are always first, followed by CATEGORIES, and then MASTER_SITES, which can be followed by MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR. PKGNAMEPREFIX and PKGNAMESUFFIX, if needed, will be after that. Then comes DISTNAME, EXTRACT_SUFX and/or DISTFILES, and then EXTRACT_ONLY, as necessary.] PORTNAME= xdvi PORTVERSION= 18.2 CATEGORIES= print [do not forget the trailing slash ("/")! if you are not using MASTER_SITE_* macros] MASTER_SITES= ${MASTER_SITE_XCONTRIB} MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR= applications PKGNAMEPREFIX= ja- DISTNAME= xdvi-pl18 [set this if the source is not in the standard ".tar.gz" form] EXTRACT_SUFX= .tar.Z [section for distributed patches -- can be empty] PATCH_SITES= ftp://ftp.sra.co.jp/pub/X11/japanese/ PATCHFILES= xdvi-18.patch1.gz xdvi-18.patch2.gz [maintainer; *mandatory*! This is the person (preferably with commit privileges) whom a user can contact for questions and bug reports - this person should be the porter or someone who can forward questions to the original porter reasonably promptly. If you really do not want to have your address here, set it to "ports@FreeBSD.org".] MAINTAINER= asami@FreeBSD.org COMMENT= A DVI Previewer for the X Window System [dependencies -- can be empty] RUN_DEPENDS= gs:${PORTSDIR}/print/ghostscript LIB_DEPENDS= Xpm.5:${PORTSDIR}/graphics/xpm [this section is for other standard bsd.port.mk variables that do not belong to any of the above] [If it asks questions during configure, build, install...] IS_INTERACTIVE= yes [If it extracts to a directory other than ${DISTNAME}...] WRKSRC= ${WRKDIR}/xdvi-new [If the distributed patches were not made relative to ${WRKSRC}, you may need to tweak this] PATCH_DIST_STRIP= -p1 [If it requires a "configure" script generated by GNU autoconf to be run] GNU_CONFIGURE= yes [If it requires GNU make, not /usr/bin/make, to build...] USE_GMAKE= yes [If it is an X application and requires "xmkmf -a" to be run...] USE_IMAKE= yes [et cetera.] [non-standard variables to be used in the rules below] MY_FAVORITE_RESPONSE= "yeah, right" [then the special rules, in the order they are called] pre-fetch: i go fetch something, yeah post-patch: i need to do something after patch, great pre-install: and then some more stuff before installing, wow [and then the epilogue] .include <bsd.port.mk> Automated package list creation First, make sure your port is almost complete, with only pkg-plist missing. Next, create a temporary directory tree into which your port can be installed, and install any dependencies. port-type should be local for non-X ports and x11-4 or x11 for ports which install into the directory hierarchy of XFree86 4 or an earlier XFree86 release, respectively. &prompt.root; mkdir /var/tmp/port-name &prompt.root; mtree -U -f /etc/mtree/BSD.port-type.dist -d -e -p /var/tmp/port-name &prompt.root; make depends PREFIX=/var/tmp/port-name Store the directory structure in a new file. &prompt.root; (cd /var/tmp/port-name && find -d * -type d) | sort > OLD-DIRS Create an empty pkg-plist file: &prompt.root; touch pkg-plist If your port honors PREFIX (which it should) you can then install the port and create the package list. &prompt.root; make install PREFIX=/var/tmp/port-name &prompt.root; (cd /var/tmp/port-name && find -d * \! -type d) | sort > pkg-plist You must also add any newly created directories to the packing list. &prompt.root; (cd /var/tmp/port-name && find -d * -type d) | sort | comm -13 OLD-DIRS - | sort -r | sed -e 's#^#@dirrm #' >> pkg-plist Finally, you need to tidy up the packing list by hand; it is not all automated. Manual pages should be listed in the port's Makefile under MANn, and not in the package list. User configuration files should be removed, or installed as filename.sample. The info/dir file should not be listed and appropriate install-info lines should be added as noted in the info files section. Any libraries installed by the port should be listed as specified in the shared libraries section. Alternatively, use the plist script in /usr/ports/Tools/scripts/ to build the package list automatically. Keeping Up The &os; Ports Collection is constantly changing. Here is some information on how to keep up. FreshPorts One of the easiest ways to learn about updates that have already been committed is by subscribing to FreshPorts. You can select multiple ports to monitor. Maintainers are strongly encouraged to subscribe, because they will receive notification of not only their own changes, but also any changes that any other &os; committer has made. (These are often necessary to keep up with changes in the underlying ports framework—although it would be most polite to receive an advance heads-up from those committing such changes, sometimes this is overlooked or just simply impractical. Also, in some cases, the changes are very minor in nature. We expect everyone to use their best judgement in these cases.) If you wish to use FreshPorts, all you need is an account. If your registered email address is @FreeBSD.org, you'll see the opt-in link on the right hand side of the webpages. For those of you who already have a FreshPorts account, but are not using your @FreeBSD.org email address, just change your email to @FreeBSD.org, subscribe, then change it back again. FreshPorts also has a sanity test feature which automatically tests each commit to the FreeBSD ports tree. If subscribed to this service, you will be notified of any errors which FreshPorts detects during sanity testing of your commits. The Web Interface to the Source Repository It is possible to browse the files in the source repository by using a web interface. Changes that affect the entire port system are now documented in the CHANGES file. Changes that affect individual ports are now documented in the UPDATING file. However, the definitive answer to any question is undoubtedly to read the source code of bsd.port.mk, and associated files. The &os; Ports Mailing List If you maintain ports, you should consider following the &a.ports;. Important changes to the way ports work will be announced there, and then committed to CHANGES. The &os; Port Building Cluster One of the least-publicized strengths of &os; is that an entire cluster of machines is dedicated to continually building the Ports Collection, for each of the major OS releases and for each Tier-1 architecture. You can find the results of these builds at package building logs and errors. The &os; Port Distfile Survey The build cluster is dedicated to building the latest release of each port with distfiles that have already been fetched. However, as the Internet continually changes, distfiles can quickly go missing. The FreeBSD Ports distfiles survey attempts to query every download site for every port to find out if each distfile is still currently available. Maintainers are asked to check this report periodically, not only to speed up the building process for users, but to help avoid wasting bandwidth of the sites that volunteer to host all these distfiles. The &os; Ports Monitoring System Another handy resource is the FreeBSD Ports Monitoring System (also known as portsmon). This system comprises a database that processes information from several sources and allows its to be browsed via a web interface. Currently, the ports Problem Reports (PRs), the error logs from the build cluster, and individual files from the ports collection are used. In the future, this will be expanded to include the distfile survey, as well as other sources. To get started, you can view all information about a particular port by using the Overview of One Port.