diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install/chapter.sgml index 0f5a998282..dcf1ed206c 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install/chapter.sgml @@ -1,5568 +1,5568 @@ Jim Mock Restructured, reorganized, and parts rewritten by Randy Pratt The sysinstall walkthrough, screenshots, and general copy by Installing FreeBSD Synopsis installation FreeBSD is provided with a text-based, easy to use installation program called sysinstall. This is the default installation program for FreeBSD, although vendors are free to provide their own installation suite if they wish. This chapter describes how to use sysinstall to install FreeBSD. After reading this chapter, you will know: How to create the FreeBSD installation disks. How FreeBSD refers to, and subdivides, your hard disks. How to start sysinstall. The questions sysinstall will ask you, what they mean, and how to answer them. Before reading this chapter, you should: Read the supported hardware list that shipped with the version of FreeBSD you are installing, and verify that your hardware is supported. In general, these installation instructions are written for &i386; (PC compatible) architecture computers. Where applicable, instructions specific to other platforms (for example, Alpha) will be listed. Although this guide is kept as up to date as possible, you may find minor differences between the installer and what is shown here. It is suggested that you use this chapter as a general guide rather than a literal installation manual. Pre-installation Tasks Inventory Your Computer Before installing FreeBSD you should attempt to inventory the components in your computer. The FreeBSD installation routines will show you the components (hard disks, network cards, CDROM drives, and so forth) with their model number and manufacturer. FreeBSD will also attempt to determine the correct configuration for these devices, which includes information about IRQ and IO port usage. Due to the vagaries of PC hardware this process is not always completely successful, and you may need to correct FreeBSD's determination of your configuration. If you already have another operating system installed, such as &windows; or Linux, it is a good idea to use the facilities provided by those operating systems to see how your hardware is already configured. If you are not sure what settings an expansion card is using, you may find it printed on the card itself. Popular IRQ numbers are 3, 5, and 7, and IO port addresses are normally written as hexadecimal numbers, such as 0x330. We recommend you print or write down this information before installing FreeBSD. It may help to use a table, like this: Sample Device Inventory Device Name IRQ IO port(s) Notes First hard disk N/A N/A 40 GB, made by Seagate, first IDE master CDROM N/A N/A First IDE slave Second hard disk N/A N/A 20 GB, made by IBM, second IDE master First IDE controller 14 0x1f0 Network card N/A N/A &intel; 10/100 Modem N/A N/A &tm.3com; 56K faxmodem, on COM1 …
Backup Your Data If the computer you will be installing FreeBSD on contains valuable data, then ensure you have it backed up, and that you have tested the backups before installing FreeBSD. The FreeBSD installation routine will prompt you before writing any data to your disk, but once that process has started it cannot be undone. Decide Where to Install FreeBSD If you want FreeBSD to use your entire hard disk, then there is nothing more to concern yourself with at this point — you can skip this section. However, if you need FreeBSD to co-exist with other operating systems then you need to have a rough understanding of how data is laid out on the disk, and how this affects you. Disk Layouts for the &i386; A PC disk can be divided into discrete chunks. These chunks are called partitions. By design, the PC only supports four partitions per disk. These partitions are called primary partitions. To work around this limitation and allow more than four partitions, a new partition type was created, the extended partition. A disk may contain only one extended partition. Special partitions, called logical partitions, can be created inside this extended partition. Each partition has a partition ID, which is a number used to identify the type of data on the partition. FreeBSD partitions have the partition ID of 165. In general, each operating system that you use will identify partitions in a particular way. For example, DOS, and its descendants, like &windows;, assign each primary and logical partition a drive letter, starting with C:. FreeBSD must be installed into a primary partition. FreeBSD can keep all its data, including any files that you create, on this one partition. However, if you have multiple disks, then you can create a FreeBSD partition on all, or some, of them. When you install FreeBSD, you must have one partition available. This might be a blank partition that you have prepared, or it might be an existing partition that contains data that you no longer care about. If you are already using all the partitions on all your disks, then you will have to free one of them for FreeBSD using the tools provided by the other operating systems you use (e.g., fdisk on DOS or &windows;). If you have a spare partition then you can use that. However, you may need to shrink one or more of your existing partitions first. A minimal installation of FreeBSD takes as little as 100 MB of disk space. However, that is a very minimal install, leaving almost no space for your own files. A more realistic minimum is 250 MB without a graphical environment, and 350 MB or more if you want a graphical user interface. If you intend to install a lot of third party software as well, then you will need more space. You can use a commercial tool such as &partitionmagic; to resize your partitions to make space for FreeBSD. The tools directory on the CDROM contains two free software tools which can carry out this task, namely FIPS and PResizer. FIPS, PResizer, and &partitionmagic; can resize FAT16 and FAT32 partitions — used in &ms-dos; through &windows; ME. &partitionmagic; is the only known application that can resize NTFS Documentation for both of these is available in the same directory. Incorrect use of these tools can delete the data on your disk. Be sure that you have recent, working backups before using them. Using an Existing Partition Unchanged Suppose that you have a computer with a single 4 GB disk that already has a version of &windows; installed, and you have split the disk into two drive letters, C: and D:, each of which is 2 GB in size. You have 1 GB of data on C:, and 0.5 GB of data on D:. This means that your disk has two partitions on it, one per drive letter. You can copy all your existing data from D: to C:, which will free up the second partition, ready for FreeBSD. Shrinking an Existing Partition Suppose that you have a computer with a single 4 GB disk that already has a version of &windows; installed. When you installed &windows; you created one large partition, giving you a C: drive that is 4 GB in size. You are currently using 1.5 GB of space, and want FreeBSD to have 2 GB of space. In order to install FreeBSD you will need to either: Backup your &windows; data, and then reinstall &windows;, asking for a 2 GB partition at install time. Use one of the tools such as &partitionmagic;, described above, to shrink your &windows; partition. Disk Layouts for the Alpha Alpha You will need a dedicated disk for FreeBSD on the Alpha. It is not possible to share a disk with another operating system at this time. Depending on the specific Alpha machine you have, this disk can either be a SCSI disk or an IDE disk, as long as your machine is capable of booting from it. Following the conventions of the Digital / Compaq manuals all SRM input is shown in uppercase. SRM is case insensitive. To find the names and types of disks in your machine, use the SHOW DEVICE command from the SRM console prompt: >>>SHOW DEVICE dka0.0.0.4.0 DKA0 TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-57 3476 dkc0.0.0.1009.0 DKC0 RZ1BB-BS 0658 dkc100.1.0.1009.0 DKC100 SEAGATE ST34501W 0015 dva0.0.0.0.1 DVA0 ewa0.0.0.3.0 EWA0 00-00-F8-75-6D-01 pkc0.7.0.1009.0 PKC0 SCSI Bus ID 7 5.27 pqa0.0.0.4.0 PQA0 PCI EIDE pqb0.0.1.4.0 PQB0 PCI EIDE This example is from a Digital Personal Workstation 433au and shows three disks attached to the machine. The first is a CDROM drive called DKA0 and the other two are disks and are called DKC0 and DKC100 respectively. Disks with names of the form DKx are SCSI disks. For example DKA100 refers to a SCSI disk with SCSI target ID 1 on the first SCSI bus (A), whereas DKC300 refers to a SCSI disk with SCSI ID 3 on the third SCSI bus (C). Devicename PKx refers to the SCSI host bus adapter. As seen in the SHOW DEVICE output SCSI CDROM drives are treated as any other SCSI hard disk drive. IDE disks have names similar to DQx, while PQx is the associated IDE controller. Collect Your Network Configuration Details If you intend to connect to a network as part of your FreeBSD installation (for example, if you will be installing from an FTP site or an NFS server), then you need to know your network configuration. You will be prompted for this information during the installation so that FreeBSD can connect to the network to complete the install. Connecting to an Ethernet Network or Cable/DSL Modem If you connect to an Ethernet network, or you have an Internet connection using an Ethernet adapter via cable or DSL, then you will need the following information: IP address IP address of the default gateway Hostname DNS server IP addresses Subnet Mask If you do not know this information, then ask your system administrator or service provider. They may say that this information is assigned automatically, using DHCP. If so, make a note of this. Connecting Using a Modem If you dial up to an ISP using a regular modem then you can still install FreeBSD over the Internet, it will just take a very long time. You will need to know: The phone number to dial for your ISP The COM: port your modem is connected to The username and password for your ISP account Check for FreeBSD Errata Although the FreeBSD project strives to ensure that each release of FreeBSD is as stable as possible, bugs do occasionally creep into the process. On very rare occasions those bugs affect the installation process. As these problems are discovered and fixed, they are noted in the FreeBSD Errata, which is found on the FreeBSD web site. You should check the errata before installing to make sure that there are no late-breaking problems which you should be aware of. Information about all the releases, including the errata for each release, can be found on the release information section of the FreeBSD web site. Obtain the FreeBSD Installation Files The FreeBSD installation process can install FreeBSD from files located in the any of the following places: Local Media A CDROM or DVD A DOS partition on the same computer A SCSI or QIC tape Floppy disks Network An FTP site, going through a firewall, or using an HTTP proxy, as necessary An NFS server A dedicated parallel or serial connection If you have purchased FreeBSD on CD or DVD then you already have everything you need, and should proceed to the next section (Preparing the Boot Media). If you have not obtained the FreeBSD installation files you should skip ahead to which explains how to prepare to install FreeBSD from any of the above. After reading that section, you should come back here, and read on to . Prepare the Boot Media The FreeBSD installation process is started by booting your computer into the FreeBSD installer—it is not a program you run within another operating system. Your computer normally boots using the operating system installed on your hard disk, but it can also be configured to use a bootable floppy disk. Most modern computers can also boot from a CDROM in the CDROM drive. If you have FreeBSD on CDROM or DVD (either one you purchased or you prepared yourself), and your computer allows you to boot from the CDROM or DVD (typically a BIOS option called Boot Order or similar), then you can skip this section. The FreeBSD CDROM and DVD images are bootable and can be used to install FreeBSD without any other special preparation. To create boot floppy images, follow these steps: Acquire the Boot Floppy Images The boot disks are available on your installation media in the floppies/ directory, and can also be downloaded from the floppies directory for the &i386; architecture and from this floppies directory for the Alpha architecture. The floppy images have a .flp extension. The floppies/ directory contains a number of different images, and the ones you will need to use depends on the version of FreeBSD you are installing, and in some cases, the hardware you are installing to. In most cases you will just need two files, kern.flp and mfsroot.flp. Additional device drivers may be necessary for some systems. These drivers are provided on the drivers.flp image. Check README.TXT in the same directory for the most up to date information about these floppy images. Your FTP program must use binary mode to download these disk images. Some web browsers have been known to use text (or ASCII) mode, which will be apparent if you cannot boot from the disks. Prepare the Floppy Disks You must prepare one floppy disk per image file you had to download. It is imperative that these disks are free from defects. The easiest way to test this is to format the disks for yourself. Do not trust pre-formatted floppies. The format utility in &windows; will not tell about the presence of bad blocks , it simply marks them as bad and ignores them. It is advised that you use brand new floppies if choosing this installation route. If you try to install FreeBSD and the installation program crashes, freezes, or otherwise misbehaves, one of the first things to suspect is the floppies. Try writing the floppy image files to new disks and try again. Write the Image Files to the Floppy Disks The .flp files are not regular files you copy to the disk. They are images of the complete contents of the disk. This means that you cannot simply copy files frm one disk to another. Instead, you must use specific tools to write the images directly to the disk. DOS If you are creating the floppies on a computer running &ms-dos;/&windows;, then we provide a tool to do this called fdimage. If you are using the floppies from the CDROM, and your CDROM is the E: drive, then you would run this: E:\> tools\fdimage floppies\kern.flp A: Repeat this command for each .flp file, replacing the floppy disk each time, being sure to label the disks with the name of the file that you copied to them. Adjust the command line as necessary, depending on where you have placed the .flp files. If you do not have the CDROM, then fdimage can be downloaded from the tools directory on the FreeBSD FTP site. If you are writing the floppies on a &unix; system (such as another FreeBSD system) you can use the &man.dd.1; command to write the image files directly to disk. On FreeBSD, you would run: &prompt.root; dd if=kern.flp of=/dev/fd0 On FreeBSD, /dev/fd0 refers to the first floppy disk (the A: drive). /dev/fd1 would be the B: drive, and so on. Other &unix; variants might have different names for the floppy disk devices, and you will need to check the documentation for the system as necessary. You are now ready to start installing FreeBSD. Starting the Installation By default, the installation will not make any changes to your disk(s) until you see the following message: Last Chance: Are you SURE you want continue the installation? If you're running this on a disk with data you wish to save then WE STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO MAKE PROPER BACKUPS before proceeding! We can take no responsibility for lost disk contents! The install can be exited at any time prior to the final warning without changing the contents of the hard drive. If you are concerned that you have configured something incorrectly you can just turn the computer off before this point, and no damage will be done. Booting Booting for the &i386; Start with your computer turned off. Turn on the computer. As it starts it should display an option to enter the system set up menu, or BIOS, commonly reached by keys like F2, F10, Del, or Alt S . Use whichever keystroke is indicated on screen. In some cases your computer may display a graphic while it starts. Typically, pressing Esc will dismiss the graphic and allow you to see the necessary messages. Find the setting that controls which devices the system boots from. This is usually labeled as the Boot Order and commonly shown as a list of devices, such as Floppy, CDROM, First Hard Disk, and so on. If you needed to prepare boot floppies, then make sure that the floppy disk is selected. If you are booting from the CDROM then make sure that that is selected instead. In case of doubt, you should consult the manual that came with your computer, and/or its motherboard. Make the change, then save and exit. The computer should now restart. If you needed to prepare boot floppies, as described in , then one of them will be the first boot disc, probably the one containing kern.flp. Put this disc in your floppy drive. If you are booting from CDROM, then you will need to turn on the computer, and insert the CDROM at the first opportunity. If your computer starts up as normal and loads your existing operating system, then either: The disks were not inserted early enough in the boot process. Leave them in, and try restarting your computer. The BIOS changes earlier did not work correctly. You should redo that step until you get the right option. Your particular BIOS does not support booting from the desired media. FreeBSD will start to boot. If you are booting from CDROM you will see a display similar to this (version information omitted): Verifying DMI Pool Data ........ Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM : 1. FD 2.88MB System Type-(00) Uncompressing ... done BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01 Console: internal video/keyboard BIOS drive A: is disk0 BIOS drive B: is disk1 BIOS drive C: is disk2 BIOS drive C: is disk3 BIOS 639kB/261120kB available memory FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 0.8 /kernel text=0x277391 data=0x3268c+0x332a8 | | Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt. Booting [kernel] in 9 seconds... _ If you are booting from floppy disc, you will see a display similar to this (version information omitted): Verifying DMI Pool Data ........ BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01 Console: internal video/keyboard BIOS drive A: is disk0 BIOS drive C: is disk1 BIOS 639kB/261120kB available memory FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 0.8 /kernel text=0x277391 data=0x3268c+0x332a8 | Please insert MFS root floppy and press enter: Follow these instructions by removing the kern.flp disc, insert the mfsroot.flp disc, and press Enter. Whether you booted from floppy or CDROM, the boot process will then get to this point: Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt. Booting [kernel] in 9 seconds... _ Either wait ten seconds, or press Enter. This will then launch the kernel configuration menu. Booting for the Alpha Alpha Start with your computer turned off. Turn on the computer and wait for a boot monitor prompt. If you needed to prepare boot floppies, as described in then one of them will be the first boot disc, probably the one containing kern.flp. Put this disc in your floppy drive and type the following command to boot the disk (substituting the name of your floppy drive if necessary): >>>BOOT DVA0 -FLAGS '' -FILE '' If you are booting from CDROM, insert the CDROM into the drive and type the following command to start the installation (substituting the name of the appropriate CDROM drive if necessary): >>>BOOT DKA0 -FLAGS '' -FILE '' FreeBSD will start to boot. If you are booting from a floppy disc, at some point you will see the message: Please insert MFS root floppy and press enter: Follow these instructions by removing the kern.flp disc, insert the mfsroot.flp disc, and press Enter. Whether you booted from floppy or CDROM, the boot process will then get to this point: Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt. Booting [kernel] in 9 seconds... _ Either wait ten seconds, or press Enter. This will then launch the kernel configuration menu. Kernel Configuration - From FreeBSD versions 5.0 and later, userconfig has been depreciated + From FreeBSD versions 5.0 and later, userconfig has been deprecated in favor of the new &man.device.hints.5; method. For more information on &man.device.hints.5; please visit The kernel is the core of the operating system. It is responsible for many things, including access to all the devices you may have on your system, such as hard disks, network cards, sound cards, and so on. Each piece of hardware supported by the FreeBSD kernel has a driver associated with it. Each driver has a two or three letter name, such as sa for the SCSI sequential access driver, or sio for the Serial I/O driver (which manages COM ports). When the kernel starts, each driver checks the system to see whether or not the hardware it supports exists on your system. If it does, then the driver configures the hardware and makes it available to the rest of the kernel. This checking is commonly referred to as device probing. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to do this in a safe way. Some hardware drivers do not co-exist well, and probing for one piece of hardware can sometimes leave another in an inconsistent state. This is a basic limitation of the PC design. Many older devices are called ISA devices—as opposed to PCI devices. The ISA specification requires each device to have some information hard coded into it, typically the Interrupt Request Line number (IRQ) and IO port address that the driver uses. This information is commonly set by using physical jumpers on the card, or by using a DOS based utility. This was often a source of problems, because it was not possible to have two devices that shared the same IRQ or port address. Newer devices follow the PCI specification, which does not require this, as the devices are supposed to cooperate with the BIOS, and are told which IRQ and IO port addresses to use. If you have any ISA devices in your computer then FreeBSD's driver for that device will need to be configured with the IRQ and port address that you have set the card to. This is why carrying out an inventory of your hardware (see ) can be useful. Unfortunately, the default IRQs and memory ports used by some drivers clash. This is because some ISA devices are shipped with IRQs or memory ports that clash. The defaults in FreeBSD's drivers are deliberately set to mirror the manufacturer's defaults, so that, out of the box, as many devices as possible will work. This is almost never an issue when running FreeBSD day-to-day. Your computer will not normally contain two pieces of hardware that clash, because one of them would not work (irrespective of the operating system you are using). It becomes an issue when you are installing FreeBSD for the first time because the kernel used to carry out the install has to contain as many drivers as possible, so that many different hardware configurations can be supported. This means that some of those drivers will have conflicting configurations. The devices are probed in a strict order, and if you own a device that is probed late in the process, but conflicted with an earlier probe, then your hardware might not function or be probed correctly when you install FreeBSD. Because of this, the first thing you have the opportunity to do when installing FreeBSD is look at the list of drivers that are configured into the kernel, and either disable some of them, if you do not own that device, or confirm (and alter) the driver's configuration if you do own the device but the defaults are wrong. This probably sounds much more complicated than it actually is. shows the first kernel configuration menu. We recommend that you choose the Start kernel configuration in full-screen visual mode option, as it presents the easiest interface for the new user.
Kernel Configuration Menu &txt.install.userconfig;
The kernel configuration screen () is then divided into four sections: A collapsible list of all the drivers that are currently marked as active, subdivided into groups such as Storage, and Network. Each driver is shown as a description, its two or three letter driver name, and the IRQ and memory port used by that driver. In addition, if an active driver conflicts with another active driver then CONF is shown next to the driver name. This section also shows the total number of conflicting drivers that are currently active. Drivers that have been marked inactive. They remain in the kernel, but they will not probe for their device when the kernel starts. These are subdivided into groups in the same way as the active driver list. More detail about the currently selected driver, including its IRQ and memory port address. Information about the keystrokes that are valid at this point in time.
The Kernel Device Configuration Visual Interface &txt.install.userconfig2;
Do not worry if any conflicts are listed about this, it is to be expected; all the drivers are enabled, and as has already been explained, some of them will conflict with one another. You now have to work through the list of drivers, resolving the conflicts. Resolving Driver Conflicts Press X. This will completely expand the list of drivers, so you can see all of them. You will need to use the arrow keys to scroll back and forth through the active driver list. shows the result of pressing X.
Expanded Driver List
Disable all the drivers for devices that you do not have. To disable a driver, highlight it with the arrow keys and press Del. The driver will be moved to the Inactive Drivers list. If you inadvertently disable a device that you need then press Tab to switch to the Inactive Drivers list, select the driver that you disabled, and press Enter to move it back to the active list. Do not disable sc0. This controls the screen, and you will need this unless you are installing over a serial cable. Only disable atkbd0 if you are using a USB keyboard. If you have a normal keyboard then you must keep atkbd0. If there are no conflicts listed then you can skip this step. Otherwise, the remaining conflicts need to be examined. If they do not have the indication of an allowed conflict in the message area, then either the IRQ/address for device probe will need to be changed, or the IRQ/address on the hardware will need to be changed. To change the driver's configuration for IRQ and IO port address, select the device and press Enter. The cursor will move to the third section of the screen, and you can change the values. You should enter the values for IRQ and port address that you discovered when you made your hardware inventory. Press Q to finish editing the device's configuration and return to the active driver list. If you are not sure what these figures should be then you can try using -1. Some FreeBSD drivers can safely probe the hardware to discover what the correct value should be, and a value of -1 configures them to do this. The procedure for changing the address on the hardware varies from device to device. For some devices you may need to physically remove the card from your computer and adjust jumper settings or DIP switches. Other cards may have come with a DOS floppy that contains the programs used to reconfigure the card. In any case, you should refer to the documentation that came with the device. This will obviously entail restarting your computer, so you will need to boot back into the FreeBSD installation routine when you have reconfigured the card. When all the conflicts have been resolved the screen will look similar to .
Driver Configuration With No Conflicts
As you can see, the active driver list is now much smaller, with only drivers for the hardware that actually exists being listed. You can now save these changes, and move on to the next step of the install. Press Q to quit the device configuration interface. This message will appear: Save these parameters before exiting? ([Y]es/[N]o/[C]ancel) Answer Y to save the parameters to memory (it will be saved to disk if you finish the install) and the probing will start. After displaying the probe results in white on black text sysinstall will start and display its main menu ().
Sysinstall Main Menu
Reviewing the Device Probe Results The last few hundred lines that have been displayed on screen are stored and can be reviewed. To review the buffer, press Scroll Lock. This turns on scrolling in the display. You can then use the arrow keys, or PageUp and PageDown to view the results. Press Scroll Lock again to stop scrolling. Do this now, to review the text that scrolled off the screen when the kernel was carrying out the device probes. You will see text similar to , although the precise text will differ depending on the devices that you have in your computer.
Typical Device Probe Results avail memory = 253050880 (247120K bytes) Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc0817000. Preloaded mfs_root "/mfsroot" at 0xc0817084. md0: Preloaded image </mfsroot> 4423680 bytes at 0xc03ddcd4 md1: Malloc disk Using $PIR table, 4 entries at 0xc00fde60 npx0: <math processor> on motherboard npx0: INT 16 interface pcib0: <Host to PCI bridge> on motherboard pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0 pcib1:<VIA 82C598MVP (Apollo MVP3) PCI-PCI (AGP) bridge> at device 1.0 on pci0 pci1: <PCI bus> on pcib1 pci1: <Matrox MGA G200 AGP graphics accelerator> at 0.0 irq 11 isab0: <VIA 82C586 PCI-ISA bridge> at device 7.0 on pci0 isa0: <iSA bus> on isab0 atapci0: <VIA 82C586 ATA33 controller> port 0xe000-0xe00f at device 7.1 on pci0 ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0 ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0 uhci0 <VIA 83C572 USB controller> port 0xe400-0xe41f irq 10 at device 7.2 on pci 0 usb0: <VIA 83572 USB controller> on uhci0 usb0: USB revision 1.0 uhub0: VIA UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr1 uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered pci0: <unknown card> (vendor=0x1106, dev=0x3040) at 7.3 dc0: <ADMtek AN985 10/100BaseTX> port 0xe800-0xe8ff mem 0xdb000000-0xeb0003ff ir q 11 at device 8.0 on pci0 dc0: Ethernet address: 00:04:5a:74:6b:b5 miibus0: <MII bus> on dc0 ukphy0: <Generic IEEE 802.3u media interface> on miibus0 ukphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto ed0: <NE2000 PCI Ethernet (RealTek 8029)> port 0xec00-0xec1f irq 9 at device 10. 0 on pci0 ed0 address 52:54:05:de:73:1b, type NE2000 (16 bit) isa0: too many dependant configs (8) isa0: unexpected small tag 14 orm0: <Option ROM> at iomem 0xc0000-0xc7fff on isa0 fdc0: <NEC 72065B or clone> at port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq 6 drq2 on isa0 fdc0: FIFO enabled, 8 bytes threshold fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0 atkbdc0: <Keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x60,0x64 on isa0 atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> flags 0x1 irq1 on atkbdc0 kbd0 at atkbd0 psm0: <PS/2 Mouse> irq 12 on atkbdc0 psm0: model Generic PS/@ mouse, device ID 0 vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0 sc0: <System console> at flags 0x100 on isa0 sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300> sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0 sio0: type 16550A sio1 at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa0 sio1: type 16550A ppc0: <Parallel port> at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0 pppc0: SMC-like chipset (ECP/EPP/PS2/NIBBLE) in COMPATIBLE mode ppc0: FIFO with 16/16/15 bytes threshold plip0: <PLIP network interface> on ppbus0 ad0: 8063MB <IBM-DHEA-38451> [16383/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA33 acd0: CD-RW <LITE-ON LTR-1210B> at ata1-slave PIO4 Mounting root from ufs:/dev/md0c /stand/sysinstall running as init on vty0
Check the probe results carefully to make sure that FreeBSD found all the devices you expected. If a device was not found, then it will not be listed. If the device's driver required configuring with the IRQ and port address then you should check that you entered them correctly. If you need to make changes to the UserConfig device probing, it's easy to exit the sysinstall program and start over again. It's also a good way to become more familiar with the process.
Select Sysinstall Exit
Use the arrow keys to select Exit Install from the Main Install Screen menu. The following message will display: User Confirmation Requested Are you sure you wish to exit? The system will reboot (be sure to remove any floppies from the drives). [ Yes ] No The install program will start again if the CDROM is left in the drive and [Yes] is selected. If you are booting from floppies it will be necessary to remove the mfsroot.flp floppy and replace it with kern.flp before rebooting. Introducing Sysinstall The sysinstall utility is the installation application provided by the FreeBSD Project. It is console based and is divided into a number of menus and screens that you can use to configure and control the installation process. The sysinstall menu system is controlled by the arrow keys, Enter, Space, and other keys. A detailed description of these keys and what they do is contained in sysinstall's usage information. To review this information, ensure that the Usage entry is highlighted and that the [Select] button is selected, as shown in , then press Enter. The instructions for using the menu system will be displayed. After reviewing them, press Enter to return to the Main Menu.
Selecting Usage from Sysinstall Main Menu
Selecting the Documentation Menu From the Main Menu, select Doc with the arrow keys and press Enter.
Selecting Documentation Menu
This will display the Documentation Menu.
Sysinstall Documentation Menu
It is important to read the documents provided. To view a document, select it with the arrow keys and press Enter. When finished reading a document, pressing Enter will return to the Documentation Menu. To return to the Main Installation Menu, select Exit with the arrow keys and press Enter. Selecting the Keymap Menu To change the keyboard mapping, use the arrow keys to select Keymap from the menu and press Enter. This is only required if you are using a non-standard or non-US keyboard.
Sysinstall Main Menu
A different keyboard mapping may be chosen by selecting the menu item using up/down arrow keys and pressing Space. Pressing Space again will unselect the item. When finished, choose the &gui.ok; using the arrow keys and press Enter. Only a partial list is shown in this screen representation. Selecting &gui.cancel; by pressing Tab will use the default keymap and return to the Main Install Menu.
Sysinstall Keymap Menu
Installation Options Screen Select Options and press Enter.
Sysinstall Main Menu
Sysinstall Options
The default values are usually fine for most users and do not need to be changed. The release name will vary according to the version being installed. The description of the selected item will appear at the bottom of the screen highlighted in blue. Notice that one of the options is Use Defaults to reset all values to startup defaults. Press F1 to read the help screen about the various options. Pressing Q will return to the Main Install menu. Begin a Standard Installation The Standard installation is the option recommended for those new to &unix; or FreeBSD. Use the arrow keys to select Standard and then press Enter to start the installation.
Begin Standard Installation
Allocating Disk Space Your first task is to allocate disk space for FreeBSD, and label that space so that sysinstall can prepare it. In order to do this you need to know how FreeBSD expects to find information on the disk. BIOS Drive Numbering Before you install and configure FreeBSD on your system, there is an important subject that you should be aware of, especially if you have multiple hard drives. DOS Microsoft Windows In a PC running a BIOS-dependent operating system such as &ms-dos; or µsoft.windows;, the BIOS is able to abstract the normal disk drive order, and the operating system goes along with the change. This allows the user to boot from a disk drive other than the so-called primary master. This is especially convenient for some users who have found that the simplest and cheapest way to keep a system backup is to buy an identical second hard drive, and perform routine copies of the first drive to the second drive using Ghost or XCOPY . Then, if the first drive fails, or is attacked by a virus, or is scribbled upon by an operating system defect, he can easily recover by instructing the BIOS to logically swap the drives. It is like switching the cables on the drives, but without having to open the case. SCSI BIOS More expensive systems with SCSI controllers often include BIOS extensions which allow the SCSI drives to be re-ordered in a similar fashion for up to seven drives. A user who is accustomed to taking advantage of these features may become surprised when the results with FreeBSD are not as expected. FreeBSD does not use the BIOS, and does not know the logical BIOS drive mapping. This can lead to very perplexing situations, especially when drives are physically identical in geometry, and have also been made as data clones of one another. When using FreeBSD, always restore the BIOS to natural drive numbering before installing FreeBSD, and then leave it that way. If you need to switch drives around, then do so, but do it the hard way, and open the case and move the jumpers and cables. An Illustration from the Files of Bill and Fred's Exceptional Adventures: Bill breaks-down an older Wintel box to make another FreeBSD box for Fred. Bill installs a single SCSI drive as SCSI unit zero and installs FreeBSD on it. Fred begins using the system, but after several days notices that the older SCSI drive is reporting numerous soft errors and reports this fact to Bill. After several more days, Bill decides it is time to address the situation, so he grabs an identical SCSI drive from the disk drive archive in the back room. An initial surface scan indicates that this drive is functioning well, so Bill installs this drive as SCSI unit four and makes an image copy from drive zero to drive four. Now that the new drive is installed and functioning nicely, Bill decides that it is a good idea to start using it, so he uses features in the SCSI BIOS to re-order the disk drives so that the system boots from SCSI unit four. FreeBSD boots and runs just fine. Fred continues his work for several days, and soon Bill and Fred decide that it is time for a new adventure -- time to upgrade to a newer version of FreeBSD. Bill removes SCSI unit zero because it was a bit flaky and replaces it with another identical disk drive from the archive. Bill then installs the new version of FreeBSD onto the new SCSI unit zero using Fred's magic Internet FTP floppies. The installation goes well. Fred uses the new version of FreeBSD for a few days, and certifies that it is good enough for use in the engineering department. It is time to copy all of his work from the old version. So Fred mounts SCSI unit four (the latest copy of the older FreeBSD version). Fred is dismayed to find that none of his precious work is present on SCSI unit four. Where did the data go? When Bill made an image copy of the original SCSI unit zero onto SCSI unit four, unit four became the new clone. When Bill re-ordered the SCSI BIOS so that he could boot from SCSI unit four, he was only fooling himself. FreeBSD was still running on SCSI unit zero. Making this kind of BIOS change will cause some or all of the Boot and Loader code to be fetched from the selected BIOS drive, but when the FreeBSD kernel drivers take-over, the BIOS drive numbering will be ignored, and FreeBSD will transition back to normal drive numbering. In the illustration at hand, the system continued to operate on the original SCSI unit zero, and all of Fred's data was there, not on SCSI unit four. The fact that the system appeared to be running on SCSI unit four was simply an artifact of human expectations. We are delighted to mention that no data bytes were killed or harmed in any way by our discovery of this phenomenon. The older SCSI unit zero was retrieved from the bone pile, and all of Fred's work was returned to him, (and now Bill knows that he can count as high as zero). Although SCSI drives were used in this illustration, the concepts apply equally to IDE drives. Creating Slices Using FDisk No changes you make at this point will be written to the disk. If you think you have made a mistake and want to start again you can use the menus to exit sysinstall and try again or press U to use the Undo option. If you get confused and can not see how to exit you can always turn your computer off. After choosing to begin a standard installation in sysinstall you will be shown this message: Message In the next menu, you will need to set up a DOS-style ("fdisk") partitioning scheme for your hard disk. If you simply wish to devote all disk space to FreeBSD (overwriting anything else that might be on the disk(s) selected) then use the (A)ll command to select the default partitioning scheme followed by a (Q)uit. If you wish to allocate only free space to FreeBSD, move to a partition marked "unused" and use the (C)reate command. [ OK ] [ Press enter or space ] Press Enter as instructed. You will then be shown a list of all the hard drives that the kernel found when it carried out the device probes. shows an example from a system with two IDE disks. They have been called ad0 and ad2.
Select Drive for FDisk
You might be wondering why ad1 is not listed here. Why has it been missed? Consider what would happen if you had two IDE hard disks, one as the master on the first IDE controller, and one as the master on the second IDE controller. If FreeBSD numbered these as it found them, as ad0 and ad1 then everything would work. But if you then added a third disk, as the slave device on the first IDE controller, it would now be ad1, and the previous ad1 would become ad2. Because device names (such as ad1s1a) are used to find filesystems, you may suddenly discover that some of your filesystems no longer appear correctly, and you would need to change your FreeBSD configuration. To work around this, the kernel can be configured to name IDE disks based on where they are, and not the order in which they were found. With this scheme the master disk on the second IDE controller will always be ad2, even if there are no ad0 or ad1 devices. This configuration is the default for the FreeBSD kernel, which is why this display shows ad0 and ad2. The machine on which this screenshot was taken had IDE disks on both master channels of the IDE controllers, and no disks on the slave channels. You should select the disk on which you want to install FreeBSD, and then press &gui.ok;. FDisk will start, with a display similar to that shown in . The FDisk display is broken into three sections. The first section, covering the first two lines of the display, shows details about the currently selected disk, including its FreeBSD name, the disk geometry, and the total size of the disk. The second section shows the slices that are currently on the disk, where they start and end, how large they are, the name FreeBSD gives them, and their description and sub-type. This example shows two small unused slices, which are artifacts of disk layout schemes on the PC. It also shows one large FAT slice, which almost certainly appears as C: in &ms-dos; / &windows;, and an extended slice, which may contain other drive letters for &ms-dos; / &windows;. The third section shows the commands that are available in FDisk.
Typical Fdisk Partitions before Editing
What you do now will depend on how you want to slice up your disk. If you want to use FreeBSD for the entire disk (which will delete all the other data on this disk when you confirm that you want sysinstall to continue later in the installation process) then you can press A, which corresponds to the Use Entire Disk option. The existing slices will be removed, and replaced with a small area flagged as unused (again, an artifact of PC disk layout), and then one large slice for FreeBSD. If you do this, then you should select the newly created FreeBSD slice using the arrow keys, and press S to mark the slice as being bootable. The screen will then look very similar to . Note the A in the Flags column, which indicates that this slice is active, and will be booted from. If you will be deleting an existing slice to make space for FreeBSD then you should select the slice using the arrow keys, and then press D. You can then press C, and be prompted for size of slice you want to create. Enter the appropriate figure and press Enter. The default value in this box represents the largest possible slice you can make, which could be the largest contiguous block of unallocated space or the size of the entire hard disk. If you have already made space for FreeBSD (perhaps by using a tool such as &partitionmagic;) then you can press C to create a new slice. Again, you will be prompted for the size of slice you would like to create.
Fdisk Partition Using Entire Disk
When finished, press Q. Your changes will be saved in sysinstall, but will not yet be written to disk. Install a Boot Manager You now have the option to install a boot manager. In general, you should choose to install the FreeBSD boot manager if: You have more than one drive, and have installed FreeBSD onto a drive other than the first one. You have installed FreeBSD alongside another operating system on the same disk, and you want to choose whether to start FreeBSD or the other operating system when you start the computer. If FreeBSD is going to be the only operating system on this machine, installed on the first hard disk, then the Standard boot manager will suffice. Choose None if you are using a third-party boot manager capable of booting FreeBSD. Make your choice and press Enter.
Sysinstall Boot Manager Menu
The help screen, reached by pressing F1, discusses the problems that can be encountered when trying to share the hard disk between operating systems. Creating Slices on Another Drive If there is more than one drive, it will return to the Select Drives screen after the boot manager selection. If you wish to install FreeBSD on to more than one disk, then you can select another disk here and repeat the slice process using FDisk. If you are installing FreeBSD on a drive other than your first, then the FreeBSD boot manager needs to be installed on both drives.
Exit Select Drive
The Tab key toggles between the last drive selected, &gui.ok;, and &gui.cancel;. Press the Tab once to toggle to the &gui.ok;, then press Enter to continue with the installation. Creating Partitions Using <application>Disklabel</application> You must now create some partitions inside each slice that you have just created. Remember that each partition is lettered, from a through to h, and that partitions b, c, and d have conventional meanings that you should adhere to. Certain applications can benefit from particular partition schemes, especially if you are laying out partitions across more than one disk. However, for this, your first FreeBSD installation, you do not need to give too much thought to how you partition the disk. It is more important that you install FreeBSD and start learning how to use it. You can always re-install FreeBSD to change your partition scheme when you are more familiar with the operating system. This scheme features four partitions—one for swap space, and three for filesystems. Partition Layout for First Disk Partition Filesystem Size Description a / 100 MB This is the root filesystem. Every other filesystem will be mounted somewhere under this one. 100 MB is a reasonable size for this filesystem. You will not be storing too much data on it, as a regular FreeBSD install will put about 40 MB of data here. The remaining space is for temporary data, and also leaves expansion space if future versions of FreeBSD need more space in /. b N/A 2-3 x RAM The system's swap space is kept on this partition. Choosing the right amount of swap space can be a bit of an art. A good rule of thumb is that your swap space should be two or three times as much as the available physical memory (RAM). You should also have at least 64 MB of swap, so if you have less than 32 MB of RAM in your computer then set the swap amount to 64 MB. If you have more than one disk then you can put swap space on each disk. FreeBSD will then use each disk for swap, which effectively speeds up the act of swapping. In this case, calculate the total amount of swap you need (e.g., 128 MB), and then divide this by the number of disks you have (e.g., two disks) to give the amount of swap you should put on each disk, in this example, 64 MB of swap per disk. e /var 50 MB The /var directory contains files that are constantly varying; log files, and other administrative files. Many of these files are read-from or written-to extensively during FreeBSD's day-to-day running. Putting these files on another filesystem allows FreeBSD to optimize the access of these files without affecting other files in other directories that do not have the same access pattern. f /usr Rest of disk All your other files will typically be stored in /usr and its subdirectories.
If you will be installing FreeBSD on to more than one disk then you must also create partitions in the other slices that you configured. The easiest way to do this is to create two partitions on each disk, one for the swap space, and one for a filesystem. Partition Layout for Subsequent Disks Partition Filesystem Size Description b N/A See description As already discussed, you can split swap space across each disk. Even though the a partition is free, convention dictates that swap space stays on the b partition. e /diskn Rest of disk The rest of the disk is taken up with one big partition. This could easily be put on the a partition, instead of the e partition. However, convention says that the a partition on a slice is reserved for the filesystem that will be the root (/) filesystem. You do not have to follow this convention, but sysinstall does, so following it yourself makes the installation slightly cleaner. You can choose to mount this filesystem anywhere; this example suggests that you mount them as directories /diskn, where n is a number that changes for each disk. But you can use another scheme if you prefer.
Having chosen your partition layout you can now create it using sysinstall. You will see this message: Message Now, you need to create BSD partitions inside of the fdisk partition(s) just created. If you have a reasonable amount of disk space (200MB or more) and don't have any special requirements, simply use the (A)uto command to allocate space automatically. If you have more specific needs or just don't care for the layout chosen by (A)uto, press F1 for more information on manual layout. [ OK ] [ Press enter or space ] Press Enter to start the FreeBSD partition editor, called Disklabel. shows the display when you first start Disklabel. The display is divided in to three sections. The first few lines show the name of the disk you are currently working on, and the slice that contains the partitions you are creating (at this point Disklabel calls this the Partition name rather than slice name). This display also shows the amount of free space within the slice; that is, space that was set aside in the slice, but that has not yet been assigned to a partition. The middle of the display shows the partitions that have been created, the name of the filesystem that each partition contains, their size, and some options pertaining to the creation of the filesystem. The bottom third of the screen shows the keystrokes that are valid in Disklabel.
Sysinstall Disklabel Editor
Disklabel can automatically create partitions for you and assign them default sizes. Try this now, by Pressing A. You will see a display similar to that shown in . Depending on the size of the disk you are using, the defaults may or may not be appropriate. This does not matter, as you do not have to accept the defaults. Beginning with FreeBSD 4.5, the default partitioning assigns the /tmp directory its own partition instead of being part of the / partition. This helps avoid filling the / partition with temporary files.
Sysinstall Disklabel Editor with Auto Defaults
If you choose to not use the default partitions and wish to replace them with your own, use the arrow keys to select the first partition, and press D to delete it. Repeat this to delete all the suggested partitions. To create the first partition (a, mounted as / — root), make sure the proper disk slice at the top of the screen is selected and press C. A dialog box will appear prompting you for the size of the new partition (as shown in ). You can enter the size as the number of disk blocks you want to use, or as a number followed by either M for megabytes, G for gigabytes, or C for cylinders. Beginning with FreeBSD 5.X, users can: select UFS2 using the Custom Newfs (Z) option, create labels with Auto Defaults and modify them with the Custom Newfs option or add during the regular creation period. Do not forget to add for SoftUpdates if you use the Custom Newfs option!
Free Space for Root Partition
The default size shown will create a partition that takes up the rest of the slice. If you are using the partition sizes described in the earlier example, then delete the existing figure using Backspace, and then type in 64M, as shown in . Then press &gui.ok;.
Edit Root Partition Size
Having chosen the partition's size you will then be asked whether this partition will contain a filesystem or swap space. The dialog box is shown in . This first partition will contain a filesystem, so check that FS is selected and press Enter.
Choose the Root Partition Type
Finally, because you are creating a filesystem, you must tell Disklabel where the filesystem is to be mounted. The dialog box is shown in . The root filesystem's mount point is /, so type /, and then press Enter.
Choose the Root Mount Point
The display will then update to show you the newly created partition. You should repeat this procedure for the other partitions. When you create the swap partition, you will not be prompted for the filesystem mount point, as swap partitions are never mounted. When you create the final partition, /usr, you can leave the suggested size as is, to use the rest of the slice. Your final FreeBSD DiskLabel Editor screen will appear similar to , although your values chosen may be different. Press Q to finish.
Sysinstall Disklabel Editor
Choosing What to Install Select the Distribution Set Deciding which distribution set to install will depend largely on the intended use of the system and the amount of disk space available. The predefined options range from installing the smallest possible configuration to everything. Those who are new to &unix; and/or FreeBSD should almost certainly select one of these canned options. Customizing a distribution set is typically for the more experienced user. Press F1 for more information on the distribution set options and what they contain. When finished reviewing the help, pressing Enter will return to the Select Distributions Menu. If a graphical user interface is desired then a distribution set that is preceded by an X should be chosen. The configuration of &xfree86; and selection of a default desktop is part of the post-installation steps. The default version of &xfree86; that is installed depends on the version of the FreeBSD that you are installing. For FreeBSD versions prior to 4.6, &xfree86; 3.X is installed. For FreeBSD 4.6 and later, &xfree86; 4.X is the default. You should check to see whether your video card is supported at the &xfree86; web site. If your video card is not supported under the default version that FreeBSD will install, you should select a distribution without X for installation. After installation, install and configure the appropriate version of &xfree86; using the ports collection. If compiling a custom kernel is anticipated, select an option which includes the source code. For more information on why a custom kernel should be built or how to build a custom kernel, see . Obviously, the most versatile system is one that includes everything. If there is adequate disk space, select All as shown in by using the arrow keys and press Enter. If there is a concern about disk space consider using an option that is more suitable for the situation. Don't fret over the perfect choice, as other distributions can be added after installation.
Choose Distributions
Installing the Ports Collection After selecting the desired distribution, an opportunity to install the FreeBSD Ports Collection is presented. The ports collection is an easy and convenient way to install software. The ports collection does not contain the source code necessary to compile the software. Instead, it is a collection of files which automates the downloading, compiling and installation of third-party software packages. discusses how to use the ports collection. The installation program does not check to see if you have adequate space. Select this option only if you have adequate hard disk space. As of FreeBSD &rel.current;, the FreeBSD Ports Collection takes up about &ports.size of disk space. You can safely assume a larger value for more recent versions of FreeBSD. User Confirmation Requested Would you like to install the FreeBSD ports collection? This will give you ready access to over &os.numports; ported software packages, at a cost of around &ports.size; of disk space when "clean" and possibly much more than that if a lot of the distribution tarballs are loaded (unless you have the extra CDs from a FreeBSD CD/DVD distribution available and can mount it on /cdrom, in which case this is far less of a problem). The ports collection is a very valuable resource and well worth having on your /usr partition, so it is advisable to say Yes to this option. For more information on the ports collection & the latest ports, visit: http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports [ Yes ] No Select [ Yes ] with the arrow keys to install the ports collection or [ No ] to skip this option. Press Enter to continue. The Choose Distributions menu will redisplay.
Confirm Distributions
If satisfied with the options, select Exit with the arrow keys, ensure that &gui.ok; is highlighted, and pressing Enter to continue. Choosing Your Installation Media If Installing from a CDROM or DVD, use the arrow keys to highlight Install from a FreeBSD CD/DVD. Ensure that &gui.ok; is highlighted, then press Enter to proceed with the installation. For other methods of installation, select the appropriate option and follow the instructions. Press F1 to display the Online Help for installation media. Press Enter to return to the media selection menu.
Choose Installation Media
FTP Installation Modes installation network FTP There are three FTP installation modes you can choose from: active FTP, passive FTP, or via a HTTP proxy. FTP Active: Install from an FTP server This option will make all FTP transfers use Active mode. This will not work through firewalls, but will often work with older FTP servers that do not support passive mode. If your connection hangs with passive mode (the default), try active! FTP Passive: Install from an FTP server through a firewall FTP passive mode This option instructs sysinstall to use Passive mode for all FTP operations. This allows the user to pass through firewalls that do not allow incoming connections on random TCP ports. FTP via a HTTP proxy: Install from an FTP server through a http proxy FTP via a HTTP proxy This option instructs sysinstall to use the HTTP protocol (like a web browser) to connect to a proxy for all FTP operations. The proxy will translate the requests and send them to the FTP server. This allows the user to pass through firewalls that do not allow FTP at all, but offer a HTTP proxy. In this case, you have to specify the proxy in addition to the FTP server. For a proxy FTP server, you should usually give the name of the server you really want as a part of the username, after an @ sign. The proxy server then fakes the real server. For example, assuming you want to install from ftp.FreeBSD.org, using the proxy FTP server foo.example.com, listening on port 1024. In this case, you go to the options menu, set the FTP username to ftp@ftp.FreeBSD.org, and the password to your email address. As your installation media, you specify FTP (or passive FTP, if the proxy supports it), and the URL ftp://foo.example.com:1234/pub/FreeBSD. Since /pub/FreeBSD from ftp.FreeBSD.org is proxied under foo.example.com, you are able to install from that machine (which will fetch the files from ftp.FreeBSD.org as your installation requests them). Committing to the Installation The installation can now proceed if desired. This is also the last chance for aborting the installation to prevent changes to the hard drive. User Confirmation Requested Last Chance! Are you SURE you want to continue the installation? If you're running this on a disk with data you wish to save then WE STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO MAKE PROPER BACKUPS before proceeding! We can take no responsibility for lost disk contents! [ Yes ] No Select [ Yes ] and press Enter to proceed. The installation time will vary according to the distribution chosen, installation media, and the speed of the computer. There will be a series of messages displayed indicating the status. The installation is complete when the following message is displayed: Message Congratulations! You now have FreeBSD installed on your system. We will now move on to the final configuration questions. For any option you do not wish to configure, simply select No. If you wish to re-enter this utility after the system is up, you may do so by typing: /stand/sysinstall . [ OK ] [ Press enter to continue ] Press Enter to proceed with post-installation configurations. Selecting [ No ] and pressing Enter will abort the installation so no changes will be made to your system. The following message will appear: Message Installation complete with some errors. You may wish to scroll through the debugging messages on VTY1 with the scroll-lock feature. You can also choose "No" at the next prompt and go back into the installation menus to retry whichever operations have failed. [ OK ] This message is generated because nothing was installed. Pressing Enter will return to the Main Installation Menu to exit the installation. Post-installation Configuration of various options follows the successful installation. An option can be configured by re-entering the configuration options before booting the new FreeBSD system or after installation using /stand/sysinstall and selecting Configure. Network Device Configuration If you previously configured PPP for an FTP install, this screen will not display and can be configured later as described above. For detailed information on Local Area Networks and configuring FreeBSD as a gateway/router refer to the Advanced Networking chapter. User Confirmation Requested Would you like to configure any Ethernet or SLIP/PPP network devices? [ Yes ] No To configure a network device, select [ Yes ] and press Enter. Otherwise, select [ No ] to continue.
Selecting an Ethernet Device
Select the interface to be configured with the arrow keys and press Enter. User Confirmation Requested Do you want to try IPv6 configuration of the interface? Yes [ No ] In this private local area network, the current Internet type protocol (IPv4) was sufficient and [ No ] was selected with the arrow keys and Enter pressed. If you are connected to an existing IPv6 network with an RA server, then choose [ Yes ] and press Enter. It will take several seconds to scan for RA servers. User Confirmation Requested Do you want to try DHCP configuration of the interface? Yes [ No ] If DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is not required select [ No ] with the arrow keys and press Enter. Selecting [ Yes ] will execute dhclient, and if successful, will fill in the network configuration information automatically. Refer to for more information. The following Network Configuration screen shows the configuration of the Ethernet device for a system that will act as the gateway for a Local Area Network.
Set Network Configuration for ed0
Use Tab to select the information fields and fill in appropriate information: Host The fully-qualified hostname, such as k6-2.example.com in this case. Domain The name of the domain that your machine is in, such as example.com for this case. IPv4 Gateway IP address of host forwarding packets to non-local destinations. You must fill this in if the machine is a node on the network. Leave this field blank if the machine is the gateway to the Internet for the network. The IPv4 Gateway is also known as the default gateway or default route. Name server IP address of your local DNS server. There is no local DNS server on this private local area network so the IP address of the provider's DNS server (208.163.10.2) was used. IPv4 address The IP address to be used for this interface was 192.168.0.1 Netmask The address block being used for this local area network is a Class C block (192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255). The default netmask is for a Class C network (255.255.255.0). Extra options to ifconfig Any interface-specific options to ifconfig you would like to add. There were none in this case. Use Tab to select &gui.ok; when finished and press Enter. User Confirmation Requested Would you like to Bring Up the ed0 interface right now? [ Yes ] No Choosing [ Yes ] and pressing Enter will bring the machine up on the network and be ready for use. However, this does not accomplish much during installation, since the machine still needs to be rebooted.. Configure Gateway User Confirmation Requested Do you want this machine to function as a network gateway? [ Yes ] No If the machine will be acting as the gateway for a local area network and forwarding packets between other machines then select [ Yes ] and press Enter. If the machine is a node on a network then select [ No ] and press Enter to continue. Configure Internet Services User Confirmation Requested Do you want to configure inetd and the network services that it provides? Yes [ No ] If [ No ] is selected, various services such telnetd will not be enabled. This means that remote users will not be able to telnet into this machine. Local users will be still be able to access remote machines with telnet. These services can be enabled after installation by editing /etc/inetd.conf with your favorite text editor. See for more information. Select [ Yes ] if you wish to configure these services during install. An additional confirmation will display: User Confirmation Requested The Internet Super Server (inetd) allows a number of simple Internet services to be enabled, including finger, ftp and telnetd. Enabling these services may increase risk of security problems by increasing the exposure of your system. With this in mind, do you wish to enable inetd? [ Yes ] No Select [ Yes ] to continue. User Confirmation Requested inetd(8) relies on its configuration file, /etc/inetd.conf, to determine which of its Internet services will be available. The default FreeBSD inetd.conf(5) leaves all services disabled by default, so they must be specifically enabled in the configuration file before they will function, even once inetd(8) is enabled. Note that services for IPv6 must be separately enabled from IPv4 services. Select [Yes] now to invoke an editor on /etc/inetd.conf, or [No] to use the current settings. [ Yes ] No Selecting [ Yes ] will allow adding services by deleting the # at the beginning of a line.
Editing <filename>inetd.conf</filename>
After adding the desired services, pressing Esc will display a menu which will allow exiting and saving the changes. Anonymous FTP User Confirmation Requested Do you want to have anonymous FTP access to this machine? Yes [ No ] Deny Anonymous FTP Selecting the default [ No ] and pressing Enter will still allow users who have accounts with passwords to use FTP to access the machine. Allow Anonymous FTP Anyone can access your machine if you elect to allow anonymous FTP connections. The security implications should be considered before enabling this option. For more information about security see . To allow anonymous FTP, use the arrow keys to select [ Yes ] and press Enter. The following screen (or similar) will display:
Default Anonymous FTP Configuration
Pressing F1 will display the help: This screen allows you to configure the anonymous FTP user. The following configuration values are editable: UID: The user ID you wish to assign to the anonymous FTP user. All files uploaded will be owned by this ID. Group: Which group you wish the anonymous FTP user to be in. Comment: String describing this user in /etc/passwd FTP Root Directory: Where files available for anonymous FTP will be kept. Upload subdirectory: Where files uploaded by anonymous FTP users will go. The ftp root directory will be put in /var by default. If you do not have enough room there for the anticipated FTP needs, the /usr directory could be used by setting the FTP Root Directory to /usr/ftp. When you are satisfied with the values, press Enter to continue. User Confirmation Requested Create a welcome message file for anonymous FTP users? [ Yes ] No If you select [ Yes ] and press Enter, an editor will automatically start allowing you to edit the message.
Edit the FTP Welcome Message
This is a text editor called ee. Use the instructions to change the message or change the message later using a text editor of your choice. Note the file name/location at the bottom of the editor screen. Press Esc and a pop-up menu will default to a) leave editor. Press Enter to exit and continue. Press Enter again to save changes if you made any./para> Configure Network File System Network File System (NFS) allows sharing of files across a network. A machine can be configured as a server, a client, or both. Refer to for a more information. NFS Server User Confirmation Requested Do you want to configure this machine as an NFS server? Yes [ No ] If there is no need for a Network File System server, select [ No ] and press Enter. If [ Yes ] is chosen, a message will pop-up indicating that the exports file must be created. Message Operating as an NFS server means that you must first configure an /etc/exports file to indicate which hosts are allowed certain kinds of access to your local filesystems. Press [Enter] now to invoke an editor on /etc/exports [ OK ] Press Enter to continue. A text editor will start allowing the exports file to be created and edited.
Editing <filename>exports</filename>
Use the instructions to add the actual exported filesystems now or later using a text editor of your choice. Note the file name/location at the bottom of the editor screen. Press Esc and a pop-up menu will default to a) leave editor. Press Enter to exit and continue. NFS Client The NFS client allows your machine to access NFS servers. User Confirmation Requested Do you want to configure this machine as an NFS client? Yes [ No ] With the arrow keys, select [ Yes ] or [ No ] as appropriate and press Enter. Security Profile A security profile is a set of configuration options that attempts to achieve the desired ratio of security to convenience by enabling and disabling certain programs and other settings. The more severe the security profile, the fewer programs will be enabled by default. This is one of the basic principles of security: do not run anything except what you must. Please note that the security profile is just a default setting. All programs can be enabled and disabled after you have installed FreeBSD by editing or adding the appropriate line(s) to /etc/rc.conf. For more information, please see the &man.rc.conf.5; manual page. The following table describes what each of the security profiles does. The columns are the choices you have for a security profile, and the rows are the program or feature that the profile enables or disables. Possible Security Profiles Extreme Moderate &man.sendmail.8; NO YES &man.sshd.8; NO YES &man.portmap.8; NO MAYBE The portmapper is enabled if the machine has been configured as an NFS client or server earlier in the installation. NFS server NO YES &man.securelevel.8; YES If you choose a security profile that sets the securelevel to Extreme or High, you must be aware of the implications. Please read the &man.init.8; manual page and pay particular attention to the meanings of the security levels, or you may have significant trouble later! NO
User Confirmation Requested Do you want to select a default security profile for this host (select No for "medium" security)? [ Yes ] No Selecting [ No ] and pressing Enter will set the security profile to medium. Selecting [ Yes ] and pressing Enter will allow selecting a different security profile.
Security Profile Options
Press F1 to display the help. Press Enter to return to selection menu. Use the arrow keys to choose Medium unless your are sure that another level is required for your needs. With &gui.ok; highlighted, press Enter. An appropriate confirmation message will display depending on which security setting was chosen. Message Moderate security settings have been selected. Sendmail and SSHd have been enabled, securelevels are disabled, and NFS server setting have been left intact. PLEASE NOTE that this still does not save you from having to properly secure your system in other ways or exercise due diligence in your administration, this simply picks a standard set of out-of-box defaults to start with. To change any of these settings later, edit /etc/rc.conf [OK] Message Extreme security settings have been selected. Sendmail, SSHd, and NFS services have been disabled, and securelevels have been enabled. PLEASE NOTE that this still does not save you from having to properly secure your system in other ways or exercise due diligence in your administration, this simply picks a more secure set of out-of-box defaults to start with. To change any of these settings later, edit /etc/rc.conf [OK] Press Enter to continue with the post-installation configuration. The security profile is not a silver bullet! Even if you use the extreme setting, you need to keep up with security issues by reading an appropriate mailing list, using good passwords and passphrases, and generally adhering to good security practices. It simply sets up the desired security to convenience ratio out of the box. System Console Settings There are several options available to customize the system console. User Confirmation Requested Would you like to customize your system console settings? [ Yes ] No To view and configure the options, select [ Yes ] and press Enter.
System Console Configuration Options
A commonly used option is the screen saver. Use the arrow keys to select Saver and then press Enter.
Screen Saver Options
Select the desired screen saver using the arrow keys and then press Enter. The System Console Configuration menu will redisplay. The default time interval is 300 seconds. To change the time interval, select Saver again. At the Screen Saver Options menu, select Timeout using the arrow keys and press Enter. A pop-up menu will appear:
Screen Saver Timeout
The value can be changed, then select &gui.ok; and press Enter to return to the System Console Configuration menu.
System Console Configuration Exit
Selecting Exit and pressing Enter will continue with the post-installation configurations. Setting the Time Zone Setting the time zone for your machine will allow it to automatically correct for any regional time changes and perform other time zone related functions properly. The example shown is for a machine located in the Eastern time zone of the United States. Your selections will vary according to your geographical location. User Confirmation Requested Would you like to set this machine's time zone now? [ Yes ] No Select [ Yes ] and press Enter to set the time zone. User Confirmation Requested Is this machine's CMOS clock set to UTC? If it is set to local time or you don't know, please choose NO here! Yes [ No ] Select [ Yes ] or [ No ] according to how the machine's clock is configured and press Enter.
Select Your Region
The appropriate region is selected using the arrow keys and then pressing Enter.
Select Your Country
Select the appropriate country using the arrow keys and press Enter.
Select Your Time Zone
The appropriate time zone is selected using the arrow keys and pressing Enter. Confirmation Does the abbreviation 'EDT' look reasonable? [ Yes ] No Confirm the abbreviation for the time zone is correct. If it looks okay, press Enter to continue with the post-installation configuration. Linux Compatibility User Confirmation Requested Would you like to enable Linux binary compatibility? [ Yes ] No Selecting [ Yes ] and pressing Enter will allow running Linux software on FreeBSD. The install will add the appropriate packages for Linux compatibility. If installing by FTP, the machine will need to be connected to the Internet. Sometimes a remote ftp site will not have all the distributions like the Linux binary compatibility. This can be installed later if necessary. Mouse Settings This option will allow you to cut and paste text in the console and user programs with a 3-button mouse. If using a 2-button mouse, refer to manual page, &man.moused.8;, after installation for details on emulating the 3-button style. This example depicts a non-USB mouse configuration (such as a PS/2 or COM port mouse): User Confirmation Requested Does this system have a non-USB mouse attached to it? [ Yes ] No Select [ Yes ] for a non-USB mouse or [ No ] for a USB mouse and press Enter.
Select Mouse Protocol Type
Use the arrow keys to select Type and press Enter.
Set Mouse Protocol
The mouse used in this example is a PS/2 type, so the default Auto was appropriate. To change protocol, use the arrow keys to select another option. Ensure that &gui.ok; is highlighted and press Enter to exit this menu.
Configure Mouse Port
Use the arrow keys to select Port and press Enter.
Setting the Mouse Port
This system had a PS/2 mouse, so the default PS/2 was appropriate. To change the port, use the arrow keys and then press Enter.
Enable the Mouse Daemon
Last, use the arrow keys to select Enable, and press Enter to enable and test the mouse daemon.
Test the Mouse Daemon
Move the mouse around the sceren and verify the cursor shown responds properly. If it does, select Yes and press Enter. If not, the mouse has not been configured correctly — select No and try using different configuration options. Select Exit with the arrow keys and press Enter to return to continue with the post-installation configuration. Configure Additional Network Services Configuring network services can be a daunting task for new users if they lack previous knowledge in this area. Networking, including the Internet, is critical to all modern operating systems including &os;; as a result, it's very useful to have some understanding &os;'s extensive networking capabilities. Doing this during the installation will ensure users have some understanding of the various services available to them. Network services are programs that accept input from anywhere on the network. Every effort is made to make sure these programs will not do anything harmful. Unfortunately, programmers are not perfect and through time there have been cases where bugs in network services have been exploited by attackers to do bad things. It is important that you only enable the network services you know that you need. If in doubt it is best if you do not enable a network service until you find out that you do need it. You can always enable it later by re-running sysinstall or by using the features provided by the /etc/rc.conf file. Selecting the Networking option will display a menu similar to the one below:
Network Configuration Upper-level
The first option, Interfaces, was previously covered during the Network Device Configuration section; thus this option can safely be ignored. Selecting the option adds support for the BSD auto mount utility. This is usually used in conjunction with the NFS protocol (see below) for automatically mounting remote file systems. No special configuration is required here. Next in line is the AMD flags option. When selected, a menu will pop up for you to enter specific AMD flags. The menu already contains a set of default options: -a /.amd_mnt -l syslog /host /etc/amd.map /net /etc/amd.map The -a option sets the default mount location which is specified here as /.amd_mnt. The -l option specifies the default log file; however, when syslogd is specified all log activity will be sent to the system log daemon. The /host directory is used to mount an exported file system from a remote host, while /net directory is used to mount an exported file system from an IP address. The /etc/amd.map file defines the default options for AMD exports. The Anon FTP permits anonymous FTP connections. Select this option to make this machine an anonymous FTP server. Be aware of the security risks involved with this option. Another menu will be displayed to explain the security risks and configuration in depth. The configuration menu will set the machine up to be a gateway as explained previously. This can be used to unset the gateway option if you accidentally selected it during the installation process. The option can be used to configure or completely disable the &man.inetd.8; daemon as discussed above. The is used to configure the system's default MTA or Mail Transfer Agent. Selecting this option will bring up the following menu:
Select a default MTA
Here you are offered a choice as to which MTA to install and set as the default. An MTA is nothing more than a mail server which delivers email to users on the system or the Internet. Selecting Sendmail will install the popular Sendmail server which is the &os; default. The option will set Sendmail to be the default MTA, but disable its ability to receive incoming email from the Internet. The other options here, Postfix and Exim act similar to Sendmail. They both deliver email; however, some users prefer these alternatives to the Sendmail MTA. After selecting an MTA, or choosing not to select an MTA, the network configuration menu will appear with the next option being NFS client. The NFS client will configure the system to communicate with a server via NFS. An NFS server makes file systems available to other machines on the network via the NFS protocol. If this is a stand alone machine, this option can remain unselected. The system may require more configuration later; see for more information about client and server configuration. Below that option is the NFS server option, permitting you to set the system up as an NFS server. This adds the required information to start up the RPC remote procedure call services. RPC is used to coordinate connections between hosts and programs. Next in line is the option, which deals with time synchronization. When selected, a menu like the one below shows up:
Ntpdate Configuration
From this menu, select the server which is the closest to your location. Selecting a close one will make the time synchronization more accurate as a server further from your location may have more connection latency. The next option is the PCNFSD selection. This option will install the net/pcnfsd package from the ports collection. This is a useful utility which provides NFS authentication services for systems which are unable to provide their own, such as Microsoft's DOS operating system. Now you must scroll down a bit to see the other options:
Network Configuration Lower-level
The &man.rpcbind.8;, &man.rpc.statd.8;, and &man.rpc.lockd.8; utilities are all used for Remote Procedure Calls (RPC). The rpcbind.8 utility manages communication between NFS servers and clients, and is required for NFS servers to operate correctly. The rpc.statd daemon interacts with the rpc.statd daemon on other hosts to provide status monitoring. The reported status is usually held in the /var/db/statd.status file. The final option listed here is the rpc.lockd option, which, when selected, will provide file locking services. This is usually used with rpc.statd to monitor what hosts are requesting locks and how frequently they request them. While these last two options are marvelous for debugging, they are not required for NFS servers and clients to operate correctly. As you progress down the list the next item here is , which is the routing daemon. The &man.routed.8; utility manages network routing tables, discovers multicast routers, and supplies a copy of the routing tables to any physically connected host on the network upon request. This is mainly used for machines which act as a gateway for the local network (see the &man.icmp.4 and &man.udp.4; manual pages). When selected, a menu will be presented requesting the default location of the utility. The default location is already defined for you and can be selected with the Enter key. You will then be presented with yet another menu, this time asking for the flags you wish to pass on to routed. The default is -q and it should already appear on the screen. Next in line is the option which, when selected, will start the &man.rwhod.8; daemon during system initialization. The rwhod utility broadcasts system messages across the network periodically, or collects them when in consumer mode. More information can be found in the &man.ruptime.1; and &man.rwho.1; manual pages. The next to the last option in the list is for the &man.sshd.8; daemon. This is the secure shell server for OpenSSH and it is highly recommended over the standard telnet and FTP servers. The sshd server is used to create a secure connection from one host to another by using encrypted connections. Finally there is the TCP Extensions option. This enables the TCP Extensions defined in RFC 1323 and RFC 1644. While on many hosts this can speed up connections, it can also cause some connections to be dropped. It is not recommended for servers, but may be beneficial for stand alone machines. Now that you have configured the network services, you can scroll up to the very top item which is and continue on to the next configuration section. Configure X Server In order to use a graphical user interface such as KDE, GNOME, or others, the X server will need to be configured. In order to run &xfree86; as a non root user you will need to have x11/wrapper installed. This is installed by default beginning with FreeBSD 4.7. For earlier versions this can be added from the Package Selection menu. To see whether your video card is supported, check the &xfree86; web site. User Confirmation Requested Would you like to configure your X server at this time? [ Yes ] No It is necessary to know your monitor specifications and video card information. Equipment damage can occur if settings are incorrect. If you do not have this information, select [ No ] and perform the configuration after installation when you have the information using /stand/sysinstall, selecting Configure and then XFree86. Improper configuration of the X server at this time can leave the machine in a frozen state. It is often advised to configure the X-server once the installation has completed. If you have graphics card and monitor information, select [ Yes ] and press Enter to proceed with configuring the X server.
Select Configuration Method Menu
There are several ways to configure the X server. Use the arrow keys to select one of the methods and press Enter. Be sure to read all instructions carefully. The xf86cfg and xf86cfg -textmode methods may make the screen go dark and take a few seconds to start. Be patient. The following will illustrate the use of the xf86config configuration tool. The configuration choices you make will depend on the hardware in the system so your choices will probably be different than those shown: Message You have configured and been running the mouse daemon. Choose "/dev/sysmouse" as the mouse port and "SysMouse" or "MouseSystems" as the mouse protocol in the X configuration utility. [ OK ] [ Press enter to continue ] This indicates that the mouse daemon previously configured has been detected. Press Enter to continue. Starting xf86config will display a brief introduction: This program will create a basic XF86Config file, based on menu selections you make. The XF86Config file usually resides in /usr/X11R6/etc/X11 or /etc/X11. A sample XF86Config file is supplied with XFree86; it is configured for a standard VGA card and monitor with 640x480 resolution. This program will ask for a pathname when it is ready to write the file. You can either take the sample XF86Config as a base and edit it for your configuration, or let this program produce a base XF86Config file for your configuration and fine-tune it. Before continuing with this program, make sure you know what video card you have, and preferably also the chipset it uses and the amount of video memory on your video card. SuperProbe may be able to help with this. Press enter to continue, or ctrl-c to abort. Pressing Enter will start the mouse configuration. Be sure to follow the instructions and use Mouse Systems as the mouse protocol and /dev/sysmouse as the mouse port even if using a PS/2 mouse is shown as an illustration. First specify a mouse protocol type. Choose one from the following list: 1. Microsoft compatible (2-button protocol) 2. Mouse Systems (3-button protocol) & FreeBSD moused protocol 3. Bus Mouse 4. PS/2 Mouse 5. Logitech Mouse (serial, old type, Logitech protocol) 6. Logitech MouseMan (Microsoft compatible) 7. MM Series 8. MM HitTablet 9. Microsoft IntelliMouse If you have a two-button mouse, it is most likely of type 1, and if you have a three-button mouse, it can probably support both protocol 1 and 2. There are two main varieties of the latter type: mice with a switch to select the protocol, and mice that default to 1 and require a button to be held at boot-time to select protocol 2. Some mice can be convinced to do 2 by sending a special sequence to the serial port (see the ClearDTR/ClearRTS options). Enter a protocol number: 2 You have selected a Mouse Systems protocol mouse. If your mouse is normally in Microsoft-compatible mode, enabling the ClearDTR and ClearRTS options may cause it to switch to Mouse Systems mode when the server starts. Please answer the following question with either 'y' or 'n'. Do you want to enable ClearDTR and ClearRTS? n You have selected a three-button mouse protocol. It is recommended that you do not enable Emulate3Buttons, unless the third button doesn't work. Please answer the following question with either 'y' or 'n'. Do you want to enable Emulate3Buttons? y Now give the full device name that the mouse is connected to, for example /dev/tty00. Just pressing enter will use the default, /dev/mouse. On FreeBSD, the default is /dev/sysmouse. Mouse device: /dev/sysmouse The keyboard is the next item to be configured. A generic 101-key model is shown for illustration. Any name may be used for the variant or simply press Enter to accept the default value. Please select one of the following keyboard types that is the better description of your keyboard. If nothing really matches, choose 1 (Generic 101-key PC) 1 Generic 101-key PC 2 Generic 102-key (Intl) PC 3 Generic 104-key PC 4 Generic 105-key (Intl) PC 5 Dell 101-key PC 6 Everex STEPnote 7 Keytronic FlexPro 8 Microsoft Natural 9 Northgate OmniKey 101 10 Winbook Model XP5 11 Japanese 106-key 12 PC-98xx Series 13 Brazilian ABNT2 14 HP Internet 15 Logitech iTouch 16 Logitech Cordless Desktop Pro 17 Logitech Internet Keyboard 18 Logitech Internet Navigator Keyboard 19 Compaq Internet 20 Microsoft Natural Pro 21 Genius Comfy KB-16M 22 IBM Rapid Access 23 IBM Rapid Access II 24 Chicony Internet Keyboard 25 Dell Internet Keyboard Enter a number to choose the keyboard. 1 Please select the layout corresponding to your keyboard 1 U.S. English 2 U.S. English w/ ISO9995-3 3 U.S. English w/ deadkeys 4 Albanian 5 Arabic 6 Armenian 7 Azerbaidjani 8 Belarusian 9 Belgian 10 Bengali 11 Brazilian 12 Bulgarian 13 Burmese 14 Canadian 15 Croatian 16 Czech 17 Czech (qwerty) 18 Danish Enter a number to choose the country. Press enter for the next page 1 Please enter a variant name for 'us' layout. Or just press enter for default variant us Please answer the following question with either 'y' or 'n'. Do you want to select additional XKB options (group switcher, group indicator, etc.)? n Next, we proceed to the configuration for the monitor. Do not exceed the ratings of your monitor. Damage could occur. If you have any doubts, do the configuration after you have the information. Now we want to set the specifications of the monitor. The two critical parameters are the vertical refresh rate, which is the rate at which the whole screen is refreshed, and most importantly the horizontal sync rate, which is the rate at which scanlines are displayed. The valid range for horizontal sync and vertical sync should be documented in the manual of your monitor. If in doubt, check the monitor database /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc/Monitors to see if your monitor is there. Press enter to continue, or ctrl-c to abort. You must indicate the horizontal sync range of your monitor. You can either select one of the predefined ranges below that correspond to industry- standard monitor types, or give a specific range. It is VERY IMPORTANT that you do not specify a monitor type with a horizontal sync range that is beyond the capabilities of your monitor. If in doubt, choose a conservative setting. hsync in kHz; monitor type with characteristic modes 1 31.5; Standard VGA, 640x480 @ 60 Hz 2 31.5 - 35.1; Super VGA, 800x600 @ 56 Hz 3 31.5, 35.5; 8514 Compatible, 1024x768 @ 87 Hz interlaced (no 800x600) 4 31.5, 35.15, 35.5; Super VGA, 1024x768 @ 87 Hz interlaced, 800x600 @ 56 Hz 5 31.5 - 37.9; Extended Super VGA, 800x600 @ 60 Hz, 640x480 @ 72 Hz 6 31.5 - 48.5; Non-Interlaced SVGA, 1024x768 @ 60 Hz, 800x600 @ 72 Hz 7 31.5 - 57.0; High Frequency SVGA, 1024x768 @ 70 Hz 8 31.5 - 64.3; Monitor that can do 1280x1024 @ 60 Hz 9 31.5 - 79.0; Monitor that can do 1280x1024 @ 74 Hz 10 31.5 - 82.0; Monitor that can do 1280x1024 @ 76 Hz 11 Enter your own horizontal sync range Enter your choice (1-11): 6 You must indicate the vertical sync range of your monitor. You can either select one of the predefined ranges below that correspond to industry- standard monitor types, or give a specific range. For interlaced modes, the number that counts is the high one (e.g. 87 Hz rather than 43 Hz). 1 50-70 2 50-90 3 50-100 4 40-150 5 Enter your own vertical sync range Enter your choice: 2 You must now enter a few identification/description strings, namely an identifier, a vendor name, and a model name. Just pressing enter will fill in default names. The strings are free-form, spaces are allowed. Enter an identifier for your monitor definition: Hitachi The selection of a video card driver from a list is next. If you pass your card on the list, continue to press Enter and the list will repeat. Only an excerpt from the list is shown: Now we must configure video card specific settings. At this point you can choose to make a selection out of a database of video card definitions. Because there can be variation in Ramdacs and clock generators even between cards of the same model, it is not sensible to blindly copy the settings (e.g. a Device section). For this reason, after you make a selection, you will still be asked about the components of the card, with the settings from the chosen database entry presented as a strong hint. The database entries include information about the chipset, what driver to run, the Ramdac and ClockChip, and comments that will be included in the Device section. However, a lot of definitions only hint about what driver to run (based on the chipset the card uses) and are untested. If you can't find your card in the database, there's nothing to worry about. You should only choose a database entry that is exactly the same model as your card; choosing one that looks similar is just a bad idea (e.g. a GemStone Snail 64 may be as different from a GemStone Snail 64+ in terms of hardware as can be). Do you want to look at the card database? y 288 Matrox Millennium G200 8MB mgag200 289 Matrox Millennium G200 SD 16MB mgag200 290 Matrox Millennium G200 SD 4MB mgag200 291 Matrox Millennium G200 SD 8MB mgag200 292 Matrox Millennium G400 mgag400 293 Matrox Millennium II 16MB mga2164w 294 Matrox Millennium II 4MB mga2164w 295 Matrox Millennium II 8MB mga2164w 296 Matrox Mystique mga1064sg 297 Matrox Mystique G200 16MB mgag200 298 Matrox Mystique G200 4MB mgag200 299 Matrox Mystique G200 8MB mgag200 300 Matrox Productiva G100 4MB mgag100 301 Matrox Productiva G100 8MB mgag100 302 MediaGX mediagx 303 MediaVision Proaxcel 128 ET6000 304 Mirage Z-128 ET6000 305 Miro CRYSTAL VRX Verite 1000 Enter a number to choose the corresponding card definition. Press enter for the next page, q to continue configuration. 288 Your selected card definition: Identifier: Matrox Millennium G200 8MB Chipset: mgag200 Driver: mga Do NOT probe clocks or use any Clocks line. Press enter to continue, or ctrl-c to abort. Now you must give information about your video card. This will be used for the "Device" section of your video card in XF86Config. You must indicate how much video memory you have. It is probably a good idea to use the same approximate amount as that detected by the server you intend to use. If you encounter problems that are due to the used server not supporting the amount memory you have (e.g. ATI Mach64 is limited to 1024K with the SVGA server), specify the maximum amount supported by the server. How much video memory do you have on your video card: 1 256K 2 512K 3 1024K 4 2048K 5 4096K 6 Other Enter your choice: 6 Amount of video memory in Kbytes: 8192 You must now enter a few identification/description strings, namely an identifier, a vendor name, and a model name. Just pressing enter will fill in default names (possibly from a card definition). Your card definition is Matrox Millennium G200 8MB. The strings are free-form, spaces are allowed. Enter an identifier for your video card definition: Next, the video modes are set for the resolutions desired. Typically, useful ranges are 640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 but those are a function of video card capability, monitor size, and eye comfort. When selecting a color depth, select the highest mode that your card will support. For each depth, a list of modes (resolutions) is defined. The default resolution that the server will start-up with will be the first listed mode that can be supported by the monitor and card. Currently it is set to: "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024" for 8-bit "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024" for 16-bit "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024" for 24-bit Modes that cannot be supported due to monitor or clock constraints will be automatically skipped by the server. 1 Change the modes for 8-bit (256 colors) 2 Change the modes for 16-bit (32K/64K colors) 3 Change the modes for 24-bit (24-bit color) 4 The modes are OK, continue. Enter your choice: 2 Select modes from the following list: 1 "640x400" 2 "640x480" 3 "800x600" 4 "1024x768" 5 "1280x1024" 6 "320x200" 7 "320x240" 8 "400x300" 9 "1152x864" a "1600x1200" b "1800x1400" c "512x384" Please type the digits corresponding to the modes that you want to select. For example, 432 selects "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480", with a default mode of 1024x768. Which modes? 432 You can have a virtual screen (desktop), which is screen area that is larger than the physical screen and which is panned by moving the mouse to the edge of the screen. If you don't want virtual desktop at a certain resolution, you cannot have modes listed that are larger. Each color depth can have a differently-sized virtual screen Please answer the following question with either 'y' or 'n'. Do you want a virtual screen that is larger than the physical screen? n For each depth, a list of modes (resolutions) is defined. The default resolution that the server will start-up with will be the first listed mode that can be supported by the monitor and card. Currently it is set to: "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024" for 8-bit "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" for 16-bit "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768" "1280x1024" for 24-bit Modes that cannot be supported due to monitor or clock constraints will be automatically skipped by the server. 1 Change the modes for 8-bit (256 colors) 2 Change the modes for 16-bit (32K/64K colors) 3 Change the modes for 24-bit (24-bit color) 4 The modes are OK, continue. Enter your choice: 4 Please specify which color depth you want to use by default: 1 1 bit (monochrome) 2 4 bits (16 colors) 3 8 bits (256 colors) 4 16 bits (65536 colors) 5 24 bits (16 million colors) Enter a number to choose the default depth. 4 Finally, the configuration needs to be saved. Be sure to enter /etc/XF86Config as the location for saving the configuration. I am going to write the XF86Config file now. Make sure you don't accidently overwrite a previously configured one. Shall I write it to /etc/X11/XF86Config? y If the configuration fails, you can try the configuration again by selecting [ Yes ] when the following message appears: User Confirmation Requested The XFree86 configuration process seems to have failed. Would you like to try again? [ Yes ] No If you have trouble configuring &xfree86;, select [ No ] and press Enter and continue with the installation process. After installation you can use xf86cfg -textmode or xf86config to access the command line configuration utilities as root. There is an additional method for configuring &xfree86; described in . If you choose not to configure &xfree86; at this time the next menu will be for package selection. The default setting which allows the server to be killed is the hotkey sequence CtrlAlt Backspace. This can be executed if something is wrong with the server settings and prevent hardware damage. The default setting that allows video mode switching will permit changing of the mode while running X with the hotkey sequence CtrlAlt+ or CtrlAlt- . After installation, the display can be adjusted for height, width, or centering by using xvidtune after you have &xfree86; running with xvidtune. There are warnings that improper settings can damage your equipment. Heed them. If in doubt, do not do it. Instead, use the monitor controls to adjust the display for X Window. There may be some display differences when switching back to text mode, but it is better than damaging equipment. Read the &man.xvidtune.1; manual page before making any adjustments. Following a successful &xfree86; configuration, it will proceed to the selection of a default desktop. Select Default X Desktop There are a variety of window managers available. They range from very basic environments to full desktop environments with a large suite of software. Some require only minimal disk space and low memory while others with more features require much more. The best way to determine which is most suitable for you is to try a few different ones. Those are available from the ports collection or as packages and can be added after installation. You can select one of the popular desktops to be installed and configured as the default desktop. This will allow you to start it right after installation.
Select Default Desktop
Use the arrow keys to select a desktop and press Enter. Installation of the selected desktop will proceed. Install Packages Packages are pre-compiled binaries and are a convenient way to install software. Installation of one package is shown for purposes of illustration. Additional packages can also be added at this time if desired. After installation /stand/sysinstall can be used to add additional packages. User Confirmation Requested The FreeBSD package collection is a collection of hundreds of ready-to-run applications, from text editors to games to WEB servers and more. Would you like to browse the collection now? [ Yes ] No Selecting [ Yes ] and pressing Enter will be followed by the Package Selection screens:
Select Package Category
Only packages on the current installation media are available for installation at any given time. All packages available will be displayed if All is selected or you can select a particular category. Highlight your selection with the arrow keys and press Enter. A menu will display showing all the packages available for the selection made:
Select Packages
The bash shell is shown selected. Select as many as desired by highlighting the package and pressing the Space key. A short description of each package will appear in the lower left corner of the screen. Pressing the Tab key will toggle between the last selected package, &gui.ok;, and &gui.cancel;. When you have finished marking the packages for installation, press Tab once to toggle to the &gui.ok; and press Enter to return to the Package Selection menu. The left and right arrow keys will also toggle between &gui.ok; and &gui.cancel;. This method can also be used to select &gui.ok; and press Enter to return to the Package Selection menu.
Install Packages
Use the tab and arrow keys to select [ Install ] and press Enter. You will then need to confirm that you want to install the packages:
Confirm Package Installation
Selecting &gui.ok; and pressing Enter will start the package installation. Installing messages will appear until completed. Make note if there are any error messages. The final configuration continues after packages are installed. If you end up not selecting any packages, and wish to return to the final configuration, select Install anyways. Add Users/Groups You should add at least one user during the installation so that you can use the system without being logged in as root. The root partition is generally small and running applications as root can quickly fill it. A bigger danger is noted below: User Confirmation Requested Would you like to add any initial user accounts to the system? Adding at least one account for yourself at this stage is suggested since working as the "root" user is dangerous (it is easy to do things which adversely affect the entire system). [ Yes ] No Select [ Yes ] and press Enter to continue with adding a user.
Select User
Select User with the arrow keys and press Enter.
Add User Information
The following descriptions will appear in the lower part of the screen as the items are selected with Tab to assist with entering the required information: Login ID The login name of the new user (mandatory). UID The numerical ID for this user (leave blank for automatic choice). Group The login group name for this user (leave blank for automatic choice). Password The password for this user (enter this field with care!). Full name The user's full name (comment). Member groups The groups this user belongs to (i.e. gets access rights for). Home directory The user's home directory (leave blank for default). Login shell The user's login shell (leave blank for default, e.g. /bin/sh). The login shell was changed from /bin/sh to /usr/local/bin/bash to use the bash shell that was previously installed as a package. Do not try to use a shell that does not exist or you will not be able to login. The most common shell used in the BSD-world is the C shell, which can be indicated as /bin/tcsh. The user was also added to the wheel group to be able to become a superuser with root privileges. When you are satisfied, press &gui.ok; and the User and Group Management menu will redisplay:
Exit User and Group Management
Groups can also be added at this time if specific needs are known. Otherwise, this may be accessed through using /stand/sysinstall after installation is completed. When you are finished adding users, select Exit with the arrow keys and press Enter to continue the installation. Set the <username>root</username> Password Message Now you must set the system manager's password. This is the password you'll use to log in as "root". [ OK ] [ Press enter to continue ] Press Enter to set the root password. The password will need to be typed in twice correctly. Needless to say, make sure you have a way of finding the password if you forget. Changing local password for root. New password : Retype new password : The installation will continue after the password is successfully entered. Exiting Install If you need to configure additional network devices or any other configuration, you can do it at this point or after installation with /stand/sysinstall. User Confirmation Requested Visit the general configuration menu for a chance to set any last options? Yes [ No ] Select [ No ] with the arrow keys and press Enter to return to the Main Installation Menu.
Exit Install
Select [X Exit Install] with the arrow keys and press Enter. You will be asked to confirm exiting the installation: User Confirmation Requested Are you sure you wish to exit? The system will reboot (be sure to remove any floppies from the drives). [ Yes ] No Select [ Yes ] and remove the floppy if booting from the floppy. The CDROM drive is locked until the machine starts to reboot. The CDROM drive is then unlocked and the disk can be removed from drive (quickly). The system will reboot so watch for any error messages that may appear. FreeBSD Bootup FreeBSD Bootup on the &i386; If everything went well, you will see messages scroll off the screen and you will arrive at a login prompt. You can view the content of the messages by pressing Scroll-Lock and using PgUp and PgDn. Pressing Scroll-Lock again will return to the prompt. The entire message may not display (buffer limitation) but it can be viewed from the command line after logging in by typing dmesg at the prompt. Login using the username/password you set during installation (rpratt, in this example). Avoid logging in as root except when necessary. Typical boot messages (version information omitted): Copyright (c) 1992-2002 The FreeBSD Project. Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz CPU: AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor (300.68-MHz 586-class CPU) Origin = "AuthenticAMD" Id = 0x580 Stepping = 0 Features=0x8001bf<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,MCE,CX8,MMX> AMD Features=0x80000800<SYSCALL,3DNow!> real memory = 268435456 (262144K bytes) config> di sn0 config> di lnc0 config> di le0 config> di ie0 config> di fe0 config> di cs0 config> di bt0 config> di aic0 config> di aha0 config> di adv0 config> q avail memory = 256311296 (250304K bytes) Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc0491000. Preloaded userconfig_script "/boot/kernel.conf" at 0xc049109c. md0: Malloc disk Using $PIR table, 4 entries at 0xc00fde60 npx0: <math processor> on motherboard npx0: INT 16 interface pcib0: <Host to PCI bridge> on motherboard pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0 pcib1: <VIA 82C598MVP (Apollo MVP3) PCI-PCI (AGP) bridge> at device 1.0 on pci0 pci1: <PCI bus> on pcib1 pci1: <Matrox MGA G200 AGP graphics accelerator> at 0.0 irq 11 isab0: <VIA 82C586 PCI-ISA bridge> at device 7.0 on pci0 isa0: <ISA bus> on isab0 atapci0: <VIA 82C586 ATA33 controller> port 0xe000-0xe00f at device 7.1 on pci0 ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0 ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0 uhci0: <VIA 83C572 USB controller> port 0xe400-0xe41f irq 10 at device 7.2 on pci0 usb0: <VIA 83C572 USB controller> on uhci0 usb0: USB revision 1.0 uhub0: VIA UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1 uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered chip1: <VIA 82C586B ACPI interface> at device 7.3 on pci0 ed0: <NE2000 PCI Ethernet (RealTek 8029)> port 0xe800-0xe81f irq 9 at device 10.0 on pci0 ed0: address 52:54:05:de:73:1b, type NE2000 (16 bit) isa0: too many dependant configs (8) isa0: unexpected small tag 14 fdc0: <NEC 72065B or clone> at port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2 on isa0 fdc0: FIFO enabled, 8 bytes threshold fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0 atkbdc0: <keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x60-0x64 on isa0 atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> flags 0x1 irq 1 on atkbdc0 kbd0 at atkbd0 psm0: <PS/2 Mouse> irq 12 on atkbdc0 psm0: model Generic PS/2 mouse, device ID 0 vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0 sc0: <System console> at flags 0x1 on isa0 sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300> sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0 sio0: type 16550A sio1 at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa0 sio1: type 16550A ppc0: <Parallel port> at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0 ppc0: SMC-like chipset (ECP/EPP/PS2/NIBBLE) in COMPATIBLE mode ppc0: FIFO with 16/16/15 bytes threshold ppbus0: IEEE1284 device found /NIBBLE Probing for PnP devices on ppbus0: plip0: <PLIP network interface> on ppbus0 lpt0: <Printer> on ppbus0 lpt0: Interrupt-driven port ppi0: <Parallel I/O> on ppbus0 ad0: 8063MB <IBM-DHEA-38451> [16383/16/63] at ata0-master using UDMA33 ad2: 8063MB <IBM-DHEA-38451> [16383/16/63] at ata1-master using UDMA33 acd0: CDROM <DELTA OTC-H101/ST3 F/W by OIPD> at ata0-slave using PIO4 Mounting root from ufs:/dev/ad0s1a swapon: adding /dev/ad0s1b as swap device Automatic boot in progress... /dev/ad0s1a: FILESYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS /dev/ad0s1a: clean, 48752 free (552 frags, 6025 blocks, 0.9% fragmentation) /dev/ad0s1f: FILESYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS /dev/ad0s1f: clean, 128997 free (21 frags, 16122 blocks, 0.0% fragmentation) /dev/ad0s1g: FILESYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS /dev/ad0s1g: clean, 3036299 free (43175 frags, 374073 blocks, 1.3% fragmentation) /dev/ad0s1e: filesystem CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS /dev/ad0s1e: clean, 128193 free (17 frags, 16022 blocks, 0.0% fragmentation) Doing initial network setup: hostname. ed0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet 192.168.0.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255 inet6 fe80::5054::5ff::fede:731b%ed0 prefixlen 64 tentative scopeid 0x1 ether 52:54:05:de:73:1b lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384 inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x8 inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 Additional routing options: IP gateway=YES TCP keepalive=YES routing daemons:. additional daemons: syslogd. Doing additional network setup:. Starting final network daemons: creating ssh RSA host key Generating public/private rsa1 key pair. Your identification has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key. Your public key has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key.pub. The key fingerprint is: cd:76:89:16:69:0e:d0:6e:f8:66:d0:07:26:3c:7e:2d root@k6-2.example.com creating ssh DSA host key Generating public/private dsa key pair. Your identification has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key. Your public key has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key.pub. The key fingerprint is: f9:a1:a9:47:c4:ad:f9:8d:52:b8:b8:ff:8c:ad:2d:e6 root@k6-2.example.com. setting ELF ldconfig path: /usr/lib /usr/lib/compat /usr/X11R6/lib /usr/local/lib a.out ldconfig path: /usr/lib/aout /usr/lib/compat/aout /usr/X11R6/lib/aout starting standard daemons: inetd cron sshd usbd sendmail. Initial rc.i386 initialization:. rc.i386 configuring syscons: blank_time screensaver moused. Additional ABI support: linux. Local package initialization:. Additional TCP options:. FreeBSD/i386 (k6-2.example.com) (ttyv0) login: rpratt Password: Generating the RSA and DSA keys may take some time on slower machines. This happens only on the initial boot-up of a new installation. Subsequent boots will be faster. If the X server has been configured and a Default Desktop chosen, it can be started by typing startx at the command line. Bootup of FreeBSD on the Alpha Alpha Once the install procedure has finished, you will be able to start FreeBSD by typing something like this to the SRM prompt: >>>BOOT DKC0 This instructs the firmware to boot the specified disk. To make FreeBSD boot automatically in the future, use these commands: >>> SET BOOT_OSFLAGS A >>> SET BOOT_FILE '' >>> SET BOOTDEF_DEV DKC0 >>> SET AUTO_ACTION BOOT The boot messages will be similar (but not identical) to those produced by FreeBSD booting on the &i386;. FreeBSD Shutdown It is important to properly shutdown the operating system. Do not just turn off power. First, become a superuser by typing su at the command line and entering the root password. This will work only if the user is a member of the wheel group. Otherwise, login as root and use shutdown -h now. The operating system has halted. Please press any key to reboot. It is safe to turn off the power after the shutdown command has been issued and the message Please press any key to reboot appears. If any key is pressed instead of turning off the power switch, the system will reboot. You could also use the Ctrl Alt Del key combination to reboot the system, however this is not recommended during normal operation. Supported Hardware hardware FreeBSD currently runs on a wide variety of ISA, VLB, EISA, and PCI bus-based PCs with Intel, AMD, Cyrix, or NexGen x86 processors, as well as a number of machines based on the Compaq Alpha processor. Support for generic IDE or ESDI drive configurations, various SCSI controllers, PCMCIA cards, USB devices, and network and serial cards is also provided. FreeBSD also supports IBM's microchannel (MCA) bus. A list of supported hardware is provided with each FreeBSD release in the FreeBSD Hardware Notes. This document can usually be found in a file named HARDWARE.TXT, in the top-level directory of a CDROM or FTP distribution or in sysinstall's documentation menu. It lists, for a given architecture, what hardware devices are known to be supported by each release of FreeBSD. Copies of the supported hardware list for various releases and architectures can also be found on the Release Information page of the FreeBSD Web site. Troubleshooting installation troubleshooting The following section covers basic installation troubleshooting, such as common problems people have reported. There are also a few questions and answers for people wishing to dual-boot FreeBSD with &ms-dos;. What to Do If Something Goes Wrong Due to various limitations of the PC architecture, it is impossible for probing to be 100% reliable, however, there are a few things you can do if it fails. Check the Hardware Notes document for your version of FreeBSD to make sure your hardware is supported. If your hardware is supported and you still experience lock-ups or other problems, reset your computer, and when the visual kernel configuration option is given, choose it. This will allow you to go through your hardware and supply information to the system about it. The kernel on the boot disks is configured assuming that most hardware devices are in their factory default configuration in terms of IRQs, IO addresses, and DMA channels. If your hardware has been reconfigured, you will most likely need to use the configuration editor to tell FreeBSD where to find things. It is also possible that a probe for a device not present will cause a later probe for another device that is present to fail. In that case, the probes for the conflicting driver(s) should be disabled. Some installation problems can be avoided or alleviated by updating the firmware on various hardware components, most notably the motherboard. The motherboard firmware may also be referred to as BIOS and most of the motherboard or computer manufactures have a website where the upgrades and upgrade information may be located. Most manufacturers strongly advise against upgrading the motherboard BIOS unless there is a good reason for doing so, which could possibly be a critical update of sorts. The upgrade process can go wrong, causing permanent damage to the BIOS chip. Do not disable any drivers you will need during the installation, such as your screen (sc0). If the installation wedges or fails mysteriously after leaving the configuration editor, you have probably removed or changed something you should not have. Reboot and try again. In configuration mode, you can: List the device drivers installed in the kernel. Disable device drivers for hardware that is not present in your system. Change IRQs, DRQs, and IO port addresses used by a device driver. After adjusting the kernel to match your hardware configuration, type Q to boot with the new settings. Once the installation has completed, any changes you made in the configuration mode will be permanent so you do not have to reconfigure every time you boot. It is still highly likely that you will eventually want to build a custom kernel. Dealing with Existing &ms-dos; Partitions DOS Many users wish to install &os; on PCs inhabited by µsoft; based operating systems. For those instances, &os; has a utility known as FIPS. This utility can be found in the tools directory on the install CD-ROM, or downloaded from one of various &os; mirrors. The FIPS utility allows you to split an existing &ms-dos; partition into two pieces, preserving the original partition and allowing you to install onto the second free piece. You first need to defragment your &ms-dos; partition using the &windows;; Disk Defragmenter utility (go into Explorer, right-click on the hard drive, and choose to defrag your hard drive), or use Norton Disk Tools. Now you can run the FIPS utility. It will prompt you for the rest of the information, just follow the on screen instructions. Afterwards, you can reboot and install &os; on the new free slice. See the Distributions menu for an estimate of how much free space you will need for the kind of installation you want. There is also a very useful product from PowerQuest (http://www.powerquest.com) called &partitionmagic;. This application has far more functionality than FIPS, and is highly recommended if you plan to add/remove operating systems often. It does cost money, so if you plan to install &os; and keep it installed, FIPS will probably be fine for you. Using &ms-dos; and &windows; File Systems At this time, &os; does not support file systems compressed with the Double Space™ application. Therefore the file system will need to be uncompressed before &os; can access the data. This can be done by running the Compression Agent located in the Start> Programs > System Tools menu. &os; can support &ms-dos; based file systems. This requires you use the &man.mount.msdos.8; command (in &os; 5.X, the command is &man.mount.msdosfs.8;) with the required parameters. The utilities most common usage is: &prompt.root; mount_msdos /dev/ad0s1 /mnt In this example, the &ms-dos; file system is located on the first partition of the primary hard disk. Your situation may be different, check the output from the dmesg, and mount commands. They should produce enough information too give an idea of the partition layout. Extended &ms-dos; file systems are usually mapped after the &os; partitions. In other words, the slice number may be higher than the ones &os; is using. For instance, the first &ms-dos; partition may be /dev/ad0s1, the &os; partition may be /dev/ad0s2, with the extended &ms-dos; partition being located on /dev/ad0s3. To some, this can be confusing at first. NTFS partitions can also be mounted in a similar manner using the &man.mount.ntfs.8; command. Alpha User's Questions and Answers Alpha This section answers some commonly asked questions about installing FreeBSD on Alpha systems. Can I boot from the ARC or Alpha BIOS Console? ARC Alpha BIOS SRM No. &os;, like Compaq Tru64 and VMS, will only boot from the SRM console. Help, I have no space! Do I need to delete everything first? Unfortunately, yes. Can I mount my Compaq Tru64 or VMS filesystems? No, not at this time. Valentino Vaschetto Contributed by Advanced Installation Guide This section describes how to install FreeBSD in exceptional cases. Installing FreeBSD on a System without a Monitor or Keyboard installation headless (serial console) serial console This type of installation is called a headless install, because the machine that you are trying to install FreeBSD on either does not have a monitor attached to it, or does not even have a VGA output. How is this possible you ask? Using a serial console. A serial console is basically using another machine to act as the main display and keyboard for a system. To do this, just follow the steps to create installation floppies, explained in . To modify these floppies to boot into a serial console, follow these steps: Enabling the Boot Floppies to Boot into a Serial Console mount If you were to boot into the floppies that you just made, FreeBSD would boot into its normal install mode. We want FreeBSD to boot into a serial console for our install. To do this, you have to mount the kern.flp floppy onto your FreeBSD system using the &man.mount.8; command. &prompt.root; mount /dev/fd0 /floppy Now that you have the floppy mounted, you must change into the floppy directory: &prompt.root; cd /floppy Here is where you must set the floppy to boot into a serial console. You have to make a file called boot.config containing /boot/loader -h. All this does is pass a flag to the bootloader to boot into a serial console. &prompt.root; echo "/boot/loader -h" > boot.config Now that you have your floppy configured correctly, you must unmount the floppy using the &man.umount.8; command: &prompt.root; cd / &prompt.root; umount /mnt Now you can remove the floppy from the floppy drive. Connecting Your Null Modem Cable null modem cable You now need to connect a null modem cable between the two machines. Just connect the cable to the serial ports of the 2 machines. A normal serial cable will not work here, you need a null modem cable because it has some of the wires inside crossed over. Booting Up for the Install It is now time to go ahead and start the install. Put the kern.flp floppy in the floppy drive of the machine you are doing the headless install on, and power on the machine. Connecting to Your Headless Machine cu Now you have to connect to that machine with &man.cu.1;: &prompt.root; cu -l /dev/cuaa0 That's it! You should now be able to control the headless machine through your cu session. It will ask you to put in the mfsroot.flp, and then it will come up with a selection of what kind of terminal to use. Select the FreeBSD color console and proceed with your install! Preparing Your Own Installation Media To prevent repetition, FreeBSD disk in this context means a FreeBSD CDROM or DVD that you have purchased or produced yourself. There may be some situations in which you need to create your own FreeBSD installation media and/or source. This might be physical media, such as a tape, or a source that sysinstall can use to retrieve the files, such as a local FTP site, or an &ms-dos; partition. For example: You have many machines connected to your local network, and one FreeBSD disk. You want to create a local FTP site using the contents of the FreeBSD disk, and then have your machines use this local FTP site instead of needing to connect to the Internet. You have a FreeBSD disk, and FreeBSD does not recognize your CD/DVD drive, but &ms-dos;/&windows; does. You want to copy the FreeBSD installations files to a DOS partition on the same computer, and then install FreeBSD using those files. The computer you want to install on does not have a CD/DVD drive or a network card, but you can connect a Laplink-style serial or parallel cable to a computer that does. You want to create a tape that can be used to install FreeBSD. Creating an Installation CDROM As part of each release, the FreeBSD project makes available two CDROM images (ISO images). These images can be written (burned) to CDs if you have a CD writer, and then used to install FreeBSD. If you have a CD writer, and bandwidth is cheap, then this is the easiest way to install FreeBSD. Download the Correct ISO Images The ISO images for each release can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-arch/version or the closest mirror. Substitute arch and version as appropriate. That directory will normally contain the following images: FreeBSD ISO Image Names and Meanings Filename Contains version-mini.iso Everything you need to install FreeBSD. version-disc1.iso Everything you need to install FreeBSD, and as many additional third party packages as would fit on the disc. version-disc2.iso A live filesystem, which is used in conjunction with the Repair facility in sysinstall. A copy of the FreeBSD CVS tree. As many additional third party packages as would fit on the disc.
You must download one of either the mini ISO image, or the image of disc one. Do not download both of them, since the disc one image contains everything that the mini ISO image contains. Use the mini ISO if Internet access is cheap for you. It will let you install FreeBSD, and you can then install third party packages by downloading them using the ports/packages system (see ) as necessary. Use the image of disc one if you want a reasonable selection of third party packages on the disc as well. The additional disc images are useful, but not essential, especially if you have high-speed access to the Internet. Write the CDs You must then write the CD images to disc. If you will be doing this on another FreeBSD system then see for more information (in particular, and ). If you will be doing this on another platform then you will need to use whatever utilities exist to control your CD writer on that platform. The images provided are in the standard ISO format, which many CD writing applications support. Creating a Local FTP Site with a FreeBSD Disk installation network FTP FreeBSD disks are laid out in the same way as the FTP site. This makes it very easy for you to create a local FTP site that can be used by other machines on your network when installing FreeBSD. On the FreeBSD computer that will host the FTP site, ensure that the CDROM is in the drive, and mounted on /cdrom. &prompt.root; mount /cdrom Create an account for anonymous FTP in /etc/passwd. Do this by editing /etc/passwd using &man.vipw.8; and adding this line. ftp:*:99:99::0:0:FTP:/cdrom:/nonexistent Ensure that the FTP service is enabled in /etc/inetd.conf. Anyone with network connectivity to your machine can now chose a media type of FTP and type in ftp://your machine after picking Other in the FTP sites menu during the install. This approach is OK for a machine that is on your local network, and that is protected by your firewall. Offering up FTP services to other machines over the Internet (and not your local network) exposes your computer to the attention of crackers and other undesirables. We strongly recommend that you follow good security practices if you do this. Creating Installation Floppies installation floppies If you must install from floppy disk (which we suggest you do not do), either due to unsupported hardware or simply because you insist on doing things the hard way, you must first prepare some floppies for the installation. At a minimum, you will need as many 1.44 MB or 1.2 MB floppies as it takes to hold all the files in the bin (binary distribution) directory. If you are preparing the floppies from DOS, then they MUST be formatted using the &ms-dos; FORMAT command. If you are using &windows;, use Explorer to format the disks (right-click on the A: drive, and select Format. Do not trust factory pre-formatted floppies. Format them again yourself, just to be sure. Many problems reported by our users in the past have resulted from the use of improperly formatted media, which is why we are making a point of it now. If you are creating the floppies on another FreeBSD machine, a format is still not a bad idea, though you do not need to put a DOS filesystem on each floppy. You can use the disklabel and newfs commands to put a UFS filesystem on them instead, as the following sequence of commands (for a 3.5" 1.44 MB floppy) illustrates: &prompt.root; fdformat -f 1440 fd0.1440 &prompt.root; disklabel -w -r fd0.1440 floppy3 &prompt.root; newfs -t 2 -u 18 -l 1 -i 65536 /dev/fd0 Use fd0.1200 and floppy5 for 5.25" 1.2 MB disks. Then you can mount and write to them like any other filesystem. After you have formatted the floppies, you will need to copy the files to them. The distribution files are split into chunks conveniently sized so that five of them will fit on a conventional 1.44 MB floppy. Go through all your floppies, packing as many files as will fit on each one, until you have all of the distributions you want packed up in this fashion. Each distribution should go into a subdirectory on the floppy, e.g.: a:\bin\bin.aa, a:\bin\bin.ab, and so on. Once you come to the Media screen during the install process, select Floppy and you will be prompted for the rest. Installing from an &ms-dos; Partition installation from MS-DOS To prepare for an installation from an &ms-dos; partition, copy the files from the distribution into a directory called freebsd in the root directory of the partition. For example, c:\freebsd. The directory structure of the CDROM or FTP site must be partially reproduced within this directory, so we suggest using the DOS xcopy command if you are copying it from a CD. For example, to prepare for a minimal installation of FreeBSD: C:\> md c:\freebsd C:\> xcopy e:\bin c:\freebsd\bin\ /s C:\> xcopy e:\manpages c:\freebsd\manpages\ /s Assuming that C: is where you have free space and E: is where your CDROM is mounted. If you do not have a CDROM drive, you can download the distribution from ftp.FreeBSD.org. Each distribution is in its own directory; for example, the base distribution can be found in the &rel.current;/base/ directory. In the 4.X and older releases of &os; the base distribution is called bin. Adjust the sample commands and URLs above accordingly, if you are using one of these versions. For as many distributions you wish to install from an &ms-dos; partition (and you have the free space for), install each one under c:\freebsd — the BIN distribution is the only one required for a minimum installation. Creating an Installation Tape installation from QIC/SCSI Tape Installing from tape is probably the easiest method, short of an online FTP install or CDROM install. The installation program expects the files to be simply tarred onto the tape. After getting all of the distribution files you are interested in, simply tar them onto the tape: &prompt.root; cd /freebsd/distdir &prompt.root; tar cvf /dev/rwt0 dist1 ... dist2 When you perform the installation, you should make sure that you leave enough room in some temporary directory (which you will be allowed to choose) to accommodate the full contents of the tape you have created. Due to the non-random access nature of tapes, this method of installation requires quite a bit of temporary storage. You should expect to require as much temporary storage as you have data written on tape. When starting the installation, the tape must be in the drive before booting from the boot floppy. The installation probe may otherwise fail to find it. Before Installing over a Network installation network serial (SLIP or PPP) installation network parallel (PLIP) installation network Ethernet There are three types of network installations available. Serial port (SLIP or PPP), Parallel port (PLIP (laplink cable)), or Ethernet (a standard Ethernet controller (includes some PCMCIA)). The SLIP support is rather primitive, and limited primarily to hard-wired links, such as a serial cable running between a laptop computer and another computer. The link should be hard-wired as the SLIP installation does not currently offer a dialing capability; that facility is provided with the PPP utility, which should be used in preference to SLIP whenever possible. If you are using a modem, then PPP is almost certainly your only choice. Make sure that you have your service provider's information handy as you will need to know it fairly early in the installation process. If you use PAP or CHAP to connect your ISP (in other words, if you can connect to the ISP in &windows; without using a script), then all you will need to do is type in dial at the ppp prompt. Otherwise, you will need to know how to dial your ISP using the AT commands specific to your modem, as the PPP dialer provides only a very simple terminal emulator. Please refer to the user-ppp handbook and FAQ entries for further information. If you have problems, logging can be directed to the screen using the command set log local .... If a hard-wired connection to another FreeBSD (2.0-R or later) machine is available, you might also consider installing over a laplink parallel port cable. The data rate over the parallel port is much higher than what is typically possible over a serial line (up to 50 kbytes/sec), thus resulting in a quicker installation. Finally, for the fastest possible network installation, an Ethernet adapter is always a good choice! FreeBSD supports most common PC Ethernet cards; a table of supported cards (and their required settings) is provided in the Hardware Notes for each release of FreeBSD. If you are using one of the supported PCMCIA Ethernet cards, also be sure that it is plugged in before the laptop is powered on! FreeBSD does not, unfortunately, currently support hot insertion of PCMCIA cards during installation. You will also need to know your IP address on the network, the netmask value for your address class, and the name of your machine. If you are installing over a PPP connection and do not have a static IP, fear not, the IP address can be dynamically assigned by your ISP. Your system administrator can tell you which values to use for your particular network setup. If you will be referring to other hosts by name rather than IP address, you will also need a name server and possibly the address of a gateway (if you are using PPP, it is your provider's IP address) to use in talking to it. If you want to install by FTP via a HTTP proxy, you will also need the proxy's address. If you do not know the answers to all or most of these questions, then you should really probably talk to your system administrator or ISP before trying this type of installation. Before Installing via NFS installation network NFS The NFS installation is fairly straight-forward. Simply copy the FreeBSD distribution files you want onto an NFS server and then point the NFS media selection at it. If this server supports only privileged port (as is generally the default for Sun workstations), you will need to set this option in the Options menu before installation can proceed. If you have a poor quality Ethernet card which suffers from very slow transfer rates, you may also wish to toggle the appropriate Options flag. In order for NFS installation to work, the server must support subdir mounts, for example., if your FreeBSD &rel.current; distribution directory lives on: ziggy:/usr/archive/stuff/FreeBSD, then ziggy will have to allow the direct mounting of /usr/archive/stuff/FreeBSD, not just /usr or /usr/archive/stuff. In FreeBSD's /etc/exports file, this is controlled by the options. Other NFS servers may have different conventions. If you are getting permission denied messages from the server, then it is likely that you do not have this enabled properly. diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/kernelconfig/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/kernelconfig/chapter.sgml index 5f811562f4..25f25cefdb 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/kernelconfig/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/kernelconfig/chapter.sgml @@ -1,1650 +1,1650 @@ Jim Mock Updated and restructured by Jake Hamby Originally contributed by Configuring the FreeBSD Kernel Synopsis kernel building a custom kernel The kernel is the core of the &os; operating system. It is responsible for managing memory, enforcing security controls, networking, disk access, and much more. While more and more of &os; becomes dynamically configurable it is still occasionally necessary to reconfigure and recompile your kernel. After reading this chapter, you will know: Why you might need to build a custom kernel. How to write a kernel configuration file, or alter an existing configuration file. How to use the kernel configuration file to create and build a new kernel. How to install the new kernel. How to create any entries in /dev that may be required. How to troubleshoot if things go wrong. Why Build a Custom Kernel? Traditionally, &os; has had what is called a monolithic kernel. This means that the kernel was one large program, supported a fixed list of devices, and if you wanted to change the kernel's behavior then you had to compile a new kernel, and then reboot your computer with the new kernel. Today, &os; is rapidly moving to a model where much of the kernel's functionality is contained in modules which can be dynamically loaded and unloaded from the kernel as necessary. This allows the kernel to adapt to new hardware suddenly becoming available (such as PCMCIA cards in a laptop), or for new functionality to be brought into the kernel that was not necessary when the kernel was originally compiled. This is known as a modular kernel. Colloquially these are called KLDs. Despite this, it is still necessary to carry out some static kernel configuration. In some cases this is because the functionality is so tied to the kernel that it can not be made dynamically loadable. In others it may simply be because no one has yet taken the time to write a dynamic loadable kernel module for that functionality yet. Building a custom kernel is one of the most important rites of passage nearly every &unix; user must endure. This process, while time consuming, will provide many benefits to your &os; system. Unlike the GENERIC kernel, which must support a wide range of hardware, a custom kernel only contains support for your PC's hardware. This has a number of benefits, such as: Faster boot time. Since the kernel will only probe the hardware you have on your system, the time it takes your system to boot will decrease dramatically. Less memory usage. A custom kernel often uses less memory than the GENERIC kernel, which is important because the kernel must always be present in real memory. For this reason, a custom kernel is especially useful on a system with a small amount of RAM. Additional hardware support. A custom kernel allows you to add in support for devices such as sound cards, which are not present in the GENERIC kernel. Building and Installing a Custom Kernel kernel building / installing First, let us take a quick tour of the kernel build directory. All directories mentioned will be relative to the main /usr/src/sys directory, which is also accessible through /sys. There are a number of subdirectories here representing different parts of the kernel, but the most important, for our purposes, are arch/conf, where you will edit your custom kernel configuration, and compile, which is the staging area where your kernel will be built. arch represents either i386, alpha, or pc98 (an alternative development branch of PC hardware, popular in Japan). Everything inside a particular architecture's directory deals with that architecture only; the rest of the code is common to all platforms to which &os; could potentially be ported. Notice the logical organization of the directory structure, with each supported device, file system, and option in its own subdirectory. &os; 5.X and up has support for sparc64, and a few other architectures under development. If there is not a /usr/src/sys directory on your system, then the kernel source has not been installed. The easiest way to do this is by running /stand/sysinstall as root, choosing Configure, then Distributions, then src, then sys. If you have an aversion to sysinstall and you have access to an official &os; CDROM, then you can also install the source from the command line: &prompt.root; mount /cdrom &prompt.root; mkdir -p /usr/src/sys &prompt.root; ln -s /usr/src/sys /sys &prompt.root; cat /cdrom/src/ssys.[a-d]* | tar -xzvf - Next, move to the arch/conf directory and copy the GENERIC configuration file to the name you want to give your kernel. For example: &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf &prompt.root; cp GENERIC MYKERNEL Traditionally, this name is in all capital letters and, if you are maintaining multiple &os; machines with different hardware, it is a good idea to name it after your machine's hostname. We will call it MYKERNEL for the purpose of this example. Storing your kernel config file directly under /usr/src can be a bad idea. If you are experiencing problems it can be tempting to just delete /usr/src and start again. Five seconds after you do that you realize that you have deleted your custom kernel config file. Do not edit GENERIC directly, as it may get overwritten the next time you update your source tree, and your kernel modifications will be lost. You might want to keep your kernel config file elsewhere, and then create a symbolic link to the file in the i386 directory. For example: &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf &prompt.root; mkdir /root/kernels &prompt.root; cp GENERIC /root/kernels/MYKERNEL &prompt.root; ln -s /root/kernels/MYKERNEL You must execute these and all of the following commands under the root account or you will get permission denied errors. Now, edit MYKERNEL with your favorite text editor. If you are just starting out, the only editor available will probably be vi, which is too complex to explain here, but is covered well in many books in the bibliography. However, &os; does offer an easier editor called ee which, if you are a beginner, should be your editor of choice. Feel free to change the comment lines at the top to reflect your configuration or the changes you have made to differentiate it from GENERIC. SunOS If you have built a kernel under &sunos; or some other BSD operating system, much of this file will be very familiar to you. If you are coming from some other operating system such as DOS, on the other hand, the GENERIC configuration file might seem overwhelming to you, so follow the descriptions in the Configuration File section slowly and carefully. Be sure to always check the file /usr/src/UPDATING, before you perform any update steps, in the case you sync your source tree with the latest sources of the &os; project. In this file all important issues with updating &os; are typed out. /usr/src/UPDATING always fits your version of the &os; source, and is therefore more accurate for new information than the handbook. You must now compile the source code for the kernel. There are two procedures you can use to do this, and the one you will use depends on why you are rebuilding the kernel, and the version of &os; you are running. If you have installed only the kernel source code, use procedure 1. If you are running a &os; version prior to 4.0, and you are not upgrading to &os; 4.0 or higher using the make world procedure, use procedure 1. If you are building a new kernel without updating the source code (perhaps just to add a new option, such as IPFIREWALL) you can use either procedure. If you are rebuilding the kernel as part of a make world process, use procedure 2. Procedure 1. Building a Kernel the <quote>Traditional</quote> Way Run &man.config.8; to generate the kernel source code. &prompt.root; /usr/sbin/config MYKERNEL Change into the build directory. This is printed out after running the aforementioned command. &prompt.root; cd ../compile/MYKERNEL For &os; version prior to 5.0, use instead: &prompt.root; cd ../../compile/MYKERNEL Compile the kernel. &prompt.root; make depend &prompt.root; make Install the new kernel. &prompt.root; make install Procedure 2. Building a Kernel the <quote>New</quote> Way Change to the /usr/src directory. &prompt.root; cd /usr/src Compile the kernel. &prompt.root; make buildkernel KERNCONF=MYKERNEL Install the new kernel. &prompt.root; make installkernel KERNCONF=MYKERNEL In &os; 4.2 and older you must replace KERNCONF= with KERNEL=. 4.2-STABLE that was fetched before Feb 2nd, 2001 does not recognize KERNCONF=. cvsup anonymous CVS CTM CVS anonymous If you have not upgraded your source tree in any way (you have not run CVSup, CTM, or used anoncvs), then you should use the config, make depend, make, make install sequence. kernel.old The new kernel will be copied to the root directory as /kernel and the old kernel will be moved to /kernel.old. Now, shutdown the system and reboot to use your new kernel. In case something goes wrong, there are some troubleshooting instructions at the end of this chapter. Be sure to read the section which explains how to recover in case your new kernel does not boot. As of &os; 5.0, kernels are installed along with their modules in /boot/kernel, and old kernels will be backed up in /boot/kernel.old. Other files relating to the boot process, such as the boot &man.loader.8; and configuration are also stored in /boot. Third party or custom modules may be placed in /boot/modules, although users should be aware that keeping modules in sync with the compiled kernel is very important. Modules not intended to run with the compiled kernel may result in instability or incorrectness. If you have added any new devices (such as sound cards) and you are running &os; 4.X or previous versions, you may have to add some device nodes to your /dev directory before you can use them. For more information, take a look at Making Device Nodes section later on in this chapter. The Configuration File kernel LINT LINT kernel config file The general format of a configuration file is quite simple. Each line contains a keyword and one or more arguments. For simplicity, most lines only contain one argument. Anything following a # is considered a comment and ignored. The following sections describe each keyword, generally in the order they are listed in GENERIC, although some related keywords have been grouped together in a single section (such as Networking) even though they are actually scattered throughout the GENERIC file. An exhaustive list of options and more detailed explanations of the device lines is present in the LINT configuration file, located in the same directory as GENERIC. If you are in doubt as to the purpose or necessity of a line, check first in LINT. In &os; 5.X and above the LINT is non-existent. See the NOTES file for architecture dependent options. Some options, mainly architecture independent ones, are stored in the /usr/src/sys/conf/NOTES file. It's advisable to review the options in here also. kernel example config file The following is an example GENERIC kernel configuration file with various additional comments where needed for clarity. This example should match your copy in /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC fairly closely. For details of all the possible kernel options, see /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/LINT. # # GENERIC -- Generic kernel configuration file for &os;/i386 # # For more information on this file, please read the handbook section on # Kernel Configuration Files: # # http://www.&os;.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/kernelconfig-config.html # # The handbook is also available locally in /usr/share/doc/handbook # if you've installed the doc distribution, otherwise always see the # &os; World Wide Web server (http://www.FreeBSD.org/) for the # latest information. # # An exhaustive list of options and more detailed explanations of the # device lines is also present in the ../../conf/NOTES and NOTES files. # If you are in doubt as to the purpose or necessity of a line, check first # in NOTES. # # $FreeBSD: src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC,v 1.380 2003/03/29 13:36:41 mdodd Exp $ The following are the mandatory keywords required in every kernel you build: kernel options machine machine i386 This is the machine architecture. It must be either i386, pc98, sparc64, alpha, ia64, amd64, or powerpc. kernel options cpu cpu I486_CPU cpu I586_CPU cpu I686_CPU The above option specifies the type of CPU you have in your system. You may have multiple instances of the CPU line (i.e., you are not sure whether you should use I586_CPU or I686_CPU), however, for a custom kernel, it is best to specify only the CPU you have. If you are unsure of your CPU type, you can check the /var/run/dmesg.boot file to view your boot up messages. kernel options cpu type Support for I386_CPU is still provided in the source of &os;, but it is disabled by default in both -STABLE and -CURRENT. This means that to install &os; with a 386-class cpu, you now have the following options: Install an older &os; release and rebuild from source as described in . Build the userland and kernel on a newer machine and install on the 386 using the precompiled /usr/obj files (see for details). Roll your own release of FreeBSD which includes I386_CPU support in the kernels of the installation CD-ROM. The first of these options is probably the easiest of all, but you will need a lot of disk space on a 386-class machine which may be difficult to find. kernel options ident ident GENERIC This is the identification of the kernel. You should change this to whatever you named your kernel, i.e. MYKERNEL if you have followed the instructions of the previous examples. The value you put in the ident string will print when you boot up the kernel, so it is useful to give the new kernel a different name if you want to keep it separate from your usual kernel (i.e. you want to build an experimental kernel). kernel options maxusers maxusers n The maxusers option sets the size of a number of important system tables. This number is supposed to be roughly equal to the number of simultaneous users you expect to have on your machine. Starting with &os; 4.5, the system will auto-tune this setting for you if you explicitly set it to 0 The auto-tuning algorithm sets maxuser equal to the amount of memory in the system, with a minimum of 32, and a maximum of 384.. In &os; 5.X, maxusers will default to 0 if not specified. If you are using an version of &os; earlier than 4.5, or you want to manage it yourself you will want to set maxusers to at least 4, especially if you are using the X Window System or compiling software. The reason is that the most important table set by maxusers is the maximum number of processes, which is set to 20 + 16 * maxusers, so if you set maxusers to 1, then you can only have 36 simultaneous processes, including the 18 or so that the system starts up at boot time, and the 15 or so you will probably create when you start the X Window System. Even a simple task like reading a manual page will start up nine processes to filter, decompress, and view it. Setting maxusers to 64 will allow you to have up to 1044 simultaneous processes, which should be enough for nearly all uses. If, however, you see the dreaded proc table full error when trying to start another program, or are running a server with a large number of simultaneous users (like ftp.FreeBSD.org), you can always increase the number and rebuild. maxusers does not limit the number of users which can log into your machine. It simply sets various table sizes to reasonable values considering the maximum number of users you will likely have on your system and how many processes each of them will be running. One keyword which does limit the number of simultaneous remote logins and X terminal windows is pseudo-device pty 16. # Floating point support - do not disable. device npx0 at nexus? port IO_NPX irq 13 npx0 is the interface to the floating point math unit in &os;, which is either the hardware co-processor or the software math emulator. This is not optional. # Pseudo devices - the number indicates how many units to allocate. pseudo-device loop # Network loopback This is the generic loopback device for TCP/IP. If you telnet or FTP to localhost (a.k.a., 127.0.0.1) it will come back at you through this pseudo-device. This is mandatory. Everything that follows is more or less optional. See the notes underneath or next to each option for more information. #To statically compile in device wiring instead of /boot/device.hints #hints "GENERIC.hints" #Default places to look for devices. In &os; 5.X and newer versions the &man.device.hints.5; is used to configure options of the device drivers. The default location that &man.loader.8; will check at boot time is /boot/device.hints. Using the hints option you can compile these hints statically into your kernel. Then there is no need to create a device.hints file in /boot. #makeoptions DEBUG=-g #Build kernel with gdb(1) debug symbols The normal build process of the &os; does not include debugging information when building the kernel and strips most symbols after the resulting kernel is linked, to save some space at the install location. If you are going to do tests of kernels in the -CURRENT branch or develop changes of your own for the &os; kernel, you might want to uncomment this line. It will enable the use of the option which enables debugging information when passed to &man.gcc.1;. The same can be accomplished by the &man.config.8; option, if you are using the traditional way for building your kernels (See the for more informations.). options MATH_EMULATE #Support for x87 emulation This line allows the kernel to simulate a math co-processor if your computer does not have one (386 or 486SX). If you have a 486DX, or a 386 or 486SX (with a separate 387 or 487 chip), or higher (&pentium;, &pentium; II, etc.), you can comment this line out. The normal math co-processor emulation routines that come with &os; are not very accurate. If you do not have a math co-processor, and you need the best accuracy, it is recommended that you change this option to GPL_MATH_EMULATE to use the GNU math support, which is not included by default for licensing reasons. In &os; 5.X, math emulation is disabled by default, as older CPUs that do not have native floating point math support are far less common, and in many cases not supported by the GENERIC kernel without other additional options. options INET #InterNETworking Networking support. Leave this in, even if you do not plan to be connected to a network. Most programs require at least loopback networking (i.e., making network connections within your PC), so this is essentially mandatory. options INET6 #IPv6 communications protocols This enables the IPv6 communication protocols. options FFS #Berkeley Fast Filesystem options FFS_ROOT #FFS usable as root device [keep this!] This is the basic hard drive Filesystem. Leave it in if you boot from the hard disk. In &os; 5.X, FFS_ROOT is no longer required. options UFS_ACL #Support for access control lists This option, present only in &os; 5.X, enables kernel support for access control lists. This relies on the use of extended attributes and UFS2, and the feature is described in detail in the . ACLs are enabled by default, and should not be disabled in the kernel if they have been used previously on a file system, as this will remove the access control lists changing the way files are protected in unpredictable ways. options UFS_DIRHASH #Improve performance on big directories This option includes functionality to speed up disk operations on large directories, at the expense of using additional memory. You would normally keep this for a large server, or interactive workstation, and remove it if you are using &os; on a smaller system where memory is at a premium and disk access speed is less important, such as a firewall. options SOFTUPDATES #Enable FFS Soft Updates support This option enables Soft Updates in the kernel, this will help speed up write access on the disks. Even when this functionality is provided by the kernel, it must be turned on for specific disks. Review the output from &man.mount.8; to see if Soft Updates is enabled for your system disks. If you do not see the soft-updates option then you will need to activate it using the &man.tunefs.8; (for existing filesystems) or &man.newfs.8; (for new filesystems) commands. options MFS #Memory Filesystem options MD_ROOT #MD is a potential root device This is the memory-mapped Filesystem. This is basically a RAM disk for fast storage of temporary files, useful if you have a lot of swap space that you want to take advantage of. A perfect place to mount an MFS partition is on the /tmp directory, since many programs store temporary data here. To mount an MFS RAM disk on /tmp, add the following line to /etc/fstab: /dev/ad1s2b /tmp mfs rw 0 0 Now you simply need to either reboot, or run the command mount /tmp. In &os; 5.X, &man.md.4;-backed UFS file systems are used for memory file systems rather than MFS. Information on configuring memory-backed file systems may be found in the manual pages for &man.mdconfig.8; and &man.mdmfs.8;, and in . As a result, the MFS option is no longer supported. kernel options NFS kernel options NFS_ROOT options NFS #Network Filesystem options NFS_ROOT #NFS usable as root device, NFS required The network Filesystem. Unless you plan to mount partitions from a &unix; file server over TCP/IP, you can comment these out. kernel options MSDOSFS options MSDOSFS #MSDOS Filesystem The &ms-dos; Filesystem. Unless you plan to mount a DOS formatted hard drive partition at boot time, you can safely comment this out. It will be automatically loaded the first time you mount a DOS partition, as described above. Also, the excellent mtools software (in the ports collection) allows you to access DOS floppies without having to mount and unmount them (and does not require MSDOSFS at all). options CD9660 #ISO 9660 Filesystem options CD9660_ROOT #CD-ROM usable as root, CD9660 required The ISO 9660 Filesystem for CDROMs. Comment it out if you do not have a CDROM drive or only mount data CDs occasionally (since it will be dynamically loaded the first time you mount a data CD). Audio CDs do not need this Filesystem. options PROCFS #Process filesystem The process filesystem. This is a pretend filesystem mounted on /proc which allows programs like &man.ps.1; to give you more information on what processes are running. In &os; 5.X, use of PROCFS is not required under most circumstances, as most debugging and monitoring tools have been adapted to run without PROCFS. In addition, 5.X-CURRENT kernels making use of PROCFS must now also include support for PSEUDOFS: options PSEUDOFS #Pseudo-filesystem framework PSEUDOFS is not available in &os; 4.X. Unlike in &os; 4.X, new installations of &os; 5.X will not mount the process file system by default. options COMPAT_43 #Compatible with BSD 4.3 [KEEP THIS!] Compatibility with 4.3BSD. Leave this in; some programs will act strangely if you comment this out. options COMPAT_FREEBSD4 #Compatible with &os;4 This option is required on &os; 5.X &i386; and Alpha systems to support applications compiled on older versions of &os; that use older system call interfaces. It is recommended that this option be used on all &i386; and Alpha systems that may run older applications; platforms that gained support only in 5.X, such as ia64 and &sparc64;, do not require this option. options SCSI_DELAY=15000 #Delay (in ms) before probing SCSI This causes the kernel to pause for 15 seconds before probing each SCSI device in your system. If you only have IDE hard drives, you can ignore this, otherwise you will probably want to lower this number, perhaps to 5 seconds, to speed up booting. Of course, if you do this, and &os; has trouble recognizing your SCSI devices, you will have to raise it back up. options UCONSOLE #Allow users to grab the console Allow users to grab the console, which is useful for X users. For example, you can create a console xterm by typing xterm -C, which will display any &man.write.1;, &man.talk.1;, and any other messages you receive, as well as any console messages sent by the kernel. In &os; 5.X, UCONSOLE is no longer required. options USERCONFIG #boot -c editor This option allows you to boot the configuration editor from the boot menu. options VISUAL_USERCONFIG #visual boot -c editor This option allows you to boot the visual configuration editor from the boot menu. From &os; versions 5.0 and later, the USERCONFIG options has - been depreciated in favor of the new &man.device.hints.5; + been deprecated in favor of the new &man.device.hints.5; method. For more information on &man.device.hints.5; please visit . options KTRACE #ktrace(1) support This enables kernel process tracing, which is useful in debugging. options SYSVSHM #SYSV-style shared memory This option provides for System V shared memory. The most common use of this is the XSHM extension in X, which many graphics-intensive programs will automatically take advantage of for extra speed. If you use X, you will definitely want to include this. options SYSVSEM #SYSV-style semaphores Support for System V semaphores. Less commonly used but only adds a few hundred bytes to the kernel. options SYSVMSG #SYSV-style message queues Support for System V messages. Again, only adds a few hundred bytes to the kernel. The &man.ipcs.1; command will list any processes using each of these System V facilities. options P1003_1B #Posix P1003_1B real-time extensions options _KPOSIX_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING Real-time extensions added in the 1993 &posix;. Certain applications in the ports collection use these (such as &staroffice;). In &os; 5.X, all of this functionality is now provided by the _KPOSIX_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING option, and P1003_1B is no longer required. kernel options ICMP_BANDLIM Denial of Service (DoS) options ICMP_BANDLIM #Rate limit bad replies This option enables ICMP error response bandwidth limiting. You typically want this option as it will help protect the machine from denial of service packet attacks. In &os; 5.X, this feature is enabled by default and the ICMP_BANDLIM option is not required. kernel options SMP # To make an SMP kernel, the next two are needed #options SMP # Symmetric MultiProcessor Kernel #options APIC_IO # Symmetric (APIC) I/O The above are both required for SMP support. device isa All PCs supported by &os; have one of these. If you have an IBM PS/2 (Micro Channel Architecture), &os; provides some limited support at this time. For more information about the MCA support, see /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/LINT. device eisa Include this if you have an EISA motherboard. This enables auto-detection and configuration support for all devices on the EISA bus. device pci Include this if you have a PCI motherboard. This enables auto-detection of PCI cards and gatewaying from the PCI to ISA bus. device agp Include this if you have an AGP card in the system. This will enable support for AGP, and AGP GART for boards which have these features. # Floppy drives device fdc0 at isa? port IO_FD1 irq 6 drq 2 device fd0 at fdc0 drive 0 device fd1 at fdc0 drive 1 This is the floppy drive controller. fd0 is the A: floppy drive, and fd1 is the B: drive. device ata This driver supports all ATA and ATAPI devices. You only need one device ata line for the kernel to detect all PCI ATA/ATAPI devices on modern machines. device atadisk # ATA disk drives This is needed along with device ata for ATA disk drives. device atapicd # ATAPI CDROM drives This is needed along with device ata for ATAPI CDROM drives. device atapifd # ATAPI floppy drives This is needed along with device ata for ATAPI floppy drives. device atapist # ATAPI tape drives This is needed along with device ata for ATAPI tape drives. options ATA_STATIC_ID #Static device numbering This makes the controller number static (like the old driver) or else the device numbers are dynamically allocated. # ATA and ATAPI devices device ata0 at isa? port IO_WD1 irq 14 device ata1 at isa? port IO_WD2 irq 15 Use the above for older, non-PCI systems. # SCSI Controllers device ahb # EISA AHA1742 family device ahc # AHA2940 and onboard AIC7xxx devices device amd # AMD 53C974 (Teckram DC-390(T)) device dpt # DPT Smartcache - See LINT for options! device isp # Qlogic family device ncr # NCR/Symbios Logic device sym # NCR/Symbios Logic (newer chipsets) device adv0 at isa? device adw device bt0 at isa? device aha0 at isa? device aic0 at isa? SCSI controllers. Comment out any you do not have in your system. If you have an IDE only system, you can remove these altogether. # SCSI peripherals device scbus # SCSI bus (required) device da # Direct Access (disks) device sa # Sequential Access (tape etc) device cd # CD device pass # Passthrough device (direct SCSI access) SCSI peripherals. Again, comment out any you do not have, or if you have only IDE hardware, you can remove them completely. # RAID controllers device ida # Compaq Smart RAID device amr # AMI MegaRAID device mlx # Mylex DAC960 family Supported RAID controllers. If you do not have any of these, you can comment them out or remove them. # atkbdc0 controls both the keyboard and the PS/2 mouse device atkbdc0 at isa? port IO_KBD The keyboard controller (atkbdc) provides I/O services for the AT keyboard and PS/2 style pointing devices. This controller is required by the keyboard driver (atkbd) and the PS/2 pointing device driver (psm). device atkbd0 at atkbdc? irq 1 The atkbd driver, together with atkbdc controller, provides access to the AT 84 keyboard or the AT enhanced keyboard which is connected to the AT keyboard controller. device psm0 at atkbdc? irq 12 Use this device if your mouse plugs into the PS/2 mouse port. device vga0 at isa? The video card driver. # splash screen/screen saver pseudo-device splash Splash screen at start up! Screen savers require this too. # syscons is the default console driver, resembling an SCO console device sc0 at isa? sc0 is the default console driver, which resembles a SCO console. Since most full-screen programs access the console through a terminal database library like termcap, it should not matter whether you use this or vt0, the VT220 compatible console driver. When you log in, set your TERM variable to scoansi if full-screen programs have trouble running under this console. # Enable this and PCVT_FREEBSD for pcvt vt220 compatible console driver #device vt0 at isa? #options XSERVER # support for X server on a vt console #options FAT_CURSOR # start with block cursor # If you have a ThinkPAD, uncomment this along with the rest of the PCVT lines #options PCVT_SCANSET=2 # IBM keyboards are non-std This is a VT220-compatible console driver, backward compatible to VT100/102. It works well on some laptops which have hardware incompatibilities with sc0. Also set your TERM variable to vt100 or vt220 when you log in. This driver might also prove useful when connecting to a large number of different machines over the network, where termcap or terminfo entries for the sc0 device are often not available — vt100 should be available on virtually any platform. # Power management support (see LINT for more options) device apm0 at nexus? disable flags 0x20 # Advanced Power Management Advanced Power Management support. Useful for laptops. # PCCARD (PCMCIA) support device card device pcic0 at isa? irq 10 port 0x3e0 iomem 0xd0000 device pcic1 at isa? irq 11 port 0x3e2 iomem 0xd4000 disable PCMCIA support. You want this if you are using a laptop. # Serial (COM) ports device sio0 at isa? port IO_COM1 flags 0x10 irq 4 device sio1 at isa? port IO_COM2 irq 3 device sio2 at isa? disable port IO_COM3 irq 5 device sio3 at isa? disable port IO_COM4 irq 9 These are the four serial ports referred to as COM1 through COM4 in the &ms-dos/&windows; world. If you have an internal modem on COM4 and a serial port at COM2, you will have to change the IRQ of the modem to 2 (for obscure technical reasons, IRQ2 = IRQ 9) in order to access it from &os;. If you have a multiport serial card, check the manual page for &man.sio.4; for more information on the proper values for these lines. Some video cards (notably those based on S3 chips) use IO addresses in the form of 0x*2e8, and since many cheap serial cards do not fully decode the 16-bit IO address space, they clash with these cards making the COM4 port practically unavailable. Each serial port is required to have a unique IRQ (unless you are using one of the multiport cards where shared interrupts are supported), so the default IRQs for COM3 and COM4 cannot be used. # Parallel port device ppc0 at isa? irq 7 This is the ISA-bus parallel port interface. device ppbus # Parallel port bus (required) Provides support for the parallel port bus. device lpt # Printer Support for parallel port printers. All three of the above are required to enable parallel printer support. device plip # TCP/IP over parallel This is the driver for the parallel network interface. device ppi # Parallel port interface device The general-purpose I/O (geek port) + IEEE1284 I/O. #device vpo # Requires scbus and da zip drive This is for an Iomega Zip drive. It requires scbus and da support. Best performance is achieved with ports in EPP 1.9 mode. # PCI Ethernet NICs. device de # DEC/Intel DC21x4x (Tulip) device fxp # Intel EtherExpress PRO/100B (82557, 82558) device tx # SMC 9432TX (83c170 EPIC) device vx # 3Com 3c590, 3c595 (Vortex) device wx # Intel Gigabit Ethernet Card (Wiseman) Various PCI network card drivers. Comment out or remove any of these not present in your system. # PCI Ethernet NICs that use the common MII bus controller code. device miibus # MII bus support MII bus support is required for some PCI 10/100 Ethernet NICs, namely those which use MII-compliant transceivers or implement transceiver control interfaces that operate like an MII. Adding device miibus to the kernel config pulls in support for the generic miibus API and all of the PHY drivers, including a generic one for PHYs that are not specifically handled by an individual driver. device dc # DEC/Intel 21143 and various workalikes device rl # RealTek 8129/8139 device sf # Adaptec AIC-6915 (Starfire) device sis # Silicon Integrated Systems SiS 900/SiS 7016 device ste # Sundance ST201 (D-Link DFE-550TX) device tl # Texas Instruments ThunderLAN device vr # VIA Rhine, Rhine II device wb # Winbond W89C840F device xl # 3Com 3c90x (Boomerang, Cyclone) Drivers that use the MII bus controller code. # ISA Ethernet NICs. device ed0 at isa? port 0x280 irq 10 iomem 0xd8000 device ex device ep # WaveLAN/IEEE 802.11 wireless NICs. Note: the WaveLAN/IEEE really # exists only as a PCMCIA device, so there is no ISA attachment needed # and resources will always be dynamically assigned by the pccard code. device wi # Aironet 4500/4800 802.11 wireless NICs. Note: the declaration below will # work for PCMCIA and PCI cards, as well as ISA cards set to ISA PnP # mode (the factory default). If you set the switches on your ISA # card for a manually chosen I/O address and IRQ, you must specify # those parameters here. device an # The probe order of these is presently determined by i386/isa/isa_compat.c. device ie0 at isa? port 0x300 irq 10 iomem 0xd0000 device fe0 at isa? port 0x300 device le0 at isa? port 0x300 irq 5 iomem 0xd0000 device lnc0 at isa? port 0x280 irq 10 drq 0 device cs0 at isa? port 0x300 device sn0 at isa? port 0x300 irq 10 # requires PCCARD (PCMCIA) support to be activated #device xe0 at isa? ISA Ethernet drivers. See /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/LINT for which cards are supported by which driver. pseudo-device ether # Ethernet support ether is only needed if you have an Ethernet card. It includes generic Ethernet protocol code. pseudo-device sl 1 # Kernel SLIP sl is for SLIP support. This has been almost entirely supplanted by PPP, which is easier to set up, better suited for modem-to-modem connection, and more powerful. The number after sl specifies how many simultaneous SLIP sessions to support. pseudo-device ppp 1 # Kernel PPP This is for kernel PPP support for dial-up connections. There is also a version of PPP implemented as a userland application that uses tun and offers more flexibility and features such as demand dialing. The number after ppp specifies how many simultaneous PPP connections to support. pseudo-device tun # Packet tunnel. This is used by the userland PPP software. A number after tun specifies the number of simultaneous PPP sessions to support. See the PPP section of this book for more information. pseudo-device pty # Pseudo-ttys (telnet etc) This is a pseudo-terminal or simulated login port. It is used by incoming telnet and rlogin sessions, xterm, and some other applications such as Emacs. A number after pty indicates the number of ptys to create. If you need more than the default of 16 simultaneous xterm windows and/or remote logins, be sure to increase this number accordingly, up to a maximum of 256. pseudo-device md # Memory disks Memory disk pseudo-devices. pseudo-device gif or pseudo-device gif 4 # IPv6 and IPv4 tunneling This implements IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling, IPv4 over IPv6 tunneling, IPv4 over IPv4 tunneling, and IPv6 over IPv6 tunneling. Beginning with &os; 4.4 the gif device is auto-cloning, and you should use the first example (without the number after gif). Earlier versions of &os; require the number. pseudo-device faith 1 # IPv6-to-IPv4 relaying (translation) This pseudo-device captures packets that are sent to it and diverts them to the IPv4/IPv6 translation daemon. # The `bpf' pseudo-device enables the Berkeley Packet Filter. # Be aware of the administrative consequences of enabling this! pseudo-device bpf # Berkeley packet filter This is the Berkeley Packet Filter. This pseudo-device allows network interfaces to be placed in promiscuous mode, capturing every packet on a broadcast network (e.g., an Ethernet). These packets can be captured to disk and or examined with the &man.tcpdump.1; program. The bpf pseudo-device is also used by &man.dhclient.8; to obtain the IP address of the default router (gateway) and so on. If you use DHCP, leave this uncommented. # USB support #device uhci # UHCI PCI->USB interface #device ohci # OHCI PCI->USB interface #device usb # USB Bus (required) #device ugen # Generic #device uhid # Human Interface Devices #device ukbd # Keyboard #device ulpt # Printer #device umass # Disks/Mass storage - Requires scbus and da #device ums # Mouse # USB Ethernet, requires mii #device aue # ADMtek USB ethernet #device cue # CATC USB ethernet #device kue # Kawasaki LSI USB ethernet Support for various USB devices. For more information and additional devices supported by &os;, see /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/LINT. Large Memory Configurations (<acronym>PAE</acronym>) Physical Address Extensions (PAE) Large Memory Configurations Large memory configuration machines require access to more than the 4 gigabyte limit on User+Kernel Virtual Address (KVA) space. Due to this limitation, Intel added support for 36-bit physical address space access in the &pentium; Pro and later line of CPUs. The Physical Address Extension (PAE) capability of the &intel; &pentium; Pro and later CPUs allows memory configurations of up to 64 gigabytes. &os; provides support for this capability via the kernel configuration option, available in the 4.X series of &os; beginning with 4.9-RELEASE and in the 5.X series of &os; beginning with 5.1-RELEASE. Due to the limitations of the Intel memory architecture, no distinction is made for memory above or below 4 gigabytes. Memory allocated above 4 gigabytes is simply added to the pool of available memory. To enable PAE support in the kernel, simply add the following line to your kernel configuration file: options PAE The PAE support in &os; is only available for &intel; IA-32 processors. It should also be noted, that the PAE support in &os; has not received wide testing, and should be considered beta quality compared to other stable features of &os;. PAE support in &os; has a few limitations: A process is not able to access more than 4 gigabytes of VM space. KLD modules cannot be loaded into a PAE enabled kernel, due to the differences in the build framework of a module and the kernel. Device drivers that do not use the &man.bus.dma.9; interface will cause data corruption in a PAE enabled kernel and are not recommended for use. For this reason, the PAE kernel configuration file is provided in &os; 5.X, which excludes all drivers not known to work in a PAE enabled kernel. Some system tunables determine memory resource usage by the amount of available physical memory. Such tunables can unnecessarily over-allocate due to the large memory nature of a PAE system. One such example is the sysctl, which controls the maximum number of vnodes allowed in the kernel. It is advised to adjust this and other such tunables to a reasonable value. It might be necessary to increase the kernel virtual address (KVA) space or to reduce the amount of specific kernel resource that is heavily used (see above) in order to avoid KVA exhaustion. The kernel option can be used for increasing the KVA space. For performance and stability concerns, it is advised to consult the &man.tuning.7; manual page. The &man.pae.4; manual page contains up-to-date information on &os;'s PAE support. Making Device Nodes device nodes MAKEDEV If you are running &os; 5.0 or later you can safely skip this section. These versions use &man.devfs.5; to allocate device nodes transparently for the user. Almost every device in the kernel has a corresponding node entry in the /dev directory. These nodes look like regular files, but are actually special entries into the kernel which programs use to access the device. The shell script /dev/MAKEDEV, which is executed when you first install the operating system, creates nearly all of the device nodes supported. However, it does not create all of them, so when you add support for a new device, it pays to make sure that the appropriate entries are in this directory, and if not, add them. Here is a simple example: Suppose you add the IDE CD-ROM support to the kernel. The line to add is: device acd0 This means that you should look for some entries that start with acd0 in the /dev directory, possibly followed by a letter, such as c, or preceded by the letter r, which means a raw device. It turns out that those files are not there, so you must change to the /dev directory and type: MAKEDEV &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV acd0 When this script finishes, you will find that there are now acd0c and racd0c entries in /dev so you know that it executed correctly. For sound cards, the following command creates the appropriate entries: &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV snd0 When creating device nodes for devices such as sound cards, if other people have access to your machine, it may be desirable to protect the devices from outside access by adding them to the /etc/fbtab file. See &man.fbtab.5; for more information. Follow this simple procedure for any other non-GENERIC devices which do not have entries. All SCSI controllers use the same set of /dev entries, so you do not need to create these. Also, network cards and SLIP/PPP pseudo-devices do not have entries in /dev at all, so you do not have to worry about these either. If Something Goes Wrong There are five categories of trouble that can occur when building a custom kernel. They are: config fails: If the &man.config.8; command fails when you give it your kernel description, you have probably made a simple error somewhere. Fortunately, &man.config.8; will print the line number that it had trouble with, so you can quickly skip to it with vi. For example, if you see: config: line 17: syntax error You can skip to the problem in vi by typing 17G in command mode. Make sure the keyword is typed correctly, by comparing it to the GENERIC kernel or another reference. make fails: If the make command fails, it usually signals an error in your kernel description, but not severe enough for &man.config.8; to catch it. Again, look over your configuration, and if you still cannot resolve the problem, send mail to the &a.questions; with your kernel configuration, and it should be diagnosed very quickly. Installing the new kernel fails: If the kernel compiled fine, but failed to install (the make install or make installkernel command failed), the first thing to check is if your system is running at securelevel 1 or higher (see &man.init.8;). The kernel installation tries to remove the immutable flag from your kernel and set the immutable flag on the new one. Since securelevel 1 or higher prevents unsetting the immutable flag for any files on the system, the kernel installation needs to be performed at securelevel 0 or lower. The kernel does not boot: If your new kernel does not boot, or fails to recognize your devices, do not panic! Fortunately, &os; has an excellent mechanism for recovering from incompatible kernels. Simply choose the kernel you want to boot from at the &os; boot loader. You can access this when the system counts down from 10. Hit any key except for the Enter key, type unload and then type boot kernel.old, or the filename of any other kernel that will boot properly. When reconfiguring a kernel, it is always a good idea to keep a kernel that is known to work on hand. After booting with a good kernel you can check over your configuration file and try to build it again. One helpful resource is the /var/log/messages file which records, among other things, all of the kernel messages from every successful boot. Also, the &man.dmesg.8; command will print the kernel messages from the current boot. If you are having trouble building a kernel, make sure to keep a GENERIC, or some other kernel that is known to work on hand as a different name that will not get erased on the next build. You cannot rely on kernel.old because when installing a new kernel, kernel.old is overwritten with the last installed kernel which may be non-functional. Also, as soon as possible, move the working kernel to the proper kernel location or commands such as &man.ps.1; will not work properly. The proper command to unlock the kernel file that make installs (in order to move another kernel back permanently) is: &prompt.root; chflags noschg /kernel If you find you cannot do this, you are probably running at a &man.securelevel.8; greater than zero. Edit kern_securelevel in /etc/rc.conf and set it to -1, then reboot. You can change it back to its previous setting when you are happy with your new kernel. And, if you want to lock your new kernel into place, or any file for that matter, so that it cannot be moved or tampered with: &prompt.root; chflags schg /kernel In &os; 5.X, kernels are not installed with the system immutable flag, so this is unlikely to be the source of the problem you are experiencing. The kernel works, but &man.ps.1; does not work any more: If you have installed a different version of the kernel from the one that the system utilities have been built with, for example, a 4.X kernel on a 3.X system, many system-status commands like &man.ps.1; and &man.vmstat.8; will not work any more. You must recompile the libkvm library as well as these utilities. This is one reason it is not normally a good idea to use a different version of the kernel from the rest of the operating system.