diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml index 5816b521c1..99a5884a48 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml @@ -1,2035 +1,2003 @@ %man; %authors; ]>
Committer Guide The FreeBSD Documentation Project - $FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml,v 1.35 2000/08/16 17:41:40 dannyboy Exp $ + $FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml,v 1.36 2000/08/23 20:36:53 ben Exp $ 1999 2000 The FreeBSD Documentation Project This document provides information for the FreeBSD committer community. All new committers should read this document before they start, and existing committers are strongly encouraged to review it from time to time. Administrative Details Main Repository Host freefall.FreeBSD.org - - - International Crypto Repository Host - - internat.FreeBSD.org - - Login Methods &man.ssh.1; Main CVSROOT /home/ncvs - - International Crypto CVSROOT - /home/cvs.crypt - - Main CVS Repository Meisters &a.jdp; and &a.peter; as well as &a.asami; for ports/ - - - International Crypto CVS Repository Meister - - &a.markm; - - Mailing List cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org Noteworthy CVS Tags RELENG_3 (3.x-STABLE), RELENG_4 (4.x-STABLE), HEAD (-CURRENT) It is required that you use &man.ssh.1; or &man.telnet.1; with Kerberos 5 to connect to the repository hosts. These are generally more secure than plain &man.telnet.1; or &man.rlogin.1; since credential negotiation will always be encrypted. All traffic is encrypted by default with &man.ssh.1;. With utilities like &man.ssh-agent.1; and &man.scp.1; also available, &man.ssh.1; is also far more convenient. If you do not know anything about &man.ssh.1;, please see . CVS Operations It is assumed that you are already familiar with the basic operation of CVS. The CVS Repository Meisters (Peter Wemm and John Polstra) are the owners of the CVS repository and are responsible for any and all direct modification of it for the purposes of cleanup or fixing some grievous abuse of CVS by a committer. No one else should attempt to touch the repository directly. Should you cause some repository accident, say a bad cvs import or tag operation, do not attempt to fix it yourself! Mail or call John or Peter immediately and report the problem to one of them instead. The only ones allowed to directly fiddle the repository bits are the repomeisters. Satoshi Asami is also a repomeister for the ports/ portion of the - tree. Mark Murray is the repomeister for the International - Crypto Repository in South Africa. + tree. CVS operations are usually done by logging into freefall, making sure the CVSROOT environment variable is set to /home/ncvs, and then doing the appropriate check-out/check-in operations. If you wish to add something which is wholly new (like contrib-ified sources, etc), a script called easy-import is also provided for making the process easier. It automatically adds the new module entry, does the appropriate thing with cvs import, etc. – just run it without arguments and it will prompt you for everything it needs to know. Note that when you use CVS on freefall, you should set your umask to 2, as well as setting the CVSUMASK environmenet variable to 2. This ensures that any new files created by cvs add will have the correct permissions. If you add a file or directory and discover that the file in the repository has incorrect permissions (specifically, all files in the repository should be group writable by group ncvs), contact one of the repository meisters as described below. If you are familiar with remote CVS and consider yourself pretty studly with CVS in general, you can also do CVS operations directly from your own machine and local working sources. Just remember to set CVS_RSH to ssh so that you are using a relatively secure and reliable transport. If you have no idea what any of the above even means, on the other hand, then please stick with logging into freefall and applying your diffs with &man.patch.1;. If you need to use CVS add and delete operations in a manner that is effectively a mv operation, then a repository copy is in order rather than your CVS add and delete. In a repository copy, a CVS Meister will copy the file(s) to their new name and/or location and let you know when it is done. The purpose of a repository copy is to preserve file change history, or logs. We in the FreeBSD Project greatly value the change history CVS gives to the project. CVS reference information, tutorials, and FAQs can also be found at: http://www.cyclic.com/CVS/support &a.des; also supplied the following mini primer for CVS. Check out a module with the co or checkout command. &prompt.user; cvs checkout shazam This checks out a copy of the shazam module. If there is no shazam module in the modules file, looks for a top-level directory named shazam instead. Useful options: Don't create empty directories Check out a single level, no subdirectories Check out revision, branch or tag rev Check out the sources as they were on date data Practical FreeBSD examples: Check out the miscfs module, which corresponds to src/sys/miscfs: &prompt.user; cvs co miscfs You now have a directory named miscfs with subdirectories CVS, deadfs, devfs, and so on. One of these (linprocfs) is empty. Check out the same files, but with full path: &prompt.user; cvs co src/sys/miscfs You now have a directory named src, with subdirectories CVS and sys. src/sys has subdirectories CVS and miscfs, etc. Check out the same files, but prunes empty directories: &prompt.user; cvs co -P miscfs You now have a directory named miscfs with subdirectories CVS, deadfs, devfs... but note that there is no linprocfs subdirectory, because there are no files in it. Check out the directory miscfs, but none of the subdirectories: &prompt.root; cvs co -l miscfs You now have a directory named miscfs with just one subdirectory named CVS. Check out the miscfs module as it is in the 4.x branch: &prompt.user; cvs co -rRELENG_4 miscfs You can modify the sources and commit along this branch. Check out the miscfs module as it was in 3.4-RELEASE. &prompt.user; cvs co -rRELENG_3_4_0_RELEASE miscfs You will not be able to commit modifications, since RELENG_3_4_0_RELEASE is a point in time, not a branch. Check out the miscfs module as it was on Jan 15 2000. &prompt.user; cvs co -D'01/15/2000' miscfs You will not be able to commit modifications. Check out the miscfs module as it was one week agao. &prompt.user; cvs co -D'last week' miscfs You will not be able to commit modifications. Note that cvs stores metadata in subdirectories named CVS. Arguments to and are sticky, which means cvs will remember them later, e.g. when you do a cvs update. Check the status of checked-out files with the status command. &prompt.user; cvs status shazam This displays the status of the shazam file or of every file in the shazam directory. For every file, the status is given as one of: Up-to-date File is up-to-date and unmodified. Needs Patch File is unmodified, but there's a newer revision in the repository. Locally Modified File is up-to-date, but modified. Needs Merge File is modified, and there's a newer revision in the repository. File had conflicts on merge There were conflicts the last time this file was updated, and they haven't been resolved yet. You'll also see the local revision and date, the revision number of the newest applicable version (newest applicable because if you have a sticky date, tag or branch, it may not be the actual newest revision), and any sticky tags, dates or options. Once you've checked something out, update it with the update command. &prompt.user; cvs update shazam This updates the shazam file or the contents of the shazam directory to the latest version along the branch you checked out. If you checked out a point in time, does nothing unless the tags have moved in the repo or some other weird stuff is going on. Useful options, in addition to those listed above for checkout: Check out any additional missing directories. Update to head of main branch. More magic (see below). If you checked out a module with or , running cvs update with a different or argument or with will select a new branch, revision or date. The option clears all sticky tags, dates or revisions whereas and set new ones. Theoretically, specifying HEAD as argument to will give you the same result as , but that's just theory. The option is useful if: somebody has added subdirectories to the module you've checked out after you checked it out. you checked out with , and later change your mind and want to check out the subdirectories as well. you deleted some subdirectories and want to check them all back out. Watch the output of the cvs update with care. The letter in front of each file name indicates what was done with it: U The file was updated with no trouble. P The file was updated with no trouble (you'll only see this when working against a remote repo). M The file had been modified, and was merged with no conflicts. C The file had been modified, and was merged with conflicts. Merging is what happens if you check out a copy of some source code, modify it, then someone else commits a change, and you run cvs update. CVS notices that you've made local changes, and tries to merge your changes with the changes between the version you originally checked out and the one you updated to. If the changed are to separate portions of the file, it'll almost always work fine (though the result might not be syntactically or semantically correct). CVS will print an 'M' in front of every locally modified file even if there is no newer version in the repository, so cvs update is handy for getting a summary of what you've changed locally. If you get a C, then your changes conflicted with the changes in the repository (the changes were to the same lines, or neighboring lines, or you changed the local file so much that cvs can't figure out how to apply the repository's changes). You'll have to go through the file manually and resolve the conflicts; they'll be marked with rows of <, = and > signs. For every conflict, there'll be a marker line with seven < signs and the name of the file, followed by a chunk of what your local file contained, followed by a separator line with seven = signs, followed by the corresponding chunk in the repository version, followed by a marker line with seven > signs and the revision number you updated to. The option is slightly voodoo. It updates the local file to the specified revision as if you used , but it does not change the recorded revision number or branch of the local file. It's not really useful except when used twice, in which case it will merge the changes between the two specified versions into the working copy. For instance, say you commit a change to shazam/shazam.c in -CURRENT and later want to MFC it. The change you want to MFC was revision 1.15: Check out the -STABLE version of the shazam module: &prompt.user; cvs co -rRELENG_4 shazam Apply the changes between rev 1.14 and 1.15: &prompt.user; cvs update -j1.14 -j1.15 shazam/shazam.c You'll almost certainly get a conflict because - of the $Id: article.sgml,v 1.36 2000-08-23 20:36:53 ben Exp $ (or in FreeBSD's case, + of the $Id: article.sgml,v 1.37 2000-09-24 07:01:47 kris Exp $ (or in FreeBSD's case, $FreeBSD$) lines, so you'll have to edit the file to resolve the conflict (remove the marker lines and - the second $Id: article.sgml,v 1.36 2000-08-23 20:36:53 ben Exp $ line, leaving the original - $Id: article.sgml,v 1.36 2000-08-23 20:36:53 ben Exp $ line intact). + the second $Id: article.sgml,v 1.37 2000-09-24 07:01:47 kris Exp $ line, leaving the original + $Id: article.sgml,v 1.37 2000-09-24 07:01:47 kris Exp $ line intact). View differences between the local version and the repository version with the diff command. &prompt.user; cvs diff shazam shows you every modification you've made to the shazam file or module. Useful options: Uses the unified diff format. Shows missing or added files. You always want to use , since unified diffs are much easier to read than almost any other diff format (in some circumstances, context diffs may be better, but they're much bulkier). A unified diff consists of a series of hunks. Each hunk begins with a line that starts with two @ signs and specifies where in the file the differences are and how many lines they span. This is followed by a number of lines; some (preceded by a blank) are context; some (preceded by a - sign) are outtakes and some (preceded by a +) are additions. You can also diff against a different version than the one you checked out by specifying a version with or as in checkout or update, or even view the diffs between two arbitrary versions (with no regard for what you have locally) by specifying two versions with or . View log entries with the log command. &prompt.user; cvs log shazam See who did what with the annotate command. This command shows you each line of the specified file or files, along with which user most recently changed that line. &prompt.user; cvs annotate shazam Add new files with the add command. Create the file, cvs add it, then cvs commit it. Similarly, you can add new directories by creating them and then cvs adding them. Note that you don't need to commit directories. Remove obsolete files with the remove command. Remove the file, then cvs rm it, then cvs commit it. Commit with the commit or checkin command. Useful options: Force a commit of an unmodified file. Specify a commit message on the command line rather than invoking an editor. Use the option if you realize that you left out important information from the commit message. Good commit messages are important. They tell others why you did the changes you did, not just right here and now, but months or years from now when someone wonders why some seemingly illogical or inefficient piece of code snuck into your source file. It's also an invaluable aid to deciding which changes to MFC and which not to MFC. Don't waste space in the commit messages explaining what you did. That's what cvs diff is for. Instead, tell us why you did it. Avoid committing several unrelated changes in one go. It makes merging difficult, and also makes it harder to determine which change is the culprit if a bug crops up. Avoid committing style or whitespace fixes and functionality fixes in one go. It makes merging difficult, and also makes it harder to understand just what functional changes were made. Avoid committing changes to multiple files in one go with a generic, vague message. Instead, commit each file (or small groups of files) with tailored commit messages. Before committing, always: verify which branch you're committing to, using cvs status. review your diffs, using cvs diff Also, ALWAYS specify which files to commit explicitly on the command line, so you don't accidentally commit other files than the ones you intended - cvs commit with no arguments will commit every modification in your current working directory and every subdirectory. Additional tips and tricks: You can place commonly used options in your ~/.cvsrc, like this: cvs -z3 diff -Nu update -Pd checkout -P This example says: always use compression level 3 when talking to a remote server. This is a life-saver when working over a slow connection. always use the (show added or removed files) and (unified diff format) options to &man.diff.1;. always use the (prune empty directories) and (check out new directories) options when updating. always use the (prune empty directories) option when checking out. Use Eivind Eklund's cdiff script to view unidiffs. It's a wrapper for &man.less.1; that adds ANSI color codes to make hunk headers, outtakes and additions stand out; context and garbage are unmodified. It also expands tabs properly (tabs often look wrong in diffs because of the extra character in front of each line). http://people.freebsd.org/~eivind/cdiff Simply use instead of &man.more.1; or &man.less.1;: &prompt.user; cvs diff -Nu shazam | cdiff Alternatively some editors like &man.vim.1; (ports/editors/vim5) have color support and when used as a pager with color syntax highlighting switched on will highlight many types of file, including diffs, patches, and cvs/rcs logs. &prompt.user; echo "syn on" >> ~/.vimrc &prompt.user; cvs diff -Nu shazam | vim - &prompt.user; cvs log shazam | vim - CVS is old, arcane, crufty and buggy, and sometimes exhibits non-deterministic behavior which some claim as proof that it's actually merely the newtonian manifestation of a sentient transdimensional entity. It's not humanly possible to know its every quirk inside out, so don't be afraid to ask the resident AI (cvs@FreeBSD.org) for help when you screw up. Conventions and Traditions As a new committer there are a number of things you should do first. Add yourself to the Developers section of the Handbook and remove yourself from the Additional Contributors section. This is a relatively easy task, but remains a good first test of your CVS skills. Add an entry for yourself to www/en/news/newsflash.sgml. Look for the other entries that look like A new committer and follow the format. Some people also add an entry for themselves to ports/astro/xearth/files/freebsd.committers.markers. Introduce yourself to the other committers, otherwise no one will have any idea who you are or what you are working on. You do not have to write a comprehensive biography, just write a paragraph or two about who you are and what you plan to be working on as a committer in FreeBSD. Email this to cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org and you will be on your way! Log into hub.FreeBSD.org and create a /var/forward/user (where user is your username) file containing the e-mail address where you want mail addressed to yourusername@FreeBSD.org to be forwarded. This includes all of the commit messages as well as any other mail addressed to cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org. Really large mailboxes which have taken up permanent residence on hub often get accidently truncated without warning, so forward it or read it and you will not lose it. All new committers also have a mentor assigned to them for the first few months. Your mentor is more or less responsible for explaining anything which is confusing to you and is also responsible for your actions during this initial period. If you make a bogus commit, it is only going to embarrass your mentor and you should probably make it a policy to pass at least your first few commits by your mentor before committing it to the repository. All commits should go to -CURRENT first before being merged to -STABLE. No major new features or high-risk modifications should be made to the -STABLE branch. Developer Relations If you are working directly on your own code or on code which is already well established as your responsibility, then there is probably little need to check with other committers before jumping in with a commit. If you see a bug in an area of the system which is clearly orphaned (and there are a few such areas, to our shame), the same applies. If, however, you are about to modify something which is clearly being actively maintained by someone else (and it is only by watching the cvs-committers mailing list that you can really get a feel for just what is and is not) then consider sending the change to them instead, just as you would have before becoming a committer. For ports, you should contact the listed MAINTAINER in the Makefile. For other parts of the repository, if you are unsure who the active maintainer might be, it may help to scan the output of cvs log to see who has committed changes in the past. &a.fenner; has written a nice shell script that can help determine who the active maintainer might be. It lists each person who has committed to a given file along with the number of commits each person has made. It can be found on freefall at ~fenner/bin/whodid. If your queries go unanswered or the committer otherwise indicates a lack of proprietary interest in the area affected, go ahead and commit it. If you are unsure about a commit for any reason at all, have it reviewed by -hackers before committing. Better to have it flamed then and there rather than when it is part of the CVS repository. If you do happen to commit something which results in controversy erupting, you may also wish to consider backing the change out again until the matter is settled. Remember – with CVS we can always change it back. GNATS The FreeBSD Project utilizes GNATS for tracking bugs and change requests. Be sure that if you commit a fix or suggestion found in a GNATS PR, you use edit-pr pr-number on freefall to close it. It is also considered nice if you take time to close any PRs associated with your commits, if appropriate. Your can also make use of &man.send-pr.1; yourself for proposing any change which you feel should probably be made, pending a more extensive peer-review first. You can find out more about GNATS at: http://www.cs.utah.edu/csinfo/texinfo/gnats/gnats.html http://www.FreeBSD.org/support.html http://www.FreeBSD.org/send-pr.html &man.send-pr.1; You can run a local copy of GNATS, and then integrate the FreeBSD GNATS tree in to it using CVSup. Then you can run GNATS commands locally, or use other interfaces, such as tkgnats. This lets you query the PR database without needing to be connected to the Internet. Using a local GNATS tree If you are not already downloading the GNATS tree, add this line to your supfile, and re-sup. Note that since GNATS is not under CVS control it has no tag, so if you are adding it to your existing supfile it should appear before any tag= entry as these remain active once set. gnats release=current prefix=/usr This will place the FreeBSD GNATS tree in /usr/gnats. You can use a refuse file to control which categories to receive. For example, to only receive docs PRs, put this line in /usr/local/etc/cvsup/sup/refuse The precise path depends on the *default base setting in your supfile. . gnats/[a-ce-z]* The rest of these examples assume you have only supped the docs category. Adjust them as necessary, depending on the categories you are synching. Install the GNATS port from ports/databases/gnats. This will place the various GNATS directories under $PREFIX/share/gnats. Symlink the GNATS directories you are supping under the version of GNATS you have installed. &prompt.root; cd /usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db &prompt.root; ln -s /usr/gnats/docs Repeat as necessary, depending on how many GNATS categories you are synching. Update the GNATS categories file with these cageories. The file is $PREFIX/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/categories. # This category is mandatory pending:Category for faulty PRs:gnats-admin: # # FreeBSD categories # docs:Documentation Bug:nik: Run $PREFIX/libexec/gnats/gen-index to recreate the GNATS index. The output has to be redirected to $PREFIX/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/index. You can do this periodically from &man.cron.8;, or run &man.cvsup.1; from a shell script that does this as well. &prompt.root; /usr/local/libexec/gnats/gen-index \ > /usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/index Test the configuration by querying the PR database. This command shows open docs PRs. &prompt.root; query-pr -c docs -s open Other interfaces, like ports/databases/tkgnats should also work nicely. Pick a PR and close it. This procedure only works to allow you to view and query the PRs locally. To edit or close them you will still have to log in to freefall and do it from there. Who's Who Besides Peter Wemm and John Polstra, the repository meisters, there are other FreeBSD project members whom you will probably get to know in your role as a committer. Briefly, and by no means all-inclusively, these are: &a.asami; Satoshi is the Ports Wraith, meaning that he has ultimate authority over any modifications to the ports collection or the ports skeleton makefiles. He is also the one responsible for administering ports freezes before the releases. &a.bde; Bruce is the Obersturmbahnfuhrer of the Style Police. When you do a commit that could have been done better, Bruce will be there to tell you. Be thankful that someone is. &a.dg; David is our principal architect and overseer of the VM system. If you have a VM system change in mind, coordinate it with David. Should you become locked in a bitter, intractable dispute with some other committer over a proposed change (which does not happen very often, thankfully) then an appeal to David to put on his P.A. hat and make a final decision might be necessary. &a.jkh; Jordan is the release engineer. He is responsible for setting release deadlines and controlling the release process. During code freezes, he also has final authority on all changes to the system for whichever branch is pending release status. If there is something you want merged from -CURRENT to -STABLE (whatever values those may have at any given time), he is also the one to talk to about it. - - &a.markm; - - Mark is the CVS repository meister for the - international crypto repository kept on - internat.FreeBSD.org in South Africa. - - Mark also oversees most of the crypto code; if you have - any crypto updates, please ask Mark first. - - - &a.steve; Steve is the unofficial maintainer of src/bin. If you have something significant you'd like to do there, you should probably coordinate it with Steve first. He is also a Problem Report-meister, along with &a.phk;. &a.brian; Official maintainer of /usr/bin/ppp and LPD. &a.wollman; If you need advice on obscure network internals or aren't sure of some potential change to the networking subsystem you have in mind, Garrett is someone to talk to. SSH Quick-Start Guide If you are using FreeBSD 4.0 or later, OpenSSH is included in the base system. If you are using an earlier release, update and install one of the SSH ports. In general, you will probably want to get OpenSSH from the port in /usr/ports/security/openssh. You may also wish to check out the original ssh1 in /usr/ports/security/ssh, but make certain you pay attention to its license. Note that both of these ports cannot be installed at the same time. If you do not wish to to type your password in every time you use &man.ssh.1;, and you use RSA keys to authenticate, &man.ssh-agent.1; is there for your convenience. If you want to use &man.ssh-agent.1;, make sure that you run it before running other applications. X users, for example, usually do this from their .xsession or .xinitrc file. See &man.ssh-agent.1; for details. Generate a key pair using &man.ssh-keygen.1;. The key pair will wind up in the $HOME/.ssh directory. Send your public key ($HOME/.ssh/identity.pub) to the person setting you up as a committer so it can be put into your authorized_keys file in your home directory on freefall (i.e. $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys). Now you should be able to use &man.ssh-add.1; for authentication once per session. This will prompt you for your private key's pass phrase, and then store it in your authentication agent (&man.ssh-agent.1;). If you no longer wish to have your key stored in the agent, issuing ssh-add -d will remove it. Test by doing something such as ssh freefall.FreeBSD.org ls /usr. For more information, see /usr/ports/security/openssh, &man.ssh.1;, &man.ssh-add.1;, &man.ssh-agent.1;, &man.ssh-keygen.1;, and &man.scp.1;. The FreeBSD Committers' Big List of Rules Respect other committers. Discuss any significant change before committing. Respect existing maintainers if listed in the (MAINTAINER field in Makefile or in the MAINTAINER file in the top-level directory). Never touch the repository directly. Ask a Repomeister. Any disputed change must be backed out pending resolution of the dispute if requested by a maintainer or the Principal Architect. Security related changes may override a maintainer's wishes at the Security Officer's discretion. Changes go to -CURRENT before -STABLE unless specifically permitted by the release engineer or unless they're not applicable to -CURRENT. Any non-trivial or non-urgent change which is applicable should also be allowed to sit in -CURRENT for at least 3 days before merging so that it can be given sufficient testing. The release engineer has the same authority over the -STABLE branch as outlined for the Principal Architect in rule #5. Don't fight in public with other committers; it looks bad. If you must strongly disagree about something, do so only in private. Respect all code freezes and read the committers mailing list on a timely basis so you know when a code freeze is in effect. When in doubt on any procedure, ask first! Test your changes before committing them. As noted, breaking some of these rules can be grounds for suspension or, upon repeated offense, permanent removal of commit privileges. Three or more members of core, or the Principal Architect and another member of core acting in unison, have the power to temporarily suspend commit privileges until -core as a whole has the chance to review the issue. In case of an emergency (a committer doing damage to the repository), a temporary suspension may also be done by the repository meisters or any other member of core who may happen to be awake at the time. Only core as a whole has the authority to suspend commit privileges for any significant length of time or to remove them permanently, the latter generally only being done after consultation with committers. This rule does not exist to set core up as a bunch of cruel dictators who can dispose of committers as casually as empty soda cans, but to give the project a kind of safety fuse. If someone is seriously out of control, it's important to be able to deal with this immediately rather than be paralyzed by debate. In all cases, a committer whose privileges are suspended or revoked is entitled to a hearing, the total duration of the suspension being determined at that time. A committer whose privileges are suspended may also request a review of the decision after 30 days and every 30 days thereafter (unless the total suspension period is less than 30 days). A committer whose privileges have been revoked entirely may request a review after a period of 6 months have elapsed. This review policy is strictly informal and, in all cases, core reserves the right to either act on or disregard requests for review if they feel their original decision to be the right one. In all other aspects of project operation, core is a subset of committers and is bound by the same rules. Just because someone is in core doesn't mean that they have special dispensation to step outside of any of the lines painted here; core's special powers only kick in when it acts as a group, not on an individual basis. As individuals, we are all committers first and core second. Details Respect other committers. This means that you need to treat other committers as the peer-group developers that they are. Despite our occasional attempts to prove the contrary, one doesn't get into committers by being stupid and nothing rankles more than being treated that way by one of your peers. Whether we always feel respect for one another or not (and everyone has off days), we still have to treat other committers with respect at all times or the whole team structure rapidly breaks down. Being able to work together long term is this project's greatest asset, one far more important than any set of changes to the code, and turning arguments about code into issues that affect our long-term ability to work harmoniously together is just not worth the trade-off by any conceivable stretch of the imagination. To comply with this rule, don't send email when you're angry or otherwise behave in a manner which is likely to strike others as needlessly confrontational. First calm down, then think about how to communicate in the most effective fashion for convincing the other person(s) that your side of the argument is correct, don't just blow off some steam so you can feel better in the short term at the cost of a long-term flame war. Not only is this very bad energy economics, but repeated displays of public aggression which impair our ability to work well together will be dealt with severely by the project leadership and may result in suspension or termination of your commit privileges. That's never an option which the project's leadership enjoys in the slightest, but unity comes first. No amount of code or good advice is worth trading that away. Discuss any significant change before committing. The CVS repository is not where changes should be initially submitted for correctness or argued over, that should happen first in the mailing lists and then committed only once something resembling consensus has been reached. This doesn't mean that you have to ask permission before correcting every obvious syntax error or man page misspelling, simply that you should try to develop a feel for when a proposed change isn't quite such a no-brainer and requires some feedback first. People really don't mind sweeping changes if the result is something clearly better than what they had before, they just don't like being surprised by those changes. The very best way of making sure that you're on the right track is to have your code reviewed by one or more other committers. When in doubt, ask for review! Respect existing maintainers if listed. Many parts of FreeBSD aren't owned in the sense that any specific individual will jump up and yell if you commit a change to their area, but it still pays to check first. One convention we use is to put a maintainer line in the Makefile for any package or subtree which is being actively maintained by one or more people; see http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/policies.html for documentation on this. Where sections of code have several maintainers, commits to affected areas by one maintainer need to be reviewed by at least one other maintainer. In cases where the maintainer-ship of something isn't clear, you can also look at the CVS logs for the file(s) in question and see if someone has been working recently or predominantly in that area. Other areas of FreeBSD fall under the control of someone who manages an overall category of FreeBSD evolution, such as internationalization or networking. See http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/staff-who.html for more information on this. Never touch the repository directly. Ask a Repomeister. This is pretty clear - you're not allowed to make direct modifications to the CVS repository, period. In case of difficulty, ask one of the repository meisters by sending mail to cvs@FreeBSD.org and simply wait for them to fix the problem and get back to you. Do not attempt to fix the problem yourself! If you're thinking about putting down a tag or doing a new import of code on a vendor branch, you might also find it useful to ask for advice first. A lot of people get this wrong the first few times and the consequences are expensive in terms of files touched and angry CVSup/CTM folks who are suddenly getting a lot of changes sent over unnecessarily. Any disputed change must be backed out pending resolution of the dispute if requested by a maintainer or the Principal Architect. Security related changes may override a maintainer's wishes at the Security Officer's discretion. This may be hard to swallow in times of conflict (when each side is convinced that they're in the right, of course) but CVS makes it unnecessary to have an ongoing dispute raging when it's far easier to simply reverse the disputed change, get everyone calmed down again and then try and figure out how best to proceed. If the change turns out to be the best thing after all, it can be easily brought back. If it turns out not to be, then the users didn't have to live with the bogus change in the tree while everyone was busily debating its merits. People very very rarely call for back-outs in the repository since discussion generally exposes bad or controversial changes before the commit even happens, but on such rare occasions the back-out should be done without argument so that we can get immediately on to the topic of figuring out whether it was bogus or not. Changes go to -CURRENT before -STABLE unless specifically permitted by the release engineer or unless they're not applicable to -CURRENT. Any non-trivial or non-urgent change which is applicable should also be allowed to sit in -CURRENT for at least 3 days before merging so that it can be given sufficient testing. The release engineer has the same authority over the -STABLE branch as outlined in rule #5. This is another don't argue about it issue since it's the release engineer who is ultimately responsible (and gets beaten up) if a change turns out to be bad. Please respect this and give the release engineer your full cooperation when it comes to the -STABLE branch. The management of -STABLE may frequently seem to be overly conservative to the casual observer, but also bear in mind the fact that conservatism is supposed to be the hallmark of -STABLE and different rules apply there than in -CURRENT. There's also really no point in having -CURRENT be a testing ground if changes are merged over to -STABLE immediately. Changes need a chance to be tested by the -CURRENT developers, so allow some time to elapse before merging unless the -STABLE fix is critical, time sensitive or so obvious as to make further testing unnecessary (spelling fixes to manpages, obvious bug/typo fixes, etc.) In other words, apply common sense. Don't fight in public with other committers; it looks bad. If you must strongly disagree about something, do so only in private. This project has a public image to uphold and that image is very important to all of us, especially if we are to continue to attract new members. There will be occasions when, despite everyone's very best attempts at self-control, tempers are lost and angry words are exchanged, and the best we can do is try and minimize the effects of this until everyone has cooled back down. That means that you should not air your angry words in public and you should not forward private correspondence to public mailing lists or aliases. What people say one-to-one is often much less sugar-coated than what they would say in public, and such communications therefore have no place there - they only serve to inflame an already bad situation. If the person sending you a flame-o-gram at least had the grace to send it privately, then have the grace to keep it private yourself. If you feel you are being unfairly treated by another developer, and it is causing you anguish, bring the matter up with core rather than taking it public. We will do our best to play peace makers and get things back to sanity. In cases where the dispute involves a change to the codebase and the participants do not appear to be reaching an amicable agreement, core may appoint a mutually-agreeable 3rd party to resolve the dispute. All parties involved must then agree to be bound by the decision reached by this 3rd party. Respect all code freezes and read the committers mailing list on a timely basis so you know when they are. Committing changes during a code freeze is a really big mistake and committers are expected to keep up-to-date on what's going on before jumping in after a long absence and committing 10 megabytes worth of accumulated stuff. People who abuse this on a regular basis will have their commit privileges suspended until they get back from the FreeBSD Happy Reeducation Camp we run in Greenland. When in doubt on any procedure, ask first! Many mistakes are made because someone is in a hurry and just assumes they know the right way of doing something. If you have not done it before, chances are good that you do not actually know the way we do things and really need to ask first or you are going to completely embarrass yourself in public. There's no shame in asking how in the heck do I do this? We already know you are an intelligent person; otherwise, you would not be a committer. Test your changes before committing them. This may sound obvious, but if it really were so obvious then we probably wouldn't see so many cases of people clearly not doing this. If your changes are to the kernel, make sure you can still compile both GENERIC and LINT. If your changes are anywhere else, make sure you can still make world. If your changes are to a branch, make sure your testing occurs with a machine which is running that code. If you have a change which also may break another architecture, be sure and test on all supported architectures. Currently, this is only the x86 and the alpha so it's pretty easy to do. If you need to test on the AXP, your account on beast.FreeBSD.org will let you compile and test alpha binaries/kernels/etc. As other architectures are added to the FreeBSD supported platforms list, the appropriate shared testing resources will be made available. Other Suggestions When committing documentation changes, use a spell checker before committing. :) For all SGML docs, you should also verify that your formatting directives are correct by running make lint. For all on-line manual pages, run manck (from ports) over the man page to verify the all of the cross references and file references are correct and that the man page has all of the appropriate MLINKs installed. Do not mix style fixes with new functionality. A style fix is any change which does not modify the functionality of the code. Mixing the changes obfuscates the functionality change when using cvs diff, which can hide any new bugs. Do not include whitespace changes with content changes in commits to doc/ or www/. The extra clutter in the diffs makes the translators' job much more difficult. Instead, make any style or whitespace changes in seperate commits that are clearly labeled as such in the commit message. Ports Specific FAQ Importing a New Port How do I import a new port? First, please read the section about repository copy. The easiest way to import a new port is to use the addport script on freefall. It will import a port from the directory you specify, determining the category automatically from the port Makefile. It will also add an entry to the CVSROOT/modules file and the port's category Makefile. It was written by &a.mharo; and &a.will;, but Will is the current maintainer so please send questions/patches about addport to him. Any other things I need to know when I import a new port? Check the port, preferably to make sure it compiles and packages correctly. This is the recommended sequence: &prompt.root; make install &prompt.root; make package &prompt.root; make deinstall &prompt.root; pkg_add package you built above &prompt.root; make deinstall &prompt.root; make reinstall &prompt.root; make package The Porters Handbook contains more detailed instructions. Use &man.portlint.1; to check the syntax of the port. You don't necessarily have to eliminate all warnings but make sure you have fixed the simple ones. If the port came from a submitter who has not contributed to the project before, add that person's name to the Handbook's Additional Contributors section. Close the PR if the port came in as a PR. To close a PR, just do edit-pr PR# on freefall and change the state from open to closed. You will be asked to enter a log message and then you are done. Repository Copies When do we need a repository copy? When you want to import a port that is related to any port that is already in the tree in a separate directory, please send mail to the ports manager asking about it. Here related means it is a different version or a slightly modified version. Examples are print/ghostscript* (different versions) and x11-wm/windowmaker* (English-only and internationalized version). Another example is when a port is moved from one subdirectory to another, or when you want to change the name of a directory because the author(s) renamed their software even though it is a descendant of a port already in a tree. When do we not need a repository copy? When there is no history to preserve. If a port is imported into a wrong category and is moved immediately, it suffices to simply cvs remove the old one and cvs import the new one. What do I need to do? Send mail to the ports manager, who will do a copy from the old location/name to the new location/name. You will then get a notice, at which point you are expected to perform the following: cvs remove the old port (if necessary) Adjust the parent (category) Makefile Update CVSROOT/modules If other ports depend on the updated port, change their Makefiles' dependency lines If the port changed categories, modify the CATEGORIES line of the port's Makefile accordingly Ports Freeze What is a ports freeze? Before a release, it is necessary to restrict commits to the ports tree for a short period of time while the packages and the release itself are being built. This is to ensure consistency among the various parts of the release, and is called the ports freeze. How long is a ports freeze? Usually two to three days. What does it mean to me? During the ports freeze, you are not allowed to commit anything to the tree without explicit approval from the ports manager. Explicit approval here means either of the following: You asked the ports manager and got a reply saying, Go ahead and commit it. The ports manager sent a mail to you or the mailing lists during the ports freeze pointing out that the port is broken and has to be fixed. Note that you do not have implicit permission to fix a port during the freeze just because it is broken. How do I know when the ports freeze starts? The ports manager will send out warning messages to the freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org and cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org mailing lists announcing the start of the impending release, usually two or three weeks in advance. The exact starting time will not be determined until a few days before the actual release. This is because the ports freeze has to be synchronized with the release, and it is usually not known until then when exactly the release will be rolled. When the freeze starts, there will be another announcement to the cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org list, of course. How do I know when the ports freeze ends? A few hours after the release, the ports manager will send out a mail to the freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org and cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org mailing lists announcing the end of the ports freeze. Note that the release being cut does not automatically end the freeze. We have to make sure there will not be any last minute snafus that result in an immediate re-rolling of the release. Miscellaneous Questions How do I know if my port is building correctly or not? First, go check http://bento.FreeBSD.org/~asami/errorlogs/. There you will find error logs from the latest package building runs on 3-stable and 4-current. However, just because the port doesn't show up there doesn't mean it's building correctly. (One of the dependencies may have failed, for instance.) Here are the relevant directories on bento, so feel free to dig around. /a/asami/portbuild/3/errors error logs from latest 3-stable run /logs all logs from latest 3-stable run /packages packages from latest 3-stable run /bak/errors error logs from last complete 3-stable run /bak/logs all logs from last complete 3-stable run /bak/packages packages from last complete 3-stable run /4/errors error logs from latest 4-current run /logs all logs from latest 4-current run /packages packages from latest 4-current run /bak/errors error logs from last complete 4-current run /bak/logs all logs from last complete 4-current run /bak/packages packages from last complete 4-current run Basically, if the port shows up in packages, or it is in logs but not in errors, it built fine. (The errors directories are what you get from the web page.) I added a new port. Do I need to add it to the INDEX? No. The ports manager will regenerate the INDEX and commit it every few days. Are there any other files I'm not allowed to touch? Any file directly under ports/, or any file under a subdirectory that starts with an uppercase letter (Mk/, Tools/, etc.). In particular, the ports manager is very protective of ports/Mk/bsd.port*.mk so don't commit changes to those files unless you want to face his wra(i)th. Miscellaneous Questions Why are trivial or cosmetic changes to files on a vendor branch a bad idea? The RCS file format is quite braindead and certain operations to achieve things for CVS are hideously expensive for the repository. Making changes to files on a vendor branch, thereby pulling the file off that branch, is one example of this. Suppose you have a file which was first imported on a vendor branch, and was then re-imported three times (still on the vendor branch) as the vendor makes updates to the file. 1.1.1.1 vendor import 1.1.1.2 vendor import, +1000, -500 lines 1.1.1.3 vendor import, +2000, -500 lines 1.1.1.4 vendor import, +1000, -1000 lines Now suppose that one of the FreeBSD committers makes a one line change to this file, causing it to go to version 1.2. This causes it to leave the branch, resulting in 4,001 lines being added to the file's history, and 2,001 lines being deleted. This is because the 1.2 delta is stored relative to 1.1.1.1, not 1.1.1.4, and so the entire vendor history is duplicated in the 1.2 delta. Now, repeat this for 2000 files in a large directory, it adds up a lot. This is why we have such hands off policies for src/contrib and other things that track the vendor releases. This is why typo fixes in man pages and spelling corrections are so strongly discouraged for vendor code. How do I add a new file to a CVS branch? To add a file onto a branch, simply checkout or update to the branch you want to add to and then add the file using cvs add as you normally would. For example, if you wanted to MFC the file src/sys/alpha/include/smp.h from HEAD to RELENG_4 and it does not exist in RELENG_4 yet, you would use the following steps: MFC'ing a New File &prompt.user; cd sys/alpha/include &prompt.user; cvs update -rRELENG_4 cvs update: Updating . U clockvar.h U console.h ... &prompt.user; cvs update -kk -Ap smp.h > smp.h =================================================================== Checking out smp.h RCS: /usr/cvs/src/sys/alpha/include/smp.h,v VERS: 1.1 *************** &prompt.user; cvs add smp.h cvs add: scheduling file `smp.h' for addition on branch `RELENG_4' cvs add: use 'cvs commit' to add this file permanently &prompt.user; cvs commit
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml index ae5bc50a1e..960ecfc0c5 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml @@ -1,9546 +1,9495 @@ %man; %authors; ]> Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X, 3.X and 4.X The FreeBSD Documentation Project - $FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml,v 1.94 2000/09/22 18:40:00 marko Exp $ + $FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml,v 1.95 2000/09/22 23:41:25 ben Exp $ This is the FAQ for FreeBSD versions 2.X, 3.X, and 4.X. All entries are assumed to be relevant to FreeBSD 2.0.5 and later, unless otherwise noted. Any entries with a <XXX> are under construction. If you are interested in helping with this project, send email to the FreeBSD documentation project mailing list freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org. The latest version of this document is always available from the FreeBSD World Wide Web server. It may also be downloaded as one large HTML file with HTTP or as plain text, postscript, or PDF from the FreeBSD FTP server. You may also want to Search the FAQ. Preface Welcome to the FreeBSD 2.X-4.X FAQ! As is usual with Usenet FAQs, this document aims to cover the most frequently asked questions concerning the FreeBSD operating system (and of course answer them!). Although originally intended to reduce bandwidth and avoid the same old questions being asked over and over again, FAQs have become recognized as valuable information resources. Every effort has been made to make this FAQ as informative as possible; if you have any suggestions as to how it may be improved, please feel free to mail them to the &a.faq;. What is FreeBSD? Briefly, FreeBSD is a UN*X-like operating system for the i386 and Alpha/AXP platforms based on U.C. Berkeley's 4.4BSD-lite release. It is also based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's Net/2 to the i386, known as 386BSD, though very little of the 386BSD code remains. A fuller description of what FreeBSD is and how it can work for you may be found on the FreeBSD home page. FreeBSD is used by companies, Internet Service Providers, researchers, computer professionals, students and home users all over the world in their work, education and recreation. See some of them in the FreeBSD Gallery. For more detailed information on FreeBSD, please see the FreeBSD Handbook. What are the goals of FreeBSD? The goals of the FreeBSD Project are to provide software that may be used for any purpose and without strings attached. Many of us have a significant investment in the code (and project) and would certainly not mind a little financial compensation now and then, but we're definitely not prepared to insist on it. We believe that our first and foremost mission is to provide code to any and all comers, and for whatever purpose, so that the code gets the widest possible use and provides the widest possible benefit. This is, we believe, one of the most fundamental goals of Free Software and one that we enthusiastically support. That code in our source tree which falls under the GNU General Public License (GPL) or GNU Library General Public License (LGPL) comes with slightly more strings attached, though at least on the side of enforced access rather than the usual opposite. Due to the additional complexities that can evolve in the commercial use of GPL software, we do, however, endeavor to replace such software with submissions under the more relaxed BSD copyright whenever possible. Why is it called FreeBSD? It may be used free of charge, even by commercial users. Full source for the operating system is freely available, and the minimum possible restrictions have been placed upon its use, distribution and incorporation into other work (commercial or non-commercial). Anyone who has an improvement and/or bug fix is free to submit their code and have it added to the source tree (subject to one or two obvious provisos). For those of our readers whose first language is not English, it may be worth pointing out that the word free is being used in two ways here, one meaning at no cost, the other meaning you can do whatever you like. Apart from one or two things you cannot do with the FreeBSD code, for example pretending you wrote it, you really can do whatever you like with it. What is the latest version of FreeBSD? Version 4.1 is the latest stable version; it was released in July, 2000. This is also the latest release version. Briefly explained, -STABLE is aimed at the ISP or other corporate user who wants stability and a low change count over the wizzy new features of the latest -CURRENT snapshot. Releases can come from either branch, but you should only use -CURRENT if you're sure that you're prepared for its increased volatility (relative to -STABLE, that is). Releases are only made every few months. While many people stay more up-to-date with the FreeBSD sources (see the questions on FreeBSD-CURRENT and FreeBSD-STABLE) than that, doing so is more of a commitment, as the sources are a moving target. What is FreeBSD-CURRENT? FreeBSD-CURRENT is the development version of the operating system, which will in due course become 5.0-RELEASE. As such, it is really only of interest to developers working on the system and die-hard hobbyists. See the relevant section in the handbook for details on running -CURRENT. If you are not familiar with the operating system or are not capable of identifying the difference between a real problem and a temporary problem, you should not use FreeBSD-CURRENT. This branch sometimes evolves quite quickly and can be un-buildable for a number of days at a time. People that use FreeBSD-CURRENT are expected to be able to analyze any problems and only report them if they are deemed to be mistakes rather than glitches. Questions such as make world produces some error about groups on the -CURRENT mailing list are sometimes treated with contempt. Every day, snapshot releases are made based on the current state of the -CURRENT and -STABLE branches. Nowadays, distributions of the occasional snapshot are now being made available. The goals behind each snapshot release are: To test the latest version of the installation software. To give people who would like to run -CURRENT or -STABLE but who don't have the time and/or bandwidth to follow it on a day-to-day basis an easy way of bootstrapping it onto their systems. To preserve a fixed reference point for the code in question, just in case we break something really badly later. (Although CVS normally prevents anything horrible like this happening :) To ensure that any new features in need of testing have the greatest possible number of potential testers. No claims are made that any -CURRENT snapshot can be considered production quality for any purpose. If you want to run a stable and fully tested system, you will have to stick to full releases, or use the -STABLE snaphosts. Snapshot releases are directly available from ftp://current.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ for 5.0-CURRENT and releng4.FreeBSD.org for 4-STABLE snapshots. 3-STABLE snapshots are not being produced at the time of this writing (May 2000). Snapshots are generated, on the average, once a day for all actively developed branches. What is the FreeBSD-STABLE concept? Back when FreeBSD 2.0.5 was released, we decided to branch FreeBSD development into two parts. One branch was named -STABLE, with the intention that only well-tested bug fixes and small incremental enhancements would be made to it (for Internet Service Providers and other commercial enterprises for whom sudden shifts or experimental features are quite undesirable). The other branch was -CURRENT, which essentially has been one unbroken line leading towards 5.0-RELEASE (and beyond) since 2.0 was released. If a little ASCII art would help, this is how it looks: 2.0 | | | [2.1-STABLE] *BRANCH* 2.0.5 -> 2.1 -> 2.1.5 -> 2.1.6 -> 2.1.7.1 [2.1-STABLE ends] | (Mar 1997) | | | [2.2-STABLE] *BRANCH* 2.2.1 -> 2.2.2-RELEASE -> 2.2.5 -> 2.2.6 -> 2.2.7 -> 2.2.8 [end] | (Mar 1997) (Oct 97) (Apr 98) (Jul 98) (Dec 98) | | 3.0-SNAPs (started Q1 1997) | | 3.0-RELEASE (Oct 1998) | | [3.0-STABLE] *BRANCH* 3.1-RELEASE (Feb 1999) -> 3.2 -> 3.3 -> 3.4 -> 3.5 -> 3.5.1 | (May 1999) (Sep 1999) (Dec 1999) (June 2000) (July 2000) | | [4.0-STABLE] *BRANCH* 4.0 (Mar 2000) -> 4.1 -> ... future 4.x releases ... | | (Jul 2000) \|/ + [5.0-CURRENT continues] The -CURRENT branch is slowly progressing towards 5.0 and beyond, the previous 2.2-STABLE branch having been retired with the release of 2.2.8. 3-STABLE replaced it, with 3.5.1 (the final 3.X release) being released in July 2000. In May 2000 (even though 3.5 came after that), the 3-STABLE branch was more or less replaced by the 4-STABLE branch. 4.1-RELEASE was released in July 2000. 4-STABLE is the actively developed -STABLE branch, although some bugfixes (mostly security-related) are still being committed to 3-STABLE. It is expected that the 3.X branch will be officially obsoleted some time in summer 2000. 5.0-CURRENT is now the current branch, with the no release date planed. When are FreeBSD releases made? As a general principle, the FreeBSD core team only release a new version of FreeBSD when they believe that there are sufficient new features and/or bug fixes to justify one, and are satisfied that the changes made have settled down sufficiently to avoid compromising the stability of the release. Many users regard this caution as one of the best things about FreeBSD, although it can be a little frustrating when waiting for all the latest goodies to become available... Releases are made about every 4 months on average. For people needing (or wanting) a little more excitement, binary snapshots are made every day... see above. Is FreeBSD only available for PCs ? Since 3.x, FreeBSD has run on the DEC Alpha as well as the x86 architecture. Some interest has also been expressed in a SPARC port, but details on this project are not yet clear. If your machine has a different architecture and you need something right now, we suggest you look at NetBSD or OpenBSD. Who is responsible for FreeBSD? The key decisions concerning the FreeBSD project, such as the overall direction of the project and who is allowed to add code to the source tree, are made by a core team of some 15 people. There is a much larger team of about 200 committers who are authorized to make changes directly to the FreeBSD source tree. However, most non-trivial changes are discussed in advance in the mailing lists, and there are no restrictions on who may take part in the discussion. Where can I get FreeBSD? Every significant release of FreeBSD is available via anonymous ftp from the FreeBSD FTP site: For the current 3.X-STABLE release, 3.4-RELEASE, see the 3.4-RELEASE directory. The current 4-STABLE release, 4.1-RELEASE can be found in the 4.1-RELEASE directory. 4.X snapshots are usually made once a day. 5.0 Snapshot releases are made once a day for the -CURRENT branch, these being of service purely to bleeding-edge testers and developers. FreeBSD is also available via CDROM, from the following place(s):
Walnut Creek CDROM 4041 Pike Lane, Suite F Concord, CA 94520 USA Orders: +1 800 786-9907 Questions: +1 925 674-0783 FAX: +1 925 674-0821 email: WC Orders address WWW: WC Home page
In Australia, you may find it at:
Advanced Multimedia Distributors Factory 1/1 Ovata Drive Tullamarine, Melbourne Victoria Australia Voice: +61 3 9338 6777 CDROM Support BBS 17 Irvine St Peppermint Grove, WA 6011 Voice: +61 9 385-3793 Fax: +61 9 385-2360
And in the UK:
The Public Domain & Shareware Library Winscombe House, Beacon Rd Crowborough Sussex. TN6 1UL Voice: +44 1892 663-298 Fax: +44 1892 667-473
 Where do I find info on the FreeBSD mailing lists? You can find full information in the Handbook entry on mailing-lists. Where do I find the FreeBSD Y2K info? You can find full information in the FreeBSD Y2K page. What FreeBSD news groups are available? You can find full information in the Handbook entry on newsgroups. Are there FreeBSD IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels? Yes, most major IRC networks host a FreeBSD chat channel: Channel #FreeBSD on EFNet is a FreeBSD forum, but don't go there for tech support or to try and get folks there to help you avoid the pain of reading man pages or doing your own research. It is a chat channel, first and foremost, and topics there are just as likely to involve sex, sports or nuclear weapons as they are FreeBSD. You Have Been Warned! Available at server irc.chat.org. Channel #FreeBSDhelp on EFNet is a channel dedicated to helping FreeBSD users. They are much more sympathetic to questions then #FreeBSD is. Channel #FreeBSD on DALNET is available at irc.dal.net in the US and irc.eu.dal.net in Europe. Channel #FreeBSD on UNDERNET is available at us.undernet.org in the US and eu.undernet.org in Europe. Since it is a help channel, be prepared to read the documents you are referred to. Channel #FreeBSD on HybNet is available at irc.FreeBSD.org. This channel is a help channel. Each of these channels are distinct and are not connected to each other. Their chat styles also differ, so you may need to try each to find one suited to your chat style. As with *all* types of IRC traffic, if you're easily offended or can't deal with lots of young people (and more than a few older ones) doing the verbal equivalent of jello wrestling, don't even bother with it. Books on FreeBSD There is a FreeBSD Documentation Project which you may contact (or even better, join) at the freebsd-doc mailing list: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org. This list is for discussion of the FreeBSD documentation. For actual questions about FreeBSD, there is the freebsd-questions mailing list: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org. A FreeBSD handbook is available, and can be found as: the FreeBSD Handbook. Note that this is a work in progress; some parts may be incomplete or out-of-date. The definitive printed guide on FreeBSD is The Complete FreeBSD, written by Greg Lehey and published by Walnut Creek CDROM Books. Now in its second edition, the book contains 1,750 pages of install & system administration guidance, program setup help, and manual pages. The book (and current FreeBSD release) can be ordered from Walnut Creek, CheapBytes, or at your favorite bookstore. The ISBN is 1-57176-227-2. Since FreeBSD is based upon Berkeley 4.4BSD-Lite2, most of the 4.4BSD manuals are applicable to FreeBSD. O'Reilly and Associates publishes the following manuals: 4.4BSD System Manager's Manual By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition June 1994, 804 pages ISBN: 1-56592-080-5 4.4BSD User's Reference Manual By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition June 1994, 905 pages ISBN: 1-56592-075-9 4.4BSD User's Supplementary Documents By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition July 1994, 712 pages ISBN: 1-56592-076-7 4.4BSD Programmer's Reference Manual By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition June 1994, 886 pages ISBN: 1-56592-078-3 4.4BSD Programmer's Supplementary Documents By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition July 1994, 596 pages ISBN: 1-56592-079-1 A description of these can be found via WWW as: 4.4BSD books description. Due to poor sales, however, these manuals may be hard to get a hold of. For a more in-depth look at the 4.4BSD kernel organization, you can't go wrong with: McKusick, Marshall Kirk, Keith Bostic, Michael J Karels, and John Quarterman. The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System. Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley, 1996. ISBN 0-201-54979-4 A good book on system administration is: Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass & Trent R. Hein, Unix System Administration Handbook, Prentice-Hall, 1995 ISBN: 0-13-151051-7 Make sure you get the second edition, with a red cover, instead of the first edition. This book covers the basics, as well as TCP/IP, DNS, NFS, SLIP/PPP, sendmail, INN/NNTP, printing, etc.. It's expensive (approx. US$45-$55), but worth it. It also includes a CDROM with the sources for various tools; most of these, however, are also on the FreeBSD 2.2.6R CDROM (and the FreeBSD CDROM often has newer versions). How do I access your Problem Report database? The Problem Report database of all user change requests may be queried (or submitted to) by using our web-based PR submission and query interfaces. The send-pr(1) command can also be used to submit problem reports and change requests via electronic mail. Is the documentation available in other formats, such as plain text (ASCII), or Postscript? Yes. The documentation is available in a number of different formats and compression schemes on the FreeBSD FTP site, in the /pub/FreeBSD/doc/ directory. The documentation is categorised in a number of different ways. These include: The document's name, such as faq, or handbook. The document's language and encoding. These are based on the locale names you will find under /usr/share/locale on your FreeBSD system. The current languages and encodings that we have for documentation are as follows: Name Meaning en_US.ISO_8859-1 US English es_ES.ISO_8859-1 Spanish fr_FR.ISO_8859-1 French ja_JP.eucJP Japanese (EUC encoding) ru_RU.KOI8-R Russian zh_TW.Big5 Chinese (Big5 encoding) Some documents may not be available in all languages. The document's format. We produce the documentation in a number of different output formats to try and make it as flexible as possible. The current formats are; Format Meaning html-split A collection of small, linked, HTML files. html One large HTML file containing the entire document pdb Palm Pilot database format, for use with the iSilo reader. pdf Adobe's Portable Document Format ps Postscript rtf Microsoft's Rich Text Format Page numbers are not automatically updated when loading this format in to Word. Press CTRL+A, CTRL+END, F9 after loading the document, to update the page numbers. txt Plain text The compression and packaging scheme. There are three of these currently in use. Where the format is html-split, the files are bundled up using &man.tar.1;. The resulting .tar file is then compressed using the compression schemes detailed in the next point. All the other formats generate one file, called book.format (i.e., book.pdb, book.html, and so on). These files are then compressed using three compression schemes. Scheme Description zip The Zip format. If you want to uncompress this on FreeBSD you will need to install the archivers/unzip port first. gz The GNU Zip format. Use &man.gunzip.1; to uncompress these files, which is part of FreeBSD. bz2 The BZip2 format. Less widespread than the others, but generally gives smaller files. Install the archivers/bzip2 port to uncompress these files. So the Postscript version of the Handbook, compressed using BZip2 will be stored in a file called book.sgml.bz2 in the handbook/ directory. The formatted documentation is also available as a FreeBSD package, of which more later. After choosing the format and compression mechanism that you want to download, you must then decide whether or not you want to download the document as a FreeBSD package. The advantage of downloading and installing the package is that the documentation can then be managed using the normal FreeBSD package management comments, such as &man.pkg.add.1; and &man.pkg.delete.1;. If you decide to download and install the package then you must know the filename to download. The documentation-as-packages files are stored in a directory called packages. Each package file looks like document-name.lang.encoding.format.tgz. For example, the FAQ, in English, formatted as PDF, is in the package called faq.en_US.ISO_8859-1.pdf.tgz. Knowing this, you can use the following command to install the English PDF FAQ package. &prompt.root; pkg_add ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/packages/faq.en_US.ISO_8859-1.pdf.tgz Having done that, you can use &man.pkg.info.1; to determine where the file has been installed. &prompt.root; pkg_info -f faq.en_US.ISO_8859-1.pdf Information for faq.en_US.ISO_8859-1.pdf: Packing list: Package name: faq.en_US.ISO_8859-1.pdf CWD to /usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq File: book.pdf CWD to . File: +COMMENT (ignored) File: +DESC (ignored) As you can see, book.pdf will have been installed in to /usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq. If you do not want to use the packages then you will have to download the compressed files yourself, uncompress them, and then copy the appropriate documents in to place. For example, the split HTML version of the FAQ, compressed using &man.gzip.1;, can be found in the en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq/book.html-split.tar.gz file. To download and uncompress that file you would have to do this. &prompt.root; fetch ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq/book.html-split.tar.gz &prompt.root; gzip -d book.html-split.tar.gz &prompt.root; tar xvf book.html-split.tar You will be left with a collection of .html files. The main one is called index.html, which will contain the table of contents, introductory material, and links to the other parts of the document. You can then copy or move these to their final location as necessary. I'd like to become a FreeBSD Web mirror! Certainly! There are multiple ways to mirror the Web pages. Using CVSup: You can retrieve the formatted files using CVSup, and connecting to a CVSup server. To retrieve the webpages, please look at the example supfile, which can be found in /usr/share/examples/cvsup/www-supfile. Using ftp mirror: You can download the FTP server's copy of the web site sources using your favorite ftp mirror tool. Keep in mind that you have to build these sources before publishing them. Simply start at ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/www. I'd like to translate the documentation into Friesian. Well, we can't pay, but we might arrange a free CD or T-shirt and a Contributor's Handbook entry if you submit a translation of the documentation. Before you begin translating please contact the freebsd-doc mailing list at freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org; you may find somebody to help with the translation effort. You may also find out there is already a team translating the docs into your chosen language, who surely wouldn't turn down your help. Other sources of information. The following newsgroups contain pertinent discussion for FreeBSD users: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.announce (moderated) comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc comp.unix.bsd.misc Web resources: The FreeBSD Home Page. If you have a laptop, be sure and see Tatsumi Hosokawa's Mobile Computing page in Japan. For information on SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessing), please see the SMP support page. For information on FreeBSD multimedia applications, please see the multimedia page. If you're interested specifically in the Bt848 video capture chip, then follow that link. The FreeBSD handbook also has a fairly complete bibliography section which is worth reading if you're looking for actual books to buy. Installation Which file do I download to get FreeBSD? Prior to release 3.1, you only needed one floppy image to install FreeBSD, namely floppies/boot.flp. However, since release 3.1 the Project has added base support for a wide variety of hardware which needed more space, and thus for 3.x and 4.x we now use two floppy images, namely floppies/kernel.flp and floppies/mfsroot.flp. These images need to be copied onto floppies by tools like fdimage or &man.dd.1;. If you need to download the distributions yourself (for a DOS filesystem install, for instance), below are some recommendations for distributions to grab: bin/ manpages/ compat*/ doc/ src/ssys.* Full instructions on this procedure and a little bit more about installation issues in general can be found in the Handbook entry on installing FreeBSD. Help! The boot floppy image will not fit on a single floppy! A 3.5 inch (1.44MB) floppy can accomodate 1474560 bytes of data. The boot image is exactly 1474560 bytes in size. Common mistakes when preparing the boot floppy are: Not downloading the floppy image in binary mode when using FTP. Some FTP clients default their transfer mode to ascii and attempt to change any end-of-line characters received to match the conventions used by the client's system. This will almost invariably corrupt the boot image. Check the size of the downloaded boot image: if it is not exactly that on the server, then the download process is suspect. To workaround: type binary at the FTP command prompt after getting connected to the server and before starting the download of the image. Using the DOS copy command (or equivalent GUI tool) to transfer the boot image to floppy. Programs like copy will not work as the boot image has been created to be booted into directly. The image has the complete content of the floppy, track for track, and is not meant to be placed on the floppy as a regular file. You have to transfer it to the floppy raw, using the low-level tools (e.g. fdimage or rawrite) described in the installation guide to FreeBSD. Where are the instructions for installing FreeBSD? Installation instructions can be found in the Handbook entry on installing FreeBSD. What do I need in order to run FreeBSD? You'll need a 386 or better PC, with 5 MB or more of RAM and at least 60 MB of hard disk space. It can run with a low end MDA graphics card but to run X11R6, a VGA or better video card is needed. See also the section on I have only 4 MB of RAM. Can I install FreeBSD? FreeBSD 2.1.7 was the last version of FreeBSD that could be installed on a 4MB system. Newer versions of FreeBSD, like 2.2, need at least 5MB to install on a new system. All versions of FreeBSD, including 3.0, will run in 4MB of RAM, they just can't run the installation program in 4MB. You can add extra memory for the install process, if you like, and then after the system is up and running, go back to 4MB. Or you could always just swap your disk into a system which has >4MB, install onto it and then swap it back. There are also situations in which FreeBSD 2.1.7 will not install in 4 MB. To be exact: it does not install with 640 kB base + 3 MB extended memory. If your motherboard can remap some of the lost memory out of the 640kB to 1MB region, then you may still be able to get FreeBSD 2.1.7 up. Try to go into your BIOS setup and look for a remap option. Enable it. You may also have to disable ROM shadowing. It may be easier to get 4 more MB just for the install. Build a custom kernel with only the options you need and then get the 4 MB out again. You may also install 2.0.5 and then upgrade your system to 2.1.7 with the upgrade option of the 2.1.7 installation program. After the installation, if you build a custom kernel, it will run in 4 MB. Someone has even succeeded in booting with 2 MB (the system was almost unusable though :-)) How can I make my own custom install floppy? Currently there's no way to just make a custom install floppy. You have to cut a whole new release, which will include your install floppy. There's some code in /usr/src/release/floppies/Makefile that's supposed to let you just make those floppies, but it's not really gelled yet. To make a custom release, follow the instructions here. Can I have more than one operating system on my PC? Have a look at The multi-OS page. Can Windows 95/98 co-exist with FreeBSD? Install Windows 95/98 first, after that FreeBSD. FreeBSD's boot manager will then manage to boot Win95/98 and FreeBSD. If you install Windows 95/98 second, it will boorishly overwrite your boot manager without even asking. If that happens, see the next section. Windows 95/98 killed my boot manager! How do I get it back? You can reinstall the boot manager FreeBSD comes with in one of three ways: Running DOS, go into the tools/ directory of your FreeBSD distribution and look for bootinst.exe. You run it like so: ...\TOOLS> bootinst.exe boot.bin and the boot manager will be reinstalled. Boot the FreeBSD boot floppy again and go to the Custom installation menu item. Choose Partition. Select the drive which used to contain your boot manager (likely the first one) and when you come to the partition editor for it, as the very first thing (e.g. do not make any changes) select (W)rite. This will ask for confirmation, say yes, and when you get the Boot Manager selection prompt, be sure to select Boot Manager. This will re-write the boot manager to disk. Now quit out of the installation menu and reboot off the hard disk as normal. Boot the FreeBSD boot floppy (or CD-ROM) and choose the Fixit menu item. Select either the Fixit floppy or CD-ROM #2 (the live file system option) as appropriate and enter the fixit shell. Then execute the following command: Fixit# fdisk -B -b /boot/boot0 bootdevice substituting bootdevice for your real boot device such as ad0 (first IDE disk), ad4 (first IDE disk on auxiliary controller), da0 (first SCSI disk), etc. Can I install on a disk with bad blocks? Prior to 3.0, FreeBSD included a utility known as bad144, which automatically remapped bad blocks. Because modern IDE drives perform this function themselves, bad144 has been removed from the FreeBSD source tree. If you wish to install FreeBSD 3.0 or later, we strongly suggest you purchase a newer disk drive. If you do not wish to do this, you must run FreeBSD 2.x. If you are seeing bad block errors with a modern IDE drive, chances are the drive is going to die very soon (the drive's internal remapping functions are no longer sufficient to fix the bad blocks, which means the disk is heavily corrupted); we suggest you by a new hard drive. If you have a SCSI drive with bad blocks, see this answer. Strange things happen when I boot the install floppy! If you're seeing things like the machine grinding to a halt or spontaneously rebooting when you try to boot the install floppy, here are three questions to ask yourself:- Did you use a new, freshly-formatted, error-free floppy (preferably a brand-new one straight out of the box, as opposed to the magazine coverdisk that's been lying under the bed for the last three years)? Did you download the floppy image in binary (or image) mode? (don't be embarrassed, even the best of us have accidentally downloaded a binary file in ASCII mode at least once!) If you're using Windows95 or Win98 did you run fdimage or rawrite in pure DOS mode? These OS's can interfere with programs that write directly to hardware, which the disk creation program does; even running it inside a DOS shell in the GUI can cause this problem. There have also been reports of Netscape causing problems when downloading the boot floppy, so it's probably best to use a different FTP client if you can. I booted from my ATAPI CD-ROM, but the install program says no CD-ROM is found. Where did it go? The usual cause of this problem is a mis-configured CD-ROM drive. Many PCs now ship with the CD-ROM as the slave device on the secondary IDE controller, with no master device on that controller. This is illegal according to the ATAPI specification, but Windows plays fast and loose with the specification, and the BIOS ignores it when booting. This is why the BIOS was able to see the CD-ROM to boot from it, but why FreeBSD can not see it to complete the install. Reconfigure your system so that the CD-ROM is either the master device on the IDE controller it is attached to, or make sure that it is the slave on an IDE controller that also has a master device. Help! I can't install from tape! If you are installing 2.1.7R from tape, you must create the tape using a tar blocksize of 10 (5120 bytes). The default tar blocksize is 20 (10240 bytes), and tapes created using this default size cannot be used to install 2.1.7R; with these tapes, you will get an error that complains about the record size being too big. Connect two FreeBSD boxes over a parallel line (PLIP) Get a laplink cable. Make sure both computer have a kernel with lpt driver support. &prompt.root; dmesg | grep lp lpt0 at 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa lpt0: Interrupt-driven lp0: TCP/IP capable interface Plug in the laplink cable into the parallel interface. Configure the network interface parameters for lp0 on both sites as root. For example, if you want connect the host max with moritz max <-----> moritz IP Address 10.0.0.1 10.0.0.2 on max start &prompt.root; ifconfig lp0 10.0.0.1 10.0.0.2 on moritz start &prompt.root; ifconfig lp0 10.0.0.2 10.0.0.1 Thats all! Please read also the manpages &man.lp.4; and &man.lpt.4; . You should also add the hosts to /etc/hosts. 127.0.0.1 localhost.my.domain localhost 10.0.0.1 max.my.domain max 10.0.0.2 moritz.my.domain To check if it works do: on max: &prompt.root; ifconfig lp0 lp0: flags=8851<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet 10.0.0.1 --> 10.0.0.2 netmask 0xff000000 &prompt.root; netstat -r Routing tables Internet: Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif Expire moritz max UH 4 127592 lp0 &prompt.root; ping -c 4 moritz PING moritz (10.0.0.2): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=2.774 ms 64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=2.530 ms 64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=2.556 ms 64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=2.714 ms --- moritz ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 2.530/2.643/2.774/0.103 ms Can I install on my laptop over PLIP (Parallel Line IP)? Connect the two computers using a Laplink parallel cable to use this feature: Wiring a parallel cable for networking A-name A-End B-End Descr. Post/Bit DATA0 -ERROR 2 15 15 2 Data 0/0x01 1/0x08 DATA1 +SLCT 3 13 13 3 Data 0/0x02 1/0x10 DATA2 +PE 4 12 12 4 Data 0/0x04 1/0x20 DATA3 -ACK 5 10 10 5 Strobe 0/0x08 1/0x40 DATA4 BUSY 6 11 11 6 Data 0/0x10 1/0x80 GND 18-25 18-25 GND -
See also this note on the Mobile Computing page. Which geometry should I use for a disk drive? (By the geometry of a disk, we mean the number of cylinders, heads and sectors/track on a disk - I'll refer to this as C/H/S for convenience. This is how the PC's BIOS works out which area on a disk to read/write from). This seems to cause a lot of confusion for some reason. First of all, the physical geometry of a SCSI drive is totally irrelevant, as FreeBSD works in term of disk blocks. In fact, there is no such thing as the physical geometry, as the sector density varies across the disk - what manufacturers claim is the quote physical geometry is usually the geometry that they've worked out results in the least wasted space. For IDE disks, FreeBSD does work in terms of C/H/S, but all modern drives will convert this into block references internally as well. All that matters is the logical geometry - the answer that the BIOS gets when it asks what is your geometry? and then uses to access the disk. As FreeBSD uses the BIOS when booting, it's very important to get this right. In particular, if you have more than one operating system on a disk, they must all agree on the geometry, otherwise you will have serious problems booting! For SCSI disks, the geometry to use depends on whether extended translation support is turned on in your controller (this is often referred to as support for DOS disks >1GB or something similar). If it's turned off, then use N cylinders, 64 heads and 32 sectors/track, where N is the capacity of the disk in MB. For example, a 2GB disk should pretend to have 2048 cylinders, 64 heads and 32 sectors/track. If it is turned on (it's often supplied this way to get around certain limitations in MSDOS) and the disk capacity is more than 1GB, use M cylinders, 63 sectors per track (*not* 64), and 255 heads, where 'M' is the disk capacity in MB divided by 7.844238 (!). So our example 2GB drive would have 261 cylinders, 63 sectors per track and 255 heads. If you are not sure about this, or FreeBSD fails to detect the geometry correctly during installation, the simplest way around this is usually to create a small DOS partition on the disk. The correct geometry should then be detected (and you can always remove the DOS partition in the partition editor if you don't want to keep it, or leave it around for programming network cards and the like). Alternatively, there is a freely available utility distributed with FreeBSD called pfdisk.exe (located in the tools subdirectory on the FreeBSD CDROM or on the various FreeBSD ftp sites) which can be used to work out what geometry the other operating systems on the disk are using. You can then enter this geometry in the partition editor. Any restrictions on how I divide the disk up? Yes. You must make sure that your root partition is below 1024 cylinders so the BIOS can boot the kernel from it. (Note that this is a limitation in the PC's BIOS, not FreeBSD). For a SCSI drive, this will normally imply that the root partition will be in the first 1024MB (or in the first 4096MB if extended translation is turned on - see previous question). For IDE, the corresponding figure is 504MB. What about disk managers? Or, I have a large drive! FreeBSD recognizes the Ontrack Disk Manager and makes allowances for it. Other disk managers are not supported. If you just want to use the disk with FreeBSD you don't need a disk manager. Just configure the disk for as much space as the BIOS can deal with (usually 504 megabytes), and FreeBSD should figure out how much space you really have. If you're using an old disk with an MFM controller, you may need to explicitly tell FreeBSD how many cylinders to use. If you want to use the disk with FreeBSD and another operating system, you may be able to do without a disk manager: just make sure the the FreeBSD boot partition and the slice for the other operating system are in the first 1024 cylinders. If you're reasonably careful, a 20 megabyte boot partition should be plenty. When I boot FreeBSD I get Missing Operating System This is classically a case of FreeBSD and DOS or some other OS conflicting over their ideas of disk geometry. You will have to reinstall FreeBSD, but obeying the instructions given above will almost always get you going. I can't get past the boot manager's F? prompt. This is another symptom of the problem described in the preceding question. Your BIOS geometry and FreeBSD geometry settings do not agree! If your controller or BIOS supports cylinder translation (often marked as >1GB drive support), try toggling its setting and reinstalling FreeBSD. Do I need to install the complete sources? In general, no. However, we would strongly recommend that you install, at a minimum, the base source kit, which includes several of the files mentioned here, and the sys (kernel) source kit, which includes sources for the kernel. There is nothing in the system which requires the presence of the sources to operate, however, except for the kernel-configuration program &man.config.8;. With the exception of the kernel sources, our build structure is set up so that you can read-only mount the sources from elsewhere via NFS and still be able to make new binaries. (Because of the kernel-source restriction, we recommend that you not mount this on /usr/src directly, but rather in some other location with appropriate symbolic links to duplicate the top-level structure of the source tree.) Having the sources on-line and knowing how to build a system with them will make it much easier for you to upgrade to future releases of FreeBSD. To actually select a subset of the sources, use the Custom menu item when you are in the Distributions menu of the system installation tool. Do I need to build a kernel? Building a new kernel was originally pretty much a required step in a FreeBSD installation, but more recent releases have benefited from the introduction of a much friendlier kernel configuration tool. When at the FreeBSD boot prompt (boot:), use the flag and you will be dropped into a visual configuration screen which allows you to configure the kernel's settings for most common ISA cards. It's still recommended that you eventually build a new kernel containing just the drivers that you need, just to save a bit of RAM, but it's no longer a strict requirement for most systems. - -I live outside the US. Can I use DES encryption? - -If it is not absolutely imperative that you use DES style -encryption, you can use FreeBSD's default encryption for even -better security, and with no export restrictions. FreeBSD -2.0's password default scrambler is now MD5-based, and is -more CPU-intensive to crack with an automated password cracker -than DES, and allows longer passwords as well. The only reason -for not using the MD5-based crypt today would be to use the -the same password entries on FreeBSD and non-FreeBSD systems. - -Since the DES encryption algorithm cannot legally be exported -from the US, non-US users should not download this software (as -part of the secrdist from US FTP sites. - -There is however a replacement libcrypt available, based on -sources written in Australia by David Burren. This code is now -available on some non-US FreeBSD mirror sites. Sources for the -unencumbered libcrypt, and binaries of the programs which use it, -can be obtained from the following FTP sites: - - - -South Africa - -ftp://ftp.internat.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/, -ftp://storm.sea.uct.ac.za/pub/FreeBSD/ - - - - - - -Brazil - - -ftp://ftp.iqm.unicamp.br/pub/FreeBSD/ - - - - - - -Finland - - -ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/unix/FreeBSD/eurocrypt/ - - - - - - -The non-US securedist can be used as a direct replacement -for the encumbered US securedist. This securedist -package is installed the same way as the US package (see -installation notes for details). If you are going to install DES -encryption, you should do so as soon as possible, before -installing other software. - -Non-US users should please not download any encryption software -from the USA. This can get the maintainers of the sites from -which the software is downloaded into severe legal difficulties. - -A non-US distribution of Kerberos is also being developed, and -current versions can generally be obtained by anonymous FTP from -braae.ru.ac.za. - -There is also a mailing list for the -discussion of non-US encryption software. For more information, send -an email message with a single line saying help in the body -of your message to majordomo@braae.ru.ac.za. + + + Should I use DES passwords, or MD5, and how do I specify + which form my users receive? + - + + The default password format on FreeBSD is to use + MD5-based passwords. These are believed to + be more secure than the traditional UNIX password format, which + used a scheme based on the DES algorithm. + DES passwords are still available if you need to share your + password file with legacy operating systems which still use the + less secure password format (they are available if you choose to + install the crypto distribution in sysinstall, or + by installing the crypto sources if building from source). Which + password format to use for new passwords is controlled by the + passwd_format login capability in + /etc/login.conf, which takes values of either + des (if available) or md5. See the + login.conf(5) manpage for more information about login + capabilities. + + The boot floppy starts but hangs at the Probing Devices... screen. If you have a IDE Zip or Jaz drive installed, remove it and try again. The boot floppy can get confused by the drives. After the system is installed you can reconnect the drive. Hopefully this will be fixed in a later release. I get a panic: cant mount root error when rebooting the system after installation. This error comes from confusion between the boot block's and the kernel's understanding of the disk devices. The error usually manifests on two-disk IDE systems, with the hard disks arranged as the master or single device on separate IDE controllers, with FreeBSD installed on the secondary IDE controller. The boot blocks think the system is installed on wd1 (the second BIOS disk) while the kernel assigns the first disk on the secondary controller device wd2. After the device probing, the kernel tries to mount what the boot blocks think is the boot disk, wd1, while it is really wd2, and fails. To fix the problem, do one of the following: For FreeBSD 3.3 and later, reboot the system and hit Enter at the Booting kernel in 10 seconds; hit [Enter] to interrupt prompt. This will drop you into the boot loader. Then type set root_disk_unit="disk_number". disk_number will be 0 if FreeBSD is installed on the master drive on the first IDE controller, 1 if it is installed on the slave on the first IDE controller, 2 if it is installed on the master of the second IDE controller, and 3 if it is installed on the slave of the second IDE controller. Then type boot, and your system should boot correctly. To make this change permanent (ie so you don't have to do this everytime you reboot or turn on your FreeBSD machine), put the line root_disk_unit="disk_number" in /boot/loader.conf.local. If using FreeBSD 3.2 or earlier, at the Boot: prompt, enter 1:wd(2,a)kernel and press Enter. If the system starts, then run the command echo "1:wd(2,a)kernel" > /boot.config to make it the default boot string. Move the FreeBSD disk onto the primary IDE controller, so the hard disks are consecutive. Rebuild your kernel, modify the wd configuration lines to read: controller wdc0 at isa? port "IO_WD1" bio irq 14 vector wdintr disk wd0 at wdc0 drive 0 # disk wd1 at wdc0 drive 1 # comment out this line controller wdc1 at isa? port "IO_WD2" bio irq 15 vector wdintr disk wd1 at wdc1 drive 0 # change from wd2 to wd1 disk wd2 at wdc1 drive 1 # change from wd3 to wd2 Install the new kernel. If you moved your disks and wish to restore the previous configuration, replace the disks in the desired configuration and reboot. Your system should boot successfully. What are the limits for memory? For memory, the limit is 4 gigabytes. This configuration has been tested, see wcarchive's configuration for more details. If you plan to install this much memory into a machine, you need to be careful. You'll probably want to use ECC memory and to reduce capacitive loading use 9 chip memory modules vice 18 chip memory modules. What are the limits for ffs filesystems? For ffs filesystems, the maximum theoretical limit is 8 terabytes (2G blocks), or 16TB for the default block size of 8K. In practice, there is a soft limit of 1 terabyte, but with modifications filesystems with 4 terabytes are possible (and exist). The maximum size of a single ffs file is approximately 1G blocks (4TB) if the block size is 4K. Maximum file sizes fs block size 2.2.7-stable 3.0-current works should work 4K 4T-1 4T-1 4T-1 4+t 8K 32+G 8T-1 32+G 32T-1 16K 128+G 16T-1 128+G 32T-1 32K 512+G 32T-1 512+G 64T-1 64K 2048+G 64T-1 2048+G 128T-1
When the fs block size is 4K, triple indirect blocks work and everything should be limited by the maximum fs block number that can be represented using triple indirect blocks (approx. 1K^3 + 1K^2 + 1K), but everything is limited by a (wrong) limit of 1G-1 on fs block numbers. The limit on fs block numbers should be 2G-1. There are some bugs for fs block numbers near 2G-1, but such block numbers are unreachable when the fs block size is 4K. For block sizes of 8K and larger, everything should be limited by the 2G-1 limit on fs block numbers, but is actually limited by the 1G-1 limit on fs block numbers, except under -STABLE triple indirect blocks are unreachable, so the limit is the maxiumum fs block number that can be represented using double indirect blocks (approx. (blocksize/4)^2 + (blocksize/4)), and under -CURRENT exceeding this limit may cause problems. Using the correct limit of 2G-1 blocks does cause problems. How can I put 1TB files on my floppy? I keep several virtual ones on floppies :-). The maxiumum file size is not closely related to the maximum disk size. The maximum disk size is 1TB. It is a feature that the file size can be larger than the disk size. The following example creates a file of size 8T-1 using a whole 32K of disk space (3 indirect blocks and 1 data block) on a small root partition. The dd command requires a dd that works with large files. &prompt.user; cat foo df . dd if=/dev/zero of=z bs=1 seek=`echo 2^43 - 2 | bc` count=1 ls -l z du z df . &prompt.user; sh foo Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/da0a 64479 27702 31619 47% / 1+0 records in 1+0 records out 1 bytes transferred in 0.000187 secs (5346 bytes/sec) -rw-r--r-- 1 bde bin 8796093022207 Sep 7 16:04 z 32 z Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/da0a 64479 27734 31587 47% / Bruce Evans, September 1998 I compiled a new kernel and now I get the error message archsw.readin.failed when booting. You can boot by specifying the kernel directly at the second stage, pressing any key when the | shows up before loader is started. More specifically, you have upgraded the source for your kernel, and installed a new kernel builtin from them without making world. This is not supported. Make world. How do I upgrade from 3.X -> 4.X? We strongly recommend that you use binary snapshots to do this. 4-STABLE snapshots are available at releng4.FreeBSD.org. If you wish to upgrade using source, please see the FreeBSD Handbook for more information. Upgrading via source is never recommended for new users, and upgading from 3.X -> 4.X is even less so; make sure you have read the instructions carefully before attempting to upgrade via source this! Hardware compatibility What kind of hard drives does FreeBSD support? FreeBSD supports EIDE and SCSI drives (with a compatible controller; see the next section), and all drives using the original Western Digital interface (MFM, RLL, ESDI, and of course IDE). A few ESDI controllers that use proprietary interfaces may not work: stick to WD1002/3/6/7 interfaces and clones. Which SCSI controllers are supported? See the complete list in the Handbook. Which CD-ROM drives are supported by FreeBSD? Any SCSI drive connected to a supported controller is supported. The following proprietary CD-ROM interfaces are also supported: Mitsumi LU002 (8bit), LU005 (16bit) and FX001D (16bit 2x Speed). Sony CDU 31/33A Sound Blaster Non-SCSI CD-ROM Matsushita/Panasonic CD-ROM ATAPI compatible IDE CD-ROMs All non-SCSI cards are known to be extremely slow compared to SCSI drives, and some ATAPI CDROMs may not work. As of 2.2 the FreeBSD CDROM from Walnut Creek supports booting directly from the CD. Does FreeBSD support ZIP drives? FreeBSD supports the SCSI ZIP drive out of the box, of course. The ZIP drive can only be set to run at SCSI target IDs 5 or 6, but if your SCSI host adapter's BIOS supports it you can even boot from it. I don't know which host adapters let you boot from targets other than 0 or 1... look at your docs (and let me know if it works out for you). ATAPI (IDE) Zip drives are supported in FreeBSD 2.2.6 and later releases. FreeBSD has contained support for Parallel Port Zip Drives since version 3.0. If you are using a sufficiently up to date version, then you should check that your kernel contains the scbus0, da0, ppbus0, and vp0 drivers (the GENERIC kernel contains everything except vp0). With all these drivers present, the Parallel Port drive should be available as /dev/da0s4. Disks can be mounted using mount /dev/da0s4 /mnt OR (for dos disks) mount_msdos /dev/da0s4 /mnt as appropriate. Also check out this note on removable drives, and this note on formatting. Does FreeBSD support JAZ, EZ and other removable drives? Apart from the IDE version of the EZ drive, these are all SCSI devices, so the should all look like SCSI disks to FreeBSD, and the IDE EZ should look like an IDE drive. I'm not sure how well FreeBSD supports changing the media out while running. You will of course need to dismount the drive before swapping media, and make sure that any external units are powered on when you boot the system so FreeBSD can see them. See this note on formatting. Which multi-port serial cards are supported by FreeBSD? There is a list of these in the Miscellaneous devices section of the handbook. Some unnamed clone cards have also been known to work, especially those that claim to be AST compatible. Check the sio man page to get more information on configuring such cards. I have a USB keyboard. Does FreeBSD support it? USB device support was added to FreeBSD 3.1. However, it is still in preliminary state and may not always work as of version 3.2. If you want to experiment with the USB mouse support, follow the procedure described below. Use FreeBSD 3.2 or later. Add the following lines to your kernel configuration file, and rebuild the kernel. device uhci device ohci device usb device ukbd options KBD_INSTALL_CDEV In versions of FreeBSD before 4.0, use this instead: controller uhci0 controller ohci0 controller usb0 controller ukbd0 options KBD_INSTALL_CDEV Go to the /dev directory and create device nodes as follows: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; ./MAKEDEV kbd0 kbd1 Edit /etc/rc.conf and add the following lines: usbd_enable="YES" usbd_flags="" After the system is rebooted, the AT keyboard becomes /dev/kbd0 and the USB keyboard becomes /dev/kbd1, if both are connected to the system. If there is the USB keyboard only, it will be /dev/ukbd0. If you want to use the USB keyboard in the console, you have to explicitly tell the console driver to use the existence of the USB keyboard. This can be done by running the following command as a part of system initialization. &prompt.root; kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd1 < /dev/ttyv0 > /dev/null Note that if the USB keyboard is the only keyboard, it is accessed as /dev/kbd0, thus, the command should look like: &prompt.root; kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd0 < /dev/ttyv0 > /dev/null /etc/rc.i386 is a good place to add the above command. Once this is done, the USB keyboard should work in the X environment as well without any special settings. Hot-plugging and unplugging of the USB keyboard may not work quite right yet. It is a good idea to connect the keyboard before you start the system and leave it connected until the system is shutdown to avoid troubles. See the &man.ukbd.4; man page for more information. I have an unusual bus mouse. How do I set it up? FreeBSD supports the bus mouse and the InPort bus mouse from such manufactures as Microsoft, Logitech and ATI. The bus device driver is compiled in the GENERIC kernel by default in FreeBSD versions 2.X, but not included in version 3.0 or later. If you are building a custom kernel with the bus mouse driver, make sure to add the following line to the kernel config file In FreeBSD 3.0 or before, add: device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c tty irq5 vector mseintr In FreeBSD 3.X, the line should be: device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c tty irq5 And in FreeBSD 4.X and later, the line should read: device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c irq5 Bus mice usually comes with dedicated interface cards. These cards may allow you to set the port address and the IRQ number other than shown above. Refer to the manual of your mouse and the &man.mse.4; man page for more information. How do I use my PS/2 (mouse port or keyboard) mouse? If you're running a post-2.2.5 version of FreeBSD, the necessary driver, psm, is included and enabled in the kernel. The kernel should detect your PS/2 mouse at boot time. If you're running a previous but relatively recent version of FreeBSD (2.1.x or better) then you can simply enable it in the kernel configuration menu at installation time, otherwise later with at the boot: prompt. It is disabled by default, so you will need to enable it explicitly. If you're running an older version of FreeBSD then you'll have to add the following lines to your kernel configuration file and compile a new kernel. In FreeBSD 3.0 or earlier, the line should be: device psm0 at isa? port "IO_KBD" conflicts tty irq 12 vector psmintr In FreeBSD 3.1 or later, the line should be: device psm0 at isa? tty irq 12 In FreeBSD 4.0 or later, the line should be: device psm0 at atkbdc? irq 12 See the Handbook entry on configuring the kernel if you've no experience with building kernels. Once you have a kernel detecting psm0 correctly at boot time, make sure that an entry for psm0 exists in /dev. You can do this by typing: &prompt.root; cd /dev; sh MAKEDEV psm0 when logged in as root. Is it possible to make use of a mouse in any way outside the X Window? If you are using the default console driver, syscons, you can use a mouse pointer in text consoles to cut & paste text. Run the mouse daemon, moused, and turn on the mouse pointer in the virtual console: &prompt.root; moused -p /dev/xxxx -t yyyy &prompt.root; vidcontrol -m on Where xxxx is the mouse device name and yyyy is a protocol type for the mouse. See the &man.moused.8; man page for supported protocol types. You may wish to run the mouse daemon automatically when the system starts. In version 2.2.1, set the following variables in /etc/sysconfig. mousedtype="yyyy" mousedport="xxxx" mousedflags="" In versions 2.2.2 to 3.0, set the following variables in /etc/rc.conf. moused_type="yyyy" moused_port="xxxx" moused_flags="" In 3.1 and later, assuming you have a PS/2 mouse, all you need to is add moused_enable="YES" to /etc/rc.conf. In addition, if you would like to be able to use the mouse daemon on all virtual terminals instead of just console at boot-time, add the following to /etc/rc.conf. allscreens_flags="-m on" Staring from FreeBSD 2.2.6, the mouse daemon is capable of determining the correct protocol type automatically unless the mouse is a relatively old serial mouse model. Specify auto the protocol to invoke automatic detection. When the mouse daemon is running, access to the mouse needs to be coordinated between the mouse daemon and other programs such as the X Window. Refer to another section on this issue. How do I cut and paste text with mouse in the text console? Once you get the mouse daemon running (see previous section), hold down the button 1 (left button) and move the mouse to select a region of text. Then, press the button 2 (middle button) or the button 3 (right button) to paste it at the text cursor. In versions 2.2.6 and later, pressing the button 2 will paste the text. Pressing the button 3 will extend the selected region of text. If your mouse does not have the middle button, you may wish to emulate it or remap buttons using moused options. See the moused(8) man page for details. I have a USB mouse. Does FreeBSD support the USB mouse? USB device support was added to FreeBSD 3.1. However, it is still in a preliminary state and may not always work as of version 3.2. If you want to experiment with the USB mouse support, follow the procedure described below. Use FreeBSD 3.2 or later. Add the following lines to your kernel configuration file, and rebuild the kernel. device uhci device ohci device usb device ums In versions of FreeBSD before 4.0, use this instead: controller uhci0 controller ohci0 controller usb0 device ums0 Go to the /dev directory and create a device node as follows: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; ./MAKEDEV ums0 Edit /etc/rc.conf and add the following lines: moused_enable="YES" moused_type="auto" moused_port="/dev/ums0" moused_flags="" usbd_enable="YES" usbd_flags="" See the previous section for more detailed discussion on moused. In order to use the USB mouse in the X session, edit XF86Config. If you are using XFree86 3.3.2 or later, be sure to have the following lines in the Pointer section: Device "/dev/sysmouse" Protocol "Auto" If you are using earlier versions of XFree86, be sure to have the following lines in the Pointer section: Device "/dev/sysmouse" Protocol "SysMouse" Refer to another section on the mouse support in the X environment. Hot-plugging and unplugging of the USB mouse may not work quite right yet. It is a good idea connect the mouse before you start the system and leave it connected until the system is shutdown to avoid trouble. My mouse has a fancy wheel and buttons. Can I use them in FreeBSD? The answer is, unfortunately, It depends. These mice with additional features require specialized driver in most cases. Unless the mouse device driver or the user program has specific support for the mouse, it will act just like a standard two, or three button mouse. For the possible usage of wheels in the X Window environment, refer to that section. My mouse does not seem working. The mouse cursor jumps around on the screen. The mouse has a wheel and is connected to the PS/2 mouse port. The PS/2 mouse driver psm in FreeBSD versions 3.2 or earlier has difficulty with some wheel mice, including Logitech model M-S48 and its OEM siblings. Apply the following patch to /sys/i386/isa/psm.c and rebuild the kernel. Index: psm.c =================================================================== RCS file: /src/CVS/src/sys/i386/isa/Attic/psm.c,v retrieving revision 1.60.2.1 retrieving revision 1.60.2.2 diff -u -r1.60.2.1 -r1.60.2.2 --- psm.c 1999/06/03 12:41:13 1.60.2.1 +++ psm.c 1999/07/12 13:40:52 1.60.2.2 @@ -959,14 +959,28 @@ sc->mode.packetsize = vendortype[i].packetsize; /* set mouse parameters */ +#if 0 + /* + * A version of Logitech FirstMouse+ won't report wheel movement, + * if SET_DEFAULTS is sent... Don't use this command. + * This fix was found by Takashi Nishida. + */ i = send_aux_command(sc->kbdc, PSMC_SET_DEFAULTS); if (verbose >= 2) printf("psm%d: SET_DEFAULTS return code:%04x\n", unit, i); +#endif if (sc->config & PSM_CONFIG_RESOLUTION) { sc->mode.resolution = set_mouse_resolution(sc->kbdc, - (sc->config & PSM_CONFIG_RESOLUTION) - 1); + (sc->config & PSM_CONFIG_RESOLUTION) - 1); + } else if (sc->mode.resolution >= 0) { + sc->mode.resolution + = set_mouse_resolution(sc->kbdc, sc->dflt_mode.resolution); + } + if (sc->mode.rate > 0) { + sc->mode.rate = set_mouse_sampling_rate(sc->kbdc, sc->dflt_mode.rate); } + set_mouse_scaling(sc->kbdc, 1); /* request a data packet and extract sync. bits */ if (get_mouse_status(sc->kbdc, stat, 1, 3) < 3) { Versions later than 3.2 should be all right. How do I use the mouse/trackball/touchpad on my laptop? Please refer to the answer to the previous question. And check out this note on the Mobile Computing page. What types of tape drives are supported? FreeBSD supports SCSI, QIC-36 (with a QIC-02 interface) and QIC-40/80 (Floppy based) tape drives. This includes 8-mm (aka Exabyte) and DAT drives. The QIC-40/80 drives are known to be slow. Some of the early 8-mm drives are not quite compatible with SCSI-2, and may not work well with FreeBSD. Does FreeBSD support tape changers? FreeBSD 2.2 supports SCSI changers using the ch(4) device and the chio(1) command. The details of how you actually control the changer can be found in the chio(1) man page. If you're not using AMANDA or some other product that already understands changers, remember that they're only know how to move a tape from one point to another, so you need to keep track of which slot a tape is in, and which slot the tape currently in the drive needs to go back to. Which sound cards are supported by FreeBSD? FreeBSD supports the SoundBlaster, SoundBlaster Pro, SoundBlaster 16, Pro Audio Spectrum 16, AdLib and Gravis UltraSound sound cards. There is also limited support for MPU-401 and compatible MIDI cards. Cards conforming to the Microsoft Sound System specification are also supported through the pcm driver. This is only for sound! This driver does not support CD-ROMs, SCSI or joysticks on these cards, except for the SoundBlaster. The SoundBlaster SCSI interface and some non-SCSI CDROMS are supported, but you can't boot off this device. Workarounds for no sound from es1370 with pcm driver? You can run the following command everytime the machine booted up: &prompt.root; mixer pcm 100 vol 100 cd 100 Which network cards does FreeBSD support? See the Ethernet cards section of the handbook for a more complete list. I don't have a math co-processor - is that bad? This will only affect 386/486SX/486SLC owners - other machines will have one built into the CPU. In general this will not cause any problems, but there are circumstances where you will take a hit, either in performance or accuracy of the math emulation code (see the section on FP emulation). In particular, drawing arcs in X will be VERY slow. It is highly recommended that you buy a math co-processor; it's well worth it. Some math co-processors are better than others. It pains us to say it, but nobody ever got fired for buying Intel. Unless you're sure it works with FreeBSD, beware of clones. What other devices does FreeBSD support? See the Handbook for the list of other devices supported. Does FreeBSD support power management on my laptop? FreeBSD supports APM on certain machines. Please look in the LINT kernel config file, searching for the APM keyword. My Micron system hangs at boot time Certain Micron motherboards have a non-conforming PCI BIOS implementation that causes grief when FreeBSD boots because PCI devices don't get configured at their reported addresses. Disable the Plug and Play Operating System flag in the BIOS to work around this problem. More information can be found at http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html#micron I have a newer Adaptec controller and FreeBSD can't find it. The newer AIC789x series Adaptec chips are supported under the CAM SCSI framework which made it's debut in 3.0. Patches against 2.2-STABLE are in ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/development/cam/. A CAM-enhanced boot floppy is available at http://people.FreeBSD.org/~abial/cam-boot/. In both cases read the README before beginning. I have an internal Plug & Play modem and FreeBSD can't find it. You will need to add the modem's PnP ID to the PnP ID list in the serial driver. To enable Plug & Play support, compile a new kernel with controller pnp0 in the configuration file, then reboot the system. The kernel will print the PnP IDs of all the devices it finds. Copy the PnP ID from the modem to the table in /sys/i386/isa/sio.c, at about line 2777. Look for the string SUP1310 in the structure siopnp_ids[] to find the table. Build the kernel again, install, reboot, and your modem should be found. You may have to manually configure the PnP devices using the pnp command in the boot-time configuration with a command like pnp 1 0 enable os irq0 3 drq0 0 port0 0x2f8 to make the modem show. How do I get the boot: prompt to show on the serial console? Build a kernel with options COMCONSOLE. Create /boot.config and place as the only text in the file. Unplug the keyboard from the system. See /usr/src/sys/i386/boot/biosboot/README.serial for information. Why doesn't my 3Com PCI network card work with my Micron computer? Certain Micron motherboards have a non-conforming PCI BIOS implementation that does not configure PCI devices at the addresses reported. This causes grief when FreeBSD boots. To work around this problem, disable the Plug and Play Operating System flag in the BIOS. More information on this problem is available at URL: http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html#micron Does FreeBSD support Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP)? SMP is supported in 3.0-STABLE and later releases only. SMP is not enabled in the GENERIC kernel, so you will have to recompile your kernel to enable SMP. Take a look at /sys/i386/conf/LINT to figure out what options to put in your kernel config file. The boot floppy hangs on a system with an ASUS K7V motherboard. How do I fix this? Go in to the BIOS setup and disable the boot virus protection. Troubleshooting I have bad blocks on my hard drive! With SCSI drives, the drive should be capable of re-mapping these automatically. However, many drives are shipped with this feature disabled, for some mysterious reason... To enable this, you'll need to edit the first device page mode, which can be done on FreeBSD by giving the command (as root) &prompt.root; scsi -f /dev/rsd0c -m 1 -e -P 3 and changing the values of AWRE and ARRE from 0 to 1:- AWRE (Auto Write Reallocation Enbld): 1 ARRE (Auto Read Reallocation Enbld): 1 The following paragraphs were submitted by Ted Mittelstaedt: For IDE drives, any bad block is usually a sign of potential trouble. All modern IDE drives come with internal bad-block remapping turned on. All IDE hard drive manufacturers today offer extensive warranties and will replace drives with bad blocks on them. If you still want to attempt to rescue an IDE drive with bad blocks, you can attempt to download the IDE drive manufacturer's IDE diagnostic program, and run this against the drive. Sometimes these programs can be set to force the drive electronics to rescan the drive for bad blocks and lock them out. For ESDI, RLL and MFM drives, bad blocks are a normal part of the drive and are no sign of trouble, generally. With a PC, the disk drive controller card and BIOS handle the task of locking out bad sectors. This is fine for operating systems like DOS that use BIOS code to access the disk. However, FreeBSD's disk driver does not go through BIOS, therefore a mechanism, bad144, exists that replaces this functionality. bad144 only works with the wd driver (which means it is not supported in FreeBSD 4.0), it is NOT able to be used with SCSI. bad144 works by entering all bad sectors found into a special file. One caveat with bad144 - the bad block special file is placed on the last track of the disk. As this file may possibly contain a listing for a bad sector that would occur near the beginning of the disk, where the /kernel file might be located, it therefore must be accessible to the bootstrap program that uses BIOS calls to read the kernel file. This means that the disk with bad144 used on it must not exceed 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors. This places an effective limit of 500MB on a disk that is mapped with bad144. To use bad144, simply set the Bad Block scanning to ON in the FreeBSD fdisk screen during the initial install. This works up through FreeBSD 2.2.7. The disk must have less than 1024 cylinders. It is generally recommended that the disk drive has been in operation for at least 4 hours prior to this to allow for thermal expansion and track wandering. If the disk has more than 1024 cylinders (such as a large ESDI drive) the ESDI controller uses a special translation mode to make it work under DOS. The wd driver understands about these translation modes, IF you enter the translated geometry with the set geometry command in fdisk. You must also NOT use the dangerously dedicated mode of creating the FreeBSD partition, as this ignores the geometry. Also, even though fdisk will use your overridden geometry, it still knows the true size of the disk, and will attempt to create a too large FreeBSD partition. If the disk geometry is changed to the translated geometry, the partition MUST be manually created with the number of blocks. A quick trick to use is to set up the large ESDI disk with the ESDI controller, boot it with a DOS disk and format it with a DOS partition. Then, boot the FreeBSD install and in the fdisk screen, read off and write down the blocksize and block numbers for the DOS partition. Then, reset the geometry to the same that DOS uses, delete the DOS partition, and create a cooperative FreeBSD partition using the blocksize you recorded earlier. Then, set the partition bootable and turn on bad block scanning. During the actual install, bad144 will run first, before any filesystems are created. (you can view this with an Alt-F2) If it has any trouble creating the badsector file, you have set too large a disk geometry - reboot the system and start all over again (including repartitioning and reformatting with DOS). If remapping is enabled and you are seeing bad blocks, consider replacing the drive. The bad blocks will only get worse as time goes on. FreeBSD does not recognize my Bustek 742a EISA SCSI! This info is specific to the 742a but may also cover other Buslogic cards. (Bustek = Buslogic) There are 2 general versions of the 742a card. They are hardware revisions A-G, and revisions H - onwards. The revision letter is located after the Assembly number on the edge of the card. The 742a has 2 ROM chips on it, one is the BIOS chip and the other is the Firmware chip. FreeBSD doesn't care what version of BIOS chip you have but it does care about what version of firmware chip. Buslogic will send upgrade ROMS out if you call their tech support dept. The BIOS and Firmware chips are shipped as a matched pair. You must have the most current Firmware ROM in your adapter card for your hardware revision. The REV A-G cards can only accept BIOS/Firmware sets up to 2.41/2.21. The REV H- up cards can accept the most current BIOS/Firmware sets of 4.70/3.37. The difference between the firmware sets is that the 3.37 firmware supports round robin The Buslogic cards also have a serial number on them. If you have a old hardware revision card you can call the Buslogic RMA department and give them the serial number and attempt to exchange the card for a newer hardware revision. If the card is young enough they will do so. FreeBSD 2.1 only supports Firmware revisions 2.21 onward. If you have a Firmware revision older than this your card will not be recognized as a Buslogic card. It may be recognized as an Adaptec 1540, however. The early Buslogic firmware contains an AHA1540 emulation mode. This is not a good thing for an EISA card, however. If you have an old hardware revision card and you obtain the 2.21 firmware for it, you will need to check the position of jumper W1 to B-C, the default is A-B. My HP Netserver's SCSI controller is not detected! This is basically a known problem. The EISA on-board SCSI controller in the HP Netserver machines occupies EISA slot number 11, so all the true EISA slots are in front of it. Alas, the address space for EISA slots >= 10 collides with the address space assigned to PCI, and FreeBSD's auto-configuration currently cannot handle this situation very well. So now, the best you can do is to pretend there is no address range clash :), by bumping the kernel option EISA_SLOTS to a value of 12. Configure and compile a kernel, as described in the Handbook entry on configuring the kernel. Of course, this does present you with a chicken-and-egg problem when installing on such a machine. In order to work around this problem, a special hack is available inside UserConfig. Do not use the visual interface, but the plain command-line interface there. Simply type eisa 12 quit at the prompt, and install your system as usual. While it's recommended you compile and install a custom kernel anyway, Hopefully, future versions will have a proper fix for this problem. You can not use a dangerously dedicated disk with an HP Netserver. See this note for more info. What's up with this CMD640 IDE controller? It's broken. It cannot handle commands on both channels simultaneously. There's a workaround available now and it is enabled automatically if your system uses this chip. For the details refer to the manual page of the disk driver (man 4 wd). If you're already running FreeBSD 2.2.1 or 2.2.2 with a CMD640 IDE controller and you want to use the second channel, build a new kernel with options "CMD640" enabled. This is the default for 2.2.5 and later. I keep seeing messages like ed1: timeout. This is usually caused by an interrupt conflict (e.g., two boards using the same IRQ). FreeBSD prior to 2.0.5R used to be tolerant of this, and the network driver would still function in the presence of IRQ conflicts. However, with 2.0.5R and later, IRQ conflicts are no longer tolerated. Boot with the -c option and change the ed0/de0/... entry to match your board. If you're using the BNC connector on your network card, you may also see device timeouts because of bad termination. To check this, attach a terminator directly to the NIC (with no cable) and see if the error messages go away. Some NE2000 compatible cards will give this error if there is no link on the UTP port or if the cable is disconnected. When I mount a CDROM, I get Incorrect super block. You have to tell mount the type of the device that you want to mount. By default, mount(8) will assume the filesystem is of type ufs. You want to mount a CDROM filesystem, and you do this by specifying the option to mount(8) . This does, of course, assume that the CDROM contains an ISO 9660 filesystem, which is what most CDROMs have. As of 1.1R, FreeBSD automatically understands the Rock Ridge (long filename) extensions as well. As an example, if you want to mount the CDROM device, /dev/cd0c, under /mnt, you would execute: &prompt.root; mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0c /mnt Note that your device name (/dev/cd0c in this example) could be different, depending on the CDROM interface. Note that the option just causes the mount_cd9660 command to be executed, and so the above example could be shortened to: &prompt.root; mount_cd9660 /dev/cd0c /mnt When I mount a CDROM, I get Device not configured. This generally means that there is no CDROM in the CDROM drive, or the drive is not visible on the bus. Feed the drive something, and/or check its master/slave status if it is IDE (ATAPI). It can take a couple of seconds for a CDROM drive to notice that it's been fed, so be patient. Sometimes a SCSI CD-ROM may be missed because it hadn't enough time to answer the bus reset. If you have a SCSI CD-ROM please try to add the following symbol into your kernel configuration file and recompile. options "SCSI_DELAY=15" My printer is ridiculously slow. What can I do ? If it's parallel, and the only problem is that it's terribly slow, try setting your printer port into polled mode: &prompt.root; lptcontrol -p Some newer HP printers are claimed not to work correctly in interrupt mode, apparently due to some (not yet exactly understood) timing problem. My programs occasionally die with Signal 11 errors. Signal 11 errors are caused when your process has attempted to access memory which the operating system has not granted it access to. If something like this is happening at seemingly random intervals then you need to start investigating things very carefully. These problems can usually be attributed to either: If the problem is occurring only in a specific application that you are developing yourself it is probably a bug in your code. If it's a problem with part of the base FreeBSD system, it may also be buggy code, but more often than not these problems are found and fixed long before us general FAQ readers get to use these bits of code (that's what -current is for). In particular, a dead giveaway that this is *not* a FreeBSD bug is if you see the problem when you're compiling a program, but the activity that the compiler is carrying out changes each time. For example, suppose you're running "make buildworld", and the compile fails while trying to compile ls.c in to ls.o. If you next run "make buildworld" again, and the compile fails in the same place then this is a broken build -- try updating your sources and try again. If the compile fails elsewhere then this is almost certainly hardware. What you should do: In the first case you can use a debugger e.g. gdb to find the point in the program which is attempting to access a bogus address and then fix it. In the second case you need to verify that it's not your hardware at fault. Common causes of this include : Your hard disks might be overheating: Check the fans in your case are still working, as your disk (and perhaps other hardware might be overheating). The processor running is overheating: This might be because the processor has been overclocked, or the fan on the processor might have died. In either case you need to ensure that you have hardware running at what it's specified to run at, at least while trying to solve this problem. i.e. Clock it back to the default settings. If you are overclocking then note that it's far cheaper to have a slow system than a fried system that needs replacing! Also the wider community is not often sympathetic to problems on overclocked systems, whether you believe it's safe or not. Dodgy memory: If you have multiple memory SIMMS/DIMMS installed then pull them all out and try running the machine with each SIMM or DIMM individually and narrow the problem down to either the problematic DIMM/SIMM or perhaps even a combination. Over-optimistic Motherboard settings: In your BIOS settings, and some motherboard jumpers you have options to set various timings, mostly the defaults will be sufficient, but sometimes, setting the wait states on RAM too low, or setting the "RAM Speed: Turbo" option, or similar in the BIOS will cause strange behaviour. A possible idea is to set to BIOS defaults, but it might be worth noting down your settings first! Unclean or insufficient power to the motherboard. If you have any unused I/O boards, hard disks, or CDROMs in your system, try temporarily removing them or disconnecting the power cable from them, to see if your power supply can manage a smaller load. Or try another power supply, preferably one with a little more power (for instance, if your current power supply is rated at 250 Watts try one rated at 300 Watts). You should also read the SIG11 FAQ (listed below) which has excellent explanations of all these problems, albeit from a Linux viewpoint. It also discusses how memory testing software or hardware can still pass faulty memory. Finally, if none of this has helped it is possible that you've just found a bug in FreeBSD, and you should follow the instructions to send a problem report. There's an extensive FAQ on this at the SIG11 problem FAQ When I boot, the screen goes black and loses sync! This is a known problem with the ATI Mach 64 video card. The problem is that this card uses address 2e8, and the fourth serial port does too. Due to a bug (feature?) in the sio(4) driver it will touch this port even if you don't have the fourth serial port, and even if you disable sio3 (the fourth port) which normally uses this address. Until the bug has been fixed, you can use this workaround: Enter at the bootprompt. (This will put the kernel into configuration mode). Disable sio0, sio1, sio2 and sio3 (all of them). This way the sio driver doesn't get activated -> no problems. Type exit to continue booting. If you want to be able to use your serial ports, you'll have to build a new kernel with the following modification: in /usr/src/sys/i386/isa/sio.c find the one occurrence of the string 0x2e8 and remove that string and the preceding comma (keep the trailing comma). Now follow the normal procedure of building a new kernel. Even after applying these workarounds, you may still find that the X Window System does not work properly. If this is the case, make sure that the XFree86 version you are using is at least XFree86 3.3.3 or higher. This version and upwards has built-in support for the Mach64 cards and even a dedicated X server for those cards. I have 128 MB of RAM but the system only uses 64 MB. Due to the manner in which FreeBSD gets the memory size from the BIOS, it can only detect 16 bits worth of Kbytes in size (65535 Kbytes = 64MB) (or less... some BIOSes peg the memory size to 16M). If you have more than 64MB, FreeBSD will attempt to detect it; however, the attempt may fail. To work around this problem, you need to use the kernel option specified below. There is a way to get complete memory information from the BIOS, but we don't have room in the bootblocks to do it. Someday when lack of room in the bootblocks is fixed, we'll use the extended BIOS functions to get the full memory information...but for now we're stuck with the kernel option. options "MAXMEM=n" Where n is your memory in Kilobytes. For a 128 MB machine, you'd want to use 131072. FreeBSD 2.0 panics with kmem_map too small! The message may also be mb_map too small! The panic indicates that the system ran out of virtual memory for network buffers (specifically, mbuf clusters). You can increase the amount of VM available for mbuf clusters by adding: options "NMBCLUSTERS=n" to your kernel config file, where n is a number in the range 512-4096, depending on the number of concurrent TCP connections you need to support. I'd recommend trying 2048 - this should get rid of the panic completely. You can monitor the number of mbuf clusters allocated/in use on the system with netstat -m. The default value for NMBCLUSTERS is 512 + MAXUSERS * 16. CMAP busy panic when rebooting with a new kernel. The logic that attempts to detect an out of date /var/db/kvm_*.db files sometimes fails and using a mismatched file can sometimes lead to panics. If this happens, reboot single-user and do: &prompt.root; rm /var/db/kvm_*.db ahc0: brkadrint, Illegal Host Access at seqaddr 0x0 This is a conflict with an Ultrastor SCSI Host Adapter. During the boot process enter the kernel configuration menu and disable uha0, which is causing the problem. Sendmail says mail loops back to myself This is answered in the sendmail FAQ as follows:- * I'm getting "Local configuration error" messages, such as: 553 relay.domain.net config error: mail loops back to myself 554 <user@domain.net>... Local configuration error How can I solve this problem? You have asked mail to the domain (e.g., domain.net) to be forwarded to a specific host (in this case, relay.domain.net) by using an MX record, but the relay machine doesn't recognize itself as domain.net. Add domain.net to /etc/sendmail.cw (if you are using FEATURE(use_cw_file)) or add "Cw domain.net" to /etc/sendmail.cf. The current version of the sendmail FAQ is no longer maintained with the sendmail release. It is however regularly posted to comp.mail.sendmail, comp.mail.misc, comp.mail.smail, comp.answers, and news.answers. You can also receive a copy via email by sending a message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the command send usenet/news.answers/mail/sendmail-faq as the body of the message. Full screen applications on remote machines misbehave The remote machine may be setting your terminal type to something other than the cons25 terminal type required by the FreeBSD console. There are a number of possible work-arounds for this problem: After logging on to the remote machine, set your TERM shell variable to ansi or sco if the remote machine knows about these terminal types. Use a VT100 emulator like screen at the FreeBSD console. screen offers you the ability to run multiple concurrent sessions from one terminal, and is a neat program in its own right. Each screen window behaves like a VT100 terminal, so the TERM variable at the remote end should be set to vt100. Install the cons25 terminal database entry on the remote machine. The way to do this depends on the operating system on the remote machine. The system administration manuals for the remote system should be able to help you here. Fire up an X server at the FreeBSD end and login to the remote machine using an X based terminal emulator such as xterm or rxvt. The TERM variable at the remote host should be set to xterm or vt100. My machine prints calcru: negative time... This can be caused by various hardware and/or software ailments relating to interrupts. It may be due to bugs but can also happen by nature of certain devices. Running TCP/IP over the parallel port using a large MTU is one good way to provoke this problem. Graphics accelerators can also get you here, in which case you should check the interrupt setting of the card first. A side effect of this problem are dying processes with the message SIGXCPU exceeded cpu time limit. For FreeBSD 3.0 and later from Nov 29, 1998 forward: If the problem cannot be fixed otherwise the solution is to set this sysctl variable: &prompt.root; sysctl -w kern.timecounter.method=1 This means a performance impact, but considering the cause of this problem, you probably will not notice. If the problem persists, keep the sysctl set to one and set the NTIMECOUNTER option in your kernel to increasingly large values. If by the time you have reached NTIMECOUNTER=20 the problem isn't solved, interrupts are too hosed on your machine for reliable timekeeping. Commercial Applications This section is still very sparse, though we're hoping, of course, that companies will add to it! :) The FreeBSD group has no financial interest in any of the companies listed here but simply lists them as a public service (and feels that commercial interest in FreeBSD can have very positive effects on FreeBSD's long-term viability). We encourage commercial software vendors to send their entries here for inclusion. See the Vendors page for a longer list. Where can I get Motif for FreeBSD? Contact Apps2go for the least expensive ELF Motif 2.1.20 distribution for FreeBSD (either i386 or Alpha). There are two distributions, the developement edition and the runtime edition (for much less). These distributions includes: OSF/Motif manager, xmbind, panner, wsm. Development kit with uil, mrm, xm, xmcxx, include and Imake files. Static and dynamic ELF libraries (for use with FreeBSD 3.0 and above). Demonstration applets. Be sure to specify that you want the FreeBSD version of Motif when ordering (don't forget to mention the architecture you want too)! Versions for NetBSD and OpenBSD are also sold by Apps2go. This is currently a FTP only download. More info Apps2go WWW page or Sales or Support email addresses. or phone (817) 431 8775 or +1 817 431-8775 Contact Metro Link for an either ELF or a.out Motif 2.1 distribution for FreeBSD. This distribution includes: OSF/Motif manager, xmbind, panner, wsm. Development kit with uil, mrm, xm, xmcxx, include and Imake files. Static and dynamic libraries (specify ELF for use with FreeBSD 3.0 and later; or a.out for use with FreeBSD 2.2.8 and eariler). Demonstration applets. Preformatted man pages. Be sure to specify that you want the FreeBSD version of Motif when ordering! Versions for Linux are also sold by Metro Link. This is available on either a CDROM or for FTP download. Contact Xi Graphics for an a.out Motif 2.0 distribution for FreeBSD. This distribution includes: OSF/Motif manager, xmbind, panner, wsm. Development kit with uil, mrm, xm, xmcxx, include and Imake files. Static and dynamic libraries (for use with FreeBSD 2.2.8 and eariler). Demonstration applets. Preformatted man pages. Be sure to specify that you want the FreeBSD version of Motif when ordering! Versions for BSDI and Linux are also sold by Xi Graphics. This is currently a 4 diskette set... in the future this will change to a unified CD distribution like their CDE. Where can I get CDE for FreeBSD? Xi Graphics used to sell CDE for FreeBSD, but no longer do. KDE is an open source X11 desktop which is similar to CDE in many respects. You might also like the look and feel of xfce. KDE and xfce are both in the ports system. Are there any commercial high-performance X servers? Yes, Xi Graphics and Metro Link sells Accelerated-X product for FreeBSD and other Intel based systems. The Metro Link offering is a high performance X Server that offers easy configuration using the FreeBSD Package suite of tools, support for multiple concurrent video boards and is distributed in binary form only, in a convienent FTP download. Not to mention the Metro Link offering is available at the very reasonable price of $39. Metro Link also sells both ELF and a.out Motif for FreeBSD (see above). More info Metro Link WWW page or Sales or Support email addresses. or phone (954) 938-0283 or +1 954 938-0283 The Xi Graphics offering is a high performance X Server that offers easy configuration, support for multiple concurrent video boards and is distributed in binary form only, in a unified diskette distribution for FreeBSD and Linux. Xi Graphics also offers a high performance X Server taylored for laptop support. There is a free compatibility demo of version 5.0 available. Xi Graphics also sells Motif and CDE for FreeBSD (see above). More info Xi Graphics WWW page or Sales or Support email addresses. or phone (800) 946 7433 or +1 303 298-7478. Are there any Database systems for FreeBSD? Yes! See the Commercial Vendors section of FreeBSD's Web site. Also see the Databases section of the Ports collection. Can I run Oracle on FreeBSD? Yes. The following pages tell you exactly how to setup Linux-Oracle on FreeBSD: http://www.scc.nl/~marcel/howto-oracle.html http://www.lf.net/lf/pi/oracle/install-linux-oracle-on-freebsd User Applications So, where are all the user applications? Please take a look at the ports page for info on software packages ported to FreeBSD. The list currently tops 3400 and is growing daily, so come back to check often or subscribe to the freebsd-announce mailing list for periodic updates on new entries. Most ports should be available for the 2.2, 3.x and 4.x branches, and many of them should work on 2.1.x systems as well. Each time a FreeBSD release is made, a snapshot of the ports tree at the time of release in also included in the ports/ directory. We also support the concept of a package, essentially no more than a gzipped binary distribution with a little extra intelligence embedded in it for doing whatever custom installation work is required. A package can be installed and uninstalled again easily without having to know the gory details of which files it includes. Use the package installation menu in /stand/sysinstall (under the post-configuration menu item) or invoke the pkg_add(1) command on the specific package files you're interested in installing. Package files can usually be identified by their .tgz suffix and CDROM distribution people will have a packages/All directory on their CD which contains such files. They can also be downloaded over the net for various versions of FreeBSD at the following locations: for 2.2.8-RELEASE/2.2.8-STABLE ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-2.2.8/ for 3.X-RELEASE/3.X-STABLE ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-3-stable/ for 4.1-RELEASE/4-STABLE ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4-stable/ for 5.X-CURRENT ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5-current or your nearest local mirror site. Note that all ports may not be available as packages since new ones are constantly being added. It is always a good idea to check back periodically to see which packages are available at the ftp.FreeBSD.org master site. Why is /bin/sh so minimal? Why doesn't FreeBSD use bash or another shell? Because POSIX says that there shall be such a shell. The more complicated answer: many people need to write shell scripts which will be portable across many systems. That's why POSIX specifies the shell and utility commands in great detail. Most scripts are written in Bourne shell, and because several important programming interfaces (&man.make.1;, &man.system.3;, &man.popen.3;, and analogues in higher-level scripting languages like Perl and Tcl) are specified to use the Bourne shell to interpret commands. Because the Bourne shell is so often and widely used, it is important for it to be quick to start, be deterministic in its behavior, and have a small memory footprint. The existing implementation is our best effort at meeting as many of these requirements simultaneously as we can. In order to keep /bin/sh small, we have not provided many of the convenience features that other shells have. That's why the Ports Collection includes more featureful shells like bash, scsh, tcsh, and zsh. (You can compare for yourself the memory utilization of all these shells by looking at the VSZ and RSS columns in a ps -u listing.) Where do I find libc.so.3.0? You are trying to run a package built on 2.2 and later on a 2.1.x system. Please take a look at the previous section and get the correct port/package for your system. I get a message Error: can't find libc.so.4.0 You accidently downloaded packages meant for 4.X and 5.X systems and attempted to install them on your 2.X or 3.X FreeBSD system. Please download the correct version of the packages. ghostscript gives lots of errors with my 386/486SX. You don't have a math co-processor, right? You will need to add the alternative math emulator to your kernel; you do this by adding the following to your kernel config file and it will be compiled in. options GPL_MATH_EMULATE You will need to remove the MATH_EMULATE option when you do this. When I run a SCO/iBCS2 application, it bombs on socksys (FreeBSD 3.0 and older only). You first need to edit the /etc/sysconfig (or /etc/rc.conf) file in the last section to change the following variable to YES: # Set to YES if you want ibcs2 (SCO) emulation loaded at startup ibcs2=NO It will load the ibcs2 kernel module at startup. You'll then need to set up /compat/ibcs2/dev to look like: lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 9 Oct 15 22:20 X0R@ -> /dev/null lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 7 Oct 15 22:20 nfsd@ -> socksys -rw-rw-r-- 1 root wheel 0 Oct 28 12:02 null lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 9 Oct 15 22:20 socksys@ -> /dev/null crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 41, 1 Oct 15 22:14 spx You just need socksys to go to /dev/null to fake the open & close. The code in -CURRENT will handle the rest. This is much cleaner than the way it was done before. If you want the spx driver for a local socket X connection, define SPX_HACK when you compile the system. How do I configure INN (Internet News) for my machine? After installing the inn package or port, an excellent place to start is Dave Barr's INN Page where you'll find the INN FAQ. What version of Microsoft FrontPage should I get? Use the Port, Luke! A pre-patched version of Apache is available in the ports tree. Does FreeBSD support Java? Yes. Please see http://www.FreeBSD.org/java/. Why can't I build this port on my 3.X-STABLE machine? If you're running a FreeBSD version that lags significantly behind -CURRENT or -STABLE, you may need a ports upgrade kit from http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/. If you are up to date, then someone might have committed a change to the port which works for -CURRENT but which broke the port for -STABLE. Please submit a bug report on this with the send-pr(1) command, since the ports collection is supposed to work for both the -CURRENT and -STABLE branches. Where do I find ld.so? If you want to run some aout applications like Netscape Navigator on an Elf'ened machine such as 3.1-R or later, it would need /usr/libexec/ld.so and some aout libs. They are included in the compat22 distribution. Use /stand/sysinstall or install.sh in the compat22 subdirectory and install it. Also read ERRATAs for 3.1-R and 3.2-R. Kernel Configuration I'd like to customize my kernel. Is it difficult? Not at all! Check out the kernel config section of the Handbook. I recommend making a dated snapshot of your kernel in kernel.YYMMDD after you get it all working, that way if you do something dire the next time you play with your configuration you can boot that kernel instead of having to go all the way back to kernel.GENERIC. This is particularly important if you're now booting off a controller that isn't supported in the GENERIC kernel (yes, personal experience). My kernel compiles fail because _hw_float is missing. Let me guess. You removed npx0 from your kernel configuration file because you don't have a math co-processor, right? Wrong! :-) The npx0 is MANDATORY. Even if you don't have a mathematic co-processor, you must include the npx0 device. Why is my kernel so big (over 10MB)? Chances are, you compiled your kernel in debug mode. Kernels built in debug mode contain many symbols that are used for debugging, thus greatly increasing the size of the kernel. Note that if you running a FreeBSD 3.0 or later system, there will be little or no performance decrease from running a debug kernel, and it is useful to keep one around in case of a system panic. However, if you are running low on disk space, or you simply don't want to run a debug kernel, make sure that both of the following are true: You do not have a line in your kernel configuration file that reads: makeoptions DEBUG=-g You are not running config with the option. Both of the above situations will cause your kernel to be built in debug mode. As long as you make sure you follow the steps above, you can build your kernel normally, and you should notice a fairly large size decrease; most kernels tend to be around 1.5MB to 2MB. Interrupt conflicts with multi-port serial code. Q. When I compile a kernel with multi-port serial code, it tells me that only the first port is probed and the rest skipped due to interrupt conflicts. How do I fix this? A. The problem here is that FreeBSD has code built-in to keep the kernel from getting trashed due to hardware or software conflicts. The way to fix this is to leave out the IRQ settings on all but one port. Here is a example: # # Multiport high-speed serial line - 16550 UARTS # device sio2 at isa? port 0x2a0 tty irq 5 flags 0x501 vector siointr device sio3 at isa? port 0x2a8 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr device sio4 at isa? port 0x2b0 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr device sio5 at isa? port 0x2b8 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr How do I enable support for QIC-40/80 drives? You need to uncomment the following line in the generic config file (or add it to your config file), add a flags 0x1 on the fdc line and recompile. controller fdc0 at isa? port "IO_FD1" bio irq 6 drq 2 flags 0x1 vector fdintr disk fd0 at fdc0 drive 0 ^^^^^^^^^ disk fd1 at fdc0 drive 1 #tape ft0 at fdc0 drive 2 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Next, you create a device called /dev/ft0 by going into /dev and run the following command: &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV ft0 for the first device. ft1 for a second one and so on. You will have a device called /dev/ft0, which you can write to through a special program to manage it called fd - see the man page on ft for further details. Versions previous to also had some trouble dealing with bad tape media; if you have trouble where ft seems to go back and forth over the same spot, try grabbing the latest version of ft from /usr/src/sbin/ft in and try that. System Administration Where are the system start-up configuration files? From 2.0.5R to 2.2.1R, the primary configuration file is /etc/sysconfig. All the options are to be specified in this file and other files such as /etc/rc and /etc/netstart just include it. Look in the /etc/sysconfig file and change the value to match your system. This file is filled with comments to show what to put in there. In post-2.2.1 and 3.0, /etc/sysconfig was renamed to a more self-describing rc.conf file and the syntax cleaned up a bit in the process. /etc/netstart was also renamed to /etc/rc.network so that all files could be copied with a cp /usr/src/etc/rc* /etc command. And, in 3.1 and later, /etc/rc.conf has been moved to /etc/defaults/rc.conf. Do not edit this file! Instead, if there is any entry in /etc/defaults/rc.conf that you want to change, you should copy the line into /etc/rc.conf and change it there. For example, if you wish to start named, the DNS server included with FreeBSD in FreeBSD 3.1 or later, all you need to do is: &prompt.root; echo named_enable="YES" >> /etc/rc.conf To start up local services in FreeBSD 3.1 or later, place shell scripts in the /usr/local/etc.rd directory. These shell scripts should be set executable, and end with a .sh. In FreeBSD 3.0 and earlier releases, you should edit the /etc/rc.local file. The /etc/rc.serial is for serial port initialization (e.g. locking the port characteristics, and so on.). The /etc/rc.i386 is for Intel-specifics settings, such as iBCS2 emulation or the PC system console configuration. How do I add a user easily? Use the adduser command. For more complicated usage, the pw command. To remove the user again, use the rmuser command. Once again, pw will work as well. How can I add my new hard disk to my FreeBSD system? See the Disk Formatting Tutorial at www.FreeBSD.org. I have a new removable drive, how do I use it? Whether it's a removable drive like a ZIP or an EZ drive (or even a floppy, if you want to use it that way), or a new hard disk, once it's installed and recognized by the system, and you have your cartridge/floppy/whatever slotted in, things are pretty much the same for all devices. (this section is based on Mark Mayo's ZIP FAQ) If it's a ZIP drive or a floppy , you've already got a DOS filesystem on it, you can use a command like this: &prompt.root; mount -t msdos /dev/fd0c /floppy if it's a floppy, or this: &prompt.root; mount -t msdos /dev/da2s4 /zip for a ZIP disk with the factory configuration. For other disks, see how they're laid out using fdisk or /stand/sysinstall. The rest of the examples will be for a ZIP drive on da2, the third SCSI disk. Unless it's a floppy, or a removable you plan on sharing with other people, it's probably a better idea to stick a BSD file system on it. You'll get long filename support, at least a 2X improvement in performance, and a lot more stability. First, you need to redo the DOS-level partitions/filesystems. You can either use fdisk or /stand/sysinstall, or for a small drive that you don't want to bother with multiple operating system support on, just blow away the whole FAT partition table (slices) and just use the BSD partitioning: &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rda2 count=2 &prompt.root; disklabel -Brw da2 auto You can use disklabel or /stand/sysinstall to create multiple BSD partitions. You'll certainly want to do this if you're adding swap space on a fixed disk, but it's probably irrelevant on a removable drive like a ZIP. Finally, create a new file system, this one's on our ZIP drive using the whole disk: &prompt.root; newfs /dev/rda2c and mount it: &prompt.root; mount /dev/da2c /zip and it's probably a good idea to add a line like this to /etc/fstab so you can just type mount /zip in the future: /dev/da2c /zip ffs rw,noauto 0 0 Why do I keep getting messages like root: not found after editing my crontab file? This is normally caused by editing the system crontab (/etc/crontab) and then using &man.crontab.1; to install it: &prompt.root; crontab /etc/crontab This is not the correct way to do things. The system crontab has a different format to the per-user crontabs which &man.crontab.1; updates (the &man.crontab.5; manual page explains the differences in more detail). If this is what you did, you should delete the /var/cron/tabs/root, since it will simply be a copy of /etc/crontab, in the wrong format. Next time, when you edit /etc/crontab, you should not do anything to inform &man.cron.8; of the changes, since it will notice them automatically. The actual reason for the error is that the system crontab has an extra field, specifying which user to run the command as. In the default system crontab provided with FreeBSD, this is root for all entries. When this crontab is used as the root user's crontab (which is not the same as the system crontab), &man.cron.8; assumes the string root is the first word of the command to execute, but no such command exists. I made a mistake in rc.conf, and now I can't edit it because the filesystem is read-only. What should I do? When you get the prompt to enter the shell pathname, simply press ENTER, and run mount / to re-mount the root filesystem in read/write mode. You may also need to run mount -a -t ufs to mount the filesystem where your favourite editor is defined. If your favourite editor is on a network filesystem, you will need to either configure the network manually before you can mount network filesystems, or use an editor which resides on a local filesystem, such as &man.ed.1;. If you intend to use a full screen editor such as &man.vi.1; or &man.emacs.1;, you may also need to run export TERM=cons25 so that these editors can load the correct data from the &man.termcap.5; database. Once you have performed these steps, you can edit /etc/rc.conf as you usually would to fix the syntax error. The error message displayed immediately after the kernel boot messages should tell you the number of the line in the file which is at fault. How do I mount a secondary DOS partition? The secondary DOS partitions are found after ALL the primary partitions. For example, if you have an E partition as the second DOS partition on the second SCSI drive, you need to create the special files for slice 5 in /dev, then mount /dev/da1s5: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV da1s5 &prompt.root; mount -t msdos /dev/da1s5 /dos/e Can I mount other foreign filesystems under FreeBSD? Digital UNIX UFS CDROMs can be mounted directly on FreeBSD. Mounting disk partitions from Digital UNIX and other systems that support UFS may be more complex, depending on the details of the disk partitioning for the operating system in question. Linux: 2.2 and later have support for ext2fs partitions. See mount_ext2fs for more information. NT: A read-only NTFS driver exists for FreeBSD. For more information, see this tutorial by Mark Ovens at http://ukug.uk.freebsd.org/~mark/ntfs_install.html. Any other information on this subject would be appreciated. How can I use the NT loader to boot FreeBSD? This procedure is slightly different for 2.2.x and 3.x (with the 3-stage boot) systems. The general idea is that you copy the first sector of your native root FreeBSD partition into a file in the DOS/NT partition. Assuming you name that file something like c:\bootsect.bsd (inspired by c:\bootsect.dos), you can then edit the c:\boot.ini file to come up with something like this: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows NT" C:\BOOTSECT.BSD="FreeBSD" C:\="DOS" For 2.2.x systems this procedure assumes that DOS, NT, FreeBSD, or whatever have been installed into their respective fdisk partitions on the same disk. In my case DOS & NT are in the first fdisk partition and FreeBSD is in the second. I also installed FreeBSD to boot from its native partition, not the disk MBR. Mount a DOS-formatted floppy (if you've converted to NTFS) or the FAT partition, under, say, /mnt. &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/rda0a of=/mnt/bootsect.bsd bs=512 count=1 Reboot into DOS or NT. NTFS users copy the bootsect.bsd and/or the bootsect.lnx file from the floppy to C:\. Modify the attributes (permissions) on boot.ini with: C:\> attrib -s -r c:\boot.ini Edit to add the appropriate entries from the example boot.ini above, and restore the attributes: C:\> attrib +s +r c:\boot.ini If FreeBSD is booting from the MBR, restore it with the DOS fdisk command after you reconfigure them to boot from their native partitions. For FreeBSD 3.x systems the procedure is somewhat simpler. If FreeBSD is installed on the same disk as the NT boot partition simply copy /boot/boot1 to C:\BOOTSECT.BSD However, if FreeBSD is installed on a different disk /boot/boot1 will not work, /boot/boot0 is needed. DO NOT SIMPLY COPY /boot/boot0 INSTEAD OF /boot/boot1, YOU WILL OVERWRITE YOUR PARTITION TABLE AND RENDER YOUR COMPUTER UN-BOOTABLE! /boot/boot0 needs to be installed using sysinstall by selecting the FreeBSD boot manager on the screen which asks if you wish to use a boot manager. This is because /boot/boot0 has the partition table area filled with NULL characters but sysinstall copies the partition table before copying /boot/boot0 to the MBR. When the FreeBSD boot manager runs it records the last OS booted by setting the active flag on the partition table entry for that OS and then writes the whole 512-bytes of itself back to the MBR so if you just copy /boot/boot0 to C:\BOOTSECT.BSD then it writes an empty partition table, with the active flag set on one entry, to the MBR. How do I boot FreeBSD and Linux from LILO? If you have FreeBSD and Linux on the same disk, just follow LILO's installation instructions for booting a non-Linux operating system. Very briefly, these are: Boot Linux, and add the following lines to /etc/lilo.conf: other=/dev/hda2 table=/dev/hda label=FreeBSD (the above assumes that your FreeBSD slice is known to Linux as /dev/hda2; tailor to suit your setup). Then, run lilo as root and you should be done. If FreeBSD resides on another disk, you need to add loader=/boot/chain.b to the LILO entry. For example: other=/dev/dab4 table=/dev/dab loader=/boot/chain.b label=FreeBSD In some cases you may need to specify the BIOS drive number to the FreeBSD boot loader to successfully boot off the second disk. For example, if your FreeBSD SCSI disk is probed by BIOS as BIOS disk 1, at the FreeBSD boot loader prompt you need to specify: Boot: 1:da(0,a)/kernel On FreeBSD 2.2.5 and later, you can configure boot(8) to automatically do this for you at boot time. The Linux+FreeBSD mini-HOWTO is a good reference for FreeBSD and Linux interoperability issues. How do I boot FreeBSD and Linux using BootEasy? Install LILO at the start of your Linux boot partition instead of in the Master Boot Record. You can then boot LILO from BootEasy. If you're running Windows-95 and Linux this is recommended anyway, to make it simpler to get Linux booting again if you should need to reinstall Windows95 (which is a Jealous Operating System, and will bear no other Operating Systems in the Master Boot Record). Will a dangerously dedicated disk endanger my health? The installation procedure allows you to chose two different methods in partitioning your harddisk(s). The default way makes it compatible with other operating systems on the same machine, by using fdisk table entries (called slices in FreeBSD), with a FreeBSD slice that employs partitions of its own. Optionally, one can chose to install a boot-selector to switch between the possible operating systems on the disk(s). The alternative uses the entire disk for FreeBSD, and makes no attempt to be compatible with other operating systems. So why it is called dangerous? A disk in this mode doesn't contain what normal PC utilities would consider a valid fdisk table. Depending on how well they have been designed, they might complain at you once they are getting in contact with such a disk, or even worse, they might damage the BSD bootstrap without even asking or notifying you. In addition, the dangerously dedicated disk's layout is known to confuse many BIOSsen, including those from AWARD (eg. as found in HP Netserver and Micronics systems as well as many others) and Symbios/NCR (for the popular 53C8xx range of SCSI controllers). This isn't a complete list, there are more. Symptoms of this confusion include the read error message printed by the FreeBSD bootstrap when it can't find itself, as well as system lockups when booting. Why have this mode at all then? It only saves a few kbytes of disk space, and it can cause real problems for a new installation. Dangerously dedicated mode's origins lie in a desire to avoid one of the most common problems plaguing new FreeBSD installers - matching the BIOS geometry numbers for a disk to the disk itself. Geometry is an outdated concept, but one still at the heart of the PC's BIOS and its interaction with disks. When the FreeBSD installer creates slices, it has to record the location of these slices on the disk in a fashion that corresponds with the way the BIOS expects to find them. If it gets it wrong, you won't be able to boot. Dangerously dedicated mode tries to work around this by making the problem simpler. In some cases, it gets it right. But it's meant to be used as a last-ditch alternative - there are better ways to solve the problem 99 times out of 100. So, how do you avoid the need for DD mode when you're installing? Start by making a note of the geometry that your BIOS claims to be using for your disks. You can arrange to have the kernel print this as it boots by specifying at the boot: prompt, or using boot -v in the loader. Just before the installer starts, the kernel will print a list of BIOS geometries. Don't panic - wait for the installer to start and then use scrollback to read the numbers. Typically the BIOS disk units will be in the same order that FreeBSD lists your disks, first IDE, then SCSI. When you're slicing up your disk, check that the disk geometry displayed in the FDISK screen is correct (ie. it matches the BIOS numbers); if it's wrong, use the g key to fix it. You may have to do this if there's absolutely nothing on the disk, or if the disk has been moved from another system. Note that this is only an issue with the disk that you're going to boot from; FreeBSD will sort itself out just fine with any other disks you may have. Once you've got the BIOS and FreeBSD agreeing about the geometry of the disk, your problems are almost guaranteed to be over, and with no need for DD mode at all. If, however, you are still greeted with the dreaded read error message when you try to boot, it's time to cross your fingers and go for it - there's nothing left to lose. To return a dangerously dedicated disk for normal PC use, there are basically two options. The first is, you write enough NULL bytes over the MBR to make any subsequent installation believe this to be a blank disk. You can do this for example with &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rda0 count=15 Alternatively, the undocumented DOS feature C:\> fdisk /mbr will to install a new master boot record as well, thus clobbering the BSD bootstrap. How can I add more swap space? The best way is to increase the size of your swap partition, or take advantage of this convenient excuse to add another disk. The general rule of thumb is to have around 2x the swap space as you have main memory. However, if you have a very small amount of main memory you may want to configure swap beyond that. It is also a good idea to configure sufficient swap relative to anticipated future memory upgrades so you do not have to futz with your swap configuration later. Adding swap onto a separate disk makes things faster than simply adding swap onto the same disk. As an example, if you are compiling source located on one disk, and the swap is on another disk, this is much faster than both swap and compile on the same disk. This is true for SCSI disks specifically. When you have several disks, configuring a swap partition on each one is usually beneficial, even if you wind up putting swap on a work disk. Typically, each fast disk in your system should have some swap configured. FreeBSD supports up to 4 interleaved swap devices by default. When configuring multiple swap partitions you generally want to make them all about the same size, but people sometimes make their primary swap parition larger in order to accomodate a kernel core dump. Your primary swap partition must be at least as large as main memory in order to be able to accomodate a kernel core. IDE drives are not able to allow access to both drives on the same channel at the same time (FreeBSD doesn't support mode 4, so all IDE disk I/O is programmed). I would still suggest putting your swap on a separate drive however. The drives are so cheap, it is not worth worrying about. Swapping over NFS is only recommended if you do not have a local disk to swap to. Swapping over NFS is slow and inefficient in FreeBSD releases prior to 4.x, but reasonably fast in releases greater or equal to 4.0. Even so, it will be limited to the network bandwidth available and puts an additional burden on the NFS server. Here is an example for 64Mb vn-swap (/usr/swap0, though of course you can use any name that you want). Make sure your kernel was built with the line pseudo-device vn 1 #Vnode driver (turns a file into a device) in your config-file. The GENERIC kernel already contains this. create a vn-device &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV vn0 create a swapfile (/usr/swap0) &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/swap0 bs=1024k count=64 set proper permissions on (/usr/swap0) &prompt.root; chmod 0600 /usr/swap0 enable the swap file in /etc/rc.conf swapfile="/usr/swap0" # Set to name of swapfile if aux swapfile desired. reboot the machine To enable the swap file immediately, type &prompt.root; vnconfig -ce /dev/vn0c /usr/swap0 swap I'm having problems setting up my printer. Please have a look at the Handbook entry on printing. It should cover most of your problem. See the Handbook entry on printing. The keyboard mappings are wrong for my system. The kbdcontrol program has an option to load a keyboard map file. Under /usr/share/syscons/keymaps are a number of map files. Choose the one relevant to your system and load it. &prompt.root; kbdcontrol -l uk.iso Both the /usr/share/syscons/keymaps and the .kbd extension are assumed by kbdcontrol. This can be configured in /etc/sysconfig (or rc.conf). See the appropriate comments in this file. In 2.0.5R and later, everything related to text fonts, keyboard mapping is in /usr/share/examples/syscons. The following mappings are currently supported: Belgian ISO-8859-1 Brazilian 275 keyboard Codepage 850 Brazilian 275 keyboard ISO-8859-1 Danish Codepage 865 Danish ISO-8859-1 French ISO-8859-1 German Codepage 850 German ISO-8859-1 Italian ISO-8859-1 Japanese 106 Japanese 106x Latin American Norwegian ISO-8859-1 Polish ISO-8859-2 (programmer's) Russian Codepage 866 (alternative) Russian koi8-r (shift) Russian koi8-r Spanish ISO-8859-1 Swedish Codepage 850 Swedish ISO-8859-1 Swiss-German ISO-8859-1 United Kingdom Codepage 850 United Kingdom ISO-8859-1 United States of America ISO-8859-1 United States of America dvorak United States of America dvorakx I can't get user quotas to work properly. Don't turn on quotas on /, Put the quota file on the file system that the quotas are to be enforced on. ie: FS QUOTA FILE /usr /usr/admin/quotas /home /home/admin/quotas ... What's inappropriate about my ccd? The symptom of this is: &prompt.root; ccdconfig -C ccdconfig: ioctl (CCDIOCSET): /dev/ccd0c: Inappropriate file type or format This usually happens when you are trying to concatenate the c partitions, which default to type unused. The ccd driver requires the underlying partition type to be FS_BSDFFS. Edit the disklabel of the disks you are trying to concatenate and change the types of partitions to 4.2BSD. Why can't I edit the disklabel on my ccd? The symptom of this is: &prompt.root; disklabel ccd0 (it prints something sensible here, so let's try to edit it) &prompt.root; disklabel -e ccd0 (edit, save, quit) disklabel: ioctl DIOCWDINFO: No disk label on disk; use "disklabel -r" to install initial label This is because the disklabel returned by ccd is actually a fake one that is not really on the disk. You can solve this problem by writing it back explicitly, as in: &prompt.root; disklabel ccd0 > /tmp/disklabel.tmp &prompt.root; disklabel -Rr ccd0 /tmp/disklabel.tmp &prompt.root; disklabel -e ccd0 (this will work now) Does FreeBSD support System V IPC primitives? Yes, FreeBSD supports System V-style IPC. This includes shared memory, messages and semaphores. You need to add the following lines to your kernel config to enable them. options SYSVSHM options SYSVSHM # enable shared memory options SYSVSEM # enable for semaphores options SYSVMSG # enable for messaging In FreeBSD 3.2 and later, these options are already part of the GENERIC kernel, which means they should already be compiled into your system. Recompile and install your kernel. How do I use sendmail for mail delivery with UUCP? The sendmail configuration that ships with FreeBSD is suited for sites that connect directly to the Internet. Sites that wish to exchange their mail via UUCP must install another sendmail configuration file. Tweaking /etc/sendmail.cf manually is considered something for purists. Sendmail version 8 comes with a new approach of generating config files via some m4 preprocessing, where the actual hand-crafted configuration is on a higher abstraction level. You should use the configuration files under /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf If you didn't install your system with full sources, the sendmail config stuff has been broken out into a separate source distribution tarball just for you. Assuming you've got your CD-ROM mounted, do: &prompt.root; cd /cdrom/src &prompt.root; cat scontrib.?? | tar xzf - -C /usr/src contrib/sendmail Don't panic, this is only a few hundred kilobytes in size. The file README in the cf directory can serve as a basic introduction to m4 configuration. For UUCP delivery, you are best advised to use the mailertable feature. This constitutes a database that sendmail can use to base its routing decision upon. First, you have to create your .mc file. The directory /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf is the home of these files. Look around, there are already a few examples. Assuming you have named your file foo.mc, all you need to do in order to convert it into a valid sendmail.cf is: &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf &prompt.root; make foo.cf &prompt.root; cp foo.cf /etc/sendmail.cf A typical .mc file might look like: include(`../m4/cf.m4') VERSIONID(`Your version number') OSTYPE(bsd4.4) FEATURE(nodns) FEATURE(nocanonify) FEATURE(mailertable) define(`UUCP_RELAY', your.uucp.relay) define(`UUCP_MAX_SIZE', 200000) MAILER(local) MAILER(smtp) MAILER(uucp) Cw your.alias.host.name Cw youruucpnodename.UUCP The nodns and nocanonify features will prevent any usage of the DNS during mail delivery. The UUCP_RELAY clause is needed for bizarre reasons, don't ask. Simply put an Internet hostname there that is able to handle .UUCP pseudo-domain addresses; most likely, you will enter the mail relay of your ISP there. Once you've got this, you need this file called /etc/mailertable. A typical example of this gender again: # # makemap hash /etc/mailertable.db < /etc/mailertable # horus.interface-business.de uucp-dom:horus .interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus .heep.sax.de smtp8:%1 horus.UUCP uucp-dom:horus if-bus.UUCP uucp-dom:if-bus . uucp-dom: As you can see, this is part of a real-life file. The first three lines handle special cases where domain-addressed mail should not be sent out to the default route, but instead to some UUCP neighbor in order to shortcut the delivery path. The next line handles mail to the local Ethernet domain that can be delivered using SMTP. Finally, the UUCP neighbors are mentioned in the .UUCP pseudo-domain notation, to allow for a uucp-neighbor!recipient override of the default rules. The last line is always a single dot, matching everything else, with UUCP delivery to a UUCP neighbor that serves as your universal mail gateway to the world. All of the node names behind the uucp-dom: keyword must be valid UUCP neighbors, as you can verify using the command uuname. As a reminder that this file needs to be converted into a DBM database file before being usable, the command line to accomplish this is best placed as a comment at the top of the mailertable. You always have to execute this command each time you change your mailertable. Final hint: if you are uncertain whether some particular mail routing would work, remember the option to sendmail. It starts sendmail in address test mode; simply enter 0 , followed by the address you wish to test for the mail routing. The last line tells you the used internal mail agent, the destination host this agent will be called with, and the (possibly translated) address. Leave this mode by typing Control-D. &prompt.user; sendmail -bt ADDRESS TEST MODE (ruleset 3 NOT automatically invoked) Enter <ruleset> <address> > 0 foo@interface-business.de rewrite: ruleset 0 input: foo @ interface-business . de ... rewrite: ruleset 0 returns: $# uucp-dom $@ if-bus $: foo \ < @ interface-business . de > > ^D How do I set up mail with a dialup connection to the 'net? If you've got a statically assigned IP number, you should not need to adjust anything from the default. Set your host name up as your assigned internet name and sendmail will do the rest. If you've got a dynamically assigned IP number and use a dialup ppp connection to the internet, you will probably be given a mailbox on your ISPs mail server. Lets assume your ISPs domain is myISP.com, and that your user name is user. Lets also assume you've called your machine bsd.home and that your ISP has told you that you may use relay.myISP.com as a mail relay. In order to retrieve mail from your mailbox, you'll need to install a retrieval agent. Fetchmail is a good choice as it supports many different protocols. Usually, POP3 will be provided by your ISP. If you've chosen to use user-ppp, you can automatically fetch your mail when a connection to the 'net is established with the following entry in /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup: MYADDR: !bg su user -c fetchmail If you are using sendmail (as shown below) to deliver mail to non-local accounts, put the command !bg su user -c "sendmail -q" after the above shown entry. This forces sendmail to process your mailqueue as soon as the connection to the 'net is established. I'm assuming that you have an account for user on bsd.home. In the home directory of user on bsd.home, create a .fetchmailrc file: poll myISP.com protocol pop3 fetchall pass MySecret Needless to say, this file should not be readable by anyone except user as it contains the password MySecret. In order to send mail with the correct from: header, you must tell sendmail to use user@myISP.com rather than user@bsd.home. You may also wish to tell sendmail to send all mail via relay.myISP.com, allowing quicker mail transmission. The following .mc file should suffice: VERSIONID(`bsd.home.mc version 1.0') OSTYPE(bsd4.4)dnl FEATURE(nouucp)dnl MAILER(local)dnl MAILER(smtp)dnl Cwlocalhost Cwbsd.home MASQUERADE_AS(`myISP.com')dnl FEATURE(allmasquerade)dnl FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl FEATURE(nocanonify)dnl FEATURE(nodns)dnl define(SMART_HOST, `relay.myISP.com') Dmbsd.home define(`confDOMAIN_NAME',`bsd.home')dnl define(`confDELIVERY_MODE',`deferred')dnl Refer to the previous section for details of how to turn this .mc file into a sendmail.cf file. Also, don't forget to restart sendmail after updating sendmail.cf. Eek! I forgot the root password! Don't Panic! Simply restart the system, type boot -s at the Boot: prompt (just -s for FreeBSD releases before 3.2) to enter Single User mode. At the question about the shell to use, hit ENTER. You'll be dropped to a &prompt.root; prompt. Enter mount -u / to remount your root filesystem read/write, then run mount -a to remount all the filesystems. Run passwd root to change the root password then run exit to continue booting. How do I keep Control-Alt-Delete from rebooting the system? If you are using syscons (the default console driver) in FreeBSD 2.2.7-RELEASE or later, build and install a new kernel with the line options SC_DISABLE_REBOOT in the configuration file. If you use the PCVT console driver in FreeBSD 2.2.5-RELEASE or later, use the following kernel configuration line instead: options PCVT_CTRL_ALT_DEL For older versions of FreeBSD, edit the keymap you are using for the console and replace the boot keywords with nop. The default keymap is /usr/share/syscons/keymaps/us.iso.kbd. You may have to instruct /etc/rc.conf to load this keymap explicitly for the change to take effect. Of course if you are using an alternate keymap for your country, you should edit that one instead. How do I reformat DOS text files to UNIX ones? Simply use this perl command: &prompt.user; perl -i.bak -npe 's/\r\n/\n/g' file ... file is the file(s) to process. The modification is done in-place, with the original file stored with a .bak extension. Alternatively you can use the tr command: &prompt.user; tr -d '\r' < dos-text-file > unix-file dos-text-file is the file containing DOS text while unix-file will contain the converted output. This can be quite a bit faster than using perl. How do I kill processes by name? Use killall. Why is su bugging me about not being in root's ACL? The error comes from the Kerberos distributed authentication system. The problem isn't fatal but annoying. You can either run su with the -K option, or uninstall Kerberos as described in the next question. How do I uninstall Kerberos? To remove Kerberos from the system, reinstall the bin distribution for the release you are running. If you have the CDROM, you can mount the cd (we'll assume on /cdrom) and run &prompt.root; cd /cdrom/bin &prompt.root; ./install.sh How do I add pseudoterminals to the system? If you have lots of telnet, ssh, X, or screen users, you'll probably run out of pseudoterminals. Here's how to add more: Build and install a new kernel with the line pseudo-device pty 256 in the configuration file. Run the commands &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV pty{1,2,3,4,5,6,7} to make 256 device nodes for the new terminals. Edit /etc/ttys and add lines for each of the 256 terminals. They should match the form of the existing entries, i.e. they look like ttyqc none network The order of the letter designations is tty[pqrsPQRS][0-9a-v], using a regular expression. Reboot the system with the new kernel and you're ready to go. I can't create the snd0 device! There is no snd device. The name is used as a shorthand for the various devices that make up the FreeBSD sound driver, such as mixer, sequencer, and dsp. To create these devices you should &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV snd0 How do I re-read /etc/rc.conf and re-start /etc/rc without a reboot? Go into single user mode and than back to multi user mode. On the console do: &prompt.root; shutdown now (Note: without -r or -h) &prompt.root; return &prompt.root; exit What is a sandbox? Sandbox is a security term. It can mean two things: A process which is placed inside a set of virtual walls that are designed to prevent someone who breaks into the process from being able to break into the wider system. The process is said to be able to play inside the walls. That is, nothing the process does in regards to executing code is supposed to be able to breech the walls so you do not have to do a detailed audit of its code to be able to say certain things about its security. The walls might be a userid, for example. This is the definition used in the security and named man pages. Take the ntalk service, for example (see /etc/inetd.conf). This service used to run as userid root. Now it runs as userid tty. The tty user is a sandbox designed to make it more difficult for someone who has successfully hacked into the system via ntalk from being able to hack beyond that user id. A process which is placed inside a simulation of the machine. This is more hard-core. Basically it means that someone who is able to break into the process may believe that he can break into the wider machine but is, in fact, only breaking into a simulation of that machine and not modifying any real data. The most common way to accomplish this is to build a simulated environment in a subdirectory and then run the processes in that directory chroot'd (i.e. / for that process is this directory, not the real / of the system). Another common use is to mount an underlying filesystem read-only and then create a filesystem layer on top of it that gives a process a seemingly writeable view into that filesystem. The process may believe it is able to write to those files, but only the process sees the effects - other processes in the system do not, necessarily. An attempt is made to make this sort of sandbox so transparent that the user (or hacker) does not realize that he is sitting in it. UNIX implements two core sanboxes. One is at the process level, and one is at the userid level. Every UNIX process is completely firewalled off from every other UNIX process. One process can not modify the address space of another. This is unlike Windows where a process can easily overwrite the address space of any other, leading to a crash. A UNIX process is owned by a patricular userid. If the userid is not the root user, it serves to firewall the process off from processes owned by other users. The userid is also used to firewall off on-disk data. How do I let ordinary users mount floppies and other removable media? Ordinary users can be permitted to mount devices. Here is how: As root assign the appropriate permissions to the block device associated with the removable media. For example, to allow users to mount the first floppy drive, use: &prompt.root; chmod 777 /dev/fd0 As root set the sysctl variable vfs.usermount to 1. &prompt.root; sysctl -w vfs.usermount=1 Users can now mount /dev/fd0 onto a directory that they own: &prompt.user; mkdir ~/my-mount-point &prompt.user; mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 ~/my-mount-point Unmounting the device is simple: &prompt.user; umount ~/my-mount-point Enabling vfs.usermount, however, has negative security implications. A better way to access MSDOS formatted media is to use the mtools package in the ports collection. How do I move my system over to my huge new disk? The best way is to reinstall the OS on the new disk, then move the user data over. This is highly recommended if you've been tracking -stable for more than one release, or have updated a release instead of installing a new one. You can install booteasy on both disks with &man.boot0cfg.8;, and dual boot them until you are happy with the new configuration. Skip the next paragraph to find out how to move the data after doing this. Should you decide not to do a fresh install, you need to partition and label the new disk with either /stand/sysinstall, or &man.fdisk.8; and &man.disklabel.8;. You should also install booteasy on both disks with &man.boot0cfg.8;, so that you can dual boot to the old or new system after the copying is done. See the formatting-media tutorial for details on this process. Now you've got the new disk set up, and are ready to move the data. Unfortunately, you can't just blindly copy the data. Things like device files (in /dev) and symbolic links tend to screw that up. You need to use tools that understand these things, which means &man.dump.8; and &man.tar.1;. I recommend doing the data moves in single user mode, but it's not required. You should never use anything but &man.dump.8; and &man.restore.8; to move the root file system. The &man.tar.1; command may work - then again, it may not. You should also use &man.dump.8; and &man.restore.8; if you are moving a single partition to another empty partition. The sequence of steps to use dump to move a partitions data to a new partition is: newfs the new partition. mount it on a temporary mount point. cd to that directory. dump the old partition, piping output to the new one. For example, if you are going to move root to /dev/ad1s1a, with /mnt as the temporary mount point, it's: &prompt.root; newfs /dev/ad1s1a &prompt.root; mount /dev/ad1s1a &prompt.root; cd /mnt &prompt.root; dump 0uaf - / | restore xf - If you are going to rearrange your partitions - say, splitting one into two, or combing two into one, you may find yourself needing to move everything under a subdirectory to a new location. Since &man.dump.8; works with file systems, it can't do this. So you use &man.tar.1;. The general command to move /old to /new for &man.tar.1; is: &prompt.root; (cd /old; tar cf - .) | (cd /new; tar xpf -) If /old has file systems mounted on that, and you don't want to move that data or unmount them, you just add the 'l' flag to the first &man.tar.1;: &prompt.root; (cd /old; tar clf - .) | (cd /new; tar xpf -). You might prefer cpio(1), pax(1) or cpdup (in ports/sysutils/cpdup) to tar. The X Window System and Virtual Consoles I want to run X, how do I go about it? The easiest way is to simply specify that you want to run X during the installation process. Then read and follow the documentation on the xf86config tool, which assists you in configuring XFree86(tm) for your particular graphics card/mouse/etc. You may also wish to investigate the Xaccel server. See the section on Xi Graphics or Metro Link for more details. Why doesn't my mouse work with X? If you are using syscons (the default console driver), you can configure FreeBSD to support a mouse pointer on each virtual screen. In order to avoid conflicting with X, syscons supports a virtual device called /dev/sysmouse. All mouse events received from the real mouse device are written to the sysmouse device via moused. If you wish to use your mouse on one or more virtual consoles, and use X, see and set up moused. Then edit /etc/XF86Config and make sure you have the following lines. Section Pointer Protocol "SysMouse" Device "/dev/sysmouse" ..... The above example is for XFree86 3.3.2 or later. For earlier versions, the Protocol should be MouseSystems. Some people prefer to use /dev/mouse under X. To make this work, /dev/mouse should be linked to /dev/sysmouse: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; rm -f mouse &prompt.root; ln -s sysmouse mouse My mouse has a fancy wheel. Can I use it in X? Yes. But you need to customize X client programs. See Colas Nahaboo's web page (http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas/mouse-wheel-scroll/). If you want to use the imwheel program, just follow these simple steps. Translate the Wheel Events The imwheel program works by translating mouse button 4 and mouse button 5 events into key events. Thus, you have to get the mouse driver to translate mouse wheel events to button 4 and 5 events. There are two ways of doing this, the first way is to have &man.moused.8; do the translation. The second way is for the X server itself to do the event translation. Using &man.moused.8; to Translate Wheel Events To have &man.moused.8; perform the event translations, simply add to the command line used to start &man.moused.8;. For example, if you normally start &man.moused.8; via moused -p /dev/psm0 you would start it by entering moused -p /dev/psm0 -z 4 instead. If you start &man.moused.8; automatically during bootup via /etc/rc.conf, you can simply add to the moused_flags variable in /etc/rc.conf. You now need to tell X that you have a 5 button mouse. To do this, simply add the line Buttons 5 to the Pointer section of /etc/XF86Config. For example, you might have the following Pointer section in /etc/XF86Config. <quote>Pointer</quote> Section for Wheeled Mouse in XF86Config with moused Translation Section "Pointer" Protocol "SysMouse" Device "/dev/sysmouse" Buttons 5 EndSection Using Your X Server to Translate the Wheel Events If you aren't running &man.moused.8;, or if you don't want &man.moused.8; to translate your wheel events, you can have the X server do the event translation instead. This requires a couple of modifications to your /etc/XF86Config file. First, you need to choose the proper protocol for your mouse. Most wheeled mice use the IntelliMouse protocol. However, XFree86 does support other protocols, such as MouseManPlusPS/2 for the Logitech MouseMan+ mice. Once you have chosen the protocol you will use, you need to add a Protocol line to the Pointer section. Secondly, you need to tell the X server to remap wheel scroll events to mouse buttons 4 and 5. This is done with the ZAxisMapping option. For example, if you aren't using &man.moused.8;, and you have an IntelliMouse attached to the PS/2 mouse port you would use the following in /etc/XF86Config. <quote>Pointer</quote> Section for Wheeled Mouse in <filename>XF86Config</filename> with X Server Translation Section "Pointer" Protocol "IntelliMouse" Device "/dev/psm0" ZAxisMapping 4 5 EndSection Install imwheel Next, install imwheel from the Ports collection. It can be found in the x11 category. This program will map the wheel events from your mouse into keyboard events. For example, it might send Page Up to a program when you scroll the wheel forwards. Imwheel uses a configuration file to map the wheel events to keypresses so that it can send different keys to different applications. The default imwheel configuration file is installed in /usr/X11R6/etc/imwheelrc. You can copy it to ~/.imwheelrc and then edit it if you wish to customize imwheel's configuration. The format of the configuration file is documented in &man.imwheel.1;. Configure Emacs to Work with Imwheel (optional) If you use emacs or Xemacs, then you need to add a small section to your ~/.emacs file. For emacs, add the following: <application>Emacs</application> Configuration for <application>Imwheel</application> ;;; For imwheel (setq imwheel-scroll-interval 3) (defun imwheel-scroll-down-some-lines () (interactive) (scroll-down imwheel-scroll-interval)) (defun imwheel-scroll-up-some-lines () (interactive) (scroll-up imwheel-scroll-interval)) (global-set-key [?\M-\C-\)] 'imwheel-scroll-up-some-lines) (global-set-key [?\M-\C-\(] 'imwheel-scroll-down-some-lines) ;;; end imwheel section For Xemacs, add the following to your ~/.emacs file instead: <application>Xemacs</application> Configuration for <application>Imwheel</application> ;;; For imwheel (setq imwheel-scroll-interval 3) (defun imwheel-scroll-down-some-lines () (interactive) (scroll-down imwheel-scroll-interval)) (defun imwheel-scroll-up-some-lines () (interactive) (scroll-up imwheel-scroll-interval)) (define-key global-map [(control meta \))] 'imwheel-scroll-up-some-lines) (define-key global-map [(control meta \()] 'imwheel-scroll-down-some-lines) ;;; end imwheel section Run Imwheel You can just type imwheel in an xterm to start it up once it is installed. It will background itself and take effect immediately. If you want to always use imwheel, simply add it to your .xinitrc or .xsession file. You can safely ignore any warnings imwheel displays about PID files. Those warnings only apply to the Linux version of imwheel. X Window menus and dialog boxes don't work right! Try turning off the Num Lock key. If your Num Lock key is on by default at boot-time, you may add the following line in the Keyboard section of the XF86Config file. # Let the server do the NumLock processing. This should only be # required when using pre-R6 clients ServerNumLock What is a virtual console and how do I make more? Virtual consoles, put simply, enable you to have several simultaneous sessions on the same machine without doing anything complicated like setting up a network or running X. When the system starts, it will display a login prompt on the monitor after displaying all the boot messages. You can then type in your login name and password and start working (or playing!) on the first virtual console. At some point, you will probably wish to start another session, perhaps to look at documentation for a program you are running or to read your mail while waiting for an FTP transfer to finish. Just do Alt-F2 (hold down the Alt key and press the F2 key), and you will find a login prompt waiting for you on the second virtual console! When you want to go back to the original session, do Alt-F1. The default FreeBSD installation has three virtual consoles enabled (8 starting with 3.3-RELEASE), and Alt-F1, Alt-F2, and Alt-F3 will switch between these virtual consoles. To enable more of them, edit /etc/ttys and add entries for ttyv4 to ttyvc after the comment on Virtual terminals: # Edit the existing entry for ttyv3 in /etc/ttys and change # "off" to "on". ttyv3 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv4 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv5 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv6 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv7 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv8 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv9 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyva "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure Use as many or as few as you want. The more virtual terminals you have, the more resources that are used; this can be important if you have 8MB RAM or less. You may also want to change the secure to insecure. If you want to run an X server you MUST leave at least one virtual terminal unused (or turned off) for it to use. That is to say that if you want to have a login prompt pop up for all twelve of your Alt-function keys, you're out of luck - you can only do this for eleven of them if you also want to run an X server on the same machine. The easiest way to disable a console is by turning it off. For example, if you had the full 12 terminal allocation mentioned above and you wanted to run X, you would change settings for virtual terminal 12 from: ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure to: ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure If your keyboard has only ten function keys, you would end up with: ttyv9 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure ttyva "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure (You could also just delete these lines.) Once you have edited /etc/ttys, the next step is to make sure that you have enough virtual terminal devices. The easiest way to do this is: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV vty12 Next, the easiest (and cleanest) way to activate the virtual consoles is to reboot. However, if you really don't want to reboot, you can just shut down the X Window system and execute (as root): &prompt.root; kill -HUP 1 It's imperative that you completely shut down X Window if it is running, before running this command. If you don't, your system will probably appear to hang/lock up after executing the kill command. How do I access the virtual consoles from X? If the console is currently displaying X Window, you can use Ctrl-Alt-F1, etc. to switch to a virtual console. Note, however, that once you've switched away from X Window to a virtual terminal, you may use only the Alt- function key to switch to another virtual terminal or back to X Window. You do not need to also press the Ctrl key. If you use the control key to switch back to X on some older releases, you can find your text console stuck in control-lock mode. Tap the control key to wake it up again. How do I start XDM on boot? There are two schools of thought on how to start xdm. One school starts xdm from /etc/ttys using the supplied example, while the other simply runs xdm from rc.local or from a X.sh script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d. Both are equally valid, and one may work in situations where the other doesn't. In both cases the result is the same: X will popup a graphical login: prompt. The ttys method has the advantage of documenting which vty X will start on and passing the responsibility of restarting the X server on logout to init. The rc.local method makes it easy to kill xdm if there is a problem starting the X server. If loaded from rc.local, xdm should be started without any arguments (i.e., as a daemon). xdm must start AFTER getty runs, or else getty and xdm will conflict, locking out the console. The best way around this is to have the script sleep 10 seconds or so then launch xdm. If you are to start xdm from /etc/ttys, there still is a chance of conflict between xdm and getty. One way to avoid this is to add the vt number in the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers file. :0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X vt4 The above example will direct the X server to run in /dev/ttyv3. Note the number is offset by one. The X server counts the vty from one, whereas the FreeBSD kernel numbers the vty from zero. When I run xconsole, I get Couldn't open console. If you start X with startx, the permissions on /dev/console will not get changed, resulting in things like xterm -C and xconsole not working. This is because of the way console permissions are set by default. On a multi-user system, one doesn't necessarily want just any user to be able to write on the system console. For users who are logging directly onto a machine with a VTY, the fbtab file exists to solve such problems. In a nutshell, make sure an uncommented line of the form /dev/ttyv0 0600 /dev/console is in /etc/fbtab and it will ensure that whomever logs in on /dev/ttyv0 will own the console. My PS/2 mouse doesn't behave properly under X. Your mouse and the mouse driver may have somewhat become out of synchronization. In versions 2.2.5 and earlier, switching away from X to a virtual terminal and getting back to X again may make them re-synchronized. If the problem occurs often, you may add the following option in your kernel configuration file and recompile it. options PSM_CHECKSYNC See the section on building a kernel if you've no experience with building kernels. With this option, there should be less chance of synchronization problem between the mouse and the driver. If, however, you still see the problem, click any mouse button while holding the mouse still to re-synchronize the mouse and the driver. Note that unfortunately this option may not work with all the systems and voids the tap feature of the ALPS GlidePoint device attached to the PS/2 mouse port. In versions 2.2.6 and later, synchronization check is done in a slightly better way and is standard in the PS/2 mouse driver. It should even work with GlidePoint. (As the check code has become a standard feature, PSM_CHECKSYNC option is not available in these versions.) However, in rare case the driver may erroneously report synchronization problem and you may see the kernel message: psmintr: out of sync (xxxx != yyyy) and find your mouse doesn't seem to work properly. If this happens, disable the synchronization check code by setting the driver flags for the PS/2 mouse driver to 0x100. Enter UserConfig by giving the option at the boot prompt: boot: -c Then, in the UserConfig command line, type: UserConfig> flags psm0 0x100 UserConfig> quit My PS/2 mouse from MouseSystems doesn't seem to work. There have been some reports that certain model of PS/2 mouse from MouseSystems works only if it is put into the high resolution mode. Otherwise, the mouse cursor may jump to the upper-left corner of the screen every so often. Unfortunately there is no workaround for versions 2.0.X and 2.1.X. In versions 2.2 through 2.2.5, apply the following patch to /sys/i386/isa/psm.c and rebuild the kernel. See the section on building a kernel if you've no experience with building kernels. @@ -766,6 +766,8 @@ if (verbose >= 2) log(LOG_DEBUG, "psm%d: SET_DEFAULTS return code:%04x\n", unit, i); + set_mouse_resolution(sc->kbdc, PSMD_RES_HIGH); + #if 0 set_mouse_scaling(sc->kbdc); /* 1:1 scaling */ set_mouse_mode(sc->kbdc); /* stream mode */ In versions 2.2.6 or later, specify the flags 0x04 to the PS/2 mouse driver to put the mouse into the high resolution mode. Enter UserConfig by giving the option at the boot prompt: boot: -c Then, in the UserConfig command line, type: UserConfig> flags psm0 0x04 UserConfig> quit See the previous section for another possible cause of mouse problems. When building an X app, imake can't find Imake.tmpl. Where is it? Imake.tmpl is part of the Imake package, a standard X application building tool. Imake.tmpl, as well as several header files that are required to build X apps, is contained in the X prog distribution. You can install this from sysinstall or manually from the X distribution files. How do I reverse the mouse buttons? Run the command xmodmap -e "pointer = 3 2 1" from your .xinitrc or .xsession. How do I install a splash screen and where do I find them? Just prior to the release of FreeBSD 3.1, a new feature was added to allow the display of splash screens during the boot messages. The splash screens currently must be a 256 color bitmap (*.BMP) or ZSoft PCX (*.PCX) file. In addition, they must have a resolution of 320x200 or less to work on standard VGA adapters. If you compile VESA support into your kernel, then you can use larger bitmaps up to 1024x768. Note that VESA support requires the VM86 kernel option to be compiled into the kernel. The actual VESA support can either be compiled directly into the kernel with the VESA kernel config option or by loading the VESA kld module during bootup. To use a splash screen, you need to modify the startup files that control the boot process for FreeBSD. The files for this changed prior to the release of FreeBSD 3.2, so there are now two ways of loading a splash screen: FreeBSD 3.1 The first step is to find a bitmap version of your splash screen. Release 3.1 only supports Windows bitmap splash screens. Once you've found your splash screen of choice copy it to /boot/splash.bmp. Next, you need to have a /boot/loader.rc file that contains the following lines: load kernel load -t splash_image_data /boot/splash.bmp load splash_bmp autoboot FreeBSD 3.2+ In addition to adding support for PCX splash screens, FreeBSD 3.2 includes a nicer way of configuring the boot process. If you wish, you can use the method listed above for FreeBSD 3.1. If you do and you want to use PCX, replace splash_bmp with splash_pcx. If, on the other hand, you want to use the newer boot configuration, you need to create a /boot/loader.rc file that contains the following lines: include /boot/loader.4th start and a /boot/loader.conf that contains the following: splash_bmp_load="YES" bitmap_load="YES" This assumes you are using /boot/splash.bmp for your splash screen. If you'd rather use a PCX file, copy it to /boot/splash.pcx, create a /boot/loader.rc as instructed above, and create a /boot/loader.conf that contains: splash_pcx_load="YES" bitmap_load="YES" bitmap_name="/boot/splash.pcx" Now all you need is a splash screen. For that you can surf on over to the gallery at http://www.cslab.vt.edu/~jobaldwi/splash/. Can I use the Windows(tm) keys on my keyboard in X? Yes. All you need to do is use &man.xmodmap.1; to define what function you wish them to perform. Assuming all Windows(tm) keyboards are standard then the keycodes for the 3 keys are 115 - Windows(tm) key, between the left-hand Ctrl and Alt keys 116 - Windows(tm) key, to the right of the Alt-Gr key 117 - Menu key, to the left of the right-hand Ctrl key To have the left Windows(tm) key print a comma, try this. &prompt.root; xmodmap -e "keycode 115 = comma" You will probably have to re-start your window manager to see the result. To have the Windows(tm) key-mappings enabled automatically everytime you start X either put the xmodmap commands in your ~/.xinitrc file or, preferably, create a file ~/.xmodmaprc and include the xmodmap options, one per line, then add the line xmodmap $HOME/.xmodmaprc to your ~/.xinitrc. For example, I have mapped the 3 keys to be F13, F14, and F15 respectively. This makes it easy to map them to useful functions within applications or your window manager. To do this put the following in ~/.xmodmaprc. keycode 115 = F13 keycode 116 = F14 keycode 117 = F15 I use fvwm2 and have mapped the keys so that F13 iconifies (or de-iconifies) the window the cursor is in, F14 brings the window the cursor is in to the front or, if it is already at the front, pushes it to the back, and F15 pops up the main Workplace (application) menu even if the cursor is not on the desktop, which is useful if you don't have any part of the desktop visible (and the logo on the key matches its functionality). The entries in my ~/.fvwmrc which map the keys this way are: Key F13 FTIWS A Iconify Key F14 FTIWS A RaiseLower Key F15 A A Menu Workplace Nop Networking Where can I get information on diskless booting? Diskless booting means that the FreeBSD box is booted over a network, and reads the necessary files from a server instead of its hard disk. For full details, please read the Handbook entry on diskless booting Can a FreeBSD box be used as a dedicated network router? Internet standards and good engineering practice prohibit us from providing packet forwarding by default in FreeBSD. You can however enable this feature by changing the following variable to YES in rc.conf: gateway_enable=YES # Set to YES if this host will be a gateway This option will put the sysctl variable net.inet.ip.forwarding to 1. In most cases, you will also need to run a routing process to tell other systems on your network about your router; FreeBSD comes with the standard BSD routing daemon routed, or for more complex situations you may want to try GaTeD (available from http://www.gated.org/ ) which supports FreeBSD as of 3_5Alpha7. It is our duty to warn you that, even when FreeBSD is configured in this way, it does not completely comply with the Internet standard requirements for routers; however, it comes close enough for ordinary usage. Can I connect my Win95 box to the Internet via FreeBSD? Typically, people who ask this question have two PC's at home, one with FreeBSD and one with Win95; the idea is to use the FreeBSD box to connect to the Internet and then be able to access the Internet from the Windows95 box through the FreeBSD box. This is really just a special case of the previous question. ... and the answer is yes! In FreeBSD 3.x, user-mode ppp contains a option. If you run ppp with the , set gateway_enable to YES in /etc/rc.conf, and configure your Windows machine correctly, this should work fine. More detailed information about setting this up can be found in the Pedantic PPP Primer by Steve Sims. If you are using kernel-mode ppp, or have an Ethernet connection to the Internet, you will have to use natd. Please look at the natd section of this FAQ. Why does recompiling the latest BIND from ISC fail? There is a conflict between the cdefs.h file in the distribution and the one shipped with FreeBSD. Just remove compat/include/sys/cdefs.h. Does FreeBSD support SLIP and PPP? Yes. See the man pages for slattach, sliplogin, pppd and ppp. pppd and ppp provide support for both incoming and outgoing connections. Sliplogin deals exclusively with incoming connections and slattach deals exclusively with outgoing connections. These programs are described in the following sections of the handbook: Handbook entry on SLIP (server side) Handbook entry on SLIP (client side) Handbook entry on PPP (kernel version) Handbook entry on PPP (user-mode version) If you only have access to the Internet through a shell account, you may want to have a look at the slirp package. It can provide you with (limited) access to services such as ftp and http direct from your local machine. Does FreeBSD support NAT or Masquerading If you have a local subnet (one or more local machines), but have been allocated only a single IP number from your Internet provider (or even if you receive a dynamic IP number), you may want to look at the natd program. natd allows you to connect an entire subnet to the internet using only a single IP number. The ppp program has similar functionality built in via the switch. The alias library is used in both cases. I can't create a /dev/ed0 device! In the Berkeley networking framework, network interfaces are only directly accessible by kernel code. Please see the /etc/rc.network file and the manual pages for the various network programs mentioned there for more information. If this leaves you totally confused, then you should pick up a book describing network administration on another BSD-related operating system; with few significant exceptions, administering networking on FreeBSD is basically the same as on SunOS 4.0 or Ultrix. How can I setup Ethernet aliases? Add netmask 0xffffffff to your ifconfig command-line like the following: &prompt.root; ifconfig ed0 alias 204.141.95.2 netmask 0xffffffff How do I get my 3C503 to use the other network port? If you want to use the other ports, you'll have to specify an additional parameter on the ifconfig command line. The default port is link0. To use the AUI port instead of the BNC one, use link2. These flags should be specified using the ifconfig_* variables in /etc/rc.conf. I'm having problems with NFS to/from FreeBSD. Certain PC network cards are better than others (to put it mildly) and can sometimes cause problems with network intensive applications like NFS. See the Handbook entry on NFS for more information on this topic. Why can't I NFS-mount from a Linux box? Some versions of the Linux NFS code only accept mount requests from a privileged port; try &prompt.root; mount -o -P linuxbox:/blah /mnt Why can't I NFS-mount from a Sun box? Sun workstations running SunOS 4.X only accept mount requests from a privileged port; try &prompt.root; mount -o -P sunbox:/blah /mnt I'm having problems talking PPP to NeXTStep machines. Try disabling the TCP extensions in /etc/rc.conf by changing the following variable to NO: tcp_extensions=NO Xylogic's Annex boxes are also broken in this regard and you must use the above change to connect thru them. How do I enable IP multicast support? Multicast host operations are fully supported in FreeBSD 2.0 and later by default. If you want your box to run as a multicast router, you will need to recompile your kernel with the MROUTING option and run mrouted. FreeBSD 2.2 and later will start mrouted at boot time if the flag mrouted_enable is set to "YES" in /etc/rc.conf. MBONE tools are available in their own ports category, mbone. If you are looking for the conference tools vic and vat, look there! For more information, see the Mbone Information Web. Which network cards are based on the DEC PCI chipset? Here is a list compiled by Glen Foster, with some more modern additions: Vendor Model ---------------------------------------------- ASUS PCI-L101-TB Accton ENI1203 Cogent EM960PCI Compex ENET32-PCI D-Link DE-530 Dayna DP1203, DP2100 DEC DE435, DE450 Danpex EN-9400P3 JCIS Condor JC1260 Linksys EtherPCI Mylex LNP101 SMC EtherPower 10/100 (Model 9332) SMC EtherPower (Model 8432) TopWare TE-3500P Znyx (2.2.x) ZX312, ZX314, ZX342, ZX345, ZX346, ZX348 (3.x) ZX345Q, ZX346Q, ZX348Q, ZX412Q, ZX414, ZX442, ZX444, ZX474, ZX478, ZX212, ZX214 (10mbps/hd) Why do I have to use the FQDN for hosts on my site? You will probably find that the host is actually in a different domain; for example, if you are in foo.bar.edu and you wish to reach a host called mumble in the bar.edu domain, you will have to refer to it by the fully-qualified domain name, mumble.bar.edu, instead of just mumble. Traditionally, this was allowed by BSD BIND resolvers. However the current version of bind that ships with FreeBSD no longer provides default abbreviations for non-fully qualified domain names other than the domain you are in. So an unqualified host mumble must either be found as mumble.foo.bar.edu, or it will be searched for in the root domain. This is different from the previous behavior, where the search continued across mumble.bar.edu, and mumble.edu. Have a look at RFC 1535 for why this was considered bad practice, or even a security hole. As a good workaround, you can place the line search foo.bar.edu bar.edu instead of the previous domain foo.bar.edu into your /etc/resolv.conf file. However, make sure that the search order does not go beyond the boundary between local and public administration, as RFC 1535 calls it. Permission denied for all networking operations. If you have compiled your kernel with the IPFIREWALL option, you need to be aware that the default policy as of 2.1.7R (this actually changed during 2.1-STABLE development) is to deny all packets that are not explicitly allowed. If you had unintentionally misconfigured your system for firewalling, you can restore network operability by typing the following while logged in as root: &prompt.root; ipfw add 65534 allow all from any to any You can also set firewall_type="open" in /etc/rc.conf. For further information on configuring a FreeBSD firewall, see the Handbook section. How much overhead does IPFW incur? The answer to this depends mostly on your rule set and processor speed. For most applications dealing with ethernet and small rule sets, the answer is, negligible. For those of you that need actual measurements to satisfy your curiosity, read on. The following measurements were made using 2.2.5-STABLE on a 486-66. IPFW was modified to measure the time spent within the ip_fw_chk routine, displaying the results to the console every 1000 packets. Two rule sets, each with 1000 rules were tested. The first set was designed to demonstrate a worst case scenario by repeating the rule: &prompt.root; ipfw add deny tcp from any to any 55555 This demonstrates worst case by causing most of IPFW's packet check routine to be executed before finally deciding that the packet does not match the rule (by virtue of the port number). Following the 999th iteration of this rule was an allow ip from any to any. The second set of rules were designed to abort the rule check quickly: &prompt.root; ipfw add deny ip from 1.2.3.4 to 1.2.3.4 The nonmatching source IP address for the above rule causes these rules to be skipped very quickly. As before, the 1000th rule was an allow ip from any to any. The per-packet processing overhead in the former case was approximately 2.703ms/packet, or roughly 2.7 microseconds per rule. Thus the theoretical packet processing limit with these rules is around 370 packets per second. Assuming 10Mbps ethernet and a ~1500 byte packet size, we would only be able to achieve a 55.5% bandwidth utilization. For the latter case each packet was processed in approximately 1.172ms, or roughly 1.2 microseconds per rule. The theoretical packet processing limit here would be about 853 packets per second, which could consume 10Mbps ethernet bandwidth. The excessive number of rules tested and the nature of those rules do not provide a real-world scenario -- they were used only to generate the timing information presented here. Here are a few things to keep in mind when building an efficient rule set: Place an established rule early on to handle the majority of TCP traffic. Don't put any allow tcp statements before this rule. Place heavily triggered rules earlier in the rule set than those rarely used (without changing the permissiveness of the firewall, of course). You can see which rules are used most often by examining the packet counting statistics with ipfw -a l. How can I redirect service requests from one machine to another? You can redirect FTP (and other service) request with the socket package, available in the ports tree in category sysutils. Simply replace the service's commandline to call socket instead, like so: ftp stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/local/bin/socket socket ftp.foo.com ftp where ftp.foo.com and ftp are the host and port to redirect to, respectively. Where can I get a bandwidth management tool? There are two bandwidth management tools available for FreeBSD. ALTQ is available for free; Bandwidth Manager from Emerging Technologies is a commercial product. Why do I get /dev/bpf0: device not configured? The Berkeley Packet Filter (bpf) driver needs to be enabled before running programs that utilize it. Add this to your kernel config file and build a new kernel: pseudo-device bpfilter # Berkeley Packet Filter Secondly, after rebooting you will have to create the device node. This can be accomplished by a change to the /dev directory, followed by the execution of: &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV bpf0 Please see the handbook's entry on device nodes for more information on creating devices. How do I mount a disk from a Windows machine that's on my network, like smbmount in Linux? Use the sharity light package in the ports collection. PPP I can't make ppp work. What am I doing wrong ? You should first read the ppp man page and the ppp section of the handbook. Enable logging with the command set log Phase Chat Connect Carrier lcp ipcp ccp command This command may be typed at the ppp command prompt or it may be entered in the /etc/ppp/ppp.conf configuration file (the start of the default section is the best place to put it). Make sure that /etc/syslog.conf contains the lines !ppp *.* /var/log/ppp.log and that the file /var/log/ppp.log exists. You can now find out a lot about what's going on from the log file. Don't worry if it doesn't all make sense. If you need to get help from someone, it may make sense to them. If your version of ppp doesn't understand the set log command, you should download the latest version. It will build on FreeBSD version 2.1.5 and higher. Ppp just hangs when I run it This is usually because your hostname won't resolve. The best way to fix this is to make sure that /etc/hosts is consoluted by your resolver first by editing /etc/host.conf and putting the hosts line first. Then, simply put an entry in /etc/hosts for your local machine. If you have no local network, change your localhost line: 127.0.0.1 foo.bar.com foo localhost Otherwise, simply add another entry for your host. Consult the relevant man pages for more details. You should be able to successfully ping -c1 `hostname` when you're done. Ppp won't dial in -auto mode First, check that you've got a default route. By running netstat -rn, you should see two entries like this: Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif Expire default 10.0.0.2 UGSc 0 0 tun0 10.0.0.2 10.0.0.1 UH 0 0 tun0 This is assuming that you've used the addresses from the handbook, the man page or from the ppp.conf.sample file. If you haven't got a default route, it may be because you're running an old version of ppp that doesn't understand the word HISADDR in the ppp.conf file. If your version of ppp is from before FreeBSD 2.2.5, change the add 0 0 HISADDR line to one saying add 0 0 10.0.0.2 Another reason for the default route line being missing is that you have mistakenly set up a default router in your /etc/rc.conf file (this file was called /etc/sysconfig prior to release 2.2.2), and you have omitted the line saying delete ALL from ppp.conf. If this is the case, go back to the Final system configuration section of the handbook. What does No route to host mean This error is usually due to a missing MYADDR: delete ALL add 0 0 HISADDR section in your /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup file. This is only necessary if you have a dynamic IP address or don't know the address of your gateway. If you're using interactive mode, you can type the following after entering packet mode (packet mode is indicated by the capitalized PPP in the prompt): delete ALL add 0 0 HISADDR Refer to the PPP and Dynamic IP addresses section of the handbook for further details. My connection drops after about 3 minutes The default ppp timeout is 3 minutes. This can be adjusted with the line set timeout NNN where NNN is the number of seconds of inactivity before the connection is closed. If NNN is zero, the connection is never closed due to a timeout. It is possible to put this command in the ppp.conf file, or to type it at the prompt in interactive mode. It is also possible to adjust it on the fly while the line is active by connecting to ppps server socket using telnet or pppctl. Refer to the ppp man page for further details. My connection drops under heavy load If you have Link Quality Reporting (LQR) configured, it is possible that too many LQR packets are lost between your machine and the peer. Ppp deduces that the line must therefore be bad, and disconnects. Prior to FreeBSD version 2.2.5, LQR was enabled by default. It is now disabled by default. LQR can be disabled with the line disable lqr My connection drops after a random amount of time Sometimes, on a noisy phone line or even on a line with call waiting enabled, your modem may hang up because it thinks (incorrectly) that it lost carrier. There's a setting on most modems for determining how tolerant it should be to temporary losses of carrier. On a USR Sportster for example, this is measured by the S10 register in tenths of a second. To make your modem more forgiving, you could add the following send-expect sequence to your dial string: set dial "...... ATS10=10 OK ......" Refer to your modem manual for details. My connection hangs after a random amount of time Many people experience hung connections with no apparent explaination. The first thing to establish is which side of the link is hung. If you are using an external modem, you can simply try using ping to see if the TD light is flashing when you transmit data. If it flashes (and the RD light doesn't), the problem is with the remote end. If TD doesn't flash, the problem is local. With an internal modem, you'll need to use the set server command in your ppp.conf file. When the hang occurs, connect to ppp using pppctl. If your network connection suddenly revives (ppp was revived due to the activity on the diagnostic socket) or if you can't connect (assuming the set socket command succeeded at startup time), the problem is local. If you can connect and things are still hung, enable local async logging with set log local async and use ping from another window or terminal to make use of the link. The async logging will show you the data being transmitted and received on the link. If data is going out and not coming back, the problem is remote. Having established whether the problem is local or remote, you now have two possibilities: The remote end isn't responding There's very little you can do about this. Most ISPs will refuse to help if you're not running a Microsoft OS. You can enable lqr in your ppp.conf file, allowing ppp to detect the remote failure and hang up, but this detection is relatively slow and therefore not that useful. You may want to avoid telling your ISP that you're running user-ppp.... First, try disabling all local compression by adding the following to your configuration: disable pred1 deflate deflate24 protocomp acfcomp shortseq vj deny pred1 deflate deflate24 protocomp acfcomp shortseq vj Then reconnect to ensure that this makes no difference. If things improve or if the problem is solved completely, determine which setting makes the difference through trial and error. This will provide good amunition when you contact your ISP (although it may make it apparent that you're not running a Microsoft product). Before contacting your ISP, enable async logging locally and wait until the connection hangs again. This may use up quite a bit of disk space. The last data read from the port may be of interest. It is usually ascii data, and may even describe the problem (Memory fault, core dumped ?). If your ISP is helpful, they should be able to enable logging on their end, then when the next link drop occurs, they may be able to tell you why their side is having a problem. Feel free to send the details to &a.brian;, or even to ask your ISP to contact me directly. Ppp is hung Your best bet here is to rebuild ppp by adding CFLAGS+=-g and STRIP= to the end of the Makefile, then doing a make clean && make && make install. When ppp hangs, find the ppp process id with ps ajxww | fgrep ppp and run gdb ppp PID. From the gdb prompt, you can then use bt to get a stack trace. Send the results to brian@Awfulhak.org. Nothing happens after the Login OK! message Prior to FreeBSD version 2.2.5, once the link was established, ppp would wait for the peer to initiate the Line Control Protocol (LCP). Many ISPs will not initiate negotiations and expect the client to do so. To force ppp to initiate the LCP, use the following line: set openmode active Note: It usually does no harm if both sides initiate negotiation, so openmode is now active by default. However, the next section explains when it does do some harm. I keep seeing errors about magic being the same Occasionally, just after connecting, you may see messages in the log that say magic is the same. Sometimes, these messages are harmless, and sometimes one side or the other exits. Most ppp implementations cannot survive this problem, and even if the link seems to come up, you'll see repeated configure requests and configure acknowledgements in the log file until ppp eventually gives up and closes the connection. This normally happens on server machines with slow disks that are spawning a getty on the port, and executing ppp from a login script or program after login. I've also heard reports of it happening consistently when using slirp. The reason is that in the time taken between getty exiting and ppp starting, the client-side ppp starts sending Line Control Protocol (LCP) packets. Because ECHO is still switched on for the port on the server, the client ppp sees these packets reflect back. One part of the LCP negotiation is to establish a magic number for each side of the link so that reflections can be detected. The protocol says that when the peer tries to negotiate the same magic number, a NAK should be sent and a new magic number should be chosen. During the period that the server port has ECHO turned on, the client ppp sends LCP packets, sees the same magic in the reflected packet and NAKs it. It also sees the NAK reflect (which also means ppp must change its magic). This produces a potentially enormous number of magic number changes, all of which are happily piling into the server's tty buffer. As soon as ppp starts on the server, it's flooded with magic number changes and almost immediately decides it's tried enough to negotiate LCP and gives up. Meanwhile, the client, who no longer sees the reflections, becomes happy just in time to see a hangup from the server. This can be avoided by allowing the peer to start negotiating with the following line in your ppp.conf file: set openmode passive This tells ppp to wait for the server to initiate LCP negotiations. Some servers however may never initiate negotiations. If this is the case, you can do something like: set openmode active 3 This tells ppp to be passive for 3 seconds, and then to start sending LCP requests. If the peer starts sending requests during this period, ppp will immediately respond rather than waiting for the full 3 second period. LCP negotiations continue 'till the connection is closed There is currently an implementation mis-feature in ppp where it doesn't associate LCP, CCP & IPCP responses with their original requests. As a result, if one ppp implementation is more than 6 seconds slower than the other side, the other side will send two additional LCP configuration requests. This is fatal. Consider two implementations, A and B. A starts sending LCP requests immediately after connecting and B takes 7 seconds to start. When B starts, A has sent 3 LCP REQs. We're assuming the line has ECHO switched off, otherwise we'd see magic number problems as described in the previous section. B sends a REQ, then an ACK to the first of A's REQs. This results in A entering the OPENED state and sending and ACK (the first) back to B. In the meantime, B sends back two more ACKs in response to the two additional REQs sent by A before B started up. B then receives the first ACK from A and enters the OPENED state. A receives the second ACK from B and goes back to the REQ-SENT state, sending another (forth) REQ as per the RFC. It then receives the third ACK and enters the OPENED state. In the meantime, B receives the forth REQ from A, resulting in it reverting to the ACK-SENT state and sending another (second) REQ and (forth) ACK as per the RFC. A gets the REQ, goes into REQ-SENT and sends another REQ. It immediately receives the following ACK and enters OPENED. This goes on 'till one side figures out that they're getting nowhere and gives up. The best way to avoid this is to configure one side to be passive - that is, make one side wait for the other to start negotiating. This can be done with the set openmode passive command. Care should be taken with this option. You should also use the set stopped N command to limit the amount of time that ppp waits for the peer to begin negotiations. Alternatively, the set openmode active N command (where N is the number of seconds to wait before starting negotiations) can be used. Check the manual page for details. Ppp locks up shortly after connecting Prior to version 2.2.5 of FreeBSD, it was possible that your link was disabled shortly after connection due to ppp mis-handling Predictor1 compression negotiation. This would only happen if both sides tried to negotiate different Compression Control Protocols (CCP). This problem is now corrected, but if you're still running an old version of ppp, the problem can be circumvented with the line disable pred1 Ppp locks up when I shell out to test it When you execute the shell or ! command, ppp executes a shell (or if you've passed any arguements, ppp will execute those arguements). Ppp will wait for the command to complete before continuing. If you attempt to use the ppp link while running the command, the link will appear to have frozen. This is because ppp is waiting for the command to complete. If you wish to execute commands like this, use the !bg command instead. This will execute the given command in the background, and ppp can continue to service the link. Ppp over a null-modem cable never exits There is no way for ppp to automatically determine that a direct connection has been dropped. This is due to the lines that are used in a null-modem serial cable. When using this sort of connection, LQR should always be enabled with the line enable lqr LQR is accepted by default if negotiated by the peer. Why does ppp dial for no reason in -auto mode If ppp is dialing unexpectedly, you must determine the cause, and set up Dial filters (dfilters) to prevent such dialing. To determine the cause, use the following line: set log +tcp/ip This will log all traffic through the connection. The next time the line comes up unexpectedly, you will see the reason logged with a convenient timestamp next to it. You can now disable dialing under these circumstances. Usually, this sort of problem arises due to DNS lookups. To prevent DNS lookups from establishing a connection (this will not prevent ppp from passing the packets through an established connection), use the following: set dfilter 1 deny udp src eq 53 set dfilter 2 deny udp dst eq 53 set dfilter 3 permit 0/0 0/0 This is not always suitable, as it will effectively break your demand-dial capabilities - most programs will need a DNS lookup before doing any other network related things. In the DNS case, you should try to determine what is actually trying to resolve a host name. A lot of the time, sendmail is the culprit. You should make sure that you tell sendmail not to do any DNS lookups in its configuration file. See the section on Mail Configuration for details on how to create your own configuration file and what should go into it. You may also want to add the following line to your .mc file: define(`confDELIVERY_MODE', `d')dnl This will make sendmail queue everything until the queue is run (usually, sendmail is invoked with , telling it to run the queue every 30 minutes) or until a sendmail -q is done (perhaps from your ppp.linkup file). What do these CCP errors mean I keep seeing the following errors in my log file: CCP: CcpSendConfigReq CCP: Received Terminate Ack (1) state = Req-Sent (6) This is because ppp is trying to negotiate Predictor1 compression, and the peer does not want to negotiate any compression at all. The messages are harmless, but if you wish to remove them, you can disable Predictor1 compression locally too: disable pred1 Ppp locks up during file transfers with IO errors Under FreeBSD 2.2.2 and before, there was a bug in the tun driver that prevents incoming packets of a size larger than the tun interface's MTU size. Receipt of a packet greater than the MTU size results in an IO error being logged via syslogd. The ppp specification says that an MRU of 1500 should always be accepted as a minimum, despite any LCP negotiations, therefore it is possible that should you decrease the MTU to less than 1500, your ISP will transmit packets of 1500 regardless, and you will tickle this non-feature - locking up your link. The problem can be circumvented by never setting an MTU of less than 1500 under FreeBSD 2.2.2 or before. Why doesn't ppp log my connection speed? In order to log all lines of your modem conversation, you must enable the following: set log +connect This will make ppp log everything up until the last requested expect string. If you wish to see your connect speed and are using PAP or CHAP (and therefore don't have anything to chat after the CONNECT in the dial script - no set login script), you must make sure that you instruct ppp to expect the whole CONNECT line, something like this: set dial "ABORT BUSY ABORT NO\\sCARRIER TIMEOUT 4 \ \"\" ATZ OK-ATZ-OK ATDT\\T TIMEOUT 60 CONNECT \\c \\n" Here, we get our CONNECT, send nothing, then expect a line-feed, forcing ppp to read the whole CONNECT response. Ppp ignores the \ character in my chat script Ppp parses each line in your config files so that it can interpret strings such as set phone "123 456 789" correctly (and realize that the number is actually only one argument. In order to specify a " character, you must escape it using a backslash (\). When the chat interpreter parses each argument, it re-interprets the argument in order to find any special escape sequences such as \P or \T (see the man page). As a result of this double-parsing, you must remember to use the correct number of escapes. If you wish to actually send a \ character to (say) your modem, you'd need something like: set dial "\"\" ATZ OK-ATZ-OK AT\\\\X OK" resulting in the following sequence: ATZ OK AT\X OK or set phone 1234567 set dial "\"\" ATZ OK ATDT\\T" resulting in the following sequence: ATZ OK ATDT1234567 Ppp gets a seg-fault, but I see no ppp.core file Ppp (or any other program for that matter) should never dump core. Because ppp runs with an effective user id of 0, the operating system will not write ppps core image to disk before terminating it. If, however ppp is actually termating due to a segmentation violation or some other signal that normally causes core to be dumped, and you're sure you're using the latest version (see the start of this section), then you should do the following: &prompt.user; tar xfz ppp-*.src.tar.gz &prompt.user; cd ppp*/ppp &prompt.user; echo STRIP= >>Makefile &prompt.user; echo CFLAGS+=-g >>Makefile &prompt.user; make clean all &prompt.user; su &prompt.root; make install &prompt.root; chmod 555 /usr/sbin/ppp You will now have a debuggable version of ppp installed. You will have to be root to run ppp as all of its privileges have been revoked. When you start ppp, take a careful note of what your current directory was at the time. Now, if and when ppp receives the segmentation violation, it will dump a core file called ppp.core. You should then do the following: &prompt.user; su &prompt.root; gdb /usr/sbin/ppp ppp.core (gdb) bt ..... (gdb) f 0 .... (gdb) i args .... (gdb) l ..... All of this information should be given alongside your question, making it possible to diagnose the problem. If you're familiar with gdb, you may wish to find out some other bits and pieces such as what actually caused the dump and the addresses & values of the relevant variables. The process that forces a dial in auto mode never connects This was a known problem with ppp set up to negotiate a dynamic local IP number with the peer in auto mode. It is fixed in the latest version - search the man page for iface. The problem was that when that initial program calls connect(2), the IP number of the tun interface is assigned to the socket endpoint. The kernel creates the first outgoing packet and writes it to the tun device. Ppp then reads the packet and establishes a connection. If, as a result of ppps dynamic IP assignment, the interface address is changed, the original socket endpoint will be invalid. Any subsequent packets sent to the peer will usually be dropped. Even if they aren't, any responses will not route back to the originating machine as the IP number is no longer owned by that machine. There are several theoretical ways to approach this problem. It would be nicest if the peer would re-assign the same IP number if possible :-) The current version of ppp does this, but most other implementations don't. The easiest method from our side would be to never change the tun interface IP number, but instead to change all outgoing packets so that the source IP number is changed from the interface IP to the negotiated IP on the fly. This is essentially what the iface-alias option in the latest version of ppp is doing (with the help of libalias(3) and ppp's switch) - it's maintaining all previous interface addresses and NATing them to the last negotiated address. Another alternative (and probably the most reliable) would be to implement a system call that changes all bound sockets from one IP to another. Ppp would use this call to modify the sockets of all existing programs when a new IP number is negotiated. The same system call could be used by dhcp clients when they are forced to re-bind() their sockets. Yet another possibility is to allow an interface to be brought up without an IP number. Outgoing packets would be given an IP number of 255.255.255.255 up until the first SIOCAIFADDR ioctl is done. This would result in fully binding the socket. It would be up to ppp to change the source IP number, but only if it's set to 255.255.255.255, and only the IP number and IP checksum would need to change. This, however is a bit of a hack as the kernel would be sending bad packets to an improperly configured interface, on the assumption that some other mechanism is capable of fixing things retrospectively. Why don't most games work with the -nat switch The reason games and the like don't work when libalias is in use is that the machine on the outside will try to open a connection or send (unsolicited) UDP packets to the machine on the inside. The NAT software doesn't know that it should send these packets to the interior machine. To make things work, make sure that the only thing running is the software that you're having problems with, then either run tcpdump on the tun interface of the gateway or enable ppp tcp/ip logging (set log +tcp/ip) on the gateway. When you start the offending software, you should see packets passing through the gateway machine. When something comes back from the outside, it'll be dropped (that's the problem). Note the port number of these packets then shut down the offending software. Do this a few times to see if the port numbers are consistent. If they are, then the following line in the relevant section of /etc/ppp/ppp.conf will make the software functional: nat port proto internalmachine:port port where proto is either tcp or udp, internalmachine is the machine that you want the packets to be sent to and port is the destination port number of the packets. You won't be able to use the software on other machines without changing the above command, and running the software on two internal machines at the same time is out of the question - after all, the outside world is seeing your entire internal network as being just a single machine. If the port numbers aren't consistent, there are three more options: 1) Submit support in libalias. Examples of special cases can be found in /usr/src/lib/libalias/alias_*.c (alias_ftp.c is a good prototype). This usually involves reading certain recognised outgoing packets, identifying the instruction that tells the outside machine to initiate a connection back to the internal machine on a specific (random) port and setting up a route in the alias table so that the subsequent packets know where to go. This is the most difficult solution, but it is the best and will make the software work with multiple machines. 2) Use a proxy. The application may support socks5 for example, or (as in the cvsup case) may have a passive option that avoids ever requesting that the peer open connections back to the local machine. 3) Redirect everything to the internal machine using nat addr. This is the sledge-hammer approach. Has anybody made a list of useful port numbers ? Not yet, but this is intended to grow into such a list (if any interest is shown). In each example, internal should be replaced with the IP number of the machine playing the game. Asheron's Call nat port udp internal:65000 65000 Manually change the port number within the game to 65000. If you've got a number of machines that you wish to play on assign a unique port number for each (i.e. 65001, 65002, etc) and add a nat port line for each one. Half Life nat port udp internal:27005 27015 PCAnywhere 8.0 nat port udp internal:5632 5632 nat port tcp internal:5631 5631 Quake nat port udp internal:6112 6112 Alternatively, you may want to take a look at www.battle.net for Quake proxy support. Quake 2 nat port udp internal:27901 27910 Red Alert nat port udp internal:8675 8675 nat port udp internal:5009 5009 What are FCS errors ? FCS stands for Frame Check Sequence. Each ppp packet has a checksum attached to ensure that the data being received is the data being sent. If the FCS of an incoming packet is incorrect, the packet is dropped and the HDLC FCS count is increased. The HDLC error values can be displayed using the show hdlc command. If your link is bad (or if your serial driver is dropping packets), you will see the occasional FCS error. This is not usually worth worrying about although it does slow down the compression protocols substantially. If you have an external modem, make sure your cable is properly shielded from interference - this may eradicate the problem. If your link freezes as soon as you've connected and you see a large number of FCS errors, this may be because your link is not 8 bit clean. Make sure your modem is not using software flow control (XON/XOFF). If your datalink must use software flow control, use the command set accmap 0x000a0000 to tell ppp to escape the ^Q and ^S characters. Another reason for seeing too many FCS errors may be that the remote end has stopped talking PPP. You may want to enable async logging at this point to determine if the incoming data is actually a login or shell prompt. If you have a shell prompt at the remote end, it's possible to terminate ppp without dropping the line by using the close lcp command (a following term command will reconnect you to the shell on the remote machine. If nothing in your log file indicates why the link might have been terminated, you should ask the remote administrator (your ISP?) why the session was terminated. Why do MacOS and Windows 98 connections freeze when running PPPoE on the gateway Thanks to Michael Wozniak mwozniak@netcom.ca for figuring this out and Dan Flemming danflemming@mac.com for the Mac solution: This is due to what's called a Black Hole router. MacOS and Windows 98 (and maybe other Microsoft OSs) send TCP packets with a requested segment size too big to fit into a PPPoE frame (MTU is 1500 by default for ethernet) and have the don't fragment bit set (default of TCP) and the Telco router is not sending ICMP must fragment back to the www site you are trying to load. When the www server is sending you frames that don't fit into the PPPoE pipe the Telco router drops them on the floor and your page doesn't load (some pages/graphics do as they are smaller than a MSS.) This seems to be the default of most Telco PPPoE configurations (if only they knew how to program a router... sigh...) One fix is to use regedit on your 95/98 boxes to add the following registry entry... HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\NetTrans\0000\MaxMTU It should be a string with a value 1450 (more accurately it should be 1464 to fit TCP packets into a PPPoE frame perfectly but the 1450 gives you a margin of error for other IP protocols you may encounter). Refer to MS KB # Q158474 - Windows TCPIP Registry Entries and Q120642 - TCPIP & NBT Configuration Parameters for Windows NT for more information on changing Windoze MTU to work with a FreeBSD/NAT/PPPoE router. Unfortunately, MacOS does not provide an interface for changing TCP/IP settings. However, there is commercial software available, such as OTAdvancedTuner (OT for OpenTransport, the MacOS TCP/IP stack) by Sustainable Softworks, that will allow users to customize TCP/IP settings. MacOS NAT users should select ip_interface_MTU from the drop-down menu, enter 1450 instead of 1500 in the box, click the box next to Save as Auto Configure, and click Make Active. None of this helps - I'm desperate ! If all else fails, send as much information as you can, including your config files, how you're starting ppp, the relevant parts of your log file and the output of the netstat -rn command (before and after connecting) to the freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org mailing list or the comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc news group, and someone should point you in the right direction. Serial Communications This section answers common questions about serial communications with FreeBSD. PPP and SLIP are covered in the section. How do I tell if FreeBSD found my serial ports? As the FreeBSD kernel boots, it will probe for the serial ports in your system for which the kernel was configured. You can either watch your system closely for the messages it prints or run the command &prompt.user; dmesg | grep sio after your system's up and running. Here's some example output from the above command: sio0 at 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 on isa sio0: type 16550A sio1 at 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa sio1: type 16550A This shows two serial ports. The first is on irq 4, is using port address 0x3f8, and has a 16550A-type UART chip. The second uses the same kind of chip but is on irq 3 and is at port address 0x2f8. Internal modem cards are treated just like serial ports---except that they always have a modem attached to the port. The GENERIC kernel includes support for two serial ports using the same irq and port address settings in the above example. If these settings aren't right for your system, or if you've added modem cards or have more serial ports than your kernel is configured for, just reconfigure your kernel. See section about building a kernel for more details. How do I tell if FreeBSD found my modem cards? Refer to the answer to the previous question. I just upgraded to 2.0.5 and my tty0X are missing! Don't worry, they have been merged with the ttydX devices. You'll have to change any old configuration files you have, though. How do I access the serial ports on FreeBSD? The third serial port, sio2 (known as COM3 in DOS), is on /dev/cuaa2 for dial-out devices, and on /dev/ttyd2 for dial-in devices. What's the difference between these two classes of devices? You use ttydX for dial-ins. When opening /dev/ttydX in blocking mode, a process will wait for the corresponding cuaaX device to become inactive, and then wait for the carrier detect line to go active. When you open the cuaaX device, it makes sure the serial port isn't already in use by the ttydX device. If the port's available, it steals it from the ttydX device. Also, the cuaXX device doesn't care about carrier detect. With this scheme and an auto-answer modem, you can have remote users log in and you can still dialout with the same modem and the system will take care of all the conflicts. How do I enable support for a multiport serial card? Again, the section on kernel configuration provides information about configuring your kernel. For a multiport serial card, place an sio line for each serial port on the card in the kernel configuration file. But place the irq and vector specifiers on only one of the entries. All of the ports on the card should share one irq. For consistency, use the last serial port to specify the irq. Also, specify the COM_MULTIPORT option. The following example is for an AST 4-port serial card on irq 7: options "COM_MULTIPORT" device sio4 at isa? port 0x2a0 tty flags 0x781 device sio5 at isa? port 0x2a8 tty flags 0x781 device sio6 at isa? port 0x2b0 tty flags 0x781 device sio7 at isa? port 0x2b8 tty flags 0x781 irq 7 vector siointr The flags indicate that the master port has minor number 7 (0x700), diagnostics enabled during probe (0x080), and all the ports share an irq (0x001). Can FreeBSD handle multiport serial cards sharing irqs? Not yet. You'll have to use a different irq for each card. Can I set the default serial parameters for a port? The ttydX (or cuaaX) device is the regular device you'll want to open for your applications. When a process opens the device, it'll have a default set of terminal I/O settings. You can see these settings with the command &prompt.root; stty -a -f /dev/ttyd1 When you change the settings to this device, the settings are in effect until the device is closed. When it's reopened, it goes back to the default set. To make changes to the default set, you can open and adjust the settings of the initial state device. For example, to turn on CLOCAL mode, 8 bits, and XON/XOFF flow control by default for ttyd5, do: &prompt.root; stty -f /dev/ttyid5 clocal cs8 ixon ixoff A good place to do this is in /etc/rc.serial. Now, an application will have these settings by default when it opens ttyd5. It can still change these settings to its liking, though. You can also prevent certain settings from being changed by an application by making adjustments to the lock state device. For example, to lock the speed of ttyd5 to 57600 bps, do &prompt.root; stty -f /dev/ttyld5 57600 Now, an application that opens ttyd5 and tries to change the speed of the port will be stuck with 57600 bps. Naturally, you should make the initial state and lock state devices writable only by root. The MAKEDEV script does NOT do this when it creates the device entries. How can I enable dialup logins on my modem? So you want to become an Internet service provider, eh? First, you'll need one or more modems that can auto-answer. Your modem will need to assert carrier-detect when it detects a carrier and not assert it all the time. It will need to hang up the phone and reset itself when the data terminal ready (DTR) line goes from on to off. It should probably use RTS/CTS flow control or no local flow control at all. Finally, it must use a constant speed between the computer and itself, but (to be nice to your callers) it should negotiate a speed between itself and the remote modem. For many Hayes command-set--compatible modems, this command will make these settings and store them in nonvolatile memory: AT &C1 &D3 &K3 &Q6 S0=1 &W See the section on sending AT commands below for information on how to make these settings without resorting to an MS-DOS terminal program. Next, make an entry in /etc/ttys for the modem. This file lists all the ports on which the operating system will await logins. Add a line that looks something like this: ttyd1 "/usr/libexec/getty std.57600" dialup on insecure This line indicates that the second serial port (/dev/ttyd1) has a modem connected running at 57600 bps and no parity (std.57600, which comes from the file /etc/gettytab). The terminal type for this port is dialup. The port is on and is insecure---meaning root logins on the port aren't allowed. For dialin ports like this one, use the ttydX entry. It's common practice to use dialup as the terminal type. Many users set up in their .profile or .login files a prompt for the actual terminal type if the starting type is dialup. The example shows the port as insecure. To become root on this port, you have to login as a regular user, then su to become root. If you use secure then root can login in directly. After making modifications to /etc/ttys, you need to send a hangup or HUP signal to the init process: &prompt.root; kill -HUP 1 This forces the init process to reread /etc/ttys. The init process will then start getty processes on all on ports. You can find out if logins are available for your port by typing &prompt.user; ps -ax | grep '[t]tyd1' You should see something like: 747 ?? I 0:00.04 /usr/libexec/getty std.57600 ttyd1 How can I connect a dumb terminal to my FreeBSD box? If you're using another computer as a terminal into your FreeBSD system, get a null modem cable to go between the two serial ports. If you're using an actual terminal, see its accompanying instructions. Then, modify /etc/ttys, like above. For example, if you're hooking up a WYSE-50 terminal to the fifth serial port, use an entry like this: ttyd4 "/usr/libexec/getty std.38400" wyse50 on secure This example shows that the port on /dev/ttyd4 has a wyse50 terminal connected at 38400 bps with no parity (std.38400 from /etc/gettytab) and root logins are allowed (secure). Why can't I run tip or cu? On your system, the programs tip and cu are probably executable only by uucp and group dialer. You can use the group dialer to control who has access to your modem or remote systems. Just add yourself to group dialer. Alternatively, you can let everyone on your system run tip and cu by typing: &prompt.root; chmod 4511 /usr/bin/cu &prompt.root; chmod 4511 /usr/bin/tip My stock Hayes modem isn't supported---what can I do? Actually, the man page for tip is out of date. There is a generic Hayes dialer already built in. Just use at=hayes in your /etc/remote file. The Hayes driver isn't smart enough to recognize some of the advanced features of newer modems---messages like BUSY, NO DIALTONE, or CONNECT 115200 will just confuse it. You should turn those messages off when you use tip (using ATX0&W). Also, the dial timeout for tip is 60 seconds. Your modem should use something less, or else tip will think there's a communication problem. Try ATS7=45&W. Actually, as shipped tip doesn't yet support it fully. The solution is to edit the file tipconf.h in the directory /usr/src/usr.bin/tip/tip. Obviously you need the source distribution to do this. Edit the line #define HAYES 0 to #define HAYES 1. Then make and make install. Everything works nicely after that. How am I expected to enter these AT commands? Make what's called a direct entry in your /etc/remote file. For example, if your modem's hooked up to the first serial port, /dev/cuaa0, then put in the following line: cuaa0:dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#19200:pa=none Use the highest bps rate your modem supports in the br capability. Then, type tip cuaa0 and you'll be connected to your modem. If there is no /dev/cuaa0 on your system, do this: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV cuaa0 Or use cu as root with the following command: &prompt.root; cu -lline -sspeed with line being the serial port (e.g./dev/cuaa0) and speed being the speed (e.g.57600). When you are done entering the AT commands hit ~. to exit. The <@> sign for the pn capability doesn't work! The <@> sign in the phone number capability tells tip to look in /etc/phones for a phone number. But the <@> sign is also a special character in capability files like /etc/remote. Escape it with a backslash: pn=\@ How can I dial a phone number on the command line? Put what's called a generic entry in your /etc/remote file. For example: tip115200|Dial any phone number at 115200 bps:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#115200:at=hayes:pa=none:du: tip57600|Dial any phone number at 57600 bps:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#57600:at=hayes:pa=none:du: Then you can do something like tip -115200 5551234. If you prefer cu over tip, use a generic cu entry: cu115200|Use cu to dial any number at 115200bps:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa1:br#57600:at=hayes:pa=none:du: and type cu 5551234 -s 115200. Do I have to type in the bps rate every time I do that? Put in an entry for tip1200 or cu1200, but go ahead and use whatever bps rate is appropriate with the br capability. tip thinks a good default is 1200 bps which is why it looks for a tip1200 entry. You don't have to use 1200 bps, though. I access a number of hosts through a terminal server. Rather than waiting until you're connected and typing CONNECT host each time, use tip's cm capability. For example, these entries in /etc/remote: pain|pain.deep13.com|Forrester's machine:\ :cm=CONNECT pain\n:tc=deep13: muffin|muffin.deep13.com|Frank's machine:\ :cm=CONNECT muffin\n:tc=deep13: deep13:Gizmonics Institute terminal server:\ :dv=/dev/cua02:br#38400:at=hayes:du:pa=none:pn=5551234: will let you type tip pain or tip muffin to connect to the hosts pain or muffin; and tip deep13 to get to the terminal server. Can tip try more than one line for each site? This is often a problem where a university has several modem lines and several thousand students trying to use them... Make an entry for your university in /etc/remote and use <\@> for the pn capability: big-university:\ :pn=\@:tc=dialout dialout:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa3:br#9600:at=courier:du:pa=none: Then, list the phone numbers for the university in /etc/phones: big-university 5551111 big-university 5551112 big-university 5551113 big-university 5551114 tip will try each one in the listed order, then give up. If you want to keep retrying, run tip in a while loop. Why do I have to hit CTRL+P twice to send CTRL+P once? CTRL+P is the default force character, used to tell tip that the next character is literal data. You can set the force character to any other character with the ~s escape, which means set a variable. Type ~sforce=single-char followed by a newline. single-char is any single character. If you leave out single-char, then the force character is the nul character, which you can get by typing CTRL+2 or CTRL+SPACE. A pretty good value for single-char is SHIFT+CTRL+6, which I've seen only used on some terminal servers. You can have the force character be whatever you want by specifying the following in your $HOME/.tiprc file: force=single-char Suddenly everything I type is in UPPER CASE?? You must've pressed CTRL+A, tip raise character, specially designed for people with broken caps-lock keys. Use ~s as above and set the variable raisechar to something reasonable. In fact, you can set it to the same as the force character, if you never expect to use either of these features. Here's a sample .tiprc file perfect for Emacs users who need to type CTRL+2 and CTRL+A a lot: force=^^ raisechar=^^ The ^^ is SHIFT+CTRL+6. How can I do file transfers with tip? If you're talking to another UNIX system, you can send and receive files with ~p (put) and ~t (take). These commands run cat and echo on the remote system to accept and send files. The syntax is: ~p <local-file> [<remote-file>] ~t <remote-file> [<local-file>] There's no error checking, so you probably should use another protocol, like zmodem. How can I run zmodem with tip? First, install one of the zmodem programs from the ports collection (such as one of the two from the comms category, lrzsz and rzsz). To receive files, start the sending program on the remote end. Then, press enter and type ~C rz (or ~C lrz if you installed lrzsz) to begin receiving them locally. To send files, start the receiving program on the remote end. Then, press enter and type ~C sz files (or ~C lsz files) to send them to the remote system. FreeBSD can't seem to find my serial ports, even when the settings are correct. Motherboards and cards with Acer UARTs do not probe properly under the FreeBSD sio probe. Obtain a patch from www.lemis.com to fix your problem. Miscellaneous Questions FreeBSD uses far more swap space than Linux. Why? FreeBSD only appears to use more swap than Linux. In actual fact, it does not. The main difference between FreeBSD and Linux in this regard is that FreeBSD will proactively move entirely idle, unused pages of main memory into swap in order to make more main memory available for active use. Linux tends to only move pages to swap as a last resort. The perceived heavier use of swap is balanced by the more efficient use of main memory. Note that while FreeBSD is proactive in this regard, it does not arbitrarily decide to swap pages when the system is truely idle. Thus you will not find your system all paged out when you get up in the morning after leaving it idle overnight. Why does &man.top.1; show very little free memory even when I have very few programs running? The simple answer is that free memory is wasted memory. Any memory that your programs don't actively allocate is used within the FreeBSD kernel as disk cache. The values shown by &man.top.1; labelled as Inact, Cache, and Buf are all cached data at different aging levels. This cached data means the system does not have to access a slow disk again for data it has accessed recently, thus increasing overall performance. In general, a low value shown for Free memory in &man.top.1; is good, provided it is not very low. Why use (what are) a.out and ELF executable formats? To understand why FreeBSD uses the ELF format, you must first know a little about the 3 currently dominant executable formats for UNIX: Prior to FreeBSD 3.x, FreeBSD used the a.out format. a.out The oldest and classic unix object format. It uses a short and compact header with a magic number at the beginning that's often used to characterize the format (see a.out(5) for more details). It contains three loaded segments: .text, .data, and .bss plus a symbol table and a string table. COFF The SVR3 object format. The header now comprises a section table, so you can have more than just .text, .data, and .bss sections. ELF The successor to COFF, featuring Multiple sections and 32-bit or 64-bit possible values. One major drawback: ELF was also designed with the assumption that there would be only one ABI per system architecture. That assumption is actually quite incorrect, and not even in the commercial SYSV world (which has at least three ABIs: SVR4, Solaris, SCO) does it hold true. FreeBSD tries to work around this problem somewhat by providing a utility for branding a known ELF executable with information about the ABI it's compliant with. See the man page for brandelf for more information. FreeBSD comes from the classic camp and has traditionally used the a.out format, a technology tried and proven through many generations of BSD releases. Though it has also been possible for some time to build and run native ELF binaries (and kernels) on a FreeBSD system, FreeBSD initially resisted the push to switch to ELF as the default format. Why? Well, when the Linux camp made their painful transition to ELF, it was not so much to flee the a.out executable format as it was their inflexible jump-table based shared library mechanism, which made the construction of shared libraries very difficult for vendors and developers alike. Since the ELF tools available offered a solution to the shared library problem and were generally seen as the way forward anyway, the migration cost was accepted as necessary and the transition made. In FreeBSD's case, our shared library mechanism is based more closely on Sun's SunOS-style shared library mechanism and, as such, is very easy to use. However, starting with 3.0, FreeBSD officially supports ELF binaries as the default format. Even though the a.out executable format has served us well, the GNU people, who author the compiler tools we use, have dropped support for the a.out format. This has forced us to maintain a divergent version of the compler and linker, and has kept us from reaping the benefits of the latest GNU development efforts. Also the demands of ISO-C++, notably contstructors and destructors, has also led to native ELF support in future FreeBSD releases. Yes, but why are there so many different formats? Back in the dim, dark past, there was simple hardware. This simple hardware supported a simple, small system. a.out was completely adequate for the job of representing binaries on this simple system (a PDP-11). As people ported unix from this simple system, they retained the a.out format because it was sufficient for the early ports of unix to architectures like the Motorola 68k, VAXen, etc. Then some bright hardware engineer decided that if he could force software to do some sleazy tricks, then he'd be able to shave a few gates off the design and allow his CPU core to run faster. While it was made to work with this new kind of hardware (known these days as RISC), a.out was ill-suited for this hardware, so many formats were developed to get to a better performance from this hardware than the limited, simple a.out format could offer. Things like COFF, ECOFF, and a few obscure others were invented and their limitations explored before things seemed to settle on ELF. In addition, program sizes were getting huge and disks (and physical memory) were still relatively small so the concept of a shared library was born. The VM system also became more sophisticated. While each one of these advancements was done using the a.out format, its usefulness was stretched more and more with each new feature. In addition, people wanted to dynamically load things at run time, or to junk parts of their program after the init code had run to save in core memory and/or swap space. Languages became more sophistocated and people wanted code called before main automatically. Lots of hacks were done to the a.out format to allow all of these things to happen, and they basically worked for a time. In time, a.out wasn't up to handling all these problems without an ever increasing overhead in code and complexity. While ELF solved many of these problems, it would be painful to switch from the system that basically worked. So ELF had to wait until it was more painful to remain with a.out than it was to migrate to ELF. However, as time passed, the build tools that FreeBSD derived their build tools from (the assembler and loader especially) evolved in two parallel trees. The FreeBSD tree added shared libraries and fixed some bugs. The GNU folks that originally write these programs rewrote them and added simpler support for building cross compilers, plugging in different formats at will, etc. Since many people wanted to build cross compilers targeting FreeBSD, they were out of luck since the older sources that FreeBSD had for as and ld weren't up to the task. The new gnu tools chain (binutils) does support cross compiling, ELF, shared libraries, C++ extnensions, etc. In addition, many vendors are releasing ELF binaries, and it is a good thing for FreeBSD to run them. And if it is running ELF binaries, why bother having a.out any more? It is a tired old horse that has proven useful for a long time, but it is time to turn him out to pasture for his long, faithful years of service. ELF is more expressive than a.out and will allow more extensibility in the base system. The ELF tools are better maintained, and offer cross compilation support, which is important to many people. ELF may be a little slower than a.out, but trying to measure it can be difficult. There are also numerous details that are different between the two in how they map pages, handle init code, etc. None of these are very important, but they are differences. In time support for a.out will be moved out of the GENERIC kernel, and eventually removed from the kernel once the need to run legacy a.out programs is past. Why won't chmod change the permissions on symlinks? Symlinks do not have permissions, and by default, &man.chmod.1; will not follow symlinks to change the permissions on the target file. So if you have a file, foo, and a symlink to that file, bar, then this command will always succeed. &prompt.user; chmod g-w bar However, the permissions on foo will not have changed. You have to use either or together with the option to make this work. See the chmod and symlink man pages for more info. The option does a RECURSIVE chmod. Be careful about specifying directories or symlinks to directories to chmod. If you want to change the permissions of a directory referenced by a symlink, use chmod without any options and follow the symlink with a trailing slash (/). For example, if foo is a symlink to directory bar, and you want to change the permissions of foo (actually bar), you would do something like: &prompt.user; chmod 555 foo/ With the trailing slash, chmod will follow the symlink, foo, to change the permissions of the directory, bar. Why are login names still restricted to 8 characters? You'd think it'd be easy enough to change UT_NAMESIZE and rebuild the whole world, and everything would just work. Unfortunately there are often scads of applications and utilities (including system tools) that have hard-coded small numbers (not always 8 or 9, but oddball ones like 15 and 20) in structures and buffers. Not only will this get you log files which are trashed (due to variable-length records getting written when fixed records were expected), but it can break Sun's NIS clients and potentially cause other problems in interacting with other UNIX systems. In FreeBSD 3.0 and later, the maximum name length has been increased to 16 characters and those various utilities with hard-coded name sizes have been found and fixed. The fact that this touched so many areas of the system is why, in fact, the change was not made until 3.0. If you're absolutely confident in your ability to find and fix these sorts of problems for yourself when and if they pop up, you can increase the login name length in earlier releases by editing /usr/include/utmp.h and changing UT_NAMESIZE accordingly. You must also update MAXLOGNAME in /usr/include/sys/param.h to match the UT_NAMESIZE change. Finally, if you build from sources, don't forget that /usr/include is updated each time! Change the appropriate files in /usr/src/.. instead. Can I run DOS binaries under FreeBSD? Yes, starting with version 3.0 you can using BSDI's doscmd DOS emulation which has been integrated and enhanced. Send mail to The FreeBSD emulation discussion list if you're interested in joining this ongoing effort! For pre-3.0 systems, there is a neat utility called pcemu in the ports collection which emulates an 8088 and enough BIOS services to run DOS text mode applications. It requires the X Window System (provided as XFree86). What is sup, and how do I use it? SUP stands for Software Update Protocol, and was developed by CMU for keeping their development trees in sync. We used it to keep remote sites in sync with our central development sources. SUP is not bandwidth friendly, and has been retired. The current recommended method to keep your sources up to date is Handbook entry on CVSup How cool is FreeBSD? Q. Has anyone done any temperature testing while running FreeBSD? I know Linux runs cooler than dos, but have never seen a mention of FreeBSD. It seems to run really hot. A. No, but we have done numerous taste tests on blindfolded volunteers who have also had 250 micrograms of LSD-25 administered beforehand. 35% of the volunteers said that FreeBSD tasted sort of orange, whereas Linux tasted like purple haze. Neither group mentioned any particular variances in temperature that I can remember. We eventually had to throw the results of this survey out entirely anyway when we found that too many volunteers were wandering out of the room during the tests, thus skewing the results. I think most of the volunteers are at Apple now, working on their new scratch and sniff GUI. It's a funny old business we're in! Seriously, both FreeBSD and Linux use the HLT (halt) instruction when the system is idle thus lowering its energy consumption and therefore the heat it generates. Also if you have APM (advanced power management) configured, then FreeBSD can also put the CPU into a low power mode. Who's scratching in my memory banks?? Q. Is there anything odd that FreeBSD does when compiling the kernel which would cause the memory to make a scratchy sound? When compiling (and for a brief moment after recognizing the floppy drive upon startup, as well), a strange scratchy sound emanates from what appears to be the memory banks. A. Yes! You'll see frequent references to daemons in the BSD documentation, and what most people don't know is that this refers to genuine, non-corporeal entities that now possess your computer. The scratchy sound coming from your memory is actually high-pitched whispering exchanged among the daemons as they best decide how to deal with various system administration tasks. If the noise gets to you, a good fdisk /mbr from DOS will get rid of them, but don't be surprised if they react adversely and try to stop you. In fact, if at any point during the exercise you hear the satanic voice of Bill Gates coming from the built-in speaker, take off running and don't ever look back! Freed from the counterbalancing influence of the BSD daemons, the twin demons of DOS and Windows are often able to re-assert total control over your machine to the eternal damnation of your soul. Given a choice, I think I'd prefer to get used to the scratchy noises, myself! What does MFC mean? MFC is an acronym for Merged From -CURRENT. It's used in the CVS logs to denote when a change was migrated from the CURRENT to the STABLE branches. What does BSD mean? It stands for something in a secret language that only members can know. It doesn't translate literally but its ok to tell you that BSD's translation is something between, Formula-1 Racing Team, Penguins are tasty snacks, and We have a better sense of humor than Linux. :-) Seriously, BSD is an acronym for Berkeley Software Distribution, which is the name the Berkeley CSRG (Computer Systems Research Group) chose for their Unix distribution way back when. What is a repo-copy? A repo-copy (which is a short form of repository copy) refers to the direct copying of files within the CVS repository. Without a repo-copy, if a file needed to be copied or moved to another place in the repository, the committer would run cvs add to put the file in its new location, and then cvs rm on the old file if the old copy was being removed. The disadvantage of this method is that the history (i.e. the entries in the CVS logs) of the file would not be copied to the new location. As the FreeBSD Project considers this history very useful, a repository copy is often used instead. This is a process where one of the repository meisters will copy the files directly within the repository, rather than using the cvs program. Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? The really, really short answer is that you shouldn't. The somewhat longer answer is that just because you are capable of building a bikeshed doesn't mean you should stop others from building one just because you don't like the color they plan to paint it. This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change. The longer and more complete answer is that after a very long argument about whether &man.sleep.1; should take fractional second arguments, &a.phk; posted a long message entitled A bike shed (any colour will do) on greener grass.... The appropriate portions of that message are quoted below.
&a.phk; on freebsd-hackers, October 2, 1999 What is it about this bike shed? Some of you have asked me. It's a long story, or rather it's an old story, but it is quite short actually. C. Northcote Parkinson wrote a book in the early 1960'ies, called Parkinson's Law, which contains a lot of insight into the dynamics of management. [snip a bit of commentary on the book] In the specific example involving the bike shed, the other vital component is an atomic power-plant, I guess that illustrates the age of the book. Parkinson shows how you can go in to the board of directors and get approval for building a multi-million or even billion dollar atomic power plant, but if you want to build a bike shed you will be tangled up in endless discussions. Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast, so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody else checked all the details before it got this far. Richard P. Feynmann gives a couple of interesting, and very much to the point, examples relating to Los Alamos in his books. A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one of those over a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is here. In Denmark we call it setting your fingerprint. It is about personal pride and prestige, it is about being able to point somewhere and say There! I did that. It is a strong trait in politicians, but present in most people given the chance. Just think about footsteps in wet cement.
How many FreeBSD hackers does it take to change a lightbulb? One thousand, one hundred and seventy-two: Twenty-three to complain to -CURRENT about the lights being out; Four to claim that it is a configuration problem, and that such matters really belong on -questions; Three to submit PRs about it, one of which is misfiled under doc and consists only of "it's dark"; One to commit an untested lightbulb which breaks buildworld, then back it out five minutes later; Eight to flame the PR originators for not including patches in their PRs; Five to complain about buildworld being broken; Thirty-one to answer that it works for them, and they must have cvsupped at a bad time; One to post a patch for a new lightbulb to -hackers; One to complain that he had patches for this three years ago, but when he sent them to -CURRENT they were just ignored, and he has had bad experiences with the PR system; besides, the proposed new lightbulb is non-reflexive; Thirty-seven to scream that lightbulbs do not belong in the base system, that committers have no right to do things like this without consulting the Community, and WHAT IS -CORE DOING ABOUT IT!? Two hundred to complain about the color of the bicycle shed; Three to point out that the patch breaks style(9); Seventeen to complain that the proposed new lightbulb is under GPL; Five hundred and eighty-six to engage in a flame war about the comparative advantages of the GPL, the BSD license, the MIT license, the NPL, and the personal hygiene of unnamed FSF founders; Seven to move various portions of the thread to -chat and -advocacy; One to commit the suggested lightbulb, even though it shines dimmer than the old one; Two to back it out with a furious flame of a commit message, arguing that FreeBSD is better off in the dark than with a dim lightbulb; Forty-six to argue vociferously about the backing out of the dim lightbulb and demanding a statement from -core; Eleven to request a smaller lightbulb so it will fit their Tamagotchi if we ever decide to port FreeBSD to that platform; Seventy-three to complain about the SNR on -hackers and -chat and unsubscribe in protest; Thirteen to post "unsubscribe", "How do I unsubscribe?", or "Please remove me from the list", followed by the usual footer; One to commit a working lightbulb while everybody is too busy flaming everybody else to notice; Thirty-one to point out that the new lightbulb would shine 0.364% brighter if compiled with TenDRA (although it will have to be reshaped into a cube), and that FreeBSD should therefore switch to TenDRA instead of EGCS; One to complain that the new lightbulb lacks fairings; Nine (including the PR originators) to ask "what is MFC?"; Fifty-seven to complain about the lights being out two weeks after the bulb has been changed. &a.nik; adds: I was laughing quite hard at this. And then I thought, "Hang on, shouldn't there be '1 to document it.' in that list somewhere?" And then I was enlightened :-) This entry is Copyright (c) 1999 &a.des;. Please do not reproduce without attribution. For serious FreeBSD hackers only What are SNAPs and RELEASEs? There are currently three active/semi-active branches in the FreeBSD CVS Repository (the RELENG_2 branch is probably only changed twice a year, which is why there are only three active branches of development): RELENG_2_2 AKA 2.2-STABLE RELENG_3 AKA 3.X-STABLE RELENG_4 AKA 4-STABLE HEAD AKA -CURRENT AKA 5.0-CURRENT HEAD is not an actual branch tag, like the other two; it's simply a symbolic constant for the current, non-branched development stream which we simply refer to as -CURRENT. Right now, -CURRENT is the 5.0 development stream and the 4-STABLE branch, RELENG_4, forked off from -CURRENT in Mar 2000. The 2.2-STABLE branch, RELENG_2_2, departed -CURRENT in November 1996, and has pretty much been retired. How do I make my own custom release? To make a release you need to do three things: First, you need to be running a kernel with the vn driver configured in. Add this to your kernel config file and build a new kernel: pseudo-device vn #Vnode driver (turns a file into a device) Second, you have to have the whole CVS repository at hand. To get this you can use CVSUP but in your supfile set the release name to cvs and remove any tag or date fields: *default prefix=/home/ncvs *default base=/a *default host=cvsup.FreeBSD.org *default release=cvs *default delete compress use-rel-suffix ## Main Source Tree src-all src-eBones src-secure # Other stuff ports-all www doc-all Then run cvsup -g supfile to suck all the good bits onto your box... Finally, you need a chunk of empty space to build into. Let's say it's in /some/big/filesystem, and from the example above you've got the CVS repository in /home/ncvs: &prompt.root; setenv CVSROOT /home/ncvs # or export CVSROOT=/home/ncvs &prompt.root; cd /usr/src &prompt.root; make buildworld &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/release &prompt.root; make release BUILDNAME=3.0-MY-SNAP CHROOTDIR=/some/big/filesystem/release
Please note that you do not need to build world if you already have a populated /usr/obj.
An entire release will be built in /some/big/filesystem/release and you will have a full FTP-type installation in /some/big/filesystem/release/R/ftp when you're done. If you want to build your SNAP along some other branch than -CURRENT, you can also add RELEASETAG=SOMETAG to the make release command line above, e.g. RELEASETAG=RELENG_2_2 would build an up-to-the- minute 2.2-STABLE snapshot. How do I create customized installation disks? The entire process of creating installation disks and source and binary archives is automated by various targets in /usr/src/release/Makefile. The information there should be enough to get you started. However, it should be said that this involves doing a make world and will therefore take up a lot of time and disk space. make world clobbers my existing installed binaries. Yes, this is the general idea; as its name might suggest, make world rebuilds every system binary from scratch, so you can be certain of having a clean and consistent environment at the end (which is why it takes so long). If the environment variable DESTDIR is defined while running make world or make install, the newly-created binaries will be deposited in a directory tree identical to the installed one, rooted at ${DESTDIR}. Some random combination of shared libraries modifications and program rebuilds can cause this to fail in make world however. When my system boots, it says (bus speed defaulted). The Adaptec 1542 SCSI host adapters allow the user to configure their bus access speed in software. Previous versions of the 1542 driver tried to determine the fastest usable speed and set the adapter to that. We found that this breaks some users' systems, so you now have to define the TUNE_1542 kernel configuration option in order to have this take place. Using it on those systems where it works may make your disks run faster, but on those systems where it doesn't, your data could be corrupted. Can I follow current with limited Internet access? Yes, you can do this without downloading the whole source tree by using the CTM facility. How did you split the distribution into 240k files? Newer BSD based systems have a option to split that allows them to split files on arbitrary byte boundaries. Here is an example from /usr/src/Makefile. bin-tarball: (cd ${DISTDIR}; \ tar cf - . \ gzip --no-name -9 -c | \ split -b 240640 - \ ${RELEASEDIR}/tarballs/bindist/bin_tgz.) I've written a kernel extension, who do I send it to? Please take a look at The Handbook entry on how to submit code. And thanks for the thought! How are Plug N Play ISA cards detected and initialized? By: Frank Durda IV In a nutshell, there a few I/O ports that all of the PnP boards respond to when the host asks if anyone is out there. So when the PnP probe routine starts, he asks if there are any PnP boards present, and all the PnP boards respond with their model # to a I/O read of the same port, so the probe routine gets a wired-OR yes to that question. At least one bit will be on in that reply. Then the probe code is able to cause boards with board model IDs (assigned by Microsoft/Intel) lower than X to go off-line. It then looks to see if any boards are still responding to the query. If the answer was 0, then there are no boards with IDs above X. Now probe asks if there are any boards below X. If so, probe knows there are boards with a model numbers below X. Probe then asks for boards greater than X-(limit/4) to go off-line. If repeats the query. By repeating this semi-binary search of IDs-in-range enough times, the probing code will eventually identify all PnP boards present in a given machine with a number of iterations that is much lower than what 2^64 would take. The IDs are two 32-bit fields (hence 2ˆ64) + 8 bit checksum. The first 32 bits are a vendor identifier. They never come out and say it, but it appears to be assumed that different types of boards from the same vendor could have different 32-bit vendor ids. The idea of needing 32 bits just for unique manufacturers is a bit excessive. The lower 32 bits are a serial #, ethernet address, something that makes this one board unique. The vendor must never produce a second board that has the same lower 32 bits unless the upper 32 bits are also different. So you can have multiple boards of the same type in the machine and the full 64 bits will still be unique. The 32 bit groups can never be all zero. This allows the wired-OR to show non-zero bits during the initial binary search. Once the system has identified all the board IDs present, it will reactivate each board, one at a time (via the same I/O ports), and find out what resources the given board needs, what interrupt choices are available, etc. A scan is made over all the boards to collect this information. This info is then combined with info from any ECU files on the hard disk or wired into the MLB BIOS. The ECU and BIOS PnP support for hardware on the MLB is usually synthetic, and the peripherals don't really do genuine PnP. However by examining the BIOS info plus the ECU info, the probe routines can cause the devices that are PnP to avoid those devices the probe code cannot relocate. Then the PnP devices are visited once more and given their I/O, DMA, IRQ and Memory-map address assignments. The devices will then appear at those locations and remain there until the next reboot, although there is nothing that says you can't move them around whenever you want. There is a lot of oversimplification above, but you should get the general idea. Microsoft took over some of the primary printer status ports to do PnP, on the logic that no boards decoded those addresses for the opposing I/O cycles. I found a genuine IBM printer board that did decode writes of the status port during the early PnP proposal review period, but MS said tough. So they do a write to the printer status port for setting addresses, plus that use that address + 0x800, and a third I/O port for reading that can be located anywhere between 0x200 and 0x3ff. Does FreeBSD support architectures other than the x86? Several groups of people have expressed interest in working on multi-architecture ports for FreeBSD and the FreeBSD/AXP (ALPHA) port is one such effort which has been quite successful, now available in 3.0 SNAPshot release form at ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/alpha. The ALPHA port currently runs on a growing number of ALPHA machine types, among them the AlphaStation, AXPpci, PC164, Miata and Multia models. This port is not yet considered a full release and won't be until a full compliment of system installation tools and a distribution on CDROM installation media is available, including a reasonable number of working ports and packages. FreeBSD/AXP should be considered BETA quality software at this time. For status information, please join the freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.orgmailing list. Interest has also been expressed in a port of FreeBSD to the SPARC architecture, join the freebsd-sparc@FreeBSD.orgmailing list if you are interested in joining that project. For general discussion on new architectures, join the freebsd-platforms@FreeBSD.org mailing list. I need a major number for a device driver I've written. This depends on whether or not you plan on making the driver publicly available. If you do, then please send us a copy of the driver source code, plus the appropriate modifications to files.i386, a sample configuration file entry, and the appropriate MAKEDEV code to create any special files your device uses. If you do not, or are unable to because of licensing restrictions, then character major number 32 and block major number 8 have been reserved specifically for this purpose; please use them. In any case, we'd appreciate hearing about your driver on freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org. Alternative layout policies for directories In answer to the question of alternative layout policies for directories, the scheme that is currently in use is unchanged from what I wrote in 1983. I wrote that policy for the original fast filesystem, and never revisited it. It works well at keeping cylinder groups from filling up. As several of you have noted, it works poorly for find. Most filesystems are created from archives that were created by a depth first search (aka ftw). These directories end up being striped across the cylinder groups thus creating a worst possible senario for future depth first searches. If one knew the total number of directories to be created, the solution would be to create (total / fs_ncg) per cylinder group before moving on. Obviously, one would have to create some heuristic to guess at this number. Even using a small fixed number like say 10 would make an order of magnitude improvement. To differentiate restores from normal operation (when the current algorithm is probably more sensible), you could use the clustering of up to 10 if they were all done within a ten second window. Anyway, my conclusion is that this is an area ripe for experimentation. Kirk McKusick, September 1998 Making the most of a kernel panic [This section was extracted from a mail written by &a.wpaul; on the freebsd-current mailing list by &a.des;, who fixed a few typos and added the bracketed comments] From: Bill Paul <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> Subject: Re: the fs fun never stops To: ben@rosengart.com Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 15:22:50 -0400 (EDT) Cc: current@FreeBSD.org [<ben@rosengart.com> posted the following panic message] > Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode > fault virtual address = 0x40 > fault code = supervisor read, page not present > instruction pointer = 0x8:0xf014a7e5 ^^^^^^^^^^ > stack pointer = 0x10:0xf4ed6f24 > frame pointer = 0x10:0xf4ed6f28 > code segment = base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b > = DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1 > processor eflags = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0 > current process = 80 (mount) > interrupt mask = > trap number = 12 > panic: page fault [When] you see a message like this, it's not enough to just reproduce it and send it in. The instruction pointer value that I highlighted up there is important; unfortunately, it's also configuration dependent. In other words, the value varies depending on the exact kernel image that you're using. If you're using a GENERIC kernel image from one of the snapshots, then it's possible for somebody else to track down the offending function, but if you're running a custom kernel then only you can tell us where the fault occured. What you should do is this: Write down the instruction pointer value. Note that the 0x8: part at the begining is not significant in this case: it's the 0xf0xxxxxx part that we want. When the system reboots, do the following: &prompt.user; nm /kernel.that.caused.the.panic | grep f0xxxxxx where f0xxxxxx is the instruction pointer value. The odds are you will not get an exact match since the symbols in the kernel symbol table are for the entry points of functions and the instruction pointer address will be somewhere inside a function, not at the start. If you don't get an exact match, omit the last digit from the instruction pointer value and try again, i.e.: &prompt.user; nm /kernel.that.caused.the.panic | grep f0xxxxx If that doesn't yield any results, chop off another digit. Repeat until you get some sort of output. The result will be a possible list of functions which caused the panic. This is a less than exact mechanism for tracking down the point of failure, but it's better than nothing. I see people constantly show panic messages like this but rarely do I see someone take the time to match up the instruction pointer with a function in the kernel symbol table. The best way to track down the cause of a panic is by capturing a crash dump, then using gdb(1) to to a stack trace on the crash dump. Of course, this depends on gdb(1) in -CURRENT working correctly, which I can't guarantee (I recall somebody saying that the new ELF-ized gdb(1) didn't handle kernel crash dumps correctly: somebody should check this before 3.0 goes out of beta or there'll be a lot of red faces after the CDs ship). In any case, the method I normally use is this: Set up a kernel config file, optionally adding options DDB if you think you need the kernel debugger for something. (I use this mainly for setting beakpoints if I suspect an infinite loop condition of some kind.) Use config -g KERNELCONFIG to set up the build directory. cd /sys/compile/KERNELCONFIG; make Wait for kernel to finish compiling. make install reboot The &man.make.1; process will have built two kernels. kernel and kernel.debug. kernel was installed as /kernel, while kernel.debug can be used as the source of debugging symbols for gdb(1). To make sure you capture a crash dump, you need edit /etc/rc.conf and set dumpdev to point to your swap partition. This will cause the rc(8) scripts to use the dumpon(8) command to enable crash dumps. You can also run dumpon(8) manually. After a panic, the crash dump can be recovered using savecore(8); if dumpdev is set in /etc/rc.conf, the rc(8) scripts will run savecore(8) automatically and put the crash dump in /var/crash. FreeBSD crash dumps are usually the same size as the physical RAM size of your machine. That is, if you have 64MB of RAM, you will get a 64MB crash dump. Therefore you must make sure there's enough space in /var/crash to hold the dump. Alternatively, you run savecore(8) manually and have it recover the crash dump to another directory where you have more room. It's possible to limit the size of the crash dump by using options MAXMEM=(foo) to set the amount of memory the kernel will use to something a little more sensible. For example, if you have 128MB of RAM, you can limit the kernel's memory usage to 16MB so that your crash dump size will be 16MB instead of 128MB. Once you have recovered the crash dump, you can get a stack trace with gdb(1) as follows: &prompt.user; gdb -k /sys/compile/KERNELCONFIG/kernel.debug /var/crash/vmcore.0 (gdb) where Note that there may be several screens worth of information; ideally you should use script(1) to capture all of them. Using the unstripped kernel image with all the debug symbols should show the exact line of kernel source code where the panic occured. Usually you have to read the stack trace from the bottom up in order to trace the exact sequence of events that lead to the crash. You can also use gdb(1) to print out the contents of various variables or structures in order to examine the system state at the time of the crash. Now, if you're really insane and have a second computer, you can also configure gdb(1) to do remote debugging such that you can use gdb(1) on one system to debug the kernel on another system, including setting breakpoints, single-stepping through the kernel code, just like you can do with a normal user-mode program. I haven't played with this yet as I don't often have the chance to set up two machines side by side for debugging purposes. [Bill adds: "I forgot to mention one thing: if you have DDB enabled and the kernel drops into the debugger, you can force a panic (and a crash dump) just by typing 'panic' at the ddb prompt. It may stop in the debugger again during the panic phase. If it does, type 'continue' and it will finish the crash dump." -ed] dlsym() stopped working for ELF executables! The ELF toolchain does not, by default, make the symbols defined in an executable visible to the dynamic linker. Consequently dlsym() searches on handles obtained from calls to dlopen(NULL, flags) will fail to find such symbols. If you want to search, using dlsym(), for symbols present in the main executable of a process, you need to link the executable using the option to the ELF linker. Increasing or reducing the kernel address space By default, the kernel address space is 256 MB on FreeBSD 3.x and 1 GB on FreeBSD 4.x. If you run a network-intensive server (e.g. a large FTP or HTTP server), you might find that 256 MB is not enough. So how do you increase the address space? There are two aspects to this. First, you need to tell the kernel to reserve a larger portion of the address space for itself. Second, since the kernel is loaded at the top of the address space, you need to lower the load address so it doesn't bump its head against the ceiling. The first goal is achieved by increasing the value of NKPDE in src/sys/i386/include/pmap.h. Here's what it looks like for a 1 GB address space: #ifndef NKPDE #ifdef SMP #define NKPDE 254 /* addressable number of page tables/pde's */ #else #define NKPDE 255 /* addressable number of page tables/pde's */ #endif /* SMP */ #endif To find the correct value of NKPDE, divide the desired address space size (in megabytes) by four, then subtract one for UP and two for SMP. To achieve the second goal, you need to compute the correct load address: simply subtract the address space size (in bytes) from 0x100100000; the result is 0xc0100000 for a 1 GB address space. Set LOAD_ADDRESS in src/sys/i386/conf/Makefile.i386 to that value; then set the location counter in the beginning of the section listing in src/sys/i386/conf/kernel.script to the same value, as follows: OUTPUT_FORMAT("elf32-i386", "elf32-i386", "elf32-i386") OUTPUT_ARCH(i386) ENTRY(btext) SEARCH_DIR(/usr/lib); SEARCH_DIR(/usr/obj/elf/home/src/tmp/usr/i386-unknown-freebsdelf/lib); SECTIONS { /* Read-only sections, merged into text segment: */ . = 0xc0100000 + SIZEOF_HEADERS; .interp : { *(.interp) } Then reconfig and rebuild your kernel. You will probably have problems with ps(1), top(1) and the like; make world should take care of it (or a manual rebuild of libkvm, ps and top after copying the patched pmap.h to /usr/include/vm/. NOTE: the size of the kernel address space must be a multiple of four megabytes. [&a.dg; adds: I think the kernel address space needs to be a power of two, but I'm not certain about that. The old(er) boot code used to monkey with the high order address bits and I think expected at least 256MB granularity.] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FreeBSD Core Team If you see a problem with this FAQ, or wish to submit an entry, please mail the &a.faq;. We appreciate your feedback, and cannot make this a better FAQ without your help!
&a.jkh; Occasional fits of FAQ-reshuffling and updating. &a.dwhite; Services above and beyond the call of duty on freebsd-questions &a.joerg; Services above and beyond the call of duty on Usenet &a.wollman; Networking and formatting Jim Lowe Multicast information &a.pds; FreeBSD FAQ typing machine slavey The FreeBSD Team Kvetching, moaning, submitting data And to any others we've forgotten, apologies and heartfelt thanks! diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/introduction/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/introduction/chapter.sgml index 1eccc0d2af..a9dd789058 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/introduction/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/introduction/chapter.sgml @@ -1,721 +1,704 @@ Introduction Restructured, reorganized, and parts rewritten by &a.jim;, 17 January 2000. Synopsis Thank you for your interest in FreeBSD! The following chapter covers various items about the FreeBSD Project, such as its history, goals, development model, and so on. FreeBSD is a 4.4BSD-Lite2 based operating system for the Intel architecture (x86) and DEC Alpha based systems. Ports to other architectures are also underway. For a brief overview of FreeBSD, see the next section. You can also read about the history of FreeBSD, or the current release. If you are interested in contributing something to the Project (code, hardware, unmarked bills), see the contributing to FreeBSD section. Welcome to FreeBSD! Since you are still here reading this, you most likely have some idea as to what FreeBSD is and what it can do for you. If you are new to FreeBSD, read on for more information. What is FreeBSD? In general, FreeBSD is a state-of-the-art operating system based on 4.4BSD-Lite2. It runs on computer systems based on the Intel architecture (x86), and also the DEC Alpha architecture. FreeBSD is used to power some of the biggest sites on the Internet, including: Yahoo! Hotmail Apache Be, Inc. Blue Mountain Arts Pair Networks Whistle Communications Walnut Creek CDROM and many more. What can FreeBSD do? FreeBSD has many noteworthy features. Some of these are: Preemptive multitasking with dynamic priority adjustment to ensure smooth and fair sharing of the computer between applications and users, even under the heaviest of loads. Multi-user facilities which allow many people to use a FreeBSD system simultaneously for a variety of things. This means, for example, that system peripherals such as printers and tape drives are properly shared between all users on the system or the network and that individual resource limits can be placed on users or groups of users, protecting critical system resources from over-use. Strong TCP/IP networking with support for industry standards such as SLIP, PPP, NFS, DHCP, and NIS. This means that your FreeBSD machine can inter-operate easily with other systems as well as act as an enterprise server, providing vital functions such as NFS (remote file access) and e-mail services or putting your organization on the Internet with WWW, FTP, routing and firewall (security) services. Memory protection ensures that applications (or users) cannot interfere with each other. One application crashing will not affect others in any way. FreeBSD is a 32-bit operating system (64-bit on the Alpha) and was designed as such from the ground up. The industry standard X Window System (X11R6) provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for the cost of a common VGA card and monitor and comes with full sources. Binary compatibility with many programs built for Linux, SCO, SVR4, BSDI and NetBSD. Thousands of ready-to-run applications are available from the FreeBSD ports and packages collection. Why search the net when you can find it all right here? Thousands of additional and easy-to-port applications are available on the Internet. FreeBSD is source code compatible with most popular commercial Unix systems and thus most applications require few, if any, changes to compile. Demand paged virtual memory and merged VM/buffer cache design efficiently satisfies applications with large appetites for memory while still maintaining interactive response to other users. SMP support for machines with multiple CPUs (Intel only). A full complement of C, C++, Fortran, and Perl development tools. Many additional languages for advanced research and development are also available in the ports and packages collection. Source code for the entire system means you have the greatest degree of control over your environment. Why be locked into a proprietary solution at the mercy of your vendor when you can have a truly Open System? Extensive on-line documentation. And many more! FreeBSD is based on the 4.4BSD-Lite2 release from Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California at Berkeley, and carries on the distinguished tradition of BSD systems development. In addition to the fine work provided by CSRG, the FreeBSD Project has put in many thousands of hours in fine tuning the system for maximum performance and reliability in real-life load situations. As many of the commercial giants struggle to field PC operating systems with such features, performance and reliability, FreeBSD can offer them now! The applications to which FreeBSD can be put are truly limited only by your own imagination. From software development to factory automation, inventory control to azimuth correction of remote satellite antennae; if it can be done with a commercial UNIX product then it is more than likely that you can do it with FreeBSD, too! FreeBSD also benefits significantly from the literally thousands of high quality applications developed by research centers and universities around the world, often available at little to no cost. Commercial applications are also available and appearing in greater numbers every day. Because the source code for FreeBSD itself is generally available, the system can also be customized to an almost unheard of degree for special applications or projects, and in ways not generally possible with operating systems from most major commercial vendors. Here is just a sampling of some of the applications in which people are currently using FreeBSD: Internet Services: The robust TCP/IP networking built into FreeBSD makes it an ideal platform for a variety of Internet services such as: FTP servers World Wide Web servers (standard or secure [SSL]) Firewalls and NAT (IP masquerading) gateways. Electronic Mail servers USENET News or Bulletin Board Systems And more... With FreeBSD, you can easily start out small with an inexpensive 386 class PC and upgrade all the way up to a quad-processor Xeon with RAID storage as your enterprise grows. Education: Are you a student of computer science or a related engineering field? There is no better way of learning about operating systems, computer architecture and networking than the hands on, under the hood experience that FreeBSD can provide. A number of freely available CAD, mathematical and graphic design packages also make it highly useful to those whose primary interest in a computer is to get other work done! Research: With source code for the entire system available, FreeBSD is an excellent platform for research in operating systems as well as other branches of computer science. FreeBSD's freely available nature also makes it possible for remote groups to collaborate on ideas or shared development without having to worry about special licensing agreements or limitations on what may be discussed in open forums. Networking: Need a new router? A name server (DNS)? A firewall to keep people out of your internal network? FreeBSD can easily turn that unused 386 or 486 PC sitting in the corner into an advanced router with sophisticated packet-filtering capabilities. X Window workstation: FreeBSD is a fine choice for an inexpensive X terminal solution, either using the freely available XFree86 server or one of the excellent commercial servers provided by X Inside. Unlike an X terminal, FreeBSD allows many applications to be run locally, if desired, thus relieving the burden on a central server. FreeBSD can even boot diskless, making individual workstations even cheaper and easier to administer. Software Development: The basic FreeBSD system comes with a full complement of development tools including the renowned GNU C/C++ compiler and debugger. FreeBSD is available in both source and binary form on CDROM and via anonymous FTP. See Obtaining FreeBSD for more details. About the FreeBSD Project The following section provides some background information on the project, including a brief history, project goals, and the development model of the project. A Brief History of FreeBSD Contributed by &a.jkh;. The FreeBSD project had its genesis in the early part of 1993, partially as an outgrowth of the Unofficial 386BSD Patchkit by the patchkit's last 3 coordinators: Nate Williams, Rod Grimes and myself. Our original goal was to produce an intermediate snapshot of 386BSD in order to fix a number of problems with it that the patchkit mechanism just was not capable of solving. Some of you may remember the early working title for the project being 386BSD 0.5 or 386BSD Interim in reference to that fact. 386BSD was Bill Jolitz's operating system, which had been up to that point suffering rather severely from almost a year's worth of neglect. As the patchkit swelled ever more uncomfortably with each passing day, we were in unanimous agreement that something had to be done and decided to try and assist Bill by providing this interim cleanup snapshot. Those plans came to a rude halt when Bill Jolitz suddenly decided to withdraw his sanction from the project without any clear indication of what would be done instead. It did not take us long to decide that the goal remained worthwhile, even without Bill's support, and so we adopted the name FreeBSD, coined by David Greenman. Our initial objectives were set after consulting with the system's current users and, once it became clear that the project was on the road to perhaps even becoming a reality, I contacted Walnut Creek CDROM with an eye towards improving FreeBSD's distribution channels for those many unfortunates without easy access to the Internet. Walnut Creek CDROM not only supported the idea of distributing FreeBSD on CD but also went so far as to provide the project with a machine to work on and a fast Internet connection. Without Walnut Creek CDROM's almost unprecedented degree of faith in what was, at the time, a completely unknown project, it is quite unlikely that FreeBSD would have gotten as far, as fast, as it has today. The first CDROM (and general net-wide) distribution was FreeBSD 1.0, released in December of 1993. This was based on the 4.3BSD-Lite (Net/2) tape from U.C. Berkeley, with many components also provided by 386BSD and the Free Software Foundation. It was a fairly reasonable success for a first offering, and we followed it with the highly successful FreeBSD 1.1 release in May of 1994. Around this time, some rather unexpected storm clouds formed on the horizon as Novell and U.C. Berkeley settled their long-running lawsuit over the legal status of the Berkeley Net/2 tape. A condition of that settlement was U.C. Berkeley's concession that large parts of Net/2 were encumbered code and the property of Novell, who had in turn acquired it from AT&T some time previously. What Berkeley got in return was Novell's blessing that the 4.4BSD-Lite release, when it was finally released, would be declared unencumbered and all existing Net/2 users would be strongly encouraged to switch. This included FreeBSD, and the project was given until the end of July 1994 to stop shipping its own Net/2 based product. Under the terms of that agreement, the project was allowed one last release before the deadline, that release being FreeBSD 1.1.5.1. FreeBSD then set about the arduous task of literally re-inventing itself from a completely new and rather incomplete set of 4.4BSD-Lite bits. The Lite releases were light in part because Berkeley's CSRG had removed large chunks of code required for actually constructing a bootable running system (due to various legal requirements) and the fact that the Intel port of 4.4 was highly incomplete. It took the project until November of 1994 to make this transition, at which point it released FreeBSD 2.0 to the net and on CDROM (in late December). Despite being still more than a little rough around the edges, the release was a significant success and was followed by the more robust and easier to install FreeBSD 2.0.5 release in June of 1995. We released FreeBSD 2.1.5 in August of 1996, and it appeared to be popular enough among the ISP and commercial communities that another release along the 2.1-STABLE branch was merited. This was FreeBSD 2.1.7.1, released in February 1997 and capping the end of mainstream development on 2.1-STABLE. Now in maintenance mode, only security enhancements and other critical bug fixes will be done on this branch (RELENG_2_1_0). FreeBSD 2.2 was branched from the development mainline (-CURRENT) in November 1996 as the RELENG_2_2 branch, and the first full release (2.2.1) was released in April 1997. Further releases along the 2.2 branch were done in the summer and fall of '97, the last of which (2.2.8) appeared in November 1998. The first official 3.0 release appeared in October 1998 and spelled the beginning of the end for the 2.2 branch. The tree branched again on Jan 20, 1999, leading to the 4.0-CURRENT and 3.X-STABLE branches. From 3.X-STABLE, 3.1 was released on February 15, 1999, 3.2 on May 15, 1999, 3.3 on September 16, 1999, 3.4 on December 20, 1999, and 3.5 on June 24, 2000, which was followed a few days later by a minor point release update to 3.5.1, to incorporate some last-minute security fixes to Kerberos. This will be the final release in the 3.X branch. There was another branch on March 13, 2000, which saw the emergence of the 5.0-CURRENT and 4.X-STABLE branches. The only release from this branch so far is &rel.current;-RELEASE. Long-term development projects continue to take place in the 5.0-CURRENT branch, and SNAPshot releases of 5.0 on CDROM (and, of course, on the net) are continually made available as work progresses. FreeBSD Project Goals Contributed by &a.jkh;. The goals of the FreeBSD Project are to provide software that may be used for any purpose and without strings attached. Many of us have a significant investment in the code (and project) and would certainly not mind a little financial compensation now and then, but we are definitely not prepared to insist on it. We believe that our first and foremost mission is to provide code to any and all comers, and for whatever purpose, so that the code gets the widest possible use and provides the widest possible benefit. This is, I believe, one of the most fundamental goals of Free Software and one that we enthusiastically support. That code in our source tree which falls under the GNU General Public License (GPL) or Library General Public License (LGPL) comes with slightly more strings attached, though at least on the side of enforced access rather than the usual opposite. Due to the additional complexities that can evolve in the commercial use of GPL software we do, however, prefer software submitted under the more relaxed BSD copyright when it's a reasonable option to do so. The FreeBSD Development Model Contributed by &a.asami;. The development of FreeBSD is a very open and flexible process, FreeBSD being literally built from the contributions of hundreds of people around the world, as can be seen from our list of contributors. We are constantly on the lookout for new developers and ideas, and those interested in becoming more closely involved with the project need simply contact us at the &a.hackers;. The &a.announce; is also available to those wishing to make other FreeBSD users aware of major areas of work. Useful things to know about the FreeBSD project and its development process, whether working independently or in close cooperation: The CVS repository The central source tree for FreeBSD is maintained by CVS (Concurrent Version System), a freely available source code control tool that comes bundled with FreeBSD. The primary CVS repository resides on a machine in Concord CA, USA from where it is replicated to numerous mirror machines throughout the world. The CVS tree, as well as the -CURRENT and -STABLE trees which are checked out of it, can be easily replicated to your own machine as well. Please refer to the Synchronizing your source tree section for more information on doing this. The committers list The committers are the people who have write access to the CVS tree, and are thus authorized to make modifications to the FreeBSD source (the term committer comes from the &man.cvs.1; commit command, which is used to bring new changes into the CVS repository). The best way of making submissions for review by the committers list is to use the &man.send-pr.1; command, though if something appears to be jammed in the system then you may also reach them by sending mail to cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org. The FreeBSD core team The FreeBSD core team would be equivalent to the board of directors if the FreeBSD Project were a company. The primary task of the core team is to make sure the project, as a whole, is in good shape and is heading in the right directions. Inviting dedicated and responsible developers to join our group of committers is one of the functions of the core team, as is the recruitment of new core team members as others move on. Most current members of the core team started as committers whose addiction to the project got the better of them. Some core team members also have specific areas of responsibility, meaning that they are committed to ensuring that some large portion of the system works as advertised. Most members of the core team are volunteers when it comes to FreeBSD development and do not benefit from the project financially, so commitment should also not be misconstrued as meaning guaranteed support. The board of directors analogy above is not actually very accurate, and it may be more suitable to say that these are the people who gave up their lives in favor of FreeBSD against their better judgment! ;-) Outside contributors Last, but definitely not least, the largest group of developers are the users themselves who provide feedback and bug fixes to us on an almost constant basis. The primary way of keeping in touch with FreeBSD's more non-centralized development is to subscribe to the &a.hackers; (see mailing list info) where such things are discussed. The list of those who have contributed something, which made its way into our source tree, is a long and growing one, so why not join it by contributing something back to FreeBSD today? :-) Providing code is not the only way of contributing to the project; for a more complete list of things that need doing, please refer to the how to contribute section in this handbook. In summary, our development model is organized as a loose set of concentric circles. The centralized model is designed for the convenience of the users of FreeBSD, who are thereby provided with an easy way of tracking one central code base, not to keep potential contributors out! Our desire is to present a stable operating system with a large set of coherent application programs that the users can easily install and use, and this model works very well in accomplishing that. All we ask of those who would join us as FreeBSD developers is some of the same dedication its current people have to its continued success! The Current FreeBSD Release FreeBSD is a freely available, full source 4.4BSD-Lite2 based release for Intel i386, i486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Celeron, Pentium II, Pentium III (or compatible) and DEC Alpha based computer systems. It is based primarily on software from U.C. Berkeley's CSRG group, with some enhancements from NetBSD, OpenBSD, 386BSD, and the Free Software Foundation. Since our release of FreeBSD 2.0 in late 94, the performance, feature set, and stability of FreeBSD has improved dramatically. The largest change is a revamped virtual memory system with a merged VM/file buffer cache that not only increases performance, but also reduces FreeBSD's memory footprint, making a 5MB configuration a more acceptable minimum. Other enhancements include full NIS client and server support, transaction TCP support, dial-on-demand PPP, integrated DHCP support, an improved SCSI subsystem, ISDN support, support for ATM, FDDI, Fast and Gigabit Ethernet (1000Mbit) adapters, improved support for the latest Adaptec controllers, and many hundreds of bug fixes. We have also taken the comments and suggestions of many of our users to heart and have attempted to provide what we hope is a more sane and easily understood installation process. Your feedback on this (constantly evolving) process is especially welcome! In addition to the base distributions, FreeBSD offers a ported software collection with thousands of commonly sought-after programs. By mid-January 2000, there were nearly 3000 ports! The list of ports ranges from http (WWW) servers, to games, languages, editors, and almost everything in between. The entire ports collection requires approximately 50MB of storage, all ports being expressed as deltas to their original sources. This makes it much easier for us to update ports, and greatly reduces the disk space demands made by the older 1.0 ports collection. To compile a port, you simply change to the directory of the program you wish to install, type make install, and let the system do the rest. The full original distribution for each port you build is retrieved dynamically off the CDROM or a local FTP site, so you need only enough disk space to build the ports you want. Almost every port is also provided as a pre-compiled package, which can be installed with a simple command (pkg_add) by those who do not wish to compile their own ports from source. A number of additional documents which you may find very helpful in the process of installing and using FreeBSD may now also be found in the /usr/share/doc directory on any machine running FreeBSD 2.1 or later. You may view the locally installed manuals with any HTML capable browser using the following URLs: The FreeBSD Handbook file:/usr/share/doc/handbook/index.html The FreeBSD FAQ file:/usr/share/doc/faq/index.html You can also view the master (and most frequently updated) copies at http://www.FreeBSD.org/. - - The core of FreeBSD does not contain DES code which would - inhibit its being exported outside the United States. There is an - add-on package to the core distribution, for use only in the United - States, which contains the programs that normally use DES. The - auxiliary packages provided separately can be used by anyone. A - freely (from outside the U.S.) exportable European distribution of - DES for our non-U.S. users also exists and is described in the - FreeBSD FAQ. - - If password security for FreeBSD is all you need, and you have - no requirement for copying encrypted passwords from different hosts - (Suns, DEC machines, etc) into FreeBSD password entries, then - FreeBSD's MD5 based security may be all you require! We feel that - our default security model is more than a match for DES, and avoids - dealing with any messy export issues. If you are outside (or even - inside) the U.S., give it a try! diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml index b9f1c86c3e..807870b165 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml @@ -1,2762 +1,2683 @@ Security Much of this chapter has been taken from the &man.security.7; man page, originally written by &a.dillon;. Synopsis The following chapter will provide a basic introduction to system security concepts, some general good rules of thumb, and some advanced topics such as S/Key, OpenSSL, Kerberos, and others. Introduction Security is a function that begins and ends with the system administrator. While all BSD UNIX multi-user systems have some inherent security, the job of building and maintaining additional security mechanisms to keep those users honest is probably one of the single largest undertakings of the sysadmin. Machines are only as secure as you make them, and security concerns are ever competing with the human necessity for convenience. UNIX systems, in general, are capable of running a huge number of simultaneous processes and many of these processes operate as servers – meaning that external entities can connect and talk to them. As yesterday's mini-computers and mainframes become today's desktops, and as computers become networked and internetworked, security becomes an ever bigger issue. Security is best implemented through a layered onion approach. In a nutshell, what you want to do is to create as many layers of security as are convenient and then carefully monitor the system for intrusions. You do not want to overbuild your security or you will interfere with the detection side, and detection is one of the single most important aspects of any security mechanism. For example, it makes little sense to set the schg flags (see &man.chflags.1;) on every system binary because while this may temporarily protect the binaries, it prevents an attacker who has broken in from making an easily detectable change that may result in your security mechanisms not detecting the attacker at all. System security also pertains to dealing with various forms of attack, including attacks that attempt to crash or otherwise make a system unusable but do not attempt to break root. Security concerns can be split up into several categories: Denial of service attacks. User account compromises. Root compromise through accessible servers. Root compromise via user accounts. Backdoor creation. A denial of service attack is an action that deprives the machine of needed resources. Typically, D.O.S. attacks are brute-force mechanisms that attempt to crash or otherwise make a machine unusable by overwhelming its servers or network stack. Some D.O.S. attacks try to take advantages of bugs in the networking stack to crash a machine with a single packet. The latter can only be fixed by applying a bug fix to the kernel. Attacks on servers can often be fixed by properly specifying options to limit the load the servers incur on the system under adverse conditions. Brute-force network attacks are harder to deal with. A spoofed-packet attack, for example, is nearly impossible to stop short of cutting your system off from the internet. It may not be able to take your machine down, but it can fill up internet pipe. A user account compromise is even more common then a D.O.S. attack. Many sysadmins still run standard telnetd, rlogind, rshd, and ftpd servers on their machines. These servers, by default, do not operate over encrypted connections. The result is that if you have any moderate-sized user base, one or more of your users logging into your system from a remote location (which is the most common and convenient way to login to a system) will have his or her password sniffed. The attentive system admin will analyze his remote access logs looking for suspicious source addresses even for successful logins. One must always assume that once an attacker has access to a user account, the attacker can break root. However, the reality is that in a well secured and maintained system, access to a user account does not necessarily give the attacker access to root. The distinction is important because without access to root the attacker cannot generally hide his tracks and may, at best, be able to do nothing more then mess with the user's files or crash the machine. User account compromises are very common because users tend not to take the precautions that sysadmins take. System administrators must keep in mind that there are potentially many ways to break root on a machine. The attacker may know the root password, the attacker may find a bug in a root-run server and be able to break root over a network connection to that server, or the attacker may know of a bug in an suid-root program that allows the attacker to break root once he has broken into a user's account. If an attacker has found a a way to break root on a machine, the attacker may not have a need to install a backdoor. Many of the root holes found and closed to date involve a considerable amount of work by the attacker to cleanup after himself, so most attackers install backdoors. Backdoors provide the attacker with a way to easily regain root access to the system, but it also gives the smart system administrator a convenient way to detect the intrusion. Making it impossible for an attacker to install a backdoor may actually be detrimental to your security because it will not close off the hole the attacker found to break in the first place. Security remedies should always be implemented with a multi-layered onion peel approach and can be categorized as follows: Securing root and staff accounts. Securing root – root-run servers and suid/sgid binaries. Securing user accounts. Securing the password file. Securing the kernel core, raw devices, and filesystems. Quick detection of inappropriate changes made to the system. Paranoia. The next section of this chapter will cover the above bullet items in greater depth. Securing FreeBSD The sections that follow will cover the methods of securing your FreeBSD system that were mentioned in the last section of this chapter. Securing the root account and staff accounts First off, do not bother securing staff accounts if you have not secured the root account. Most systems have a password assigned to the root account. The first thing you do is assume that the password is always compromised. This does not mean that you should remove the password. The password is almost always necessary for console access to the machine. What it does mean is that you should not make it possible to use the password outside of the console or possibly even with the &man.su.1; command. For example, make sure that your pty's are specified as being unsecure in the /etc/ttys file so that direct root logins via telnet or rlogin are disallowed. If using other login services such as sshd, make sure that direct root logins are disabled there as well. Consider every access method – services such as FTP often fall through the cracks. Direct root logins should only be allowed via the system console. Of course, as a sysadmin you have to be able to get to root, so we open up a few holes. But we make sure these holes require additional password verification to operate. One way to make root accessible is to add appropriate staff accounts to the wheel group (in /etc/group). The staff members placed in the wheel group are allowed to su to root. You should never give staff members native wheel access by putting them in the wheel group in their password entry. Staff accounts should be placed in a staff group, and then added to the wheel group via the /etc/group file. Only those staff members who actually need to have root access should be placed in the wheel group. It is also possible, when using an authentication method such as kerberos, to use kerberos' .k5login file in the root account to allow a &man.ksu.1; to root without having to place anyone at all in the wheel group. This may be the better solution since the wheel mechanism still allows an intruder to break root if the intruder has gotten hold of your password file and can break into a staff account. While having the wheel mechanism is better then having nothing at all, it is not necessarily the safest option. An indirect way to secure the root account is to secure your staff accounts by using an alternative login access method and *'ing out the crypted password for the staff accounts. This way an intruder may be able to steal the password file but will not be able to break into any staff accounts (or, indirectly, root, even if root has a crypted password associated with it). Staff members get into their staff accounts through a secure login mechanism such as &man.kerberos.1; or &man.ssh.1; using a private/public key pair. When you use something like kerberos, you generally must secure the machines which run the kerberos servers and your desktop workstation. When you use a public/private key pair with ssh, you must generally secure the machine you are logging in from (typically your workstation), but you can also add an additional layer of protection to the key pair by password protecting the keypair when you create it with &man.ssh-keygen.1;. Being able to * out the passwords for staff accounts also guarantees that staff members can only login through secure access methods that you have setup. You can thus force all staff members to use secure, encrypted connections for all of their sessions which closes an important hole used by many intruders: That of sniffing the network from an unrelated, less secure machine. The more indirect security mechanisms also assume that you are logging in from a more restrictive server to a less restrictive server. For example, if your main box is running all sorts of servers, your workstation should not be running any. In order for your workstation to be reasonably secure you should run as few servers as possible, up to and including no servers at all, and you should run a password-protected screen blanker. Of course, given physical access to a workstation an attacker can break any sort of security you put on it. This is definitely a problem that you should consider but you should also consider the fact that the vast majority of break-ins occur remotely, over a network, from people who do not have physical access to your workstation or servers. Using something like kerberos also gives you the ability to disable or change the password for a staff account in one place and have it immediately effect all the machine the staff member may have an account on. If a staff member's account gets compromised, the ability to instantly change his password on all machines should not be underrated. With discrete passwords, changing a password on N machines can be a mess. You can also impose re-passwording restrictions with kerberos: not only can a kerberos ticket be made to timeout after a while, but the kerberos system can require that the user choose a new password after a certain period of time (say, once a month). Securing Root-run Servers and SUID/SGID Binaries The prudent sysadmin only runs the servers he needs to, no more, no less. Be aware that third party servers are often the most bug-prone. For example, running an old version of imapd or popper is like giving a universal root ticket out to the entire world. Never run a server that you have not checked out carefully. Many servers do not need to be run as root. For example, the ntalk, comsat, and finger daemons can be run in special user sandboxes. A sandbox isn't perfect unless you go to a large amount of trouble, but the onion approach to security still stands: If someone is able to break in through a server running in a sandbox, they still have to break out of the sandbox. The more layers the attacker must break through, the lower the likelihood of his success. Root holes have historically been found in virtually every server ever run as root, including basic system servers. If you are running a machine through which people only login via sshd and never login via telnetd or rshd or rlogind, then turn off those services! FreeBSD now defaults to running ntalkd, comsat, and finger in a sandbox. Another program which may be a candidate for running in a sandbox is &man.named.8;. The default rc.conf includes the arguments necessary to run named in a sandbox in a commented-out form. Depending on whether you are installing a new system or upgrading an existing system, the special user accounts used by these sandboxes may not be installed. The prudent sysadmin would research and implement sandboxes for servers whenever possible. There are a number of other servers that typically do not run in sandboxes: sendmail, popper, imapd, ftpd, and others. There are alternatives to some of these, but installing them may require more work then you are willing to perform (the convenience factor strikes again). You may have to run these servers as root and rely on other mechanisms to detect break-ins that might occur through them. The other big potential root hole in a system are the suid-root and sgid binaries installed on the system. Most of these binaries, such as rlogin, reside in /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, or /usr/sbin. While nothing is 100% safe, the system-default suid and sgid binaries can be considered reasonably safe. Still, root holes are occasionally found in these binaries. A root hole was found in Xlib in 1998 that made xterm (which is typically suid) vulnerable. It is better to be safe then sorry and the prudent sysadmin will restrict suid binaries that only staff should run to a special group that only staff can access, and get rid of (chmod 000) any suid binaries that nobody uses. A server with no display generally does not need an xterm binary. Sgid binaries can be almost as dangerous. If an intruder can break an sgid-kmem binary the intruder might be able to read /dev/kmem and thus read the crypted password file, potentially compromising any passworded account. Alternatively an intruder who breaks group kmem can monitor keystrokes sent through pty's, including pty's used by users who login through secure methods. An intruder that breaks the tty group can write to almost any user's tty. If a user is running a terminal program or emulator with a keyboard-simulation feature, the intruder can potentially generate a data stream that causes the user's terminal to echo a command, which is then run as that user. Securing User Accounts User accounts are usually the most difficult to secure. While you can impose Draconian access restrictions on your staff and * out their passwords, you may not be able to do so with any general user accounts you might have. If you do have sufficient control then you may win out and be able to secure the user accounts properly. If not, you simply have to be more vigilant in your monitoring of those accounts. Use of ssh and kerberos for user accounts is more problematic due to the extra administration and technical support required, but still a very good solution compared to a crypted password file. Securing the Password File The only sure fire way is to * out as many passwords as you can and use ssh or kerberos for access to those accounts. Even though the crypted password file (/etc/spwd.db) can only be read by root, it may be possible for an intruder to obtain read access to that file even if the attacker cannot obtain root-write access. Your security scripts should always check for and report changes to the password file (see Checking file integrity below). Securing the Kernel Core, Raw Devices, and Filesystems If an attacker breaks root he can do just about anything, but there are certain conveniences. For example, most modern kernels have a packet sniffing device driver built in. Under FreeBSD it is called the bpf device. An intruder will commonly attempt to run a packet sniffer on a compromised machine. You do not need to give the intruder the capability and most systems should not have the bpf device compiled in. But even if you turn off the bpf device, you still have /dev/mem and /dev/kmem to worry about. For that matter, the intruder can still write to raw disk devices. Also, there is another kernel feature called the module loader, &man.kldload.8;. An enterprising intruder can use a KLD module to install his own bpf device or other sniffing device on a running kernel. To avoid these problems you have to run the kernel at a higher secure level, at least securelevel 1. The securelevel can be set with a sysctl on the kern.securelevel variable. Once you have set the securelevel to 1, write access to raw devices will be denied and special chflags flags, such as schg, will be enforced. You must also ensure that the schg flag is set on critical startup binaries, directories, and script files – everything that gets run up to the point where the securelevel is set. This might be overdoing it, and upgrading the system is much more difficult when you operate at a higher secure level. You may compromise and run the system at a higher secure level but not set the schg flag for every system file and directory under the sun. Another possibility is to simply mount / and /usr read-only. It should be noted that being too draconian in what you attempt to protect may prevent the all-important detection of an intrusion. Checking File Integrity: Binaries, Configuration Files, Etc. When it comes right down to it, you can only protect your core system configuration and control files so much before the convenience factor rears its ugly head. For example, using chflags to set the schg bit on most of the files in / and /usr is probably counterproductive because while it may protect the files, it also closes a detection window. The last layer of your security onion is perhaps the most important – detection. The rest of your security is pretty much useless (or, worse, presents you with a false sense of safety) if you cannot detect potential incursions. Half the job of the onion is to slow down the attacker rather then stop him in order to give the detection side of the equation a chance to catch him in the act. The best way to detect an incursion is to look for modified, missing, or unexpected files. The best way to look for modified files is from another (often centralized) limited-access system. Writing your security scripts on the extra-secure limited-access system makes them mostly invisible to potential attackers, and this is important. In order to take maximum advantage you generally have to give the limited-access box significant access to the other machines in the business, usually either by doing a read-only NFS export of the other machines to the limited-access box, or by setting up ssh keypairs to allow the limit-access box to ssh to the other machines. Except for its network traffic, NFS is the least visible method – allowing you to monitor the filesystems on each client box virtually undetected. If your limited-access server is connected to the client boxes through a switch, the NFS method is often the better choice. If your limited-access server is connected to the client boxes through a hub or through several layers of routing, the NFS method may be too insecure (network-wise) and using ssh may be the better choice even with the audit-trail tracks that ssh lays. Once you give a limit-access box at least read access to the client systems it is supposed to monitor, you must write scripts to do the actual monitoring. Given an NFS mount, you can write scripts out of simple system utilities such as &man.find.1; and &man.md5.1;. It is best to physically md5 the client-box files boxes at least once a day, and to test control files such as those found in /etc and /usr/local/etc even more often. When mismatches are found relative to the base md5 information the limited-access machine knows is valid, it should scream at a sysadmin to go check it out. A good security script will also check for inappropriate suid binaries and for new or deleted files on system partitions such as / and /usr. When using ssh rather then NFS, writing the security script is much more difficult. You essentially have to scp the scripts to the client box in order to run them, making them visible, and for safety you also need to scp the binaries (such as find) that those scripts use. The ssh daemon on the client box may already be compromised. All in all, using ssh may be necessary when running over unsecure links, but it's also a lot harder to deal with. A good security script will also check for changes to user and staff members access configuration files: .rhosts, .shosts, .ssh/authorized_keys and so forth… files that might fall outside the purview of the MD5 check. If you have a huge amount of user disk space it may take too long to run through every file on those partitions. In this case, setting mount flags to disallow suid binaries and devices on those partitions is a good idea. The nodev and nosuid options (see &man.mount.8;) are what you want to look into. I would scan them anyway at least once a week, since the object of this layer is to detect a break-in whether or not the break-in is effective. Process accounting (see &man.accton.8;) is a relatively low-overhead feature of the operating system which I recommend using as a post-break-in evaluation mechanism. It is especially useful in tracking down how an intruder has actually broken into a system, assuming the file is still intact after the break-in occurs. Finally, security scripts should process the log files and the logs themselves should be generated in as secure a manner as possible – remote syslog can be very useful. An intruder tries to cover his tracks, and log files are critical to the sysadmin trying to track down the time and method of the initial break-in. One way to keep a permanent record of the log files is to run the system console to a serial port and collect the information on a continuing basis through a secure machine monitoring the consoles. Paranoia A little paranoia never hurts. As a rule, a sysadmin can add any number of security features as long as they do not effect convenience, and can add security features that do effect convenience with some added thought. Even more importantly, a security administrator should mix it up a bit – if you use recommendations such as those given by this document verbatim, you give away your methodologies to the prospective attacker who also has access to this document. Denial of Service Attacks This section covers Denial of Service attacks. A DOS attack is typically a packet attack. While there is not much you can do about modern spoofed packet attacks that saturate your network, you can generally limit the damage by ensuring that the attacks cannot take down your servers. Limiting server forks. Limiting springboard attacks (ICMP response attacks, ping broadcast, etc.). Kernel Route Cache. A common DOS attack is against a forking server that attempts to cause the server to eat processes, file descriptors, and memory until the machine dies. Inetd (see &man.inetd.8;) has several options to limit this sort of attack. It should be noted that while it is possible to prevent a machine from going down it is not generally possible to prevent a service from being disrupted by the attack. Read the inetd manual page carefully and pay specific attention to the , , and options. Note that spoofed-IP attacks will circumvent the option to inetd, so typically a combination of options must be used. Some standalone servers have self-fork-limitation parameters. Sendmail has its option which tends to work much better than trying to use sendmail's load limiting options due to the load lag. You should specify a MaxDaemonChildren parameter when you start sendmail high enough to handle your expected load but no so high that the computer cannot handle that number of sendmails without falling on its face. It is also prudent to run sendmail in queued mode () and to run the daemon (sendmail -bd) separate from the queue-runs (sendmail -q15m). If you still want real-time delivery you can run the queue at a much lower interval, such as , but be sure to specify a reasonable MaxDaemonChildren option for that sendmail to prevent cascade failures. Syslogd can be attacked directly and it is strongly recommended that you use the option whenever possible, and the option otherwise. You should also be fairly careful with connect-back services such as tcpwrapper's reverse-identd, which can be attacked directly. You generally do not want to use the reverse-ident feature of tcpwrappers for this reason. It is a very good idea to protect internal services from external access by firewalling them off at your border routers. The idea here is to prevent saturation attacks from outside your LAN, not so much to protect internal services from network-based root compromise. Always configure an exclusive firewall, i.e., firewall everything except ports A, B, C, D, and M-Z. This way you can firewall off all of your low ports except for certain specific services such as named (if you are primary for a zone), ntalkd, sendmail, and other internet-accessible services. If you try to configure the firewall the other way – as an inclusive or permissive firewall, there is a good chance that you will forget to close a couple of services or that you will add a new internal service and forget to update the firewall. You can still open up the high-numbered port range on the firewall to allow permissive-like operation without compromising your low ports. Also take note that FreeBSD allows you to control the range of port numbers used for dynamic binding via the various net.inet.ip.portrange sysctl's (sysctl -a | fgrep portrange), which can also ease the complexity of your firewall's configuration. I usually use a normal first/last range of 4000 to 5000, and a hiport range of 49152 to 65535, then block everything under 4000 off in my firewall (except for certain specific internet-accessible ports, of course). Another common DOS attack is called a springboard attack – to attack a server in a manner that causes the server to generate responses which then overload the server, the local network, or some other machine. The most common attack of this nature is the ICMP ping broadcast attack. The attacker spoofs ping packets sent to your LAN's broadcast address with the source IP address set to the actual machine they wish to attack. If your border routers are not configured to stomp on ping's to broadcast addresses, your LAN winds up generating sufficient responses to the spoofed source address to saturate the victim, especially when the attacker uses the same trick on several dozen broadcast addresses over several dozen different networks at once. Broadcast attacks of over a hundred and twenty megabits have been measured. A second common springboard attack is against the ICMP error reporting system. By constructing packets that generate ICMP error responses, an attacker can saturate a server's incoming network and cause the server to saturate its outgoing network with ICMP responses. This type of attack can also crash the server by running it out of mbuf's, especially if the server cannot drain the ICMP responses it generates fast enough. The FreeBSD kernel has a new kernel compile option called ICMP_BANDLIM which limits the effectiveness of these sorts of attacks. The last major class of springboard attacks is related to certain internal inetd services such as the udp echo service. An attacker simply spoofs a UDP packet with the source address being server A's echo port, and the destination address being server B's echo port, where server A and B are both on your LAN. The two servers then bounce this one packet back and forth between each other. The attacker can overload both servers and their LANs simply by injecting a few packets in this manner. Similar problems exist with the internal chargen port. A competent sysadmin will turn off all of these inetd-internal test services. Spoofed packet attacks may also be used to overload the kernel route cache. Refer to the net.inet.ip.rtexpire, rtminexpire, and rtmaxcache sysctl parameters. A spoofed packet attack that uses a random source IP will cause the kernel to generate a temporary cached route in the route table, viewable with netstat -rna | fgrep W3. These routes typically timeout in 1600 seconds or so. If the kernel detects that the cached route table has gotten too big it will dynamically reduce the rtexpire but will never decrease it to less then rtminexpire. There are two problems: The kernel does not react quickly enough when a lightly loaded server is suddenly attacked. The rtminexpire is not low enough for the kernel to survive a sustained attack. If your servers are connected to the internet via a T3 or better it may be prudent to manually override both rtexpire and rtminexpire via &man.sysctl.8;. Never set either parameter to zero (unless you want to crash the machine :-). Setting both parameters to 2 seconds should be sufficient to protect the route table from attack. Access Issues with Kerberos and SSH There are a few issues with both kerberos and ssh that need to be addressed if you intend to use them. Kerberos V is an excellent authentication protocol but there are bugs in the kerberized telnet and rlogin applications that make them unsuitable for dealing with binary streams. Also, by default kerberos does not encrypt a session unless you use the option. ssh encrypts everything by default. ssh works quite well in every respect except that it forwards encryption keys by default. What this means is that if you have a secure workstation holding keys that give you access to the rest of the system, and you ssh to an unsecure machine, your keys becomes exposed. The actual keys themselves are not exposed, but ssh installs a forwarding port for the duration of your login and if a attacker has broken root on the unsecure machine he can utilize that port to use your keys to gain access to any other machine that your keys unlock. We recommend that you use ssh in combination with kerberos whenever possible for staff logins. ssh can be compiled with kerberos support. This reduces your reliance on potentially exposable ssh keys while at the same time protecting passwords via kerberos. ssh keys should only be used for automated tasks from secure machines (something that kerberos is unsuited to). We also recommend that you either turn off key-forwarding in the ssh configuration, or that you make use of the from=IP/DOMAIN option that ssh allows in its authorized_keys file to make the key only usable to entities logging in from specific machines. DES, MD5, and Crypt Parts rewritten and updated by &a.unfurl;, 21 March 2000. Every user on a UNIX system has a password associated with their account. It seems obvious that these passwords need to be known only to the user and the actual operating system. In order to keep these passwords secret, they are encrypted with what is known as a one-way hash, that is, they can only be easily encrypted but not decrypted. In other words, what we told you a moment ago was obvious is not even true: the operating system itself does not really know the password. It only knows the encrypted form of the password. The only way to get the plain-text password is by a brute force search of the space of possible passwords. Unfortunately the only secure way to encrypt passwords when UNIX came into being was based on DES, the Data Encryption Standard. This is not such a problem for users that live in - the US, but since the source code for DES cannot be exported + the US, but since the source code for DES could not be exported outside the US, FreeBSD had to find a way to both comply with US law and retain compatibility with all the other UNIX variants that still use DES. The solution was to divide up the encryption libraries so that US users could install the DES libraries and use DES but international users still had an encryption method that could be exported abroad. This is how FreeBSD came to use MD5 as its default encryption method. MD5 is believed to be more secure than DES, so installing DES is offered primarily for compatibility reasons. Recognizing your crypt mechanism It is pretty easy to identify which encryption method FreeBSD is set up to use. Examining the encrypted passwords in the /etc/master.passwd file is one way. Passwords encrypted with the MD5 hash are longer than those with encrypted with the DES hash and also begin with the characters $1$. DES password strings do not have any particular identifying characteristics, but they are shorter than MD5 passwords, and are coded in a 64-character alphabet which does not include the $ character, so a relatively short string which does not begin with a dollar sign is very likely a DES password. The libraries can identify the passwords this way as well. As a result, the DES libraries are able to identify MD5 passwords, and use MD5 to check passwords that were encrypted that way, and DES for the rest. They are able to do this because the DES libraries also contain MD5. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true, so the MD5 libraries cannot authenticate passwords that were encrypted with DES. Identifying which library is being used by the programs on your system is easy as well. Any program that uses crypt is linked against libcrypt which for each type of library is a symbolic link to the appropriate implementation. For example, on a system using the DES versions: &prompt.user; ls -l /usr/lib/libcrypt* lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 13 Mar 19 06:56 libcrypt.a -> libdescrypt.a lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 18 Mar 19 06:56 libcrypt.so.2.0 -> libdescrypt.so.2.0 lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 15 Mar 19 06:56 libcrypt_p.a -> libdescrypt_p.a On a system using the MD5-based libraries, the same links will be present, but the target will be libscrypt rather than libdescrypt. + + If you have installed the DES-capable crypt library + libdescrypt (e.g. by installing the + "crypto" distribution), then which password format will be used + for new passwords is controlled by the + passwd_format login capability in + /etc/login.conf, which takes values of + either des or md5. See the + login.conf(5) manpage for more information about login + capabilities. S/Key S/Key is a one-time password scheme based on a one-way hash function. FreeBSD uses the MD4 hash for compatibility but other systems have used MD5 and DES-MAC. S/Key has been part of the FreeBSD base system since version 1.1.5 and is also used on a growing number of other operating systems. S/Key is a registered trademark of Bell Communications Research, Inc. There are three different sorts of passwords which we will talk about in the discussion below. The first is your usual UNIX-style or Kerberos password; we will call this a UNIX password. The second sort is the one-time password which is generated by the S/Key key program and accepted by the keyinit program and the login prompt; we will call this a one-time password. The final sort of password is the secret password which you give to the key program (and sometimes the keyinit program) which it uses to generate one-time passwords; we will call it a secret password or just unqualified password. The secret password does not have anything to do with your UNIX password; they can be the same but this is not recommended. S/Key secret passwords are not limited to 8 characters like UNIX passwords, they can be as long as you like. Passwords of six or seven word long phrases are fairly common. For the most part, the S/Key system operates completely independently of the UNIX password system. Besides the password, there are two other pieces of data that are important to S/Key. One is what is known as the seed or key and consists of two letters and five digits. The other is what is called the iteration count and is a number between 1 and 100. S/Key creates the one-time password by concatenating the seed and the secret password, then applying the MD4 hash as many times as specified by the iteration count and turning the result into six short English words. These six English words are your one-time password. The login and su programs keep track of the last one-time password used, and the user is authenticated if the hash of the user-provided password is equal to the previous password. Because a one-way hash is used it is impossible to generate future one-time passwords if a successfully used password is captured; the iteration count is decremented after each successful login to keep the user and the login program in sync. When the iteration count gets down to 1 S/Key must be reinitialized. There are four programs involved in the S/Key system which we will discuss below. The key program accepts an iteration count, a seed, and a secret password, and generates a one-time password. The keyinit program is used to initialized S/Key, and to change passwords, iteration counts, or seeds; it takes either a secret password, or an iteration count, seed, and one-time password. The keyinfo program examines the /etc/skeykeys file and prints out the invoking user's current iteration count and seed. Finally, the login and su programs contain the necessary logic to accept S/Key one-time passwords for authentication. The login program is also capable of disallowing the use of UNIX passwords on connections coming from specified addresses. There are four different sorts of operations we will cover. The first is using the keyinit program over a secure connection to set up S/Key for the first time, or to change your password or seed. The second operation is using the keyinit program over an insecure connection, in conjunction with the key program over a secure connection, to do the same. The third is using the key program to log in over an insecure connection. The fourth is using the key program to generate a number of keys which can be written down or printed out to carry with you when going to some location without secure connections to anywhere. Secure connection initialization To initialize S/Key for the first time, change your password, or change your seed while logged in over a secure connection (e.g., on the console of a machine or via ssh), use the keyinit command without any parameters while logged in as yourself: &prompt.user; keyinit Adding unfurl: Reminder - Only use this method if you are directly connected. If you are using telnet or rlogin exit with no password and use keyinit -s. Enter secret password: Again secret password: ID unfurl s/key is 99 to17757 DEFY CLUB PRO NASH LACE SOFT At the Enter secret password: prompt you should enter a password or phrase. Remember, this is not the password that you will use to login with, this is used to generate your one-time login keys. The ID line gives the parameters of your particular S/Key instance; your login name, the iteration count, and seed. When logging in with S/Key, the system will remember these parameters and present them back to you so you do not have to remember them. The last line gives the particular one-time password which corresponds to those parameters and your secret password; if you were to re-login immediately, this one-time password is the one you would use. Insecure connection initialization To initialize S/Key or change your secret password over an insecure connection, you will need to already have a secure connection to some place where you can run the key program; this might be in the form of a desk accessory on a Macintosh, or a shell prompt on a machine you trust. You will also need to make up an iteration count (100 is probably a good value), and you may make up your own seed or use a randomly-generated one. Over on the insecure connection (to the machine you are initializing), use the keyinit -s command: &prompt.user; keyinit -s Updating unfurl: Old key: to17758 Reminder you need the 6 English words from the key command. Enter sequence count from 1 to 9999: 100 Enter new key [default to17759]: s/key 100 to 17759 s/key access password: To accept the default seed (which the keyinit program confusingly calls a key), press return. Then before entering an access password, move over to your secure connection or S/Key desk accessory, and give it the same parameters: &prompt.user; key 100 to17759 Reminder - Do not use this program while logged in via telnet or rlogin. Enter secret password: <secret password> CURE MIKE BANE HIM RACY GORE Now switch back over to the insecure connection, and copy the one-time password generated by key over to the keyinit program: s/key access password:CURE MIKE BANE HIM RACY GORE ID unfurl s/key is 100 to17759 CURE MIKE BANE HIM RACY GORE The rest of the description from the previous section applies here as well. Generating a single one-time password Once you've initialized S/Key, when you login you will be presented with a prompt like this: &prompt.user; telnet example.com Trying 10.0.0.1... Connected to example.com Escape character is '^]'. FreeBSD/i386 (example.com) (ttypa) login: <username> s/key 97 fw13894 Password: As a side note, the S/Key prompt has a useful feature (not shown here): if you press return at the password prompt, the login program will turn echo on, so you can see what you are typing. This can be extremely useful if you are attempting to type in an S/Key by hand, such as from a printout. Also, if this machine were configured to disallow UNIX passwords over a connection from my machine, the prompt would have also included the annotation (s/key required), indicating that only S/Key one-time passwords will be accepted. At this point you need to generate your one-time password to answer this login prompt. This must be done on a trusted system that you can run the key command on. (There are versions of the key program from DOS, Windows and MacOS as well.) The key program needs both the iteration count and the seed as command line options. You can cut-and-paste these right from the login prompt on the machine that you are logging in to. On the trusted system: &prompt.user; key 97 fw13894 Reminder - Do not use this program while logged in via telnet or rlogin. Enter secret password: WELD LIP ACTS ENDS ME HAAG Now that you have your one-time password you can continue logging in: login: <username> s/key 97 fw13894 Password: <return to enable echo> s/key 97 fw13894 Password [echo on]: WELD LIP ACTS ENDS ME HAAG Last login: Tue Mar 21 11:56:41 from 10.0.0.2 ... This is the easiest mechanism if you have a trusted machine. There is a Java S/Key key applet, The Java OTP Calculator, that you can download and run locally on any Java supporting browser. Generating multiple one-time passwords Sometimes you have have to go places where you do not have access to a trusted machine or secure connection. In this case, it is possible to use the key command to generate a number of one-time passwords before hand to be printed out and taken with you. For example: &prompt.user; key -n 5 30 zz99999 Reminder - Do not use this program while logged in via telnet or rlogin. Enter secret password: <secret password> 26: SODA RUDE LEA LIND BUDD SILT 27: JILT SPY DUTY GLOW COWL ROT 28: THEM OW COLA RUNT BONG SCOT 29: COT MASH BARR BRIM NAN FLAG 30: CAN KNEE CAST NAME FOLK BILK The requests five keys in sequence, the specifies what the last iteration number should be. Note that these are printed out in reverse order of eventual use. If you are really paranoid, you might want to write the results down by hand; otherwise you can cut-and-paste into lpr. Note that each line shows both the iteration count and the one-time password; you may still find it handy to scratch off passwords as you use them. Restricting use of UNIX passwords Restrictions can be placed on the use of UNIX passwords based on the host name, user name, terminal port, or IP address of a login session. These restrictions can be found in the configuration file /etc/skey.access. The &man.skey.access.5; manual page has more info on the complete format of the file and also details some security cautions to be aware of before depending on this file for security. If there is no /etc/skey.access file (this is the FreeBSD default), then all users will be allowed to use UNIX passwords. If the file exists, however, then all users will be required to use S/Key unless explicitly permitted to do otherwise by configuration statements in the skey.access file. In all cases, UNIX passwords are permitted on the console. Here is a sample configuration file which illustrates the three most common sorts of configuration statements: permit internet 192.168.0.0 255.255.0.0 permit user fnord permit port ttyd0 The first line (permit internet) allows users whose IP source address (which is vulnerable to spoofing) matches the specified value and mask, to use UNIX passwords. This should not be considered a security mechanism, but rather, a means to remind authorized users that they are using an insecure network and need to use S/Key for authentication. The second line (permit user) allows the specified username, in this case fnord, to use UNIX passwords at any time. Generally speaking, this should only be used for people who are either unable to use the key program, like those with dumb terminals, or those who are uneducable. The third line (permit port) allows all users logging in on the specified terminal line to use UNIX passwords; this would be used for dial-ups. Kerberos Contributed by &a.markm; (based on contribution by &a.md;). Kerberos is a network add-on system/protocol that allows users to authenticate themselves through the services of a secure server. Services such as remote login, remote copy, secure inter-system file copying and other high-risk tasks are made considerably safer and more controllable. The following instructions can be used as a guide on how to set up Kerberos as distributed for FreeBSD. However, you should refer to the relevant manual pages for a complete description. In FreeBSD, the Kerberos is not that from the original 4.4BSD-Lite, distribution, but eBones, which had been previously ported to FreeBSD - 1.1.5.1, and was sourced from outside the USA/Canada, and is thus - available to system owners outside those countries. - - For those needing to get a legal foreign distribution of this - software, please do not get it from a USA or Canada - site. You will get that site in big trouble! A - legal copy of this is available from ftp.internat.FreeBSD.org, which is in South - Africa and an official FreeBSD mirror site. + 1.1.5.1, and was sourced from outside the USA/Canada, and was thus + available to system owners outside those countries during the era + of restrictive export controls on cryptographic code from the USA. Creating the initial database This is done on the Kerberos server only. First make sure that you do not have any old Kerberos databases around. You should change to the directory /etc/kerberosIV and check that only the following files are present: &prompt.root; cd /etc/kerberosIV &prompt.root; ls README krb.conf krb.realms If any additional files (such as principal.* or master_key) exist, then use the kdb_destroy command to destroy the old Kerberos database, of if Kerberos is not running, simply delete the extra files. You should now edit the krb.conf and krb.realms files to define your Kerberos realm. In this case the realm will be GRONDAR.ZA and the server is grunt.grondar.za. We edit or create the krb.conf file: &prompt.root; cat krb.conf GRONDAR.ZA GRONDAR.ZA grunt.grondar.za admin server CS.BERKELEY.EDU okeeffe.berkeley.edu ATHENA.MIT.EDU kerberos.mit.edu ATHENA.MIT.EDU kerberos-1.mit.edu ATHENA.MIT.EDU kerberos-2.mit.edu ATHENA.MIT.EDU kerberos-3.mit.edu LCS.MIT.EDU kerberos.lcs.mit.edu TELECOM.MIT.EDU bitsy.mit.edu ARC.NASA.GOV trident.arc.nasa.gov In this case, the other realms do not need to be there. They are here as an example of how a machine may be made aware of multiple realms. You may wish to not include them for simplicity. The first line names the realm in which this system works. The other lines contain realm/host entries. The first item on a line is a realm, and the second is a host in that realm that is acting as a key distribution center. The words admin server following a hosts name means that host also provides an administrative database server. For further explanation of these terms, please consult the Kerberos man pages. Now we have to add grunt.grondar.za to the GRONDAR.ZA realm and also add an entry to put all hosts in the .grondar.za domain in the GRONDAR.ZA realm. The krb.realms file would be updated as follows: &prompt.root; cat krb.realms grunt.grondar.za GRONDAR.ZA .grondar.za GRONDAR.ZA .berkeley.edu CS.BERKELEY.EDU .MIT.EDU ATHENA.MIT.EDU .mit.edu ATHENA.MIT.EDU Again, the other realms do not need to be there. They are here as an example of how a machine may be made aware of multiple realms. You may wish to remove them to simplify things. The first line puts the specific system into the named realm. The rest of the lines show how to default systems of a particular subdomain to a named realm. Now we are ready to create the database. This only needs to run on the Kerberos server (or Key Distribution Center). Issue the kdb_init command to do this: &prompt.root; kdb_init Realm name [default ATHENA.MIT.EDU ]: GRONDAR.ZA You will be prompted for the database Master Password. It is important that you NOT FORGET this password. Enter Kerberos master key: Now we have to save the key so that servers on the local machine can pick it up. Use the kstash command to do this. &prompt.root; kstash Enter Kerberos master key: Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! This saves the encrypted master password in /etc/kerberosIV/master_key. Making it all run Two principals need to be added to the database for each system that will be secured with Kerberos. Their names are kpasswd and rcmd These two principals are made for each system, with the instance being the name of the individual system. These daemons, kpasswd and rcmd allow other systems to change Kerberos passwords and run commands like rcp, rlogin and rsh. Now let's add these entries: &prompt.root; kdb_edit Opening database... Enter Kerberos master key: Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! Previous or default values are in [brackets] , enter return to leave the same, or new value. Principal name: passwd Instance: grunt <Not found>, Create [y] ? y Principal: passwd, Instance: grunt, kdc_key_ver: 1 New Password: <---- enter RANDOM here Verifying password New Password: <---- enter RANDOM here Random password [y] ? y Principal's new key version = 1 Expiration date (enter yyyy-mm-dd) [ 2000-01-01 ] ? Max ticket lifetime (*5 minutes) [ 255 ] ? Attributes [ 0 ] ? Edit O.K. Principal name: rcmd Instance: grunt <Not found>, Create [y] ? Principal: rcmd, Instance: grunt, kdc_key_ver: 1 New Password: <---- enter RANDOM here Verifying password New Password: <---- enter RANDOM here Random password [y] ? Principal's new key version = 1 Expiration date (enter yyyy-mm-dd) [ 2000-01-01 ] ? Max ticket lifetime (*5 minutes) [ 255 ] ? Attributes [ 0 ] ? Edit O.K. Principal name: <---- null entry here will cause an exit Creating the server file We now have to extract all the instances which define the services on each machine. For this we use the ext_srvtab command. This will create a file which must be copied or moved by secure means to each Kerberos client's /etc/kerberosIV directory. This file must be present on each server and client, and is crucial to the operation of Kerberos. &prompt.root; ext_srvtab grunt Enter Kerberos master key: Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! Generating 'grunt-new-srvtab'.... Now, this command only generates a temporary file which must be renamed to srvtab so that all the server can pick it up. Use the mv command to move it into place on the original system: &prompt.root; mv grunt-new-srvtab srvtab If the file is for a client system, and the network is not deemed safe, then copy the client-new-srvtab to removable media and transport it by secure physical means. Be sure to rename it to srvtab in the client's /etc/kerberosIV directory, and make sure it is mode 600: &prompt.root; mv grumble-new-srvtab srvtab &prompt.root; chmod 600 srvtab Populating the database We now have to add some user entries into the database. First let's create an entry for the user jane. Use the kdb_edit command to do this: &prompt.root; kdb_edit Opening database... Enter Kerberos master key: Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! Previous or default values are in [brackets] , enter return to leave the same, or new value. Principal name: jane Instance: <Not found>, Create [y] ? y Principal: jane, Instance: , kdc_key_ver: 1 New Password: <---- enter a secure password here Verifying password New Password: <---- re-enter the password here Principal's new key version = 1 Expiration date (enter yyyy-mm-dd) [ 2000-01-01 ] ? Max ticket lifetime (*5 minutes) [ 255 ] ? Attributes [ 0 ] ? Edit O.K. Principal name: <---- null entry here will cause an exit Testing it all out First we have to start the Kerberos daemons. NOTE that if you have correctly edited your /etc/rc.conf then this will happen automatically when you reboot. This is only necessary on the Kerberos server. Kerberos clients will automagically get what they need from the /etc/kerberosIV directory. &prompt.root; kerberos & Kerberos server starting Sleep forever on error Log file is /var/log/kerberos.log Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! Current Kerberos master key version is 1 Local realm: GRONDAR.ZA &prompt.root; kadmind -n & KADM Server KADM0.0A initializing Please do not use 'kill -9' to kill this job, use a regular kill instead Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! Now we can try using the kinit command to get a ticket for the id jane that we created above: &prompt.user; kinit jane MIT Project Athena (grunt.grondar.za) Kerberos Initialization for "jane" Password: Try listing the tokens using klist to see if we really have them: &prompt.user; klist Ticket file: /tmp/tkt245 Principal: jane@GRONDAR.ZA Issued Expires Principal Apr 30 11:23:22 Apr 30 19:23:22 krbtgt.GRONDAR.ZA@GRONDAR.ZA Now try changing the password using passwd to check if the kpasswd daemon can get authorization to the Kerberos database: &prompt.user; passwd realm GRONDAR.ZA Old password for jane: New Password for jane: Verifying password New Password for jane: Password changed. Adding <command>su</command> privileges Kerberos allows us to give each user who needs root privileges their own separate supassword. We could now add an id which is authorized to su to root. This is controlled by having an instance of root associated with a principal. Using kdb_edit we can create the entry jane.root in the Kerberos database: &prompt.root; kdb_edit Opening database... Enter Kerberos master key: Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! Previous or default values are in [brackets] , enter return to leave the same, or new value. Principal name: jane Instance: root <Not found>, Create [y] ? y Principal: jane, Instance: root, kdc_key_ver: 1 New Password: <---- enter a SECURE password here Verifying password New Password: <---- re-enter the password here Principal's new key version = 1 Expiration date (enter yyyy-mm-dd) [ 2000-01-01 ] ? Max ticket lifetime (*5 minutes) [ 255 ] ? 12 <--- Keep this short! Attributes [ 0 ] ? Edit O.K. Principal name: <---- null entry here will cause an exit Now try getting tokens for it to make sure it works: &prompt.root; kinit jane.root MIT Project Athena (grunt.grondar.za) Kerberos Initialization for "jane.root" Password: Now we need to add the user to root's .klogin file: &prompt.root; cat /root/.klogin jane.root@GRONDAR.ZA Now try doing the su: &prompt.user; su Password: and take a look at what tokens we have: &prompt.root; klist Ticket file: /tmp/tkt_root_245 Principal: jane.root@GRONDAR.ZA Issued Expires Principal May 2 20:43:12 May 3 04:43:12 krbtgt.GRONDAR.ZA@GRONDAR.ZA Using other commands In an earlier example, we created a principal called jane with an instance root. This was based on a user with the same name as the principal, and this is a Kerberos default; that a <principal>.<instance> of the form <username>.root will allow that <username> to su to root if the necessary entries are in the .klogin file in root's home directory: &prompt.root; cat /root/.klogin jane.root@GRONDAR.ZA Likewise, if a user has in their own home directory lines of the form: &prompt.user; cat ~/.klogin jane@GRONDAR.ZA jack@GRONDAR.ZA This allows anyone in the GRONDAR.ZA realm who has authenticated themselves to jane or jack (via kinit, see above) access to rlogin to jane's account or files on this system (grunt) via rlogin, rsh or rcp. For example, Jane now logs into another system, using Kerberos: &prompt.user; kinit MIT Project Athena (grunt.grondar.za) Password: %prompt.user; rlogin grunt Last login: Mon May 1 21:14:47 from grumble Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. FreeBSD BUILT-19950429 (GR386) #0: Sat Apr 29 17:50:09 SAT 1995 Or Jack logs into Jane's account on the same machine (Jane having set up the .klogin file as above, and the person in charge of Kerberos having set up principal jack with a null instance: &prompt.user; kinit &prompt.user; rlogin grunt -l jane MIT Project Athena (grunt.grondar.za) Password: Last login: Mon May 1 21:16:55 from grumble Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. FreeBSD BUILT-19950429 (GR386) #0: Sat Apr 29 17:50:09 SAT 1995 Firewalls Contributed by &a.gpalmer; and Alex Nash. Firewalls are an area of increasing interest for people who are connected to the Internet, and are even finding applications on private networks to provide enhanced security. This section will hopefully explain what firewalls are, how to use them, and how to use the facilities provided in the FreeBSD kernel to implement them. People often think that having a firewall between your internal network and the Big Bad Internet will solve all your security problems. It may help, but a poorly setup firewall system is more of a security risk than not having one at all. A firewall can add another layer of security to your systems, but it cannot stop a really determined cracker from penetrating your internal network. If you let internal security lapse because you believe your firewall to be impenetrable, you have just made the crackers job that much easier. What is a firewall? There are currently two distinct types of firewalls in common use on the Internet today. The first type is more properly called a packet filtering router, where the kernel on a multi-homed machine chooses whether to forward or block packets based on a set of rules. The second type, known as a proxy server, relies on daemons to provide authentication and to forward packets, possibly on a multi-homed machine which has kernel packet forwarding disabled. Sometimes sites combine the two types of firewalls, so that only a certain machine (known as a bastion host) is allowed to send packets through a packet filtering router onto an internal network. Proxy services are run on the bastion host, which are generally more secure than normal authentication mechanisms. FreeBSD comes with a kernel packet filter (known as IPFW), which is what the rest of this section will concentrate on. Proxy servers can be built on FreeBSD from third party software, but there is such a variety of proxy servers available that it would be impossible to cover them in this document. Packet filtering routers A router is a machine which forwards packets between two or more networks. A packet filtering router has an extra piece of code in its kernel which compares each packet to a list of rules before deciding if it should be forwarded or not. Most modern IP routing software has packet filtering code within it that defaults to forwarding all packets. To enable the filters, you need to define a set of rules for the filtering code so it can decide if the packet should be allowed to pass or not. To decide whether a packet should be passed on, the code looks through its set of rules for a rule which matches the contents of this packets headers. Once a match is found, the rule action is obeyed. The rule action could be to drop the packet, to forward the packet, or even to send an ICMP message back to the originator. Only the first match counts, as the rules are searched in order. Hence, the list of rules can be referred to as a rule chain. The packet matching criteria varies depending on the software used, but typically you can specify rules which depend on the source IP address of the packet, the destination IP address, the source port number, the destination port number (for protocols which support ports), or even the packet type (UDP, TCP, ICMP, etc). Proxy servers Proxy servers are machines which have had the normal system daemons (telnetd, ftpd, etc) replaced with special servers. These servers are called proxy servers as they normally only allow onward connections to be made. This enables you to run (for example) a proxy telnet server on your firewall host, and people can telnet in to your firewall from the outside, go through some authentication mechanism, and then gain access to the internal network (alternatively, proxy servers can be used for signals coming from the internal network and heading out). Proxy servers are normally more secure than normal servers, and often have a wider variety of authentication mechanisms available, including one-shot password systems so that even if someone manages to discover what password you used, they will not be able to use it to gain access to your systems as the password instantly expires. As they do not actually give users access to the host machine, it becomes a lot more difficult for someone to install backdoors around your security system. Proxy servers often have ways of restricting access further, so that only certain hosts can gain access to the servers, and often they can be set up so that you can limit which users can talk to which destination machine. Again, what facilities are available depends largely on what proxy software you choose. What does IPFW allow me to do? IPFW, the software supplied with FreeBSD, is a packet filtering and accounting system which resides in the kernel, and has a user-land control utility, &man.ipfw.8;. Together, they allow you to define and query the rules currently used by the kernel in its routing decisions. There are two related parts to IPFW. The firewall section allows you to perform packet filtering. There is also an IP accounting section which allows you to track usage of your router, based on similar rules to the firewall section. This allows you to see (for example) how much traffic your router is getting from a certain machine, or how much WWW (World Wide Web) traffic it is forwarding. As a result of the way that IPFW is designed, you can use IPFW on non-router machines to perform packet filtering on incoming and outgoing connections. This is a special case of the more general use of IPFW, and the same commands and techniques should be used in this situation. Enabling IPFW on FreeBSD As the main part of the IPFW system lives in the kernel, you will need to add one or more options to your kernel configuration file, depending on what facilities you want, and recompile your kernel. See reconfiguring the kernel for more details on how to recompile your kernel. There are currently three kernel configuration options relevant to IPFW: options IPFIREWALL Compiles into the kernel the code for packet filtering. options IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE Enables code to allow logging of packets through &man.syslogd.8;. Without this option, even if you specify that packets should be logged in the filter rules, nothing will happen. options IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE_LIMIT=10 Limits the number of packets logged through &man.syslogd.8; on a per entry basis. You may wish to use this option in hostile environments in which you want to log firewall activity, but do not want to be open to a denial of service attack via syslog flooding. When a chain entry reaches the packet limit specified, logging is turned off for that particular entry. To resume logging, you will need to reset the associated counter using the &man.ipfw.8; utility: &prompt.root; ipfw zero 4500 Where 4500 is the chain entry you wish to continue logging. Previous versions of FreeBSD contained an IPFIREWALL_ACCT option. This is now obsolete as the firewall code automatically includes accounting facilities. Configuring IPFW The configuration of the IPFW software is done through the &man.ipfw.8; utility. The syntax for this command looks quite complicated, but it is relatively simple once you understand its structure. There are currently four different command categories used by the utility: addition/deletion, listing, flushing, and clearing. Addition/deletion is used to build the rules that control how packets are accepted, rejected, and logged. Listing is used to examine the contents of your rule set (otherwise known as the chain) and packet counters (accounting). Flushing is used to remove all entries from the chain. Clearing is used to zero out one or more accounting entries. Altering the IPFW rules The syntax for this form of the command is: ipfw -N command index action log protocol addresses options There is one valid flag when using this form of the command: -N Resolve addresses and service names in output. The command given can be shortened to the shortest unique form. The valid commands are: add Add an entry to the firewall/accounting rule list delete Delete an entry from the firewall/accounting rule list Previous versions of IPFW used separate firewall and accounting entries. The present version provides packet accounting with each firewall entry. If an index value is supplied, it used to place the entry at a specific point in the chain. Otherwise, the entry is placed at the end of the chain at an index 100 greater than the last chain entry (this does not include the default policy, rule 65535, deny). The log option causes matching rules to be output to the system console if the kernel was compiled with IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE. Valid actions are: reject Drop the packet, and send an ICMP host or port unreachable (as appropriate) packet to the source. allow Pass the packet on as normal. (aliases: pass and accept) deny Drop the packet. The source is not notified via an ICMP message (thus it appears that the packet never arrived at the destination). count Update packet counters but do not allow/deny the packet based on this rule. The search continues with the next chain entry. Each action will be recognized by the shortest unambiguous prefix. The protocols which can be specified are: all Matches any IP packet icmp Matches ICMP packets tcp Matches TCP packets udp Matches UDP packets The address specification is: from address/maskport to address/maskport via interface You can only specify port in conjunction with protocols which support ports (UDP and TCP). The is optional and may specify the IP address or domain name of a local IP interface, or an interface name (e.g. ed0) to match only packets coming through this interface. Interface unit numbers can be specified with an optional wildcard. For example, ppp* would match all kernel PPP interfaces. The syntax used to specify an address/mask is: address or address/mask-bits or address:mask-pattern A valid hostname may be specified in place of the IP address. is a decimal number representing how many bits in the address mask should be set. e.g. specifying 192.216.222.1/24 will create a mask which will allow any address in a class C subnet (in this case, 192.216.222) to be matched. is an IP address which will be logically AND'ed with the address given. The keyword any may be used to specify any IP address. The port numbers to be blocked are specified as: port,port,port… to specify either a single port or a list of ports, or port-port to specify a range of ports. You may also combine a single range with a list, but the range must always be specified first. The options available are: frag Matches if the packet is not the first fragment of the datagram. in Matches if the packet is on the way in. out Matches if the packet is on the way out. ipoptions spec Matches if the IP header contains the comma separated list of options specified in spec. The supported list of IP options are: ssrr (strict source route), lsrr (loose source route), rr (record packet route), and ts (time stamp). The absence of a particular option may be denoted with a leading !. established Matches if the packet is part of an already established TCP connection (i.e. it has the RST or ACK bits set). You can optimize the performance of the firewall by placing established rules early in the chain. setup Matches if the packet is an attempt to establish a TCP connection (the SYN bit set is set but the ACK bit is not). tcpflags flags Matches if the TCP header contains the comma separated list of flags. The supported flags are fin, syn, rst, psh, ack, and urg. The absence of a particular flag may be indicated by a leading !. icmptypes types Matches if the ICMP type is present in the list types. The list may be specified as any combination of ranges and/or individual types separated by commas. Commonly used ICMP types are: 0 echo reply (ping reply), 3 destination unreachable, 5 redirect, 8 echo request (ping request), and 11 time exceeded (used to indicate TTL expiration as with &man.traceroute.8;). Listing the IPFW rules The syntax for this form of the command is: ipfw -a -t -N l There are three valid flags when using this form of the command: -a While listing, show counter values. This option is the only way to see accounting counters. -t Display the last match times for each chain entry. The time listing is incompatible with the input syntax used by the &man.ipfw.8; utility. -N Attempt to resolve given addresses and service names. Flushing the IPFW rules The syntax for flushing the chain is: ipfw flush This causes all entries in the firewall chain to be removed except the fixed default policy enforced by the kernel (index 65535). Use caution when flushing rules, the default deny policy will leave your system cut off from the network until allow entries are added to the chain. Clearing the IPFW packet counters The syntax for clearing one or more packet counters is: ipfw zero index When used without an index argument, all packet counters are cleared. If an index is supplied, the clearing operation only affects a specific chain entry. Example commands for ipfw This command will deny all packets from the host evil.crackers.org to the telnet port of the host nice.people.org: &prompt.root ipfw add deny tcp from evil.crackers.org to nice.people.org 23 The next example denies and logs any TCP traffic from the entire crackers.org network (a class C) to the nice.people.org machine (any port). &prompt.root; ipfw add deny log tcp from evil.crackers.org/24 to nice.people.org If you do not want people sending X sessions to your internal network (a subnet of a class C), the following command will do the necessary filtering: &prompt.root; ipfw add deny tcp from any to my.org/28 6000 setup To see the accounting records: &prompt.root; ipfw -a list or in the short form &prompt.root; ipfw -a l You can also see the last time a chain entry was matched with: &prompt.root; ipfw -at l Building a packet filtering firewall The following suggestions are just that: suggestions. The requirements of each firewall are different and I cannot tell you how to build a firewall to meet your particular requirements. When initially setting up your firewall, unless you have a test bench setup where you can configure your firewall host in a controlled environment, I strongly recommend you use the logging version of the commands and enable logging in the kernel. This will allow you to quickly identify problem areas and cure them without too much disruption. Even after the initial setup phase is complete, I recommend using the logging for `deny' as it allows tracing of possible attacks and also modification of the firewall rules if your requirements alter. If you use the logging versions of the accept command, it can generate large amounts of log data as one log line will be generated for every packet that passes through the firewall, so large ftp/http transfers, etc, will really slow the system down. It also increases the latencies on those packets as it requires more work to be done by the kernel before the packet can be passed on. syslogd with also start using up a lot more processor time as it logs all the extra data to disk, and it could quite easily fill the partition /var/log is located on. You should enable your firewall from /etc/rc.conf.local or /etc/rc.conf. The associated man page explains which knobs to fiddle and lists some preset firewall configurations. If you do not use a preset configuration, ipfw list will output the current ruleset into a file that you can pass to rc.conf. If you do not use /etc/rc.conf.local or /etc/rc.conf to enable your firewall, it is important to make sure your firewall is enabled before any IP interfaces are configured. The next problem is what your firewall should actually do! This is largely dependent on what access to your network you want to allow from the outside, and how much access to the outside world you want to allow from the inside. Some general rules are: Block all incoming access to ports below 1024 for TCP. This is where most of the security sensitive services are, like finger, SMTP (mail) and telnet. Block all incoming UDP traffic. There are very few useful services that travel over UDP, and what useful traffic there is is normally a security threat (e.g. Suns RPC and NFS protocols). This has its disadvantages also, since UDP is a connectionless protocol, denying incoming UDP traffic also blocks the replies to outgoing UDP traffic. This can cause a problem for people (on the inside) using external archie (prospero) servers. If you want to allow access to archie, you'll have to allow packets coming from ports 191 and 1525 to any internal UDP port through the firewall. ntp is another service you may consider allowing through, which comes from port 123. Block traffic to port 6000 from the outside. Port 6000 is the port used for access to X11 servers, and can be a security threat (especially if people are in the habit of doing xhost + on their workstations). X11 can actually use a range of ports starting at 6000, the upper limit being how many X displays you can run on the machine. The upper limit as defined by RFC 1700 (Assigned Numbers) is 6063. Check what ports any internal servers use (e.g. SQL servers, etc). It is probably a good idea to block those as well, as they normally fall outside the 1-1024 range specified above. Another checklist for firewall configuration is available from CERT at ftp://ftp.cert.org/pub/tech_tips/packet_filtering As I said above, these are only guidelines. You will have to decide what filter rules you want to use on your firewall yourself. I cannot accept ANY responsibility if someone breaks into your network, even if you follow the advice given above. OpenSSL As of FreeBSD 4.0, the OpenSSL toolkit is a part of the base system. OpenSSL provides a general-purpose cryptography library, as well as the Secure Sockets Layer v2/v3 (SSLv2/SSLv3) and Transport Layer Security v1 (TLSv1) network security protocols. - However, some of the algorithms (specifically, RSA and IDEA) - included in OpenSSL are protected by patents in the USA and - elsewhere, and are not available for unrestricted use (in - particular, IDEA is not available at all in FreeBSD's version of - OpenSSL). As a result, FreeBSD has available two different - versions of the OpenSSL RSA libraries depending on geographical - location (USA/non-USA). + However, one of the algorithms (specifically IDEA) + included in OpenSSL is protected by patents in the USA and + elsewhere, and is not available for unrestricted use. + IDEA is included in the OpenSSL sources in FreeBSD, but it is not + built by default. If you wish to use it, and you comply with the + license terms, enable the MAKE_IDEA switch in /etc/make.conf and + rebuild your sources using 'make world'. + + Today, the RSA algorithm is free for use in USA and other + countries. In the past it was protected by a patent. Source Code Installations OpenSSL is part of the src-crypto and src-secure cvsup collections. See the Obtaining FreeBSD section for more information about obtaining and updating FreeBSD source code. - - - International (Non-USA) Users - - People who are located outside the USA, and who obtain their - crypto sources from internat.FreeBSD.org (the International - Crypto Repository) or an international mirror site, will build a - version of OpenSSL which includes the native OpenSSL - implementation of - RSA, but does not include IDEA, because the latter is restricted - in certain locations elsewhere in the world. In the future a more - flexible geographical identification system may allow building of - IDEA in countries for which it is not restricted. - - Please be aware of any local restrictions on the import, use - and redistribution of cryptography which may exist in your - country. - - - - USA Users - - As noted above, RSA is patented in the USA, with terms - preventing general use without an appropriate license. Therefore - the standard OpenSSL RSA code may not be used in the USA, and has been - removed from the version of OpenSSL carried on USA mirror sites. - The RSA patent is due to expire on September 20, 2000, at which - time it is intended to add the full RSA code back to - the USA version of OpenSSL. - - However (and fortunately), the RSA patent holder (RSA Security, has - provided a RSA reference implementation toolkit - (RSAREF) which is available for certain classes of - use, including non-commercial use - (see the RSAREF license for their definition of - non-commercial). - - If you meet the conditions of the RSAREF license and wish to - use it in conjunction with OpenSSL to provide RSA support, you can - install the rsaref port, which is located in - /usr/ports/security/rsaref, or the - rsaref-2.0 package. The OpenSSL library will - then automatically detect and use the RSAREF libraries. Please obtain - legal advice if you are unsure of your compliance with the license - terms. - - The RSAREF implementation is inferior to the - native OpenSSL implementation (it is much slower, - and cannot be used with keys larger than 1024 bits). If you are not - located in the USA then you are doing yourself a disadvantage by - using RSAREF. - - Users who have purchased an appropriate RSA source code - license from RSA Security may use the International version of - OpenSSL described above to obtain native RSA support. - - IDEA code is also removed from the USA version of OpenSSL for - patent reasons. - - - - Binary Installations - - If your FreeBSD installation was a binary installation (e.g., - installed from the Walnut Creek CDROM, or from a snapshot - downloaded from - ftp.FreeBSD.org) and you selected to - install the crypto collection, then the - sysinstall utility will automatically select - the correct version to install during the installation - process. If the international version was selected but could - not be installed during sysinstall (e.g. you have not - configured network access, and the version must be downloaded - from a FTP site) then you can add the international RSA library - after installation as a package. - - The librsaintl package contains the RSA - code for International (non-USA) users. This is not legal for - use in the USA, but international users should use this version - because the RSA implementation is faster and more flexible. It - is available from ftp.internat.FreeBSD.org and does not - require RSAREF. - IPsec Contributed by &a.shin;, 5 March 2000. IPsec mechanism provides secure communication either for IP layer and socket layer communication. This section should explain how to use them. About IPsec implementation, please refer section 23.5.4. The current IPsec implementation supports both transport mode and tunnel mode. However, tunnel mode comes with some restrictions. http://www.kame.net/newsletter/ has more comprehensive examples. Transport mode example with IPv4 Let's setup security association to deploy a secure channel between HOST A (10.2.3.4) and HOST B (10.6.7.8). Here we show a little complicated example. From HOST A to HOST B, only old AH is used. From HOST B to HOST A, new AH and new ESP are combined. Now we should choose algorithm to be used corresponding to "AH"/"new AH"/"ESP"/"new ESP". Please refer to the &man.setkey.8; man page to know algorithm names. Our choice is MD5 for AH, new-HMAC-SHA1 for new AH, and new-DES-expIV with 8 byte IV for new ESP. Key length highly depends on each algorithm. For example, key length must be equal to 16 bytes for MD5, 20 for new-HMAC-SHA1, and 8 for new-DES-expIV. Now we choose "MYSECRETMYSECRET", "KAMEKAMEKAMEKAMEKAME", "PASSWORD", respectively. OK, let's assign SPI (Security Parameter Index) for each protocol. Please note that we need 3 SPIs for this secure channel since three security headers are produced (one for from HOST A to HOST B, two for from HOST B to HOST A). Please also note that SPI MUST be greater than or equal to 256. We choose, 1000, 2000, and 3000, respectively. (1) HOST A ------> HOST B (1)PROTO=AH ALG=MD5(RFC1826) KEY=MYSECRETMYSECRET SPI=1000 (2.1) HOST A <------ HOST B <------ (2.2) (2.1) PROTO=AH ALG=new-HMAC-SHA1(new AH) KEY=KAMEKAMEKAMEKAMEKAME SPI=2000 (2.2) PROTO=ESP ALG=new-DES-expIV(new ESP) IV length = 8 KEY=PASSWORD SPI=3000 Now, let's setup security association. Execute &man.setkey.8; on both HOST A and B: &prompt.root; setkey -c add 10.2.3.4 10.6.7.8 ah-old 1000 -m transport -A keyed-md5 "MYSECRETMYSECRET" ; add 10.6.7.8 10.2.3.4 ah 2000 -m transport -A hmac-sha1 "KAMEKAMEKAMEKAMEKAME" ; add 10.6.7.8 10.2.3.4 esp 3000 -m transport -E des-cbc "PASSWORD" ; ^D Actually, IPsec communication doesn't process until security policy entries will be defined. In this case, you must setup each host. At A: &prompt.root; setkey -c spdadd 10.2.3.4 10.6.7.8 any -P out ipsec ah/transport/10.2.3.4-10.6.7.8/require ; ^D At B: &prompt.root; setkey -c spdadd 10.6.7.8 10.2.3.4 any -P out ipsec esp/transport/10.6.7.8-10.2.3.4/require ; spdadd 10.6.7.8 10.2.3.4 any -P out ipsec ah/transport/10.6.7.8-10.2.3.4/require ; ^D HOST A --------------------------------------> HOST E 10.2.3.4 10.6.7.8 | | ========== old AH keyed-md5 ==========> <========= new AH hmac-sha1 =========== <========= new ESP des-cbc ============ Transport mode example with IPv6 Another example using IPv6. ESP transport mode is recommended for TCP port number 110 between Host-A and Host-B. ============ ESP ============ | | Host-A Host-B fec0::10 -------------------- fec0::11 Encryption algorithm is blowfish-cbc whose key is "kamekame", and authentication algorithm is hmac-sha1 whose key is "this is the test key". Configuration at Host-A: &prompt.root; setkey -c <<EOF spdadd fec0::10[any] fec0::11[110] tcp -P out ipsec esp/transport/fec0::10-fec0::11/use ; spdadd fec0::11[110] fec0::10[any] tcp -P in ipsec esp/transport/fec0::11-fec0::10/use ; add fec0::10 fec0::11 esp 0x10001 -m transport -E blowfish-cbc "kamekame" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; add fec0::11 fec0::10 esp 0x10002 -m transport -E blowfish-cbc "kamekame" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; EOF and at Host-B: &prompt.root; setkey -c <<EOF spdadd fec0::11[110] fec0::10[any] tcp -P out ipsec esp/transport/fec0::11-fec0::10/use ; spdadd fec0::10[any] fec0::11[110] tcp -P in ipsec esp/transport/fec0::10-fec0::11/use ; add fec0::10 fec0::11 esp 0x10001 -m transport -E blowfish-cbc "kamekame" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; add fec0::11 fec0::10 esp 0x10002 -m transport -E blowfish-cbc "kamekame" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; EOF Note the direction of SP. Tunnel mode example with IPv4 Tunnel mode between two security gateways Security protocol is old AH tunnel mode, i.e. specified by RFC1826, with keyed-md5 whose key is "this is the test" as authentication algorithm. ======= AH ======= | | Network-A Gateway-A Gateway-B Network-B 10.0.1.0/24 ---- 172.16.0.1 ----- 172.16.0.2 ---- 10.0.2.0/24 Configuration at Gateway-A: &prompt.root; setkey -c <<EOF spdadd 10.0.1.0/24 10.0.2.0/24 any -P out ipsec ah/tunnel/172.16.0.1-172.16.0.2/require ; spdadd 10.0.2.0/24 10.0.1.0/24 any -P in ipsec ah/tunnel/172.16.0.2-172.16.0.1/require ; add 172.16.0.1 172.16.0.2 ah-old 0x10003 -m any -A keyed-md5 "this is the test" ; add 172.16.0.2 172.16.0.1 ah-old 0x10004 -m any -A keyed-md5 "this is the test" ; EOF If port number field is omitted such above then "[any]" is employed. `-m' specifies the mode of SA to be used. "-m any" means wild-card of mode of security protocol. You can use this SA for both tunnel and transport mode. and at Gateway-B: &prompt.root; setkey -c <<EOF spdadd 10.0.2.0/24 10.0.1.0/24 any -P out ipsec ah/tunnel/172.16.0.2-172.16.0.1/require ; spdadd 10.0.1.0/24 10.0.2.0/24 any -P in ipsec ah/tunnel/172.16.0.1-172.16.0.2/require ; add 172.16.0.1 172.16.0.2 ah-old 0x10003 -m any -A keyed-md5 "this is the test" ; add 172.16.0.2 172.16.0.1 ah-old 0x10004 -m any -A keyed-md5 "this is the test" ; EOF Making SA bundle between two security gateways AH transport mode and ESP tunnel mode is required between Gateway-A and Gateway-B. In this case, ESP tunnel mode is applied first, and AH transport mode is next. ========== AH ========= | ======= ESP ===== | | | | | Network-A Gateway-A Gateway-B Network-B fec0:0:0:1::/64 --- fec0:0:0:1::1 ---- fec0:0:0:2::1 --- fec0:0:0:2::/64 Tunnel mode example with IPv6 Encryption algorithm is 3des-cbc, and authentication algorithm for ESP is hmac-sha1. Authentication algorithm for AH is hmac-md5. Configuration at Gateway-A: &prompt.root; setkey -c <<EOF spdadd fec0:0:0:1::/64 fec0:0:0:2::/64 any -P out ipsec esp/tunnel/fec0:0:0:1::1-fec0:0:0:2::1/require ah/transport/fec0:0:0:1::1-fec0:0:0:2::1/require ; spdadd fec0:0:0:2::/64 fec0:0:0:1::/64 any -P in ipsec esp/tunnel/fec0:0:0:2::1-fec0:0:0:1::1/require ah/transport/fec0:0:0:2::1-fec0:0:0:1::1/require ; add fec0:0:0:1::1 fec0:0:0:2::1 esp 0x10001 -m tunnel -E 3des-cbc "kamekame12341234kame1234" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; add fec0:0:0:1::1 fec0:0:0:2::1 ah 0x10001 -m transport -A hmac-md5 "this is the test" ; add fec0:0:0:2::1 fec0:0:0:1::1 esp 0x10001 -m tunnel -E 3des-cbc "kamekame12341234kame1234" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; add fec0:0:0:2::1 fec0:0:0:1::1 ah 0x10001 -m transport -A hmac-md5 "this is the test" ; EOF Making SAs with the different end ESP tunnel mode is required between Host-A and Gateway-A. Encryption algorithm is cast128-cbc, and authentication algorithm for ESP is hmac-sha1. ESP transport mode is recommended between Host-A and Host-B. Encryption algorithm is rc5-cbc, and authentication algorithm for ESP is hmac-md5. ================== ESP ================= | ======= ESP ======= | | | | | Host-A Gateway-A Host-B fec0:0:0:1::1 ---- fec0:0:0:2::1 ---- fec0:0:0:2::2 Configuration at Host-A: &prompt.root; setkey -c <<EOF spdadd fec0:0:0:1::1[any] fec0:0:0:2::2[80] tcp -P out ipsec esp/transport/fec0:0:0:1::1-fec0:0:0:2::2/use esp/tunnel/fec0:0:0:1::1-fec0:0:0:2::1/require ; spdadd fec0:0:0:2::1[80] fec0:0:0:1::1[any] tcp -P in ipsec esp/transport/fec0:0:0:2::2-fec0:0:0:l::1/use esp/tunnel/fec0:0:0:2::1-fec0:0:0:1::1/require ; add fec0:0:0:1::1 fec0:0:0:2::2 esp 0x10001 -m transport -E cast128-cbc "12341234" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; add fec0:0:0:1::1 fec0:0:0:2::1 esp 0x10002 -E rc5-cbc "kamekame" -A hmac-md5 "this is the test" ; add fec0:0:0:2::2 fec0:0:0:1::1 esp 0x10003 -m transport -E cast128-cbc "12341234" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; add fec0:0:0:2::1 fec0:0:0:1::1 esp 0x10004 -E rc5-cbc "kamekame" -A hmac-md5 "this is the test" ; EOF diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/book.sgml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/book.sgml index 632cfc6c50..b8e98b45bb 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/book.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/porters-handbook/book.sgml @@ -1,4165 +1,4165 @@ %man; %bookinfo; %authors; %mailing-lists; ]> FreeBSD Porter's Handbook The FreeBSD Documentation Project April 2000 2000 The FreeBSD Documentation Project &bookinfo.legalnotice; Making a port yourself So, now you are interested in making your own port or upgrading an existing one? Great! What follows are some guidelines for creating a new port for FreeBSD. If you want to upgrade an existing port, you should read this and then read . When this document is not sufficiently detailed, you should refer to /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk, which all port Makefiles include. Even if you do not hack Makefiles daily, it is well commented, and you will still gain much knowledge from it. Additionally, you may send specific questions to the &a.ports;. Only a fraction of the variables (VAR) that can be overridden are mentioned in this document. Most (if not all) are documented at the start of bsd.port.mk. This file uses a non-standard tab setting. Emacs and Vim should recognize the setting on loading the file. Both vi and ex can be set to use the correct value by typing :set tabstop=4 once the file has been loaded. Quick Porting This section tells you how to do a quick port. In many cases, it is not enough, but we will see. First, get the original tarball and put it into DISTDIR, which defaults to /usr/ports/distfiles. The following assumes that the software compiled out-of-the-box, i.e., there was absolutely no change required for the port to work on your FreeBSD box. If you needed to change something, you will have to refer to the next section too. Writing the <filename>Makefile</filename> The minimal Makefile would look something like this: # New ports collection makefile for: oneko # Date created: 5 December 1994 # Whom: asami # # $FreeBSD$ # PORTNAME= oneko PORTVERSION= 1.1b CATEGORIES= games MASTER_SITES= ftp://ftp.cs.columbia.edu/archives/X11R5/contrib/ MAINTAINER= asami@FreeBSD.org MAN1= oneko.1 MANCOMPRESSED= yes USE_IMAKE= yes .include <bsd.port.mk> See if you can figure it out. Do not worry about the contents of the $FreeBSD$ line, it will be filled in automatically by CVS when the port is imported to our main ports tree. You can find a more detailed example in the sample Makefile section. Writing the description files There are three description files that are required for any port, whether they actually package or not. They are COMMENT, DESCR, and PLIST, and reside in the pkg subdirectory. <filename>COMMENT</filename> This is the one-line description of the port. Please do not include the package name (or version number of the software) in the comment. The comment should begin with a capital, and end without a period. Here is an example: A cat chasing a mouse all over the screen <filename>DESCR</filename> This is a longer description of the port. One to a few paragraphs concisely explaining what the port does is sufficient. This is not a manual or an in-depth description on how to use or compile the port! Please be careful if you are copying from the README or manpage; too often they are not a concise description of the port or are in an awkward format (e.g., manpages have justified spacing). If the ported software has an official WWW homepage, you should list it here. Prefix one of the websites with WWW: so that automated tools will work correctly. It is recommended that you sign your name at the end of this file, as in: This is a port of oneko, in which a cat chases a poor mouse all over the screen. : (etc.) WWW: http://www.oneko.org/ - Satoshi asami@cs.berkeley.edu <filename>PLIST</filename> This file lists all the files installed by the port. It is also called the “packing list” because the package is generated by packing the files listed here. The pathnames are relative to the installation prefix (usually /usr/local or /usr/X11R6). If you are using the MANn variables (as you should be), do not list any manpages here. Here is a small example: bin/oneko lib/X11/app-defaults/Oneko lib/X11/oneko/cat1.xpm lib/X11/oneko/cat2.xpm lib/X11/oneko/mouse.xpm @dirrm lib/X11/oneko Refer to the &man.pkg.create.1; man page for details on the packing list. You should list all the files, but not the name directories, in the list. Also, if the port creates directories for itself during installation, make sure to add @dirrm lines as necessary to remove them when the port is deleted. It is recommended that you keep all the filenames in this file sorted alphabetically. It will make verifying the changes when you upgrade the port much easier. Creating a packing list manually can be a very tedious task. If the port installs a large numbers of files, creating the packing list automatically might save time. Creating the checksum file Just type make makesum. The ports make rules will automatically generate the file files/md5. Testing the port You should make sure that the port rules do exactly what you want them to do, including packaging up the port. These are the important points you need to verify. PLIST does not contain anything not installed by your port PLIST contains everything that is installed by your port Your port can be installed multiple times using the reinstall target Your port cleans up after itself upon deinstall Recommended test ordering make install make package make deinstall pkg_add package-name make deinstall make reinstall make package Make sure that there are not any warnings issued in any of the package and deinstall stages. After step 3, check to see if all the new directories are correctly deleted. Also, try using the software after step 4, to ensure that it works correctly when installed from a package. Checking your port with <command>portlint</command> Please use portlint to see if your port conforms to our guidelines. The portlint program is part of the ports collection. In particular, you may want to check if the Makefile is in the right shape and the package is named appropriately. Submitting the port First, make sure you have read the DOs and DON'Ts section. Now that you are happy with your port, the only thing remaining is to put it in the main FreeBSD ports tree and make everybody else happy about it too. We do not need your work directory or the pkgname.tgz package, so delete them now. Next, simply include the output of shar `find port_dir` in a bug report and send it with the &man.send-pr.1; program (see Bug Reports and General Commentary for more information about &man.send-pr.1;. If the uncompressed port is larger than 20KB, you should compress it into a tarfile and use &man.uuencode.1; before including it in the bug report (uuencoded tarfiles are acceptable even if the bug report is smaller than 20KB but are not preferred). Be sure to classify the bug report as category ports and class change-request (Do not mark the report confidential!). Also add a short description of the program you ported to the Description field of the PR and the shar or uuencoded tarfile to the Fix field. The latter one helps the committers a lot, who use scripts for the ports-work. One more time, do not include the original source distfile, the work directory, or the package you built with make package. In the past, we asked you to upload new port submissions in our ftp site (ftp.FreeBSD.org). This is no longer recommended as read access is turned off on the incoming/ directory of that site due to the large amount of pirated software showing up there. We will look at your port, get back to you if necessary, and put it in the tree. Your name will also appear in the list of “Additional FreeBSD contributors” in the FreeBSD Handbook and other files. Isn't that great?!? :-) You can make our work a lot easier, if you use a good description in the synopsis of the problem report. We prefer something like “New port: <short description of the port>” for new ports and “Update port: <category>/<port> <short description of the update>” for port updates. If you stick to this scheme, the chance that one takes a look at your PR soon is much bigger. Slow Porting Ok, so it was not that simple, and the port required some modifications to get it to work. In this section, we will explain, step by step, how to modify it to get it to work with the ports paradigm. How things work First, this is the sequence of events which occurs when the user first types make in your port's directory. You may find that having bsd.port.mk in another window while you read this really helps to understand it. But do not worry if you do not really understand what bsd.port.mk is doing, not many people do... :-> The fetch target is run. The fetch target is responsible for making sure that the tarball exists locally in DISTDIR. If fetch cannot find the required files in DISTDIR it will look up the URL MASTER_SITES, which is set in the Makefile, as well as our main ftp site at ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/, where we put sanctioned distfiles as backup. It will then attempt to fetch the named distribution file with FETCH, assuming that the requesting site has direct access to the Internet. If that succeeds, it will save the file in DISTDIR for future use and proceed. The extract target is run. It looks for your port's distribution file (typically a gzip'd tarball) in DISTDIR and unpacks it into a temporary subdirectory specified by WRKDIR (defaults to work). The patch target is run. First, any patches defined in PATCHFILES are applied. Second, if any patches are found in PATCHDIR (defaults to the patches subdirectory), they are applied at this time in alphabetical order. The configure target is run. This can do any one of many different things. If it exists, scripts/configure is run. If HAS_CONFIGURE or GNU_CONFIGURE is set, WRKSRC/configure is run. If USE_IMAKE is set, XMKMF (default: xmkmf -a) is run. The build target is run. This is responsible for descending into the port's private working directory (WRKSRC) and building it. If USE_GMAKE is set, GNU make will be used, otherwise the system make will be used. The above are the default actions. In addition, you can define targets pre-something or post-something, or put scripts with those names, in the scripts subdirectory, and they will be run before or after the default actions are done. For example, if you have a post-extract target defined in your Makefile, and a file pre-build in the scripts subdirectory, the post-extract target will be called after the regular extraction actions, and the pre-build script will be executed before the default build rules are done. It is recommended that you use Makefile targets if the actions are simple enough, because it will be easier for someone to figure out what kind of non-default action the port requires. The default actions are done by the bsd.port.mk targets do-something. For example, the commands to extract a port are in the target do-extract. If you are not happy with the default target, you can fix it by redefining the do-something target in your Makefile. The “main” targets (e.g., extract, configure, etc.) do nothing more than make sure all the stages up to that one are completed and call the real targets or scripts, and they are not intended to be changed. If you want to fix the extraction, fix do-extract, but never ever touch extract! Now that you understand what goes on when the user types make, let us go through the recommended steps to create the perfect port. Getting the original sources Get the original sources (normally) as a compressed tarball (foo.tar.gz or foo.tar.Z) and copy it into DISTDIR. Always use mainstream sources when and where you can. If you cannot find a ftp/http site that is well-connected to the net, or can only find sites that have irritatingly non-standard formats, you might want to put a copy on a reliable ftp or http server that you control (e.g., your home page). Make sure you set MASTER_SITES to reflect your choice. If you cannot find somewhere convenient and reliable to put the distfile we can “house” it ourselves on ftp.FreeBSD.org. The distfile must be placed into ~/public_distfiles/ of someone's freefall account. Ask the person who commits your port to do this. This person will also set MASTER_SITES to MASTER_SITE_LOCAL and MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR to their freefall username. If your port's distfile changes all the time for no good reason, consider putting the distfile in your home page and listing it as the first MASTER_SITES. This will prevent users from getting checksum mismatch errors, and also reduce the workload of maintainers of our ftp site. Also, if there is only one master site for the port, it is recommended that you house a backup at your site and list it as the second MASTER_SITES. If your port requires some additional `patches' that are available on the Internet, fetch them too and put them in DISTDIR. Do not worry if they come from a site other than where you got the main source tarball, we have a way to handle these situations (see the description of PATCHFILES below). Modifying the port Unpack a copy of the tarball in a private directory and make whatever changes are necessary to get the port to compile properly under the current version of FreeBSD. Keep careful track of everything you do, as you will be automating the process shortly. Everything, including the deletion, addition, or modification of files should be doable using an automated script or patch file when your port is finished. If your port requires significant user interaction/customization to compile or install, you should take a look at one of Larry Wall's classic Configure scripts and perhaps do something similar yourself. The goal of the new ports collection is to make each port as “plug-and-play” as possible for the end-user while using a minimum of disk space. Unless explicitly stated, patch files, scripts, and other files you have created and contributed to the FreeBSD ports collection are assumed to be covered by the standard BSD copyright conditions. Patching In the preparation of the port, files that have been added or changed can be picked up with a recursive diff for later feeding to patch. Each set of patches you wish to apply should be collected into a file named patch-xx where xx denotes the sequence in which the patches will be applied — these are done in alphabetical order, thus aa first, ab second and so on. These files should be stored in PATCHDIR, from where they will be automatically applied. All patches should be relative to WRKSRC (generally the directory your port's tarball unpacks itself into, that being where the build is done). To make fixes and upgrades easier, you should avoid having more than one patch fix the same file (e.g., patch-aa and patch-ab both changing WRKSRC/foobar.c). Configuring Include any additional customization commands in your configure script and save it in the scripts subdirectory. As mentioned above, you can also do this with Makefile targets and/or scripts with the name pre-configure or post-configure. Handling user input If your port requires user input to build, configure, or install, then set IS_INTERACTIVE in your Makefile. This will allow “overnight builds” to skip your port if the user sets the variable BATCH in his environment (and if the user sets the variable INTERACTIVE, then only those ports requiring interaction are built). It is also recommended that if there are reasonable default answers to the questions, you check the PACKAGE_BUILDING variable and turn off the interactive script when it is set. This will allow us to build the packages for CD-ROMs and ftp. Configuring the Makefile Configuring the Makefile is pretty simple, and again we suggest that you look at existing examples before starting. Also, there is a sample Makefile in this handbook, so take a look and please follow the ordering of variables and sections in that template to make your port easier for others to read. Now, consider the following problems in sequence as you design your new Makefile: The original source Does it live in DISTDIR as a standard gzip'd tarball named something like foozolix-1.2.tar.gz? If so, you can go on to the next step. If not, you should look at overriding any of the DISTNAME, EXTRACT_CMD, EXTRACT_BEFORE_ARGS, EXTRACT_AFTER_ARGS, EXTRACT_SUFX, or DISTFILES variables, depending on how alien a format your port's distribution file is. (The most common case is EXTRACT_SUFX=.tar.Z, when the tarball is condensed by regular compress, not gzip.) In the worst case, you can simply create your own do-extract target to override the default, though this should be rarely, if ever, necessary. <makevar>PORTNAME</makevar> and <makevar>PORTVERSION</makevar> You should set PORTNAME to the base name of your port, and PORTVERSION to the version number of the port. <makevar>PKGNAMEPREFIX</makevar> and <makevar>PKGNAMESUFFIX</makevar> Two optional variables, PKGNAMEPREFIX and PKGNAMESUFFIX, are combined with PORTNAME and PORTVERSION to form PKGNAME as ${PKGNAMEPREFIX}${PORTNAME}${PKGNAMESUFFIX}-${PORTVERSION}. Make sure this conforms to our guidelines for a good package name. In particular, you are not allowed to use a hyphen (-) in PORTVERSION. Also, if the package name has the language- or the compiled.specifics part, use PKGNAMEPREFIX and PKGNAMESUFFIX, respectively. Do not make them part of PORTNAME. <makevar>DISTNAME</makevar> DISTNAME is the name of the port as called by the authors of the software. DISTNAME defaults to ${PORTNAME}-${PORTVERSION}, so override it if necessary. DISTNAME is only used in two places. First, the distribution file list (DISTFILES) defaults to ${DISTNAME}${EXTRACT_SUFX}. Second, the distribution file is expected to extract into a subdirectory named WRKSRC, which defaults to work/${DISTNAME}. Note that PKGNAMEPREFIX and PKGNAMESUFFIX do not affect DISTNAME. <makevar>CATEGORIES</makevar> When a package is created, it is put under /usr/ports/packages/All and links are made from one or more subdirectories of /usr/ports/packages. The names of these subdirectories are specified by the variable CATEGORIES. It is intended to make life easier for the user when he is wading through the pile of packages on the ftp site or the CD-ROM. Please take a look at the existing categories and pick the ones that are suitable for your port. This list also determines where in the ports tree the port is imported. If you put more than one category here, it is assumed that the port files will be put in the subdirectory with the name in the first category. See the categories section for more discussion about how to pick the right categories. If your port truly belongs to something that is different from all the existing ones, you can even create a new category name. In that case, please send mail to the &a.ports; to propose a new category. There is no error checking for category names. make package will happily create a new directory if you mistype the category name, so be careful! <makevar>MASTER_SITES</makevar> Record the directory part of the ftp/http-URL pointing at the original tarball in MASTER_SITES. Do not forget the trailing slash (/)! The make macros will try to use this specification for grabbing the distribution file with FETCH if they cannot find it already on the system. It is recommended that you put multiple sites on this list, preferably from different continents. This will safeguard against wide-area network problems, and we are even planning to add support for automatically determining the closest master site and fetching from there! If the original tarball is part of one of the following popular archives: X-contrib, GNU, Perl CPAN, TeX CTAN, or Linux Sunsite, you refer to those sites in an easy compact form using MASTER_SITE_XCONTRIB, MASTER_SITE_GNU, MASTER_SITE_PERL_CPAN, MASTER_SITE_TEX_CTAN, and MASTER_SITE_SUNSITE. Simply set MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR to the path within the archive. Here is an example: MASTER_SITES= ${MASTER_SITE_XCONTRIB} MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR= applications The user can also set the MASTER_SITE_* variables in /etc/make.conf to override our choices, and use their favorite mirrors of these popular archives instead. <makevar>PATCHFILES</makevar> If your port requires some additional patches that are available by ftp or http, set PATCHFILES to the names of the files and PATCH_SITES to the URL of the directory that contains them (the format is the same as MASTER_SITES). If the patch is not relative to the top of the source tree (i.e., WRKSRC) because it contains some extra pathnames, set PATCH_DIST_STRIP accordingly. For instance, if all the pathnames in the patch have an extra foozolix-1.0/ in front of the filenames, then set PATCH_DIST_STRIP=-p1. Do not worry if the patches are compressed; they will be decompressed automatically if the filenames end with .gz or .Z. If the patch is distributed with some other files, such as documentation, in a gzip'd tarball, you cannot just use PATCHFILES. If that is the case, add the name and the location of the patch tarball to DISTFILES and MASTER_SITES. Then, from the pre-patch target, apply the patch either by running the patch command from there, or copying the patch file into the PATCHDIR directory and calling it patch-xx. Note that the tarball will have been extracted alongside the regular source by then, so there is no need to explicitly extract it if it is a regular gzip'd or compress'd tarball. If you do the latter, take extra care not to overwrite something that already exists in that directory. Also, do not forget to add a command to remove the copied patch in the pre-clean target. <makevar>MAINTAINER</makevar> Set your mail-address here. Please. :-) For a detailed description of the responsibilities of maintainers, refer to the MAINTAINER on Makefiles section. Dependencies Many ports depend on other ports. There are five variables that you can use to ensure that all the required bits will be on the user's machine. There are also some pre-supported dependency variables for common cases, plus a few more to control the behaviour of dependencies. <makevar>LIB_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies the shared libraries this port depends on. It is a list of lib:dir:target tuples where lib is the name of the shared library, dir is the directory in which to find it in case it is not available, and target is the target to call in that directory. For example, LIB_DEPENDS= jpeg.9:${PORTSDIR}/graphics/jpeg:install will check for a shared jpeg library with major version 9, and descend into the graphics/jpeg subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. The target part can be omitted if it is equal to DEPENDS_TARGET (which defaults to install). The lib part is an argument given to ldconfig -r | grep -wF. There shall be no regular expressions in this variable. The dependency is checked twice, once from within the extract target and then from within the install target. Also, the name of the dependency is put into the package so that pkg_add will automatically install it if it is not on the user's system. <makevar>RUN_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies executables or files this port depends on during run-time. It is a list of path:dir:target tuples where path is the name of the executable or file, dir is the directory in which to find it in case it is not available, and target is the target to call in that directory. If path starts with a slash (/), it is treated as a file and its existence is tested with test -e; otherwise, it is assumed to be an executable, and which -s is used to determine if the program exists in the user's search path. For example, RUN_DEPENDS= ${PREFIX}/etc/innd:${PORTSDIR}/news/inn \ wish8.0:${PORTSDIR}/x11-toolkits/tk80 will check if the file or directory /usr/local/etc/innd exists, and build and install it from the news/inn subdirectory of the ports tree if it is not found. It will also see if an executable called wish8.0 is in your search path, and descend into the x11-toolkits/tk80 subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. In this case, innd is actually an executable; if an executable is in a place that is not expected to be in a normal user's search path, you should use the full pathname. The dependency is checked from within the install target. Also, the name of the dependency is put in to the package so that pkg_add will automatically install it if it is not on the user's system. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET. <makevar>BUILD_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies executables or files this port requires to build. Like RUN_DEPENDS, it is a list of path:dir:target tuples. For example, BUILD_DEPENDS= unzip:${PORTSDIR}/archivers/unzip will check for an executable called unzip, and descend into the archivers/unzip subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. “build” here means everything from extraction to compilation. The dependency is checked from within the extract target. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET <makevar>FETCH_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies executables or files this port requires to fetch. Like the previous two, it is a list of path:dir:target tuples. For example, FETCH_DEPENDS= ncftp2:${PORTSDIR}/net/ncftp2 will check for an executable called ncftp2, and descend into the net/ncftp2 subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. The dependency is checked from within the fetch target. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET. <makevar>DEPENDS</makevar> If there is a dependency that does not fall into either of the above four categories, or your port requires having the source of the other port extracted in addition to having it installed, then use this variable. This is a list of dir:target, as there is nothing to check, unlike the previous four. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET. Common dependency variables Define USE_XLIB=yes if your port requires the X Window System to be installed (it is implied by USE_IMAKE). Define USE_GMAKE=yes if your port requires GNU make instead of BSD make. Define USE_AUTOCONF=yes if your port requires GNU autoconf to be run. Define USE_QT=yes if your port uses the latest qt toolkit. Use USE_PERL5=yes if your port requires version 5 of the perl language. (The last is especially important since some versions of FreeBSD have perl5 as part of the base system while others do not.) Notes on dependencies As mentioned above, the default target to call when a dependency is required is DEPENDS_TARGET. It defaults to install. This is a user variable; it is never defined in a port's Makefile. If your port needs a special way to handle a dependency, use the :target part of the *_DEPENDS variables instead of redefining DEPENDS_TARGET. When you type make clean, its dependencies are automatically cleaned too. If you do not wish this to happen, define the variable NOCLEANDEPENDS in your environment. To depend on another port unconditionally, it is customary to use the string nonexistent as the first field of BUILD_DEPENDS or RUN_DEPENDS. Use this only when you need to the to get to the source of the other port. You can often save compilation time by specifying the target too. For instance BUILD_DEPENDS= /nonexistent:${PORTSDIR}/graphics/jpeg:extract will always descend to the JPEG port and extract it. Do not use DEPENDS unless there is no other way the behaviour you want can be accomplished. It will cause the other port to always be built (and installed, by default), and the dependency will go into the packages as well. If this is really what you need, I recommend you write it as BUILD_DEPENDS and RUN_DEPENDS instead—at least the intention will be clear. Building mechanisms If your package uses GNU make, set USE_GMAKE=yes. If your package uses configure, set HAS_CONFIGURE=yes. If your package uses GNU configure, set GNU_CONFIGURE=yes (this implies HAS_CONFIGURE). If you want to give some extra arguments to configure (the default argument list --prefix=${PREFIX} for GNU configure and empty for non-GNU configure), set those extra arguments in CONFIGURE_ARGS. If your package uses GNU autoconf, set USE_AUTOCONF=yes. This implies GNU_CONFIGURE, and will cause autoconf to be run before configure. If your package is an X application that creates Makefiles from Imakefiles using imake, then set USE_IMAKE=yes. This will cause the configure stage to automatically do an xmkmf -a. If the flag is a problem for your port, set XMKMF=xmkmf. If the port uses imake but does not understand the install.man target, NO_INSTALL_MANPAGES=yes should be set. In addition, the author of the original port should be shot. :-> If your port's source Makefile has something else than all as the main build target, set ALL_TARGET accordingly. Same goes for install and INSTALL_TARGET. Special considerations There are some more things you have to take into account when you create a port. This section explains the most common of those. Shared Libraries If your port installs one or more shared libraries, define a INSTALLS_SHLIB make variable, which will instruct a bsd.port.mk to run ${LDCONFIG} -m on the directory where the new library is installed (usually PREFIX/lib) during post-install target to register it into the shared library cache. This variable, when defined, will also facilitate addition of an appropriate @exec /sbin/ldconfig -m and @unexec /sbin/ldconfig -R pair into your pkg/PLIST file, so that a user who installed the package can start using the shared library immediately and deinstallation will not cause the system to still believe the library is there. If you need, you can override default location where the new library is installed by defining LDCONFIG_DIRS make variable, which should contain a list of directories into which shared libraries are to be installed. For example if your port installs shared libraries into PREFIX/lib/foo and PREFIX/lib/bar directories you could use the following in your Makefile: INSTALLS_SHLIB= yes LDCONFIG_DIRS= %%PREFIX%%/lib/foo %%PREFIX%%/lib/bar Note that content of LDCONFIG_DIRS is passed through &man.sed.1; just like the rest of pkg/PLIST, so PLIST_SUB substitutions also apply here. It is recommended that you use %%PREFIX%% for PREFIX, %%LOCALBASE%% for LOCALBASE and %%X11BASE%% for X11BASE. <makevar>MASTERDIR</makevar> If your port needs to build slightly different versions of packages by having a variable (for instance, resolution, or paper size) take different values, create one subdirectory per package to make it easier for users to see what to do, but try to share as many files as possible between ports. Typically you only need a very short Makefile in all but one of the directories if you use variables cleverly. In the sole Makefiles, you can use MASTERDIR to specify the directory where the rest of the files are. Also, use a variable as part of PKGNAMESUFFIX so the packages will have different names. This will be best demonstrated by an example. This is part of japanese/xdvi300/Makefile; PORTNAME= xdvi PORTVERSION= 17 PKGNAMEPREFIX= ja- PKGNAMESUFFIX= ${RESOLUTION} : # default RESOLUTION?= 300 .if ${RESOLUTION} != 118 && ${RESOLUTION} != 240 && \ ${RESOLUTION} != 300 && ${RESOLUTION} != 400 @${ECHO} "Error: invalid value for RESOLUTION: \"${RESOLUTION}\"" @${ECHO} "Possible values are: 118, 240, 300 (default) and 400." @${FALSE} .endif japanese/xdvi300 also has all the regular patches, package files, etc. If you type make there, it will take the default value for the resolution (300) and build the port normally. As for other resolutions, this is the entire xdvi118/Makefile: RESOLUTION= 118 MASTERDIR= ${.CURDIR}/../xdvi300 .include ${MASTERDIR}/Makefile (xdvi240/Makefile and xdvi400/Makefile are similar). The MASTERDIR definition tells bsd.port.mk that the regular set of subdirectories like PATCHDIR and PKGDIR are to be found under xdvi300. The RESOLUTION=118 line will override the RESOLUTION=300 line in xdvi300/Makefile and the port will be built with resolution set to 118. Shared library versions Please read our policy on shared library versioning to understand what to do with shared library versions in general. Do not blindly assume software authors know what they are doing; many of them do not. It is very important that these details are carefully considered, as we have quite a unique situation where we are trying to have dozens of potentially incompatible software pairs co-exist. Careless port imports have caused great trouble regarding shared libraries in the past (ever wondered why the port jpeg-6b has a shared library version of 9?). If in doubt, send a message to the &a.ports;. Most of the time, your job ends by determining the right shared library version and making appropriate patches to implement it. Manpages The MAN[1-9LN] variables will automatically add any manpages to pkg/PLIST (this means you must not list manpages in the PLIST—see generating PLIST for more). It also makes the install stage automatically compress or uncompress manpages depending on the setting of NOMANCOMPRESS in /etc/make.conf. If your port tries to install multiple names for manpages using symlinks or hardlinks, you must use the MLINKS variable to identify these. The link installed by your port will be destroyed and recreated by bsd.port.mk to make sure it points to the correct file. Any manpages listed in MLINKS must not be listed in the PLIST. To specify whether the manpages are compressed upon installation, use the MANCOMPRESSED variable. This variable can take three values, yes, no and maybe. yes means manpages are already installed compressed, no means they are not, and maybe means the software already respects the value of NOMANCOMPRESS so bsd.port.mk does not have to do anything special. MANCOMPRESSED is automatically set to yes if USE_IMAKE is set and NO_INSTALL_MANPAGES is not set, and to no otherwise. You do not have to explicitly define it unless the default is not suitable for your port. If your port anchors its man tree somewhere other than PREFIX, you can use the MANPREFIX to set it. Also, if only manpages in certain sections go in a non-standard place, such as some Perl modules ports, you can set individual man paths using MANsectPREFIX (where sect is one of 1-9, L or N). If your manpages go to language-specific subdirectories, set the name of the languages to MANLANG. The value of this variable defaults to "" (i.e., English only). Here is an example that puts it all together. MAN1= foo.1 MAN3= bar.3 MAN4= baz.4 MLINKS= foo.1 alt-name.8 MANLANG= "" ja MAN3PREFIX= ${PREFIX}/share/foobar MANCOMPRESSED= yes This states that six files are installed by this port; ${PREFIX}/man/man1/foo.1.gz ${PREFIX}/man/ja/man1/foo.1.gz ${PREFIX}/share/foobar/man/man3/bar.3.gz ${PREFIX}/share/foobar/man/ja/man3/bar.3.gz ${PREFIX}/man/man4/baz.4.gz ${PREFIX}/man/ja/man4/baz.4.gz Additionally ${PREFIX}/man/man8/alt-name.8.gz may or may not be installed by your port. Regardless, a symlink will be made to join the foo(1) manpage and alt-name(8) manpage. Ports that require Motif There are many programs that require a Motif library (available from several commercial vendors, while there is a free clone reported to be able to run many applications in x11-toolkits/lesstif) to compile. Since it is a popular toolkit and their licenses usually permit redistribution of statically linked binaries, we have made special provisions for handling ports that require Motif in a way that we can easily compile binaries linked either dynamically (for people who are compiling from the port) or statically (for people who distribute packages). <makevar>REQUIRES_MOTIF</makevar> If your port requires Motif, define this variable in the Makefile. This will prevent people who do not own a copy of Motif from even attempting to build it. <makevar>MOTIFLIB</makevar> This variable will be set by bsd.port.mk to be the appropriate reference to the Motif library. Please patch the source to use this wherever the Motif library is referenced in the Makefile or Imakefile. There are two common cases: If the port refers to the Motif library as -lXm in its Makefile or Imakefile, simply substitute ${MOTIFLIB} for it. If the port uses XmClientLibs in its Imakefile, change it to ${MOTIFLIB} ${XTOOLLIB} ${XLIB}. Note that MOTIFLIB (usually) expands to -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lXm or /usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.a, so there is no need to add -L or -l in front. X11 fonts If your port installs fonts for the X Window system, put them in X11BASE/lib/X11/fonts/local. This directory is new to XFree86 release 3.3.3. If it does not exist, please create it, and print out a message urging the user to update their XFree86 to 3.3.3 or newer, or at least add this directory to the font path in /etc/XF86Config. Info files The new version of texinfo (included in 2.2.2-RELEASE and onwards) contains a utility called install-info to add and delete entries to the dir file. If your port installs any info documents, please follow these instructions so your port/package will correctly update the user's PREFIX/info/dir file. (Sorry for the length of this section, but is it imperative to weave all the info files together. If done correctly, it will produce a beautiful listing, so please bear with me! First, this is what you (as a porter) need to know &prompt.user; install-info --help install-info [OPTION]... [INFO-FILE [DIR-FILE]] Install INFO-FILE in the Info directory file DIR-FILE. Options: --delete Delete existing entries in INFO-FILE; don't insert any new entries. : --entry=TEXT Insert TEXT as an Info directory entry. : --section=SEC Put this file's entries in section SEC of the directory. : This program will not actually install info files; it merely inserts or deletes entries in the dir file. Here's a seven-step procedure to convert ports to use install-info. I will use editors/emacs as an example. Look at the texinfo sources and make a patch to insert @dircategory and @direntry statements to files that do not have them. This is part of my patch: --- ./man/vip.texi.org Fri Jun 16 15:31:11 1995 +++ ./man/vip.texi Tue May 20 01:28:33 1997 @@ -2,6 +2,10 @@ @setfilename ../info/vip @settitle VIP +@dircategory The Emacs editor and associated tools +@direntry +* VIP: (vip). A VI-emulation for Emacs. +@end direntry @iftex @finalout : The format should be self-explanatory. Many authors leave a dir file in the source tree that contains all the entries you need, so look around before you try to write your own. Also, make sure you look into related ports and make the section names and entry indentations consistent (we recommend that all entry text start at the 4th tab stop). Note that you can put only one info entry per file because of a bug in install-info --delete that deletes only the first entry if you specify multiple entries in the @direntry section. You can give the dir entries to install-info as arguments ( and ) instead of patching the texinfo sources. I do not think this is a good idea for ports because you need to duplicate the same information in three places (Makefile and @exec/@unexec of PLIST; see below). However, if you have Japanese (or other multibyte encoding) info files, you will have to use the extra arguments to install-info because makeinfo cannot handle those texinfo sources. (See Makefile and PLIST of japanese/skk for examples on how to do this). Go back to the port directory and do a make clean; make and verify that the info files are regenerated from the texinfo sources. Since the texinfo sources are newer than the info files, they should be rebuilt when you type make; but many Makefiles do not include correct dependencies for info files. In emacs' case, I had to patch the main Makefile.in so it will descend into the man subdirectory to rebuild the info pages. --- ./Makefile.in.org Mon Aug 19 21:12:19 1996 +++ ./Makefile.in Tue Apr 15 00:15:28 1997 @@ -184,7 +184,7 @@ # Subdirectories to make recursively. `lisp' is not included # because the compiled lisp files are part of the distribution # and you cannot remake them without installing Emacs first. -SUBDIR = lib-src src +SUBDIR = lib-src src man # The makefiles of the directories in $SUBDIR. SUBDIR_MAKEFILES = lib-src/Makefile man/Makefile src/Makefile oldXMenu/Makefile lwlib/Makefile --- ./man/Makefile.in.org Thu Jun 27 15:27:19 1996 +++ ./man/Makefile.in Tue Apr 15 00:29:52 1997 @@ -66,6 +66,7 @@ ${srcdir}/gnu1.texi \ ${srcdir}/glossary.texi +all: info info: $(INFO_TARGETS) dvi: $(DVI_TARGETS) The second hunk was necessary because the default target in the man subdir is called info, while the main Makefile wants to call all. I also deleted the installation of the info info file because we already have one with the same name in /usr/share/info (that patch is not shown here). If there is a place in the Makefile that is installing the dir file, delete it. Your port may not be doing it. Also, remove any commands that are otherwise mucking around with the dir file. --- ./Makefile.in.org Mon Aug 19 21:12:19 1996 +++ ./Makefile.in Mon Apr 14 23:38:07 1997 @@ -368,14 +368,8 @@ if [ `(cd ${srcdir}/info && /bin/pwd)` != `(cd ${infodir} && /bin/pwd)` ]; \ then \ (cd ${infodir}; \ - if [ -f dir ]; then \ - if [ ! -f dir.old ]; then mv -f dir dir.old; \ - else mv -f dir dir.bak; fi; \ - fi; \ cd ${srcdir}/info ; \ - (cd $${thisdir}; ${INSTALL_DATA} ${srcdir}/info/dir ${infodir}/dir); \ - (cd $${thisdir}; chmod a+r ${infodir}/dir); \ for f in ccmode* cl* dired-x* ediff* emacs* forms* gnus* info* message* mh-e* sc* vip*; do \ (cd $${thisdir}; \ ${INSTALL_DATA} ${srcdir}/info/$$f ${infodir}/$$f; \ chmod a+r ${infodir}/$$f); \ (This step is only necessary if you are modifying an existing port.) Take a look at pkg/PLIST and delete anything that is trying to patch up info/dir. They may be in pkg/INSTALL or some other file, so search extensively. Index: pkg/PLIST =================================================================== RCS file: /usr/cvs/ports/editors/emacs/pkg/PLIST,v retrieving revision 1.15 diff -u -r1.15 PLIST --- PLIST 1997/03/04 08:04:00 1.15 +++ PLIST 1997/04/15 06:32:12 @@ -15,9 +15,6 @@ man/man1/emacs.1.gz man/man1/etags.1.gz man/man1/ctags.1.gz -@unexec cp %D/info/dir %D/info/dir.bak -info/dir -@unexec cp %D/info/dir.bak %D/info/dir info/cl info/cl-1 info/cl-2 Add a post-install target to the Makefile to call install-info with the installed info files. (It is no longer necessary to create the dir file yourself; install-info automatically creates this file if it does not exist.) Index: Makefile =================================================================== RCS file: /usr/cvs/ports/editors/emacs/Makefile,v retrieving revision 1.26 diff -u -r1.26 Makefile --- Makefile 1996/11/19 13:14:40 1.26 +++ Makefile 1997/05/20 10:25:09 1.28 @@ -20,5 +20,8 @@ post-install: .for file in emacs-19.34 emacsclient etags ctags b2m strip ${PREFIX}/bin/${file} .endfor +.for info in emacs vip viper forms gnus mh-e cl sc dired-x ediff ccmode + install-info ${PREFIX}/info/${info} ${PREFIX}/info/dir +.endfor .include <bsd.port.mk> Edit PLIST and add equivalent @exec statements and also @unexec for pkg_delete. Index: pkg/PLIST =================================================================== RCS file: /usr/cvs/ports/editors/emacs/pkg/PLIST,v retrieving revision 1.15 diff -u -r1.15 PLIST --- PLIST 1997/03/04 08:04:00 1.15 +++ PLIST 1997/05/20 10:25:12 1.17 @@ -16,7 +14,14 @@ man/man1/etags.1.gz man/man1/ctags.1.gz +@unexec install-info --delete %D/info/emacs %D/info/dir : +@unexec install-info --delete %D/info/ccmode %D/info/dir info/cl info/cl-1 @@ -87,6 +94,18 @@ info/viper-3 info/viper-4 +@exec install-info %D/info/emacs %D/info/dir : +@exec install-info %D/info/ccmode %D/info/dir libexec/emacs/19.34/i386--freebsd/cvtmail libexec/emacs/19.34/i386--freebsd/digest-doc The @unexec install-info --delete commands have to be listed before the info files themselves so they can read the files. Also, the @exec install-info commands have to be after the info files and the @exec command that creates the the dir file. Test and admire your work. :-). Check the dir file before and after each step. The <filename>pkg/</filename> subdirectory There are some tricks we have not mentioned yet about the pkg/ subdirectory that come in handy sometimes. <filename>MESSAGE</filename> If you need to display a message to the installer, you may place the message in pkg/MESSAGE. This capability is often useful to display additional installation steps to be taken after a pkg_add or to display licensing information. The pkg/MESSAGE file does not need to be added to pkg/PLIST. Also, it will not get automatically printed if the user is using the port, not the package, so you should probably display it from the post-install target yourself. <filename>INSTALL</filename> If your port needs to execute commands when the binary package is installed with pkg_add you can do this via the pkg/INSTALL script. This script will automatically be added to the package, and will be run twice by pkg_add. The first time will as INSTALL ${PKGNAME} PRE-INSTALL and the second time as INSTALL ${PKGNAME} POST-INSTALL. $2 can be tested to determine which mode the script is being run in. The PKG_PREFIX environmental variable will be set to the package installation directory. See &man.pkg.add.1; for additional information. This script is not run automatically if you install the port with make install. If you are depending on it being run, you will have to explicitly call it from your port's Makefile. <filename>REQ</filename> If your port needs to determine if it should install or not, you can create a pkg/REQ “requirements” script. It will be invoked automatically at installation/deinstallation time to determine whether or not installation/deinstallation should proceed. Changing <filename>PLIST</filename> based on make variables Some ports, particularly the p5- ports, need to change their PLIST depending on what options they are configured with (or version of perl, in the case of p5- ports). To make this easy, any instances in the PLIST of %%OSREL%%, %%PERL_VER%%, and %%PERL_VERSION%% will be substituted for appropriately. The value of %%OSREL%% is the numeric revision of the operating system (e.g., 2.2.7). %%PERL_VERSION%% is the full version number of perl (e.g., 5.00502) and %%PERL_VER%% is the perl version number minus the patchlevel (e.g., 5.005). If you need to make other substitutions, you can set the PLIST_SUB variable with a list of VAR=VALUE pairs and instances of %%VAR%%' will be substituted with VALUE in the PLIST. For instance, if you have a port that installs many files in a version-specific subdirectory, you can put something like OCTAVE_VERSION= 2.0.13 PLIST_SUB= OCTAVE_VERSION=${OCTAVE_VERSION} in the Makefile and use %%OCTAVE_VERSION%% wherever the version shows up in PLIST. That way, when you upgrade the port, you will not have to change dozens (or in some cases, hundreds) of lines in the PLIST. This substitution (as well as addition of any man pages) will be done between the do-install and post-install targets, by reading from PLIST and writing to TMPPLIST (default: WRKDIR/.PLIST.mktmp). So if your port builds PLIST on the fly, do so in or before do-install. Also, if your port needs to edit the resulting file, do so in post-install to a file named TMPPLIST. Changing the names of files in the <filename>pkg</filename> subdirectory All the filenames in the pkg subdirectory are defined using variables so you can change them in your Makefile if need be. This is especially useful when you are sharing the same pkg subdirectory among several ports or have to write to one of the above files (see writing to places other than WRKDIR for why it is a bad idea to write directly in to the pkg subdirectory). Here is a list of variable names and their default values. Variable Default value COMMENT ${PKGDIR}/COMMENT DESCR ${PKGDIR}/DESCR PLIST ${PKGDIR}/PLIST PKGINSTALL ${PKGDIR}/INSTALL PKGDEINSTALL ${PKGDIR}/DEINSTALL PKGREQ ${PKGDIR}/REQ PKGMESSAGE ${PKGDIR}/MESSAGE Please change these variables rather than overriding PKG_ARGS. If you change PKG_ARGS, those files will not correctly be installed in /var/db/pkg upon install from a port. Licensing Problems Some software packages have restrictive licenses or can be in - violation of the law (PKP's patent on public key crypto, ITAR (export - of crypto software) to name just two of them). What we can do with + violation of the law in some countries (such as violating a patent). + What we can do with them varies a lot, depending on the exact wordings of the respective licenses. It is your responsibility as a porter to read the licensing terms of the software and make sure that the FreeBSD project will not be held accountable for violating them by redistributing the source or compiled binaries either via ftp or CD-ROM. If in doubt, please contact the &a.ports;. There are two variables you can set in the Makefile to handle the situations that arise frequently: If the port has a “do not sell for profit” type of license, set the variable NO_CDROM to a string describing the reason why. We will make sure such ports will not go into the CD-ROM come release time. The distfile and package will still be available via ftp. If the resulting package needs to be built uniquely for each site, or the resulting binary package cannot be distributed due to licensing; set the variable NO_PACKAGE to a string describing the reason why. We will make sure such packages will not go on the ftp site, nor into the CD-ROM come release time. The distfile will still be included on both however. If the port has legal restrictions on who can use it (e.g., - crypto stuff) or has a “no commercial use” license, + patented stuff) or has a “no commercial use” license, set the variable RESTRICTED to be the string describing the reason why. For such ports, the distfiles/packages will not be available even from our ftp sites. The GNU General Public License (GPL), both version 1 and 2, should not be a problem for ports. If you are a committer, make sure you update the ports/LEGAL file too. Upgrading When you notice that a port is out of date compared to the latest version from the original authors, first make sure you have the latest port. You can find them in the ports/ports-current directory of the ftp mirror sites. You may also use CVSup to keep your whole ports collection up-to-date, as described in the Handbook. The next step is to send a mail to the maintainer, if one is listed in the port's Makefile. That person may already be working on an upgrade, or have a reason to not upgrade the port right now (because of, for example, stability problems of the new version). If the maintainer asks you to do the upgrade or there is not any such person to begin with, please make the upgrade and send the recursive diff (either unified or context diff is fine, but port committers appear to prefer unified diff more) of the new and old ports directories to us (e.g., if your modified port directory is called superedit and the original as in our tree is superedit.bak, then send us the result of diff -ruN superedit.bak superedit). Please examine the output to make sure all the changes make sense. The best way to send us the diff is by including it via &man.send-pr.1; (category ports). Please mention any added or deleted files in the message, as they have to be explicitly specified to CVS when doing a commit. If the diff is more than about 20KB, please compress and uuencode it; otherwise, just include it in the PR as is. Once again, please use &man.diff.1; and not &man.shar.1; to send updates to existing ports! <anchor id="porting-dads">Dos and Don'ts Here is a list of common dos and don'ts that you encounter during the porting process.You should check your own port against this list, but you can also check ports in the PR database that others have submitted. Submit any comments on ports you check as described in Bug Reports and General Commentary. Checking ports in the PR database will both make it faster for us to commit them, and prove that you know what you are doing. Strip Binaries Do strip binaries. If the original source already strips the binaries, fine; otherwise you should add a post-install rule to to it yourself. Here is an example: post-install: strip ${PREFIX}/bin/xdl Use the &man.file.1; command on the installed executable to check whether the binary is stripped or not. If it does not say not stripped, it is stripped. INSTALL_* macros Do use the macros provided in bsd.port.mk to ensure correct modes and ownership of files in your own *-install targets. INSTALL_PROGRAM is a command to install binary executables. INSTALL_SCRIPT is a command to install executable scripts. INSTALL_DATA is a command to install sharable data. INSTALL_MAN is a command to install manpages and other documentation (it does not compress anything). These are basically the install command with all the appropriate flags. See below for an example on how to use them. <makevar>WRKDIR</makevar> Do not write anything to files outside WRKDIR. WRKDIR is the only place that is guaranteed to be writable during the port build (see compiling ports from CDROM for an example of building ports from a read-only tree). If you need to modify some file in PKGDIR, do so by redefining a variable, not by writing over it. <makevar>WRKDIRPREFIX</makevar> Make sure your port honors WRKDIRPREFIX. Most ports do not have to worry about this. In particular, if you are referring to a WRKDIR of another port, note that the correct location is WRKDIRPREFIXPORTSDIR/subdir/name/work not PORTSDIR/subdir/name/work or .CURDIR/../../subdir/name/work or some such. Also, if you are defining WRKDIR yourself, make sure you prepend ${WRKDIRPREFIX}${.CURDIR} in the front. Differentiating operating systems and OS versions You may come across code that needs modifications or conditional compilation based upon what version of UNIX it is running under. If you need to make such changes to the code for conditional compilation, make sure you make the changes as general as possible so that we can back-port code to FreeBSD 1.x systems and cross-port to other BSD systems such as 4.4BSD from CSRG, BSD/386, 386BSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. The preferred way to tell 4.3BSD/Reno (1990) and newer versions of the BSD code apart is by using the BSD macro defined in <sys/param.h>. Hopefully that file is already included; if not, add the code: #if (defined(__unix__) || defined(unix)) && !defined(USG) #include <sys/param.h> #endif to the proper place in the .c file. We believe that every system that defines these two symbols has sys/param.h. If you find a system that does not, we would like to know. Please send mail to the &a.ports;. Another way is to use the GNU Autoconf style of doing this: #ifdef HAVE_SYS_PARAM_H #include <sys/param.h> #endif Do not forget to add -DHAVE_SYS_PARAM_H to the CFLAGS in the Makefile for this method. Once you have sys/param.h included, you may use: #if (defined(BSD) && (BSD >= 199103)) to detect if the code is being compiled on a 4.3 Net2 code base or newer (e.g. FreeBSD 1.x, 4.3/Reno, NetBSD 0.9, 386BSD, BSD/386 1.1 and below). Use: #if (defined(BSD) && (BSD >= 199306)) to detect if the code is being compiled on a 4.4 code base or newer (e.g. FreeBSD 2.x, 4.4, NetBSD 1.0, BSD/386 2.0 or above). The value of the BSD macro is 199506 for the 4.4BSD-Lite2 code base. This is stated for informational purposes only. It should not be used to distinguish between versions of FreeBSD based only on 4.4-Lite vs. versions that have merged in changes from 4.4-Lite2. The __FreeBSD__ macro should be used instead. Use sparingly: __FreeBSD__ is defined in all versions of FreeBSD. Use it if the change you are making only affects FreeBSD. Porting gotchas like the use of sys_errlist[] vs strerror() are Berkeleyisms, not FreeBSD changes. In FreeBSD 2.x, __FreeBSD__ is defined to be 2. In earlier versions, it is 1. Later versions will bump it to match their major version number. If you need to tell the difference between a FreeBSD 1.x system and a FreeBSD 2.x or 3.x system, usually the right answer is to use the BSD macros described above. If there actually is a FreeBSD specific change (such as special shared library options when using ld) then it is OK to use __FreeBSD__ and #if __FreeBSD__ > 1 to detect a FreeBSD 2.x and later system. If you need more granularity in detecting FreeBSD systems since 2.0-RELEASE you can use the following: #if __FreeBSD__ >= 2 #include <osreldate.h> # if __FreeBSD_version >= 199504 /* 2.0.5+ release specific code here */ # endif #endif Release __FreeBSD_version 2.0-RELEASE 119411 2.1-CURRENT 199501, 199503 2.0.5-RELEASE 199504 2.2-CURRENT before 2.1 199508 2.1.0-RELEASE 199511 2.2-CURRENT before 2.1.5 199512 2.1.5-RELEASE 199607 2.2-CURRENT before 2.1.6 199608 2.1.6-RELEASE 199612 2.1.7-RELEASE 199612 2.2-RELEASE 220000 2.2.1-RELEASE 220000 (no change) 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.1-RELEASE 220000 (no change) 2.2-STABLE after texinfo-3.9 221001 2.2-STABLE after top 221002 2.2.2-RELEASE 222000 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.2-RELEASE 222001 2.2.5-RELEASE 225000 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.5-RELEASE 225001 2.2-STABLE after ldconfig -R merge 225002 2.2.6-RELEASE 226000 2.2.7-RELEASE 227000 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.7-RELEASE 227001 2.2-STABLE after semctl(2) change 227002 2.2.8-RELEASE 228000 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.8-RELEASE 228001 3.0-CURRENT before mount(2) change 300000 3.0-CURRENT after mount(2) change 300001 3.0-CURRENT after semctl(2) change 300002 3.0-CURRENT after ioctl arg changes 300003 3.0-CURRENT after ELF conversion 300004 3.0-RELEASE 300005 3.0-CURRENT after 3.0-RELEASE 300006 3.0-STABLE after 3/4 branch 300007 3.1-RELEASE 310000 3.1-STABLE after 3.1-RELEASE 310001 3.1-STABLE after C++ constructor/destructor order change 310002 3.2-RELEASE 320000 3.2-STABLE 320001 3.2-STABLE after binary-incompatible IPFW and socket changes 320002 3.3-RELEASE 330000 3.3-STABLE 330001 3.3-STABLE after adding mkstemps() to libc 330002 3.4-RELEASE 340000 3.4-STABLE 340001 4.0-CURRENT after 3.4 branch 400000 4.0-CURRENT after change in dynamic linker handling 400001 4.0-CURRENT after C++ constructor/destructor order change 400002 4.0-CURRENT after functioning dladdr(3) 400003 4.0-CURRENT after __deregister_frame_info dynamic linker bug fix (also 4.0-CURRENT after EGCS 1.1.2 integration) 400004 4.0-CURRENT after suser(9) API change (also 4.0-CURRENT after newbus) 400005 4.0-CURRENT after cdevsw registration change 400006 4.0-CURRENT after the addition of so_cred for socket level credentials 400007 4.0-CURRENT after the addition of a poll syscall wrapper to libc_r 400008 4.0-CURRENT after the change of the kernel's dev_t type to struct specinfo pointer 400009 4.0-CURRENT after fixing a hole in jail(2) 400010 4.0-CURRENT after the sigset_t datatype change 400011 4.0-CURRENT after the cutover to the GCC 2.95.2 compiler 400012 4.0-CURRENT after adding pluggable linux-mode ioctl handlers 400013 4.0-CURRENT after importing OpenSSL 400014 4.0-CURRENT after the C++ ABI change in GCC 2.95.2 from -fvtable-thunks to -fno-vtable-thunks by default 400015 4.0-CURRENT after importing OpenSSH 400016 4.0-RELEASE 400017 4.0-STABLE after 4.0-RELEASE 400018 4.0-STABLE after merging libxpg4 code into libc. 400020 4.0-STABLE after upgrading Binutils to 2.10.0, ELF branding changes, and tcsh in the base system. 400021 4.1-RELEASE 410000 4.1-STABLE after 4.1-RELEASE 410001 4.1-STABLE after setproctitle() moved from libutil to libc. 410002 4.1.1-RELEASE 411000 4.1.1-STABLE after 4.1.1-RELEASE 411001 5.0-CURRENT 500000 5.0-CURRENT after adding addition ELF header fields, and changing our ELF binary branding method. 500001 5.0-CURRENT after kld metadata changes. 500002 5.0-CURRENT after buf/bio changes. 500003 5.0-CURRENT after binutils upgrade. 500004 5.0-CURRENT after merging libxpg4 code into libc and after TASKQ interface introduction. 500005 5.0-CURRENT after the addition of AGP interfaces. 500006 5.0-CURRENT after Perl upgrade to 5.6.0 500007 5.0-CURRENT after the update of KAME code to 2000/07 sources. 500008 5.0-CURRENT after ether_ifattach() and ether_ifdetach() changes. 500009 5.0-CURRENT after changing mtree defaults back to original variant, adding -L to follow symlinks. 500010 5.0-CURRENT after kqueue API changed. 500011 5.0-CURRENT after setproctitle() moved from libutil to libc. 500012 5.0-CURRENT after the first SMPng commit. 500013 Note that 2.2-STABLE sometimes identifies itself as “2.2.5-STABLE” after the 2.2.5-RELEASE. The pattern used to be year followed by the month, but we decided to change it to a more straightforward major/minor system starting from 2.2. This is because the parallel development on several branches made it infeasible to classify the releases simply by their real release dates. If you are making a port now, you do not have to worry about old -CURRENTs; they are listed here just for your reference. In the hundreds of ports that have been done, there have only been one or two cases where __FreeBSD__ should have been used. Just because an earlier port screwed up and used it in the wrong place does not mean you should do so too. Writing something after <filename>bsd.port.mk</filename> Do not write anything after the .include <bsd.port.mk> line. It usually can be avoided by including bsd.port.pre.mk somewhere in the middle of your Makefile and bsd.port.post.mk at the end. You need to include either the pre.mk/post.mk pair or bsd.port.mk only; do not mix these two. bsd.port.pre.mk only defines a few variables, which can be used in tests in the Makefile, bsd.port.post.mk defines the rest. Here are some important variables defined in bsd.port.pre.mk (this is not the complete list, please read bsd.port.mk for the complete list). Variable Description ARCH The architecture as returned by uname -m (e.g., i386) OPSYS The operating system type, as returned by uname -s (e.g., FreeBSD) OSREL The release version of the operating system (e.g., 2.1.5 or 2.2.7) OSVERSION The numeric version of the operating system, same as __FreeBSD_version. PORTOBJFORMAT The object format of the system (aout or elf) LOCALBASE The base of the “local” tree (e.g., /usr/local/) X11BASE The base of the “X11” tree (e.g., /usr/X11R6) PREFIX Where the port installs itself (see more on PREFIX). If you have to define the variables USE_IMAKE, USE_X_PREFIX, or MASTERDIR, do so before including bsd.port.pre.mk. Here are some examples of things you can write after bsd.port.pre.mk: # no need to compile lang/perl5 if perl5 is already in system .if ${OSVERSION} > 300003 BROKEN= perl is in system .endif # only one shlib version number for ELF .if ${PORTOBJFORMAT} == "elf" TCL_LIB_FILE= ${TCL_LIB}.${SHLIB_MAJOR} .else TCL_LIB_FILE= ${TCL_LIB}.${SHLIB_MAJOR}.${SHLIB_MINOR} .endif # software already makes link for ELF, but not for a.out post-install: .if ${PORTOBJFORMAT} == "aout" ${LN} -sf liblinpack.so.1.0 ${PREFIX}/lib/liblinpack.so .endif Install additional documentation If your software has some documentation other than the standard man and info pages that you think is useful for the user, install it under PREFIX/share/doc. This can be done, like the previous item, in the post-install target. Create a new directory for your port. The directory name should reflect what the port is. This usually means PORTNAME. However, if you think the user might want different versions of the port to be installed at the same time, you can use the whole PKGNAME. Make the installation dependent to the variable NOPORTDOCS so that users can disable it in /etc/make.conf, like this: post-install: .if !defined(NOPORTDOCS) ${MKDIR} ${PREFIX}/share/doc/xv ${INSTALL_MAN} ${WRKSRC}/docs/xvdocs.ps ${PREFIX}/share/doc/xv .endif Do not forget to add them to pkg/PLIST too! (Do not worry about NOPORTDOCS here; there is currently no way for the packages to read variables from /etc/make.conf.) You can also use the pkg/MESSAGE file to display messages upon installation. See the using pkg/MESSAGE section for details. MESSAGE does not need to be added to pkg/PLIST. <makevar>DIST_SUBDIR</makevar> Do not let your port clutter /usr/ports/distfiles. If your port requires a lot of files to be fetched, or contains a file that has a name that might conflict with other ports (e.g., Makefile), set DIST_SUBDIR to the name of the port (${PORTNAME} or ${PKGNAMEPREFIX}${PORTNAME} should work fine). This will change DISTDIR from the default /usr/ports/distfiles to /usr/ports/distfiles/DIST_SUBDIR, and in effect puts everything that is required for your port into that subdirectory. It will also look at the subdirectory with the same name on the backup master site at ftp.FreeBSD.org. (Setting DISTDIR explicitly in your Makefile will not accomplish this, so please use DIST_SUBDIR.) This does not affect the MASTER_SITES you define in your Makefile. Package information Do include package information, i.e. COMMENT, DESCR, and PLIST, in pkg. Note that these files are not used only for packaging anymore, and are mandatory now, even if NO_PACKAGE is set. RCS strings Do not put RCS strings in patches. CVS will mangle them when we put the files into the ports tree, and when we check them out again, they will come out different and the patch will fail. RCS strings are surrounded by dollar ($) signs, and typically start with $Id or $RCS. Recursive diff Using the recurse () option to diff to generate patches is fine, but please take a look at the resulting patches to make sure you do not have any unnecessary junk in there. In particular, diffs between two backup files, Makefiles when the port uses Imake or GNU configure, etc., are unnecessary and should be deleted. If you had to edit configure.in and run autoconf to regenerate configure, do not take the diffs of configure (it often grows to a few thousand lines!); define USE_AUTOCONF=yes and take the diffs of configure.in. Also, if you had to delete a file, then you can do it in the post-extract target rather than as part of the patch. Once you are happy with the resulting diff, please split it up into one source file per patch file. <makevar>PREFIX</makevar> Do try to make your port install relative to PREFIX. (The value of this variable will be set to LOCALBASE (default /usr/local), unless USE_X_PREFIX or USE_IMAKE is set, in which case it will be X11BASE (default /usr/X11R6).) Not hard-coding /usr/local or /usr/X11R6 anywhere in the source will make the port much more flexible and able to cater to the needs of other sites. For X ports that use imake, this is automatic; otherwise, this can often be done by simply replacing the occurrences of /usr/local (or /usr/X11R6 for X ports that do not use imake) in the various scripts/Makefiles in the port to read PREFIX, as this variable is automatically passed down to every stage of the build and install processes. Do not set USE_X_PREFIX unless your port truly requires it (i.e., it links against X libs or it needs to reference files in X11BASE). The variable PREFIX can be reassigned in your Makefile or in the user's environment. However, it is strongly discouraged for individual ports to set this variable explicitly in the Makefiles. Also, refer to programs/files from other ports with the variables mentioned above, not explicit pathnames. For instance, if your port requires a macro PAGER to be the full pathname of less, use the compiler flag: -DPAGER=\"${PREFIX}/bin/less\" or -DPAGER=\"${LOCALBASE}/bin/less\" if this is an X port, instead of -DPAGER=\"/usr/local/bin/less\". This way it will have a better chance of working if the system administrator has moved the whole `/usr/local' tree somewhere else. Subdirectories Try to let the port put things in the right subdirectories of PREFIX. Some ports lump everything and put it in the subdirectory with the port's name, which is incorrect. Also, many ports put everything except binaries, header files and manual pages in the a subdirectory of lib, which does not bode well with the BSD paradigm. Many of the files should be moved to one of the following: etc (setup/configuration files), libexec (executables started internally), sbin (executables for superusers/managers), info (documentation for info browser) or share (architecture independent files). See man &man.hier.7; for details, the rules governing /usr pretty much apply to /usr/local too. The exception are ports dealing with USENET “news”. They may use PREFIX/news as a destination for their files. Cleaning up empty directories Do make your ports clean up after themselves when they are deinstalled. This is usually accomplished by adding @dirrm lines for all directories that are specifically created by the port. You need to delete subdirectories before you can delete parent directories. : lib/X11/oneko/pixmaps/cat.xpm lib/X11/oneko/sounds/cat.au : @dirrm lib/X11/oneko/pixmaps @dirrm lib/X11/oneko/sounds @dirrm lib/X11/oneko However, sometimes @dirrm will give you errors because other ports also share the same subdirectory. You can call rmdir from @unexec to remove only empty directories without warning. @unexec rmdir %D/share/doc/gimp 2>/dev/null || true This will neither print any error messages nor cause pkg_delete to exit abnormally even if PREFIX/share/doc/gimp is not empty due to other ports installing some files in there. UIDs If your port requires a certain user to be on the installed system, let the pkg/INSTALL script call pw to create it automatically. Look at net/cvsup-mirror for an example. If your port must use the same user/group ID number when it is installed as a binary package as when it was compiled, then you must choose a free UID from 50 to 99 and register it below. Look at japanese/Wnn for an example. Make sure you do not use a UID already used by the system or other ports. This is the current list of UIDs between 50 and 99. majordom:*:54:54:Majordomo Pseudo User:/usr/local/majordomo:/nonexistent cyrus:*:60:60:the cyrus mail server:/nonexistent:/nonexistent gnats:*:61:1:GNATS database owner:/usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db:/bin/sh uucp:*:66:66:UUCP pseudo-user:/var/spool/uucppublic:/usr/libexec/uucp/uucico xten:*:67:67:X-10 daemon:/usr/local/xten:/nonexistent pop:*:68:6:Post Office Owner (popper):/nonexistent:/nonexistent wnn:*:69:7:Wnn:/nonexistent:/nonexistent ifmail:*:70:66:Ifmail user:/nonexistent:/nonexistent pgsql:*:70:70:PostgreSQL pseudo-user:/usr/local/pgsql:/bin/sh ircd:*:72:72:IRCd hybrid:/nonexistent:/nonexistent alias:*:81:81:QMail user:/var/qmail/alias:/nonexistent qmaill:*:83:81:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmaild:*:82:81:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmailq:*:85:82:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmails:*:87:82:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmailp:*:84:81:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmailr:*:86:82:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent msql:*:87:87:mSQL-2 pseudo-user:/var/db/msqldb:/bin/sh mysql:*:88:88:MySQL Daemon:/var/db/mysql:/sbin/nologin vpopmail:*:89:89::0:0:User &:/usr/local/vpopmail:/nonexistent Please include a notice when you submit a port (or an upgrade) that reserves a new UID or GID in this range. This allows us to keep the list of reserved IDs up to date. Do things rationally The Makefile should do things simply and reasonably. If you can make it a couple of lines shorter or more readable, then do so. Examples include using a make .if construct instead of a shell if construct, not redefining do-extract if you can redefine EXTRACT* instead, and using GNU_CONFIGURE instead of CONFIGURE_ARGS += --prefix=${PREFIX}. Respect <makevar>CFLAGS</makevar> The port should respect the CFLAGS variable. If it does not, please add NO_PACKAGE=ignores cflags to the Makefile. An example of a Makefile respecting the CFLAGS variable follows. Note the +=: CFLAGS += -Wall -Werror Here is an example which does not respect the CFLAGS variable: CFLAGS = -Wall -Werror The CFLAGS variable is defined on FreeBSD systems in /etc/make.conf. The first example appends additional flags to the CFLAGS variable, preserving any system-wide definitions. The second example clobbers anything previously defined. Configuration files If your port requires some configuration files in PREFIX/etc, do not just install them and list them in pkg/PLIST. That will cause pkg_delete to delete files carefully edited by the user and a new installation to wipe them out. Instead, install sample files with a suffix (filename.sample will work well) and print out a message pointing out that the user has to copy and edit the file before the software can be made to work. Portlint Do check your work with portlint before you submit or commit it. Feedback Do send applicable changes/patches to the original author/maintainer for inclusion in next release of the code. This will only make your job that much easier for the next release. <filename>README.html</filename> Do not include the README.html file. This file is not part of the cvs collection but is generated using the make readme command. Miscellanea The files pkg/DESCR, pkg/COMMENT, and pkg/PLIST should each be double-checked. If you are reviewing a port and feel they can be worded better, do so. Do not copy more copies of the GNU General Public License into our system, please. Please be careful to note any legal issues! Do not let us illegally distribute software! If you are stuck… Do look at existing examples and the bsd.port.mk file before asking us questions! ;-) Do ask us questions if you have any trouble! Do not just beat your head against a wall! :-) A Sample <filename>Makefile</filename> Here is a sample Makefile that you can use to create a new port. Make sure you remove all the extra comments (ones between brackets)! It is recommended that you follow this format (ordering of variables, empty lines between sections, etc.). This format is designed so that the most important information is easy to locate. We recommend that you use portlint to check the Makefile. [the header...just to make it easier for us to identify the ports.] # New ports collection makefile for: xdvi [the "version required" line is only needed when the PORTVERSION variable is not specific enough to describe the port.] # Version required: pl18 + japanization patches 18.1 and 18.2 [this is the date when the first version of this Makefile was created. Never change this when doing an update of the port.] # Date created: 26 May 1995 [this is the person who did the original port to FreeBSD, in particular, the person who wrote the first version of this Makefile. Remember, this should not be changed when upgrading the port later.] # Whom: Satoshi Asami <asami@FreeBSD.org> # # $FreeBSD$ [ ^^^^^^^^^ This will be automatically replaced with RCS ID string by CVS when it is committed to our repository. If upgrading a port, do not alter this line back to "$FreeBSD$". CVS deals with it automatically.] # [section to describe the port itself and the master site - PORTNAME and PORTVERSION are always first, followed by CATEGORIES, and then MASTER_SITES, which can be followed by MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR. PKGNAMEPREFIX and PKGNAMESUFFIX, if needed, will be after that. Then comes DISTNAME, EXTRACT_SUFX and/or DISTFILES, and then EXTRACT_ONLY, as necessary.] PORTNAME= xdvi PORTVERSION= 18.2 CATEGORIES= print [do not forget the trailing slash ("/")! if you are not using MASTER_SITE_* macros] MASTER_SITES= ${MASTER_SITE_XCONTRIB} MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR= applications PKGNAMEPREFIX= ja- DISTNAME= xdvi-pl18 [set this if the source is not in the standard ".tar.gz" form] EXTRACT_SUFX= .tar.Z [section for distributed patches -- can be empty] PATCH_SITES= ftp://ftp.sra.co.jp/pub/X11/japanese/ PATCHFILES= xdvi-18.patch1.gz xdvi-18.patch2.gz [maintainer; *mandatory*! This is the person (preferably with commit privileges) whom a user can contact for questions and bug reports - this person should be the porter or someone who can forward questions to the original porter reasonably promptly. If you really do not want to have your address here, set it to "ports@FreeBSD.org".] MAINTAINER= asami@FreeBSD.org [dependencies -- can be empty] RUN_DEPENDS= gs:${PORTSDIR}/print/ghostscript LIB_DEPENDS= Xpm.5:${PORTSDIR}/graphics/xpm [this section is for other standard bsd.port.mk variables that do not belong to any of the above] [If it asks questions during configure, build, install...] IS_INTERACTIVE= yes [If it extracts to a directory other than ${DISTNAME}...] WRKSRC= ${WRKDIR}/xdvi-new [If the distributed patches were not made relative to ${WRKSRC}, you may need to tweak this] PATCH_DIST_STRIP= -p1 [If it requires a "configure" script generated by GNU autoconf to be run] GNU_CONFIGURE= yes [If it requires GNU make, not /usr/bin/make, to build...] USE_GMAKE= yes [If it is an X application and requires "xmkmf -a" to be run...] USE_IMAKE= yes [et cetera.] [non-standard variables to be used in the rules below] MY_FAVORITE_RESPONSE= "yeah, right" [then the special rules, in the order they are called] pre-fetch: i go fetch something, yeah post-patch: i need to do something after patch, great pre-install: and then some more stuff before installing, wow [and then the epilogue] .include <bsd.port.mk> Automated package list creation First, make sure your port is almost complete, with only PLIST missing. Create an empty PLIST. &prompt.root; touch PLIST Next, create a new set of directories which your port can be installed, and install any dependencies. &prompt.root; mtree -U -f /etc/mtree/BSD.local.dist -d -e -p /var/tmp/port-name &prompt.root; make depends PREFIX=/var/tmp/port-name Store the directory structure in a new file. &prompt.root; (cd /var/tmp/port-name && find * -type d) > OLD-DIRS If your port honors PREFIX (which it should) you can then install the port and create the package list. &prompt.root; make install PREFIX=/var/tmp/port-name &prompt.root; (cd /var/tmp/port-name && find * \! -type d) > pkg/PLIST You must also add any newly created directories to the packing list. &prompt.root; (cd /var/tmp/port-name && find * -type d) | comm -13 OLD-DIRS - | sed -e 's#^#@dirrm #' >> pkg/PLIST Finally, you need to tidy up the packing list by hand. I lied when I said this was all automated. Manual pages should be listed in the port's Makefile under MANn, and not in the package list. User configuration files should be removed, or installed as filename.sample. The info/dir file should not be listed and appropriate install-info lines should be added as noted in the info files section. Any libraries installed by the port should be listed as specified in the shared libraries section. Package Names The following are the conventions you should follow in naming your packages. This is to have our package directory easy to scan, as there are already lots and lots of packages and users are going to turn away if they hurt their eyes! The package name should look like language_region-name-compiled.specifics-version.numbers. The package name is defined as ${PKGNAMEPREFIX}${PORTNAME}${PKGNAMESUFFIX}-${PORTVERSION}. Make sure to set the variables to conform to that format. FreeBSD strives to support the native language of its users. The language- part should be a two letter abbreviation of the natural language defined by ISO-639 if the port is specific to a certain language. Examples are ja for Japanese, ru for Russian, vi for Vietnamese, zh for Chinese, ko for Korean and de for German. If the port is specific to a certain region within the language area, add the two letter country code as well. Examples are en_US for US English and fr_CH for Swiss French. The language- part should be set in the PKGNAMEPREFIX variable. The name part should be all lowercase, except for a really large package (with lots of programs in it). Things like XFree86 (yes there really is a port of it, check it out) and ImageMagick fall into this category. Otherwise, convert the name (or at least the first letter) to lowercase. If the capital letters are important to the name (for example, with one-letter names like R or V) you may use capital letters at your discretion. There is a tradition of naming Perl 5 modules by prepending p5- and converting the double-colon separator to a hyphen; for example, the Data::Dumper module becomes p5-Data-Dumper. If the software in question has numbers, hyphens, or underscores in its name, you may include them as well (like kinput2). If the port can be built with different hardcoded defaults (usually part of the directory name in a family of ports), the -compiled.specifics part should state the compiled-in defaults (the hyphen is optional). Examples are papersize and font units. The compiled.specifics part should be set in the PKGNAMESUFFIX variable. The version string should follow a dash (-) and be a period-separated list of integers and single lowercase alphabetics. In particular, it is not pormissible to have another dash inside the version string. The only exception is the string pl (meaning `patchlevel'), which can be used only when there are no major and minor version numbers in the software. If the software version has strings like "alpha", "beta", or "pre", take the first letter and put it immediately after a period. If the version string continues after those names, the numbers should follow the single alphabet without an extra period between them. The idea is to make it easier to sort ports by looking at the version string. In particular, make sure version number components are always delimited by a period, and if the date is part of the string, use the yyyy.mm.dd format, not dd.mm.yyyy or the non-Y2K compliant yy.mm.dd format. Here are some (real) examples on how to convert the name as called by the software authors to a suitable package name: Distribution Name PKGNAMEPREFIX PORTNAME PKGNAMESUFFIX PORTVERSION Reason mule-2.2.2 (empty) mule (empty) 2.2.2 No changes required XFree86-3.3.6 (empty) XFree86 (empty) 3.3.6 No changes required EmiClock-1.0.2 (empty) emiclock (empty) 1.0.2 No uppercase names for single programs rdist-1.3alpha (empty) rdist (empty) 1.3.a No strings like alpha allowed es-0.9-beta1 (empty) es (empty) 0.9.b1 No strings like beta allowed v3.3beta021.src (empty) tiff (empty) 3.3 What the heck was that anyway? tvtwm (empty) tvtwm (empty) pl11 Version string always required piewm (empty) piewm (empty) 1.0 Version string always required xvgr-2.10pl1 (empty) xvgr (empty) 2.10.1 pl allowed only when no major/minor version numbers gawk-2.15.6 ja- gawk (empty) 2.15.6 Japanese language version psutils-1.13 (empty) psutils -letter 1.13 Papersize hardcoded at package build time pkfonts (empty) pkfonts 300 1.0 Package for 300dpi fonts If there is absolutely no trace of version information in the original source and it is unlikely that the original author will ever release another version, just set the version string to 1.0 (like the piewm example above). Otherwise, ask the original author or use the date string (yyyy.mm.dd) as the version. Categories As you already know, ports are classified in several categories. But for this to work, it is important that porters and users understand what each category is for and how we decide what to put in each category. Current list of categories First, this is the current list of port categories. Those marked with an asterisk (*) are virtual categories—those that do not have a corresponding subdirectory in the ports tree. For non-virtual categories, you will find a one-line description in the pkg/COMMENT file in that subdirectory (e.g., archivers/pkg/COMMENT). Category Description afterstep* Ports to support the AfterStep window manager. archivers Archiving tools. astro Astronomical ports. audio Sound support. benchmarks Benchmarking utilities. biology Biology-related software. cad Computer aided design tools. chinese Chinese language support. comms Communication software. Mostly software to talk to your serial port. converters Character code converters. databases Databases. deskutils Things that used to be on the desktop before computers were invented. devel Development utilities. Do not put libraries here just because they are libraries—unless they truly do not belong anywhere else, they should not be in this category. editors General editors. Specialized editors go in the section for those tools (e.g., a mathematical-formula editor will go in math). elisp* Emacs-lisp ports. emulators Emulators for other operating systems. Terminal emulators do not belong here—X-based ones should go to x11 and text-based ones to either comms or misc, depending on the exact functionality. french French language support. ftp FTP client and server utilities. If your port speaks both FTP and HTTP, put it in ftp with a secondary category of www. games Games. german German language support. gnome* Ports from the GNU Object Model Environment (GNOME) Project. graphics Graphics utilities. hebrew Hebrew language support. irc Internet Relay Chat utilities. ipv6* IPv6 related software. japanese Japanese language support. java Java language support. kde* Ports from the K Desktop Environment (KDE) Project. korean Korean language support. lang Programming languages. linux* Linux applications and support utilities. mail Mail software. math Numerical computation software and other utilities for mathematics. mbone MBone applications. misc Miscellaneous utilities—basically things that do not belong anywhere else. This is the only category that should not appear with any other non-virtual category. If you have misc with something else in your CATEGORIES line, that means you can safely delete misc and just put the port in that other subdirectory! net Miscellaneous networking software. news USENET news software. offix* Ports from the OffiX suite. palm Software support for the 3Com Palm(tm) series. perl5* Ports that require perl version 5 to run. plan9* Various programs from Plan9. print Printing software. Desktop publishing tools (previewers, etc.) belong here too. python* Software written in python. ruby* Software written in ruby. russian Russian language support. security Security utilities. shells Command line shells. sysutils System utilities. tcl76* Ports that use Tcl version 7.6 to run. tcl80* Ports that use Tcl version 8.0 to run. tcl81* Ports that use Tcl version 8.1 to run. tcl82* Ports that use Tcl version 8.2 to run. textproc Text processing utilities. It does not include desktop publishing tools, which go to print/. tk42* Ports that use Tk version 4.2 to run. tk80* Ports that use Tk version 8.0 to run. tk81* Ports that use Tk version 8.1 to run. tk82* Ports that use Tk version 8.2 to run. tkstep80* Ports that use TkSTEP version 8.0 to run. vietnamese Vietnamese language support. windowmaker* Ports to support the WindowMaker window manager www Software related to the World Wide Web. HTML language support belongs here too. x11 The X window system and friends. This category is only for software that directly supports the window system. Do not put regular X applications here. If your port is an X application, define USE_XLIB (implied by USE_IMAKE) and put it in the appropriate categories. Also, many of them go into other x11-* categories (see below). x11-clocks X11 clocks. x11-fm X11 file managers. x11-fonts X11 fonts and font utilities. x11-servers X11 servers. x11-toolkits X11 toolkits. x11-wm X11 window managers. zope* Zope support. Choosing the right category As many of the categories overlap, you often have to choose which of the categories should be the primary category of your port. There are several rules that govern this issue. Here is the list of priorities, in decreasing order of precedence. Language specific categories always come first. For example, if your port installs Japanese X11 fonts, then your CATEGORIES line would read japanese x11-fonts. Specific categories win over less-specific ones. For instance, an HTML editor should be listed as www editors, not the other way around. Also, you do not need to list net when the port belongs to any of irc, mail, mbone, news, security, or www. x11 is used as a secondary category only when the primary category is a natural language. In particular, you should not put x11 in the category line for X applications. Emacs modes should be placed in the same ports category as the application supported by the mode, not in editors. For example, an Emacs mode to edit source files of some programming language should go into lang. If your port truly does not belong anywhere else, put it in misc. If you are not sure about the category, please put a comment to that effect in your send-pr submission so we can discuss it before we import it. If you are a committer, send a note to the &a.ports; so we can discuss it first—too often new ports are imported to the wrong category only to be moved right away. Changes to this document and the ports system If you maintain a lot of ports, you should consider following the &a.ports;. Important changes to the way ports work will be announced there. You can always find more detailed information on the latest changes by looking at the bsd.port.mk CVS log. That is It, Folks! Boy, this sure was a long tutorial, wasn't it? Thanks for following us to here, really. Now that you know how to do a port, have at it and convert everything in the world into ports! That is the easiest way to start contributing to the FreeBSD Project! :-) diff --git a/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml b/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml index 5816b521c1..99a5884a48 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml @@ -1,2035 +1,2003 @@ %man; %authors; ]>
Committer Guide The FreeBSD Documentation Project - $FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml,v 1.35 2000/08/16 17:41:40 dannyboy Exp $ + $FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/committers-guide/article.sgml,v 1.36 2000/08/23 20:36:53 ben Exp $ 1999 2000 The FreeBSD Documentation Project This document provides information for the FreeBSD committer community. All new committers should read this document before they start, and existing committers are strongly encouraged to review it from time to time. Administrative Details Main Repository Host freefall.FreeBSD.org - - - International Crypto Repository Host - - internat.FreeBSD.org - - Login Methods &man.ssh.1; Main CVSROOT /home/ncvs - - International Crypto CVSROOT - /home/cvs.crypt - - Main CVS Repository Meisters &a.jdp; and &a.peter; as well as &a.asami; for ports/ - - - International Crypto CVS Repository Meister - - &a.markm; - - Mailing List cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org Noteworthy CVS Tags RELENG_3 (3.x-STABLE), RELENG_4 (4.x-STABLE), HEAD (-CURRENT) It is required that you use &man.ssh.1; or &man.telnet.1; with Kerberos 5 to connect to the repository hosts. These are generally more secure than plain &man.telnet.1; or &man.rlogin.1; since credential negotiation will always be encrypted. All traffic is encrypted by default with &man.ssh.1;. With utilities like &man.ssh-agent.1; and &man.scp.1; also available, &man.ssh.1; is also far more convenient. If you do not know anything about &man.ssh.1;, please see . CVS Operations It is assumed that you are already familiar with the basic operation of CVS. The CVS Repository Meisters (Peter Wemm and John Polstra) are the owners of the CVS repository and are responsible for any and all direct modification of it for the purposes of cleanup or fixing some grievous abuse of CVS by a committer. No one else should attempt to touch the repository directly. Should you cause some repository accident, say a bad cvs import or tag operation, do not attempt to fix it yourself! Mail or call John or Peter immediately and report the problem to one of them instead. The only ones allowed to directly fiddle the repository bits are the repomeisters. Satoshi Asami is also a repomeister for the ports/ portion of the - tree. Mark Murray is the repomeister for the International - Crypto Repository in South Africa. + tree. CVS operations are usually done by logging into freefall, making sure the CVSROOT environment variable is set to /home/ncvs, and then doing the appropriate check-out/check-in operations. If you wish to add something which is wholly new (like contrib-ified sources, etc), a script called easy-import is also provided for making the process easier. It automatically adds the new module entry, does the appropriate thing with cvs import, etc. – just run it without arguments and it will prompt you for everything it needs to know. Note that when you use CVS on freefall, you should set your umask to 2, as well as setting the CVSUMASK environmenet variable to 2. This ensures that any new files created by cvs add will have the correct permissions. If you add a file or directory and discover that the file in the repository has incorrect permissions (specifically, all files in the repository should be group writable by group ncvs), contact one of the repository meisters as described below. If you are familiar with remote CVS and consider yourself pretty studly with CVS in general, you can also do CVS operations directly from your own machine and local working sources. Just remember to set CVS_RSH to ssh so that you are using a relatively secure and reliable transport. If you have no idea what any of the above even means, on the other hand, then please stick with logging into freefall and applying your diffs with &man.patch.1;. If you need to use CVS add and delete operations in a manner that is effectively a mv operation, then a repository copy is in order rather than your CVS add and delete. In a repository copy, a CVS Meister will copy the file(s) to their new name and/or location and let you know when it is done. The purpose of a repository copy is to preserve file change history, or logs. We in the FreeBSD Project greatly value the change history CVS gives to the project. CVS reference information, tutorials, and FAQs can also be found at: http://www.cyclic.com/CVS/support &a.des; also supplied the following mini primer for CVS. Check out a module with the co or checkout command. &prompt.user; cvs checkout shazam This checks out a copy of the shazam module. If there is no shazam module in the modules file, looks for a top-level directory named shazam instead. Useful options: Don't create empty directories Check out a single level, no subdirectories Check out revision, branch or tag rev Check out the sources as they were on date data Practical FreeBSD examples: Check out the miscfs module, which corresponds to src/sys/miscfs: &prompt.user; cvs co miscfs You now have a directory named miscfs with subdirectories CVS, deadfs, devfs, and so on. One of these (linprocfs) is empty. Check out the same files, but with full path: &prompt.user; cvs co src/sys/miscfs You now have a directory named src, with subdirectories CVS and sys. src/sys has subdirectories CVS and miscfs, etc. Check out the same files, but prunes empty directories: &prompt.user; cvs co -P miscfs You now have a directory named miscfs with subdirectories CVS, deadfs, devfs... but note that there is no linprocfs subdirectory, because there are no files in it. Check out the directory miscfs, but none of the subdirectories: &prompt.root; cvs co -l miscfs You now have a directory named miscfs with just one subdirectory named CVS. Check out the miscfs module as it is in the 4.x branch: &prompt.user; cvs co -rRELENG_4 miscfs You can modify the sources and commit along this branch. Check out the miscfs module as it was in 3.4-RELEASE. &prompt.user; cvs co -rRELENG_3_4_0_RELEASE miscfs You will not be able to commit modifications, since RELENG_3_4_0_RELEASE is a point in time, not a branch. Check out the miscfs module as it was on Jan 15 2000. &prompt.user; cvs co -D'01/15/2000' miscfs You will not be able to commit modifications. Check out the miscfs module as it was one week agao. &prompt.user; cvs co -D'last week' miscfs You will not be able to commit modifications. Note that cvs stores metadata in subdirectories named CVS. Arguments to and are sticky, which means cvs will remember them later, e.g. when you do a cvs update. Check the status of checked-out files with the status command. &prompt.user; cvs status shazam This displays the status of the shazam file or of every file in the shazam directory. For every file, the status is given as one of: Up-to-date File is up-to-date and unmodified. Needs Patch File is unmodified, but there's a newer revision in the repository. Locally Modified File is up-to-date, but modified. Needs Merge File is modified, and there's a newer revision in the repository. File had conflicts on merge There were conflicts the last time this file was updated, and they haven't been resolved yet. You'll also see the local revision and date, the revision number of the newest applicable version (newest applicable because if you have a sticky date, tag or branch, it may not be the actual newest revision), and any sticky tags, dates or options. Once you've checked something out, update it with the update command. &prompt.user; cvs update shazam This updates the shazam file or the contents of the shazam directory to the latest version along the branch you checked out. If you checked out a point in time, does nothing unless the tags have moved in the repo or some other weird stuff is going on. Useful options, in addition to those listed above for checkout: Check out any additional missing directories. Update to head of main branch. More magic (see below). If you checked out a module with or , running cvs update with a different or argument or with will select a new branch, revision or date. The option clears all sticky tags, dates or revisions whereas and set new ones. Theoretically, specifying HEAD as argument to will give you the same result as , but that's just theory. The option is useful if: somebody has added subdirectories to the module you've checked out after you checked it out. you checked out with , and later change your mind and want to check out the subdirectories as well. you deleted some subdirectories and want to check them all back out. Watch the output of the cvs update with care. The letter in front of each file name indicates what was done with it: U The file was updated with no trouble. P The file was updated with no trouble (you'll only see this when working against a remote repo). M The file had been modified, and was merged with no conflicts. C The file had been modified, and was merged with conflicts. Merging is what happens if you check out a copy of some source code, modify it, then someone else commits a change, and you run cvs update. CVS notices that you've made local changes, and tries to merge your changes with the changes between the version you originally checked out and the one you updated to. If the changed are to separate portions of the file, it'll almost always work fine (though the result might not be syntactically or semantically correct). CVS will print an 'M' in front of every locally modified file even if there is no newer version in the repository, so cvs update is handy for getting a summary of what you've changed locally. If you get a C, then your changes conflicted with the changes in the repository (the changes were to the same lines, or neighboring lines, or you changed the local file so much that cvs can't figure out how to apply the repository's changes). You'll have to go through the file manually and resolve the conflicts; they'll be marked with rows of <, = and > signs. For every conflict, there'll be a marker line with seven < signs and the name of the file, followed by a chunk of what your local file contained, followed by a separator line with seven = signs, followed by the corresponding chunk in the repository version, followed by a marker line with seven > signs and the revision number you updated to. The option is slightly voodoo. It updates the local file to the specified revision as if you used , but it does not change the recorded revision number or branch of the local file. It's not really useful except when used twice, in which case it will merge the changes between the two specified versions into the working copy. For instance, say you commit a change to shazam/shazam.c in -CURRENT and later want to MFC it. The change you want to MFC was revision 1.15: Check out the -STABLE version of the shazam module: &prompt.user; cvs co -rRELENG_4 shazam Apply the changes between rev 1.14 and 1.15: &prompt.user; cvs update -j1.14 -j1.15 shazam/shazam.c You'll almost certainly get a conflict because - of the $Id: article.sgml,v 1.36 2000-08-23 20:36:53 ben Exp $ (or in FreeBSD's case, + of the $Id: article.sgml,v 1.37 2000-09-24 07:01:47 kris Exp $ (or in FreeBSD's case, $FreeBSD$) lines, so you'll have to edit the file to resolve the conflict (remove the marker lines and - the second $Id: article.sgml,v 1.36 2000-08-23 20:36:53 ben Exp $ line, leaving the original - $Id: article.sgml,v 1.36 2000-08-23 20:36:53 ben Exp $ line intact). + the second $Id: article.sgml,v 1.37 2000-09-24 07:01:47 kris Exp $ line, leaving the original + $Id: article.sgml,v 1.37 2000-09-24 07:01:47 kris Exp $ line intact). View differences between the local version and the repository version with the diff command. &prompt.user; cvs diff shazam shows you every modification you've made to the shazam file or module. Useful options: Uses the unified diff format. Shows missing or added files. You always want to use , since unified diffs are much easier to read than almost any other diff format (in some circumstances, context diffs may be better, but they're much bulkier). A unified diff consists of a series of hunks. Each hunk begins with a line that starts with two @ signs and specifies where in the file the differences are and how many lines they span. This is followed by a number of lines; some (preceded by a blank) are context; some (preceded by a - sign) are outtakes and some (preceded by a +) are additions. You can also diff against a different version than the one you checked out by specifying a version with or as in checkout or update, or even view the diffs between two arbitrary versions (with no regard for what you have locally) by specifying two versions with or . View log entries with the log command. &prompt.user; cvs log shazam See who did what with the annotate command. This command shows you each line of the specified file or files, along with which user most recently changed that line. &prompt.user; cvs annotate shazam Add new files with the add command. Create the file, cvs add it, then cvs commit it. Similarly, you can add new directories by creating them and then cvs adding them. Note that you don't need to commit directories. Remove obsolete files with the remove command. Remove the file, then cvs rm it, then cvs commit it. Commit with the commit or checkin command. Useful options: Force a commit of an unmodified file. Specify a commit message on the command line rather than invoking an editor. Use the option if you realize that you left out important information from the commit message. Good commit messages are important. They tell others why you did the changes you did, not just right here and now, but months or years from now when someone wonders why some seemingly illogical or inefficient piece of code snuck into your source file. It's also an invaluable aid to deciding which changes to MFC and which not to MFC. Don't waste space in the commit messages explaining what you did. That's what cvs diff is for. Instead, tell us why you did it. Avoid committing several unrelated changes in one go. It makes merging difficult, and also makes it harder to determine which change is the culprit if a bug crops up. Avoid committing style or whitespace fixes and functionality fixes in one go. It makes merging difficult, and also makes it harder to understand just what functional changes were made. Avoid committing changes to multiple files in one go with a generic, vague message. Instead, commit each file (or small groups of files) with tailored commit messages. Before committing, always: verify which branch you're committing to, using cvs status. review your diffs, using cvs diff Also, ALWAYS specify which files to commit explicitly on the command line, so you don't accidentally commit other files than the ones you intended - cvs commit with no arguments will commit every modification in your current working directory and every subdirectory. Additional tips and tricks: You can place commonly used options in your ~/.cvsrc, like this: cvs -z3 diff -Nu update -Pd checkout -P This example says: always use compression level 3 when talking to a remote server. This is a life-saver when working over a slow connection. always use the (show added or removed files) and (unified diff format) options to &man.diff.1;. always use the (prune empty directories) and (check out new directories) options when updating. always use the (prune empty directories) option when checking out. Use Eivind Eklund's cdiff script to view unidiffs. It's a wrapper for &man.less.1; that adds ANSI color codes to make hunk headers, outtakes and additions stand out; context and garbage are unmodified. It also expands tabs properly (tabs often look wrong in diffs because of the extra character in front of each line). http://people.freebsd.org/~eivind/cdiff Simply use instead of &man.more.1; or &man.less.1;: &prompt.user; cvs diff -Nu shazam | cdiff Alternatively some editors like &man.vim.1; (ports/editors/vim5) have color support and when used as a pager with color syntax highlighting switched on will highlight many types of file, including diffs, patches, and cvs/rcs logs. &prompt.user; echo "syn on" >> ~/.vimrc &prompt.user; cvs diff -Nu shazam | vim - &prompt.user; cvs log shazam | vim - CVS is old, arcane, crufty and buggy, and sometimes exhibits non-deterministic behavior which some claim as proof that it's actually merely the newtonian manifestation of a sentient transdimensional entity. It's not humanly possible to know its every quirk inside out, so don't be afraid to ask the resident AI (cvs@FreeBSD.org) for help when you screw up. Conventions and Traditions As a new committer there are a number of things you should do first. Add yourself to the Developers section of the Handbook and remove yourself from the Additional Contributors section. This is a relatively easy task, but remains a good first test of your CVS skills. Add an entry for yourself to www/en/news/newsflash.sgml. Look for the other entries that look like A new committer and follow the format. Some people also add an entry for themselves to ports/astro/xearth/files/freebsd.committers.markers. Introduce yourself to the other committers, otherwise no one will have any idea who you are or what you are working on. You do not have to write a comprehensive biography, just write a paragraph or two about who you are and what you plan to be working on as a committer in FreeBSD. Email this to cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org and you will be on your way! Log into hub.FreeBSD.org and create a /var/forward/user (where user is your username) file containing the e-mail address where you want mail addressed to yourusername@FreeBSD.org to be forwarded. This includes all of the commit messages as well as any other mail addressed to cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org. Really large mailboxes which have taken up permanent residence on hub often get accidently truncated without warning, so forward it or read it and you will not lose it. All new committers also have a mentor assigned to them for the first few months. Your mentor is more or less responsible for explaining anything which is confusing to you and is also responsible for your actions during this initial period. If you make a bogus commit, it is only going to embarrass your mentor and you should probably make it a policy to pass at least your first few commits by your mentor before committing it to the repository. All commits should go to -CURRENT first before being merged to -STABLE. No major new features or high-risk modifications should be made to the -STABLE branch. Developer Relations If you are working directly on your own code or on code which is already well established as your responsibility, then there is probably little need to check with other committers before jumping in with a commit. If you see a bug in an area of the system which is clearly orphaned (and there are a few such areas, to our shame), the same applies. If, however, you are about to modify something which is clearly being actively maintained by someone else (and it is only by watching the cvs-committers mailing list that you can really get a feel for just what is and is not) then consider sending the change to them instead, just as you would have before becoming a committer. For ports, you should contact the listed MAINTAINER in the Makefile. For other parts of the repository, if you are unsure who the active maintainer might be, it may help to scan the output of cvs log to see who has committed changes in the past. &a.fenner; has written a nice shell script that can help determine who the active maintainer might be. It lists each person who has committed to a given file along with the number of commits each person has made. It can be found on freefall at ~fenner/bin/whodid. If your queries go unanswered or the committer otherwise indicates a lack of proprietary interest in the area affected, go ahead and commit it. If you are unsure about a commit for any reason at all, have it reviewed by -hackers before committing. Better to have it flamed then and there rather than when it is part of the CVS repository. If you do happen to commit something which results in controversy erupting, you may also wish to consider backing the change out again until the matter is settled. Remember – with CVS we can always change it back. GNATS The FreeBSD Project utilizes GNATS for tracking bugs and change requests. Be sure that if you commit a fix or suggestion found in a GNATS PR, you use edit-pr pr-number on freefall to close it. It is also considered nice if you take time to close any PRs associated with your commits, if appropriate. Your can also make use of &man.send-pr.1; yourself for proposing any change which you feel should probably be made, pending a more extensive peer-review first. You can find out more about GNATS at: http://www.cs.utah.edu/csinfo/texinfo/gnats/gnats.html http://www.FreeBSD.org/support.html http://www.FreeBSD.org/send-pr.html &man.send-pr.1; You can run a local copy of GNATS, and then integrate the FreeBSD GNATS tree in to it using CVSup. Then you can run GNATS commands locally, or use other interfaces, such as tkgnats. This lets you query the PR database without needing to be connected to the Internet. Using a local GNATS tree If you are not already downloading the GNATS tree, add this line to your supfile, and re-sup. Note that since GNATS is not under CVS control it has no tag, so if you are adding it to your existing supfile it should appear before any tag= entry as these remain active once set. gnats release=current prefix=/usr This will place the FreeBSD GNATS tree in /usr/gnats. You can use a refuse file to control which categories to receive. For example, to only receive docs PRs, put this line in /usr/local/etc/cvsup/sup/refuse The precise path depends on the *default base setting in your supfile. . gnats/[a-ce-z]* The rest of these examples assume you have only supped the docs category. Adjust them as necessary, depending on the categories you are synching. Install the GNATS port from ports/databases/gnats. This will place the various GNATS directories under $PREFIX/share/gnats. Symlink the GNATS directories you are supping under the version of GNATS you have installed. &prompt.root; cd /usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db &prompt.root; ln -s /usr/gnats/docs Repeat as necessary, depending on how many GNATS categories you are synching. Update the GNATS categories file with these cageories. The file is $PREFIX/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/categories. # This category is mandatory pending:Category for faulty PRs:gnats-admin: # # FreeBSD categories # docs:Documentation Bug:nik: Run $PREFIX/libexec/gnats/gen-index to recreate the GNATS index. The output has to be redirected to $PREFIX/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/index. You can do this periodically from &man.cron.8;, or run &man.cvsup.1; from a shell script that does this as well. &prompt.root; /usr/local/libexec/gnats/gen-index \ > /usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db/gnats-adm/index Test the configuration by querying the PR database. This command shows open docs PRs. &prompt.root; query-pr -c docs -s open Other interfaces, like ports/databases/tkgnats should also work nicely. Pick a PR and close it. This procedure only works to allow you to view and query the PRs locally. To edit or close them you will still have to log in to freefall and do it from there. Who's Who Besides Peter Wemm and John Polstra, the repository meisters, there are other FreeBSD project members whom you will probably get to know in your role as a committer. Briefly, and by no means all-inclusively, these are: &a.asami; Satoshi is the Ports Wraith, meaning that he has ultimate authority over any modifications to the ports collection or the ports skeleton makefiles. He is also the one responsible for administering ports freezes before the releases. &a.bde; Bruce is the Obersturmbahnfuhrer of the Style Police. When you do a commit that could have been done better, Bruce will be there to tell you. Be thankful that someone is. &a.dg; David is our principal architect and overseer of the VM system. If you have a VM system change in mind, coordinate it with David. Should you become locked in a bitter, intractable dispute with some other committer over a proposed change (which does not happen very often, thankfully) then an appeal to David to put on his P.A. hat and make a final decision might be necessary. &a.jkh; Jordan is the release engineer. He is responsible for setting release deadlines and controlling the release process. During code freezes, he also has final authority on all changes to the system for whichever branch is pending release status. If there is something you want merged from -CURRENT to -STABLE (whatever values those may have at any given time), he is also the one to talk to about it. - - &a.markm; - - Mark is the CVS repository meister for the - international crypto repository kept on - internat.FreeBSD.org in South Africa. - - Mark also oversees most of the crypto code; if you have - any crypto updates, please ask Mark first. - - - &a.steve; Steve is the unofficial maintainer of src/bin. If you have something significant you'd like to do there, you should probably coordinate it with Steve first. He is also a Problem Report-meister, along with &a.phk;. &a.brian; Official maintainer of /usr/bin/ppp and LPD. &a.wollman; If you need advice on obscure network internals or aren't sure of some potential change to the networking subsystem you have in mind, Garrett is someone to talk to. SSH Quick-Start Guide If you are using FreeBSD 4.0 or later, OpenSSH is included in the base system. If you are using an earlier release, update and install one of the SSH ports. In general, you will probably want to get OpenSSH from the port in /usr/ports/security/openssh. You may also wish to check out the original ssh1 in /usr/ports/security/ssh, but make certain you pay attention to its license. Note that both of these ports cannot be installed at the same time. If you do not wish to to type your password in every time you use &man.ssh.1;, and you use RSA keys to authenticate, &man.ssh-agent.1; is there for your convenience. If you want to use &man.ssh-agent.1;, make sure that you run it before running other applications. X users, for example, usually do this from their .xsession or .xinitrc file. See &man.ssh-agent.1; for details. Generate a key pair using &man.ssh-keygen.1;. The key pair will wind up in the $HOME/.ssh directory. Send your public key ($HOME/.ssh/identity.pub) to the person setting you up as a committer so it can be put into your authorized_keys file in your home directory on freefall (i.e. $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys). Now you should be able to use &man.ssh-add.1; for authentication once per session. This will prompt you for your private key's pass phrase, and then store it in your authentication agent (&man.ssh-agent.1;). If you no longer wish to have your key stored in the agent, issuing ssh-add -d will remove it. Test by doing something such as ssh freefall.FreeBSD.org ls /usr. For more information, see /usr/ports/security/openssh, &man.ssh.1;, &man.ssh-add.1;, &man.ssh-agent.1;, &man.ssh-keygen.1;, and &man.scp.1;. The FreeBSD Committers' Big List of Rules Respect other committers. Discuss any significant change before committing. Respect existing maintainers if listed in the (MAINTAINER field in Makefile or in the MAINTAINER file in the top-level directory). Never touch the repository directly. Ask a Repomeister. Any disputed change must be backed out pending resolution of the dispute if requested by a maintainer or the Principal Architect. Security related changes may override a maintainer's wishes at the Security Officer's discretion. Changes go to -CURRENT before -STABLE unless specifically permitted by the release engineer or unless they're not applicable to -CURRENT. Any non-trivial or non-urgent change which is applicable should also be allowed to sit in -CURRENT for at least 3 days before merging so that it can be given sufficient testing. The release engineer has the same authority over the -STABLE branch as outlined for the Principal Architect in rule #5. Don't fight in public with other committers; it looks bad. If you must strongly disagree about something, do so only in private. Respect all code freezes and read the committers mailing list on a timely basis so you know when a code freeze is in effect. When in doubt on any procedure, ask first! Test your changes before committing them. As noted, breaking some of these rules can be grounds for suspension or, upon repeated offense, permanent removal of commit privileges. Three or more members of core, or the Principal Architect and another member of core acting in unison, have the power to temporarily suspend commit privileges until -core as a whole has the chance to review the issue. In case of an emergency (a committer doing damage to the repository), a temporary suspension may also be done by the repository meisters or any other member of core who may happen to be awake at the time. Only core as a whole has the authority to suspend commit privileges for any significant length of time or to remove them permanently, the latter generally only being done after consultation with committers. This rule does not exist to set core up as a bunch of cruel dictators who can dispose of committers as casually as empty soda cans, but to give the project a kind of safety fuse. If someone is seriously out of control, it's important to be able to deal with this immediately rather than be paralyzed by debate. In all cases, a committer whose privileges are suspended or revoked is entitled to a hearing, the total duration of the suspension being determined at that time. A committer whose privileges are suspended may also request a review of the decision after 30 days and every 30 days thereafter (unless the total suspension period is less than 30 days). A committer whose privileges have been revoked entirely may request a review after a period of 6 months have elapsed. This review policy is strictly informal and, in all cases, core reserves the right to either act on or disregard requests for review if they feel their original decision to be the right one. In all other aspects of project operation, core is a subset of committers and is bound by the same rules. Just because someone is in core doesn't mean that they have special dispensation to step outside of any of the lines painted here; core's special powers only kick in when it acts as a group, not on an individual basis. As individuals, we are all committers first and core second. Details Respect other committers. This means that you need to treat other committers as the peer-group developers that they are. Despite our occasional attempts to prove the contrary, one doesn't get into committers by being stupid and nothing rankles more than being treated that way by one of your peers. Whether we always feel respect for one another or not (and everyone has off days), we still have to treat other committers with respect at all times or the whole team structure rapidly breaks down. Being able to work together long term is this project's greatest asset, one far more important than any set of changes to the code, and turning arguments about code into issues that affect our long-term ability to work harmoniously together is just not worth the trade-off by any conceivable stretch of the imagination. To comply with this rule, don't send email when you're angry or otherwise behave in a manner which is likely to strike others as needlessly confrontational. First calm down, then think about how to communicate in the most effective fashion for convincing the other person(s) that your side of the argument is correct, don't just blow off some steam so you can feel better in the short term at the cost of a long-term flame war. Not only is this very bad energy economics, but repeated displays of public aggression which impair our ability to work well together will be dealt with severely by the project leadership and may result in suspension or termination of your commit privileges. That's never an option which the project's leadership enjoys in the slightest, but unity comes first. No amount of code or good advice is worth trading that away. Discuss any significant change before committing. The CVS repository is not where changes should be initially submitted for correctness or argued over, that should happen first in the mailing lists and then committed only once something resembling consensus has been reached. This doesn't mean that you have to ask permission before correcting every obvious syntax error or man page misspelling, simply that you should try to develop a feel for when a proposed change isn't quite such a no-brainer and requires some feedback first. People really don't mind sweeping changes if the result is something clearly better than what they had before, they just don't like being surprised by those changes. The very best way of making sure that you're on the right track is to have your code reviewed by one or more other committers. When in doubt, ask for review! Respect existing maintainers if listed. Many parts of FreeBSD aren't owned in the sense that any specific individual will jump up and yell if you commit a change to their area, but it still pays to check first. One convention we use is to put a maintainer line in the Makefile for any package or subtree which is being actively maintained by one or more people; see http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/policies.html for documentation on this. Where sections of code have several maintainers, commits to affected areas by one maintainer need to be reviewed by at least one other maintainer. In cases where the maintainer-ship of something isn't clear, you can also look at the CVS logs for the file(s) in question and see if someone has been working recently or predominantly in that area. Other areas of FreeBSD fall under the control of someone who manages an overall category of FreeBSD evolution, such as internationalization or networking. See http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/staff-who.html for more information on this. Never touch the repository directly. Ask a Repomeister. This is pretty clear - you're not allowed to make direct modifications to the CVS repository, period. In case of difficulty, ask one of the repository meisters by sending mail to cvs@FreeBSD.org and simply wait for them to fix the problem and get back to you. Do not attempt to fix the problem yourself! If you're thinking about putting down a tag or doing a new import of code on a vendor branch, you might also find it useful to ask for advice first. A lot of people get this wrong the first few times and the consequences are expensive in terms of files touched and angry CVSup/CTM folks who are suddenly getting a lot of changes sent over unnecessarily. Any disputed change must be backed out pending resolution of the dispute if requested by a maintainer or the Principal Architect. Security related changes may override a maintainer's wishes at the Security Officer's discretion. This may be hard to swallow in times of conflict (when each side is convinced that they're in the right, of course) but CVS makes it unnecessary to have an ongoing dispute raging when it's far easier to simply reverse the disputed change, get everyone calmed down again and then try and figure out how best to proceed. If the change turns out to be the best thing after all, it can be easily brought back. If it turns out not to be, then the users didn't have to live with the bogus change in the tree while everyone was busily debating its merits. People very very rarely call for back-outs in the repository since discussion generally exposes bad or controversial changes before the commit even happens, but on such rare occasions the back-out should be done without argument so that we can get immediately on to the topic of figuring out whether it was bogus or not. Changes go to -CURRENT before -STABLE unless specifically permitted by the release engineer or unless they're not applicable to -CURRENT. Any non-trivial or non-urgent change which is applicable should also be allowed to sit in -CURRENT for at least 3 days before merging so that it can be given sufficient testing. The release engineer has the same authority over the -STABLE branch as outlined in rule #5. This is another don't argue about it issue since it's the release engineer who is ultimately responsible (and gets beaten up) if a change turns out to be bad. Please respect this and give the release engineer your full cooperation when it comes to the -STABLE branch. The management of -STABLE may frequently seem to be overly conservative to the casual observer, but also bear in mind the fact that conservatism is supposed to be the hallmark of -STABLE and different rules apply there than in -CURRENT. There's also really no point in having -CURRENT be a testing ground if changes are merged over to -STABLE immediately. Changes need a chance to be tested by the -CURRENT developers, so allow some time to elapse before merging unless the -STABLE fix is critical, time sensitive or so obvious as to make further testing unnecessary (spelling fixes to manpages, obvious bug/typo fixes, etc.) In other words, apply common sense. Don't fight in public with other committers; it looks bad. If you must strongly disagree about something, do so only in private. This project has a public image to uphold and that image is very important to all of us, especially if we are to continue to attract new members. There will be occasions when, despite everyone's very best attempts at self-control, tempers are lost and angry words are exchanged, and the best we can do is try and minimize the effects of this until everyone has cooled back down. That means that you should not air your angry words in public and you should not forward private correspondence to public mailing lists or aliases. What people say one-to-one is often much less sugar-coated than what they would say in public, and such communications therefore have no place there - they only serve to inflame an already bad situation. If the person sending you a flame-o-gram at least had the grace to send it privately, then have the grace to keep it private yourself. If you feel you are being unfairly treated by another developer, and it is causing you anguish, bring the matter up with core rather than taking it public. We will do our best to play peace makers and get things back to sanity. In cases where the dispute involves a change to the codebase and the participants do not appear to be reaching an amicable agreement, core may appoint a mutually-agreeable 3rd party to resolve the dispute. All parties involved must then agree to be bound by the decision reached by this 3rd party. Respect all code freezes and read the committers mailing list on a timely basis so you know when they are. Committing changes during a code freeze is a really big mistake and committers are expected to keep up-to-date on what's going on before jumping in after a long absence and committing 10 megabytes worth of accumulated stuff. People who abuse this on a regular basis will have their commit privileges suspended until they get back from the FreeBSD Happy Reeducation Camp we run in Greenland. When in doubt on any procedure, ask first! Many mistakes are made because someone is in a hurry and just assumes they know the right way of doing something. If you have not done it before, chances are good that you do not actually know the way we do things and really need to ask first or you are going to completely embarrass yourself in public. There's no shame in asking how in the heck do I do this? We already know you are an intelligent person; otherwise, you would not be a committer. Test your changes before committing them. This may sound obvious, but if it really were so obvious then we probably wouldn't see so many cases of people clearly not doing this. If your changes are to the kernel, make sure you can still compile both GENERIC and LINT. If your changes are anywhere else, make sure you can still make world. If your changes are to a branch, make sure your testing occurs with a machine which is running that code. If you have a change which also may break another architecture, be sure and test on all supported architectures. Currently, this is only the x86 and the alpha so it's pretty easy to do. If you need to test on the AXP, your account on beast.FreeBSD.org will let you compile and test alpha binaries/kernels/etc. As other architectures are added to the FreeBSD supported platforms list, the appropriate shared testing resources will be made available. Other Suggestions When committing documentation changes, use a spell checker before committing. :) For all SGML docs, you should also verify that your formatting directives are correct by running make lint. For all on-line manual pages, run manck (from ports) over the man page to verify the all of the cross references and file references are correct and that the man page has all of the appropriate MLINKs installed. Do not mix style fixes with new functionality. A style fix is any change which does not modify the functionality of the code. Mixing the changes obfuscates the functionality change when using cvs diff, which can hide any new bugs. Do not include whitespace changes with content changes in commits to doc/ or www/. The extra clutter in the diffs makes the translators' job much more difficult. Instead, make any style or whitespace changes in seperate commits that are clearly labeled as such in the commit message. Ports Specific FAQ Importing a New Port How do I import a new port? First, please read the section about repository copy. The easiest way to import a new port is to use the addport script on freefall. It will import a port from the directory you specify, determining the category automatically from the port Makefile. It will also add an entry to the CVSROOT/modules file and the port's category Makefile. It was written by &a.mharo; and &a.will;, but Will is the current maintainer so please send questions/patches about addport to him. Any other things I need to know when I import a new port? Check the port, preferably to make sure it compiles and packages correctly. This is the recommended sequence: &prompt.root; make install &prompt.root; make package &prompt.root; make deinstall &prompt.root; pkg_add package you built above &prompt.root; make deinstall &prompt.root; make reinstall &prompt.root; make package The Porters Handbook contains more detailed instructions. Use &man.portlint.1; to check the syntax of the port. You don't necessarily have to eliminate all warnings but make sure you have fixed the simple ones. If the port came from a submitter who has not contributed to the project before, add that person's name to the Handbook's Additional Contributors section. Close the PR if the port came in as a PR. To close a PR, just do edit-pr PR# on freefall and change the state from open to closed. You will be asked to enter a log message and then you are done. Repository Copies When do we need a repository copy? When you want to import a port that is related to any port that is already in the tree in a separate directory, please send mail to the ports manager asking about it. Here related means it is a different version or a slightly modified version. Examples are print/ghostscript* (different versions) and x11-wm/windowmaker* (English-only and internationalized version). Another example is when a port is moved from one subdirectory to another, or when you want to change the name of a directory because the author(s) renamed their software even though it is a descendant of a port already in a tree. When do we not need a repository copy? When there is no history to preserve. If a port is imported into a wrong category and is moved immediately, it suffices to simply cvs remove the old one and cvs import the new one. What do I need to do? Send mail to the ports manager, who will do a copy from the old location/name to the new location/name. You will then get a notice, at which point you are expected to perform the following: cvs remove the old port (if necessary) Adjust the parent (category) Makefile Update CVSROOT/modules If other ports depend on the updated port, change their Makefiles' dependency lines If the port changed categories, modify the CATEGORIES line of the port's Makefile accordingly Ports Freeze What is a ports freeze? Before a release, it is necessary to restrict commits to the ports tree for a short period of time while the packages and the release itself are being built. This is to ensure consistency among the various parts of the release, and is called the ports freeze. How long is a ports freeze? Usually two to three days. What does it mean to me? During the ports freeze, you are not allowed to commit anything to the tree without explicit approval from the ports manager. Explicit approval here means either of the following: You asked the ports manager and got a reply saying, Go ahead and commit it. The ports manager sent a mail to you or the mailing lists during the ports freeze pointing out that the port is broken and has to be fixed. Note that you do not have implicit permission to fix a port during the freeze just because it is broken. How do I know when the ports freeze starts? The ports manager will send out warning messages to the freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org and cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org mailing lists announcing the start of the impending release, usually two or three weeks in advance. The exact starting time will not be determined until a few days before the actual release. This is because the ports freeze has to be synchronized with the release, and it is usually not known until then when exactly the release will be rolled. When the freeze starts, there will be another announcement to the cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org list, of course. How do I know when the ports freeze ends? A few hours after the release, the ports manager will send out a mail to the freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org and cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org mailing lists announcing the end of the ports freeze. Note that the release being cut does not automatically end the freeze. We have to make sure there will not be any last minute snafus that result in an immediate re-rolling of the release. Miscellaneous Questions How do I know if my port is building correctly or not? First, go check http://bento.FreeBSD.org/~asami/errorlogs/. There you will find error logs from the latest package building runs on 3-stable and 4-current. However, just because the port doesn't show up there doesn't mean it's building correctly. (One of the dependencies may have failed, for instance.) Here are the relevant directories on bento, so feel free to dig around. /a/asami/portbuild/3/errors error logs from latest 3-stable run /logs all logs from latest 3-stable run /packages packages from latest 3-stable run /bak/errors error logs from last complete 3-stable run /bak/logs all logs from last complete 3-stable run /bak/packages packages from last complete 3-stable run /4/errors error logs from latest 4-current run /logs all logs from latest 4-current run /packages packages from latest 4-current run /bak/errors error logs from last complete 4-current run /bak/logs all logs from last complete 4-current run /bak/packages packages from last complete 4-current run Basically, if the port shows up in packages, or it is in logs but not in errors, it built fine. (The errors directories are what you get from the web page.) I added a new port. Do I need to add it to the INDEX? No. The ports manager will regenerate the INDEX and commit it every few days. Are there any other files I'm not allowed to touch? Any file directly under ports/, or any file under a subdirectory that starts with an uppercase letter (Mk/, Tools/, etc.). In particular, the ports manager is very protective of ports/Mk/bsd.port*.mk so don't commit changes to those files unless you want to face his wra(i)th. Miscellaneous Questions Why are trivial or cosmetic changes to files on a vendor branch a bad idea? The RCS file format is quite braindead and certain operations to achieve things for CVS are hideously expensive for the repository. Making changes to files on a vendor branch, thereby pulling the file off that branch, is one example of this. Suppose you have a file which was first imported on a vendor branch, and was then re-imported three times (still on the vendor branch) as the vendor makes updates to the file. 1.1.1.1 vendor import 1.1.1.2 vendor import, +1000, -500 lines 1.1.1.3 vendor import, +2000, -500 lines 1.1.1.4 vendor import, +1000, -1000 lines Now suppose that one of the FreeBSD committers makes a one line change to this file, causing it to go to version 1.2. This causes it to leave the branch, resulting in 4,001 lines being added to the file's history, and 2,001 lines being deleted. This is because the 1.2 delta is stored relative to 1.1.1.1, not 1.1.1.4, and so the entire vendor history is duplicated in the 1.2 delta. Now, repeat this for 2000 files in a large directory, it adds up a lot. This is why we have such hands off policies for src/contrib and other things that track the vendor releases. This is why typo fixes in man pages and spelling corrections are so strongly discouraged for vendor code. How do I add a new file to a CVS branch? To add a file onto a branch, simply checkout or update to the branch you want to add to and then add the file using cvs add as you normally would. For example, if you wanted to MFC the file src/sys/alpha/include/smp.h from HEAD to RELENG_4 and it does not exist in RELENG_4 yet, you would use the following steps: MFC'ing a New File &prompt.user; cd sys/alpha/include &prompt.user; cvs update -rRELENG_4 cvs update: Updating . U clockvar.h U console.h ... &prompt.user; cvs update -kk -Ap smp.h > smp.h =================================================================== Checking out smp.h RCS: /usr/cvs/src/sys/alpha/include/smp.h,v VERS: 1.1 *************** &prompt.user; cvs add smp.h cvs add: scheduling file `smp.h' for addition on branch `RELENG_4' cvs add: use 'cvs commit' to add this file permanently &prompt.user; cvs commit
diff --git a/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml b/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml index ae5bc50a1e..960ecfc0c5 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml @@ -1,9546 +1,9495 @@ %man; %authors; ]> Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X, 3.X and 4.X The FreeBSD Documentation Project - $FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml,v 1.94 2000/09/22 18:40:00 marko Exp $ + $FreeBSD: doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq/book.sgml,v 1.95 2000/09/22 23:41:25 ben Exp $ This is the FAQ for FreeBSD versions 2.X, 3.X, and 4.X. All entries are assumed to be relevant to FreeBSD 2.0.5 and later, unless otherwise noted. Any entries with a <XXX> are under construction. If you are interested in helping with this project, send email to the FreeBSD documentation project mailing list freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org. The latest version of this document is always available from the FreeBSD World Wide Web server. It may also be downloaded as one large HTML file with HTTP or as plain text, postscript, or PDF from the FreeBSD FTP server. You may also want to Search the FAQ. Preface Welcome to the FreeBSD 2.X-4.X FAQ! As is usual with Usenet FAQs, this document aims to cover the most frequently asked questions concerning the FreeBSD operating system (and of course answer them!). Although originally intended to reduce bandwidth and avoid the same old questions being asked over and over again, FAQs have become recognized as valuable information resources. Every effort has been made to make this FAQ as informative as possible; if you have any suggestions as to how it may be improved, please feel free to mail them to the &a.faq;. What is FreeBSD? Briefly, FreeBSD is a UN*X-like operating system for the i386 and Alpha/AXP platforms based on U.C. Berkeley's 4.4BSD-lite release. It is also based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's Net/2 to the i386, known as 386BSD, though very little of the 386BSD code remains. A fuller description of what FreeBSD is and how it can work for you may be found on the FreeBSD home page. FreeBSD is used by companies, Internet Service Providers, researchers, computer professionals, students and home users all over the world in their work, education and recreation. See some of them in the FreeBSD Gallery. For more detailed information on FreeBSD, please see the FreeBSD Handbook. What are the goals of FreeBSD? The goals of the FreeBSD Project are to provide software that may be used for any purpose and without strings attached. Many of us have a significant investment in the code (and project) and would certainly not mind a little financial compensation now and then, but we're definitely not prepared to insist on it. We believe that our first and foremost mission is to provide code to any and all comers, and for whatever purpose, so that the code gets the widest possible use and provides the widest possible benefit. This is, we believe, one of the most fundamental goals of Free Software and one that we enthusiastically support. That code in our source tree which falls under the GNU General Public License (GPL) or GNU Library General Public License (LGPL) comes with slightly more strings attached, though at least on the side of enforced access rather than the usual opposite. Due to the additional complexities that can evolve in the commercial use of GPL software, we do, however, endeavor to replace such software with submissions under the more relaxed BSD copyright whenever possible. Why is it called FreeBSD? It may be used free of charge, even by commercial users. Full source for the operating system is freely available, and the minimum possible restrictions have been placed upon its use, distribution and incorporation into other work (commercial or non-commercial). Anyone who has an improvement and/or bug fix is free to submit their code and have it added to the source tree (subject to one or two obvious provisos). For those of our readers whose first language is not English, it may be worth pointing out that the word free is being used in two ways here, one meaning at no cost, the other meaning you can do whatever you like. Apart from one or two things you cannot do with the FreeBSD code, for example pretending you wrote it, you really can do whatever you like with it. What is the latest version of FreeBSD? Version 4.1 is the latest stable version; it was released in July, 2000. This is also the latest release version. Briefly explained, -STABLE is aimed at the ISP or other corporate user who wants stability and a low change count over the wizzy new features of the latest -CURRENT snapshot. Releases can come from either branch, but you should only use -CURRENT if you're sure that you're prepared for its increased volatility (relative to -STABLE, that is). Releases are only made every few months. While many people stay more up-to-date with the FreeBSD sources (see the questions on FreeBSD-CURRENT and FreeBSD-STABLE) than that, doing so is more of a commitment, as the sources are a moving target. What is FreeBSD-CURRENT? FreeBSD-CURRENT is the development version of the operating system, which will in due course become 5.0-RELEASE. As such, it is really only of interest to developers working on the system and die-hard hobbyists. See the relevant section in the handbook for details on running -CURRENT. If you are not familiar with the operating system or are not capable of identifying the difference between a real problem and a temporary problem, you should not use FreeBSD-CURRENT. This branch sometimes evolves quite quickly and can be un-buildable for a number of days at a time. People that use FreeBSD-CURRENT are expected to be able to analyze any problems and only report them if they are deemed to be mistakes rather than glitches. Questions such as make world produces some error about groups on the -CURRENT mailing list are sometimes treated with contempt. Every day, snapshot releases are made based on the current state of the -CURRENT and -STABLE branches. Nowadays, distributions of the occasional snapshot are now being made available. The goals behind each snapshot release are: To test the latest version of the installation software. To give people who would like to run -CURRENT or -STABLE but who don't have the time and/or bandwidth to follow it on a day-to-day basis an easy way of bootstrapping it onto their systems. To preserve a fixed reference point for the code in question, just in case we break something really badly later. (Although CVS normally prevents anything horrible like this happening :) To ensure that any new features in need of testing have the greatest possible number of potential testers. No claims are made that any -CURRENT snapshot can be considered production quality for any purpose. If you want to run a stable and fully tested system, you will have to stick to full releases, or use the -STABLE snaphosts. Snapshot releases are directly available from ftp://current.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ for 5.0-CURRENT and releng4.FreeBSD.org for 4-STABLE snapshots. 3-STABLE snapshots are not being produced at the time of this writing (May 2000). Snapshots are generated, on the average, once a day for all actively developed branches. What is the FreeBSD-STABLE concept? Back when FreeBSD 2.0.5 was released, we decided to branch FreeBSD development into two parts. One branch was named -STABLE, with the intention that only well-tested bug fixes and small incremental enhancements would be made to it (for Internet Service Providers and other commercial enterprises for whom sudden shifts or experimental features are quite undesirable). The other branch was -CURRENT, which essentially has been one unbroken line leading towards 5.0-RELEASE (and beyond) since 2.0 was released. If a little ASCII art would help, this is how it looks: 2.0 | | | [2.1-STABLE] *BRANCH* 2.0.5 -> 2.1 -> 2.1.5 -> 2.1.6 -> 2.1.7.1 [2.1-STABLE ends] | (Mar 1997) | | | [2.2-STABLE] *BRANCH* 2.2.1 -> 2.2.2-RELEASE -> 2.2.5 -> 2.2.6 -> 2.2.7 -> 2.2.8 [end] | (Mar 1997) (Oct 97) (Apr 98) (Jul 98) (Dec 98) | | 3.0-SNAPs (started Q1 1997) | | 3.0-RELEASE (Oct 1998) | | [3.0-STABLE] *BRANCH* 3.1-RELEASE (Feb 1999) -> 3.2 -> 3.3 -> 3.4 -> 3.5 -> 3.5.1 | (May 1999) (Sep 1999) (Dec 1999) (June 2000) (July 2000) | | [4.0-STABLE] *BRANCH* 4.0 (Mar 2000) -> 4.1 -> ... future 4.x releases ... | | (Jul 2000) \|/ + [5.0-CURRENT continues] The -CURRENT branch is slowly progressing towards 5.0 and beyond, the previous 2.2-STABLE branch having been retired with the release of 2.2.8. 3-STABLE replaced it, with 3.5.1 (the final 3.X release) being released in July 2000. In May 2000 (even though 3.5 came after that), the 3-STABLE branch was more or less replaced by the 4-STABLE branch. 4.1-RELEASE was released in July 2000. 4-STABLE is the actively developed -STABLE branch, although some bugfixes (mostly security-related) are still being committed to 3-STABLE. It is expected that the 3.X branch will be officially obsoleted some time in summer 2000. 5.0-CURRENT is now the current branch, with the no release date planed. When are FreeBSD releases made? As a general principle, the FreeBSD core team only release a new version of FreeBSD when they believe that there are sufficient new features and/or bug fixes to justify one, and are satisfied that the changes made have settled down sufficiently to avoid compromising the stability of the release. Many users regard this caution as one of the best things about FreeBSD, although it can be a little frustrating when waiting for all the latest goodies to become available... Releases are made about every 4 months on average. For people needing (or wanting) a little more excitement, binary snapshots are made every day... see above. Is FreeBSD only available for PCs ? Since 3.x, FreeBSD has run on the DEC Alpha as well as the x86 architecture. Some interest has also been expressed in a SPARC port, but details on this project are not yet clear. If your machine has a different architecture and you need something right now, we suggest you look at NetBSD or OpenBSD. Who is responsible for FreeBSD? The key decisions concerning the FreeBSD project, such as the overall direction of the project and who is allowed to add code to the source tree, are made by a core team of some 15 people. There is a much larger team of about 200 committers who are authorized to make changes directly to the FreeBSD source tree. However, most non-trivial changes are discussed in advance in the mailing lists, and there are no restrictions on who may take part in the discussion. Where can I get FreeBSD? Every significant release of FreeBSD is available via anonymous ftp from the FreeBSD FTP site: For the current 3.X-STABLE release, 3.4-RELEASE, see the 3.4-RELEASE directory. The current 4-STABLE release, 4.1-RELEASE can be found in the 4.1-RELEASE directory. 4.X snapshots are usually made once a day. 5.0 Snapshot releases are made once a day for the -CURRENT branch, these being of service purely to bleeding-edge testers and developers. FreeBSD is also available via CDROM, from the following place(s):
Walnut Creek CDROM 4041 Pike Lane, Suite F Concord, CA 94520 USA Orders: +1 800 786-9907 Questions: +1 925 674-0783 FAX: +1 925 674-0821 email: WC Orders address WWW: WC Home page
In Australia, you may find it at:
Advanced Multimedia Distributors Factory 1/1 Ovata Drive Tullamarine, Melbourne Victoria Australia Voice: +61 3 9338 6777 CDROM Support BBS 17 Irvine St Peppermint Grove, WA 6011 Voice: +61 9 385-3793 Fax: +61 9 385-2360
And in the UK:
The Public Domain & Shareware Library Winscombe House, Beacon Rd Crowborough Sussex. TN6 1UL Voice: +44 1892 663-298 Fax: +44 1892 667-473
 Where do I find info on the FreeBSD mailing lists? You can find full information in the Handbook entry on mailing-lists. Where do I find the FreeBSD Y2K info? You can find full information in the FreeBSD Y2K page. What FreeBSD news groups are available? You can find full information in the Handbook entry on newsgroups. Are there FreeBSD IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels? Yes, most major IRC networks host a FreeBSD chat channel: Channel #FreeBSD on EFNet is a FreeBSD forum, but don't go there for tech support or to try and get folks there to help you avoid the pain of reading man pages or doing your own research. It is a chat channel, first and foremost, and topics there are just as likely to involve sex, sports or nuclear weapons as they are FreeBSD. You Have Been Warned! Available at server irc.chat.org. Channel #FreeBSDhelp on EFNet is a channel dedicated to helping FreeBSD users. They are much more sympathetic to questions then #FreeBSD is. Channel #FreeBSD on DALNET is available at irc.dal.net in the US and irc.eu.dal.net in Europe. Channel #FreeBSD on UNDERNET is available at us.undernet.org in the US and eu.undernet.org in Europe. Since it is a help channel, be prepared to read the documents you are referred to. Channel #FreeBSD on HybNet is available at irc.FreeBSD.org. This channel is a help channel. Each of these channels are distinct and are not connected to each other. Their chat styles also differ, so you may need to try each to find one suited to your chat style. As with *all* types of IRC traffic, if you're easily offended or can't deal with lots of young people (and more than a few older ones) doing the verbal equivalent of jello wrestling, don't even bother with it. Books on FreeBSD There is a FreeBSD Documentation Project which you may contact (or even better, join) at the freebsd-doc mailing list: freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org. This list is for discussion of the FreeBSD documentation. For actual questions about FreeBSD, there is the freebsd-questions mailing list: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org. A FreeBSD handbook is available, and can be found as: the FreeBSD Handbook. Note that this is a work in progress; some parts may be incomplete or out-of-date. The definitive printed guide on FreeBSD is The Complete FreeBSD, written by Greg Lehey and published by Walnut Creek CDROM Books. Now in its second edition, the book contains 1,750 pages of install & system administration guidance, program setup help, and manual pages. The book (and current FreeBSD release) can be ordered from Walnut Creek, CheapBytes, or at your favorite bookstore. The ISBN is 1-57176-227-2. Since FreeBSD is based upon Berkeley 4.4BSD-Lite2, most of the 4.4BSD manuals are applicable to FreeBSD. O'Reilly and Associates publishes the following manuals: 4.4BSD System Manager's Manual By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition June 1994, 804 pages ISBN: 1-56592-080-5 4.4BSD User's Reference Manual By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition June 1994, 905 pages ISBN: 1-56592-075-9 4.4BSD User's Supplementary Documents By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition July 1994, 712 pages ISBN: 1-56592-076-7 4.4BSD Programmer's Reference Manual By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition June 1994, 886 pages ISBN: 1-56592-078-3 4.4BSD Programmer's Supplementary Documents By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition July 1994, 596 pages ISBN: 1-56592-079-1 A description of these can be found via WWW as: 4.4BSD books description. Due to poor sales, however, these manuals may be hard to get a hold of. For a more in-depth look at the 4.4BSD kernel organization, you can't go wrong with: McKusick, Marshall Kirk, Keith Bostic, Michael J Karels, and John Quarterman. The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System. Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley, 1996. ISBN 0-201-54979-4 A good book on system administration is: Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass & Trent R. Hein, Unix System Administration Handbook, Prentice-Hall, 1995 ISBN: 0-13-151051-7 Make sure you get the second edition, with a red cover, instead of the first edition. This book covers the basics, as well as TCP/IP, DNS, NFS, SLIP/PPP, sendmail, INN/NNTP, printing, etc.. It's expensive (approx. US$45-$55), but worth it. It also includes a CDROM with the sources for various tools; most of these, however, are also on the FreeBSD 2.2.6R CDROM (and the FreeBSD CDROM often has newer versions). How do I access your Problem Report database? The Problem Report database of all user change requests may be queried (or submitted to) by using our web-based PR submission and query interfaces. The send-pr(1) command can also be used to submit problem reports and change requests via electronic mail. Is the documentation available in other formats, such as plain text (ASCII), or Postscript? Yes. The documentation is available in a number of different formats and compression schemes on the FreeBSD FTP site, in the /pub/FreeBSD/doc/ directory. The documentation is categorised in a number of different ways. These include: The document's name, such as faq, or handbook. The document's language and encoding. These are based on the locale names you will find under /usr/share/locale on your FreeBSD system. The current languages and encodings that we have for documentation are as follows: Name Meaning en_US.ISO_8859-1 US English es_ES.ISO_8859-1 Spanish fr_FR.ISO_8859-1 French ja_JP.eucJP Japanese (EUC encoding) ru_RU.KOI8-R Russian zh_TW.Big5 Chinese (Big5 encoding) Some documents may not be available in all languages. The document's format. We produce the documentation in a number of different output formats to try and make it as flexible as possible. The current formats are; Format Meaning html-split A collection of small, linked, HTML files. html One large HTML file containing the entire document pdb Palm Pilot database format, for use with the iSilo reader. pdf Adobe's Portable Document Format ps Postscript rtf Microsoft's Rich Text Format Page numbers are not automatically updated when loading this format in to Word. Press CTRL+A, CTRL+END, F9 after loading the document, to update the page numbers. txt Plain text The compression and packaging scheme. There are three of these currently in use. Where the format is html-split, the files are bundled up using &man.tar.1;. The resulting .tar file is then compressed using the compression schemes detailed in the next point. All the other formats generate one file, called book.format (i.e., book.pdb, book.html, and so on). These files are then compressed using three compression schemes. Scheme Description zip The Zip format. If you want to uncompress this on FreeBSD you will need to install the archivers/unzip port first. gz The GNU Zip format. Use &man.gunzip.1; to uncompress these files, which is part of FreeBSD. bz2 The BZip2 format. Less widespread than the others, but generally gives smaller files. Install the archivers/bzip2 port to uncompress these files. So the Postscript version of the Handbook, compressed using BZip2 will be stored in a file called book.sgml.bz2 in the handbook/ directory. The formatted documentation is also available as a FreeBSD package, of which more later. After choosing the format and compression mechanism that you want to download, you must then decide whether or not you want to download the document as a FreeBSD package. The advantage of downloading and installing the package is that the documentation can then be managed using the normal FreeBSD package management comments, such as &man.pkg.add.1; and &man.pkg.delete.1;. If you decide to download and install the package then you must know the filename to download. The documentation-as-packages files are stored in a directory called packages. Each package file looks like document-name.lang.encoding.format.tgz. For example, the FAQ, in English, formatted as PDF, is in the package called faq.en_US.ISO_8859-1.pdf.tgz. Knowing this, you can use the following command to install the English PDF FAQ package. &prompt.root; pkg_add ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/packages/faq.en_US.ISO_8859-1.pdf.tgz Having done that, you can use &man.pkg.info.1; to determine where the file has been installed. &prompt.root; pkg_info -f faq.en_US.ISO_8859-1.pdf Information for faq.en_US.ISO_8859-1.pdf: Packing list: Package name: faq.en_US.ISO_8859-1.pdf CWD to /usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq File: book.pdf CWD to . File: +COMMENT (ignored) File: +DESC (ignored) As you can see, book.pdf will have been installed in to /usr/share/doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq. If you do not want to use the packages then you will have to download the compressed files yourself, uncompress them, and then copy the appropriate documents in to place. For example, the split HTML version of the FAQ, compressed using &man.gzip.1;, can be found in the en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq/book.html-split.tar.gz file. To download and uncompress that file you would have to do this. &prompt.root; fetch ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq/book.html-split.tar.gz &prompt.root; gzip -d book.html-split.tar.gz &prompt.root; tar xvf book.html-split.tar You will be left with a collection of .html files. The main one is called index.html, which will contain the table of contents, introductory material, and links to the other parts of the document. You can then copy or move these to their final location as necessary. I'd like to become a FreeBSD Web mirror! Certainly! There are multiple ways to mirror the Web pages. Using CVSup: You can retrieve the formatted files using CVSup, and connecting to a CVSup server. To retrieve the webpages, please look at the example supfile, which can be found in /usr/share/examples/cvsup/www-supfile. Using ftp mirror: You can download the FTP server's copy of the web site sources using your favorite ftp mirror tool. Keep in mind that you have to build these sources before publishing them. Simply start at ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/www. I'd like to translate the documentation into Friesian. Well, we can't pay, but we might arrange a free CD or T-shirt and a Contributor's Handbook entry if you submit a translation of the documentation. Before you begin translating please contact the freebsd-doc mailing list at freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org; you may find somebody to help with the translation effort. You may also find out there is already a team translating the docs into your chosen language, who surely wouldn't turn down your help. Other sources of information. The following newsgroups contain pertinent discussion for FreeBSD users: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.announce (moderated) comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc comp.unix.bsd.misc Web resources: The FreeBSD Home Page. If you have a laptop, be sure and see Tatsumi Hosokawa's Mobile Computing page in Japan. For information on SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessing), please see the SMP support page. For information on FreeBSD multimedia applications, please see the multimedia page. If you're interested specifically in the Bt848 video capture chip, then follow that link. The FreeBSD handbook also has a fairly complete bibliography section which is worth reading if you're looking for actual books to buy. Installation Which file do I download to get FreeBSD? Prior to release 3.1, you only needed one floppy image to install FreeBSD, namely floppies/boot.flp. However, since release 3.1 the Project has added base support for a wide variety of hardware which needed more space, and thus for 3.x and 4.x we now use two floppy images, namely floppies/kernel.flp and floppies/mfsroot.flp. These images need to be copied onto floppies by tools like fdimage or &man.dd.1;. If you need to download the distributions yourself (for a DOS filesystem install, for instance), below are some recommendations for distributions to grab: bin/ manpages/ compat*/ doc/ src/ssys.* Full instructions on this procedure and a little bit more about installation issues in general can be found in the Handbook entry on installing FreeBSD. Help! The boot floppy image will not fit on a single floppy! A 3.5 inch (1.44MB) floppy can accomodate 1474560 bytes of data. The boot image is exactly 1474560 bytes in size. Common mistakes when preparing the boot floppy are: Not downloading the floppy image in binary mode when using FTP. Some FTP clients default their transfer mode to ascii and attempt to change any end-of-line characters received to match the conventions used by the client's system. This will almost invariably corrupt the boot image. Check the size of the downloaded boot image: if it is not exactly that on the server, then the download process is suspect. To workaround: type binary at the FTP command prompt after getting connected to the server and before starting the download of the image. Using the DOS copy command (or equivalent GUI tool) to transfer the boot image to floppy. Programs like copy will not work as the boot image has been created to be booted into directly. The image has the complete content of the floppy, track for track, and is not meant to be placed on the floppy as a regular file. You have to transfer it to the floppy raw, using the low-level tools (e.g. fdimage or rawrite) described in the installation guide to FreeBSD. Where are the instructions for installing FreeBSD? Installation instructions can be found in the Handbook entry on installing FreeBSD. What do I need in order to run FreeBSD? You'll need a 386 or better PC, with 5 MB or more of RAM and at least 60 MB of hard disk space. It can run with a low end MDA graphics card but to run X11R6, a VGA or better video card is needed. See also the section on I have only 4 MB of RAM. Can I install FreeBSD? FreeBSD 2.1.7 was the last version of FreeBSD that could be installed on a 4MB system. Newer versions of FreeBSD, like 2.2, need at least 5MB to install on a new system. All versions of FreeBSD, including 3.0, will run in 4MB of RAM, they just can't run the installation program in 4MB. You can add extra memory for the install process, if you like, and then after the system is up and running, go back to 4MB. Or you could always just swap your disk into a system which has >4MB, install onto it and then swap it back. There are also situations in which FreeBSD 2.1.7 will not install in 4 MB. To be exact: it does not install with 640 kB base + 3 MB extended memory. If your motherboard can remap some of the lost memory out of the 640kB to 1MB region, then you may still be able to get FreeBSD 2.1.7 up. Try to go into your BIOS setup and look for a remap option. Enable it. You may also have to disable ROM shadowing. It may be easier to get 4 more MB just for the install. Build a custom kernel with only the options you need and then get the 4 MB out again. You may also install 2.0.5 and then upgrade your system to 2.1.7 with the upgrade option of the 2.1.7 installation program. After the installation, if you build a custom kernel, it will run in 4 MB. Someone has even succeeded in booting with 2 MB (the system was almost unusable though :-)) How can I make my own custom install floppy? Currently there's no way to just make a custom install floppy. You have to cut a whole new release, which will include your install floppy. There's some code in /usr/src/release/floppies/Makefile that's supposed to let you just make those floppies, but it's not really gelled yet. To make a custom release, follow the instructions here. Can I have more than one operating system on my PC? Have a look at The multi-OS page. Can Windows 95/98 co-exist with FreeBSD? Install Windows 95/98 first, after that FreeBSD. FreeBSD's boot manager will then manage to boot Win95/98 and FreeBSD. If you install Windows 95/98 second, it will boorishly overwrite your boot manager without even asking. If that happens, see the next section. Windows 95/98 killed my boot manager! How do I get it back? You can reinstall the boot manager FreeBSD comes with in one of three ways: Running DOS, go into the tools/ directory of your FreeBSD distribution and look for bootinst.exe. You run it like so: ...\TOOLS> bootinst.exe boot.bin and the boot manager will be reinstalled. Boot the FreeBSD boot floppy again and go to the Custom installation menu item. Choose Partition. Select the drive which used to contain your boot manager (likely the first one) and when you come to the partition editor for it, as the very first thing (e.g. do not make any changes) select (W)rite. This will ask for confirmation, say yes, and when you get the Boot Manager selection prompt, be sure to select Boot Manager. This will re-write the boot manager to disk. Now quit out of the installation menu and reboot off the hard disk as normal. Boot the FreeBSD boot floppy (or CD-ROM) and choose the Fixit menu item. Select either the Fixit floppy or CD-ROM #2 (the live file system option) as appropriate and enter the fixit shell. Then execute the following command: Fixit# fdisk -B -b /boot/boot0 bootdevice substituting bootdevice for your real boot device such as ad0 (first IDE disk), ad4 (first IDE disk on auxiliary controller), da0 (first SCSI disk), etc. Can I install on a disk with bad blocks? Prior to 3.0, FreeBSD included a utility known as bad144, which automatically remapped bad blocks. Because modern IDE drives perform this function themselves, bad144 has been removed from the FreeBSD source tree. If you wish to install FreeBSD 3.0 or later, we strongly suggest you purchase a newer disk drive. If you do not wish to do this, you must run FreeBSD 2.x. If you are seeing bad block errors with a modern IDE drive, chances are the drive is going to die very soon (the drive's internal remapping functions are no longer sufficient to fix the bad blocks, which means the disk is heavily corrupted); we suggest you by a new hard drive. If you have a SCSI drive with bad blocks, see this answer. Strange things happen when I boot the install floppy! If you're seeing things like the machine grinding to a halt or spontaneously rebooting when you try to boot the install floppy, here are three questions to ask yourself:- Did you use a new, freshly-formatted, error-free floppy (preferably a brand-new one straight out of the box, as opposed to the magazine coverdisk that's been lying under the bed for the last three years)? Did you download the floppy image in binary (or image) mode? (don't be embarrassed, even the best of us have accidentally downloaded a binary file in ASCII mode at least once!) If you're using Windows95 or Win98 did you run fdimage or rawrite in pure DOS mode? These OS's can interfere with programs that write directly to hardware, which the disk creation program does; even running it inside a DOS shell in the GUI can cause this problem. There have also been reports of Netscape causing problems when downloading the boot floppy, so it's probably best to use a different FTP client if you can. I booted from my ATAPI CD-ROM, but the install program says no CD-ROM is found. Where did it go? The usual cause of this problem is a mis-configured CD-ROM drive. Many PCs now ship with the CD-ROM as the slave device on the secondary IDE controller, with no master device on that controller. This is illegal according to the ATAPI specification, but Windows plays fast and loose with the specification, and the BIOS ignores it when booting. This is why the BIOS was able to see the CD-ROM to boot from it, but why FreeBSD can not see it to complete the install. Reconfigure your system so that the CD-ROM is either the master device on the IDE controller it is attached to, or make sure that it is the slave on an IDE controller that also has a master device. Help! I can't install from tape! If you are installing 2.1.7R from tape, you must create the tape using a tar blocksize of 10 (5120 bytes). The default tar blocksize is 20 (10240 bytes), and tapes created using this default size cannot be used to install 2.1.7R; with these tapes, you will get an error that complains about the record size being too big. Connect two FreeBSD boxes over a parallel line (PLIP) Get a laplink cable. Make sure both computer have a kernel with lpt driver support. &prompt.root; dmesg | grep lp lpt0 at 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa lpt0: Interrupt-driven lp0: TCP/IP capable interface Plug in the laplink cable into the parallel interface. Configure the network interface parameters for lp0 on both sites as root. For example, if you want connect the host max with moritz max <-----> moritz IP Address 10.0.0.1 10.0.0.2 on max start &prompt.root; ifconfig lp0 10.0.0.1 10.0.0.2 on moritz start &prompt.root; ifconfig lp0 10.0.0.2 10.0.0.1 Thats all! Please read also the manpages &man.lp.4; and &man.lpt.4; . You should also add the hosts to /etc/hosts. 127.0.0.1 localhost.my.domain localhost 10.0.0.1 max.my.domain max 10.0.0.2 moritz.my.domain To check if it works do: on max: &prompt.root; ifconfig lp0 lp0: flags=8851<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 inet 10.0.0.1 --> 10.0.0.2 netmask 0xff000000 &prompt.root; netstat -r Routing tables Internet: Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif Expire moritz max UH 4 127592 lp0 &prompt.root; ping -c 4 moritz PING moritz (10.0.0.2): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=2.774 ms 64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=2.530 ms 64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=2.556 ms 64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=2.714 ms --- moritz ping statistics --- 4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 2.530/2.643/2.774/0.103 ms Can I install on my laptop over PLIP (Parallel Line IP)? Connect the two computers using a Laplink parallel cable to use this feature: Wiring a parallel cable for networking A-name A-End B-End Descr. Post/Bit DATA0 -ERROR 2 15 15 2 Data 0/0x01 1/0x08 DATA1 +SLCT 3 13 13 3 Data 0/0x02 1/0x10 DATA2 +PE 4 12 12 4 Data 0/0x04 1/0x20 DATA3 -ACK 5 10 10 5 Strobe 0/0x08 1/0x40 DATA4 BUSY 6 11 11 6 Data 0/0x10 1/0x80 GND 18-25 18-25 GND -
See also this note on the Mobile Computing page. Which geometry should I use for a disk drive? (By the geometry of a disk, we mean the number of cylinders, heads and sectors/track on a disk - I'll refer to this as C/H/S for convenience. This is how the PC's BIOS works out which area on a disk to read/write from). This seems to cause a lot of confusion for some reason. First of all, the physical geometry of a SCSI drive is totally irrelevant, as FreeBSD works in term of disk blocks. In fact, there is no such thing as the physical geometry, as the sector density varies across the disk - what manufacturers claim is the quote physical geometry is usually the geometry that they've worked out results in the least wasted space. For IDE disks, FreeBSD does work in terms of C/H/S, but all modern drives will convert this into block references internally as well. All that matters is the logical geometry - the answer that the BIOS gets when it asks what is your geometry? and then uses to access the disk. As FreeBSD uses the BIOS when booting, it's very important to get this right. In particular, if you have more than one operating system on a disk, they must all agree on the geometry, otherwise you will have serious problems booting! For SCSI disks, the geometry to use depends on whether extended translation support is turned on in your controller (this is often referred to as support for DOS disks >1GB or something similar). If it's turned off, then use N cylinders, 64 heads and 32 sectors/track, where N is the capacity of the disk in MB. For example, a 2GB disk should pretend to have 2048 cylinders, 64 heads and 32 sectors/track. If it is turned on (it's often supplied this way to get around certain limitations in MSDOS) and the disk capacity is more than 1GB, use M cylinders, 63 sectors per track (*not* 64), and 255 heads, where 'M' is the disk capacity in MB divided by 7.844238 (!). So our example 2GB drive would have 261 cylinders, 63 sectors per track and 255 heads. If you are not sure about this, or FreeBSD fails to detect the geometry correctly during installation, the simplest way around this is usually to create a small DOS partition on the disk. The correct geometry should then be detected (and you can always remove the DOS partition in the partition editor if you don't want to keep it, or leave it around for programming network cards and the like). Alternatively, there is a freely available utility distributed with FreeBSD called pfdisk.exe (located in the tools subdirectory on the FreeBSD CDROM or on the various FreeBSD ftp sites) which can be used to work out what geometry the other operating systems on the disk are using. You can then enter this geometry in the partition editor. Any restrictions on how I divide the disk up? Yes. You must make sure that your root partition is below 1024 cylinders so the BIOS can boot the kernel from it. (Note that this is a limitation in the PC's BIOS, not FreeBSD). For a SCSI drive, this will normally imply that the root partition will be in the first 1024MB (or in the first 4096MB if extended translation is turned on - see previous question). For IDE, the corresponding figure is 504MB. What about disk managers? Or, I have a large drive! FreeBSD recognizes the Ontrack Disk Manager and makes allowances for it. Other disk managers are not supported. If you just want to use the disk with FreeBSD you don't need a disk manager. Just configure the disk for as much space as the BIOS can deal with (usually 504 megabytes), and FreeBSD should figure out how much space you really have. If you're using an old disk with an MFM controller, you may need to explicitly tell FreeBSD how many cylinders to use. If you want to use the disk with FreeBSD and another operating system, you may be able to do without a disk manager: just make sure the the FreeBSD boot partition and the slice for the other operating system are in the first 1024 cylinders. If you're reasonably careful, a 20 megabyte boot partition should be plenty. When I boot FreeBSD I get Missing Operating System This is classically a case of FreeBSD and DOS or some other OS conflicting over their ideas of disk geometry. You will have to reinstall FreeBSD, but obeying the instructions given above will almost always get you going. I can't get past the boot manager's F? prompt. This is another symptom of the problem described in the preceding question. Your BIOS geometry and FreeBSD geometry settings do not agree! If your controller or BIOS supports cylinder translation (often marked as >1GB drive support), try toggling its setting and reinstalling FreeBSD. Do I need to install the complete sources? In general, no. However, we would strongly recommend that you install, at a minimum, the base source kit, which includes several of the files mentioned here, and the sys (kernel) source kit, which includes sources for the kernel. There is nothing in the system which requires the presence of the sources to operate, however, except for the kernel-configuration program &man.config.8;. With the exception of the kernel sources, our build structure is set up so that you can read-only mount the sources from elsewhere via NFS and still be able to make new binaries. (Because of the kernel-source restriction, we recommend that you not mount this on /usr/src directly, but rather in some other location with appropriate symbolic links to duplicate the top-level structure of the source tree.) Having the sources on-line and knowing how to build a system with them will make it much easier for you to upgrade to future releases of FreeBSD. To actually select a subset of the sources, use the Custom menu item when you are in the Distributions menu of the system installation tool. Do I need to build a kernel? Building a new kernel was originally pretty much a required step in a FreeBSD installation, but more recent releases have benefited from the introduction of a much friendlier kernel configuration tool. When at the FreeBSD boot prompt (boot:), use the flag and you will be dropped into a visual configuration screen which allows you to configure the kernel's settings for most common ISA cards. It's still recommended that you eventually build a new kernel containing just the drivers that you need, just to save a bit of RAM, but it's no longer a strict requirement for most systems. - -I live outside the US. Can I use DES encryption? - -If it is not absolutely imperative that you use DES style -encryption, you can use FreeBSD's default encryption for even -better security, and with no export restrictions. FreeBSD -2.0's password default scrambler is now MD5-based, and is -more CPU-intensive to crack with an automated password cracker -than DES, and allows longer passwords as well. The only reason -for not using the MD5-based crypt today would be to use the -the same password entries on FreeBSD and non-FreeBSD systems. - -Since the DES encryption algorithm cannot legally be exported -from the US, non-US users should not download this software (as -part of the secrdist from US FTP sites. - -There is however a replacement libcrypt available, based on -sources written in Australia by David Burren. This code is now -available on some non-US FreeBSD mirror sites. Sources for the -unencumbered libcrypt, and binaries of the programs which use it, -can be obtained from the following FTP sites: - - - -South Africa - -ftp://ftp.internat.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/, -ftp://storm.sea.uct.ac.za/pub/FreeBSD/ - - - - - - -Brazil - - -ftp://ftp.iqm.unicamp.br/pub/FreeBSD/ - - - - - - -Finland - - -ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/unix/FreeBSD/eurocrypt/ - - - - - - -The non-US securedist can be used as a direct replacement -for the encumbered US securedist. This securedist -package is installed the same way as the US package (see -installation notes for details). If you are going to install DES -encryption, you should do so as soon as possible, before -installing other software. - -Non-US users should please not download any encryption software -from the USA. This can get the maintainers of the sites from -which the software is downloaded into severe legal difficulties. - -A non-US distribution of Kerberos is also being developed, and -current versions can generally be obtained by anonymous FTP from -braae.ru.ac.za. - -There is also a mailing list for the -discussion of non-US encryption software. For more information, send -an email message with a single line saying help in the body -of your message to majordomo@braae.ru.ac.za. + + + Should I use DES passwords, or MD5, and how do I specify + which form my users receive? + - + + The default password format on FreeBSD is to use + MD5-based passwords. These are believed to + be more secure than the traditional UNIX password format, which + used a scheme based on the DES algorithm. + DES passwords are still available if you need to share your + password file with legacy operating systems which still use the + less secure password format (they are available if you choose to + install the crypto distribution in sysinstall, or + by installing the crypto sources if building from source). Which + password format to use for new passwords is controlled by the + passwd_format login capability in + /etc/login.conf, which takes values of either + des (if available) or md5. See the + login.conf(5) manpage for more information about login + capabilities. + + The boot floppy starts but hangs at the Probing Devices... screen. If you have a IDE Zip or Jaz drive installed, remove it and try again. The boot floppy can get confused by the drives. After the system is installed you can reconnect the drive. Hopefully this will be fixed in a later release. I get a panic: cant mount root error when rebooting the system after installation. This error comes from confusion between the boot block's and the kernel's understanding of the disk devices. The error usually manifests on two-disk IDE systems, with the hard disks arranged as the master or single device on separate IDE controllers, with FreeBSD installed on the secondary IDE controller. The boot blocks think the system is installed on wd1 (the second BIOS disk) while the kernel assigns the first disk on the secondary controller device wd2. After the device probing, the kernel tries to mount what the boot blocks think is the boot disk, wd1, while it is really wd2, and fails. To fix the problem, do one of the following: For FreeBSD 3.3 and later, reboot the system and hit Enter at the Booting kernel in 10 seconds; hit [Enter] to interrupt prompt. This will drop you into the boot loader. Then type set root_disk_unit="disk_number". disk_number will be 0 if FreeBSD is installed on the master drive on the first IDE controller, 1 if it is installed on the slave on the first IDE controller, 2 if it is installed on the master of the second IDE controller, and 3 if it is installed on the slave of the second IDE controller. Then type boot, and your system should boot correctly. To make this change permanent (ie so you don't have to do this everytime you reboot or turn on your FreeBSD machine), put the line root_disk_unit="disk_number" in /boot/loader.conf.local. If using FreeBSD 3.2 or earlier, at the Boot: prompt, enter 1:wd(2,a)kernel and press Enter. If the system starts, then run the command echo "1:wd(2,a)kernel" > /boot.config to make it the default boot string. Move the FreeBSD disk onto the primary IDE controller, so the hard disks are consecutive. Rebuild your kernel, modify the wd configuration lines to read: controller wdc0 at isa? port "IO_WD1" bio irq 14 vector wdintr disk wd0 at wdc0 drive 0 # disk wd1 at wdc0 drive 1 # comment out this line controller wdc1 at isa? port "IO_WD2" bio irq 15 vector wdintr disk wd1 at wdc1 drive 0 # change from wd2 to wd1 disk wd2 at wdc1 drive 1 # change from wd3 to wd2 Install the new kernel. If you moved your disks and wish to restore the previous configuration, replace the disks in the desired configuration and reboot. Your system should boot successfully. What are the limits for memory? For memory, the limit is 4 gigabytes. This configuration has been tested, see wcarchive's configuration for more details. If you plan to install this much memory into a machine, you need to be careful. You'll probably want to use ECC memory and to reduce capacitive loading use 9 chip memory modules vice 18 chip memory modules. What are the limits for ffs filesystems? For ffs filesystems, the maximum theoretical limit is 8 terabytes (2G blocks), or 16TB for the default block size of 8K. In practice, there is a soft limit of 1 terabyte, but with modifications filesystems with 4 terabytes are possible (and exist). The maximum size of a single ffs file is approximately 1G blocks (4TB) if the block size is 4K. Maximum file sizes fs block size 2.2.7-stable 3.0-current works should work 4K 4T-1 4T-1 4T-1 4+t 8K 32+G 8T-1 32+G 32T-1 16K 128+G 16T-1 128+G 32T-1 32K 512+G 32T-1 512+G 64T-1 64K 2048+G 64T-1 2048+G 128T-1
When the fs block size is 4K, triple indirect blocks work and everything should be limited by the maximum fs block number that can be represented using triple indirect blocks (approx. 1K^3 + 1K^2 + 1K), but everything is limited by a (wrong) limit of 1G-1 on fs block numbers. The limit on fs block numbers should be 2G-1. There are some bugs for fs block numbers near 2G-1, but such block numbers are unreachable when the fs block size is 4K. For block sizes of 8K and larger, everything should be limited by the 2G-1 limit on fs block numbers, but is actually limited by the 1G-1 limit on fs block numbers, except under -STABLE triple indirect blocks are unreachable, so the limit is the maxiumum fs block number that can be represented using double indirect blocks (approx. (blocksize/4)^2 + (blocksize/4)), and under -CURRENT exceeding this limit may cause problems. Using the correct limit of 2G-1 blocks does cause problems. How can I put 1TB files on my floppy? I keep several virtual ones on floppies :-). The maxiumum file size is not closely related to the maximum disk size. The maximum disk size is 1TB. It is a feature that the file size can be larger than the disk size. The following example creates a file of size 8T-1 using a whole 32K of disk space (3 indirect blocks and 1 data block) on a small root partition. The dd command requires a dd that works with large files. &prompt.user; cat foo df . dd if=/dev/zero of=z bs=1 seek=`echo 2^43 - 2 | bc` count=1 ls -l z du z df . &prompt.user; sh foo Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/da0a 64479 27702 31619 47% / 1+0 records in 1+0 records out 1 bytes transferred in 0.000187 secs (5346 bytes/sec) -rw-r--r-- 1 bde bin 8796093022207 Sep 7 16:04 z 32 z Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/da0a 64479 27734 31587 47% / Bruce Evans, September 1998 I compiled a new kernel and now I get the error message archsw.readin.failed when booting. You can boot by specifying the kernel directly at the second stage, pressing any key when the | shows up before loader is started. More specifically, you have upgraded the source for your kernel, and installed a new kernel builtin from them without making world. This is not supported. Make world. How do I upgrade from 3.X -> 4.X? We strongly recommend that you use binary snapshots to do this. 4-STABLE snapshots are available at releng4.FreeBSD.org. If you wish to upgrade using source, please see the FreeBSD Handbook for more information. Upgrading via source is never recommended for new users, and upgading from 3.X -> 4.X is even less so; make sure you have read the instructions carefully before attempting to upgrade via source this! Hardware compatibility What kind of hard drives does FreeBSD support? FreeBSD supports EIDE and SCSI drives (with a compatible controller; see the next section), and all drives using the original Western Digital interface (MFM, RLL, ESDI, and of course IDE). A few ESDI controllers that use proprietary interfaces may not work: stick to WD1002/3/6/7 interfaces and clones. Which SCSI controllers are supported? See the complete list in the Handbook. Which CD-ROM drives are supported by FreeBSD? Any SCSI drive connected to a supported controller is supported. The following proprietary CD-ROM interfaces are also supported: Mitsumi LU002 (8bit), LU005 (16bit) and FX001D (16bit 2x Speed). Sony CDU 31/33A Sound Blaster Non-SCSI CD-ROM Matsushita/Panasonic CD-ROM ATAPI compatible IDE CD-ROMs All non-SCSI cards are known to be extremely slow compared to SCSI drives, and some ATAPI CDROMs may not work. As of 2.2 the FreeBSD CDROM from Walnut Creek supports booting directly from the CD. Does FreeBSD support ZIP drives? FreeBSD supports the SCSI ZIP drive out of the box, of course. The ZIP drive can only be set to run at SCSI target IDs 5 or 6, but if your SCSI host adapter's BIOS supports it you can even boot from it. I don't know which host adapters let you boot from targets other than 0 or 1... look at your docs (and let me know if it works out for you). ATAPI (IDE) Zip drives are supported in FreeBSD 2.2.6 and later releases. FreeBSD has contained support for Parallel Port Zip Drives since version 3.0. If you are using a sufficiently up to date version, then you should check that your kernel contains the scbus0, da0, ppbus0, and vp0 drivers (the GENERIC kernel contains everything except vp0). With all these drivers present, the Parallel Port drive should be available as /dev/da0s4. Disks can be mounted using mount /dev/da0s4 /mnt OR (for dos disks) mount_msdos /dev/da0s4 /mnt as appropriate. Also check out this note on removable drives, and this note on formatting. Does FreeBSD support JAZ, EZ and other removable drives? Apart from the IDE version of the EZ drive, these are all SCSI devices, so the should all look like SCSI disks to FreeBSD, and the IDE EZ should look like an IDE drive. I'm not sure how well FreeBSD supports changing the media out while running. You will of course need to dismount the drive before swapping media, and make sure that any external units are powered on when you boot the system so FreeBSD can see them. See this note on formatting. Which multi-port serial cards are supported by FreeBSD? There is a list of these in the Miscellaneous devices section of the handbook. Some unnamed clone cards have also been known to work, especially those that claim to be AST compatible. Check the sio man page to get more information on configuring such cards. I have a USB keyboard. Does FreeBSD support it? USB device support was added to FreeBSD 3.1. However, it is still in preliminary state and may not always work as of version 3.2. If you want to experiment with the USB mouse support, follow the procedure described below. Use FreeBSD 3.2 or later. Add the following lines to your kernel configuration file, and rebuild the kernel. device uhci device ohci device usb device ukbd options KBD_INSTALL_CDEV In versions of FreeBSD before 4.0, use this instead: controller uhci0 controller ohci0 controller usb0 controller ukbd0 options KBD_INSTALL_CDEV Go to the /dev directory and create device nodes as follows: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; ./MAKEDEV kbd0 kbd1 Edit /etc/rc.conf and add the following lines: usbd_enable="YES" usbd_flags="" After the system is rebooted, the AT keyboard becomes /dev/kbd0 and the USB keyboard becomes /dev/kbd1, if both are connected to the system. If there is the USB keyboard only, it will be /dev/ukbd0. If you want to use the USB keyboard in the console, you have to explicitly tell the console driver to use the existence of the USB keyboard. This can be done by running the following command as a part of system initialization. &prompt.root; kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd1 < /dev/ttyv0 > /dev/null Note that if the USB keyboard is the only keyboard, it is accessed as /dev/kbd0, thus, the command should look like: &prompt.root; kbdcontrol -k /dev/kbd0 < /dev/ttyv0 > /dev/null /etc/rc.i386 is a good place to add the above command. Once this is done, the USB keyboard should work in the X environment as well without any special settings. Hot-plugging and unplugging of the USB keyboard may not work quite right yet. It is a good idea to connect the keyboard before you start the system and leave it connected until the system is shutdown to avoid troubles. See the &man.ukbd.4; man page for more information. I have an unusual bus mouse. How do I set it up? FreeBSD supports the bus mouse and the InPort bus mouse from such manufactures as Microsoft, Logitech and ATI. The bus device driver is compiled in the GENERIC kernel by default in FreeBSD versions 2.X, but not included in version 3.0 or later. If you are building a custom kernel with the bus mouse driver, make sure to add the following line to the kernel config file In FreeBSD 3.0 or before, add: device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c tty irq5 vector mseintr In FreeBSD 3.X, the line should be: device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c tty irq5 And in FreeBSD 4.X and later, the line should read: device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c irq5 Bus mice usually comes with dedicated interface cards. These cards may allow you to set the port address and the IRQ number other than shown above. Refer to the manual of your mouse and the &man.mse.4; man page for more information. How do I use my PS/2 (mouse port or keyboard) mouse? If you're running a post-2.2.5 version of FreeBSD, the necessary driver, psm, is included and enabled in the kernel. The kernel should detect your PS/2 mouse at boot time. If you're running a previous but relatively recent version of FreeBSD (2.1.x or better) then you can simply enable it in the kernel configuration menu at installation time, otherwise later with at the boot: prompt. It is disabled by default, so you will need to enable it explicitly. If you're running an older version of FreeBSD then you'll have to add the following lines to your kernel configuration file and compile a new kernel. In FreeBSD 3.0 or earlier, the line should be: device psm0 at isa? port "IO_KBD" conflicts tty irq 12 vector psmintr In FreeBSD 3.1 or later, the line should be: device psm0 at isa? tty irq 12 In FreeBSD 4.0 or later, the line should be: device psm0 at atkbdc? irq 12 See the Handbook entry on configuring the kernel if you've no experience with building kernels. Once you have a kernel detecting psm0 correctly at boot time, make sure that an entry for psm0 exists in /dev. You can do this by typing: &prompt.root; cd /dev; sh MAKEDEV psm0 when logged in as root. Is it possible to make use of a mouse in any way outside the X Window? If you are using the default console driver, syscons, you can use a mouse pointer in text consoles to cut & paste text. Run the mouse daemon, moused, and turn on the mouse pointer in the virtual console: &prompt.root; moused -p /dev/xxxx -t yyyy &prompt.root; vidcontrol -m on Where xxxx is the mouse device name and yyyy is a protocol type for the mouse. See the &man.moused.8; man page for supported protocol types. You may wish to run the mouse daemon automatically when the system starts. In version 2.2.1, set the following variables in /etc/sysconfig. mousedtype="yyyy" mousedport="xxxx" mousedflags="" In versions 2.2.2 to 3.0, set the following variables in /etc/rc.conf. moused_type="yyyy" moused_port="xxxx" moused_flags="" In 3.1 and later, assuming you have a PS/2 mouse, all you need to is add moused_enable="YES" to /etc/rc.conf. In addition, if you would like to be able to use the mouse daemon on all virtual terminals instead of just console at boot-time, add the following to /etc/rc.conf. allscreens_flags="-m on" Staring from FreeBSD 2.2.6, the mouse daemon is capable of determining the correct protocol type automatically unless the mouse is a relatively old serial mouse model. Specify auto the protocol to invoke automatic detection. When the mouse daemon is running, access to the mouse needs to be coordinated between the mouse daemon and other programs such as the X Window. Refer to another section on this issue. How do I cut and paste text with mouse in the text console? Once you get the mouse daemon running (see previous section), hold down the button 1 (left button) and move the mouse to select a region of text. Then, press the button 2 (middle button) or the button 3 (right button) to paste it at the text cursor. In versions 2.2.6 and later, pressing the button 2 will paste the text. Pressing the button 3 will extend the selected region of text. If your mouse does not have the middle button, you may wish to emulate it or remap buttons using moused options. See the moused(8) man page for details. I have a USB mouse. Does FreeBSD support the USB mouse? USB device support was added to FreeBSD 3.1. However, it is still in a preliminary state and may not always work as of version 3.2. If you want to experiment with the USB mouse support, follow the procedure described below. Use FreeBSD 3.2 or later. Add the following lines to your kernel configuration file, and rebuild the kernel. device uhci device ohci device usb device ums In versions of FreeBSD before 4.0, use this instead: controller uhci0 controller ohci0 controller usb0 device ums0 Go to the /dev directory and create a device node as follows: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; ./MAKEDEV ums0 Edit /etc/rc.conf and add the following lines: moused_enable="YES" moused_type="auto" moused_port="/dev/ums0" moused_flags="" usbd_enable="YES" usbd_flags="" See the previous section for more detailed discussion on moused. In order to use the USB mouse in the X session, edit XF86Config. If you are using XFree86 3.3.2 or later, be sure to have the following lines in the Pointer section: Device "/dev/sysmouse" Protocol "Auto" If you are using earlier versions of XFree86, be sure to have the following lines in the Pointer section: Device "/dev/sysmouse" Protocol "SysMouse" Refer to another section on the mouse support in the X environment. Hot-plugging and unplugging of the USB mouse may not work quite right yet. It is a good idea connect the mouse before you start the system and leave it connected until the system is shutdown to avoid trouble. My mouse has a fancy wheel and buttons. Can I use them in FreeBSD? The answer is, unfortunately, It depends. These mice with additional features require specialized driver in most cases. Unless the mouse device driver or the user program has specific support for the mouse, it will act just like a standard two, or three button mouse. For the possible usage of wheels in the X Window environment, refer to that section. My mouse does not seem working. The mouse cursor jumps around on the screen. The mouse has a wheel and is connected to the PS/2 mouse port. The PS/2 mouse driver psm in FreeBSD versions 3.2 or earlier has difficulty with some wheel mice, including Logitech model M-S48 and its OEM siblings. Apply the following patch to /sys/i386/isa/psm.c and rebuild the kernel. Index: psm.c =================================================================== RCS file: /src/CVS/src/sys/i386/isa/Attic/psm.c,v retrieving revision 1.60.2.1 retrieving revision 1.60.2.2 diff -u -r1.60.2.1 -r1.60.2.2 --- psm.c 1999/06/03 12:41:13 1.60.2.1 +++ psm.c 1999/07/12 13:40:52 1.60.2.2 @@ -959,14 +959,28 @@ sc->mode.packetsize = vendortype[i].packetsize; /* set mouse parameters */ +#if 0 + /* + * A version of Logitech FirstMouse+ won't report wheel movement, + * if SET_DEFAULTS is sent... Don't use this command. + * This fix was found by Takashi Nishida. + */ i = send_aux_command(sc->kbdc, PSMC_SET_DEFAULTS); if (verbose >= 2) printf("psm%d: SET_DEFAULTS return code:%04x\n", unit, i); +#endif if (sc->config & PSM_CONFIG_RESOLUTION) { sc->mode.resolution = set_mouse_resolution(sc->kbdc, - (sc->config & PSM_CONFIG_RESOLUTION) - 1); + (sc->config & PSM_CONFIG_RESOLUTION) - 1); + } else if (sc->mode.resolution >= 0) { + sc->mode.resolution + = set_mouse_resolution(sc->kbdc, sc->dflt_mode.resolution); + } + if (sc->mode.rate > 0) { + sc->mode.rate = set_mouse_sampling_rate(sc->kbdc, sc->dflt_mode.rate); } + set_mouse_scaling(sc->kbdc, 1); /* request a data packet and extract sync. bits */ if (get_mouse_status(sc->kbdc, stat, 1, 3) < 3) { Versions later than 3.2 should be all right. How do I use the mouse/trackball/touchpad on my laptop? Please refer to the answer to the previous question. And check out this note on the Mobile Computing page. What types of tape drives are supported? FreeBSD supports SCSI, QIC-36 (with a QIC-02 interface) and QIC-40/80 (Floppy based) tape drives. This includes 8-mm (aka Exabyte) and DAT drives. The QIC-40/80 drives are known to be slow. Some of the early 8-mm drives are not quite compatible with SCSI-2, and may not work well with FreeBSD. Does FreeBSD support tape changers? FreeBSD 2.2 supports SCSI changers using the ch(4) device and the chio(1) command. The details of how you actually control the changer can be found in the chio(1) man page. If you're not using AMANDA or some other product that already understands changers, remember that they're only know how to move a tape from one point to another, so you need to keep track of which slot a tape is in, and which slot the tape currently in the drive needs to go back to. Which sound cards are supported by FreeBSD? FreeBSD supports the SoundBlaster, SoundBlaster Pro, SoundBlaster 16, Pro Audio Spectrum 16, AdLib and Gravis UltraSound sound cards. There is also limited support for MPU-401 and compatible MIDI cards. Cards conforming to the Microsoft Sound System specification are also supported through the pcm driver. This is only for sound! This driver does not support CD-ROMs, SCSI or joysticks on these cards, except for the SoundBlaster. The SoundBlaster SCSI interface and some non-SCSI CDROMS are supported, but you can't boot off this device. Workarounds for no sound from es1370 with pcm driver? You can run the following command everytime the machine booted up: &prompt.root; mixer pcm 100 vol 100 cd 100 Which network cards does FreeBSD support? See the Ethernet cards section of the handbook for a more complete list. I don't have a math co-processor - is that bad? This will only affect 386/486SX/486SLC owners - other machines will have one built into the CPU. In general this will not cause any problems, but there are circumstances where you will take a hit, either in performance or accuracy of the math emulation code (see the section on FP emulation). In particular, drawing arcs in X will be VERY slow. It is highly recommended that you buy a math co-processor; it's well worth it. Some math co-processors are better than others. It pains us to say it, but nobody ever got fired for buying Intel. Unless you're sure it works with FreeBSD, beware of clones. What other devices does FreeBSD support? See the Handbook for the list of other devices supported. Does FreeBSD support power management on my laptop? FreeBSD supports APM on certain machines. Please look in the LINT kernel config file, searching for the APM keyword. My Micron system hangs at boot time Certain Micron motherboards have a non-conforming PCI BIOS implementation that causes grief when FreeBSD boots because PCI devices don't get configured at their reported addresses. Disable the Plug and Play Operating System flag in the BIOS to work around this problem. More information can be found at http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html#micron I have a newer Adaptec controller and FreeBSD can't find it. The newer AIC789x series Adaptec chips are supported under the CAM SCSI framework which made it's debut in 3.0. Patches against 2.2-STABLE are in ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/development/cam/. A CAM-enhanced boot floppy is available at http://people.FreeBSD.org/~abial/cam-boot/. In both cases read the README before beginning. I have an internal Plug & Play modem and FreeBSD can't find it. You will need to add the modem's PnP ID to the PnP ID list in the serial driver. To enable Plug & Play support, compile a new kernel with controller pnp0 in the configuration file, then reboot the system. The kernel will print the PnP IDs of all the devices it finds. Copy the PnP ID from the modem to the table in /sys/i386/isa/sio.c, at about line 2777. Look for the string SUP1310 in the structure siopnp_ids[] to find the table. Build the kernel again, install, reboot, and your modem should be found. You may have to manually configure the PnP devices using the pnp command in the boot-time configuration with a command like pnp 1 0 enable os irq0 3 drq0 0 port0 0x2f8 to make the modem show. How do I get the boot: prompt to show on the serial console? Build a kernel with options COMCONSOLE. Create /boot.config and place as the only text in the file. Unplug the keyboard from the system. See /usr/src/sys/i386/boot/biosboot/README.serial for information. Why doesn't my 3Com PCI network card work with my Micron computer? Certain Micron motherboards have a non-conforming PCI BIOS implementation that does not configure PCI devices at the addresses reported. This causes grief when FreeBSD boots. To work around this problem, disable the Plug and Play Operating System flag in the BIOS. More information on this problem is available at URL: http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html#micron Does FreeBSD support Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP)? SMP is supported in 3.0-STABLE and later releases only. SMP is not enabled in the GENERIC kernel, so you will have to recompile your kernel to enable SMP. Take a look at /sys/i386/conf/LINT to figure out what options to put in your kernel config file. The boot floppy hangs on a system with an ASUS K7V motherboard. How do I fix this? Go in to the BIOS setup and disable the boot virus protection. Troubleshooting I have bad blocks on my hard drive! With SCSI drives, the drive should be capable of re-mapping these automatically. However, many drives are shipped with this feature disabled, for some mysterious reason... To enable this, you'll need to edit the first device page mode, which can be done on FreeBSD by giving the command (as root) &prompt.root; scsi -f /dev/rsd0c -m 1 -e -P 3 and changing the values of AWRE and ARRE from 0 to 1:- AWRE (Auto Write Reallocation Enbld): 1 ARRE (Auto Read Reallocation Enbld): 1 The following paragraphs were submitted by Ted Mittelstaedt: For IDE drives, any bad block is usually a sign of potential trouble. All modern IDE drives come with internal bad-block remapping turned on. All IDE hard drive manufacturers today offer extensive warranties and will replace drives with bad blocks on them. If you still want to attempt to rescue an IDE drive with bad blocks, you can attempt to download the IDE drive manufacturer's IDE diagnostic program, and run this against the drive. Sometimes these programs can be set to force the drive electronics to rescan the drive for bad blocks and lock them out. For ESDI, RLL and MFM drives, bad blocks are a normal part of the drive and are no sign of trouble, generally. With a PC, the disk drive controller card and BIOS handle the task of locking out bad sectors. This is fine for operating systems like DOS that use BIOS code to access the disk. However, FreeBSD's disk driver does not go through BIOS, therefore a mechanism, bad144, exists that replaces this functionality. bad144 only works with the wd driver (which means it is not supported in FreeBSD 4.0), it is NOT able to be used with SCSI. bad144 works by entering all bad sectors found into a special file. One caveat with bad144 - the bad block special file is placed on the last track of the disk. As this file may possibly contain a listing for a bad sector that would occur near the beginning of the disk, where the /kernel file might be located, it therefore must be accessible to the bootstrap program that uses BIOS calls to read the kernel file. This means that the disk with bad144 used on it must not exceed 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors. This places an effective limit of 500MB on a disk that is mapped with bad144. To use bad144, simply set the Bad Block scanning to ON in the FreeBSD fdisk screen during the initial install. This works up through FreeBSD 2.2.7. The disk must have less than 1024 cylinders. It is generally recommended that the disk drive has been in operation for at least 4 hours prior to this to allow for thermal expansion and track wandering. If the disk has more than 1024 cylinders (such as a large ESDI drive) the ESDI controller uses a special translation mode to make it work under DOS. The wd driver understands about these translation modes, IF you enter the translated geometry with the set geometry command in fdisk. You must also NOT use the dangerously dedicated mode of creating the FreeBSD partition, as this ignores the geometry. Also, even though fdisk will use your overridden geometry, it still knows the true size of the disk, and will attempt to create a too large FreeBSD partition. If the disk geometry is changed to the translated geometry, the partition MUST be manually created with the number of blocks. A quick trick to use is to set up the large ESDI disk with the ESDI controller, boot it with a DOS disk and format it with a DOS partition. Then, boot the FreeBSD install and in the fdisk screen, read off and write down the blocksize and block numbers for the DOS partition. Then, reset the geometry to the same that DOS uses, delete the DOS partition, and create a cooperative FreeBSD partition using the blocksize you recorded earlier. Then, set the partition bootable and turn on bad block scanning. During the actual install, bad144 will run first, before any filesystems are created. (you can view this with an Alt-F2) If it has any trouble creating the badsector file, you have set too large a disk geometry - reboot the system and start all over again (including repartitioning and reformatting with DOS). If remapping is enabled and you are seeing bad blocks, consider replacing the drive. The bad blocks will only get worse as time goes on. FreeBSD does not recognize my Bustek 742a EISA SCSI! This info is specific to the 742a but may also cover other Buslogic cards. (Bustek = Buslogic) There are 2 general versions of the 742a card. They are hardware revisions A-G, and revisions H - onwards. The revision letter is located after the Assembly number on the edge of the card. The 742a has 2 ROM chips on it, one is the BIOS chip and the other is the Firmware chip. FreeBSD doesn't care what version of BIOS chip you have but it does care about what version of firmware chip. Buslogic will send upgrade ROMS out if you call their tech support dept. The BIOS and Firmware chips are shipped as a matched pair. You must have the most current Firmware ROM in your adapter card for your hardware revision. The REV A-G cards can only accept BIOS/Firmware sets up to 2.41/2.21. The REV H- up cards can accept the most current BIOS/Firmware sets of 4.70/3.37. The difference between the firmware sets is that the 3.37 firmware supports round robin The Buslogic cards also have a serial number on them. If you have a old hardware revision card you can call the Buslogic RMA department and give them the serial number and attempt to exchange the card for a newer hardware revision. If the card is young enough they will do so. FreeBSD 2.1 only supports Firmware revisions 2.21 onward. If you have a Firmware revision older than this your card will not be recognized as a Buslogic card. It may be recognized as an Adaptec 1540, however. The early Buslogic firmware contains an AHA1540 emulation mode. This is not a good thing for an EISA card, however. If you have an old hardware revision card and you obtain the 2.21 firmware for it, you will need to check the position of jumper W1 to B-C, the default is A-B. My HP Netserver's SCSI controller is not detected! This is basically a known problem. The EISA on-board SCSI controller in the HP Netserver machines occupies EISA slot number 11, so all the true EISA slots are in front of it. Alas, the address space for EISA slots >= 10 collides with the address space assigned to PCI, and FreeBSD's auto-configuration currently cannot handle this situation very well. So now, the best you can do is to pretend there is no address range clash :), by bumping the kernel option EISA_SLOTS to a value of 12. Configure and compile a kernel, as described in the Handbook entry on configuring the kernel. Of course, this does present you with a chicken-and-egg problem when installing on such a machine. In order to work around this problem, a special hack is available inside UserConfig. Do not use the visual interface, but the plain command-line interface there. Simply type eisa 12 quit at the prompt, and install your system as usual. While it's recommended you compile and install a custom kernel anyway, Hopefully, future versions will have a proper fix for this problem. You can not use a dangerously dedicated disk with an HP Netserver. See this note for more info. What's up with this CMD640 IDE controller? It's broken. It cannot handle commands on both channels simultaneously. There's a workaround available now and it is enabled automatically if your system uses this chip. For the details refer to the manual page of the disk driver (man 4 wd). If you're already running FreeBSD 2.2.1 or 2.2.2 with a CMD640 IDE controller and you want to use the second channel, build a new kernel with options "CMD640" enabled. This is the default for 2.2.5 and later. I keep seeing messages like ed1: timeout. This is usually caused by an interrupt conflict (e.g., two boards using the same IRQ). FreeBSD prior to 2.0.5R used to be tolerant of this, and the network driver would still function in the presence of IRQ conflicts. However, with 2.0.5R and later, IRQ conflicts are no longer tolerated. Boot with the -c option and change the ed0/de0/... entry to match your board. If you're using the BNC connector on your network card, you may also see device timeouts because of bad termination. To check this, attach a terminator directly to the NIC (with no cable) and see if the error messages go away. Some NE2000 compatible cards will give this error if there is no link on the UTP port or if the cable is disconnected. When I mount a CDROM, I get Incorrect super block. You have to tell mount the type of the device that you want to mount. By default, mount(8) will assume the filesystem is of type ufs. You want to mount a CDROM filesystem, and you do this by specifying the option to mount(8) . This does, of course, assume that the CDROM contains an ISO 9660 filesystem, which is what most CDROMs have. As of 1.1R, FreeBSD automatically understands the Rock Ridge (long filename) extensions as well. As an example, if you want to mount the CDROM device, /dev/cd0c, under /mnt, you would execute: &prompt.root; mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0c /mnt Note that your device name (/dev/cd0c in this example) could be different, depending on the CDROM interface. Note that the option just causes the mount_cd9660 command to be executed, and so the above example could be shortened to: &prompt.root; mount_cd9660 /dev/cd0c /mnt When I mount a CDROM, I get Device not configured. This generally means that there is no CDROM in the CDROM drive, or the drive is not visible on the bus. Feed the drive something, and/or check its master/slave status if it is IDE (ATAPI). It can take a couple of seconds for a CDROM drive to notice that it's been fed, so be patient. Sometimes a SCSI CD-ROM may be missed because it hadn't enough time to answer the bus reset. If you have a SCSI CD-ROM please try to add the following symbol into your kernel configuration file and recompile. options "SCSI_DELAY=15" My printer is ridiculously slow. What can I do ? If it's parallel, and the only problem is that it's terribly slow, try setting your printer port into polled mode: &prompt.root; lptcontrol -p Some newer HP printers are claimed not to work correctly in interrupt mode, apparently due to some (not yet exactly understood) timing problem. My programs occasionally die with Signal 11 errors. Signal 11 errors are caused when your process has attempted to access memory which the operating system has not granted it access to. If something like this is happening at seemingly random intervals then you need to start investigating things very carefully. These problems can usually be attributed to either: If the problem is occurring only in a specific application that you are developing yourself it is probably a bug in your code. If it's a problem with part of the base FreeBSD system, it may also be buggy code, but more often than not these problems are found and fixed long before us general FAQ readers get to use these bits of code (that's what -current is for). In particular, a dead giveaway that this is *not* a FreeBSD bug is if you see the problem when you're compiling a program, but the activity that the compiler is carrying out changes each time. For example, suppose you're running "make buildworld", and the compile fails while trying to compile ls.c in to ls.o. If you next run "make buildworld" again, and the compile fails in the same place then this is a broken build -- try updating your sources and try again. If the compile fails elsewhere then this is almost certainly hardware. What you should do: In the first case you can use a debugger e.g. gdb to find the point in the program which is attempting to access a bogus address and then fix it. In the second case you need to verify that it's not your hardware at fault. Common causes of this include : Your hard disks might be overheating: Check the fans in your case are still working, as your disk (and perhaps other hardware might be overheating). The processor running is overheating: This might be because the processor has been overclocked, or the fan on the processor might have died. In either case you need to ensure that you have hardware running at what it's specified to run at, at least while trying to solve this problem. i.e. Clock it back to the default settings. If you are overclocking then note that it's far cheaper to have a slow system than a fried system that needs replacing! Also the wider community is not often sympathetic to problems on overclocked systems, whether you believe it's safe or not. Dodgy memory: If you have multiple memory SIMMS/DIMMS installed then pull them all out and try running the machine with each SIMM or DIMM individually and narrow the problem down to either the problematic DIMM/SIMM or perhaps even a combination. Over-optimistic Motherboard settings: In your BIOS settings, and some motherboard jumpers you have options to set various timings, mostly the defaults will be sufficient, but sometimes, setting the wait states on RAM too low, or setting the "RAM Speed: Turbo" option, or similar in the BIOS will cause strange behaviour. A possible idea is to set to BIOS defaults, but it might be worth noting down your settings first! Unclean or insufficient power to the motherboard. If you have any unused I/O boards, hard disks, or CDROMs in your system, try temporarily removing them or disconnecting the power cable from them, to see if your power supply can manage a smaller load. Or try another power supply, preferably one with a little more power (for instance, if your current power supply is rated at 250 Watts try one rated at 300 Watts). You should also read the SIG11 FAQ (listed below) which has excellent explanations of all these problems, albeit from a Linux viewpoint. It also discusses how memory testing software or hardware can still pass faulty memory. Finally, if none of this has helped it is possible that you've just found a bug in FreeBSD, and you should follow the instructions to send a problem report. There's an extensive FAQ on this at the SIG11 problem FAQ When I boot, the screen goes black and loses sync! This is a known problem with the ATI Mach 64 video card. The problem is that this card uses address 2e8, and the fourth serial port does too. Due to a bug (feature?) in the sio(4) driver it will touch this port even if you don't have the fourth serial port, and even if you disable sio3 (the fourth port) which normally uses this address. Until the bug has been fixed, you can use this workaround: Enter at the bootprompt. (This will put the kernel into configuration mode). Disable sio0, sio1, sio2 and sio3 (all of them). This way the sio driver doesn't get activated -> no problems. Type exit to continue booting. If you want to be able to use your serial ports, you'll have to build a new kernel with the following modification: in /usr/src/sys/i386/isa/sio.c find the one occurrence of the string 0x2e8 and remove that string and the preceding comma (keep the trailing comma). Now follow the normal procedure of building a new kernel. Even after applying these workarounds, you may still find that the X Window System does not work properly. If this is the case, make sure that the XFree86 version you are using is at least XFree86 3.3.3 or higher. This version and upwards has built-in support for the Mach64 cards and even a dedicated X server for those cards. I have 128 MB of RAM but the system only uses 64 MB. Due to the manner in which FreeBSD gets the memory size from the BIOS, it can only detect 16 bits worth of Kbytes in size (65535 Kbytes = 64MB) (or less... some BIOSes peg the memory size to 16M). If you have more than 64MB, FreeBSD will attempt to detect it; however, the attempt may fail. To work around this problem, you need to use the kernel option specified below. There is a way to get complete memory information from the BIOS, but we don't have room in the bootblocks to do it. Someday when lack of room in the bootblocks is fixed, we'll use the extended BIOS functions to get the full memory information...but for now we're stuck with the kernel option. options "MAXMEM=n" Where n is your memory in Kilobytes. For a 128 MB machine, you'd want to use 131072. FreeBSD 2.0 panics with kmem_map too small! The message may also be mb_map too small! The panic indicates that the system ran out of virtual memory for network buffers (specifically, mbuf clusters). You can increase the amount of VM available for mbuf clusters by adding: options "NMBCLUSTERS=n" to your kernel config file, where n is a number in the range 512-4096, depending on the number of concurrent TCP connections you need to support. I'd recommend trying 2048 - this should get rid of the panic completely. You can monitor the number of mbuf clusters allocated/in use on the system with netstat -m. The default value for NMBCLUSTERS is 512 + MAXUSERS * 16. CMAP busy panic when rebooting with a new kernel. The logic that attempts to detect an out of date /var/db/kvm_*.db files sometimes fails and using a mismatched file can sometimes lead to panics. If this happens, reboot single-user and do: &prompt.root; rm /var/db/kvm_*.db ahc0: brkadrint, Illegal Host Access at seqaddr 0x0 This is a conflict with an Ultrastor SCSI Host Adapter. During the boot process enter the kernel configuration menu and disable uha0, which is causing the problem. Sendmail says mail loops back to myself This is answered in the sendmail FAQ as follows:- * I'm getting "Local configuration error" messages, such as: 553 relay.domain.net config error: mail loops back to myself 554 <user@domain.net>... Local configuration error How can I solve this problem? You have asked mail to the domain (e.g., domain.net) to be forwarded to a specific host (in this case, relay.domain.net) by using an MX record, but the relay machine doesn't recognize itself as domain.net. Add domain.net to /etc/sendmail.cw (if you are using FEATURE(use_cw_file)) or add "Cw domain.net" to /etc/sendmail.cf. The current version of the sendmail FAQ is no longer maintained with the sendmail release. It is however regularly posted to comp.mail.sendmail, comp.mail.misc, comp.mail.smail, comp.answers, and news.answers. You can also receive a copy via email by sending a message to mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with the command send usenet/news.answers/mail/sendmail-faq as the body of the message. Full screen applications on remote machines misbehave The remote machine may be setting your terminal type to something other than the cons25 terminal type required by the FreeBSD console. There are a number of possible work-arounds for this problem: After logging on to the remote machine, set your TERM shell variable to ansi or sco if the remote machine knows about these terminal types. Use a VT100 emulator like screen at the FreeBSD console. screen offers you the ability to run multiple concurrent sessions from one terminal, and is a neat program in its own right. Each screen window behaves like a VT100 terminal, so the TERM variable at the remote end should be set to vt100. Install the cons25 terminal database entry on the remote machine. The way to do this depends on the operating system on the remote machine. The system administration manuals for the remote system should be able to help you here. Fire up an X server at the FreeBSD end and login to the remote machine using an X based terminal emulator such as xterm or rxvt. The TERM variable at the remote host should be set to xterm or vt100. My machine prints calcru: negative time... This can be caused by various hardware and/or software ailments relating to interrupts. It may be due to bugs but can also happen by nature of certain devices. Running TCP/IP over the parallel port using a large MTU is one good way to provoke this problem. Graphics accelerators can also get you here, in which case you should check the interrupt setting of the card first. A side effect of this problem are dying processes with the message SIGXCPU exceeded cpu time limit. For FreeBSD 3.0 and later from Nov 29, 1998 forward: If the problem cannot be fixed otherwise the solution is to set this sysctl variable: &prompt.root; sysctl -w kern.timecounter.method=1 This means a performance impact, but considering the cause of this problem, you probably will not notice. If the problem persists, keep the sysctl set to one and set the NTIMECOUNTER option in your kernel to increasingly large values. If by the time you have reached NTIMECOUNTER=20 the problem isn't solved, interrupts are too hosed on your machine for reliable timekeeping. Commercial Applications This section is still very sparse, though we're hoping, of course, that companies will add to it! :) The FreeBSD group has no financial interest in any of the companies listed here but simply lists them as a public service (and feels that commercial interest in FreeBSD can have very positive effects on FreeBSD's long-term viability). We encourage commercial software vendors to send their entries here for inclusion. See the Vendors page for a longer list. Where can I get Motif for FreeBSD? Contact Apps2go for the least expensive ELF Motif 2.1.20 distribution for FreeBSD (either i386 or Alpha). There are two distributions, the developement edition and the runtime edition (for much less). These distributions includes: OSF/Motif manager, xmbind, panner, wsm. Development kit with uil, mrm, xm, xmcxx, include and Imake files. Static and dynamic ELF libraries (for use with FreeBSD 3.0 and above). Demonstration applets. Be sure to specify that you want the FreeBSD version of Motif when ordering (don't forget to mention the architecture you want too)! Versions for NetBSD and OpenBSD are also sold by Apps2go. This is currently a FTP only download. More info Apps2go WWW page or Sales or Support email addresses. or phone (817) 431 8775 or +1 817 431-8775 Contact Metro Link for an either ELF or a.out Motif 2.1 distribution for FreeBSD. This distribution includes: OSF/Motif manager, xmbind, panner, wsm. Development kit with uil, mrm, xm, xmcxx, include and Imake files. Static and dynamic libraries (specify ELF for use with FreeBSD 3.0 and later; or a.out for use with FreeBSD 2.2.8 and eariler). Demonstration applets. Preformatted man pages. Be sure to specify that you want the FreeBSD version of Motif when ordering! Versions for Linux are also sold by Metro Link. This is available on either a CDROM or for FTP download. Contact Xi Graphics for an a.out Motif 2.0 distribution for FreeBSD. This distribution includes: OSF/Motif manager, xmbind, panner, wsm. Development kit with uil, mrm, xm, xmcxx, include and Imake files. Static and dynamic libraries (for use with FreeBSD 2.2.8 and eariler). Demonstration applets. Preformatted man pages. Be sure to specify that you want the FreeBSD version of Motif when ordering! Versions for BSDI and Linux are also sold by Xi Graphics. This is currently a 4 diskette set... in the future this will change to a unified CD distribution like their CDE. Where can I get CDE for FreeBSD? Xi Graphics used to sell CDE for FreeBSD, but no longer do. KDE is an open source X11 desktop which is similar to CDE in many respects. You might also like the look and feel of xfce. KDE and xfce are both in the ports system. Are there any commercial high-performance X servers? Yes, Xi Graphics and Metro Link sells Accelerated-X product for FreeBSD and other Intel based systems. The Metro Link offering is a high performance X Server that offers easy configuration using the FreeBSD Package suite of tools, support for multiple concurrent video boards and is distributed in binary form only, in a convienent FTP download. Not to mention the Metro Link offering is available at the very reasonable price of $39. Metro Link also sells both ELF and a.out Motif for FreeBSD (see above). More info Metro Link WWW page or Sales or Support email addresses. or phone (954) 938-0283 or +1 954 938-0283 The Xi Graphics offering is a high performance X Server that offers easy configuration, support for multiple concurrent video boards and is distributed in binary form only, in a unified diskette distribution for FreeBSD and Linux. Xi Graphics also offers a high performance X Server taylored for laptop support. There is a free compatibility demo of version 5.0 available. Xi Graphics also sells Motif and CDE for FreeBSD (see above). More info Xi Graphics WWW page or Sales or Support email addresses. or phone (800) 946 7433 or +1 303 298-7478. Are there any Database systems for FreeBSD? Yes! See the Commercial Vendors section of FreeBSD's Web site. Also see the Databases section of the Ports collection. Can I run Oracle on FreeBSD? Yes. The following pages tell you exactly how to setup Linux-Oracle on FreeBSD: http://www.scc.nl/~marcel/howto-oracle.html http://www.lf.net/lf/pi/oracle/install-linux-oracle-on-freebsd User Applications So, where are all the user applications? Please take a look at the ports page for info on software packages ported to FreeBSD. The list currently tops 3400 and is growing daily, so come back to check often or subscribe to the freebsd-announce mailing list for periodic updates on new entries. Most ports should be available for the 2.2, 3.x and 4.x branches, and many of them should work on 2.1.x systems as well. Each time a FreeBSD release is made, a snapshot of the ports tree at the time of release in also included in the ports/ directory. We also support the concept of a package, essentially no more than a gzipped binary distribution with a little extra intelligence embedded in it for doing whatever custom installation work is required. A package can be installed and uninstalled again easily without having to know the gory details of which files it includes. Use the package installation menu in /stand/sysinstall (under the post-configuration menu item) or invoke the pkg_add(1) command on the specific package files you're interested in installing. Package files can usually be identified by their .tgz suffix and CDROM distribution people will have a packages/All directory on their CD which contains such files. They can also be downloaded over the net for various versions of FreeBSD at the following locations: for 2.2.8-RELEASE/2.2.8-STABLE ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-2.2.8/ for 3.X-RELEASE/3.X-STABLE ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-3-stable/ for 4.1-RELEASE/4-STABLE ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4-stable/ for 5.X-CURRENT ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5-current or your nearest local mirror site. Note that all ports may not be available as packages since new ones are constantly being added. It is always a good idea to check back periodically to see which packages are available at the ftp.FreeBSD.org master site. Why is /bin/sh so minimal? Why doesn't FreeBSD use bash or another shell? Because POSIX says that there shall be such a shell. The more complicated answer: many people need to write shell scripts which will be portable across many systems. That's why POSIX specifies the shell and utility commands in great detail. Most scripts are written in Bourne shell, and because several important programming interfaces (&man.make.1;, &man.system.3;, &man.popen.3;, and analogues in higher-level scripting languages like Perl and Tcl) are specified to use the Bourne shell to interpret commands. Because the Bourne shell is so often and widely used, it is important for it to be quick to start, be deterministic in its behavior, and have a small memory footprint. The existing implementation is our best effort at meeting as many of these requirements simultaneously as we can. In order to keep /bin/sh small, we have not provided many of the convenience features that other shells have. That's why the Ports Collection includes more featureful shells like bash, scsh, tcsh, and zsh. (You can compare for yourself the memory utilization of all these shells by looking at the VSZ and RSS columns in a ps -u listing.) Where do I find libc.so.3.0? You are trying to run a package built on 2.2 and later on a 2.1.x system. Please take a look at the previous section and get the correct port/package for your system. I get a message Error: can't find libc.so.4.0 You accidently downloaded packages meant for 4.X and 5.X systems and attempted to install them on your 2.X or 3.X FreeBSD system. Please download the correct version of the packages. ghostscript gives lots of errors with my 386/486SX. You don't have a math co-processor, right? You will need to add the alternative math emulator to your kernel; you do this by adding the following to your kernel config file and it will be compiled in. options GPL_MATH_EMULATE You will need to remove the MATH_EMULATE option when you do this. When I run a SCO/iBCS2 application, it bombs on socksys (FreeBSD 3.0 and older only). You first need to edit the /etc/sysconfig (or /etc/rc.conf) file in the last section to change the following variable to YES: # Set to YES if you want ibcs2 (SCO) emulation loaded at startup ibcs2=NO It will load the ibcs2 kernel module at startup. You'll then need to set up /compat/ibcs2/dev to look like: lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 9 Oct 15 22:20 X0R@ -> /dev/null lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 7 Oct 15 22:20 nfsd@ -> socksys -rw-rw-r-- 1 root wheel 0 Oct 28 12:02 null lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 9 Oct 15 22:20 socksys@ -> /dev/null crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 41, 1 Oct 15 22:14 spx You just need socksys to go to /dev/null to fake the open & close. The code in -CURRENT will handle the rest. This is much cleaner than the way it was done before. If you want the spx driver for a local socket X connection, define SPX_HACK when you compile the system. How do I configure INN (Internet News) for my machine? After installing the inn package or port, an excellent place to start is Dave Barr's INN Page where you'll find the INN FAQ. What version of Microsoft FrontPage should I get? Use the Port, Luke! A pre-patched version of Apache is available in the ports tree. Does FreeBSD support Java? Yes. Please see http://www.FreeBSD.org/java/. Why can't I build this port on my 3.X-STABLE machine? If you're running a FreeBSD version that lags significantly behind -CURRENT or -STABLE, you may need a ports upgrade kit from http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/. If you are up to date, then someone might have committed a change to the port which works for -CURRENT but which broke the port for -STABLE. Please submit a bug report on this with the send-pr(1) command, since the ports collection is supposed to work for both the -CURRENT and -STABLE branches. Where do I find ld.so? If you want to run some aout applications like Netscape Navigator on an Elf'ened machine such as 3.1-R or later, it would need /usr/libexec/ld.so and some aout libs. They are included in the compat22 distribution. Use /stand/sysinstall or install.sh in the compat22 subdirectory and install it. Also read ERRATAs for 3.1-R and 3.2-R. Kernel Configuration I'd like to customize my kernel. Is it difficult? Not at all! Check out the kernel config section of the Handbook. I recommend making a dated snapshot of your kernel in kernel.YYMMDD after you get it all working, that way if you do something dire the next time you play with your configuration you can boot that kernel instead of having to go all the way back to kernel.GENERIC. This is particularly important if you're now booting off a controller that isn't supported in the GENERIC kernel (yes, personal experience). My kernel compiles fail because _hw_float is missing. Let me guess. You removed npx0 from your kernel configuration file because you don't have a math co-processor, right? Wrong! :-) The npx0 is MANDATORY. Even if you don't have a mathematic co-processor, you must include the npx0 device. Why is my kernel so big (over 10MB)? Chances are, you compiled your kernel in debug mode. Kernels built in debug mode contain many symbols that are used for debugging, thus greatly increasing the size of the kernel. Note that if you running a FreeBSD 3.0 or later system, there will be little or no performance decrease from running a debug kernel, and it is useful to keep one around in case of a system panic. However, if you are running low on disk space, or you simply don't want to run a debug kernel, make sure that both of the following are true: You do not have a line in your kernel configuration file that reads: makeoptions DEBUG=-g You are not running config with the option. Both of the above situations will cause your kernel to be built in debug mode. As long as you make sure you follow the steps above, you can build your kernel normally, and you should notice a fairly large size decrease; most kernels tend to be around 1.5MB to 2MB. Interrupt conflicts with multi-port serial code. Q. When I compile a kernel with multi-port serial code, it tells me that only the first port is probed and the rest skipped due to interrupt conflicts. How do I fix this? A. The problem here is that FreeBSD has code built-in to keep the kernel from getting trashed due to hardware or software conflicts. The way to fix this is to leave out the IRQ settings on all but one port. Here is a example: # # Multiport high-speed serial line - 16550 UARTS # device sio2 at isa? port 0x2a0 tty irq 5 flags 0x501 vector siointr device sio3 at isa? port 0x2a8 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr device sio4 at isa? port 0x2b0 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr device sio5 at isa? port 0x2b8 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr How do I enable support for QIC-40/80 drives? You need to uncomment the following line in the generic config file (or add it to your config file), add a flags 0x1 on the fdc line and recompile. controller fdc0 at isa? port "IO_FD1" bio irq 6 drq 2 flags 0x1 vector fdintr disk fd0 at fdc0 drive 0 ^^^^^^^^^ disk fd1 at fdc0 drive 1 #tape ft0 at fdc0 drive 2 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Next, you create a device called /dev/ft0 by going into /dev and run the following command: &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV ft0 for the first device. ft1 for a second one and so on. You will have a device called /dev/ft0, which you can write to through a special program to manage it called fd - see the man page on ft for further details. Versions previous to also had some trouble dealing with bad tape media; if you have trouble where ft seems to go back and forth over the same spot, try grabbing the latest version of ft from /usr/src/sbin/ft in and try that. System Administration Where are the system start-up configuration files? From 2.0.5R to 2.2.1R, the primary configuration file is /etc/sysconfig. All the options are to be specified in this file and other files such as /etc/rc and /etc/netstart just include it. Look in the /etc/sysconfig file and change the value to match your system. This file is filled with comments to show what to put in there. In post-2.2.1 and 3.0, /etc/sysconfig was renamed to a more self-describing rc.conf file and the syntax cleaned up a bit in the process. /etc/netstart was also renamed to /etc/rc.network so that all files could be copied with a cp /usr/src/etc/rc* /etc command. And, in 3.1 and later, /etc/rc.conf has been moved to /etc/defaults/rc.conf. Do not edit this file! Instead, if there is any entry in /etc/defaults/rc.conf that you want to change, you should copy the line into /etc/rc.conf and change it there. For example, if you wish to start named, the DNS server included with FreeBSD in FreeBSD 3.1 or later, all you need to do is: &prompt.root; echo named_enable="YES" >> /etc/rc.conf To start up local services in FreeBSD 3.1 or later, place shell scripts in the /usr/local/etc.rd directory. These shell scripts should be set executable, and end with a .sh. In FreeBSD 3.0 and earlier releases, you should edit the /etc/rc.local file. The /etc/rc.serial is for serial port initialization (e.g. locking the port characteristics, and so on.). The /etc/rc.i386 is for Intel-specifics settings, such as iBCS2 emulation or the PC system console configuration. How do I add a user easily? Use the adduser command. For more complicated usage, the pw command. To remove the user again, use the rmuser command. Once again, pw will work as well. How can I add my new hard disk to my FreeBSD system? See the Disk Formatting Tutorial at www.FreeBSD.org. I have a new removable drive, how do I use it? Whether it's a removable drive like a ZIP or an EZ drive (or even a floppy, if you want to use it that way), or a new hard disk, once it's installed and recognized by the system, and you have your cartridge/floppy/whatever slotted in, things are pretty much the same for all devices. (this section is based on Mark Mayo's ZIP FAQ) If it's a ZIP drive or a floppy , you've already got a DOS filesystem on it, you can use a command like this: &prompt.root; mount -t msdos /dev/fd0c /floppy if it's a floppy, or this: &prompt.root; mount -t msdos /dev/da2s4 /zip for a ZIP disk with the factory configuration. For other disks, see how they're laid out using fdisk or /stand/sysinstall. The rest of the examples will be for a ZIP drive on da2, the third SCSI disk. Unless it's a floppy, or a removable you plan on sharing with other people, it's probably a better idea to stick a BSD file system on it. You'll get long filename support, at least a 2X improvement in performance, and a lot more stability. First, you need to redo the DOS-level partitions/filesystems. You can either use fdisk or /stand/sysinstall, or for a small drive that you don't want to bother with multiple operating system support on, just blow away the whole FAT partition table (slices) and just use the BSD partitioning: &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rda2 count=2 &prompt.root; disklabel -Brw da2 auto You can use disklabel or /stand/sysinstall to create multiple BSD partitions. You'll certainly want to do this if you're adding swap space on a fixed disk, but it's probably irrelevant on a removable drive like a ZIP. Finally, create a new file system, this one's on our ZIP drive using the whole disk: &prompt.root; newfs /dev/rda2c and mount it: &prompt.root; mount /dev/da2c /zip and it's probably a good idea to add a line like this to /etc/fstab so you can just type mount /zip in the future: /dev/da2c /zip ffs rw,noauto 0 0 Why do I keep getting messages like root: not found after editing my crontab file? This is normally caused by editing the system crontab (/etc/crontab) and then using &man.crontab.1; to install it: &prompt.root; crontab /etc/crontab This is not the correct way to do things. The system crontab has a different format to the per-user crontabs which &man.crontab.1; updates (the &man.crontab.5; manual page explains the differences in more detail). If this is what you did, you should delete the /var/cron/tabs/root, since it will simply be a copy of /etc/crontab, in the wrong format. Next time, when you edit /etc/crontab, you should not do anything to inform &man.cron.8; of the changes, since it will notice them automatically. The actual reason for the error is that the system crontab has an extra field, specifying which user to run the command as. In the default system crontab provided with FreeBSD, this is root for all entries. When this crontab is used as the root user's crontab (which is not the same as the system crontab), &man.cron.8; assumes the string root is the first word of the command to execute, but no such command exists. I made a mistake in rc.conf, and now I can't edit it because the filesystem is read-only. What should I do? When you get the prompt to enter the shell pathname, simply press ENTER, and run mount / to re-mount the root filesystem in read/write mode. You may also need to run mount -a -t ufs to mount the filesystem where your favourite editor is defined. If your favourite editor is on a network filesystem, you will need to either configure the network manually before you can mount network filesystems, or use an editor which resides on a local filesystem, such as &man.ed.1;. If you intend to use a full screen editor such as &man.vi.1; or &man.emacs.1;, you may also need to run export TERM=cons25 so that these editors can load the correct data from the &man.termcap.5; database. Once you have performed these steps, you can edit /etc/rc.conf as you usually would to fix the syntax error. The error message displayed immediately after the kernel boot messages should tell you the number of the line in the file which is at fault. How do I mount a secondary DOS partition? The secondary DOS partitions are found after ALL the primary partitions. For example, if you have an E partition as the second DOS partition on the second SCSI drive, you need to create the special files for slice 5 in /dev, then mount /dev/da1s5: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV da1s5 &prompt.root; mount -t msdos /dev/da1s5 /dos/e Can I mount other foreign filesystems under FreeBSD? Digital UNIX UFS CDROMs can be mounted directly on FreeBSD. Mounting disk partitions from Digital UNIX and other systems that support UFS may be more complex, depending on the details of the disk partitioning for the operating system in question. Linux: 2.2 and later have support for ext2fs partitions. See mount_ext2fs for more information. NT: A read-only NTFS driver exists for FreeBSD. For more information, see this tutorial by Mark Ovens at http://ukug.uk.freebsd.org/~mark/ntfs_install.html. Any other information on this subject would be appreciated. How can I use the NT loader to boot FreeBSD? This procedure is slightly different for 2.2.x and 3.x (with the 3-stage boot) systems. The general idea is that you copy the first sector of your native root FreeBSD partition into a file in the DOS/NT partition. Assuming you name that file something like c:\bootsect.bsd (inspired by c:\bootsect.dos), you can then edit the c:\boot.ini file to come up with something like this: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows NT" C:\BOOTSECT.BSD="FreeBSD" C:\="DOS" For 2.2.x systems this procedure assumes that DOS, NT, FreeBSD, or whatever have been installed into their respective fdisk partitions on the same disk. In my case DOS & NT are in the first fdisk partition and FreeBSD is in the second. I also installed FreeBSD to boot from its native partition, not the disk MBR. Mount a DOS-formatted floppy (if you've converted to NTFS) or the FAT partition, under, say, /mnt. &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/rda0a of=/mnt/bootsect.bsd bs=512 count=1 Reboot into DOS or NT. NTFS users copy the bootsect.bsd and/or the bootsect.lnx file from the floppy to C:\. Modify the attributes (permissions) on boot.ini with: C:\> attrib -s -r c:\boot.ini Edit to add the appropriate entries from the example boot.ini above, and restore the attributes: C:\> attrib +s +r c:\boot.ini If FreeBSD is booting from the MBR, restore it with the DOS fdisk command after you reconfigure them to boot from their native partitions. For FreeBSD 3.x systems the procedure is somewhat simpler. If FreeBSD is installed on the same disk as the NT boot partition simply copy /boot/boot1 to C:\BOOTSECT.BSD However, if FreeBSD is installed on a different disk /boot/boot1 will not work, /boot/boot0 is needed. DO NOT SIMPLY COPY /boot/boot0 INSTEAD OF /boot/boot1, YOU WILL OVERWRITE YOUR PARTITION TABLE AND RENDER YOUR COMPUTER UN-BOOTABLE! /boot/boot0 needs to be installed using sysinstall by selecting the FreeBSD boot manager on the screen which asks if you wish to use a boot manager. This is because /boot/boot0 has the partition table area filled with NULL characters but sysinstall copies the partition table before copying /boot/boot0 to the MBR. When the FreeBSD boot manager runs it records the last OS booted by setting the active flag on the partition table entry for that OS and then writes the whole 512-bytes of itself back to the MBR so if you just copy /boot/boot0 to C:\BOOTSECT.BSD then it writes an empty partition table, with the active flag set on one entry, to the MBR. How do I boot FreeBSD and Linux from LILO? If you have FreeBSD and Linux on the same disk, just follow LILO's installation instructions for booting a non-Linux operating system. Very briefly, these are: Boot Linux, and add the following lines to /etc/lilo.conf: other=/dev/hda2 table=/dev/hda label=FreeBSD (the above assumes that your FreeBSD slice is known to Linux as /dev/hda2; tailor to suit your setup). Then, run lilo as root and you should be done. If FreeBSD resides on another disk, you need to add loader=/boot/chain.b to the LILO entry. For example: other=/dev/dab4 table=/dev/dab loader=/boot/chain.b label=FreeBSD In some cases you may need to specify the BIOS drive number to the FreeBSD boot loader to successfully boot off the second disk. For example, if your FreeBSD SCSI disk is probed by BIOS as BIOS disk 1, at the FreeBSD boot loader prompt you need to specify: Boot: 1:da(0,a)/kernel On FreeBSD 2.2.5 and later, you can configure boot(8) to automatically do this for you at boot time. The Linux+FreeBSD mini-HOWTO is a good reference for FreeBSD and Linux interoperability issues. How do I boot FreeBSD and Linux using BootEasy? Install LILO at the start of your Linux boot partition instead of in the Master Boot Record. You can then boot LILO from BootEasy. If you're running Windows-95 and Linux this is recommended anyway, to make it simpler to get Linux booting again if you should need to reinstall Windows95 (which is a Jealous Operating System, and will bear no other Operating Systems in the Master Boot Record). Will a dangerously dedicated disk endanger my health? The installation procedure allows you to chose two different methods in partitioning your harddisk(s). The default way makes it compatible with other operating systems on the same machine, by using fdisk table entries (called slices in FreeBSD), with a FreeBSD slice that employs partitions of its own. Optionally, one can chose to install a boot-selector to switch between the possible operating systems on the disk(s). The alternative uses the entire disk for FreeBSD, and makes no attempt to be compatible with other operating systems. So why it is called dangerous? A disk in this mode doesn't contain what normal PC utilities would consider a valid fdisk table. Depending on how well they have been designed, they might complain at you once they are getting in contact with such a disk, or even worse, they might damage the BSD bootstrap without even asking or notifying you. In addition, the dangerously dedicated disk's layout is known to confuse many BIOSsen, including those from AWARD (eg. as found in HP Netserver and Micronics systems as well as many others) and Symbios/NCR (for the popular 53C8xx range of SCSI controllers). This isn't a complete list, there are more. Symptoms of this confusion include the read error message printed by the FreeBSD bootstrap when it can't find itself, as well as system lockups when booting. Why have this mode at all then? It only saves a few kbytes of disk space, and it can cause real problems for a new installation. Dangerously dedicated mode's origins lie in a desire to avoid one of the most common problems plaguing new FreeBSD installers - matching the BIOS geometry numbers for a disk to the disk itself. Geometry is an outdated concept, but one still at the heart of the PC's BIOS and its interaction with disks. When the FreeBSD installer creates slices, it has to record the location of these slices on the disk in a fashion that corresponds with the way the BIOS expects to find them. If it gets it wrong, you won't be able to boot. Dangerously dedicated mode tries to work around this by making the problem simpler. In some cases, it gets it right. But it's meant to be used as a last-ditch alternative - there are better ways to solve the problem 99 times out of 100. So, how do you avoid the need for DD mode when you're installing? Start by making a note of the geometry that your BIOS claims to be using for your disks. You can arrange to have the kernel print this as it boots by specifying at the boot: prompt, or using boot -v in the loader. Just before the installer starts, the kernel will print a list of BIOS geometries. Don't panic - wait for the installer to start and then use scrollback to read the numbers. Typically the BIOS disk units will be in the same order that FreeBSD lists your disks, first IDE, then SCSI. When you're slicing up your disk, check that the disk geometry displayed in the FDISK screen is correct (ie. it matches the BIOS numbers); if it's wrong, use the g key to fix it. You may have to do this if there's absolutely nothing on the disk, or if the disk has been moved from another system. Note that this is only an issue with the disk that you're going to boot from; FreeBSD will sort itself out just fine with any other disks you may have. Once you've got the BIOS and FreeBSD agreeing about the geometry of the disk, your problems are almost guaranteed to be over, and with no need for DD mode at all. If, however, you are still greeted with the dreaded read error message when you try to boot, it's time to cross your fingers and go for it - there's nothing left to lose. To return a dangerously dedicated disk for normal PC use, there are basically two options. The first is, you write enough NULL bytes over the MBR to make any subsequent installation believe this to be a blank disk. You can do this for example with &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rda0 count=15 Alternatively, the undocumented DOS feature C:\> fdisk /mbr will to install a new master boot record as well, thus clobbering the BSD bootstrap. How can I add more swap space? The best way is to increase the size of your swap partition, or take advantage of this convenient excuse to add another disk. The general rule of thumb is to have around 2x the swap space as you have main memory. However, if you have a very small amount of main memory you may want to configure swap beyond that. It is also a good idea to configure sufficient swap relative to anticipated future memory upgrades so you do not have to futz with your swap configuration later. Adding swap onto a separate disk makes things faster than simply adding swap onto the same disk. As an example, if you are compiling source located on one disk, and the swap is on another disk, this is much faster than both swap and compile on the same disk. This is true for SCSI disks specifically. When you have several disks, configuring a swap partition on each one is usually beneficial, even if you wind up putting swap on a work disk. Typically, each fast disk in your system should have some swap configured. FreeBSD supports up to 4 interleaved swap devices by default. When configuring multiple swap partitions you generally want to make them all about the same size, but people sometimes make their primary swap parition larger in order to accomodate a kernel core dump. Your primary swap partition must be at least as large as main memory in order to be able to accomodate a kernel core. IDE drives are not able to allow access to both drives on the same channel at the same time (FreeBSD doesn't support mode 4, so all IDE disk I/O is programmed). I would still suggest putting your swap on a separate drive however. The drives are so cheap, it is not worth worrying about. Swapping over NFS is only recommended if you do not have a local disk to swap to. Swapping over NFS is slow and inefficient in FreeBSD releases prior to 4.x, but reasonably fast in releases greater or equal to 4.0. Even so, it will be limited to the network bandwidth available and puts an additional burden on the NFS server. Here is an example for 64Mb vn-swap (/usr/swap0, though of course you can use any name that you want). Make sure your kernel was built with the line pseudo-device vn 1 #Vnode driver (turns a file into a device) in your config-file. The GENERIC kernel already contains this. create a vn-device &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV vn0 create a swapfile (/usr/swap0) &prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/swap0 bs=1024k count=64 set proper permissions on (/usr/swap0) &prompt.root; chmod 0600 /usr/swap0 enable the swap file in /etc/rc.conf swapfile="/usr/swap0" # Set to name of swapfile if aux swapfile desired. reboot the machine To enable the swap file immediately, type &prompt.root; vnconfig -ce /dev/vn0c /usr/swap0 swap I'm having problems setting up my printer. Please have a look at the Handbook entry on printing. It should cover most of your problem. See the Handbook entry on printing. The keyboard mappings are wrong for my system. The kbdcontrol program has an option to load a keyboard map file. Under /usr/share/syscons/keymaps are a number of map files. Choose the one relevant to your system and load it. &prompt.root; kbdcontrol -l uk.iso Both the /usr/share/syscons/keymaps and the .kbd extension are assumed by kbdcontrol. This can be configured in /etc/sysconfig (or rc.conf). See the appropriate comments in this file. In 2.0.5R and later, everything related to text fonts, keyboard mapping is in /usr/share/examples/syscons. The following mappings are currently supported: Belgian ISO-8859-1 Brazilian 275 keyboard Codepage 850 Brazilian 275 keyboard ISO-8859-1 Danish Codepage 865 Danish ISO-8859-1 French ISO-8859-1 German Codepage 850 German ISO-8859-1 Italian ISO-8859-1 Japanese 106 Japanese 106x Latin American Norwegian ISO-8859-1 Polish ISO-8859-2 (programmer's) Russian Codepage 866 (alternative) Russian koi8-r (shift) Russian koi8-r Spanish ISO-8859-1 Swedish Codepage 850 Swedish ISO-8859-1 Swiss-German ISO-8859-1 United Kingdom Codepage 850 United Kingdom ISO-8859-1 United States of America ISO-8859-1 United States of America dvorak United States of America dvorakx I can't get user quotas to work properly. Don't turn on quotas on /, Put the quota file on the file system that the quotas are to be enforced on. ie: FS QUOTA FILE /usr /usr/admin/quotas /home /home/admin/quotas ... What's inappropriate about my ccd? The symptom of this is: &prompt.root; ccdconfig -C ccdconfig: ioctl (CCDIOCSET): /dev/ccd0c: Inappropriate file type or format This usually happens when you are trying to concatenate the c partitions, which default to type unused. The ccd driver requires the underlying partition type to be FS_BSDFFS. Edit the disklabel of the disks you are trying to concatenate and change the types of partitions to 4.2BSD. Why can't I edit the disklabel on my ccd? The symptom of this is: &prompt.root; disklabel ccd0 (it prints something sensible here, so let's try to edit it) &prompt.root; disklabel -e ccd0 (edit, save, quit) disklabel: ioctl DIOCWDINFO: No disk label on disk; use "disklabel -r" to install initial label This is because the disklabel returned by ccd is actually a fake one that is not really on the disk. You can solve this problem by writing it back explicitly, as in: &prompt.root; disklabel ccd0 > /tmp/disklabel.tmp &prompt.root; disklabel -Rr ccd0 /tmp/disklabel.tmp &prompt.root; disklabel -e ccd0 (this will work now) Does FreeBSD support System V IPC primitives? Yes, FreeBSD supports System V-style IPC. This includes shared memory, messages and semaphores. You need to add the following lines to your kernel config to enable them. options SYSVSHM options SYSVSHM # enable shared memory options SYSVSEM # enable for semaphores options SYSVMSG # enable for messaging In FreeBSD 3.2 and later, these options are already part of the GENERIC kernel, which means they should already be compiled into your system. Recompile and install your kernel. How do I use sendmail for mail delivery with UUCP? The sendmail configuration that ships with FreeBSD is suited for sites that connect directly to the Internet. Sites that wish to exchange their mail via UUCP must install another sendmail configuration file. Tweaking /etc/sendmail.cf manually is considered something for purists. Sendmail version 8 comes with a new approach of generating config files via some m4 preprocessing, where the actual hand-crafted configuration is on a higher abstraction level. You should use the configuration files under /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf If you didn't install your system with full sources, the sendmail config stuff has been broken out into a separate source distribution tarball just for you. Assuming you've got your CD-ROM mounted, do: &prompt.root; cd /cdrom/src &prompt.root; cat scontrib.?? | tar xzf - -C /usr/src contrib/sendmail Don't panic, this is only a few hundred kilobytes in size. The file README in the cf directory can serve as a basic introduction to m4 configuration. For UUCP delivery, you are best advised to use the mailertable feature. This constitutes a database that sendmail can use to base its routing decision upon. First, you have to create your .mc file. The directory /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf is the home of these files. Look around, there are already a few examples. Assuming you have named your file foo.mc, all you need to do in order to convert it into a valid sendmail.cf is: &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf &prompt.root; make foo.cf &prompt.root; cp foo.cf /etc/sendmail.cf A typical .mc file might look like: include(`../m4/cf.m4') VERSIONID(`Your version number') OSTYPE(bsd4.4) FEATURE(nodns) FEATURE(nocanonify) FEATURE(mailertable) define(`UUCP_RELAY', your.uucp.relay) define(`UUCP_MAX_SIZE', 200000) MAILER(local) MAILER(smtp) MAILER(uucp) Cw your.alias.host.name Cw youruucpnodename.UUCP The nodns and nocanonify features will prevent any usage of the DNS during mail delivery. The UUCP_RELAY clause is needed for bizarre reasons, don't ask. Simply put an Internet hostname there that is able to handle .UUCP pseudo-domain addresses; most likely, you will enter the mail relay of your ISP there. Once you've got this, you need this file called /etc/mailertable. A typical example of this gender again: # # makemap hash /etc/mailertable.db < /etc/mailertable # horus.interface-business.de uucp-dom:horus .interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus .heep.sax.de smtp8:%1 horus.UUCP uucp-dom:horus if-bus.UUCP uucp-dom:if-bus . uucp-dom: As you can see, this is part of a real-life file. The first three lines handle special cases where domain-addressed mail should not be sent out to the default route, but instead to some UUCP neighbor in order to shortcut the delivery path. The next line handles mail to the local Ethernet domain that can be delivered using SMTP. Finally, the UUCP neighbors are mentioned in the .UUCP pseudo-domain notation, to allow for a uucp-neighbor!recipient override of the default rules. The last line is always a single dot, matching everything else, with UUCP delivery to a UUCP neighbor that serves as your universal mail gateway to the world. All of the node names behind the uucp-dom: keyword must be valid UUCP neighbors, as you can verify using the command uuname. As a reminder that this file needs to be converted into a DBM database file before being usable, the command line to accomplish this is best placed as a comment at the top of the mailertable. You always have to execute this command each time you change your mailertable. Final hint: if you are uncertain whether some particular mail routing would work, remember the option to sendmail. It starts sendmail in address test mode; simply enter 0 , followed by the address you wish to test for the mail routing. The last line tells you the used internal mail agent, the destination host this agent will be called with, and the (possibly translated) address. Leave this mode by typing Control-D. &prompt.user; sendmail -bt ADDRESS TEST MODE (ruleset 3 NOT automatically invoked) Enter <ruleset> <address> > 0 foo@interface-business.de rewrite: ruleset 0 input: foo @ interface-business . de ... rewrite: ruleset 0 returns: $# uucp-dom $@ if-bus $: foo \ < @ interface-business . de > > ^D How do I set up mail with a dialup connection to the 'net? If you've got a statically assigned IP number, you should not need to adjust anything from the default. Set your host name up as your assigned internet name and sendmail will do the rest. If you've got a dynamically assigned IP number and use a dialup ppp connection to the internet, you will probably be given a mailbox on your ISPs mail server. Lets assume your ISPs domain is myISP.com, and that your user name is user. Lets also assume you've called your machine bsd.home and that your ISP has told you that you may use relay.myISP.com as a mail relay. In order to retrieve mail from your mailbox, you'll need to install a retrieval agent. Fetchmail is a good choice as it supports many different protocols. Usually, POP3 will be provided by your ISP. If you've chosen to use user-ppp, you can automatically fetch your mail when a connection to the 'net is established with the following entry in /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup: MYADDR: !bg su user -c fetchmail If you are using sendmail (as shown below) to deliver mail to non-local accounts, put the command !bg su user -c "sendmail -q" after the above shown entry. This forces sendmail to process your mailqueue as soon as the connection to the 'net is established. I'm assuming that you have an account for user on bsd.home. In the home directory of user on bsd.home, create a .fetchmailrc file: poll myISP.com protocol pop3 fetchall pass MySecret Needless to say, this file should not be readable by anyone except user as it contains the password MySecret. In order to send mail with the correct from: header, you must tell sendmail to use user@myISP.com rather than user@bsd.home. You may also wish to tell sendmail to send all mail via relay.myISP.com, allowing quicker mail transmission. The following .mc file should suffice: VERSIONID(`bsd.home.mc version 1.0') OSTYPE(bsd4.4)dnl FEATURE(nouucp)dnl MAILER(local)dnl MAILER(smtp)dnl Cwlocalhost Cwbsd.home MASQUERADE_AS(`myISP.com')dnl FEATURE(allmasquerade)dnl FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl FEATURE(nocanonify)dnl FEATURE(nodns)dnl define(SMART_HOST, `relay.myISP.com') Dmbsd.home define(`confDOMAIN_NAME',`bsd.home')dnl define(`confDELIVERY_MODE',`deferred')dnl Refer to the previous section for details of how to turn this .mc file into a sendmail.cf file. Also, don't forget to restart sendmail after updating sendmail.cf. Eek! I forgot the root password! Don't Panic! Simply restart the system, type boot -s at the Boot: prompt (just -s for FreeBSD releases before 3.2) to enter Single User mode. At the question about the shell to use, hit ENTER. You'll be dropped to a &prompt.root; prompt. Enter mount -u / to remount your root filesystem read/write, then run mount -a to remount all the filesystems. Run passwd root to change the root password then run exit to continue booting. How do I keep Control-Alt-Delete from rebooting the system? If you are using syscons (the default console driver) in FreeBSD 2.2.7-RELEASE or later, build and install a new kernel with the line options SC_DISABLE_REBOOT in the configuration file. If you use the PCVT console driver in FreeBSD 2.2.5-RELEASE or later, use the following kernel configuration line instead: options PCVT_CTRL_ALT_DEL For older versions of FreeBSD, edit the keymap you are using for the console and replace the boot keywords with nop. The default keymap is /usr/share/syscons/keymaps/us.iso.kbd. You may have to instruct /etc/rc.conf to load this keymap explicitly for the change to take effect. Of course if you are using an alternate keymap for your country, you should edit that one instead. How do I reformat DOS text files to UNIX ones? Simply use this perl command: &prompt.user; perl -i.bak -npe 's/\r\n/\n/g' file ... file is the file(s) to process. The modification is done in-place, with the original file stored with a .bak extension. Alternatively you can use the tr command: &prompt.user; tr -d '\r' < dos-text-file > unix-file dos-text-file is the file containing DOS text while unix-file will contain the converted output. This can be quite a bit faster than using perl. How do I kill processes by name? Use killall. Why is su bugging me about not being in root's ACL? The error comes from the Kerberos distributed authentication system. The problem isn't fatal but annoying. You can either run su with the -K option, or uninstall Kerberos as described in the next question. How do I uninstall Kerberos? To remove Kerberos from the system, reinstall the bin distribution for the release you are running. If you have the CDROM, you can mount the cd (we'll assume on /cdrom) and run &prompt.root; cd /cdrom/bin &prompt.root; ./install.sh How do I add pseudoterminals to the system? If you have lots of telnet, ssh, X, or screen users, you'll probably run out of pseudoterminals. Here's how to add more: Build and install a new kernel with the line pseudo-device pty 256 in the configuration file. Run the commands &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV pty{1,2,3,4,5,6,7} to make 256 device nodes for the new terminals. Edit /etc/ttys and add lines for each of the 256 terminals. They should match the form of the existing entries, i.e. they look like ttyqc none network The order of the letter designations is tty[pqrsPQRS][0-9a-v], using a regular expression. Reboot the system with the new kernel and you're ready to go. I can't create the snd0 device! There is no snd device. The name is used as a shorthand for the various devices that make up the FreeBSD sound driver, such as mixer, sequencer, and dsp. To create these devices you should &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV snd0 How do I re-read /etc/rc.conf and re-start /etc/rc without a reboot? Go into single user mode and than back to multi user mode. On the console do: &prompt.root; shutdown now (Note: without -r or -h) &prompt.root; return &prompt.root; exit What is a sandbox? Sandbox is a security term. It can mean two things: A process which is placed inside a set of virtual walls that are designed to prevent someone who breaks into the process from being able to break into the wider system. The process is said to be able to play inside the walls. That is, nothing the process does in regards to executing code is supposed to be able to breech the walls so you do not have to do a detailed audit of its code to be able to say certain things about its security. The walls might be a userid, for example. This is the definition used in the security and named man pages. Take the ntalk service, for example (see /etc/inetd.conf). This service used to run as userid root. Now it runs as userid tty. The tty user is a sandbox designed to make it more difficult for someone who has successfully hacked into the system via ntalk from being able to hack beyond that user id. A process which is placed inside a simulation of the machine. This is more hard-core. Basically it means that someone who is able to break into the process may believe that he can break into the wider machine but is, in fact, only breaking into a simulation of that machine and not modifying any real data. The most common way to accomplish this is to build a simulated environment in a subdirectory and then run the processes in that directory chroot'd (i.e. / for that process is this directory, not the real / of the system). Another common use is to mount an underlying filesystem read-only and then create a filesystem layer on top of it that gives a process a seemingly writeable view into that filesystem. The process may believe it is able to write to those files, but only the process sees the effects - other processes in the system do not, necessarily. An attempt is made to make this sort of sandbox so transparent that the user (or hacker) does not realize that he is sitting in it. UNIX implements two core sanboxes. One is at the process level, and one is at the userid level. Every UNIX process is completely firewalled off from every other UNIX process. One process can not modify the address space of another. This is unlike Windows where a process can easily overwrite the address space of any other, leading to a crash. A UNIX process is owned by a patricular userid. If the userid is not the root user, it serves to firewall the process off from processes owned by other users. The userid is also used to firewall off on-disk data. How do I let ordinary users mount floppies and other removable media? Ordinary users can be permitted to mount devices. Here is how: As root assign the appropriate permissions to the block device associated with the removable media. For example, to allow users to mount the first floppy drive, use: &prompt.root; chmod 777 /dev/fd0 As root set the sysctl variable vfs.usermount to 1. &prompt.root; sysctl -w vfs.usermount=1 Users can now mount /dev/fd0 onto a directory that they own: &prompt.user; mkdir ~/my-mount-point &prompt.user; mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 ~/my-mount-point Unmounting the device is simple: &prompt.user; umount ~/my-mount-point Enabling vfs.usermount, however, has negative security implications. A better way to access MSDOS formatted media is to use the mtools package in the ports collection. How do I move my system over to my huge new disk? The best way is to reinstall the OS on the new disk, then move the user data over. This is highly recommended if you've been tracking -stable for more than one release, or have updated a release instead of installing a new one. You can install booteasy on both disks with &man.boot0cfg.8;, and dual boot them until you are happy with the new configuration. Skip the next paragraph to find out how to move the data after doing this. Should you decide not to do a fresh install, you need to partition and label the new disk with either /stand/sysinstall, or &man.fdisk.8; and &man.disklabel.8;. You should also install booteasy on both disks with &man.boot0cfg.8;, so that you can dual boot to the old or new system after the copying is done. See the formatting-media tutorial for details on this process. Now you've got the new disk set up, and are ready to move the data. Unfortunately, you can't just blindly copy the data. Things like device files (in /dev) and symbolic links tend to screw that up. You need to use tools that understand these things, which means &man.dump.8; and &man.tar.1;. I recommend doing the data moves in single user mode, but it's not required. You should never use anything but &man.dump.8; and &man.restore.8; to move the root file system. The &man.tar.1; command may work - then again, it may not. You should also use &man.dump.8; and &man.restore.8; if you are moving a single partition to another empty partition. The sequence of steps to use dump to move a partitions data to a new partition is: newfs the new partition. mount it on a temporary mount point. cd to that directory. dump the old partition, piping output to the new one. For example, if you are going to move root to /dev/ad1s1a, with /mnt as the temporary mount point, it's: &prompt.root; newfs /dev/ad1s1a &prompt.root; mount /dev/ad1s1a &prompt.root; cd /mnt &prompt.root; dump 0uaf - / | restore xf - If you are going to rearrange your partitions - say, splitting one into two, or combing two into one, you may find yourself needing to move everything under a subdirectory to a new location. Since &man.dump.8; works with file systems, it can't do this. So you use &man.tar.1;. The general command to move /old to /new for &man.tar.1; is: &prompt.root; (cd /old; tar cf - .) | (cd /new; tar xpf -) If /old has file systems mounted on that, and you don't want to move that data or unmount them, you just add the 'l' flag to the first &man.tar.1;: &prompt.root; (cd /old; tar clf - .) | (cd /new; tar xpf -). You might prefer cpio(1), pax(1) or cpdup (in ports/sysutils/cpdup) to tar. The X Window System and Virtual Consoles I want to run X, how do I go about it? The easiest way is to simply specify that you want to run X during the installation process. Then read and follow the documentation on the xf86config tool, which assists you in configuring XFree86(tm) for your particular graphics card/mouse/etc. You may also wish to investigate the Xaccel server. See the section on Xi Graphics or Metro Link for more details. Why doesn't my mouse work with X? If you are using syscons (the default console driver), you can configure FreeBSD to support a mouse pointer on each virtual screen. In order to avoid conflicting with X, syscons supports a virtual device called /dev/sysmouse. All mouse events received from the real mouse device are written to the sysmouse device via moused. If you wish to use your mouse on one or more virtual consoles, and use X, see and set up moused. Then edit /etc/XF86Config and make sure you have the following lines. Section Pointer Protocol "SysMouse" Device "/dev/sysmouse" ..... The above example is for XFree86 3.3.2 or later. For earlier versions, the Protocol should be MouseSystems. Some people prefer to use /dev/mouse under X. To make this work, /dev/mouse should be linked to /dev/sysmouse: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; rm -f mouse &prompt.root; ln -s sysmouse mouse My mouse has a fancy wheel. Can I use it in X? Yes. But you need to customize X client programs. See Colas Nahaboo's web page (http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas/mouse-wheel-scroll/). If you want to use the imwheel program, just follow these simple steps. Translate the Wheel Events The imwheel program works by translating mouse button 4 and mouse button 5 events into key events. Thus, you have to get the mouse driver to translate mouse wheel events to button 4 and 5 events. There are two ways of doing this, the first way is to have &man.moused.8; do the translation. The second way is for the X server itself to do the event translation. Using &man.moused.8; to Translate Wheel Events To have &man.moused.8; perform the event translations, simply add to the command line used to start &man.moused.8;. For example, if you normally start &man.moused.8; via moused -p /dev/psm0 you would start it by entering moused -p /dev/psm0 -z 4 instead. If you start &man.moused.8; automatically during bootup via /etc/rc.conf, you can simply add to the moused_flags variable in /etc/rc.conf. You now need to tell X that you have a 5 button mouse. To do this, simply add the line Buttons 5 to the Pointer section of /etc/XF86Config. For example, you might have the following Pointer section in /etc/XF86Config. <quote>Pointer</quote> Section for Wheeled Mouse in XF86Config with moused Translation Section "Pointer" Protocol "SysMouse" Device "/dev/sysmouse" Buttons 5 EndSection Using Your X Server to Translate the Wheel Events If you aren't running &man.moused.8;, or if you don't want &man.moused.8; to translate your wheel events, you can have the X server do the event translation instead. This requires a couple of modifications to your /etc/XF86Config file. First, you need to choose the proper protocol for your mouse. Most wheeled mice use the IntelliMouse protocol. However, XFree86 does support other protocols, such as MouseManPlusPS/2 for the Logitech MouseMan+ mice. Once you have chosen the protocol you will use, you need to add a Protocol line to the Pointer section. Secondly, you need to tell the X server to remap wheel scroll events to mouse buttons 4 and 5. This is done with the ZAxisMapping option. For example, if you aren't using &man.moused.8;, and you have an IntelliMouse attached to the PS/2 mouse port you would use the following in /etc/XF86Config. <quote>Pointer</quote> Section for Wheeled Mouse in <filename>XF86Config</filename> with X Server Translation Section "Pointer" Protocol "IntelliMouse" Device "/dev/psm0" ZAxisMapping 4 5 EndSection Install imwheel Next, install imwheel from the Ports collection. It can be found in the x11 category. This program will map the wheel events from your mouse into keyboard events. For example, it might send Page Up to a program when you scroll the wheel forwards. Imwheel uses a configuration file to map the wheel events to keypresses so that it can send different keys to different applications. The default imwheel configuration file is installed in /usr/X11R6/etc/imwheelrc. You can copy it to ~/.imwheelrc and then edit it if you wish to customize imwheel's configuration. The format of the configuration file is documented in &man.imwheel.1;. Configure Emacs to Work with Imwheel (optional) If you use emacs or Xemacs, then you need to add a small section to your ~/.emacs file. For emacs, add the following: <application>Emacs</application> Configuration for <application>Imwheel</application> ;;; For imwheel (setq imwheel-scroll-interval 3) (defun imwheel-scroll-down-some-lines () (interactive) (scroll-down imwheel-scroll-interval)) (defun imwheel-scroll-up-some-lines () (interactive) (scroll-up imwheel-scroll-interval)) (global-set-key [?\M-\C-\)] 'imwheel-scroll-up-some-lines) (global-set-key [?\M-\C-\(] 'imwheel-scroll-down-some-lines) ;;; end imwheel section For Xemacs, add the following to your ~/.emacs file instead: <application>Xemacs</application> Configuration for <application>Imwheel</application> ;;; For imwheel (setq imwheel-scroll-interval 3) (defun imwheel-scroll-down-some-lines () (interactive) (scroll-down imwheel-scroll-interval)) (defun imwheel-scroll-up-some-lines () (interactive) (scroll-up imwheel-scroll-interval)) (define-key global-map [(control meta \))] 'imwheel-scroll-up-some-lines) (define-key global-map [(control meta \()] 'imwheel-scroll-down-some-lines) ;;; end imwheel section Run Imwheel You can just type imwheel in an xterm to start it up once it is installed. It will background itself and take effect immediately. If you want to always use imwheel, simply add it to your .xinitrc or .xsession file. You can safely ignore any warnings imwheel displays about PID files. Those warnings only apply to the Linux version of imwheel. X Window menus and dialog boxes don't work right! Try turning off the Num Lock key. If your Num Lock key is on by default at boot-time, you may add the following line in the Keyboard section of the XF86Config file. # Let the server do the NumLock processing. This should only be # required when using pre-R6 clients ServerNumLock What is a virtual console and how do I make more? Virtual consoles, put simply, enable you to have several simultaneous sessions on the same machine without doing anything complicated like setting up a network or running X. When the system starts, it will display a login prompt on the monitor after displaying all the boot messages. You can then type in your login name and password and start working (or playing!) on the first virtual console. At some point, you will probably wish to start another session, perhaps to look at documentation for a program you are running or to read your mail while waiting for an FTP transfer to finish. Just do Alt-F2 (hold down the Alt key and press the F2 key), and you will find a login prompt waiting for you on the second virtual console! When you want to go back to the original session, do Alt-F1. The default FreeBSD installation has three virtual consoles enabled (8 starting with 3.3-RELEASE), and Alt-F1, Alt-F2, and Alt-F3 will switch between these virtual consoles. To enable more of them, edit /etc/ttys and add entries for ttyv4 to ttyvc after the comment on Virtual terminals: # Edit the existing entry for ttyv3 in /etc/ttys and change # "off" to "on". ttyv3 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv4 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv5 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv6 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv7 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv8 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyv9 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyva "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure Use as many or as few as you want. The more virtual terminals you have, the more resources that are used; this can be important if you have 8MB RAM or less. You may also want to change the secure to insecure. If you want to run an X server you MUST leave at least one virtual terminal unused (or turned off) for it to use. That is to say that if you want to have a login prompt pop up for all twelve of your Alt-function keys, you're out of luck - you can only do this for eleven of them if you also want to run an X server on the same machine. The easiest way to disable a console is by turning it off. For example, if you had the full 12 terminal allocation mentioned above and you wanted to run X, you would change settings for virtual terminal 12 from: ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure to: ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure If your keyboard has only ten function keys, you would end up with: ttyv9 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure ttyva "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure (You could also just delete these lines.) Once you have edited /etc/ttys, the next step is to make sure that you have enough virtual terminal devices. The easiest way to do this is: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV vty12 Next, the easiest (and cleanest) way to activate the virtual consoles is to reboot. However, if you really don't want to reboot, you can just shut down the X Window system and execute (as root): &prompt.root; kill -HUP 1 It's imperative that you completely shut down X Window if it is running, before running this command. If you don't, your system will probably appear to hang/lock up after executing the kill command. How do I access the virtual consoles from X? If the console is currently displaying X Window, you can use Ctrl-Alt-F1, etc. to switch to a virtual console. Note, however, that once you've switched away from X Window to a virtual terminal, you may use only the Alt- function key to switch to another virtual terminal or back to X Window. You do not need to also press the Ctrl key. If you use the control key to switch back to X on some older releases, you can find your text console stuck in control-lock mode. Tap the control key to wake it up again. How do I start XDM on boot? There are two schools of thought on how to start xdm. One school starts xdm from /etc/ttys using the supplied example, while the other simply runs xdm from rc.local or from a X.sh script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d. Both are equally valid, and one may work in situations where the other doesn't. In both cases the result is the same: X will popup a graphical login: prompt. The ttys method has the advantage of documenting which vty X will start on and passing the responsibility of restarting the X server on logout to init. The rc.local method makes it easy to kill xdm if there is a problem starting the X server. If loaded from rc.local, xdm should be started without any arguments (i.e., as a daemon). xdm must start AFTER getty runs, or else getty and xdm will conflict, locking out the console. The best way around this is to have the script sleep 10 seconds or so then launch xdm. If you are to start xdm from /etc/ttys, there still is a chance of conflict between xdm and getty. One way to avoid this is to add the vt number in the /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers file. :0 local /usr/X11R6/bin/X vt4 The above example will direct the X server to run in /dev/ttyv3. Note the number is offset by one. The X server counts the vty from one, whereas the FreeBSD kernel numbers the vty from zero. When I run xconsole, I get Couldn't open console. If you start X with startx, the permissions on /dev/console will not get changed, resulting in things like xterm -C and xconsole not working. This is because of the way console permissions are set by default. On a multi-user system, one doesn't necessarily want just any user to be able to write on the system console. For users who are logging directly onto a machine with a VTY, the fbtab file exists to solve such problems. In a nutshell, make sure an uncommented line of the form /dev/ttyv0 0600 /dev/console is in /etc/fbtab and it will ensure that whomever logs in on /dev/ttyv0 will own the console. My PS/2 mouse doesn't behave properly under X. Your mouse and the mouse driver may have somewhat become out of synchronization. In versions 2.2.5 and earlier, switching away from X to a virtual terminal and getting back to X again may make them re-synchronized. If the problem occurs often, you may add the following option in your kernel configuration file and recompile it. options PSM_CHECKSYNC See the section on building a kernel if you've no experience with building kernels. With this option, there should be less chance of synchronization problem between the mouse and the driver. If, however, you still see the problem, click any mouse button while holding the mouse still to re-synchronize the mouse and the driver. Note that unfortunately this option may not work with all the systems and voids the tap feature of the ALPS GlidePoint device attached to the PS/2 mouse port. In versions 2.2.6 and later, synchronization check is done in a slightly better way and is standard in the PS/2 mouse driver. It should even work with GlidePoint. (As the check code has become a standard feature, PSM_CHECKSYNC option is not available in these versions.) However, in rare case the driver may erroneously report synchronization problem and you may see the kernel message: psmintr: out of sync (xxxx != yyyy) and find your mouse doesn't seem to work properly. If this happens, disable the synchronization check code by setting the driver flags for the PS/2 mouse driver to 0x100. Enter UserConfig by giving the option at the boot prompt: boot: -c Then, in the UserConfig command line, type: UserConfig> flags psm0 0x100 UserConfig> quit My PS/2 mouse from MouseSystems doesn't seem to work. There have been some reports that certain model of PS/2 mouse from MouseSystems works only if it is put into the high resolution mode. Otherwise, the mouse cursor may jump to the upper-left corner of the screen every so often. Unfortunately there is no workaround for versions 2.0.X and 2.1.X. In versions 2.2 through 2.2.5, apply the following patch to /sys/i386/isa/psm.c and rebuild the kernel. See the section on building a kernel if you've no experience with building kernels. @@ -766,6 +766,8 @@ if (verbose >= 2) log(LOG_DEBUG, "psm%d: SET_DEFAULTS return code:%04x\n", unit, i); + set_mouse_resolution(sc->kbdc, PSMD_RES_HIGH); + #if 0 set_mouse_scaling(sc->kbdc); /* 1:1 scaling */ set_mouse_mode(sc->kbdc); /* stream mode */ In versions 2.2.6 or later, specify the flags 0x04 to the PS/2 mouse driver to put the mouse into the high resolution mode. Enter UserConfig by giving the option at the boot prompt: boot: -c Then, in the UserConfig command line, type: UserConfig> flags psm0 0x04 UserConfig> quit See the previous section for another possible cause of mouse problems. When building an X app, imake can't find Imake.tmpl. Where is it? Imake.tmpl is part of the Imake package, a standard X application building tool. Imake.tmpl, as well as several header files that are required to build X apps, is contained in the X prog distribution. You can install this from sysinstall or manually from the X distribution files. How do I reverse the mouse buttons? Run the command xmodmap -e "pointer = 3 2 1" from your .xinitrc or .xsession. How do I install a splash screen and where do I find them? Just prior to the release of FreeBSD 3.1, a new feature was added to allow the display of splash screens during the boot messages. The splash screens currently must be a 256 color bitmap (*.BMP) or ZSoft PCX (*.PCX) file. In addition, they must have a resolution of 320x200 or less to work on standard VGA adapters. If you compile VESA support into your kernel, then you can use larger bitmaps up to 1024x768. Note that VESA support requires the VM86 kernel option to be compiled into the kernel. The actual VESA support can either be compiled directly into the kernel with the VESA kernel config option or by loading the VESA kld module during bootup. To use a splash screen, you need to modify the startup files that control the boot process for FreeBSD. The files for this changed prior to the release of FreeBSD 3.2, so there are now two ways of loading a splash screen: FreeBSD 3.1 The first step is to find a bitmap version of your splash screen. Release 3.1 only supports Windows bitmap splash screens. Once you've found your splash screen of choice copy it to /boot/splash.bmp. Next, you need to have a /boot/loader.rc file that contains the following lines: load kernel load -t splash_image_data /boot/splash.bmp load splash_bmp autoboot FreeBSD 3.2+ In addition to adding support for PCX splash screens, FreeBSD 3.2 includes a nicer way of configuring the boot process. If you wish, you can use the method listed above for FreeBSD 3.1. If you do and you want to use PCX, replace splash_bmp with splash_pcx. If, on the other hand, you want to use the newer boot configuration, you need to create a /boot/loader.rc file that contains the following lines: include /boot/loader.4th start and a /boot/loader.conf that contains the following: splash_bmp_load="YES" bitmap_load="YES" This assumes you are using /boot/splash.bmp for your splash screen. If you'd rather use a PCX file, copy it to /boot/splash.pcx, create a /boot/loader.rc as instructed above, and create a /boot/loader.conf that contains: splash_pcx_load="YES" bitmap_load="YES" bitmap_name="/boot/splash.pcx" Now all you need is a splash screen. For that you can surf on over to the gallery at http://www.cslab.vt.edu/~jobaldwi/splash/. Can I use the Windows(tm) keys on my keyboard in X? Yes. All you need to do is use &man.xmodmap.1; to define what function you wish them to perform. Assuming all Windows(tm) keyboards are standard then the keycodes for the 3 keys are 115 - Windows(tm) key, between the left-hand Ctrl and Alt keys 116 - Windows(tm) key, to the right of the Alt-Gr key 117 - Menu key, to the left of the right-hand Ctrl key To have the left Windows(tm) key print a comma, try this. &prompt.root; xmodmap -e "keycode 115 = comma" You will probably have to re-start your window manager to see the result. To have the Windows(tm) key-mappings enabled automatically everytime you start X either put the xmodmap commands in your ~/.xinitrc file or, preferably, create a file ~/.xmodmaprc and include the xmodmap options, one per line, then add the line xmodmap $HOME/.xmodmaprc to your ~/.xinitrc. For example, I have mapped the 3 keys to be F13, F14, and F15 respectively. This makes it easy to map them to useful functions within applications or your window manager. To do this put the following in ~/.xmodmaprc. keycode 115 = F13 keycode 116 = F14 keycode 117 = F15 I use fvwm2 and have mapped the keys so that F13 iconifies (or de-iconifies) the window the cursor is in, F14 brings the window the cursor is in to the front or, if it is already at the front, pushes it to the back, and F15 pops up the main Workplace (application) menu even if the cursor is not on the desktop, which is useful if you don't have any part of the desktop visible (and the logo on the key matches its functionality). The entries in my ~/.fvwmrc which map the keys this way are: Key F13 FTIWS A Iconify Key F14 FTIWS A RaiseLower Key F15 A A Menu Workplace Nop Networking Where can I get information on diskless booting? Diskless booting means that the FreeBSD box is booted over a network, and reads the necessary files from a server instead of its hard disk. For full details, please read the Handbook entry on diskless booting Can a FreeBSD box be used as a dedicated network router? Internet standards and good engineering practice prohibit us from providing packet forwarding by default in FreeBSD. You can however enable this feature by changing the following variable to YES in rc.conf: gateway_enable=YES # Set to YES if this host will be a gateway This option will put the sysctl variable net.inet.ip.forwarding to 1. In most cases, you will also need to run a routing process to tell other systems on your network about your router; FreeBSD comes with the standard BSD routing daemon routed, or for more complex situations you may want to try GaTeD (available from http://www.gated.org/ ) which supports FreeBSD as of 3_5Alpha7. It is our duty to warn you that, even when FreeBSD is configured in this way, it does not completely comply with the Internet standard requirements for routers; however, it comes close enough for ordinary usage. Can I connect my Win95 box to the Internet via FreeBSD? Typically, people who ask this question have two PC's at home, one with FreeBSD and one with Win95; the idea is to use the FreeBSD box to connect to the Internet and then be able to access the Internet from the Windows95 box through the FreeBSD box. This is really just a special case of the previous question. ... and the answer is yes! In FreeBSD 3.x, user-mode ppp contains a option. If you run ppp with the , set gateway_enable to YES in /etc/rc.conf, and configure your Windows machine correctly, this should work fine. More detailed information about setting this up can be found in the Pedantic PPP Primer by Steve Sims. If you are using kernel-mode ppp, or have an Ethernet connection to the Internet, you will have to use natd. Please look at the natd section of this FAQ. Why does recompiling the latest BIND from ISC fail? There is a conflict between the cdefs.h file in the distribution and the one shipped with FreeBSD. Just remove compat/include/sys/cdefs.h. Does FreeBSD support SLIP and PPP? Yes. See the man pages for slattach, sliplogin, pppd and ppp. pppd and ppp provide support for both incoming and outgoing connections. Sliplogin deals exclusively with incoming connections and slattach deals exclusively with outgoing connections. These programs are described in the following sections of the handbook: Handbook entry on SLIP (server side) Handbook entry on SLIP (client side) Handbook entry on PPP (kernel version) Handbook entry on PPP (user-mode version) If you only have access to the Internet through a shell account, you may want to have a look at the slirp package. It can provide you with (limited) access to services such as ftp and http direct from your local machine. Does FreeBSD support NAT or Masquerading If you have a local subnet (one or more local machines), but have been allocated only a single IP number from your Internet provider (or even if you receive a dynamic IP number), you may want to look at the natd program. natd allows you to connect an entire subnet to the internet using only a single IP number. The ppp program has similar functionality built in via the switch. The alias library is used in both cases. I can't create a /dev/ed0 device! In the Berkeley networking framework, network interfaces are only directly accessible by kernel code. Please see the /etc/rc.network file and the manual pages for the various network programs mentioned there for more information. If this leaves you totally confused, then you should pick up a book describing network administration on another BSD-related operating system; with few significant exceptions, administering networking on FreeBSD is basically the same as on SunOS 4.0 or Ultrix. How can I setup Ethernet aliases? Add netmask 0xffffffff to your ifconfig command-line like the following: &prompt.root; ifconfig ed0 alias 204.141.95.2 netmask 0xffffffff How do I get my 3C503 to use the other network port? If you want to use the other ports, you'll have to specify an additional parameter on the ifconfig command line. The default port is link0. To use the AUI port instead of the BNC one, use link2. These flags should be specified using the ifconfig_* variables in /etc/rc.conf. I'm having problems with NFS to/from FreeBSD. Certain PC network cards are better than others (to put it mildly) and can sometimes cause problems with network intensive applications like NFS. See the Handbook entry on NFS for more information on this topic. Why can't I NFS-mount from a Linux box? Some versions of the Linux NFS code only accept mount requests from a privileged port; try &prompt.root; mount -o -P linuxbox:/blah /mnt Why can't I NFS-mount from a Sun box? Sun workstations running SunOS 4.X only accept mount requests from a privileged port; try &prompt.root; mount -o -P sunbox:/blah /mnt I'm having problems talking PPP to NeXTStep machines. Try disabling the TCP extensions in /etc/rc.conf by changing the following variable to NO: tcp_extensions=NO Xylogic's Annex boxes are also broken in this regard and you must use the above change to connect thru them. How do I enable IP multicast support? Multicast host operations are fully supported in FreeBSD 2.0 and later by default. If you want your box to run as a multicast router, you will need to recompile your kernel with the MROUTING option and run mrouted. FreeBSD 2.2 and later will start mrouted at boot time if the flag mrouted_enable is set to "YES" in /etc/rc.conf. MBONE tools are available in their own ports category, mbone. If you are looking for the conference tools vic and vat, look there! For more information, see the Mbone Information Web. Which network cards are based on the DEC PCI chipset? Here is a list compiled by Glen Foster, with some more modern additions: Vendor Model ---------------------------------------------- ASUS PCI-L101-TB Accton ENI1203 Cogent EM960PCI Compex ENET32-PCI D-Link DE-530 Dayna DP1203, DP2100 DEC DE435, DE450 Danpex EN-9400P3 JCIS Condor JC1260 Linksys EtherPCI Mylex LNP101 SMC EtherPower 10/100 (Model 9332) SMC EtherPower (Model 8432) TopWare TE-3500P Znyx (2.2.x) ZX312, ZX314, ZX342, ZX345, ZX346, ZX348 (3.x) ZX345Q, ZX346Q, ZX348Q, ZX412Q, ZX414, ZX442, ZX444, ZX474, ZX478, ZX212, ZX214 (10mbps/hd) Why do I have to use the FQDN for hosts on my site? You will probably find that the host is actually in a different domain; for example, if you are in foo.bar.edu and you wish to reach a host called mumble in the bar.edu domain, you will have to refer to it by the fully-qualified domain name, mumble.bar.edu, instead of just mumble. Traditionally, this was allowed by BSD BIND resolvers. However the current version of bind that ships with FreeBSD no longer provides default abbreviations for non-fully qualified domain names other than the domain you are in. So an unqualified host mumble must either be found as mumble.foo.bar.edu, or it will be searched for in the root domain. This is different from the previous behavior, where the search continued across mumble.bar.edu, and mumble.edu. Have a look at RFC 1535 for why this was considered bad practice, or even a security hole. As a good workaround, you can place the line search foo.bar.edu bar.edu instead of the previous domain foo.bar.edu into your /etc/resolv.conf file. However, make sure that the search order does not go beyond the boundary between local and public administration, as RFC 1535 calls it. Permission denied for all networking operations. If you have compiled your kernel with the IPFIREWALL option, you need to be aware that the default policy as of 2.1.7R (this actually changed during 2.1-STABLE development) is to deny all packets that are not explicitly allowed. If you had unintentionally misconfigured your system for firewalling, you can restore network operability by typing the following while logged in as root: &prompt.root; ipfw add 65534 allow all from any to any You can also set firewall_type="open" in /etc/rc.conf. For further information on configuring a FreeBSD firewall, see the Handbook section. How much overhead does IPFW incur? The answer to this depends mostly on your rule set and processor speed. For most applications dealing with ethernet and small rule sets, the answer is, negligible. For those of you that need actual measurements to satisfy your curiosity, read on. The following measurements were made using 2.2.5-STABLE on a 486-66. IPFW was modified to measure the time spent within the ip_fw_chk routine, displaying the results to the console every 1000 packets. Two rule sets, each with 1000 rules were tested. The first set was designed to demonstrate a worst case scenario by repeating the rule: &prompt.root; ipfw add deny tcp from any to any 55555 This demonstrates worst case by causing most of IPFW's packet check routine to be executed before finally deciding that the packet does not match the rule (by virtue of the port number). Following the 999th iteration of this rule was an allow ip from any to any. The second set of rules were designed to abort the rule check quickly: &prompt.root; ipfw add deny ip from 1.2.3.4 to 1.2.3.4 The nonmatching source IP address for the above rule causes these rules to be skipped very quickly. As before, the 1000th rule was an allow ip from any to any. The per-packet processing overhead in the former case was approximately 2.703ms/packet, or roughly 2.7 microseconds per rule. Thus the theoretical packet processing limit with these rules is around 370 packets per second. Assuming 10Mbps ethernet and a ~1500 byte packet size, we would only be able to achieve a 55.5% bandwidth utilization. For the latter case each packet was processed in approximately 1.172ms, or roughly 1.2 microseconds per rule. The theoretical packet processing limit here would be about 853 packets per second, which could consume 10Mbps ethernet bandwidth. The excessive number of rules tested and the nature of those rules do not provide a real-world scenario -- they were used only to generate the timing information presented here. Here are a few things to keep in mind when building an efficient rule set: Place an established rule early on to handle the majority of TCP traffic. Don't put any allow tcp statements before this rule. Place heavily triggered rules earlier in the rule set than those rarely used (without changing the permissiveness of the firewall, of course). You can see which rules are used most often by examining the packet counting statistics with ipfw -a l. How can I redirect service requests from one machine to another? You can redirect FTP (and other service) request with the socket package, available in the ports tree in category sysutils. Simply replace the service's commandline to call socket instead, like so: ftp stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/local/bin/socket socket ftp.foo.com ftp where ftp.foo.com and ftp are the host and port to redirect to, respectively. Where can I get a bandwidth management tool? There are two bandwidth management tools available for FreeBSD. ALTQ is available for free; Bandwidth Manager from Emerging Technologies is a commercial product. Why do I get /dev/bpf0: device not configured? The Berkeley Packet Filter (bpf) driver needs to be enabled before running programs that utilize it. Add this to your kernel config file and build a new kernel: pseudo-device bpfilter # Berkeley Packet Filter Secondly, after rebooting you will have to create the device node. This can be accomplished by a change to the /dev directory, followed by the execution of: &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV bpf0 Please see the handbook's entry on device nodes for more information on creating devices. How do I mount a disk from a Windows machine that's on my network, like smbmount in Linux? Use the sharity light package in the ports collection. PPP I can't make ppp work. What am I doing wrong ? You should first read the ppp man page and the ppp section of the handbook. Enable logging with the command set log Phase Chat Connect Carrier lcp ipcp ccp command This command may be typed at the ppp command prompt or it may be entered in the /etc/ppp/ppp.conf configuration file (the start of the default section is the best place to put it). Make sure that /etc/syslog.conf contains the lines !ppp *.* /var/log/ppp.log and that the file /var/log/ppp.log exists. You can now find out a lot about what's going on from the log file. Don't worry if it doesn't all make sense. If you need to get help from someone, it may make sense to them. If your version of ppp doesn't understand the set log command, you should download the latest version. It will build on FreeBSD version 2.1.5 and higher. Ppp just hangs when I run it This is usually because your hostname won't resolve. The best way to fix this is to make sure that /etc/hosts is consoluted by your resolver first by editing /etc/host.conf and putting the hosts line first. Then, simply put an entry in /etc/hosts for your local machine. If you have no local network, change your localhost line: 127.0.0.1 foo.bar.com foo localhost Otherwise, simply add another entry for your host. Consult the relevant man pages for more details. You should be able to successfully ping -c1 `hostname` when you're done. Ppp won't dial in -auto mode First, check that you've got a default route. By running netstat -rn, you should see two entries like this: Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif Expire default 10.0.0.2 UGSc 0 0 tun0 10.0.0.2 10.0.0.1 UH 0 0 tun0 This is assuming that you've used the addresses from the handbook, the man page or from the ppp.conf.sample file. If you haven't got a default route, it may be because you're running an old version of ppp that doesn't understand the word HISADDR in the ppp.conf file. If your version of ppp is from before FreeBSD 2.2.5, change the add 0 0 HISADDR line to one saying add 0 0 10.0.0.2 Another reason for the default route line being missing is that you have mistakenly set up a default router in your /etc/rc.conf file (this file was called /etc/sysconfig prior to release 2.2.2), and you have omitted the line saying delete ALL from ppp.conf. If this is the case, go back to the Final system configuration section of the handbook. What does No route to host mean This error is usually due to a missing MYADDR: delete ALL add 0 0 HISADDR section in your /etc/ppp/ppp.linkup file. This is only necessary if you have a dynamic IP address or don't know the address of your gateway. If you're using interactive mode, you can type the following after entering packet mode (packet mode is indicated by the capitalized PPP in the prompt): delete ALL add 0 0 HISADDR Refer to the PPP and Dynamic IP addresses section of the handbook for further details. My connection drops after about 3 minutes The default ppp timeout is 3 minutes. This can be adjusted with the line set timeout NNN where NNN is the number of seconds of inactivity before the connection is closed. If NNN is zero, the connection is never closed due to a timeout. It is possible to put this command in the ppp.conf file, or to type it at the prompt in interactive mode. It is also possible to adjust it on the fly while the line is active by connecting to ppps server socket using telnet or pppctl. Refer to the ppp man page for further details. My connection drops under heavy load If you have Link Quality Reporting (LQR) configured, it is possible that too many LQR packets are lost between your machine and the peer. Ppp deduces that the line must therefore be bad, and disconnects. Prior to FreeBSD version 2.2.5, LQR was enabled by default. It is now disabled by default. LQR can be disabled with the line disable lqr My connection drops after a random amount of time Sometimes, on a noisy phone line or even on a line with call waiting enabled, your modem may hang up because it thinks (incorrectly) that it lost carrier. There's a setting on most modems for determining how tolerant it should be to temporary losses of carrier. On a USR Sportster for example, this is measured by the S10 register in tenths of a second. To make your modem more forgiving, you could add the following send-expect sequence to your dial string: set dial "...... ATS10=10 OK ......" Refer to your modem manual for details. My connection hangs after a random amount of time Many people experience hung connections with no apparent explaination. The first thing to establish is which side of the link is hung. If you are using an external modem, you can simply try using ping to see if the TD light is flashing when you transmit data. If it flashes (and the RD light doesn't), the problem is with the remote end. If TD doesn't flash, the problem is local. With an internal modem, you'll need to use the set server command in your ppp.conf file. When the hang occurs, connect to ppp using pppctl. If your network connection suddenly revives (ppp was revived due to the activity on the diagnostic socket) or if you can't connect (assuming the set socket command succeeded at startup time), the problem is local. If you can connect and things are still hung, enable local async logging with set log local async and use ping from another window or terminal to make use of the link. The async logging will show you the data being transmitted and received on the link. If data is going out and not coming back, the problem is remote. Having established whether the problem is local or remote, you now have two possibilities: The remote end isn't responding There's very little you can do about this. Most ISPs will refuse to help if you're not running a Microsoft OS. You can enable lqr in your ppp.conf file, allowing ppp to detect the remote failure and hang up, but this detection is relatively slow and therefore not that useful. You may want to avoid telling your ISP that you're running user-ppp.... First, try disabling all local compression by adding the following to your configuration: disable pred1 deflate deflate24 protocomp acfcomp shortseq vj deny pred1 deflate deflate24 protocomp acfcomp shortseq vj Then reconnect to ensure that this makes no difference. If things improve or if the problem is solved completely, determine which setting makes the difference through trial and error. This will provide good amunition when you contact your ISP (although it may make it apparent that you're not running a Microsoft product). Before contacting your ISP, enable async logging locally and wait until the connection hangs again. This may use up quite a bit of disk space. The last data read from the port may be of interest. It is usually ascii data, and may even describe the problem (Memory fault, core dumped ?). If your ISP is helpful, they should be able to enable logging on their end, then when the next link drop occurs, they may be able to tell you why their side is having a problem. Feel free to send the details to &a.brian;, or even to ask your ISP to contact me directly. Ppp is hung Your best bet here is to rebuild ppp by adding CFLAGS+=-g and STRIP= to the end of the Makefile, then doing a make clean && make && make install. When ppp hangs, find the ppp process id with ps ajxww | fgrep ppp and run gdb ppp PID. From the gdb prompt, you can then use bt to get a stack trace. Send the results to brian@Awfulhak.org. Nothing happens after the Login OK! message Prior to FreeBSD version 2.2.5, once the link was established, ppp would wait for the peer to initiate the Line Control Protocol (LCP). Many ISPs will not initiate negotiations and expect the client to do so. To force ppp to initiate the LCP, use the following line: set openmode active Note: It usually does no harm if both sides initiate negotiation, so openmode is now active by default. However, the next section explains when it does do some harm. I keep seeing errors about magic being the same Occasionally, just after connecting, you may see messages in the log that say magic is the same. Sometimes, these messages are harmless, and sometimes one side or the other exits. Most ppp implementations cannot survive this problem, and even if the link seems to come up, you'll see repeated configure requests and configure acknowledgements in the log file until ppp eventually gives up and closes the connection. This normally happens on server machines with slow disks that are spawning a getty on the port, and executing ppp from a login script or program after login. I've also heard reports of it happening consistently when using slirp. The reason is that in the time taken between getty exiting and ppp starting, the client-side ppp starts sending Line Control Protocol (LCP) packets. Because ECHO is still switched on for the port on the server, the client ppp sees these packets reflect back. One part of the LCP negotiation is to establish a magic number for each side of the link so that reflections can be detected. The protocol says that when the peer tries to negotiate the same magic number, a NAK should be sent and a new magic number should be chosen. During the period that the server port has ECHO turned on, the client ppp sends LCP packets, sees the same magic in the reflected packet and NAKs it. It also sees the NAK reflect (which also means ppp must change its magic). This produces a potentially enormous number of magic number changes, all of which are happily piling into the server's tty buffer. As soon as ppp starts on the server, it's flooded with magic number changes and almost immediately decides it's tried enough to negotiate LCP and gives up. Meanwhile, the client, who no longer sees the reflections, becomes happy just in time to see a hangup from the server. This can be avoided by allowing the peer to start negotiating with the following line in your ppp.conf file: set openmode passive This tells ppp to wait for the server to initiate LCP negotiations. Some servers however may never initiate negotiations. If this is the case, you can do something like: set openmode active 3 This tells ppp to be passive for 3 seconds, and then to start sending LCP requests. If the peer starts sending requests during this period, ppp will immediately respond rather than waiting for the full 3 second period. LCP negotiations continue 'till the connection is closed There is currently an implementation mis-feature in ppp where it doesn't associate LCP, CCP & IPCP responses with their original requests. As a result, if one ppp implementation is more than 6 seconds slower than the other side, the other side will send two additional LCP configuration requests. This is fatal. Consider two implementations, A and B. A starts sending LCP requests immediately after connecting and B takes 7 seconds to start. When B starts, A has sent 3 LCP REQs. We're assuming the line has ECHO switched off, otherwise we'd see magic number problems as described in the previous section. B sends a REQ, then an ACK to the first of A's REQs. This results in A entering the OPENED state and sending and ACK (the first) back to B. In the meantime, B sends back two more ACKs in response to the two additional REQs sent by A before B started up. B then receives the first ACK from A and enters the OPENED state. A receives the second ACK from B and goes back to the REQ-SENT state, sending another (forth) REQ as per the RFC. It then receives the third ACK and enters the OPENED state. In the meantime, B receives the forth REQ from A, resulting in it reverting to the ACK-SENT state and sending another (second) REQ and (forth) ACK as per the RFC. A gets the REQ, goes into REQ-SENT and sends another REQ. It immediately receives the following ACK and enters OPENED. This goes on 'till one side figures out that they're getting nowhere and gives up. The best way to avoid this is to configure one side to be passive - that is, make one side wait for the other to start negotiating. This can be done with the set openmode passive command. Care should be taken with this option. You should also use the set stopped N command to limit the amount of time that ppp waits for the peer to begin negotiations. Alternatively, the set openmode active N command (where N is the number of seconds to wait before starting negotiations) can be used. Check the manual page for details. Ppp locks up shortly after connecting Prior to version 2.2.5 of FreeBSD, it was possible that your link was disabled shortly after connection due to ppp mis-handling Predictor1 compression negotiation. This would only happen if both sides tried to negotiate different Compression Control Protocols (CCP). This problem is now corrected, but if you're still running an old version of ppp, the problem can be circumvented with the line disable pred1 Ppp locks up when I shell out to test it When you execute the shell or ! command, ppp executes a shell (or if you've passed any arguements, ppp will execute those arguements). Ppp will wait for the command to complete before continuing. If you attempt to use the ppp link while running the command, the link will appear to have frozen. This is because ppp is waiting for the command to complete. If you wish to execute commands like this, use the !bg command instead. This will execute the given command in the background, and ppp can continue to service the link. Ppp over a null-modem cable never exits There is no way for ppp to automatically determine that a direct connection has been dropped. This is due to the lines that are used in a null-modem serial cable. When using this sort of connection, LQR should always be enabled with the line enable lqr LQR is accepted by default if negotiated by the peer. Why does ppp dial for no reason in -auto mode If ppp is dialing unexpectedly, you must determine the cause, and set up Dial filters (dfilters) to prevent such dialing. To determine the cause, use the following line: set log +tcp/ip This will log all traffic through the connection. The next time the line comes up unexpectedly, you will see the reason logged with a convenient timestamp next to it. You can now disable dialing under these circumstances. Usually, this sort of problem arises due to DNS lookups. To prevent DNS lookups from establishing a connection (this will not prevent ppp from passing the packets through an established connection), use the following: set dfilter 1 deny udp src eq 53 set dfilter 2 deny udp dst eq 53 set dfilter 3 permit 0/0 0/0 This is not always suitable, as it will effectively break your demand-dial capabilities - most programs will need a DNS lookup before doing any other network related things. In the DNS case, you should try to determine what is actually trying to resolve a host name. A lot of the time, sendmail is the culprit. You should make sure that you tell sendmail not to do any DNS lookups in its configuration file. See the section on Mail Configuration for details on how to create your own configuration file and what should go into it. You may also want to add the following line to your .mc file: define(`confDELIVERY_MODE', `d')dnl This will make sendmail queue everything until the queue is run (usually, sendmail is invoked with , telling it to run the queue every 30 minutes) or until a sendmail -q is done (perhaps from your ppp.linkup file). What do these CCP errors mean I keep seeing the following errors in my log file: CCP: CcpSendConfigReq CCP: Received Terminate Ack (1) state = Req-Sent (6) This is because ppp is trying to negotiate Predictor1 compression, and the peer does not want to negotiate any compression at all. The messages are harmless, but if you wish to remove them, you can disable Predictor1 compression locally too: disable pred1 Ppp locks up during file transfers with IO errors Under FreeBSD 2.2.2 and before, there was a bug in the tun driver that prevents incoming packets of a size larger than the tun interface's MTU size. Receipt of a packet greater than the MTU size results in an IO error being logged via syslogd. The ppp specification says that an MRU of 1500 should always be accepted as a minimum, despite any LCP negotiations, therefore it is possible that should you decrease the MTU to less than 1500, your ISP will transmit packets of 1500 regardless, and you will tickle this non-feature - locking up your link. The problem can be circumvented by never setting an MTU of less than 1500 under FreeBSD 2.2.2 or before. Why doesn't ppp log my connection speed? In order to log all lines of your modem conversation, you must enable the following: set log +connect This will make ppp log everything up until the last requested expect string. If you wish to see your connect speed and are using PAP or CHAP (and therefore don't have anything to chat after the CONNECT in the dial script - no set login script), you must make sure that you instruct ppp to expect the whole CONNECT line, something like this: set dial "ABORT BUSY ABORT NO\\sCARRIER TIMEOUT 4 \ \"\" ATZ OK-ATZ-OK ATDT\\T TIMEOUT 60 CONNECT \\c \\n" Here, we get our CONNECT, send nothing, then expect a line-feed, forcing ppp to read the whole CONNECT response. Ppp ignores the \ character in my chat script Ppp parses each line in your config files so that it can interpret strings such as set phone "123 456 789" correctly (and realize that the number is actually only one argument. In order to specify a " character, you must escape it using a backslash (\). When the chat interpreter parses each argument, it re-interprets the argument in order to find any special escape sequences such as \P or \T (see the man page). As a result of this double-parsing, you must remember to use the correct number of escapes. If you wish to actually send a \ character to (say) your modem, you'd need something like: set dial "\"\" ATZ OK-ATZ-OK AT\\\\X OK" resulting in the following sequence: ATZ OK AT\X OK or set phone 1234567 set dial "\"\" ATZ OK ATDT\\T" resulting in the following sequence: ATZ OK ATDT1234567 Ppp gets a seg-fault, but I see no ppp.core file Ppp (or any other program for that matter) should never dump core. Because ppp runs with an effective user id of 0, the operating system will not write ppps core image to disk before terminating it. If, however ppp is actually termating due to a segmentation violation or some other signal that normally causes core to be dumped, and you're sure you're using the latest version (see the start of this section), then you should do the following: &prompt.user; tar xfz ppp-*.src.tar.gz &prompt.user; cd ppp*/ppp &prompt.user; echo STRIP= >>Makefile &prompt.user; echo CFLAGS+=-g >>Makefile &prompt.user; make clean all &prompt.user; su &prompt.root; make install &prompt.root; chmod 555 /usr/sbin/ppp You will now have a debuggable version of ppp installed. You will have to be root to run ppp as all of its privileges have been revoked. When you start ppp, take a careful note of what your current directory was at the time. Now, if and when ppp receives the segmentation violation, it will dump a core file called ppp.core. You should then do the following: &prompt.user; su &prompt.root; gdb /usr/sbin/ppp ppp.core (gdb) bt ..... (gdb) f 0 .... (gdb) i args .... (gdb) l ..... All of this information should be given alongside your question, making it possible to diagnose the problem. If you're familiar with gdb, you may wish to find out some other bits and pieces such as what actually caused the dump and the addresses & values of the relevant variables. The process that forces a dial in auto mode never connects This was a known problem with ppp set up to negotiate a dynamic local IP number with the peer in auto mode. It is fixed in the latest version - search the man page for iface. The problem was that when that initial program calls connect(2), the IP number of the tun interface is assigned to the socket endpoint. The kernel creates the first outgoing packet and writes it to the tun device. Ppp then reads the packet and establishes a connection. If, as a result of ppps dynamic IP assignment, the interface address is changed, the original socket endpoint will be invalid. Any subsequent packets sent to the peer will usually be dropped. Even if they aren't, any responses will not route back to the originating machine as the IP number is no longer owned by that machine. There are several theoretical ways to approach this problem. It would be nicest if the peer would re-assign the same IP number if possible :-) The current version of ppp does this, but most other implementations don't. The easiest method from our side would be to never change the tun interface IP number, but instead to change all outgoing packets so that the source IP number is changed from the interface IP to the negotiated IP on the fly. This is essentially what the iface-alias option in the latest version of ppp is doing (with the help of libalias(3) and ppp's switch) - it's maintaining all previous interface addresses and NATing them to the last negotiated address. Another alternative (and probably the most reliable) would be to implement a system call that changes all bound sockets from one IP to another. Ppp would use this call to modify the sockets of all existing programs when a new IP number is negotiated. The same system call could be used by dhcp clients when they are forced to re-bind() their sockets. Yet another possibility is to allow an interface to be brought up without an IP number. Outgoing packets would be given an IP number of 255.255.255.255 up until the first SIOCAIFADDR ioctl is done. This would result in fully binding the socket. It would be up to ppp to change the source IP number, but only if it's set to 255.255.255.255, and only the IP number and IP checksum would need to change. This, however is a bit of a hack as the kernel would be sending bad packets to an improperly configured interface, on the assumption that some other mechanism is capable of fixing things retrospectively. Why don't most games work with the -nat switch The reason games and the like don't work when libalias is in use is that the machine on the outside will try to open a connection or send (unsolicited) UDP packets to the machine on the inside. The NAT software doesn't know that it should send these packets to the interior machine. To make things work, make sure that the only thing running is the software that you're having problems with, then either run tcpdump on the tun interface of the gateway or enable ppp tcp/ip logging (set log +tcp/ip) on the gateway. When you start the offending software, you should see packets passing through the gateway machine. When something comes back from the outside, it'll be dropped (that's the problem). Note the port number of these packets then shut down the offending software. Do this a few times to see if the port numbers are consistent. If they are, then the following line in the relevant section of /etc/ppp/ppp.conf will make the software functional: nat port proto internalmachine:port port where proto is either tcp or udp, internalmachine is the machine that you want the packets to be sent to and port is the destination port number of the packets. You won't be able to use the software on other machines without changing the above command, and running the software on two internal machines at the same time is out of the question - after all, the outside world is seeing your entire internal network as being just a single machine. If the port numbers aren't consistent, there are three more options: 1) Submit support in libalias. Examples of special cases can be found in /usr/src/lib/libalias/alias_*.c (alias_ftp.c is a good prototype). This usually involves reading certain recognised outgoing packets, identifying the instruction that tells the outside machine to initiate a connection back to the internal machine on a specific (random) port and setting up a route in the alias table so that the subsequent packets know where to go. This is the most difficult solution, but it is the best and will make the software work with multiple machines. 2) Use a proxy. The application may support socks5 for example, or (as in the cvsup case) may have a passive option that avoids ever requesting that the peer open connections back to the local machine. 3) Redirect everything to the internal machine using nat addr. This is the sledge-hammer approach. Has anybody made a list of useful port numbers ? Not yet, but this is intended to grow into such a list (if any interest is shown). In each example, internal should be replaced with the IP number of the machine playing the game. Asheron's Call nat port udp internal:65000 65000 Manually change the port number within the game to 65000. If you've got a number of machines that you wish to play on assign a unique port number for each (i.e. 65001, 65002, etc) and add a nat port line for each one. Half Life nat port udp internal:27005 27015 PCAnywhere 8.0 nat port udp internal:5632 5632 nat port tcp internal:5631 5631 Quake nat port udp internal:6112 6112 Alternatively, you may want to take a look at www.battle.net for Quake proxy support. Quake 2 nat port udp internal:27901 27910 Red Alert nat port udp internal:8675 8675 nat port udp internal:5009 5009 What are FCS errors ? FCS stands for Frame Check Sequence. Each ppp packet has a checksum attached to ensure that the data being received is the data being sent. If the FCS of an incoming packet is incorrect, the packet is dropped and the HDLC FCS count is increased. The HDLC error values can be displayed using the show hdlc command. If your link is bad (or if your serial driver is dropping packets), you will see the occasional FCS error. This is not usually worth worrying about although it does slow down the compression protocols substantially. If you have an external modem, make sure your cable is properly shielded from interference - this may eradicate the problem. If your link freezes as soon as you've connected and you see a large number of FCS errors, this may be because your link is not 8 bit clean. Make sure your modem is not using software flow control (XON/XOFF). If your datalink must use software flow control, use the command set accmap 0x000a0000 to tell ppp to escape the ^Q and ^S characters. Another reason for seeing too many FCS errors may be that the remote end has stopped talking PPP. You may want to enable async logging at this point to determine if the incoming data is actually a login or shell prompt. If you have a shell prompt at the remote end, it's possible to terminate ppp without dropping the line by using the close lcp command (a following term command will reconnect you to the shell on the remote machine. If nothing in your log file indicates why the link might have been terminated, you should ask the remote administrator (your ISP?) why the session was terminated. Why do MacOS and Windows 98 connections freeze when running PPPoE on the gateway Thanks to Michael Wozniak mwozniak@netcom.ca for figuring this out and Dan Flemming danflemming@mac.com for the Mac solution: This is due to what's called a Black Hole router. MacOS and Windows 98 (and maybe other Microsoft OSs) send TCP packets with a requested segment size too big to fit into a PPPoE frame (MTU is 1500 by default for ethernet) and have the don't fragment bit set (default of TCP) and the Telco router is not sending ICMP must fragment back to the www site you are trying to load. When the www server is sending you frames that don't fit into the PPPoE pipe the Telco router drops them on the floor and your page doesn't load (some pages/graphics do as they are smaller than a MSS.) This seems to be the default of most Telco PPPoE configurations (if only they knew how to program a router... sigh...) One fix is to use regedit on your 95/98 boxes to add the following registry entry... HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Class\NetTrans\0000\MaxMTU It should be a string with a value 1450 (more accurately it should be 1464 to fit TCP packets into a PPPoE frame perfectly but the 1450 gives you a margin of error for other IP protocols you may encounter). Refer to MS KB # Q158474 - Windows TCPIP Registry Entries and Q120642 - TCPIP & NBT Configuration Parameters for Windows NT for more information on changing Windoze MTU to work with a FreeBSD/NAT/PPPoE router. Unfortunately, MacOS does not provide an interface for changing TCP/IP settings. However, there is commercial software available, such as OTAdvancedTuner (OT for OpenTransport, the MacOS TCP/IP stack) by Sustainable Softworks, that will allow users to customize TCP/IP settings. MacOS NAT users should select ip_interface_MTU from the drop-down menu, enter 1450 instead of 1500 in the box, click the box next to Save as Auto Configure, and click Make Active. None of this helps - I'm desperate ! If all else fails, send as much information as you can, including your config files, how you're starting ppp, the relevant parts of your log file and the output of the netstat -rn command (before and after connecting) to the freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org mailing list or the comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc news group, and someone should point you in the right direction. Serial Communications This section answers common questions about serial communications with FreeBSD. PPP and SLIP are covered in the section. How do I tell if FreeBSD found my serial ports? As the FreeBSD kernel boots, it will probe for the serial ports in your system for which the kernel was configured. You can either watch your system closely for the messages it prints or run the command &prompt.user; dmesg | grep sio after your system's up and running. Here's some example output from the above command: sio0 at 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 on isa sio0: type 16550A sio1 at 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa sio1: type 16550A This shows two serial ports. The first is on irq 4, is using port address 0x3f8, and has a 16550A-type UART chip. The second uses the same kind of chip but is on irq 3 and is at port address 0x2f8. Internal modem cards are treated just like serial ports---except that they always have a modem attached to the port. The GENERIC kernel includes support for two serial ports using the same irq and port address settings in the above example. If these settings aren't right for your system, or if you've added modem cards or have more serial ports than your kernel is configured for, just reconfigure your kernel. See section about building a kernel for more details. How do I tell if FreeBSD found my modem cards? Refer to the answer to the previous question. I just upgraded to 2.0.5 and my tty0X are missing! Don't worry, they have been merged with the ttydX devices. You'll have to change any old configuration files you have, though. How do I access the serial ports on FreeBSD? The third serial port, sio2 (known as COM3 in DOS), is on /dev/cuaa2 for dial-out devices, and on /dev/ttyd2 for dial-in devices. What's the difference between these two classes of devices? You use ttydX for dial-ins. When opening /dev/ttydX in blocking mode, a process will wait for the corresponding cuaaX device to become inactive, and then wait for the carrier detect line to go active. When you open the cuaaX device, it makes sure the serial port isn't already in use by the ttydX device. If the port's available, it steals it from the ttydX device. Also, the cuaXX device doesn't care about carrier detect. With this scheme and an auto-answer modem, you can have remote users log in and you can still dialout with the same modem and the system will take care of all the conflicts. How do I enable support for a multiport serial card? Again, the section on kernel configuration provides information about configuring your kernel. For a multiport serial card, place an sio line for each serial port on the card in the kernel configuration file. But place the irq and vector specifiers on only one of the entries. All of the ports on the card should share one irq. For consistency, use the last serial port to specify the irq. Also, specify the COM_MULTIPORT option. The following example is for an AST 4-port serial card on irq 7: options "COM_MULTIPORT" device sio4 at isa? port 0x2a0 tty flags 0x781 device sio5 at isa? port 0x2a8 tty flags 0x781 device sio6 at isa? port 0x2b0 tty flags 0x781 device sio7 at isa? port 0x2b8 tty flags 0x781 irq 7 vector siointr The flags indicate that the master port has minor number 7 (0x700), diagnostics enabled during probe (0x080), and all the ports share an irq (0x001). Can FreeBSD handle multiport serial cards sharing irqs? Not yet. You'll have to use a different irq for each card. Can I set the default serial parameters for a port? The ttydX (or cuaaX) device is the regular device you'll want to open for your applications. When a process opens the device, it'll have a default set of terminal I/O settings. You can see these settings with the command &prompt.root; stty -a -f /dev/ttyd1 When you change the settings to this device, the settings are in effect until the device is closed. When it's reopened, it goes back to the default set. To make changes to the default set, you can open and adjust the settings of the initial state device. For example, to turn on CLOCAL mode, 8 bits, and XON/XOFF flow control by default for ttyd5, do: &prompt.root; stty -f /dev/ttyid5 clocal cs8 ixon ixoff A good place to do this is in /etc/rc.serial. Now, an application will have these settings by default when it opens ttyd5. It can still change these settings to its liking, though. You can also prevent certain settings from being changed by an application by making adjustments to the lock state device. For example, to lock the speed of ttyd5 to 57600 bps, do &prompt.root; stty -f /dev/ttyld5 57600 Now, an application that opens ttyd5 and tries to change the speed of the port will be stuck with 57600 bps. Naturally, you should make the initial state and lock state devices writable only by root. The MAKEDEV script does NOT do this when it creates the device entries. How can I enable dialup logins on my modem? So you want to become an Internet service provider, eh? First, you'll need one or more modems that can auto-answer. Your modem will need to assert carrier-detect when it detects a carrier and not assert it all the time. It will need to hang up the phone and reset itself when the data terminal ready (DTR) line goes from on to off. It should probably use RTS/CTS flow control or no local flow control at all. Finally, it must use a constant speed between the computer and itself, but (to be nice to your callers) it should negotiate a speed between itself and the remote modem. For many Hayes command-set--compatible modems, this command will make these settings and store them in nonvolatile memory: AT &C1 &D3 &K3 &Q6 S0=1 &W See the section on sending AT commands below for information on how to make these settings without resorting to an MS-DOS terminal program. Next, make an entry in /etc/ttys for the modem. This file lists all the ports on which the operating system will await logins. Add a line that looks something like this: ttyd1 "/usr/libexec/getty std.57600" dialup on insecure This line indicates that the second serial port (/dev/ttyd1) has a modem connected running at 57600 bps and no parity (std.57600, which comes from the file /etc/gettytab). The terminal type for this port is dialup. The port is on and is insecure---meaning root logins on the port aren't allowed. For dialin ports like this one, use the ttydX entry. It's common practice to use dialup as the terminal type. Many users set up in their .profile or .login files a prompt for the actual terminal type if the starting type is dialup. The example shows the port as insecure. To become root on this port, you have to login as a regular user, then su to become root. If you use secure then root can login in directly. After making modifications to /etc/ttys, you need to send a hangup or HUP signal to the init process: &prompt.root; kill -HUP 1 This forces the init process to reread /etc/ttys. The init process will then start getty processes on all on ports. You can find out if logins are available for your port by typing &prompt.user; ps -ax | grep '[t]tyd1' You should see something like: 747 ?? I 0:00.04 /usr/libexec/getty std.57600 ttyd1 How can I connect a dumb terminal to my FreeBSD box? If you're using another computer as a terminal into your FreeBSD system, get a null modem cable to go between the two serial ports. If you're using an actual terminal, see its accompanying instructions. Then, modify /etc/ttys, like above. For example, if you're hooking up a WYSE-50 terminal to the fifth serial port, use an entry like this: ttyd4 "/usr/libexec/getty std.38400" wyse50 on secure This example shows that the port on /dev/ttyd4 has a wyse50 terminal connected at 38400 bps with no parity (std.38400 from /etc/gettytab) and root logins are allowed (secure). Why can't I run tip or cu? On your system, the programs tip and cu are probably executable only by uucp and group dialer. You can use the group dialer to control who has access to your modem or remote systems. Just add yourself to group dialer. Alternatively, you can let everyone on your system run tip and cu by typing: &prompt.root; chmod 4511 /usr/bin/cu &prompt.root; chmod 4511 /usr/bin/tip My stock Hayes modem isn't supported---what can I do? Actually, the man page for tip is out of date. There is a generic Hayes dialer already built in. Just use at=hayes in your /etc/remote file. The Hayes driver isn't smart enough to recognize some of the advanced features of newer modems---messages like BUSY, NO DIALTONE, or CONNECT 115200 will just confuse it. You should turn those messages off when you use tip (using ATX0&W). Also, the dial timeout for tip is 60 seconds. Your modem should use something less, or else tip will think there's a communication problem. Try ATS7=45&W. Actually, as shipped tip doesn't yet support it fully. The solution is to edit the file tipconf.h in the directory /usr/src/usr.bin/tip/tip. Obviously you need the source distribution to do this. Edit the line #define HAYES 0 to #define HAYES 1. Then make and make install. Everything works nicely after that. How am I expected to enter these AT commands? Make what's called a direct entry in your /etc/remote file. For example, if your modem's hooked up to the first serial port, /dev/cuaa0, then put in the following line: cuaa0:dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#19200:pa=none Use the highest bps rate your modem supports in the br capability. Then, type tip cuaa0 and you'll be connected to your modem. If there is no /dev/cuaa0 on your system, do this: &prompt.root; cd /dev &prompt.root; sh MAKEDEV cuaa0 Or use cu as root with the following command: &prompt.root; cu -lline -sspeed with line being the serial port (e.g./dev/cuaa0) and speed being the speed (e.g.57600). When you are done entering the AT commands hit ~. to exit. The <@> sign for the pn capability doesn't work! The <@> sign in the phone number capability tells tip to look in /etc/phones for a phone number. But the <@> sign is also a special character in capability files like /etc/remote. Escape it with a backslash: pn=\@ How can I dial a phone number on the command line? Put what's called a generic entry in your /etc/remote file. For example: tip115200|Dial any phone number at 115200 bps:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#115200:at=hayes:pa=none:du: tip57600|Dial any phone number at 57600 bps:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#57600:at=hayes:pa=none:du: Then you can do something like tip -115200 5551234. If you prefer cu over tip, use a generic cu entry: cu115200|Use cu to dial any number at 115200bps:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa1:br#57600:at=hayes:pa=none:du: and type cu 5551234 -s 115200. Do I have to type in the bps rate every time I do that? Put in an entry for tip1200 or cu1200, but go ahead and use whatever bps rate is appropriate with the br capability. tip thinks a good default is 1200 bps which is why it looks for a tip1200 entry. You don't have to use 1200 bps, though. I access a number of hosts through a terminal server. Rather than waiting until you're connected and typing CONNECT host each time, use tip's cm capability. For example, these entries in /etc/remote: pain|pain.deep13.com|Forrester's machine:\ :cm=CONNECT pain\n:tc=deep13: muffin|muffin.deep13.com|Frank's machine:\ :cm=CONNECT muffin\n:tc=deep13: deep13:Gizmonics Institute terminal server:\ :dv=/dev/cua02:br#38400:at=hayes:du:pa=none:pn=5551234: will let you type tip pain or tip muffin to connect to the hosts pain or muffin; and tip deep13 to get to the terminal server. Can tip try more than one line for each site? This is often a problem where a university has several modem lines and several thousand students trying to use them... Make an entry for your university in /etc/remote and use <\@> for the pn capability: big-university:\ :pn=\@:tc=dialout dialout:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa3:br#9600:at=courier:du:pa=none: Then, list the phone numbers for the university in /etc/phones: big-university 5551111 big-university 5551112 big-university 5551113 big-university 5551114 tip will try each one in the listed order, then give up. If you want to keep retrying, run tip in a while loop. Why do I have to hit CTRL+P twice to send CTRL+P once? CTRL+P is the default force character, used to tell tip that the next character is literal data. You can set the force character to any other character with the ~s escape, which means set a variable. Type ~sforce=single-char followed by a newline. single-char is any single character. If you leave out single-char, then the force character is the nul character, which you can get by typing CTRL+2 or CTRL+SPACE. A pretty good value for single-char is SHIFT+CTRL+6, which I've seen only used on some terminal servers. You can have the force character be whatever you want by specifying the following in your $HOME/.tiprc file: force=single-char Suddenly everything I type is in UPPER CASE?? You must've pressed CTRL+A, tip raise character, specially designed for people with broken caps-lock keys. Use ~s as above and set the variable raisechar to something reasonable. In fact, you can set it to the same as the force character, if you never expect to use either of these features. Here's a sample .tiprc file perfect for Emacs users who need to type CTRL+2 and CTRL+A a lot: force=^^ raisechar=^^ The ^^ is SHIFT+CTRL+6. How can I do file transfers with tip? If you're talking to another UNIX system, you can send and receive files with ~p (put) and ~t (take). These commands run cat and echo on the remote system to accept and send files. The syntax is: ~p <local-file> [<remote-file>] ~t <remote-file> [<local-file>] There's no error checking, so you probably should use another protocol, like zmodem. How can I run zmodem with tip? First, install one of the zmodem programs from the ports collection (such as one of the two from the comms category, lrzsz and rzsz). To receive files, start the sending program on the remote end. Then, press enter and type ~C rz (or ~C lrz if you installed lrzsz) to begin receiving them locally. To send files, start the receiving program on the remote end. Then, press enter and type ~C sz files (or ~C lsz files) to send them to the remote system. FreeBSD can't seem to find my serial ports, even when the settings are correct. Motherboards and cards with Acer UARTs do not probe properly under the FreeBSD sio probe. Obtain a patch from www.lemis.com to fix your problem. Miscellaneous Questions FreeBSD uses far more swap space than Linux. Why? FreeBSD only appears to use more swap than Linux. In actual fact, it does not. The main difference between FreeBSD and Linux in this regard is that FreeBSD will proactively move entirely idle, unused pages of main memory into swap in order to make more main memory available for active use. Linux tends to only move pages to swap as a last resort. The perceived heavier use of swap is balanced by the more efficient use of main memory. Note that while FreeBSD is proactive in this regard, it does not arbitrarily decide to swap pages when the system is truely idle. Thus you will not find your system all paged out when you get up in the morning after leaving it idle overnight. Why does &man.top.1; show very little free memory even when I have very few programs running? The simple answer is that free memory is wasted memory. Any memory that your programs don't actively allocate is used within the FreeBSD kernel as disk cache. The values shown by &man.top.1; labelled as Inact, Cache, and Buf are all cached data at different aging levels. This cached data means the system does not have to access a slow disk again for data it has accessed recently, thus increasing overall performance. In general, a low value shown for Free memory in &man.top.1; is good, provided it is not very low. Why use (what are) a.out and ELF executable formats? To understand why FreeBSD uses the ELF format, you must first know a little about the 3 currently dominant executable formats for UNIX: Prior to FreeBSD 3.x, FreeBSD used the a.out format. a.out The oldest and classic unix object format. It uses a short and compact header with a magic number at the beginning that's often used to characterize the format (see a.out(5) for more details). It contains three loaded segments: .text, .data, and .bss plus a symbol table and a string table. COFF The SVR3 object format. The header now comprises a section table, so you can have more than just .text, .data, and .bss sections. ELF The successor to COFF, featuring Multiple sections and 32-bit or 64-bit possible values. One major drawback: ELF was also designed with the assumption that there would be only one ABI per system architecture. That assumption is actually quite incorrect, and not even in the commercial SYSV world (which has at least three ABIs: SVR4, Solaris, SCO) does it hold true. FreeBSD tries to work around this problem somewhat by providing a utility for branding a known ELF executable with information about the ABI it's compliant with. See the man page for brandelf for more information. FreeBSD comes from the classic camp and has traditionally used the a.out format, a technology tried and proven through many generations of BSD releases. Though it has also been possible for some time to build and run native ELF binaries (and kernels) on a FreeBSD system, FreeBSD initially resisted the push to switch to ELF as the default format. Why? Well, when the Linux camp made their painful transition to ELF, it was not so much to flee the a.out executable format as it was their inflexible jump-table based shared library mechanism, which made the construction of shared libraries very difficult for vendors and developers alike. Since the ELF tools available offered a solution to the shared library problem and were generally seen as the way forward anyway, the migration cost was accepted as necessary and the transition made. In FreeBSD's case, our shared library mechanism is based more closely on Sun's SunOS-style shared library mechanism and, as such, is very easy to use. However, starting with 3.0, FreeBSD officially supports ELF binaries as the default format. Even though the a.out executable format has served us well, the GNU people, who author the compiler tools we use, have dropped support for the a.out format. This has forced us to maintain a divergent version of the compler and linker, and has kept us from reaping the benefits of the latest GNU development efforts. Also the demands of ISO-C++, notably contstructors and destructors, has also led to native ELF support in future FreeBSD releases. Yes, but why are there so many different formats? Back in the dim, dark past, there was simple hardware. This simple hardware supported a simple, small system. a.out was completely adequate for the job of representing binaries on this simple system (a PDP-11). As people ported unix from this simple system, they retained the a.out format because it was sufficient for the early ports of unix to architectures like the Motorola 68k, VAXen, etc. Then some bright hardware engineer decided that if he could force software to do some sleazy tricks, then he'd be able to shave a few gates off the design and allow his CPU core to run faster. While it was made to work with this new kind of hardware (known these days as RISC), a.out was ill-suited for this hardware, so many formats were developed to get to a better performance from this hardware than the limited, simple a.out format could offer. Things like COFF, ECOFF, and a few obscure others were invented and their limitations explored before things seemed to settle on ELF. In addition, program sizes were getting huge and disks (and physical memory) were still relatively small so the concept of a shared library was born. The VM system also became more sophisticated. While each one of these advancements was done using the a.out format, its usefulness was stretched more and more with each new feature. In addition, people wanted to dynamically load things at run time, or to junk parts of their program after the init code had run to save in core memory and/or swap space. Languages became more sophistocated and people wanted code called before main automatically. Lots of hacks were done to the a.out format to allow all of these things to happen, and they basically worked for a time. In time, a.out wasn't up to handling all these problems without an ever increasing overhead in code and complexity. While ELF solved many of these problems, it would be painful to switch from the system that basically worked. So ELF had to wait until it was more painful to remain with a.out than it was to migrate to ELF. However, as time passed, the build tools that FreeBSD derived their build tools from (the assembler and loader especially) evolved in two parallel trees. The FreeBSD tree added shared libraries and fixed some bugs. The GNU folks that originally write these programs rewrote them and added simpler support for building cross compilers, plugging in different formats at will, etc. Since many people wanted to build cross compilers targeting FreeBSD, they were out of luck since the older sources that FreeBSD had for as and ld weren't up to the task. The new gnu tools chain (binutils) does support cross compiling, ELF, shared libraries, C++ extnensions, etc. In addition, many vendors are releasing ELF binaries, and it is a good thing for FreeBSD to run them. And if it is running ELF binaries, why bother having a.out any more? It is a tired old horse that has proven useful for a long time, but it is time to turn him out to pasture for his long, faithful years of service. ELF is more expressive than a.out and will allow more extensibility in the base system. The ELF tools are better maintained, and offer cross compilation support, which is important to many people. ELF may be a little slower than a.out, but trying to measure it can be difficult. There are also numerous details that are different between the two in how they map pages, handle init code, etc. None of these are very important, but they are differences. In time support for a.out will be moved out of the GENERIC kernel, and eventually removed from the kernel once the need to run legacy a.out programs is past. Why won't chmod change the permissions on symlinks? Symlinks do not have permissions, and by default, &man.chmod.1; will not follow symlinks to change the permissions on the target file. So if you have a file, foo, and a symlink to that file, bar, then this command will always succeed. &prompt.user; chmod g-w bar However, the permissions on foo will not have changed. You have to use either or together with the option to make this work. See the chmod and symlink man pages for more info. The option does a RECURSIVE chmod. Be careful about specifying directories or symlinks to directories to chmod. If you want to change the permissions of a directory referenced by a symlink, use chmod without any options and follow the symlink with a trailing slash (/). For example, if foo is a symlink to directory bar, and you want to change the permissions of foo (actually bar), you would do something like: &prompt.user; chmod 555 foo/ With the trailing slash, chmod will follow the symlink, foo, to change the permissions of the directory, bar. Why are login names still restricted to 8 characters? You'd think it'd be easy enough to change UT_NAMESIZE and rebuild the whole world, and everything would just work. Unfortunately there are often scads of applications and utilities (including system tools) that have hard-coded small numbers (not always 8 or 9, but oddball ones like 15 and 20) in structures and buffers. Not only will this get you log files which are trashed (due to variable-length records getting written when fixed records were expected), but it can break Sun's NIS clients and potentially cause other problems in interacting with other UNIX systems. In FreeBSD 3.0 and later, the maximum name length has been increased to 16 characters and those various utilities with hard-coded name sizes have been found and fixed. The fact that this touched so many areas of the system is why, in fact, the change was not made until 3.0. If you're absolutely confident in your ability to find and fix these sorts of problems for yourself when and if they pop up, you can increase the login name length in earlier releases by editing /usr/include/utmp.h and changing UT_NAMESIZE accordingly. You must also update MAXLOGNAME in /usr/include/sys/param.h to match the UT_NAMESIZE change. Finally, if you build from sources, don't forget that /usr/include is updated each time! Change the appropriate files in /usr/src/.. instead. Can I run DOS binaries under FreeBSD? Yes, starting with version 3.0 you can using BSDI's doscmd DOS emulation which has been integrated and enhanced. Send mail to The FreeBSD emulation discussion list if you're interested in joining this ongoing effort! For pre-3.0 systems, there is a neat utility called pcemu in the ports collection which emulates an 8088 and enough BIOS services to run DOS text mode applications. It requires the X Window System (provided as XFree86). What is sup, and how do I use it? SUP stands for Software Update Protocol, and was developed by CMU for keeping their development trees in sync. We used it to keep remote sites in sync with our central development sources. SUP is not bandwidth friendly, and has been retired. The current recommended method to keep your sources up to date is Handbook entry on CVSup How cool is FreeBSD? Q. Has anyone done any temperature testing while running FreeBSD? I know Linux runs cooler than dos, but have never seen a mention of FreeBSD. It seems to run really hot. A. No, but we have done numerous taste tests on blindfolded volunteers who have also had 250 micrograms of LSD-25 administered beforehand. 35% of the volunteers said that FreeBSD tasted sort of orange, whereas Linux tasted like purple haze. Neither group mentioned any particular variances in temperature that I can remember. We eventually had to throw the results of this survey out entirely anyway when we found that too many volunteers were wandering out of the room during the tests, thus skewing the results. I think most of the volunteers are at Apple now, working on their new scratch and sniff GUI. It's a funny old business we're in! Seriously, both FreeBSD and Linux use the HLT (halt) instruction when the system is idle thus lowering its energy consumption and therefore the heat it generates. Also if you have APM (advanced power management) configured, then FreeBSD can also put the CPU into a low power mode. Who's scratching in my memory banks?? Q. Is there anything odd that FreeBSD does when compiling the kernel which would cause the memory to make a scratchy sound? When compiling (and for a brief moment after recognizing the floppy drive upon startup, as well), a strange scratchy sound emanates from what appears to be the memory banks. A. Yes! You'll see frequent references to daemons in the BSD documentation, and what most people don't know is that this refers to genuine, non-corporeal entities that now possess your computer. The scratchy sound coming from your memory is actually high-pitched whispering exchanged among the daemons as they best decide how to deal with various system administration tasks. If the noise gets to you, a good fdisk /mbr from DOS will get rid of them, but don't be surprised if they react adversely and try to stop you. In fact, if at any point during the exercise you hear the satanic voice of Bill Gates coming from the built-in speaker, take off running and don't ever look back! Freed from the counterbalancing influence of the BSD daemons, the twin demons of DOS and Windows are often able to re-assert total control over your machine to the eternal damnation of your soul. Given a choice, I think I'd prefer to get used to the scratchy noises, myself! What does MFC mean? MFC is an acronym for Merged From -CURRENT. It's used in the CVS logs to denote when a change was migrated from the CURRENT to the STABLE branches. What does BSD mean? It stands for something in a secret language that only members can know. It doesn't translate literally but its ok to tell you that BSD's translation is something between, Formula-1 Racing Team, Penguins are tasty snacks, and We have a better sense of humor than Linux. :-) Seriously, BSD is an acronym for Berkeley Software Distribution, which is the name the Berkeley CSRG (Computer Systems Research Group) chose for their Unix distribution way back when. What is a repo-copy? A repo-copy (which is a short form of repository copy) refers to the direct copying of files within the CVS repository. Without a repo-copy, if a file needed to be copied or moved to another place in the repository, the committer would run cvs add to put the file in its new location, and then cvs rm on the old file if the old copy was being removed. The disadvantage of this method is that the history (i.e. the entries in the CVS logs) of the file would not be copied to the new location. As the FreeBSD Project considers this history very useful, a repository copy is often used instead. This is a process where one of the repository meisters will copy the files directly within the repository, rather than using the cvs program. Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? The really, really short answer is that you shouldn't. The somewhat longer answer is that just because you are capable of building a bikeshed doesn't mean you should stop others from building one just because you don't like the color they plan to paint it. This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change. The longer and more complete answer is that after a very long argument about whether &man.sleep.1; should take fractional second arguments, &a.phk; posted a long message entitled A bike shed (any colour will do) on greener grass.... The appropriate portions of that message are quoted below.
&a.phk; on freebsd-hackers, October 2, 1999 What is it about this bike shed? Some of you have asked me. It's a long story, or rather it's an old story, but it is quite short actually. C. Northcote Parkinson wrote a book in the early 1960'ies, called Parkinson's Law, which contains a lot of insight into the dynamics of management. [snip a bit of commentary on the book] In the specific example involving the bike shed, the other vital component is an atomic power-plant, I guess that illustrates the age of the book. Parkinson shows how you can go in to the board of directors and get approval for building a multi-million or even billion dollar atomic power plant, but if you want to build a bike shed you will be tangled up in endless discussions. Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast, so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody else checked all the details before it got this far. Richard P. Feynmann gives a couple of interesting, and very much to the point, examples relating to Los Alamos in his books. A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one of those over a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is here. In Denmark we call it setting your fingerprint. It is about personal pride and prestige, it is about being able to point somewhere and say There! I did that. It is a strong trait in politicians, but present in most people given the chance. Just think about footsteps in wet cement.
How many FreeBSD hackers does it take to change a lightbulb? One thousand, one hundred and seventy-two: Twenty-three to complain to -CURRENT about the lights being out; Four to claim that it is a configuration problem, and that such matters really belong on -questions; Three to submit PRs about it, one of which is misfiled under doc and consists only of "it's dark"; One to commit an untested lightbulb which breaks buildworld, then back it out five minutes later; Eight to flame the PR originators for not including patches in their PRs; Five to complain about buildworld being broken; Thirty-one to answer that it works for them, and they must have cvsupped at a bad time; One to post a patch for a new lightbulb to -hackers; One to complain that he had patches for this three years ago, but when he sent them to -CURRENT they were just ignored, and he has had bad experiences with the PR system; besides, the proposed new lightbulb is non-reflexive; Thirty-seven to scream that lightbulbs do not belong in the base system, that committers have no right to do things like this without consulting the Community, and WHAT IS -CORE DOING ABOUT IT!? Two hundred to complain about the color of the bicycle shed; Three to point out that the patch breaks style(9); Seventeen to complain that the proposed new lightbulb is under GPL; Five hundred and eighty-six to engage in a flame war about the comparative advantages of the GPL, the BSD license, the MIT license, the NPL, and the personal hygiene of unnamed FSF founders; Seven to move various portions of the thread to -chat and -advocacy; One to commit the suggested lightbulb, even though it shines dimmer than the old one; Two to back it out with a furious flame of a commit message, arguing that FreeBSD is better off in the dark than with a dim lightbulb; Forty-six to argue vociferously about the backing out of the dim lightbulb and demanding a statement from -core; Eleven to request a smaller lightbulb so it will fit their Tamagotchi if we ever decide to port FreeBSD to that platform; Seventy-three to complain about the SNR on -hackers and -chat and unsubscribe in protest; Thirteen to post "unsubscribe", "How do I unsubscribe?", or "Please remove me from the list", followed by the usual footer; One to commit a working lightbulb while everybody is too busy flaming everybody else to notice; Thirty-one to point out that the new lightbulb would shine 0.364% brighter if compiled with TenDRA (although it will have to be reshaped into a cube), and that FreeBSD should therefore switch to TenDRA instead of EGCS; One to complain that the new lightbulb lacks fairings; Nine (including the PR originators) to ask "what is MFC?"; Fifty-seven to complain about the lights being out two weeks after the bulb has been changed. &a.nik; adds: I was laughing quite hard at this. And then I thought, "Hang on, shouldn't there be '1 to document it.' in that list somewhere?" And then I was enlightened :-) This entry is Copyright (c) 1999 &a.des;. Please do not reproduce without attribution. For serious FreeBSD hackers only What are SNAPs and RELEASEs? There are currently three active/semi-active branches in the FreeBSD CVS Repository (the RELENG_2 branch is probably only changed twice a year, which is why there are only three active branches of development): RELENG_2_2 AKA 2.2-STABLE RELENG_3 AKA 3.X-STABLE RELENG_4 AKA 4-STABLE HEAD AKA -CURRENT AKA 5.0-CURRENT HEAD is not an actual branch tag, like the other two; it's simply a symbolic constant for the current, non-branched development stream which we simply refer to as -CURRENT. Right now, -CURRENT is the 5.0 development stream and the 4-STABLE branch, RELENG_4, forked off from -CURRENT in Mar 2000. The 2.2-STABLE branch, RELENG_2_2, departed -CURRENT in November 1996, and has pretty much been retired. How do I make my own custom release? To make a release you need to do three things: First, you need to be running a kernel with the vn driver configured in. Add this to your kernel config file and build a new kernel: pseudo-device vn #Vnode driver (turns a file into a device) Second, you have to have the whole CVS repository at hand. To get this you can use CVSUP but in your supfile set the release name to cvs and remove any tag or date fields: *default prefix=/home/ncvs *default base=/a *default host=cvsup.FreeBSD.org *default release=cvs *default delete compress use-rel-suffix ## Main Source Tree src-all src-eBones src-secure # Other stuff ports-all www doc-all Then run cvsup -g supfile to suck all the good bits onto your box... Finally, you need a chunk of empty space to build into. Let's say it's in /some/big/filesystem, and from the example above you've got the CVS repository in /home/ncvs: &prompt.root; setenv CVSROOT /home/ncvs # or export CVSROOT=/home/ncvs &prompt.root; cd /usr/src &prompt.root; make buildworld &prompt.root; cd /usr/src/release &prompt.root; make release BUILDNAME=3.0-MY-SNAP CHROOTDIR=/some/big/filesystem/release
Please note that you do not need to build world if you already have a populated /usr/obj.
An entire release will be built in /some/big/filesystem/release and you will have a full FTP-type installation in /some/big/filesystem/release/R/ftp when you're done. If you want to build your SNAP along some other branch than -CURRENT, you can also add RELEASETAG=SOMETAG to the make release command line above, e.g. RELEASETAG=RELENG_2_2 would build an up-to-the- minute 2.2-STABLE snapshot. How do I create customized installation disks? The entire process of creating installation disks and source and binary archives is automated by various targets in /usr/src/release/Makefile. The information there should be enough to get you started. However, it should be said that this involves doing a make world and will therefore take up a lot of time and disk space. make world clobbers my existing installed binaries. Yes, this is the general idea; as its name might suggest, make world rebuilds every system binary from scratch, so you can be certain of having a clean and consistent environment at the end (which is why it takes so long). If the environment variable DESTDIR is defined while running make world or make install, the newly-created binaries will be deposited in a directory tree identical to the installed one, rooted at ${DESTDIR}. Some random combination of shared libraries modifications and program rebuilds can cause this to fail in make world however. When my system boots, it says (bus speed defaulted). The Adaptec 1542 SCSI host adapters allow the user to configure their bus access speed in software. Previous versions of the 1542 driver tried to determine the fastest usable speed and set the adapter to that. We found that this breaks some users' systems, so you now have to define the TUNE_1542 kernel configuration option in order to have this take place. Using it on those systems where it works may make your disks run faster, but on those systems where it doesn't, your data could be corrupted. Can I follow current with limited Internet access? Yes, you can do this without downloading the whole source tree by using the CTM facility. How did you split the distribution into 240k files? Newer BSD based systems have a option to split that allows them to split files on arbitrary byte boundaries. Here is an example from /usr/src/Makefile. bin-tarball: (cd ${DISTDIR}; \ tar cf - . \ gzip --no-name -9 -c | \ split -b 240640 - \ ${RELEASEDIR}/tarballs/bindist/bin_tgz.) I've written a kernel extension, who do I send it to? Please take a look at The Handbook entry on how to submit code. And thanks for the thought! How are Plug N Play ISA cards detected and initialized? By: Frank Durda IV In a nutshell, there a few I/O ports that all of the PnP boards respond to when the host asks if anyone is out there. So when the PnP probe routine starts, he asks if there are any PnP boards present, and all the PnP boards respond with their model # to a I/O read of the same port, so the probe routine gets a wired-OR yes to that question. At least one bit will be on in that reply. Then the probe code is able to cause boards with board model IDs (assigned by Microsoft/Intel) lower than X to go off-line. It then looks to see if any boards are still responding to the query. If the answer was 0, then there are no boards with IDs above X. Now probe asks if there are any boards below X. If so, probe knows there are boards with a model numbers below X. Probe then asks for boards greater than X-(limit/4) to go off-line. If repeats the query. By repeating this semi-binary search of IDs-in-range enough times, the probing code will eventually identify all PnP boards present in a given machine with a number of iterations that is much lower than what 2^64 would take. The IDs are two 32-bit fields (hence 2ˆ64) + 8 bit checksum. The first 32 bits are a vendor identifier. They never come out and say it, but it appears to be assumed that different types of boards from the same vendor could have different 32-bit vendor ids. The idea of needing 32 bits just for unique manufacturers is a bit excessive. The lower 32 bits are a serial #, ethernet address, something that makes this one board unique. The vendor must never produce a second board that has the same lower 32 bits unless the upper 32 bits are also different. So you can have multiple boards of the same type in the machine and the full 64 bits will still be unique. The 32 bit groups can never be all zero. This allows the wired-OR to show non-zero bits during the initial binary search. Once the system has identified all the board IDs present, it will reactivate each board, one at a time (via the same I/O ports), and find out what resources the given board needs, what interrupt choices are available, etc. A scan is made over all the boards to collect this information. This info is then combined with info from any ECU files on the hard disk or wired into the MLB BIOS. The ECU and BIOS PnP support for hardware on the MLB is usually synthetic, and the peripherals don't really do genuine PnP. However by examining the BIOS info plus the ECU info, the probe routines can cause the devices that are PnP to avoid those devices the probe code cannot relocate. Then the PnP devices are visited once more and given their I/O, DMA, IRQ and Memory-map address assignments. The devices will then appear at those locations and remain there until the next reboot, although there is nothing that says you can't move them around whenever you want. There is a lot of oversimplification above, but you should get the general idea. Microsoft took over some of the primary printer status ports to do PnP, on the logic that no boards decoded those addresses for the opposing I/O cycles. I found a genuine IBM printer board that did decode writes of the status port during the early PnP proposal review period, but MS said tough. So they do a write to the printer status port for setting addresses, plus that use that address + 0x800, and a third I/O port for reading that can be located anywhere between 0x200 and 0x3ff. Does FreeBSD support architectures other than the x86? Several groups of people have expressed interest in working on multi-architecture ports for FreeBSD and the FreeBSD/AXP (ALPHA) port is one such effort which has been quite successful, now available in 3.0 SNAPshot release form at ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/alpha. The ALPHA port currently runs on a growing number of ALPHA machine types, among them the AlphaStation, AXPpci, PC164, Miata and Multia models. This port is not yet considered a full release and won't be until a full compliment of system installation tools and a distribution on CDROM installation media is available, including a reasonable number of working ports and packages. FreeBSD/AXP should be considered BETA quality software at this time. For status information, please join the freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.orgmailing list. Interest has also been expressed in a port of FreeBSD to the SPARC architecture, join the freebsd-sparc@FreeBSD.orgmailing list if you are interested in joining that project. For general discussion on new architectures, join the freebsd-platforms@FreeBSD.org mailing list. I need a major number for a device driver I've written. This depends on whether or not you plan on making the driver publicly available. If you do, then please send us a copy of the driver source code, plus the appropriate modifications to files.i386, a sample configuration file entry, and the appropriate MAKEDEV code to create any special files your device uses. If you do not, or are unable to because of licensing restrictions, then character major number 32 and block major number 8 have been reserved specifically for this purpose; please use them. In any case, we'd appreciate hearing about your driver on freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org. Alternative layout policies for directories In answer to the question of alternative layout policies for directories, the scheme that is currently in use is unchanged from what I wrote in 1983. I wrote that policy for the original fast filesystem, and never revisited it. It works well at keeping cylinder groups from filling up. As several of you have noted, it works poorly for find. Most filesystems are created from archives that were created by a depth first search (aka ftw). These directories end up being striped across the cylinder groups thus creating a worst possible senario for future depth first searches. If one knew the total number of directories to be created, the solution would be to create (total / fs_ncg) per cylinder group before moving on. Obviously, one would have to create some heuristic to guess at this number. Even using a small fixed number like say 10 would make an order of magnitude improvement. To differentiate restores from normal operation (when the current algorithm is probably more sensible), you could use the clustering of up to 10 if they were all done within a ten second window. Anyway, my conclusion is that this is an area ripe for experimentation. Kirk McKusick, September 1998 Making the most of a kernel panic [This section was extracted from a mail written by &a.wpaul; on the freebsd-current mailing list by &a.des;, who fixed a few typos and added the bracketed comments] From: Bill Paul <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> Subject: Re: the fs fun never stops To: ben@rosengart.com Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 15:22:50 -0400 (EDT) Cc: current@FreeBSD.org [<ben@rosengart.com> posted the following panic message] > Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode > fault virtual address = 0x40 > fault code = supervisor read, page not present > instruction pointer = 0x8:0xf014a7e5 ^^^^^^^^^^ > stack pointer = 0x10:0xf4ed6f24 > frame pointer = 0x10:0xf4ed6f28 > code segment = base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b > = DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1 > processor eflags = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0 > current process = 80 (mount) > interrupt mask = > trap number = 12 > panic: page fault [When] you see a message like this, it's not enough to just reproduce it and send it in. The instruction pointer value that I highlighted up there is important; unfortunately, it's also configuration dependent. In other words, the value varies depending on the exact kernel image that you're using. If you're using a GENERIC kernel image from one of the snapshots, then it's possible for somebody else to track down the offending function, but if you're running a custom kernel then only you can tell us where the fault occured. What you should do is this: Write down the instruction pointer value. Note that the 0x8: part at the begining is not significant in this case: it's the 0xf0xxxxxx part that we want. When the system reboots, do the following: &prompt.user; nm /kernel.that.caused.the.panic | grep f0xxxxxx where f0xxxxxx is the instruction pointer value. The odds are you will not get an exact match since the symbols in the kernel symbol table are for the entry points of functions and the instruction pointer address will be somewhere inside a function, not at the start. If you don't get an exact match, omit the last digit from the instruction pointer value and try again, i.e.: &prompt.user; nm /kernel.that.caused.the.panic | grep f0xxxxx If that doesn't yield any results, chop off another digit. Repeat until you get some sort of output. The result will be a possible list of functions which caused the panic. This is a less than exact mechanism for tracking down the point of failure, but it's better than nothing. I see people constantly show panic messages like this but rarely do I see someone take the time to match up the instruction pointer with a function in the kernel symbol table. The best way to track down the cause of a panic is by capturing a crash dump, then using gdb(1) to to a stack trace on the crash dump. Of course, this depends on gdb(1) in -CURRENT working correctly, which I can't guarantee (I recall somebody saying that the new ELF-ized gdb(1) didn't handle kernel crash dumps correctly: somebody should check this before 3.0 goes out of beta or there'll be a lot of red faces after the CDs ship). In any case, the method I normally use is this: Set up a kernel config file, optionally adding options DDB if you think you need the kernel debugger for something. (I use this mainly for setting beakpoints if I suspect an infinite loop condition of some kind.) Use config -g KERNELCONFIG to set up the build directory. cd /sys/compile/KERNELCONFIG; make Wait for kernel to finish compiling. make install reboot The &man.make.1; process will have built two kernels. kernel and kernel.debug. kernel was installed as /kernel, while kernel.debug can be used as the source of debugging symbols for gdb(1). To make sure you capture a crash dump, you need edit /etc/rc.conf and set dumpdev to point to your swap partition. This will cause the rc(8) scripts to use the dumpon(8) command to enable crash dumps. You can also run dumpon(8) manually. After a panic, the crash dump can be recovered using savecore(8); if dumpdev is set in /etc/rc.conf, the rc(8) scripts will run savecore(8) automatically and put the crash dump in /var/crash. FreeBSD crash dumps are usually the same size as the physical RAM size of your machine. That is, if you have 64MB of RAM, you will get a 64MB crash dump. Therefore you must make sure there's enough space in /var/crash to hold the dump. Alternatively, you run savecore(8) manually and have it recover the crash dump to another directory where you have more room. It's possible to limit the size of the crash dump by using options MAXMEM=(foo) to set the amount of memory the kernel will use to something a little more sensible. For example, if you have 128MB of RAM, you can limit the kernel's memory usage to 16MB so that your crash dump size will be 16MB instead of 128MB. Once you have recovered the crash dump, you can get a stack trace with gdb(1) as follows: &prompt.user; gdb -k /sys/compile/KERNELCONFIG/kernel.debug /var/crash/vmcore.0 (gdb) where Note that there may be several screens worth of information; ideally you should use script(1) to capture all of them. Using the unstripped kernel image with all the debug symbols should show the exact line of kernel source code where the panic occured. Usually you have to read the stack trace from the bottom up in order to trace the exact sequence of events that lead to the crash. You can also use gdb(1) to print out the contents of various variables or structures in order to examine the system state at the time of the crash. Now, if you're really insane and have a second computer, you can also configure gdb(1) to do remote debugging such that you can use gdb(1) on one system to debug the kernel on another system, including setting breakpoints, single-stepping through the kernel code, just like you can do with a normal user-mode program. I haven't played with this yet as I don't often have the chance to set up two machines side by side for debugging purposes. [Bill adds: "I forgot to mention one thing: if you have DDB enabled and the kernel drops into the debugger, you can force a panic (and a crash dump) just by typing 'panic' at the ddb prompt. It may stop in the debugger again during the panic phase. If it does, type 'continue' and it will finish the crash dump." -ed] dlsym() stopped working for ELF executables! The ELF toolchain does not, by default, make the symbols defined in an executable visible to the dynamic linker. Consequently dlsym() searches on handles obtained from calls to dlopen(NULL, flags) will fail to find such symbols. If you want to search, using dlsym(), for symbols present in the main executable of a process, you need to link the executable using the option to the ELF linker. Increasing or reducing the kernel address space By default, the kernel address space is 256 MB on FreeBSD 3.x and 1 GB on FreeBSD 4.x. If you run a network-intensive server (e.g. a large FTP or HTTP server), you might find that 256 MB is not enough. So how do you increase the address space? There are two aspects to this. First, you need to tell the kernel to reserve a larger portion of the address space for itself. Second, since the kernel is loaded at the top of the address space, you need to lower the load address so it doesn't bump its head against the ceiling. The first goal is achieved by increasing the value of NKPDE in src/sys/i386/include/pmap.h. Here's what it looks like for a 1 GB address space: #ifndef NKPDE #ifdef SMP #define NKPDE 254 /* addressable number of page tables/pde's */ #else #define NKPDE 255 /* addressable number of page tables/pde's */ #endif /* SMP */ #endif To find the correct value of NKPDE, divide the desired address space size (in megabytes) by four, then subtract one for UP and two for SMP. To achieve the second goal, you need to compute the correct load address: simply subtract the address space size (in bytes) from 0x100100000; the result is 0xc0100000 for a 1 GB address space. Set LOAD_ADDRESS in src/sys/i386/conf/Makefile.i386 to that value; then set the location counter in the beginning of the section listing in src/sys/i386/conf/kernel.script to the same value, as follows: OUTPUT_FORMAT("elf32-i386", "elf32-i386", "elf32-i386") OUTPUT_ARCH(i386) ENTRY(btext) SEARCH_DIR(/usr/lib); SEARCH_DIR(/usr/obj/elf/home/src/tmp/usr/i386-unknown-freebsdelf/lib); SECTIONS { /* Read-only sections, merged into text segment: */ . = 0xc0100000 + SIZEOF_HEADERS; .interp : { *(.interp) } Then reconfig and rebuild your kernel. You will probably have problems with ps(1), top(1) and the like; make world should take care of it (or a manual rebuild of libkvm, ps and top after copying the patched pmap.h to /usr/include/vm/. NOTE: the size of the kernel address space must be a multiple of four megabytes. [&a.dg; adds: I think the kernel address space needs to be a power of two, but I'm not certain about that. The old(er) boot code used to monkey with the high order address bits and I think expected at least 256MB granularity.] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
FreeBSD Core Team If you see a problem with this FAQ, or wish to submit an entry, please mail the &a.faq;. We appreciate your feedback, and cannot make this a better FAQ without your help!
&a.jkh; Occasional fits of FAQ-reshuffling and updating. &a.dwhite; Services above and beyond the call of duty on freebsd-questions &a.joerg; Services above and beyond the call of duty on Usenet &a.wollman; Networking and formatting Jim Lowe Multicast information &a.pds; FreeBSD FAQ typing machine slavey The FreeBSD Team Kvetching, moaning, submitting data And to any others we've forgotten, apologies and heartfelt thanks! diff --git a/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/handbook/introduction/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/handbook/introduction/chapter.sgml index 1eccc0d2af..a9dd789058 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/handbook/introduction/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/handbook/introduction/chapter.sgml @@ -1,721 +1,704 @@ Introduction Restructured, reorganized, and parts rewritten by &a.jim;, 17 January 2000. Synopsis Thank you for your interest in FreeBSD! The following chapter covers various items about the FreeBSD Project, such as its history, goals, development model, and so on. FreeBSD is a 4.4BSD-Lite2 based operating system for the Intel architecture (x86) and DEC Alpha based systems. Ports to other architectures are also underway. For a brief overview of FreeBSD, see the next section. You can also read about the history of FreeBSD, or the current release. If you are interested in contributing something to the Project (code, hardware, unmarked bills), see the contributing to FreeBSD section. Welcome to FreeBSD! Since you are still here reading this, you most likely have some idea as to what FreeBSD is and what it can do for you. If you are new to FreeBSD, read on for more information. What is FreeBSD? In general, FreeBSD is a state-of-the-art operating system based on 4.4BSD-Lite2. It runs on computer systems based on the Intel architecture (x86), and also the DEC Alpha architecture. FreeBSD is used to power some of the biggest sites on the Internet, including: Yahoo! Hotmail Apache Be, Inc. Blue Mountain Arts Pair Networks Whistle Communications Walnut Creek CDROM and many more. What can FreeBSD do? FreeBSD has many noteworthy features. Some of these are: Preemptive multitasking with dynamic priority adjustment to ensure smooth and fair sharing of the computer between applications and users, even under the heaviest of loads. Multi-user facilities which allow many people to use a FreeBSD system simultaneously for a variety of things. This means, for example, that system peripherals such as printers and tape drives are properly shared between all users on the system or the network and that individual resource limits can be placed on users or groups of users, protecting critical system resources from over-use. Strong TCP/IP networking with support for industry standards such as SLIP, PPP, NFS, DHCP, and NIS. This means that your FreeBSD machine can inter-operate easily with other systems as well as act as an enterprise server, providing vital functions such as NFS (remote file access) and e-mail services or putting your organization on the Internet with WWW, FTP, routing and firewall (security) services. Memory protection ensures that applications (or users) cannot interfere with each other. One application crashing will not affect others in any way. FreeBSD is a 32-bit operating system (64-bit on the Alpha) and was designed as such from the ground up. The industry standard X Window System (X11R6) provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for the cost of a common VGA card and monitor and comes with full sources. Binary compatibility with many programs built for Linux, SCO, SVR4, BSDI and NetBSD. Thousands of ready-to-run applications are available from the FreeBSD ports and packages collection. Why search the net when you can find it all right here? Thousands of additional and easy-to-port applications are available on the Internet. FreeBSD is source code compatible with most popular commercial Unix systems and thus most applications require few, if any, changes to compile. Demand paged virtual memory and merged VM/buffer cache design efficiently satisfies applications with large appetites for memory while still maintaining interactive response to other users. SMP support for machines with multiple CPUs (Intel only). A full complement of C, C++, Fortran, and Perl development tools. Many additional languages for advanced research and development are also available in the ports and packages collection. Source code for the entire system means you have the greatest degree of control over your environment. Why be locked into a proprietary solution at the mercy of your vendor when you can have a truly Open System? Extensive on-line documentation. And many more! FreeBSD is based on the 4.4BSD-Lite2 release from Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California at Berkeley, and carries on the distinguished tradition of BSD systems development. In addition to the fine work provided by CSRG, the FreeBSD Project has put in many thousands of hours in fine tuning the system for maximum performance and reliability in real-life load situations. As many of the commercial giants struggle to field PC operating systems with such features, performance and reliability, FreeBSD can offer them now! The applications to which FreeBSD can be put are truly limited only by your own imagination. From software development to factory automation, inventory control to azimuth correction of remote satellite antennae; if it can be done with a commercial UNIX product then it is more than likely that you can do it with FreeBSD, too! FreeBSD also benefits significantly from the literally thousands of high quality applications developed by research centers and universities around the world, often available at little to no cost. Commercial applications are also available and appearing in greater numbers every day. Because the source code for FreeBSD itself is generally available, the system can also be customized to an almost unheard of degree for special applications or projects, and in ways not generally possible with operating systems from most major commercial vendors. Here is just a sampling of some of the applications in which people are currently using FreeBSD: Internet Services: The robust TCP/IP networking built into FreeBSD makes it an ideal platform for a variety of Internet services such as: FTP servers World Wide Web servers (standard or secure [SSL]) Firewalls and NAT (IP masquerading) gateways. Electronic Mail servers USENET News or Bulletin Board Systems And more... With FreeBSD, you can easily start out small with an inexpensive 386 class PC and upgrade all the way up to a quad-processor Xeon with RAID storage as your enterprise grows. Education: Are you a student of computer science or a related engineering field? There is no better way of learning about operating systems, computer architecture and networking than the hands on, under the hood experience that FreeBSD can provide. A number of freely available CAD, mathematical and graphic design packages also make it highly useful to those whose primary interest in a computer is to get other work done! Research: With source code for the entire system available, FreeBSD is an excellent platform for research in operating systems as well as other branches of computer science. FreeBSD's freely available nature also makes it possible for remote groups to collaborate on ideas or shared development without having to worry about special licensing agreements or limitations on what may be discussed in open forums. Networking: Need a new router? A name server (DNS)? A firewall to keep people out of your internal network? FreeBSD can easily turn that unused 386 or 486 PC sitting in the corner into an advanced router with sophisticated packet-filtering capabilities. X Window workstation: FreeBSD is a fine choice for an inexpensive X terminal solution, either using the freely available XFree86 server or one of the excellent commercial servers provided by X Inside. Unlike an X terminal, FreeBSD allows many applications to be run locally, if desired, thus relieving the burden on a central server. FreeBSD can even boot diskless, making individual workstations even cheaper and easier to administer. Software Development: The basic FreeBSD system comes with a full complement of development tools including the renowned GNU C/C++ compiler and debugger. FreeBSD is available in both source and binary form on CDROM and via anonymous FTP. See Obtaining FreeBSD for more details. About the FreeBSD Project The following section provides some background information on the project, including a brief history, project goals, and the development model of the project. A Brief History of FreeBSD Contributed by &a.jkh;. The FreeBSD project had its genesis in the early part of 1993, partially as an outgrowth of the Unofficial 386BSD Patchkit by the patchkit's last 3 coordinators: Nate Williams, Rod Grimes and myself. Our original goal was to produce an intermediate snapshot of 386BSD in order to fix a number of problems with it that the patchkit mechanism just was not capable of solving. Some of you may remember the early working title for the project being 386BSD 0.5 or 386BSD Interim in reference to that fact. 386BSD was Bill Jolitz's operating system, which had been up to that point suffering rather severely from almost a year's worth of neglect. As the patchkit swelled ever more uncomfortably with each passing day, we were in unanimous agreement that something had to be done and decided to try and assist Bill by providing this interim cleanup snapshot. Those plans came to a rude halt when Bill Jolitz suddenly decided to withdraw his sanction from the project without any clear indication of what would be done instead. It did not take us long to decide that the goal remained worthwhile, even without Bill's support, and so we adopted the name FreeBSD, coined by David Greenman. Our initial objectives were set after consulting with the system's current users and, once it became clear that the project was on the road to perhaps even becoming a reality, I contacted Walnut Creek CDROM with an eye towards improving FreeBSD's distribution channels for those many unfortunates without easy access to the Internet. Walnut Creek CDROM not only supported the idea of distributing FreeBSD on CD but also went so far as to provide the project with a machine to work on and a fast Internet connection. Without Walnut Creek CDROM's almost unprecedented degree of faith in what was, at the time, a completely unknown project, it is quite unlikely that FreeBSD would have gotten as far, as fast, as it has today. The first CDROM (and general net-wide) distribution was FreeBSD 1.0, released in December of 1993. This was based on the 4.3BSD-Lite (Net/2) tape from U.C. Berkeley, with many components also provided by 386BSD and the Free Software Foundation. It was a fairly reasonable success for a first offering, and we followed it with the highly successful FreeBSD 1.1 release in May of 1994. Around this time, some rather unexpected storm clouds formed on the horizon as Novell and U.C. Berkeley settled their long-running lawsuit over the legal status of the Berkeley Net/2 tape. A condition of that settlement was U.C. Berkeley's concession that large parts of Net/2 were encumbered code and the property of Novell, who had in turn acquired it from AT&T some time previously. What Berkeley got in return was Novell's blessing that the 4.4BSD-Lite release, when it was finally released, would be declared unencumbered and all existing Net/2 users would be strongly encouraged to switch. This included FreeBSD, and the project was given until the end of July 1994 to stop shipping its own Net/2 based product. Under the terms of that agreement, the project was allowed one last release before the deadline, that release being FreeBSD 1.1.5.1. FreeBSD then set about the arduous task of literally re-inventing itself from a completely new and rather incomplete set of 4.4BSD-Lite bits. The Lite releases were light in part because Berkeley's CSRG had removed large chunks of code required for actually constructing a bootable running system (due to various legal requirements) and the fact that the Intel port of 4.4 was highly incomplete. It took the project until November of 1994 to make this transition, at which point it released FreeBSD 2.0 to the net and on CDROM (in late December). Despite being still more than a little rough around the edges, the release was a significant success and was followed by the more robust and easier to install FreeBSD 2.0.5 release in June of 1995. We released FreeBSD 2.1.5 in August of 1996, and it appeared to be popular enough among the ISP and commercial communities that another release along the 2.1-STABLE branch was merited. This was FreeBSD 2.1.7.1, released in February 1997 and capping the end of mainstream development on 2.1-STABLE. Now in maintenance mode, only security enhancements and other critical bug fixes will be done on this branch (RELENG_2_1_0). FreeBSD 2.2 was branched from the development mainline (-CURRENT) in November 1996 as the RELENG_2_2 branch, and the first full release (2.2.1) was released in April 1997. Further releases along the 2.2 branch were done in the summer and fall of '97, the last of which (2.2.8) appeared in November 1998. The first official 3.0 release appeared in October 1998 and spelled the beginning of the end for the 2.2 branch. The tree branched again on Jan 20, 1999, leading to the 4.0-CURRENT and 3.X-STABLE branches. From 3.X-STABLE, 3.1 was released on February 15, 1999, 3.2 on May 15, 1999, 3.3 on September 16, 1999, 3.4 on December 20, 1999, and 3.5 on June 24, 2000, which was followed a few days later by a minor point release update to 3.5.1, to incorporate some last-minute security fixes to Kerberos. This will be the final release in the 3.X branch. There was another branch on March 13, 2000, which saw the emergence of the 5.0-CURRENT and 4.X-STABLE branches. The only release from this branch so far is &rel.current;-RELEASE. Long-term development projects continue to take place in the 5.0-CURRENT branch, and SNAPshot releases of 5.0 on CDROM (and, of course, on the net) are continually made available as work progresses. FreeBSD Project Goals Contributed by &a.jkh;. The goals of the FreeBSD Project are to provide software that may be used for any purpose and without strings attached. Many of us have a significant investment in the code (and project) and would certainly not mind a little financial compensation now and then, but we are definitely not prepared to insist on it. We believe that our first and foremost mission is to provide code to any and all comers, and for whatever purpose, so that the code gets the widest possible use and provides the widest possible benefit. This is, I believe, one of the most fundamental goals of Free Software and one that we enthusiastically support. That code in our source tree which falls under the GNU General Public License (GPL) or Library General Public License (LGPL) comes with slightly more strings attached, though at least on the side of enforced access rather than the usual opposite. Due to the additional complexities that can evolve in the commercial use of GPL software we do, however, prefer software submitted under the more relaxed BSD copyright when it's a reasonable option to do so. The FreeBSD Development Model Contributed by &a.asami;. The development of FreeBSD is a very open and flexible process, FreeBSD being literally built from the contributions of hundreds of people around the world, as can be seen from our list of contributors. We are constantly on the lookout for new developers and ideas, and those interested in becoming more closely involved with the project need simply contact us at the &a.hackers;. The &a.announce; is also available to those wishing to make other FreeBSD users aware of major areas of work. Useful things to know about the FreeBSD project and its development process, whether working independently or in close cooperation: The CVS repository The central source tree for FreeBSD is maintained by CVS (Concurrent Version System), a freely available source code control tool that comes bundled with FreeBSD. The primary CVS repository resides on a machine in Concord CA, USA from where it is replicated to numerous mirror machines throughout the world. The CVS tree, as well as the -CURRENT and -STABLE trees which are checked out of it, can be easily replicated to your own machine as well. Please refer to the Synchronizing your source tree section for more information on doing this. The committers list The committers are the people who have write access to the CVS tree, and are thus authorized to make modifications to the FreeBSD source (the term committer comes from the &man.cvs.1; commit command, which is used to bring new changes into the CVS repository). The best way of making submissions for review by the committers list is to use the &man.send-pr.1; command, though if something appears to be jammed in the system then you may also reach them by sending mail to cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org. The FreeBSD core team The FreeBSD core team would be equivalent to the board of directors if the FreeBSD Project were a company. The primary task of the core team is to make sure the project, as a whole, is in good shape and is heading in the right directions. Inviting dedicated and responsible developers to join our group of committers is one of the functions of the core team, as is the recruitment of new core team members as others move on. Most current members of the core team started as committers whose addiction to the project got the better of them. Some core team members also have specific areas of responsibility, meaning that they are committed to ensuring that some large portion of the system works as advertised. Most members of the core team are volunteers when it comes to FreeBSD development and do not benefit from the project financially, so commitment should also not be misconstrued as meaning guaranteed support. The board of directors analogy above is not actually very accurate, and it may be more suitable to say that these are the people who gave up their lives in favor of FreeBSD against their better judgment! ;-) Outside contributors Last, but definitely not least, the largest group of developers are the users themselves who provide feedback and bug fixes to us on an almost constant basis. The primary way of keeping in touch with FreeBSD's more non-centralized development is to subscribe to the &a.hackers; (see mailing list info) where such things are discussed. The list of those who have contributed something, which made its way into our source tree, is a long and growing one, so why not join it by contributing something back to FreeBSD today? :-) Providing code is not the only way of contributing to the project; for a more complete list of things that need doing, please refer to the how to contribute section in this handbook. In summary, our development model is organized as a loose set of concentric circles. The centralized model is designed for the convenience of the users of FreeBSD, who are thereby provided with an easy way of tracking one central code base, not to keep potential contributors out! Our desire is to present a stable operating system with a large set of coherent application programs that the users can easily install and use, and this model works very well in accomplishing that. All we ask of those who would join us as FreeBSD developers is some of the same dedication its current people have to its continued success! The Current FreeBSD Release FreeBSD is a freely available, full source 4.4BSD-Lite2 based release for Intel i386, i486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Celeron, Pentium II, Pentium III (or compatible) and DEC Alpha based computer systems. It is based primarily on software from U.C. Berkeley's CSRG group, with some enhancements from NetBSD, OpenBSD, 386BSD, and the Free Software Foundation. Since our release of FreeBSD 2.0 in late 94, the performance, feature set, and stability of FreeBSD has improved dramatically. The largest change is a revamped virtual memory system with a merged VM/file buffer cache that not only increases performance, but also reduces FreeBSD's memory footprint, making a 5MB configuration a more acceptable minimum. Other enhancements include full NIS client and server support, transaction TCP support, dial-on-demand PPP, integrated DHCP support, an improved SCSI subsystem, ISDN support, support for ATM, FDDI, Fast and Gigabit Ethernet (1000Mbit) adapters, improved support for the latest Adaptec controllers, and many hundreds of bug fixes. We have also taken the comments and suggestions of many of our users to heart and have attempted to provide what we hope is a more sane and easily understood installation process. Your feedback on this (constantly evolving) process is especially welcome! In addition to the base distributions, FreeBSD offers a ported software collection with thousands of commonly sought-after programs. By mid-January 2000, there were nearly 3000 ports! The list of ports ranges from http (WWW) servers, to games, languages, editors, and almost everything in between. The entire ports collection requires approximately 50MB of storage, all ports being expressed as deltas to their original sources. This makes it much easier for us to update ports, and greatly reduces the disk space demands made by the older 1.0 ports collection. To compile a port, you simply change to the directory of the program you wish to install, type make install, and let the system do the rest. The full original distribution for each port you build is retrieved dynamically off the CDROM or a local FTP site, so you need only enough disk space to build the ports you want. Almost every port is also provided as a pre-compiled package, which can be installed with a simple command (pkg_add) by those who do not wish to compile their own ports from source. A number of additional documents which you may find very helpful in the process of installing and using FreeBSD may now also be found in the /usr/share/doc directory on any machine running FreeBSD 2.1 or later. You may view the locally installed manuals with any HTML capable browser using the following URLs: The FreeBSD Handbook file:/usr/share/doc/handbook/index.html The FreeBSD FAQ file:/usr/share/doc/faq/index.html You can also view the master (and most frequently updated) copies at http://www.FreeBSD.org/. - - The core of FreeBSD does not contain DES code which would - inhibit its being exported outside the United States. There is an - add-on package to the core distribution, for use only in the United - States, which contains the programs that normally use DES. The - auxiliary packages provided separately can be used by anyone. A - freely (from outside the U.S.) exportable European distribution of - DES for our non-U.S. users also exists and is described in the - FreeBSD FAQ. - - If password security for FreeBSD is all you need, and you have - no requirement for copying encrypted passwords from different hosts - (Suns, DEC machines, etc) into FreeBSD password entries, then - FreeBSD's MD5 based security may be all you require! We feel that - our default security model is more than a match for DES, and avoids - dealing with any messy export issues. If you are outside (or even - inside) the U.S., give it a try! diff --git a/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml b/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml index b9f1c86c3e..807870b165 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/handbook/security/chapter.sgml @@ -1,2762 +1,2683 @@ Security Much of this chapter has been taken from the &man.security.7; man page, originally written by &a.dillon;. Synopsis The following chapter will provide a basic introduction to system security concepts, some general good rules of thumb, and some advanced topics such as S/Key, OpenSSL, Kerberos, and others. Introduction Security is a function that begins and ends with the system administrator. While all BSD UNIX multi-user systems have some inherent security, the job of building and maintaining additional security mechanisms to keep those users honest is probably one of the single largest undertakings of the sysadmin. Machines are only as secure as you make them, and security concerns are ever competing with the human necessity for convenience. UNIX systems, in general, are capable of running a huge number of simultaneous processes and many of these processes operate as servers – meaning that external entities can connect and talk to them. As yesterday's mini-computers and mainframes become today's desktops, and as computers become networked and internetworked, security becomes an ever bigger issue. Security is best implemented through a layered onion approach. In a nutshell, what you want to do is to create as many layers of security as are convenient and then carefully monitor the system for intrusions. You do not want to overbuild your security or you will interfere with the detection side, and detection is one of the single most important aspects of any security mechanism. For example, it makes little sense to set the schg flags (see &man.chflags.1;) on every system binary because while this may temporarily protect the binaries, it prevents an attacker who has broken in from making an easily detectable change that may result in your security mechanisms not detecting the attacker at all. System security also pertains to dealing with various forms of attack, including attacks that attempt to crash or otherwise make a system unusable but do not attempt to break root. Security concerns can be split up into several categories: Denial of service attacks. User account compromises. Root compromise through accessible servers. Root compromise via user accounts. Backdoor creation. A denial of service attack is an action that deprives the machine of needed resources. Typically, D.O.S. attacks are brute-force mechanisms that attempt to crash or otherwise make a machine unusable by overwhelming its servers or network stack. Some D.O.S. attacks try to take advantages of bugs in the networking stack to crash a machine with a single packet. The latter can only be fixed by applying a bug fix to the kernel. Attacks on servers can often be fixed by properly specifying options to limit the load the servers incur on the system under adverse conditions. Brute-force network attacks are harder to deal with. A spoofed-packet attack, for example, is nearly impossible to stop short of cutting your system off from the internet. It may not be able to take your machine down, but it can fill up internet pipe. A user account compromise is even more common then a D.O.S. attack. Many sysadmins still run standard telnetd, rlogind, rshd, and ftpd servers on their machines. These servers, by default, do not operate over encrypted connections. The result is that if you have any moderate-sized user base, one or more of your users logging into your system from a remote location (which is the most common and convenient way to login to a system) will have his or her password sniffed. The attentive system admin will analyze his remote access logs looking for suspicious source addresses even for successful logins. One must always assume that once an attacker has access to a user account, the attacker can break root. However, the reality is that in a well secured and maintained system, access to a user account does not necessarily give the attacker access to root. The distinction is important because without access to root the attacker cannot generally hide his tracks and may, at best, be able to do nothing more then mess with the user's files or crash the machine. User account compromises are very common because users tend not to take the precautions that sysadmins take. System administrators must keep in mind that there are potentially many ways to break root on a machine. The attacker may know the root password, the attacker may find a bug in a root-run server and be able to break root over a network connection to that server, or the attacker may know of a bug in an suid-root program that allows the attacker to break root once he has broken into a user's account. If an attacker has found a a way to break root on a machine, the attacker may not have a need to install a backdoor. Many of the root holes found and closed to date involve a considerable amount of work by the attacker to cleanup after himself, so most attackers install backdoors. Backdoors provide the attacker with a way to easily regain root access to the system, but it also gives the smart system administrator a convenient way to detect the intrusion. Making it impossible for an attacker to install a backdoor may actually be detrimental to your security because it will not close off the hole the attacker found to break in the first place. Security remedies should always be implemented with a multi-layered onion peel approach and can be categorized as follows: Securing root and staff accounts. Securing root – root-run servers and suid/sgid binaries. Securing user accounts. Securing the password file. Securing the kernel core, raw devices, and filesystems. Quick detection of inappropriate changes made to the system. Paranoia. The next section of this chapter will cover the above bullet items in greater depth. Securing FreeBSD The sections that follow will cover the methods of securing your FreeBSD system that were mentioned in the last section of this chapter. Securing the root account and staff accounts First off, do not bother securing staff accounts if you have not secured the root account. Most systems have a password assigned to the root account. The first thing you do is assume that the password is always compromised. This does not mean that you should remove the password. The password is almost always necessary for console access to the machine. What it does mean is that you should not make it possible to use the password outside of the console or possibly even with the &man.su.1; command. For example, make sure that your pty's are specified as being unsecure in the /etc/ttys file so that direct root logins via telnet or rlogin are disallowed. If using other login services such as sshd, make sure that direct root logins are disabled there as well. Consider every access method – services such as FTP often fall through the cracks. Direct root logins should only be allowed via the system console. Of course, as a sysadmin you have to be able to get to root, so we open up a few holes. But we make sure these holes require additional password verification to operate. One way to make root accessible is to add appropriate staff accounts to the wheel group (in /etc/group). The staff members placed in the wheel group are allowed to su to root. You should never give staff members native wheel access by putting them in the wheel group in their password entry. Staff accounts should be placed in a staff group, and then added to the wheel group via the /etc/group file. Only those staff members who actually need to have root access should be placed in the wheel group. It is also possible, when using an authentication method such as kerberos, to use kerberos' .k5login file in the root account to allow a &man.ksu.1; to root without having to place anyone at all in the wheel group. This may be the better solution since the wheel mechanism still allows an intruder to break root if the intruder has gotten hold of your password file and can break into a staff account. While having the wheel mechanism is better then having nothing at all, it is not necessarily the safest option. An indirect way to secure the root account is to secure your staff accounts by using an alternative login access method and *'ing out the crypted password for the staff accounts. This way an intruder may be able to steal the password file but will not be able to break into any staff accounts (or, indirectly, root, even if root has a crypted password associated with it). Staff members get into their staff accounts through a secure login mechanism such as &man.kerberos.1; or &man.ssh.1; using a private/public key pair. When you use something like kerberos, you generally must secure the machines which run the kerberos servers and your desktop workstation. When you use a public/private key pair with ssh, you must generally secure the machine you are logging in from (typically your workstation), but you can also add an additional layer of protection to the key pair by password protecting the keypair when you create it with &man.ssh-keygen.1;. Being able to * out the passwords for staff accounts also guarantees that staff members can only login through secure access methods that you have setup. You can thus force all staff members to use secure, encrypted connections for all of their sessions which closes an important hole used by many intruders: That of sniffing the network from an unrelated, less secure machine. The more indirect security mechanisms also assume that you are logging in from a more restrictive server to a less restrictive server. For example, if your main box is running all sorts of servers, your workstation should not be running any. In order for your workstation to be reasonably secure you should run as few servers as possible, up to and including no servers at all, and you should run a password-protected screen blanker. Of course, given physical access to a workstation an attacker can break any sort of security you put on it. This is definitely a problem that you should consider but you should also consider the fact that the vast majority of break-ins occur remotely, over a network, from people who do not have physical access to your workstation or servers. Using something like kerberos also gives you the ability to disable or change the password for a staff account in one place and have it immediately effect all the machine the staff member may have an account on. If a staff member's account gets compromised, the ability to instantly change his password on all machines should not be underrated. With discrete passwords, changing a password on N machines can be a mess. You can also impose re-passwording restrictions with kerberos: not only can a kerberos ticket be made to timeout after a while, but the kerberos system can require that the user choose a new password after a certain period of time (say, once a month). Securing Root-run Servers and SUID/SGID Binaries The prudent sysadmin only runs the servers he needs to, no more, no less. Be aware that third party servers are often the most bug-prone. For example, running an old version of imapd or popper is like giving a universal root ticket out to the entire world. Never run a server that you have not checked out carefully. Many servers do not need to be run as root. For example, the ntalk, comsat, and finger daemons can be run in special user sandboxes. A sandbox isn't perfect unless you go to a large amount of trouble, but the onion approach to security still stands: If someone is able to break in through a server running in a sandbox, they still have to break out of the sandbox. The more layers the attacker must break through, the lower the likelihood of his success. Root holes have historically been found in virtually every server ever run as root, including basic system servers. If you are running a machine through which people only login via sshd and never login via telnetd or rshd or rlogind, then turn off those services! FreeBSD now defaults to running ntalkd, comsat, and finger in a sandbox. Another program which may be a candidate for running in a sandbox is &man.named.8;. The default rc.conf includes the arguments necessary to run named in a sandbox in a commented-out form. Depending on whether you are installing a new system or upgrading an existing system, the special user accounts used by these sandboxes may not be installed. The prudent sysadmin would research and implement sandboxes for servers whenever possible. There are a number of other servers that typically do not run in sandboxes: sendmail, popper, imapd, ftpd, and others. There are alternatives to some of these, but installing them may require more work then you are willing to perform (the convenience factor strikes again). You may have to run these servers as root and rely on other mechanisms to detect break-ins that might occur through them. The other big potential root hole in a system are the suid-root and sgid binaries installed on the system. Most of these binaries, such as rlogin, reside in /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, or /usr/sbin. While nothing is 100% safe, the system-default suid and sgid binaries can be considered reasonably safe. Still, root holes are occasionally found in these binaries. A root hole was found in Xlib in 1998 that made xterm (which is typically suid) vulnerable. It is better to be safe then sorry and the prudent sysadmin will restrict suid binaries that only staff should run to a special group that only staff can access, and get rid of (chmod 000) any suid binaries that nobody uses. A server with no display generally does not need an xterm binary. Sgid binaries can be almost as dangerous. If an intruder can break an sgid-kmem binary the intruder might be able to read /dev/kmem and thus read the crypted password file, potentially compromising any passworded account. Alternatively an intruder who breaks group kmem can monitor keystrokes sent through pty's, including pty's used by users who login through secure methods. An intruder that breaks the tty group can write to almost any user's tty. If a user is running a terminal program or emulator with a keyboard-simulation feature, the intruder can potentially generate a data stream that causes the user's terminal to echo a command, which is then run as that user. Securing User Accounts User accounts are usually the most difficult to secure. While you can impose Draconian access restrictions on your staff and * out their passwords, you may not be able to do so with any general user accounts you might have. If you do have sufficient control then you may win out and be able to secure the user accounts properly. If not, you simply have to be more vigilant in your monitoring of those accounts. Use of ssh and kerberos for user accounts is more problematic due to the extra administration and technical support required, but still a very good solution compared to a crypted password file. Securing the Password File The only sure fire way is to * out as many passwords as you can and use ssh or kerberos for access to those accounts. Even though the crypted password file (/etc/spwd.db) can only be read by root, it may be possible for an intruder to obtain read access to that file even if the attacker cannot obtain root-write access. Your security scripts should always check for and report changes to the password file (see Checking file integrity below). Securing the Kernel Core, Raw Devices, and Filesystems If an attacker breaks root he can do just about anything, but there are certain conveniences. For example, most modern kernels have a packet sniffing device driver built in. Under FreeBSD it is called the bpf device. An intruder will commonly attempt to run a packet sniffer on a compromised machine. You do not need to give the intruder the capability and most systems should not have the bpf device compiled in. But even if you turn off the bpf device, you still have /dev/mem and /dev/kmem to worry about. For that matter, the intruder can still write to raw disk devices. Also, there is another kernel feature called the module loader, &man.kldload.8;. An enterprising intruder can use a KLD module to install his own bpf device or other sniffing device on a running kernel. To avoid these problems you have to run the kernel at a higher secure level, at least securelevel 1. The securelevel can be set with a sysctl on the kern.securelevel variable. Once you have set the securelevel to 1, write access to raw devices will be denied and special chflags flags, such as schg, will be enforced. You must also ensure that the schg flag is set on critical startup binaries, directories, and script files – everything that gets run up to the point where the securelevel is set. This might be overdoing it, and upgrading the system is much more difficult when you operate at a higher secure level. You may compromise and run the system at a higher secure level but not set the schg flag for every system file and directory under the sun. Another possibility is to simply mount / and /usr read-only. It should be noted that being too draconian in what you attempt to protect may prevent the all-important detection of an intrusion. Checking File Integrity: Binaries, Configuration Files, Etc. When it comes right down to it, you can only protect your core system configuration and control files so much before the convenience factor rears its ugly head. For example, using chflags to set the schg bit on most of the files in / and /usr is probably counterproductive because while it may protect the files, it also closes a detection window. The last layer of your security onion is perhaps the most important – detection. The rest of your security is pretty much useless (or, worse, presents you with a false sense of safety) if you cannot detect potential incursions. Half the job of the onion is to slow down the attacker rather then stop him in order to give the detection side of the equation a chance to catch him in the act. The best way to detect an incursion is to look for modified, missing, or unexpected files. The best way to look for modified files is from another (often centralized) limited-access system. Writing your security scripts on the extra-secure limited-access system makes them mostly invisible to potential attackers, and this is important. In order to take maximum advantage you generally have to give the limited-access box significant access to the other machines in the business, usually either by doing a read-only NFS export of the other machines to the limited-access box, or by setting up ssh keypairs to allow the limit-access box to ssh to the other machines. Except for its network traffic, NFS is the least visible method – allowing you to monitor the filesystems on each client box virtually undetected. If your limited-access server is connected to the client boxes through a switch, the NFS method is often the better choice. If your limited-access server is connected to the client boxes through a hub or through several layers of routing, the NFS method may be too insecure (network-wise) and using ssh may be the better choice even with the audit-trail tracks that ssh lays. Once you give a limit-access box at least read access to the client systems it is supposed to monitor, you must write scripts to do the actual monitoring. Given an NFS mount, you can write scripts out of simple system utilities such as &man.find.1; and &man.md5.1;. It is best to physically md5 the client-box files boxes at least once a day, and to test control files such as those found in /etc and /usr/local/etc even more often. When mismatches are found relative to the base md5 information the limited-access machine knows is valid, it should scream at a sysadmin to go check it out. A good security script will also check for inappropriate suid binaries and for new or deleted files on system partitions such as / and /usr. When using ssh rather then NFS, writing the security script is much more difficult. You essentially have to scp the scripts to the client box in order to run them, making them visible, and for safety you also need to scp the binaries (such as find) that those scripts use. The ssh daemon on the client box may already be compromised. All in all, using ssh may be necessary when running over unsecure links, but it's also a lot harder to deal with. A good security script will also check for changes to user and staff members access configuration files: .rhosts, .shosts, .ssh/authorized_keys and so forth… files that might fall outside the purview of the MD5 check. If you have a huge amount of user disk space it may take too long to run through every file on those partitions. In this case, setting mount flags to disallow suid binaries and devices on those partitions is a good idea. The nodev and nosuid options (see &man.mount.8;) are what you want to look into. I would scan them anyway at least once a week, since the object of this layer is to detect a break-in whether or not the break-in is effective. Process accounting (see &man.accton.8;) is a relatively low-overhead feature of the operating system which I recommend using as a post-break-in evaluation mechanism. It is especially useful in tracking down how an intruder has actually broken into a system, assuming the file is still intact after the break-in occurs. Finally, security scripts should process the log files and the logs themselves should be generated in as secure a manner as possible – remote syslog can be very useful. An intruder tries to cover his tracks, and log files are critical to the sysadmin trying to track down the time and method of the initial break-in. One way to keep a permanent record of the log files is to run the system console to a serial port and collect the information on a continuing basis through a secure machine monitoring the consoles. Paranoia A little paranoia never hurts. As a rule, a sysadmin can add any number of security features as long as they do not effect convenience, and can add security features that do effect convenience with some added thought. Even more importantly, a security administrator should mix it up a bit – if you use recommendations such as those given by this document verbatim, you give away your methodologies to the prospective attacker who also has access to this document. Denial of Service Attacks This section covers Denial of Service attacks. A DOS attack is typically a packet attack. While there is not much you can do about modern spoofed packet attacks that saturate your network, you can generally limit the damage by ensuring that the attacks cannot take down your servers. Limiting server forks. Limiting springboard attacks (ICMP response attacks, ping broadcast, etc.). Kernel Route Cache. A common DOS attack is against a forking server that attempts to cause the server to eat processes, file descriptors, and memory until the machine dies. Inetd (see &man.inetd.8;) has several options to limit this sort of attack. It should be noted that while it is possible to prevent a machine from going down it is not generally possible to prevent a service from being disrupted by the attack. Read the inetd manual page carefully and pay specific attention to the , , and options. Note that spoofed-IP attacks will circumvent the option to inetd, so typically a combination of options must be used. Some standalone servers have self-fork-limitation parameters. Sendmail has its option which tends to work much better than trying to use sendmail's load limiting options due to the load lag. You should specify a MaxDaemonChildren parameter when you start sendmail high enough to handle your expected load but no so high that the computer cannot handle that number of sendmails without falling on its face. It is also prudent to run sendmail in queued mode () and to run the daemon (sendmail -bd) separate from the queue-runs (sendmail -q15m). If you still want real-time delivery you can run the queue at a much lower interval, such as , but be sure to specify a reasonable MaxDaemonChildren option for that sendmail to prevent cascade failures. Syslogd can be attacked directly and it is strongly recommended that you use the option whenever possible, and the option otherwise. You should also be fairly careful with connect-back services such as tcpwrapper's reverse-identd, which can be attacked directly. You generally do not want to use the reverse-ident feature of tcpwrappers for this reason. It is a very good idea to protect internal services from external access by firewalling them off at your border routers. The idea here is to prevent saturation attacks from outside your LAN, not so much to protect internal services from network-based root compromise. Always configure an exclusive firewall, i.e., firewall everything except ports A, B, C, D, and M-Z. This way you can firewall off all of your low ports except for certain specific services such as named (if you are primary for a zone), ntalkd, sendmail, and other internet-accessible services. If you try to configure the firewall the other way – as an inclusive or permissive firewall, there is a good chance that you will forget to close a couple of services or that you will add a new internal service and forget to update the firewall. You can still open up the high-numbered port range on the firewall to allow permissive-like operation without compromising your low ports. Also take note that FreeBSD allows you to control the range of port numbers used for dynamic binding via the various net.inet.ip.portrange sysctl's (sysctl -a | fgrep portrange), which can also ease the complexity of your firewall's configuration. I usually use a normal first/last range of 4000 to 5000, and a hiport range of 49152 to 65535, then block everything under 4000 off in my firewall (except for certain specific internet-accessible ports, of course). Another common DOS attack is called a springboard attack – to attack a server in a manner that causes the server to generate responses which then overload the server, the local network, or some other machine. The most common attack of this nature is the ICMP ping broadcast attack. The attacker spoofs ping packets sent to your LAN's broadcast address with the source IP address set to the actual machine they wish to attack. If your border routers are not configured to stomp on ping's to broadcast addresses, your LAN winds up generating sufficient responses to the spoofed source address to saturate the victim, especially when the attacker uses the same trick on several dozen broadcast addresses over several dozen different networks at once. Broadcast attacks of over a hundred and twenty megabits have been measured. A second common springboard attack is against the ICMP error reporting system. By constructing packets that generate ICMP error responses, an attacker can saturate a server's incoming network and cause the server to saturate its outgoing network with ICMP responses. This type of attack can also crash the server by running it out of mbuf's, especially if the server cannot drain the ICMP responses it generates fast enough. The FreeBSD kernel has a new kernel compile option called ICMP_BANDLIM which limits the effectiveness of these sorts of attacks. The last major class of springboard attacks is related to certain internal inetd services such as the udp echo service. An attacker simply spoofs a UDP packet with the source address being server A's echo port, and the destination address being server B's echo port, where server A and B are both on your LAN. The two servers then bounce this one packet back and forth between each other. The attacker can overload both servers and their LANs simply by injecting a few packets in this manner. Similar problems exist with the internal chargen port. A competent sysadmin will turn off all of these inetd-internal test services. Spoofed packet attacks may also be used to overload the kernel route cache. Refer to the net.inet.ip.rtexpire, rtminexpire, and rtmaxcache sysctl parameters. A spoofed packet attack that uses a random source IP will cause the kernel to generate a temporary cached route in the route table, viewable with netstat -rna | fgrep W3. These routes typically timeout in 1600 seconds or so. If the kernel detects that the cached route table has gotten too big it will dynamically reduce the rtexpire but will never decrease it to less then rtminexpire. There are two problems: The kernel does not react quickly enough when a lightly loaded server is suddenly attacked. The rtminexpire is not low enough for the kernel to survive a sustained attack. If your servers are connected to the internet via a T3 or better it may be prudent to manually override both rtexpire and rtminexpire via &man.sysctl.8;. Never set either parameter to zero (unless you want to crash the machine :-). Setting both parameters to 2 seconds should be sufficient to protect the route table from attack. Access Issues with Kerberos and SSH There are a few issues with both kerberos and ssh that need to be addressed if you intend to use them. Kerberos V is an excellent authentication protocol but there are bugs in the kerberized telnet and rlogin applications that make them unsuitable for dealing with binary streams. Also, by default kerberos does not encrypt a session unless you use the option. ssh encrypts everything by default. ssh works quite well in every respect except that it forwards encryption keys by default. What this means is that if you have a secure workstation holding keys that give you access to the rest of the system, and you ssh to an unsecure machine, your keys becomes exposed. The actual keys themselves are not exposed, but ssh installs a forwarding port for the duration of your login and if a attacker has broken root on the unsecure machine he can utilize that port to use your keys to gain access to any other machine that your keys unlock. We recommend that you use ssh in combination with kerberos whenever possible for staff logins. ssh can be compiled with kerberos support. This reduces your reliance on potentially exposable ssh keys while at the same time protecting passwords via kerberos. ssh keys should only be used for automated tasks from secure machines (something that kerberos is unsuited to). We also recommend that you either turn off key-forwarding in the ssh configuration, or that you make use of the from=IP/DOMAIN option that ssh allows in its authorized_keys file to make the key only usable to entities logging in from specific machines. DES, MD5, and Crypt Parts rewritten and updated by &a.unfurl;, 21 March 2000. Every user on a UNIX system has a password associated with their account. It seems obvious that these passwords need to be known only to the user and the actual operating system. In order to keep these passwords secret, they are encrypted with what is known as a one-way hash, that is, they can only be easily encrypted but not decrypted. In other words, what we told you a moment ago was obvious is not even true: the operating system itself does not really know the password. It only knows the encrypted form of the password. The only way to get the plain-text password is by a brute force search of the space of possible passwords. Unfortunately the only secure way to encrypt passwords when UNIX came into being was based on DES, the Data Encryption Standard. This is not such a problem for users that live in - the US, but since the source code for DES cannot be exported + the US, but since the source code for DES could not be exported outside the US, FreeBSD had to find a way to both comply with US law and retain compatibility with all the other UNIX variants that still use DES. The solution was to divide up the encryption libraries so that US users could install the DES libraries and use DES but international users still had an encryption method that could be exported abroad. This is how FreeBSD came to use MD5 as its default encryption method. MD5 is believed to be more secure than DES, so installing DES is offered primarily for compatibility reasons. Recognizing your crypt mechanism It is pretty easy to identify which encryption method FreeBSD is set up to use. Examining the encrypted passwords in the /etc/master.passwd file is one way. Passwords encrypted with the MD5 hash are longer than those with encrypted with the DES hash and also begin with the characters $1$. DES password strings do not have any particular identifying characteristics, but they are shorter than MD5 passwords, and are coded in a 64-character alphabet which does not include the $ character, so a relatively short string which does not begin with a dollar sign is very likely a DES password. The libraries can identify the passwords this way as well. As a result, the DES libraries are able to identify MD5 passwords, and use MD5 to check passwords that were encrypted that way, and DES for the rest. They are able to do this because the DES libraries also contain MD5. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true, so the MD5 libraries cannot authenticate passwords that were encrypted with DES. Identifying which library is being used by the programs on your system is easy as well. Any program that uses crypt is linked against libcrypt which for each type of library is a symbolic link to the appropriate implementation. For example, on a system using the DES versions: &prompt.user; ls -l /usr/lib/libcrypt* lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 13 Mar 19 06:56 libcrypt.a -> libdescrypt.a lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 18 Mar 19 06:56 libcrypt.so.2.0 -> libdescrypt.so.2.0 lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 15 Mar 19 06:56 libcrypt_p.a -> libdescrypt_p.a On a system using the MD5-based libraries, the same links will be present, but the target will be libscrypt rather than libdescrypt. + + If you have installed the DES-capable crypt library + libdescrypt (e.g. by installing the + "crypto" distribution), then which password format will be used + for new passwords is controlled by the + passwd_format login capability in + /etc/login.conf, which takes values of + either des or md5. See the + login.conf(5) manpage for more information about login + capabilities. S/Key S/Key is a one-time password scheme based on a one-way hash function. FreeBSD uses the MD4 hash for compatibility but other systems have used MD5 and DES-MAC. S/Key has been part of the FreeBSD base system since version 1.1.5 and is also used on a growing number of other operating systems. S/Key is a registered trademark of Bell Communications Research, Inc. There are three different sorts of passwords which we will talk about in the discussion below. The first is your usual UNIX-style or Kerberos password; we will call this a UNIX password. The second sort is the one-time password which is generated by the S/Key key program and accepted by the keyinit program and the login prompt; we will call this a one-time password. The final sort of password is the secret password which you give to the key program (and sometimes the keyinit program) which it uses to generate one-time passwords; we will call it a secret password or just unqualified password. The secret password does not have anything to do with your UNIX password; they can be the same but this is not recommended. S/Key secret passwords are not limited to 8 characters like UNIX passwords, they can be as long as you like. Passwords of six or seven word long phrases are fairly common. For the most part, the S/Key system operates completely independently of the UNIX password system. Besides the password, there are two other pieces of data that are important to S/Key. One is what is known as the seed or key and consists of two letters and five digits. The other is what is called the iteration count and is a number between 1 and 100. S/Key creates the one-time password by concatenating the seed and the secret password, then applying the MD4 hash as many times as specified by the iteration count and turning the result into six short English words. These six English words are your one-time password. The login and su programs keep track of the last one-time password used, and the user is authenticated if the hash of the user-provided password is equal to the previous password. Because a one-way hash is used it is impossible to generate future one-time passwords if a successfully used password is captured; the iteration count is decremented after each successful login to keep the user and the login program in sync. When the iteration count gets down to 1 S/Key must be reinitialized. There are four programs involved in the S/Key system which we will discuss below. The key program accepts an iteration count, a seed, and a secret password, and generates a one-time password. The keyinit program is used to initialized S/Key, and to change passwords, iteration counts, or seeds; it takes either a secret password, or an iteration count, seed, and one-time password. The keyinfo program examines the /etc/skeykeys file and prints out the invoking user's current iteration count and seed. Finally, the login and su programs contain the necessary logic to accept S/Key one-time passwords for authentication. The login program is also capable of disallowing the use of UNIX passwords on connections coming from specified addresses. There are four different sorts of operations we will cover. The first is using the keyinit program over a secure connection to set up S/Key for the first time, or to change your password or seed. The second operation is using the keyinit program over an insecure connection, in conjunction with the key program over a secure connection, to do the same. The third is using the key program to log in over an insecure connection. The fourth is using the key program to generate a number of keys which can be written down or printed out to carry with you when going to some location without secure connections to anywhere. Secure connection initialization To initialize S/Key for the first time, change your password, or change your seed while logged in over a secure connection (e.g., on the console of a machine or via ssh), use the keyinit command without any parameters while logged in as yourself: &prompt.user; keyinit Adding unfurl: Reminder - Only use this method if you are directly connected. If you are using telnet or rlogin exit with no password and use keyinit -s. Enter secret password: Again secret password: ID unfurl s/key is 99 to17757 DEFY CLUB PRO NASH LACE SOFT At the Enter secret password: prompt you should enter a password or phrase. Remember, this is not the password that you will use to login with, this is used to generate your one-time login keys. The ID line gives the parameters of your particular S/Key instance; your login name, the iteration count, and seed. When logging in with S/Key, the system will remember these parameters and present them back to you so you do not have to remember them. The last line gives the particular one-time password which corresponds to those parameters and your secret password; if you were to re-login immediately, this one-time password is the one you would use. Insecure connection initialization To initialize S/Key or change your secret password over an insecure connection, you will need to already have a secure connection to some place where you can run the key program; this might be in the form of a desk accessory on a Macintosh, or a shell prompt on a machine you trust. You will also need to make up an iteration count (100 is probably a good value), and you may make up your own seed or use a randomly-generated one. Over on the insecure connection (to the machine you are initializing), use the keyinit -s command: &prompt.user; keyinit -s Updating unfurl: Old key: to17758 Reminder you need the 6 English words from the key command. Enter sequence count from 1 to 9999: 100 Enter new key [default to17759]: s/key 100 to 17759 s/key access password: To accept the default seed (which the keyinit program confusingly calls a key), press return. Then before entering an access password, move over to your secure connection or S/Key desk accessory, and give it the same parameters: &prompt.user; key 100 to17759 Reminder - Do not use this program while logged in via telnet or rlogin. Enter secret password: <secret password> CURE MIKE BANE HIM RACY GORE Now switch back over to the insecure connection, and copy the one-time password generated by key over to the keyinit program: s/key access password:CURE MIKE BANE HIM RACY GORE ID unfurl s/key is 100 to17759 CURE MIKE BANE HIM RACY GORE The rest of the description from the previous section applies here as well. Generating a single one-time password Once you've initialized S/Key, when you login you will be presented with a prompt like this: &prompt.user; telnet example.com Trying 10.0.0.1... Connected to example.com Escape character is '^]'. FreeBSD/i386 (example.com) (ttypa) login: <username> s/key 97 fw13894 Password: As a side note, the S/Key prompt has a useful feature (not shown here): if you press return at the password prompt, the login program will turn echo on, so you can see what you are typing. This can be extremely useful if you are attempting to type in an S/Key by hand, such as from a printout. Also, if this machine were configured to disallow UNIX passwords over a connection from my machine, the prompt would have also included the annotation (s/key required), indicating that only S/Key one-time passwords will be accepted. At this point you need to generate your one-time password to answer this login prompt. This must be done on a trusted system that you can run the key command on. (There are versions of the key program from DOS, Windows and MacOS as well.) The key program needs both the iteration count and the seed as command line options. You can cut-and-paste these right from the login prompt on the machine that you are logging in to. On the trusted system: &prompt.user; key 97 fw13894 Reminder - Do not use this program while logged in via telnet or rlogin. Enter secret password: WELD LIP ACTS ENDS ME HAAG Now that you have your one-time password you can continue logging in: login: <username> s/key 97 fw13894 Password: <return to enable echo> s/key 97 fw13894 Password [echo on]: WELD LIP ACTS ENDS ME HAAG Last login: Tue Mar 21 11:56:41 from 10.0.0.2 ... This is the easiest mechanism if you have a trusted machine. There is a Java S/Key key applet, The Java OTP Calculator, that you can download and run locally on any Java supporting browser. Generating multiple one-time passwords Sometimes you have have to go places where you do not have access to a trusted machine or secure connection. In this case, it is possible to use the key command to generate a number of one-time passwords before hand to be printed out and taken with you. For example: &prompt.user; key -n 5 30 zz99999 Reminder - Do not use this program while logged in via telnet or rlogin. Enter secret password: <secret password> 26: SODA RUDE LEA LIND BUDD SILT 27: JILT SPY DUTY GLOW COWL ROT 28: THEM OW COLA RUNT BONG SCOT 29: COT MASH BARR BRIM NAN FLAG 30: CAN KNEE CAST NAME FOLK BILK The requests five keys in sequence, the specifies what the last iteration number should be. Note that these are printed out in reverse order of eventual use. If you are really paranoid, you might want to write the results down by hand; otherwise you can cut-and-paste into lpr. Note that each line shows both the iteration count and the one-time password; you may still find it handy to scratch off passwords as you use them. Restricting use of UNIX passwords Restrictions can be placed on the use of UNIX passwords based on the host name, user name, terminal port, or IP address of a login session. These restrictions can be found in the configuration file /etc/skey.access. The &man.skey.access.5; manual page has more info on the complete format of the file and also details some security cautions to be aware of before depending on this file for security. If there is no /etc/skey.access file (this is the FreeBSD default), then all users will be allowed to use UNIX passwords. If the file exists, however, then all users will be required to use S/Key unless explicitly permitted to do otherwise by configuration statements in the skey.access file. In all cases, UNIX passwords are permitted on the console. Here is a sample configuration file which illustrates the three most common sorts of configuration statements: permit internet 192.168.0.0 255.255.0.0 permit user fnord permit port ttyd0 The first line (permit internet) allows users whose IP source address (which is vulnerable to spoofing) matches the specified value and mask, to use UNIX passwords. This should not be considered a security mechanism, but rather, a means to remind authorized users that they are using an insecure network and need to use S/Key for authentication. The second line (permit user) allows the specified username, in this case fnord, to use UNIX passwords at any time. Generally speaking, this should only be used for people who are either unable to use the key program, like those with dumb terminals, or those who are uneducable. The third line (permit port) allows all users logging in on the specified terminal line to use UNIX passwords; this would be used for dial-ups. Kerberos Contributed by &a.markm; (based on contribution by &a.md;). Kerberos is a network add-on system/protocol that allows users to authenticate themselves through the services of a secure server. Services such as remote login, remote copy, secure inter-system file copying and other high-risk tasks are made considerably safer and more controllable. The following instructions can be used as a guide on how to set up Kerberos as distributed for FreeBSD. However, you should refer to the relevant manual pages for a complete description. In FreeBSD, the Kerberos is not that from the original 4.4BSD-Lite, distribution, but eBones, which had been previously ported to FreeBSD - 1.1.5.1, and was sourced from outside the USA/Canada, and is thus - available to system owners outside those countries. - - For those needing to get a legal foreign distribution of this - software, please do not get it from a USA or Canada - site. You will get that site in big trouble! A - legal copy of this is available from ftp.internat.FreeBSD.org, which is in South - Africa and an official FreeBSD mirror site. + 1.1.5.1, and was sourced from outside the USA/Canada, and was thus + available to system owners outside those countries during the era + of restrictive export controls on cryptographic code from the USA. Creating the initial database This is done on the Kerberos server only. First make sure that you do not have any old Kerberos databases around. You should change to the directory /etc/kerberosIV and check that only the following files are present: &prompt.root; cd /etc/kerberosIV &prompt.root; ls README krb.conf krb.realms If any additional files (such as principal.* or master_key) exist, then use the kdb_destroy command to destroy the old Kerberos database, of if Kerberos is not running, simply delete the extra files. You should now edit the krb.conf and krb.realms files to define your Kerberos realm. In this case the realm will be GRONDAR.ZA and the server is grunt.grondar.za. We edit or create the krb.conf file: &prompt.root; cat krb.conf GRONDAR.ZA GRONDAR.ZA grunt.grondar.za admin server CS.BERKELEY.EDU okeeffe.berkeley.edu ATHENA.MIT.EDU kerberos.mit.edu ATHENA.MIT.EDU kerberos-1.mit.edu ATHENA.MIT.EDU kerberos-2.mit.edu ATHENA.MIT.EDU kerberos-3.mit.edu LCS.MIT.EDU kerberos.lcs.mit.edu TELECOM.MIT.EDU bitsy.mit.edu ARC.NASA.GOV trident.arc.nasa.gov In this case, the other realms do not need to be there. They are here as an example of how a machine may be made aware of multiple realms. You may wish to not include them for simplicity. The first line names the realm in which this system works. The other lines contain realm/host entries. The first item on a line is a realm, and the second is a host in that realm that is acting as a key distribution center. The words admin server following a hosts name means that host also provides an administrative database server. For further explanation of these terms, please consult the Kerberos man pages. Now we have to add grunt.grondar.za to the GRONDAR.ZA realm and also add an entry to put all hosts in the .grondar.za domain in the GRONDAR.ZA realm. The krb.realms file would be updated as follows: &prompt.root; cat krb.realms grunt.grondar.za GRONDAR.ZA .grondar.za GRONDAR.ZA .berkeley.edu CS.BERKELEY.EDU .MIT.EDU ATHENA.MIT.EDU .mit.edu ATHENA.MIT.EDU Again, the other realms do not need to be there. They are here as an example of how a machine may be made aware of multiple realms. You may wish to remove them to simplify things. The first line puts the specific system into the named realm. The rest of the lines show how to default systems of a particular subdomain to a named realm. Now we are ready to create the database. This only needs to run on the Kerberos server (or Key Distribution Center). Issue the kdb_init command to do this: &prompt.root; kdb_init Realm name [default ATHENA.MIT.EDU ]: GRONDAR.ZA You will be prompted for the database Master Password. It is important that you NOT FORGET this password. Enter Kerberos master key: Now we have to save the key so that servers on the local machine can pick it up. Use the kstash command to do this. &prompt.root; kstash Enter Kerberos master key: Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! This saves the encrypted master password in /etc/kerberosIV/master_key. Making it all run Two principals need to be added to the database for each system that will be secured with Kerberos. Their names are kpasswd and rcmd These two principals are made for each system, with the instance being the name of the individual system. These daemons, kpasswd and rcmd allow other systems to change Kerberos passwords and run commands like rcp, rlogin and rsh. Now let's add these entries: &prompt.root; kdb_edit Opening database... Enter Kerberos master key: Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! Previous or default values are in [brackets] , enter return to leave the same, or new value. Principal name: passwd Instance: grunt <Not found>, Create [y] ? y Principal: passwd, Instance: grunt, kdc_key_ver: 1 New Password: <---- enter RANDOM here Verifying password New Password: <---- enter RANDOM here Random password [y] ? y Principal's new key version = 1 Expiration date (enter yyyy-mm-dd) [ 2000-01-01 ] ? Max ticket lifetime (*5 minutes) [ 255 ] ? Attributes [ 0 ] ? Edit O.K. Principal name: rcmd Instance: grunt <Not found>, Create [y] ? Principal: rcmd, Instance: grunt, kdc_key_ver: 1 New Password: <---- enter RANDOM here Verifying password New Password: <---- enter RANDOM here Random password [y] ? Principal's new key version = 1 Expiration date (enter yyyy-mm-dd) [ 2000-01-01 ] ? Max ticket lifetime (*5 minutes) [ 255 ] ? Attributes [ 0 ] ? Edit O.K. Principal name: <---- null entry here will cause an exit Creating the server file We now have to extract all the instances which define the services on each machine. For this we use the ext_srvtab command. This will create a file which must be copied or moved by secure means to each Kerberos client's /etc/kerberosIV directory. This file must be present on each server and client, and is crucial to the operation of Kerberos. &prompt.root; ext_srvtab grunt Enter Kerberos master key: Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! Generating 'grunt-new-srvtab'.... Now, this command only generates a temporary file which must be renamed to srvtab so that all the server can pick it up. Use the mv command to move it into place on the original system: &prompt.root; mv grunt-new-srvtab srvtab If the file is for a client system, and the network is not deemed safe, then copy the client-new-srvtab to removable media and transport it by secure physical means. Be sure to rename it to srvtab in the client's /etc/kerberosIV directory, and make sure it is mode 600: &prompt.root; mv grumble-new-srvtab srvtab &prompt.root; chmod 600 srvtab Populating the database We now have to add some user entries into the database. First let's create an entry for the user jane. Use the kdb_edit command to do this: &prompt.root; kdb_edit Opening database... Enter Kerberos master key: Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! Previous or default values are in [brackets] , enter return to leave the same, or new value. Principal name: jane Instance: <Not found>, Create [y] ? y Principal: jane, Instance: , kdc_key_ver: 1 New Password: <---- enter a secure password here Verifying password New Password: <---- re-enter the password here Principal's new key version = 1 Expiration date (enter yyyy-mm-dd) [ 2000-01-01 ] ? Max ticket lifetime (*5 minutes) [ 255 ] ? Attributes [ 0 ] ? Edit O.K. Principal name: <---- null entry here will cause an exit Testing it all out First we have to start the Kerberos daemons. NOTE that if you have correctly edited your /etc/rc.conf then this will happen automatically when you reboot. This is only necessary on the Kerberos server. Kerberos clients will automagically get what they need from the /etc/kerberosIV directory. &prompt.root; kerberos & Kerberos server starting Sleep forever on error Log file is /var/log/kerberos.log Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! Current Kerberos master key version is 1 Local realm: GRONDAR.ZA &prompt.root; kadmind -n & KADM Server KADM0.0A initializing Please do not use 'kill -9' to kill this job, use a regular kill instead Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! Now we can try using the kinit command to get a ticket for the id jane that we created above: &prompt.user; kinit jane MIT Project Athena (grunt.grondar.za) Kerberos Initialization for "jane" Password: Try listing the tokens using klist to see if we really have them: &prompt.user; klist Ticket file: /tmp/tkt245 Principal: jane@GRONDAR.ZA Issued Expires Principal Apr 30 11:23:22 Apr 30 19:23:22 krbtgt.GRONDAR.ZA@GRONDAR.ZA Now try changing the password using passwd to check if the kpasswd daemon can get authorization to the Kerberos database: &prompt.user; passwd realm GRONDAR.ZA Old password for jane: New Password for jane: Verifying password New Password for jane: Password changed. Adding <command>su</command> privileges Kerberos allows us to give each user who needs root privileges their own separate supassword. We could now add an id which is authorized to su to root. This is controlled by having an instance of root associated with a principal. Using kdb_edit we can create the entry jane.root in the Kerberos database: &prompt.root; kdb_edit Opening database... Enter Kerberos master key: Current Kerberos master key version is 1. Master key entered. BEWARE! Previous or default values are in [brackets] , enter return to leave the same, or new value. Principal name: jane Instance: root <Not found>, Create [y] ? y Principal: jane, Instance: root, kdc_key_ver: 1 New Password: <---- enter a SECURE password here Verifying password New Password: <---- re-enter the password here Principal's new key version = 1 Expiration date (enter yyyy-mm-dd) [ 2000-01-01 ] ? Max ticket lifetime (*5 minutes) [ 255 ] ? 12 <--- Keep this short! Attributes [ 0 ] ? Edit O.K. Principal name: <---- null entry here will cause an exit Now try getting tokens for it to make sure it works: &prompt.root; kinit jane.root MIT Project Athena (grunt.grondar.za) Kerberos Initialization for "jane.root" Password: Now we need to add the user to root's .klogin file: &prompt.root; cat /root/.klogin jane.root@GRONDAR.ZA Now try doing the su: &prompt.user; su Password: and take a look at what tokens we have: &prompt.root; klist Ticket file: /tmp/tkt_root_245 Principal: jane.root@GRONDAR.ZA Issued Expires Principal May 2 20:43:12 May 3 04:43:12 krbtgt.GRONDAR.ZA@GRONDAR.ZA Using other commands In an earlier example, we created a principal called jane with an instance root. This was based on a user with the same name as the principal, and this is a Kerberos default; that a <principal>.<instance> of the form <username>.root will allow that <username> to su to root if the necessary entries are in the .klogin file in root's home directory: &prompt.root; cat /root/.klogin jane.root@GRONDAR.ZA Likewise, if a user has in their own home directory lines of the form: &prompt.user; cat ~/.klogin jane@GRONDAR.ZA jack@GRONDAR.ZA This allows anyone in the GRONDAR.ZA realm who has authenticated themselves to jane or jack (via kinit, see above) access to rlogin to jane's account or files on this system (grunt) via rlogin, rsh or rcp. For example, Jane now logs into another system, using Kerberos: &prompt.user; kinit MIT Project Athena (grunt.grondar.za) Password: %prompt.user; rlogin grunt Last login: Mon May 1 21:14:47 from grumble Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. FreeBSD BUILT-19950429 (GR386) #0: Sat Apr 29 17:50:09 SAT 1995 Or Jack logs into Jane's account on the same machine (Jane having set up the .klogin file as above, and the person in charge of Kerberos having set up principal jack with a null instance: &prompt.user; kinit &prompt.user; rlogin grunt -l jane MIT Project Athena (grunt.grondar.za) Password: Last login: Mon May 1 21:16:55 from grumble Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. FreeBSD BUILT-19950429 (GR386) #0: Sat Apr 29 17:50:09 SAT 1995 Firewalls Contributed by &a.gpalmer; and Alex Nash. Firewalls are an area of increasing interest for people who are connected to the Internet, and are even finding applications on private networks to provide enhanced security. This section will hopefully explain what firewalls are, how to use them, and how to use the facilities provided in the FreeBSD kernel to implement them. People often think that having a firewall between your internal network and the Big Bad Internet will solve all your security problems. It may help, but a poorly setup firewall system is more of a security risk than not having one at all. A firewall can add another layer of security to your systems, but it cannot stop a really determined cracker from penetrating your internal network. If you let internal security lapse because you believe your firewall to be impenetrable, you have just made the crackers job that much easier. What is a firewall? There are currently two distinct types of firewalls in common use on the Internet today. The first type is more properly called a packet filtering router, where the kernel on a multi-homed machine chooses whether to forward or block packets based on a set of rules. The second type, known as a proxy server, relies on daemons to provide authentication and to forward packets, possibly on a multi-homed machine which has kernel packet forwarding disabled. Sometimes sites combine the two types of firewalls, so that only a certain machine (known as a bastion host) is allowed to send packets through a packet filtering router onto an internal network. Proxy services are run on the bastion host, which are generally more secure than normal authentication mechanisms. FreeBSD comes with a kernel packet filter (known as IPFW), which is what the rest of this section will concentrate on. Proxy servers can be built on FreeBSD from third party software, but there is such a variety of proxy servers available that it would be impossible to cover them in this document. Packet filtering routers A router is a machine which forwards packets between two or more networks. A packet filtering router has an extra piece of code in its kernel which compares each packet to a list of rules before deciding if it should be forwarded or not. Most modern IP routing software has packet filtering code within it that defaults to forwarding all packets. To enable the filters, you need to define a set of rules for the filtering code so it can decide if the packet should be allowed to pass or not. To decide whether a packet should be passed on, the code looks through its set of rules for a rule which matches the contents of this packets headers. Once a match is found, the rule action is obeyed. The rule action could be to drop the packet, to forward the packet, or even to send an ICMP message back to the originator. Only the first match counts, as the rules are searched in order. Hence, the list of rules can be referred to as a rule chain. The packet matching criteria varies depending on the software used, but typically you can specify rules which depend on the source IP address of the packet, the destination IP address, the source port number, the destination port number (for protocols which support ports), or even the packet type (UDP, TCP, ICMP, etc). Proxy servers Proxy servers are machines which have had the normal system daemons (telnetd, ftpd, etc) replaced with special servers. These servers are called proxy servers as they normally only allow onward connections to be made. This enables you to run (for example) a proxy telnet server on your firewall host, and people can telnet in to your firewall from the outside, go through some authentication mechanism, and then gain access to the internal network (alternatively, proxy servers can be used for signals coming from the internal network and heading out). Proxy servers are normally more secure than normal servers, and often have a wider variety of authentication mechanisms available, including one-shot password systems so that even if someone manages to discover what password you used, they will not be able to use it to gain access to your systems as the password instantly expires. As they do not actually give users access to the host machine, it becomes a lot more difficult for someone to install backdoors around your security system. Proxy servers often have ways of restricting access further, so that only certain hosts can gain access to the servers, and often they can be set up so that you can limit which users can talk to which destination machine. Again, what facilities are available depends largely on what proxy software you choose. What does IPFW allow me to do? IPFW, the software supplied with FreeBSD, is a packet filtering and accounting system which resides in the kernel, and has a user-land control utility, &man.ipfw.8;. Together, they allow you to define and query the rules currently used by the kernel in its routing decisions. There are two related parts to IPFW. The firewall section allows you to perform packet filtering. There is also an IP accounting section which allows you to track usage of your router, based on similar rules to the firewall section. This allows you to see (for example) how much traffic your router is getting from a certain machine, or how much WWW (World Wide Web) traffic it is forwarding. As a result of the way that IPFW is designed, you can use IPFW on non-router machines to perform packet filtering on incoming and outgoing connections. This is a special case of the more general use of IPFW, and the same commands and techniques should be used in this situation. Enabling IPFW on FreeBSD As the main part of the IPFW system lives in the kernel, you will need to add one or more options to your kernel configuration file, depending on what facilities you want, and recompile your kernel. See reconfiguring the kernel for more details on how to recompile your kernel. There are currently three kernel configuration options relevant to IPFW: options IPFIREWALL Compiles into the kernel the code for packet filtering. options IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE Enables code to allow logging of packets through &man.syslogd.8;. Without this option, even if you specify that packets should be logged in the filter rules, nothing will happen. options IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE_LIMIT=10 Limits the number of packets logged through &man.syslogd.8; on a per entry basis. You may wish to use this option in hostile environments in which you want to log firewall activity, but do not want to be open to a denial of service attack via syslog flooding. When a chain entry reaches the packet limit specified, logging is turned off for that particular entry. To resume logging, you will need to reset the associated counter using the &man.ipfw.8; utility: &prompt.root; ipfw zero 4500 Where 4500 is the chain entry you wish to continue logging. Previous versions of FreeBSD contained an IPFIREWALL_ACCT option. This is now obsolete as the firewall code automatically includes accounting facilities. Configuring IPFW The configuration of the IPFW software is done through the &man.ipfw.8; utility. The syntax for this command looks quite complicated, but it is relatively simple once you understand its structure. There are currently four different command categories used by the utility: addition/deletion, listing, flushing, and clearing. Addition/deletion is used to build the rules that control how packets are accepted, rejected, and logged. Listing is used to examine the contents of your rule set (otherwise known as the chain) and packet counters (accounting). Flushing is used to remove all entries from the chain. Clearing is used to zero out one or more accounting entries. Altering the IPFW rules The syntax for this form of the command is: ipfw -N command index action log protocol addresses options There is one valid flag when using this form of the command: -N Resolve addresses and service names in output. The command given can be shortened to the shortest unique form. The valid commands are: add Add an entry to the firewall/accounting rule list delete Delete an entry from the firewall/accounting rule list Previous versions of IPFW used separate firewall and accounting entries. The present version provides packet accounting with each firewall entry. If an index value is supplied, it used to place the entry at a specific point in the chain. Otherwise, the entry is placed at the end of the chain at an index 100 greater than the last chain entry (this does not include the default policy, rule 65535, deny). The log option causes matching rules to be output to the system console if the kernel was compiled with IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE. Valid actions are: reject Drop the packet, and send an ICMP host or port unreachable (as appropriate) packet to the source. allow Pass the packet on as normal. (aliases: pass and accept) deny Drop the packet. The source is not notified via an ICMP message (thus it appears that the packet never arrived at the destination). count Update packet counters but do not allow/deny the packet based on this rule. The search continues with the next chain entry. Each action will be recognized by the shortest unambiguous prefix. The protocols which can be specified are: all Matches any IP packet icmp Matches ICMP packets tcp Matches TCP packets udp Matches UDP packets The address specification is: from address/maskport to address/maskport via interface You can only specify port in conjunction with protocols which support ports (UDP and TCP). The is optional and may specify the IP address or domain name of a local IP interface, or an interface name (e.g. ed0) to match only packets coming through this interface. Interface unit numbers can be specified with an optional wildcard. For example, ppp* would match all kernel PPP interfaces. The syntax used to specify an address/mask is: address or address/mask-bits or address:mask-pattern A valid hostname may be specified in place of the IP address. is a decimal number representing how many bits in the address mask should be set. e.g. specifying 192.216.222.1/24 will create a mask which will allow any address in a class C subnet (in this case, 192.216.222) to be matched. is an IP address which will be logically AND'ed with the address given. The keyword any may be used to specify any IP address. The port numbers to be blocked are specified as: port,port,port… to specify either a single port or a list of ports, or port-port to specify a range of ports. You may also combine a single range with a list, but the range must always be specified first. The options available are: frag Matches if the packet is not the first fragment of the datagram. in Matches if the packet is on the way in. out Matches if the packet is on the way out. ipoptions spec Matches if the IP header contains the comma separated list of options specified in spec. The supported list of IP options are: ssrr (strict source route), lsrr (loose source route), rr (record packet route), and ts (time stamp). The absence of a particular option may be denoted with a leading !. established Matches if the packet is part of an already established TCP connection (i.e. it has the RST or ACK bits set). You can optimize the performance of the firewall by placing established rules early in the chain. setup Matches if the packet is an attempt to establish a TCP connection (the SYN bit set is set but the ACK bit is not). tcpflags flags Matches if the TCP header contains the comma separated list of flags. The supported flags are fin, syn, rst, psh, ack, and urg. The absence of a particular flag may be indicated by a leading !. icmptypes types Matches if the ICMP type is present in the list types. The list may be specified as any combination of ranges and/or individual types separated by commas. Commonly used ICMP types are: 0 echo reply (ping reply), 3 destination unreachable, 5 redirect, 8 echo request (ping request), and 11 time exceeded (used to indicate TTL expiration as with &man.traceroute.8;). Listing the IPFW rules The syntax for this form of the command is: ipfw -a -t -N l There are three valid flags when using this form of the command: -a While listing, show counter values. This option is the only way to see accounting counters. -t Display the last match times for each chain entry. The time listing is incompatible with the input syntax used by the &man.ipfw.8; utility. -N Attempt to resolve given addresses and service names. Flushing the IPFW rules The syntax for flushing the chain is: ipfw flush This causes all entries in the firewall chain to be removed except the fixed default policy enforced by the kernel (index 65535). Use caution when flushing rules, the default deny policy will leave your system cut off from the network until allow entries are added to the chain. Clearing the IPFW packet counters The syntax for clearing one or more packet counters is: ipfw zero index When used without an index argument, all packet counters are cleared. If an index is supplied, the clearing operation only affects a specific chain entry. Example commands for ipfw This command will deny all packets from the host evil.crackers.org to the telnet port of the host nice.people.org: &prompt.root ipfw add deny tcp from evil.crackers.org to nice.people.org 23 The next example denies and logs any TCP traffic from the entire crackers.org network (a class C) to the nice.people.org machine (any port). &prompt.root; ipfw add deny log tcp from evil.crackers.org/24 to nice.people.org If you do not want people sending X sessions to your internal network (a subnet of a class C), the following command will do the necessary filtering: &prompt.root; ipfw add deny tcp from any to my.org/28 6000 setup To see the accounting records: &prompt.root; ipfw -a list or in the short form &prompt.root; ipfw -a l You can also see the last time a chain entry was matched with: &prompt.root; ipfw -at l Building a packet filtering firewall The following suggestions are just that: suggestions. The requirements of each firewall are different and I cannot tell you how to build a firewall to meet your particular requirements. When initially setting up your firewall, unless you have a test bench setup where you can configure your firewall host in a controlled environment, I strongly recommend you use the logging version of the commands and enable logging in the kernel. This will allow you to quickly identify problem areas and cure them without too much disruption. Even after the initial setup phase is complete, I recommend using the logging for `deny' as it allows tracing of possible attacks and also modification of the firewall rules if your requirements alter. If you use the logging versions of the accept command, it can generate large amounts of log data as one log line will be generated for every packet that passes through the firewall, so large ftp/http transfers, etc, will really slow the system down. It also increases the latencies on those packets as it requires more work to be done by the kernel before the packet can be passed on. syslogd with also start using up a lot more processor time as it logs all the extra data to disk, and it could quite easily fill the partition /var/log is located on. You should enable your firewall from /etc/rc.conf.local or /etc/rc.conf. The associated man page explains which knobs to fiddle and lists some preset firewall configurations. If you do not use a preset configuration, ipfw list will output the current ruleset into a file that you can pass to rc.conf. If you do not use /etc/rc.conf.local or /etc/rc.conf to enable your firewall, it is important to make sure your firewall is enabled before any IP interfaces are configured. The next problem is what your firewall should actually do! This is largely dependent on what access to your network you want to allow from the outside, and how much access to the outside world you want to allow from the inside. Some general rules are: Block all incoming access to ports below 1024 for TCP. This is where most of the security sensitive services are, like finger, SMTP (mail) and telnet. Block all incoming UDP traffic. There are very few useful services that travel over UDP, and what useful traffic there is is normally a security threat (e.g. Suns RPC and NFS protocols). This has its disadvantages also, since UDP is a connectionless protocol, denying incoming UDP traffic also blocks the replies to outgoing UDP traffic. This can cause a problem for people (on the inside) using external archie (prospero) servers. If you want to allow access to archie, you'll have to allow packets coming from ports 191 and 1525 to any internal UDP port through the firewall. ntp is another service you may consider allowing through, which comes from port 123. Block traffic to port 6000 from the outside. Port 6000 is the port used for access to X11 servers, and can be a security threat (especially if people are in the habit of doing xhost + on their workstations). X11 can actually use a range of ports starting at 6000, the upper limit being how many X displays you can run on the machine. The upper limit as defined by RFC 1700 (Assigned Numbers) is 6063. Check what ports any internal servers use (e.g. SQL servers, etc). It is probably a good idea to block those as well, as they normally fall outside the 1-1024 range specified above. Another checklist for firewall configuration is available from CERT at ftp://ftp.cert.org/pub/tech_tips/packet_filtering As I said above, these are only guidelines. You will have to decide what filter rules you want to use on your firewall yourself. I cannot accept ANY responsibility if someone breaks into your network, even if you follow the advice given above. OpenSSL As of FreeBSD 4.0, the OpenSSL toolkit is a part of the base system. OpenSSL provides a general-purpose cryptography library, as well as the Secure Sockets Layer v2/v3 (SSLv2/SSLv3) and Transport Layer Security v1 (TLSv1) network security protocols. - However, some of the algorithms (specifically, RSA and IDEA) - included in OpenSSL are protected by patents in the USA and - elsewhere, and are not available for unrestricted use (in - particular, IDEA is not available at all in FreeBSD's version of - OpenSSL). As a result, FreeBSD has available two different - versions of the OpenSSL RSA libraries depending on geographical - location (USA/non-USA). + However, one of the algorithms (specifically IDEA) + included in OpenSSL is protected by patents in the USA and + elsewhere, and is not available for unrestricted use. + IDEA is included in the OpenSSL sources in FreeBSD, but it is not + built by default. If you wish to use it, and you comply with the + license terms, enable the MAKE_IDEA switch in /etc/make.conf and + rebuild your sources using 'make world'. + + Today, the RSA algorithm is free for use in USA and other + countries. In the past it was protected by a patent. Source Code Installations OpenSSL is part of the src-crypto and src-secure cvsup collections. See the Obtaining FreeBSD section for more information about obtaining and updating FreeBSD source code. - - - International (Non-USA) Users - - People who are located outside the USA, and who obtain their - crypto sources from internat.FreeBSD.org (the International - Crypto Repository) or an international mirror site, will build a - version of OpenSSL which includes the native OpenSSL - implementation of - RSA, but does not include IDEA, because the latter is restricted - in certain locations elsewhere in the world. In the future a more - flexible geographical identification system may allow building of - IDEA in countries for which it is not restricted. - - Please be aware of any local restrictions on the import, use - and redistribution of cryptography which may exist in your - country. - - - - USA Users - - As noted above, RSA is patented in the USA, with terms - preventing general use without an appropriate license. Therefore - the standard OpenSSL RSA code may not be used in the USA, and has been - removed from the version of OpenSSL carried on USA mirror sites. - The RSA patent is due to expire on September 20, 2000, at which - time it is intended to add the full RSA code back to - the USA version of OpenSSL. - - However (and fortunately), the RSA patent holder (RSA Security, has - provided a RSA reference implementation toolkit - (RSAREF) which is available for certain classes of - use, including non-commercial use - (see the RSAREF license for their definition of - non-commercial). - - If you meet the conditions of the RSAREF license and wish to - use it in conjunction with OpenSSL to provide RSA support, you can - install the rsaref port, which is located in - /usr/ports/security/rsaref, or the - rsaref-2.0 package. The OpenSSL library will - then automatically detect and use the RSAREF libraries. Please obtain - legal advice if you are unsure of your compliance with the license - terms. - - The RSAREF implementation is inferior to the - native OpenSSL implementation (it is much slower, - and cannot be used with keys larger than 1024 bits). If you are not - located in the USA then you are doing yourself a disadvantage by - using RSAREF. - - Users who have purchased an appropriate RSA source code - license from RSA Security may use the International version of - OpenSSL described above to obtain native RSA support. - - IDEA code is also removed from the USA version of OpenSSL for - patent reasons. - - - - Binary Installations - - If your FreeBSD installation was a binary installation (e.g., - installed from the Walnut Creek CDROM, or from a snapshot - downloaded from - ftp.FreeBSD.org) and you selected to - install the crypto collection, then the - sysinstall utility will automatically select - the correct version to install during the installation - process. If the international version was selected but could - not be installed during sysinstall (e.g. you have not - configured network access, and the version must be downloaded - from a FTP site) then you can add the international RSA library - after installation as a package. - - The librsaintl package contains the RSA - code for International (non-USA) users. This is not legal for - use in the USA, but international users should use this version - because the RSA implementation is faster and more flexible. It - is available from ftp.internat.FreeBSD.org and does not - require RSAREF. - IPsec Contributed by &a.shin;, 5 March 2000. IPsec mechanism provides secure communication either for IP layer and socket layer communication. This section should explain how to use them. About IPsec implementation, please refer section 23.5.4. The current IPsec implementation supports both transport mode and tunnel mode. However, tunnel mode comes with some restrictions. http://www.kame.net/newsletter/ has more comprehensive examples. Transport mode example with IPv4 Let's setup security association to deploy a secure channel between HOST A (10.2.3.4) and HOST B (10.6.7.8). Here we show a little complicated example. From HOST A to HOST B, only old AH is used. From HOST B to HOST A, new AH and new ESP are combined. Now we should choose algorithm to be used corresponding to "AH"/"new AH"/"ESP"/"new ESP". Please refer to the &man.setkey.8; man page to know algorithm names. Our choice is MD5 for AH, new-HMAC-SHA1 for new AH, and new-DES-expIV with 8 byte IV for new ESP. Key length highly depends on each algorithm. For example, key length must be equal to 16 bytes for MD5, 20 for new-HMAC-SHA1, and 8 for new-DES-expIV. Now we choose "MYSECRETMYSECRET", "KAMEKAMEKAMEKAMEKAME", "PASSWORD", respectively. OK, let's assign SPI (Security Parameter Index) for each protocol. Please note that we need 3 SPIs for this secure channel since three security headers are produced (one for from HOST A to HOST B, two for from HOST B to HOST A). Please also note that SPI MUST be greater than or equal to 256. We choose, 1000, 2000, and 3000, respectively. (1) HOST A ------> HOST B (1)PROTO=AH ALG=MD5(RFC1826) KEY=MYSECRETMYSECRET SPI=1000 (2.1) HOST A <------ HOST B <------ (2.2) (2.1) PROTO=AH ALG=new-HMAC-SHA1(new AH) KEY=KAMEKAMEKAMEKAMEKAME SPI=2000 (2.2) PROTO=ESP ALG=new-DES-expIV(new ESP) IV length = 8 KEY=PASSWORD SPI=3000 Now, let's setup security association. Execute &man.setkey.8; on both HOST A and B: &prompt.root; setkey -c add 10.2.3.4 10.6.7.8 ah-old 1000 -m transport -A keyed-md5 "MYSECRETMYSECRET" ; add 10.6.7.8 10.2.3.4 ah 2000 -m transport -A hmac-sha1 "KAMEKAMEKAMEKAMEKAME" ; add 10.6.7.8 10.2.3.4 esp 3000 -m transport -E des-cbc "PASSWORD" ; ^D Actually, IPsec communication doesn't process until security policy entries will be defined. In this case, you must setup each host. At A: &prompt.root; setkey -c spdadd 10.2.3.4 10.6.7.8 any -P out ipsec ah/transport/10.2.3.4-10.6.7.8/require ; ^D At B: &prompt.root; setkey -c spdadd 10.6.7.8 10.2.3.4 any -P out ipsec esp/transport/10.6.7.8-10.2.3.4/require ; spdadd 10.6.7.8 10.2.3.4 any -P out ipsec ah/transport/10.6.7.8-10.2.3.4/require ; ^D HOST A --------------------------------------> HOST E 10.2.3.4 10.6.7.8 | | ========== old AH keyed-md5 ==========> <========= new AH hmac-sha1 =========== <========= new ESP des-cbc ============ Transport mode example with IPv6 Another example using IPv6. ESP transport mode is recommended for TCP port number 110 between Host-A and Host-B. ============ ESP ============ | | Host-A Host-B fec0::10 -------------------- fec0::11 Encryption algorithm is blowfish-cbc whose key is "kamekame", and authentication algorithm is hmac-sha1 whose key is "this is the test key". Configuration at Host-A: &prompt.root; setkey -c <<EOF spdadd fec0::10[any] fec0::11[110] tcp -P out ipsec esp/transport/fec0::10-fec0::11/use ; spdadd fec0::11[110] fec0::10[any] tcp -P in ipsec esp/transport/fec0::11-fec0::10/use ; add fec0::10 fec0::11 esp 0x10001 -m transport -E blowfish-cbc "kamekame" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; add fec0::11 fec0::10 esp 0x10002 -m transport -E blowfish-cbc "kamekame" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; EOF and at Host-B: &prompt.root; setkey -c <<EOF spdadd fec0::11[110] fec0::10[any] tcp -P out ipsec esp/transport/fec0::11-fec0::10/use ; spdadd fec0::10[any] fec0::11[110] tcp -P in ipsec esp/transport/fec0::10-fec0::11/use ; add fec0::10 fec0::11 esp 0x10001 -m transport -E blowfish-cbc "kamekame" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; add fec0::11 fec0::10 esp 0x10002 -m transport -E blowfish-cbc "kamekame" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; EOF Note the direction of SP. Tunnel mode example with IPv4 Tunnel mode between two security gateways Security protocol is old AH tunnel mode, i.e. specified by RFC1826, with keyed-md5 whose key is "this is the test" as authentication algorithm. ======= AH ======= | | Network-A Gateway-A Gateway-B Network-B 10.0.1.0/24 ---- 172.16.0.1 ----- 172.16.0.2 ---- 10.0.2.0/24 Configuration at Gateway-A: &prompt.root; setkey -c <<EOF spdadd 10.0.1.0/24 10.0.2.0/24 any -P out ipsec ah/tunnel/172.16.0.1-172.16.0.2/require ; spdadd 10.0.2.0/24 10.0.1.0/24 any -P in ipsec ah/tunnel/172.16.0.2-172.16.0.1/require ; add 172.16.0.1 172.16.0.2 ah-old 0x10003 -m any -A keyed-md5 "this is the test" ; add 172.16.0.2 172.16.0.1 ah-old 0x10004 -m any -A keyed-md5 "this is the test" ; EOF If port number field is omitted such above then "[any]" is employed. `-m' specifies the mode of SA to be used. "-m any" means wild-card of mode of security protocol. You can use this SA for both tunnel and transport mode. and at Gateway-B: &prompt.root; setkey -c <<EOF spdadd 10.0.2.0/24 10.0.1.0/24 any -P out ipsec ah/tunnel/172.16.0.2-172.16.0.1/require ; spdadd 10.0.1.0/24 10.0.2.0/24 any -P in ipsec ah/tunnel/172.16.0.1-172.16.0.2/require ; add 172.16.0.1 172.16.0.2 ah-old 0x10003 -m any -A keyed-md5 "this is the test" ; add 172.16.0.2 172.16.0.1 ah-old 0x10004 -m any -A keyed-md5 "this is the test" ; EOF Making SA bundle between two security gateways AH transport mode and ESP tunnel mode is required between Gateway-A and Gateway-B. In this case, ESP tunnel mode is applied first, and AH transport mode is next. ========== AH ========= | ======= ESP ===== | | | | | Network-A Gateway-A Gateway-B Network-B fec0:0:0:1::/64 --- fec0:0:0:1::1 ---- fec0:0:0:2::1 --- fec0:0:0:2::/64 Tunnel mode example with IPv6 Encryption algorithm is 3des-cbc, and authentication algorithm for ESP is hmac-sha1. Authentication algorithm for AH is hmac-md5. Configuration at Gateway-A: &prompt.root; setkey -c <<EOF spdadd fec0:0:0:1::/64 fec0:0:0:2::/64 any -P out ipsec esp/tunnel/fec0:0:0:1::1-fec0:0:0:2::1/require ah/transport/fec0:0:0:1::1-fec0:0:0:2::1/require ; spdadd fec0:0:0:2::/64 fec0:0:0:1::/64 any -P in ipsec esp/tunnel/fec0:0:0:2::1-fec0:0:0:1::1/require ah/transport/fec0:0:0:2::1-fec0:0:0:1::1/require ; add fec0:0:0:1::1 fec0:0:0:2::1 esp 0x10001 -m tunnel -E 3des-cbc "kamekame12341234kame1234" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; add fec0:0:0:1::1 fec0:0:0:2::1 ah 0x10001 -m transport -A hmac-md5 "this is the test" ; add fec0:0:0:2::1 fec0:0:0:1::1 esp 0x10001 -m tunnel -E 3des-cbc "kamekame12341234kame1234" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; add fec0:0:0:2::1 fec0:0:0:1::1 ah 0x10001 -m transport -A hmac-md5 "this is the test" ; EOF Making SAs with the different end ESP tunnel mode is required between Host-A and Gateway-A. Encryption algorithm is cast128-cbc, and authentication algorithm for ESP is hmac-sha1. ESP transport mode is recommended between Host-A and Host-B. Encryption algorithm is rc5-cbc, and authentication algorithm for ESP is hmac-md5. ================== ESP ================= | ======= ESP ======= | | | | | Host-A Gateway-A Host-B fec0:0:0:1::1 ---- fec0:0:0:2::1 ---- fec0:0:0:2::2 Configuration at Host-A: &prompt.root; setkey -c <<EOF spdadd fec0:0:0:1::1[any] fec0:0:0:2::2[80] tcp -P out ipsec esp/transport/fec0:0:0:1::1-fec0:0:0:2::2/use esp/tunnel/fec0:0:0:1::1-fec0:0:0:2::1/require ; spdadd fec0:0:0:2::1[80] fec0:0:0:1::1[any] tcp -P in ipsec esp/transport/fec0:0:0:2::2-fec0:0:0:l::1/use esp/tunnel/fec0:0:0:2::1-fec0:0:0:1::1/require ; add fec0:0:0:1::1 fec0:0:0:2::2 esp 0x10001 -m transport -E cast128-cbc "12341234" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; add fec0:0:0:1::1 fec0:0:0:2::1 esp 0x10002 -E rc5-cbc "kamekame" -A hmac-md5 "this is the test" ; add fec0:0:0:2::2 fec0:0:0:1::1 esp 0x10003 -m transport -E cast128-cbc "12341234" -A hmac-sha1 "this is the test key" ; add fec0:0:0:2::1 fec0:0:0:1::1 esp 0x10004 -E rc5-cbc "kamekame" -A hmac-md5 "this is the test" ; EOF diff --git a/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/porters-handbook/book.sgml b/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/porters-handbook/book.sgml index 632cfc6c50..b8e98b45bb 100644 --- a/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/porters-handbook/book.sgml +++ b/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/porters-handbook/book.sgml @@ -1,4165 +1,4165 @@ %man; %bookinfo; %authors; %mailing-lists; ]> FreeBSD Porter's Handbook The FreeBSD Documentation Project April 2000 2000 The FreeBSD Documentation Project &bookinfo.legalnotice; Making a port yourself So, now you are interested in making your own port or upgrading an existing one? Great! What follows are some guidelines for creating a new port for FreeBSD. If you want to upgrade an existing port, you should read this and then read . When this document is not sufficiently detailed, you should refer to /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk, which all port Makefiles include. Even if you do not hack Makefiles daily, it is well commented, and you will still gain much knowledge from it. Additionally, you may send specific questions to the &a.ports;. Only a fraction of the variables (VAR) that can be overridden are mentioned in this document. Most (if not all) are documented at the start of bsd.port.mk. This file uses a non-standard tab setting. Emacs and Vim should recognize the setting on loading the file. Both vi and ex can be set to use the correct value by typing :set tabstop=4 once the file has been loaded. Quick Porting This section tells you how to do a quick port. In many cases, it is not enough, but we will see. First, get the original tarball and put it into DISTDIR, which defaults to /usr/ports/distfiles. The following assumes that the software compiled out-of-the-box, i.e., there was absolutely no change required for the port to work on your FreeBSD box. If you needed to change something, you will have to refer to the next section too. Writing the <filename>Makefile</filename> The minimal Makefile would look something like this: # New ports collection makefile for: oneko # Date created: 5 December 1994 # Whom: asami # # $FreeBSD$ # PORTNAME= oneko PORTVERSION= 1.1b CATEGORIES= games MASTER_SITES= ftp://ftp.cs.columbia.edu/archives/X11R5/contrib/ MAINTAINER= asami@FreeBSD.org MAN1= oneko.1 MANCOMPRESSED= yes USE_IMAKE= yes .include <bsd.port.mk> See if you can figure it out. Do not worry about the contents of the $FreeBSD$ line, it will be filled in automatically by CVS when the port is imported to our main ports tree. You can find a more detailed example in the sample Makefile section. Writing the description files There are three description files that are required for any port, whether they actually package or not. They are COMMENT, DESCR, and PLIST, and reside in the pkg subdirectory. <filename>COMMENT</filename> This is the one-line description of the port. Please do not include the package name (or version number of the software) in the comment. The comment should begin with a capital, and end without a period. Here is an example: A cat chasing a mouse all over the screen <filename>DESCR</filename> This is a longer description of the port. One to a few paragraphs concisely explaining what the port does is sufficient. This is not a manual or an in-depth description on how to use or compile the port! Please be careful if you are copying from the README or manpage; too often they are not a concise description of the port or are in an awkward format (e.g., manpages have justified spacing). If the ported software has an official WWW homepage, you should list it here. Prefix one of the websites with WWW: so that automated tools will work correctly. It is recommended that you sign your name at the end of this file, as in: This is a port of oneko, in which a cat chases a poor mouse all over the screen. : (etc.) WWW: http://www.oneko.org/ - Satoshi asami@cs.berkeley.edu <filename>PLIST</filename> This file lists all the files installed by the port. It is also called the “packing list” because the package is generated by packing the files listed here. The pathnames are relative to the installation prefix (usually /usr/local or /usr/X11R6). If you are using the MANn variables (as you should be), do not list any manpages here. Here is a small example: bin/oneko lib/X11/app-defaults/Oneko lib/X11/oneko/cat1.xpm lib/X11/oneko/cat2.xpm lib/X11/oneko/mouse.xpm @dirrm lib/X11/oneko Refer to the &man.pkg.create.1; man page for details on the packing list. You should list all the files, but not the name directories, in the list. Also, if the port creates directories for itself during installation, make sure to add @dirrm lines as necessary to remove them when the port is deleted. It is recommended that you keep all the filenames in this file sorted alphabetically. It will make verifying the changes when you upgrade the port much easier. Creating a packing list manually can be a very tedious task. If the port installs a large numbers of files, creating the packing list automatically might save time. Creating the checksum file Just type make makesum. The ports make rules will automatically generate the file files/md5. Testing the port You should make sure that the port rules do exactly what you want them to do, including packaging up the port. These are the important points you need to verify. PLIST does not contain anything not installed by your port PLIST contains everything that is installed by your port Your port can be installed multiple times using the reinstall target Your port cleans up after itself upon deinstall Recommended test ordering make install make package make deinstall pkg_add package-name make deinstall make reinstall make package Make sure that there are not any warnings issued in any of the package and deinstall stages. After step 3, check to see if all the new directories are correctly deleted. Also, try using the software after step 4, to ensure that it works correctly when installed from a package. Checking your port with <command>portlint</command> Please use portlint to see if your port conforms to our guidelines. The portlint program is part of the ports collection. In particular, you may want to check if the Makefile is in the right shape and the package is named appropriately. Submitting the port First, make sure you have read the DOs and DON'Ts section. Now that you are happy with your port, the only thing remaining is to put it in the main FreeBSD ports tree and make everybody else happy about it too. We do not need your work directory or the pkgname.tgz package, so delete them now. Next, simply include the output of shar `find port_dir` in a bug report and send it with the &man.send-pr.1; program (see Bug Reports and General Commentary for more information about &man.send-pr.1;. If the uncompressed port is larger than 20KB, you should compress it into a tarfile and use &man.uuencode.1; before including it in the bug report (uuencoded tarfiles are acceptable even if the bug report is smaller than 20KB but are not preferred). Be sure to classify the bug report as category ports and class change-request (Do not mark the report confidential!). Also add a short description of the program you ported to the Description field of the PR and the shar or uuencoded tarfile to the Fix field. The latter one helps the committers a lot, who use scripts for the ports-work. One more time, do not include the original source distfile, the work directory, or the package you built with make package. In the past, we asked you to upload new port submissions in our ftp site (ftp.FreeBSD.org). This is no longer recommended as read access is turned off on the incoming/ directory of that site due to the large amount of pirated software showing up there. We will look at your port, get back to you if necessary, and put it in the tree. Your name will also appear in the list of “Additional FreeBSD contributors” in the FreeBSD Handbook and other files. Isn't that great?!? :-) You can make our work a lot easier, if you use a good description in the synopsis of the problem report. We prefer something like “New port: <short description of the port>” for new ports and “Update port: <category>/<port> <short description of the update>” for port updates. If you stick to this scheme, the chance that one takes a look at your PR soon is much bigger. Slow Porting Ok, so it was not that simple, and the port required some modifications to get it to work. In this section, we will explain, step by step, how to modify it to get it to work with the ports paradigm. How things work First, this is the sequence of events which occurs when the user first types make in your port's directory. You may find that having bsd.port.mk in another window while you read this really helps to understand it. But do not worry if you do not really understand what bsd.port.mk is doing, not many people do... :-> The fetch target is run. The fetch target is responsible for making sure that the tarball exists locally in DISTDIR. If fetch cannot find the required files in DISTDIR it will look up the URL MASTER_SITES, which is set in the Makefile, as well as our main ftp site at ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/distfiles/, where we put sanctioned distfiles as backup. It will then attempt to fetch the named distribution file with FETCH, assuming that the requesting site has direct access to the Internet. If that succeeds, it will save the file in DISTDIR for future use and proceed. The extract target is run. It looks for your port's distribution file (typically a gzip'd tarball) in DISTDIR and unpacks it into a temporary subdirectory specified by WRKDIR (defaults to work). The patch target is run. First, any patches defined in PATCHFILES are applied. Second, if any patches are found in PATCHDIR (defaults to the patches subdirectory), they are applied at this time in alphabetical order. The configure target is run. This can do any one of many different things. If it exists, scripts/configure is run. If HAS_CONFIGURE or GNU_CONFIGURE is set, WRKSRC/configure is run. If USE_IMAKE is set, XMKMF (default: xmkmf -a) is run. The build target is run. This is responsible for descending into the port's private working directory (WRKSRC) and building it. If USE_GMAKE is set, GNU make will be used, otherwise the system make will be used. The above are the default actions. In addition, you can define targets pre-something or post-something, or put scripts with those names, in the scripts subdirectory, and they will be run before or after the default actions are done. For example, if you have a post-extract target defined in your Makefile, and a file pre-build in the scripts subdirectory, the post-extract target will be called after the regular extraction actions, and the pre-build script will be executed before the default build rules are done. It is recommended that you use Makefile targets if the actions are simple enough, because it will be easier for someone to figure out what kind of non-default action the port requires. The default actions are done by the bsd.port.mk targets do-something. For example, the commands to extract a port are in the target do-extract. If you are not happy with the default target, you can fix it by redefining the do-something target in your Makefile. The “main” targets (e.g., extract, configure, etc.) do nothing more than make sure all the stages up to that one are completed and call the real targets or scripts, and they are not intended to be changed. If you want to fix the extraction, fix do-extract, but never ever touch extract! Now that you understand what goes on when the user types make, let us go through the recommended steps to create the perfect port. Getting the original sources Get the original sources (normally) as a compressed tarball (foo.tar.gz or foo.tar.Z) and copy it into DISTDIR. Always use mainstream sources when and where you can. If you cannot find a ftp/http site that is well-connected to the net, or can only find sites that have irritatingly non-standard formats, you might want to put a copy on a reliable ftp or http server that you control (e.g., your home page). Make sure you set MASTER_SITES to reflect your choice. If you cannot find somewhere convenient and reliable to put the distfile we can “house” it ourselves on ftp.FreeBSD.org. The distfile must be placed into ~/public_distfiles/ of someone's freefall account. Ask the person who commits your port to do this. This person will also set MASTER_SITES to MASTER_SITE_LOCAL and MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR to their freefall username. If your port's distfile changes all the time for no good reason, consider putting the distfile in your home page and listing it as the first MASTER_SITES. This will prevent users from getting checksum mismatch errors, and also reduce the workload of maintainers of our ftp site. Also, if there is only one master site for the port, it is recommended that you house a backup at your site and list it as the second MASTER_SITES. If your port requires some additional `patches' that are available on the Internet, fetch them too and put them in DISTDIR. Do not worry if they come from a site other than where you got the main source tarball, we have a way to handle these situations (see the description of PATCHFILES below). Modifying the port Unpack a copy of the tarball in a private directory and make whatever changes are necessary to get the port to compile properly under the current version of FreeBSD. Keep careful track of everything you do, as you will be automating the process shortly. Everything, including the deletion, addition, or modification of files should be doable using an automated script or patch file when your port is finished. If your port requires significant user interaction/customization to compile or install, you should take a look at one of Larry Wall's classic Configure scripts and perhaps do something similar yourself. The goal of the new ports collection is to make each port as “plug-and-play” as possible for the end-user while using a minimum of disk space. Unless explicitly stated, patch files, scripts, and other files you have created and contributed to the FreeBSD ports collection are assumed to be covered by the standard BSD copyright conditions. Patching In the preparation of the port, files that have been added or changed can be picked up with a recursive diff for later feeding to patch. Each set of patches you wish to apply should be collected into a file named patch-xx where xx denotes the sequence in which the patches will be applied — these are done in alphabetical order, thus aa first, ab second and so on. These files should be stored in PATCHDIR, from where they will be automatically applied. All patches should be relative to WRKSRC (generally the directory your port's tarball unpacks itself into, that being where the build is done). To make fixes and upgrades easier, you should avoid having more than one patch fix the same file (e.g., patch-aa and patch-ab both changing WRKSRC/foobar.c). Configuring Include any additional customization commands in your configure script and save it in the scripts subdirectory. As mentioned above, you can also do this with Makefile targets and/or scripts with the name pre-configure or post-configure. Handling user input If your port requires user input to build, configure, or install, then set IS_INTERACTIVE in your Makefile. This will allow “overnight builds” to skip your port if the user sets the variable BATCH in his environment (and if the user sets the variable INTERACTIVE, then only those ports requiring interaction are built). It is also recommended that if there are reasonable default answers to the questions, you check the PACKAGE_BUILDING variable and turn off the interactive script when it is set. This will allow us to build the packages for CD-ROMs and ftp. Configuring the Makefile Configuring the Makefile is pretty simple, and again we suggest that you look at existing examples before starting. Also, there is a sample Makefile in this handbook, so take a look and please follow the ordering of variables and sections in that template to make your port easier for others to read. Now, consider the following problems in sequence as you design your new Makefile: The original source Does it live in DISTDIR as a standard gzip'd tarball named something like foozolix-1.2.tar.gz? If so, you can go on to the next step. If not, you should look at overriding any of the DISTNAME, EXTRACT_CMD, EXTRACT_BEFORE_ARGS, EXTRACT_AFTER_ARGS, EXTRACT_SUFX, or DISTFILES variables, depending on how alien a format your port's distribution file is. (The most common case is EXTRACT_SUFX=.tar.Z, when the tarball is condensed by regular compress, not gzip.) In the worst case, you can simply create your own do-extract target to override the default, though this should be rarely, if ever, necessary. <makevar>PORTNAME</makevar> and <makevar>PORTVERSION</makevar> You should set PORTNAME to the base name of your port, and PORTVERSION to the version number of the port. <makevar>PKGNAMEPREFIX</makevar> and <makevar>PKGNAMESUFFIX</makevar> Two optional variables, PKGNAMEPREFIX and PKGNAMESUFFIX, are combined with PORTNAME and PORTVERSION to form PKGNAME as ${PKGNAMEPREFIX}${PORTNAME}${PKGNAMESUFFIX}-${PORTVERSION}. Make sure this conforms to our guidelines for a good package name. In particular, you are not allowed to use a hyphen (-) in PORTVERSION. Also, if the package name has the language- or the compiled.specifics part, use PKGNAMEPREFIX and PKGNAMESUFFIX, respectively. Do not make them part of PORTNAME. <makevar>DISTNAME</makevar> DISTNAME is the name of the port as called by the authors of the software. DISTNAME defaults to ${PORTNAME}-${PORTVERSION}, so override it if necessary. DISTNAME is only used in two places. First, the distribution file list (DISTFILES) defaults to ${DISTNAME}${EXTRACT_SUFX}. Second, the distribution file is expected to extract into a subdirectory named WRKSRC, which defaults to work/${DISTNAME}. Note that PKGNAMEPREFIX and PKGNAMESUFFIX do not affect DISTNAME. <makevar>CATEGORIES</makevar> When a package is created, it is put under /usr/ports/packages/All and links are made from one or more subdirectories of /usr/ports/packages. The names of these subdirectories are specified by the variable CATEGORIES. It is intended to make life easier for the user when he is wading through the pile of packages on the ftp site or the CD-ROM. Please take a look at the existing categories and pick the ones that are suitable for your port. This list also determines where in the ports tree the port is imported. If you put more than one category here, it is assumed that the port files will be put in the subdirectory with the name in the first category. See the categories section for more discussion about how to pick the right categories. If your port truly belongs to something that is different from all the existing ones, you can even create a new category name. In that case, please send mail to the &a.ports; to propose a new category. There is no error checking for category names. make package will happily create a new directory if you mistype the category name, so be careful! <makevar>MASTER_SITES</makevar> Record the directory part of the ftp/http-URL pointing at the original tarball in MASTER_SITES. Do not forget the trailing slash (/)! The make macros will try to use this specification for grabbing the distribution file with FETCH if they cannot find it already on the system. It is recommended that you put multiple sites on this list, preferably from different continents. This will safeguard against wide-area network problems, and we are even planning to add support for automatically determining the closest master site and fetching from there! If the original tarball is part of one of the following popular archives: X-contrib, GNU, Perl CPAN, TeX CTAN, or Linux Sunsite, you refer to those sites in an easy compact form using MASTER_SITE_XCONTRIB, MASTER_SITE_GNU, MASTER_SITE_PERL_CPAN, MASTER_SITE_TEX_CTAN, and MASTER_SITE_SUNSITE. Simply set MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR to the path within the archive. Here is an example: MASTER_SITES= ${MASTER_SITE_XCONTRIB} MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR= applications The user can also set the MASTER_SITE_* variables in /etc/make.conf to override our choices, and use their favorite mirrors of these popular archives instead. <makevar>PATCHFILES</makevar> If your port requires some additional patches that are available by ftp or http, set PATCHFILES to the names of the files and PATCH_SITES to the URL of the directory that contains them (the format is the same as MASTER_SITES). If the patch is not relative to the top of the source tree (i.e., WRKSRC) because it contains some extra pathnames, set PATCH_DIST_STRIP accordingly. For instance, if all the pathnames in the patch have an extra foozolix-1.0/ in front of the filenames, then set PATCH_DIST_STRIP=-p1. Do not worry if the patches are compressed; they will be decompressed automatically if the filenames end with .gz or .Z. If the patch is distributed with some other files, such as documentation, in a gzip'd tarball, you cannot just use PATCHFILES. If that is the case, add the name and the location of the patch tarball to DISTFILES and MASTER_SITES. Then, from the pre-patch target, apply the patch either by running the patch command from there, or copying the patch file into the PATCHDIR directory and calling it patch-xx. Note that the tarball will have been extracted alongside the regular source by then, so there is no need to explicitly extract it if it is a regular gzip'd or compress'd tarball. If you do the latter, take extra care not to overwrite something that already exists in that directory. Also, do not forget to add a command to remove the copied patch in the pre-clean target. <makevar>MAINTAINER</makevar> Set your mail-address here. Please. :-) For a detailed description of the responsibilities of maintainers, refer to the MAINTAINER on Makefiles section. Dependencies Many ports depend on other ports. There are five variables that you can use to ensure that all the required bits will be on the user's machine. There are also some pre-supported dependency variables for common cases, plus a few more to control the behaviour of dependencies. <makevar>LIB_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies the shared libraries this port depends on. It is a list of lib:dir:target tuples where lib is the name of the shared library, dir is the directory in which to find it in case it is not available, and target is the target to call in that directory. For example, LIB_DEPENDS= jpeg.9:${PORTSDIR}/graphics/jpeg:install will check for a shared jpeg library with major version 9, and descend into the graphics/jpeg subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. The target part can be omitted if it is equal to DEPENDS_TARGET (which defaults to install). The lib part is an argument given to ldconfig -r | grep -wF. There shall be no regular expressions in this variable. The dependency is checked twice, once from within the extract target and then from within the install target. Also, the name of the dependency is put into the package so that pkg_add will automatically install it if it is not on the user's system. <makevar>RUN_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies executables or files this port depends on during run-time. It is a list of path:dir:target tuples where path is the name of the executable or file, dir is the directory in which to find it in case it is not available, and target is the target to call in that directory. If path starts with a slash (/), it is treated as a file and its existence is tested with test -e; otherwise, it is assumed to be an executable, and which -s is used to determine if the program exists in the user's search path. For example, RUN_DEPENDS= ${PREFIX}/etc/innd:${PORTSDIR}/news/inn \ wish8.0:${PORTSDIR}/x11-toolkits/tk80 will check if the file or directory /usr/local/etc/innd exists, and build and install it from the news/inn subdirectory of the ports tree if it is not found. It will also see if an executable called wish8.0 is in your search path, and descend into the x11-toolkits/tk80 subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. In this case, innd is actually an executable; if an executable is in a place that is not expected to be in a normal user's search path, you should use the full pathname. The dependency is checked from within the install target. Also, the name of the dependency is put in to the package so that pkg_add will automatically install it if it is not on the user's system. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET. <makevar>BUILD_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies executables or files this port requires to build. Like RUN_DEPENDS, it is a list of path:dir:target tuples. For example, BUILD_DEPENDS= unzip:${PORTSDIR}/archivers/unzip will check for an executable called unzip, and descend into the archivers/unzip subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. “build” here means everything from extraction to compilation. The dependency is checked from within the extract target. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET <makevar>FETCH_DEPENDS</makevar> This variable specifies executables or files this port requires to fetch. Like the previous two, it is a list of path:dir:target tuples. For example, FETCH_DEPENDS= ncftp2:${PORTSDIR}/net/ncftp2 will check for an executable called ncftp2, and descend into the net/ncftp2 subdirectory of your ports tree to build and install it if it is not found. The dependency is checked from within the fetch target. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET. <makevar>DEPENDS</makevar> If there is a dependency that does not fall into either of the above four categories, or your port requires having the source of the other port extracted in addition to having it installed, then use this variable. This is a list of dir:target, as there is nothing to check, unlike the previous four. The target part can be omitted if it is the same as DEPENDS_TARGET. Common dependency variables Define USE_XLIB=yes if your port requires the X Window System to be installed (it is implied by USE_IMAKE). Define USE_GMAKE=yes if your port requires GNU make instead of BSD make. Define USE_AUTOCONF=yes if your port requires GNU autoconf to be run. Define USE_QT=yes if your port uses the latest qt toolkit. Use USE_PERL5=yes if your port requires version 5 of the perl language. (The last is especially important since some versions of FreeBSD have perl5 as part of the base system while others do not.) Notes on dependencies As mentioned above, the default target to call when a dependency is required is DEPENDS_TARGET. It defaults to install. This is a user variable; it is never defined in a port's Makefile. If your port needs a special way to handle a dependency, use the :target part of the *_DEPENDS variables instead of redefining DEPENDS_TARGET. When you type make clean, its dependencies are automatically cleaned too. If you do not wish this to happen, define the variable NOCLEANDEPENDS in your environment. To depend on another port unconditionally, it is customary to use the string nonexistent as the first field of BUILD_DEPENDS or RUN_DEPENDS. Use this only when you need to the to get to the source of the other port. You can often save compilation time by specifying the target too. For instance BUILD_DEPENDS= /nonexistent:${PORTSDIR}/graphics/jpeg:extract will always descend to the JPEG port and extract it. Do not use DEPENDS unless there is no other way the behaviour you want can be accomplished. It will cause the other port to always be built (and installed, by default), and the dependency will go into the packages as well. If this is really what you need, I recommend you write it as BUILD_DEPENDS and RUN_DEPENDS instead—at least the intention will be clear. Building mechanisms If your package uses GNU make, set USE_GMAKE=yes. If your package uses configure, set HAS_CONFIGURE=yes. If your package uses GNU configure, set GNU_CONFIGURE=yes (this implies HAS_CONFIGURE). If you want to give some extra arguments to configure (the default argument list --prefix=${PREFIX} for GNU configure and empty for non-GNU configure), set those extra arguments in CONFIGURE_ARGS. If your package uses GNU autoconf, set USE_AUTOCONF=yes. This implies GNU_CONFIGURE, and will cause autoconf to be run before configure. If your package is an X application that creates Makefiles from Imakefiles using imake, then set USE_IMAKE=yes. This will cause the configure stage to automatically do an xmkmf -a. If the flag is a problem for your port, set XMKMF=xmkmf. If the port uses imake but does not understand the install.man target, NO_INSTALL_MANPAGES=yes should be set. In addition, the author of the original port should be shot. :-> If your port's source Makefile has something else than all as the main build target, set ALL_TARGET accordingly. Same goes for install and INSTALL_TARGET. Special considerations There are some more things you have to take into account when you create a port. This section explains the most common of those. Shared Libraries If your port installs one or more shared libraries, define a INSTALLS_SHLIB make variable, which will instruct a bsd.port.mk to run ${LDCONFIG} -m on the directory where the new library is installed (usually PREFIX/lib) during post-install target to register it into the shared library cache. This variable, when defined, will also facilitate addition of an appropriate @exec /sbin/ldconfig -m and @unexec /sbin/ldconfig -R pair into your pkg/PLIST file, so that a user who installed the package can start using the shared library immediately and deinstallation will not cause the system to still believe the library is there. If you need, you can override default location where the new library is installed by defining LDCONFIG_DIRS make variable, which should contain a list of directories into which shared libraries are to be installed. For example if your port installs shared libraries into PREFIX/lib/foo and PREFIX/lib/bar directories you could use the following in your Makefile: INSTALLS_SHLIB= yes LDCONFIG_DIRS= %%PREFIX%%/lib/foo %%PREFIX%%/lib/bar Note that content of LDCONFIG_DIRS is passed through &man.sed.1; just like the rest of pkg/PLIST, so PLIST_SUB substitutions also apply here. It is recommended that you use %%PREFIX%% for PREFIX, %%LOCALBASE%% for LOCALBASE and %%X11BASE%% for X11BASE. <makevar>MASTERDIR</makevar> If your port needs to build slightly different versions of packages by having a variable (for instance, resolution, or paper size) take different values, create one subdirectory per package to make it easier for users to see what to do, but try to share as many files as possible between ports. Typically you only need a very short Makefile in all but one of the directories if you use variables cleverly. In the sole Makefiles, you can use MASTERDIR to specify the directory where the rest of the files are. Also, use a variable as part of PKGNAMESUFFIX so the packages will have different names. This will be best demonstrated by an example. This is part of japanese/xdvi300/Makefile; PORTNAME= xdvi PORTVERSION= 17 PKGNAMEPREFIX= ja- PKGNAMESUFFIX= ${RESOLUTION} : # default RESOLUTION?= 300 .if ${RESOLUTION} != 118 && ${RESOLUTION} != 240 && \ ${RESOLUTION} != 300 && ${RESOLUTION} != 400 @${ECHO} "Error: invalid value for RESOLUTION: \"${RESOLUTION}\"" @${ECHO} "Possible values are: 118, 240, 300 (default) and 400." @${FALSE} .endif japanese/xdvi300 also has all the regular patches, package files, etc. If you type make there, it will take the default value for the resolution (300) and build the port normally. As for other resolutions, this is the entire xdvi118/Makefile: RESOLUTION= 118 MASTERDIR= ${.CURDIR}/../xdvi300 .include ${MASTERDIR}/Makefile (xdvi240/Makefile and xdvi400/Makefile are similar). The MASTERDIR definition tells bsd.port.mk that the regular set of subdirectories like PATCHDIR and PKGDIR are to be found under xdvi300. The RESOLUTION=118 line will override the RESOLUTION=300 line in xdvi300/Makefile and the port will be built with resolution set to 118. Shared library versions Please read our policy on shared library versioning to understand what to do with shared library versions in general. Do not blindly assume software authors know what they are doing; many of them do not. It is very important that these details are carefully considered, as we have quite a unique situation where we are trying to have dozens of potentially incompatible software pairs co-exist. Careless port imports have caused great trouble regarding shared libraries in the past (ever wondered why the port jpeg-6b has a shared library version of 9?). If in doubt, send a message to the &a.ports;. Most of the time, your job ends by determining the right shared library version and making appropriate patches to implement it. Manpages The MAN[1-9LN] variables will automatically add any manpages to pkg/PLIST (this means you must not list manpages in the PLIST—see generating PLIST for more). It also makes the install stage automatically compress or uncompress manpages depending on the setting of NOMANCOMPRESS in /etc/make.conf. If your port tries to install multiple names for manpages using symlinks or hardlinks, you must use the MLINKS variable to identify these. The link installed by your port will be destroyed and recreated by bsd.port.mk to make sure it points to the correct file. Any manpages listed in MLINKS must not be listed in the PLIST. To specify whether the manpages are compressed upon installation, use the MANCOMPRESSED variable. This variable can take three values, yes, no and maybe. yes means manpages are already installed compressed, no means they are not, and maybe means the software already respects the value of NOMANCOMPRESS so bsd.port.mk does not have to do anything special. MANCOMPRESSED is automatically set to yes if USE_IMAKE is set and NO_INSTALL_MANPAGES is not set, and to no otherwise. You do not have to explicitly define it unless the default is not suitable for your port. If your port anchors its man tree somewhere other than PREFIX, you can use the MANPREFIX to set it. Also, if only manpages in certain sections go in a non-standard place, such as some Perl modules ports, you can set individual man paths using MANsectPREFIX (where sect is one of 1-9, L or N). If your manpages go to language-specific subdirectories, set the name of the languages to MANLANG. The value of this variable defaults to "" (i.e., English only). Here is an example that puts it all together. MAN1= foo.1 MAN3= bar.3 MAN4= baz.4 MLINKS= foo.1 alt-name.8 MANLANG= "" ja MAN3PREFIX= ${PREFIX}/share/foobar MANCOMPRESSED= yes This states that six files are installed by this port; ${PREFIX}/man/man1/foo.1.gz ${PREFIX}/man/ja/man1/foo.1.gz ${PREFIX}/share/foobar/man/man3/bar.3.gz ${PREFIX}/share/foobar/man/ja/man3/bar.3.gz ${PREFIX}/man/man4/baz.4.gz ${PREFIX}/man/ja/man4/baz.4.gz Additionally ${PREFIX}/man/man8/alt-name.8.gz may or may not be installed by your port. Regardless, a symlink will be made to join the foo(1) manpage and alt-name(8) manpage. Ports that require Motif There are many programs that require a Motif library (available from several commercial vendors, while there is a free clone reported to be able to run many applications in x11-toolkits/lesstif) to compile. Since it is a popular toolkit and their licenses usually permit redistribution of statically linked binaries, we have made special provisions for handling ports that require Motif in a way that we can easily compile binaries linked either dynamically (for people who are compiling from the port) or statically (for people who distribute packages). <makevar>REQUIRES_MOTIF</makevar> If your port requires Motif, define this variable in the Makefile. This will prevent people who do not own a copy of Motif from even attempting to build it. <makevar>MOTIFLIB</makevar> This variable will be set by bsd.port.mk to be the appropriate reference to the Motif library. Please patch the source to use this wherever the Motif library is referenced in the Makefile or Imakefile. There are two common cases: If the port refers to the Motif library as -lXm in its Makefile or Imakefile, simply substitute ${MOTIFLIB} for it. If the port uses XmClientLibs in its Imakefile, change it to ${MOTIFLIB} ${XTOOLLIB} ${XLIB}. Note that MOTIFLIB (usually) expands to -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lXm or /usr/X11R6/lib/libXm.a, so there is no need to add -L or -l in front. X11 fonts If your port installs fonts for the X Window system, put them in X11BASE/lib/X11/fonts/local. This directory is new to XFree86 release 3.3.3. If it does not exist, please create it, and print out a message urging the user to update their XFree86 to 3.3.3 or newer, or at least add this directory to the font path in /etc/XF86Config. Info files The new version of texinfo (included in 2.2.2-RELEASE and onwards) contains a utility called install-info to add and delete entries to the dir file. If your port installs any info documents, please follow these instructions so your port/package will correctly update the user's PREFIX/info/dir file. (Sorry for the length of this section, but is it imperative to weave all the info files together. If done correctly, it will produce a beautiful listing, so please bear with me! First, this is what you (as a porter) need to know &prompt.user; install-info --help install-info [OPTION]... [INFO-FILE [DIR-FILE]] Install INFO-FILE in the Info directory file DIR-FILE. Options: --delete Delete existing entries in INFO-FILE; don't insert any new entries. : --entry=TEXT Insert TEXT as an Info directory entry. : --section=SEC Put this file's entries in section SEC of the directory. : This program will not actually install info files; it merely inserts or deletes entries in the dir file. Here's a seven-step procedure to convert ports to use install-info. I will use editors/emacs as an example. Look at the texinfo sources and make a patch to insert @dircategory and @direntry statements to files that do not have them. This is part of my patch: --- ./man/vip.texi.org Fri Jun 16 15:31:11 1995 +++ ./man/vip.texi Tue May 20 01:28:33 1997 @@ -2,6 +2,10 @@ @setfilename ../info/vip @settitle VIP +@dircategory The Emacs editor and associated tools +@direntry +* VIP: (vip). A VI-emulation for Emacs. +@end direntry @iftex @finalout : The format should be self-explanatory. Many authors leave a dir file in the source tree that contains all the entries you need, so look around before you try to write your own. Also, make sure you look into related ports and make the section names and entry indentations consistent (we recommend that all entry text start at the 4th tab stop). Note that you can put only one info entry per file because of a bug in install-info --delete that deletes only the first entry if you specify multiple entries in the @direntry section. You can give the dir entries to install-info as arguments ( and ) instead of patching the texinfo sources. I do not think this is a good idea for ports because you need to duplicate the same information in three places (Makefile and @exec/@unexec of PLIST; see below). However, if you have Japanese (or other multibyte encoding) info files, you will have to use the extra arguments to install-info because makeinfo cannot handle those texinfo sources. (See Makefile and PLIST of japanese/skk for examples on how to do this). Go back to the port directory and do a make clean; make and verify that the info files are regenerated from the texinfo sources. Since the texinfo sources are newer than the info files, they should be rebuilt when you type make; but many Makefiles do not include correct dependencies for info files. In emacs' case, I had to patch the main Makefile.in so it will descend into the man subdirectory to rebuild the info pages. --- ./Makefile.in.org Mon Aug 19 21:12:19 1996 +++ ./Makefile.in Tue Apr 15 00:15:28 1997 @@ -184,7 +184,7 @@ # Subdirectories to make recursively. `lisp' is not included # because the compiled lisp files are part of the distribution # and you cannot remake them without installing Emacs first. -SUBDIR = lib-src src +SUBDIR = lib-src src man # The makefiles of the directories in $SUBDIR. SUBDIR_MAKEFILES = lib-src/Makefile man/Makefile src/Makefile oldXMenu/Makefile lwlib/Makefile --- ./man/Makefile.in.org Thu Jun 27 15:27:19 1996 +++ ./man/Makefile.in Tue Apr 15 00:29:52 1997 @@ -66,6 +66,7 @@ ${srcdir}/gnu1.texi \ ${srcdir}/glossary.texi +all: info info: $(INFO_TARGETS) dvi: $(DVI_TARGETS) The second hunk was necessary because the default target in the man subdir is called info, while the main Makefile wants to call all. I also deleted the installation of the info info file because we already have one with the same name in /usr/share/info (that patch is not shown here). If there is a place in the Makefile that is installing the dir file, delete it. Your port may not be doing it. Also, remove any commands that are otherwise mucking around with the dir file. --- ./Makefile.in.org Mon Aug 19 21:12:19 1996 +++ ./Makefile.in Mon Apr 14 23:38:07 1997 @@ -368,14 +368,8 @@ if [ `(cd ${srcdir}/info && /bin/pwd)` != `(cd ${infodir} && /bin/pwd)` ]; \ then \ (cd ${infodir}; \ - if [ -f dir ]; then \ - if [ ! -f dir.old ]; then mv -f dir dir.old; \ - else mv -f dir dir.bak; fi; \ - fi; \ cd ${srcdir}/info ; \ - (cd $${thisdir}; ${INSTALL_DATA} ${srcdir}/info/dir ${infodir}/dir); \ - (cd $${thisdir}; chmod a+r ${infodir}/dir); \ for f in ccmode* cl* dired-x* ediff* emacs* forms* gnus* info* message* mh-e* sc* vip*; do \ (cd $${thisdir}; \ ${INSTALL_DATA} ${srcdir}/info/$$f ${infodir}/$$f; \ chmod a+r ${infodir}/$$f); \ (This step is only necessary if you are modifying an existing port.) Take a look at pkg/PLIST and delete anything that is trying to patch up info/dir. They may be in pkg/INSTALL or some other file, so search extensively. Index: pkg/PLIST =================================================================== RCS file: /usr/cvs/ports/editors/emacs/pkg/PLIST,v retrieving revision 1.15 diff -u -r1.15 PLIST --- PLIST 1997/03/04 08:04:00 1.15 +++ PLIST 1997/04/15 06:32:12 @@ -15,9 +15,6 @@ man/man1/emacs.1.gz man/man1/etags.1.gz man/man1/ctags.1.gz -@unexec cp %D/info/dir %D/info/dir.bak -info/dir -@unexec cp %D/info/dir.bak %D/info/dir info/cl info/cl-1 info/cl-2 Add a post-install target to the Makefile to call install-info with the installed info files. (It is no longer necessary to create the dir file yourself; install-info automatically creates this file if it does not exist.) Index: Makefile =================================================================== RCS file: /usr/cvs/ports/editors/emacs/Makefile,v retrieving revision 1.26 diff -u -r1.26 Makefile --- Makefile 1996/11/19 13:14:40 1.26 +++ Makefile 1997/05/20 10:25:09 1.28 @@ -20,5 +20,8 @@ post-install: .for file in emacs-19.34 emacsclient etags ctags b2m strip ${PREFIX}/bin/${file} .endfor +.for info in emacs vip viper forms gnus mh-e cl sc dired-x ediff ccmode + install-info ${PREFIX}/info/${info} ${PREFIX}/info/dir +.endfor .include <bsd.port.mk> Edit PLIST and add equivalent @exec statements and also @unexec for pkg_delete. Index: pkg/PLIST =================================================================== RCS file: /usr/cvs/ports/editors/emacs/pkg/PLIST,v retrieving revision 1.15 diff -u -r1.15 PLIST --- PLIST 1997/03/04 08:04:00 1.15 +++ PLIST 1997/05/20 10:25:12 1.17 @@ -16,7 +14,14 @@ man/man1/etags.1.gz man/man1/ctags.1.gz +@unexec install-info --delete %D/info/emacs %D/info/dir : +@unexec install-info --delete %D/info/ccmode %D/info/dir info/cl info/cl-1 @@ -87,6 +94,18 @@ info/viper-3 info/viper-4 +@exec install-info %D/info/emacs %D/info/dir : +@exec install-info %D/info/ccmode %D/info/dir libexec/emacs/19.34/i386--freebsd/cvtmail libexec/emacs/19.34/i386--freebsd/digest-doc The @unexec install-info --delete commands have to be listed before the info files themselves so they can read the files. Also, the @exec install-info commands have to be after the info files and the @exec command that creates the the dir file. Test and admire your work. :-). Check the dir file before and after each step. The <filename>pkg/</filename> subdirectory There are some tricks we have not mentioned yet about the pkg/ subdirectory that come in handy sometimes. <filename>MESSAGE</filename> If you need to display a message to the installer, you may place the message in pkg/MESSAGE. This capability is often useful to display additional installation steps to be taken after a pkg_add or to display licensing information. The pkg/MESSAGE file does not need to be added to pkg/PLIST. Also, it will not get automatically printed if the user is using the port, not the package, so you should probably display it from the post-install target yourself. <filename>INSTALL</filename> If your port needs to execute commands when the binary package is installed with pkg_add you can do this via the pkg/INSTALL script. This script will automatically be added to the package, and will be run twice by pkg_add. The first time will as INSTALL ${PKGNAME} PRE-INSTALL and the second time as INSTALL ${PKGNAME} POST-INSTALL. $2 can be tested to determine which mode the script is being run in. The PKG_PREFIX environmental variable will be set to the package installation directory. See &man.pkg.add.1; for additional information. This script is not run automatically if you install the port with make install. If you are depending on it being run, you will have to explicitly call it from your port's Makefile. <filename>REQ</filename> If your port needs to determine if it should install or not, you can create a pkg/REQ “requirements” script. It will be invoked automatically at installation/deinstallation time to determine whether or not installation/deinstallation should proceed. Changing <filename>PLIST</filename> based on make variables Some ports, particularly the p5- ports, need to change their PLIST depending on what options they are configured with (or version of perl, in the case of p5- ports). To make this easy, any instances in the PLIST of %%OSREL%%, %%PERL_VER%%, and %%PERL_VERSION%% will be substituted for appropriately. The value of %%OSREL%% is the numeric revision of the operating system (e.g., 2.2.7). %%PERL_VERSION%% is the full version number of perl (e.g., 5.00502) and %%PERL_VER%% is the perl version number minus the patchlevel (e.g., 5.005). If you need to make other substitutions, you can set the PLIST_SUB variable with a list of VAR=VALUE pairs and instances of %%VAR%%' will be substituted with VALUE in the PLIST. For instance, if you have a port that installs many files in a version-specific subdirectory, you can put something like OCTAVE_VERSION= 2.0.13 PLIST_SUB= OCTAVE_VERSION=${OCTAVE_VERSION} in the Makefile and use %%OCTAVE_VERSION%% wherever the version shows up in PLIST. That way, when you upgrade the port, you will not have to change dozens (or in some cases, hundreds) of lines in the PLIST. This substitution (as well as addition of any man pages) will be done between the do-install and post-install targets, by reading from PLIST and writing to TMPPLIST (default: WRKDIR/.PLIST.mktmp). So if your port builds PLIST on the fly, do so in or before do-install. Also, if your port needs to edit the resulting file, do so in post-install to a file named TMPPLIST. Changing the names of files in the <filename>pkg</filename> subdirectory All the filenames in the pkg subdirectory are defined using variables so you can change them in your Makefile if need be. This is especially useful when you are sharing the same pkg subdirectory among several ports or have to write to one of the above files (see writing to places other than WRKDIR for why it is a bad idea to write directly in to the pkg subdirectory). Here is a list of variable names and their default values. Variable Default value COMMENT ${PKGDIR}/COMMENT DESCR ${PKGDIR}/DESCR PLIST ${PKGDIR}/PLIST PKGINSTALL ${PKGDIR}/INSTALL PKGDEINSTALL ${PKGDIR}/DEINSTALL PKGREQ ${PKGDIR}/REQ PKGMESSAGE ${PKGDIR}/MESSAGE Please change these variables rather than overriding PKG_ARGS. If you change PKG_ARGS, those files will not correctly be installed in /var/db/pkg upon install from a port. Licensing Problems Some software packages have restrictive licenses or can be in - violation of the law (PKP's patent on public key crypto, ITAR (export - of crypto software) to name just two of them). What we can do with + violation of the law in some countries (such as violating a patent). + What we can do with them varies a lot, depending on the exact wordings of the respective licenses. It is your responsibility as a porter to read the licensing terms of the software and make sure that the FreeBSD project will not be held accountable for violating them by redistributing the source or compiled binaries either via ftp or CD-ROM. If in doubt, please contact the &a.ports;. There are two variables you can set in the Makefile to handle the situations that arise frequently: If the port has a “do not sell for profit” type of license, set the variable NO_CDROM to a string describing the reason why. We will make sure such ports will not go into the CD-ROM come release time. The distfile and package will still be available via ftp. If the resulting package needs to be built uniquely for each site, or the resulting binary package cannot be distributed due to licensing; set the variable NO_PACKAGE to a string describing the reason why. We will make sure such packages will not go on the ftp site, nor into the CD-ROM come release time. The distfile will still be included on both however. If the port has legal restrictions on who can use it (e.g., - crypto stuff) or has a “no commercial use” license, + patented stuff) or has a “no commercial use” license, set the variable RESTRICTED to be the string describing the reason why. For such ports, the distfiles/packages will not be available even from our ftp sites. The GNU General Public License (GPL), both version 1 and 2, should not be a problem for ports. If you are a committer, make sure you update the ports/LEGAL file too. Upgrading When you notice that a port is out of date compared to the latest version from the original authors, first make sure you have the latest port. You can find them in the ports/ports-current directory of the ftp mirror sites. You may also use CVSup to keep your whole ports collection up-to-date, as described in the Handbook. The next step is to send a mail to the maintainer, if one is listed in the port's Makefile. That person may already be working on an upgrade, or have a reason to not upgrade the port right now (because of, for example, stability problems of the new version). If the maintainer asks you to do the upgrade or there is not any such person to begin with, please make the upgrade and send the recursive diff (either unified or context diff is fine, but port committers appear to prefer unified diff more) of the new and old ports directories to us (e.g., if your modified port directory is called superedit and the original as in our tree is superedit.bak, then send us the result of diff -ruN superedit.bak superedit). Please examine the output to make sure all the changes make sense. The best way to send us the diff is by including it via &man.send-pr.1; (category ports). Please mention any added or deleted files in the message, as they have to be explicitly specified to CVS when doing a commit. If the diff is more than about 20KB, please compress and uuencode it; otherwise, just include it in the PR as is. Once again, please use &man.diff.1; and not &man.shar.1; to send updates to existing ports! <anchor id="porting-dads">Dos and Don'ts Here is a list of common dos and don'ts that you encounter during the porting process.You should check your own port against this list, but you can also check ports in the PR database that others have submitted. Submit any comments on ports you check as described in Bug Reports and General Commentary. Checking ports in the PR database will both make it faster for us to commit them, and prove that you know what you are doing. Strip Binaries Do strip binaries. If the original source already strips the binaries, fine; otherwise you should add a post-install rule to to it yourself. Here is an example: post-install: strip ${PREFIX}/bin/xdl Use the &man.file.1; command on the installed executable to check whether the binary is stripped or not. If it does not say not stripped, it is stripped. INSTALL_* macros Do use the macros provided in bsd.port.mk to ensure correct modes and ownership of files in your own *-install targets. INSTALL_PROGRAM is a command to install binary executables. INSTALL_SCRIPT is a command to install executable scripts. INSTALL_DATA is a command to install sharable data. INSTALL_MAN is a command to install manpages and other documentation (it does not compress anything). These are basically the install command with all the appropriate flags. See below for an example on how to use them. <makevar>WRKDIR</makevar> Do not write anything to files outside WRKDIR. WRKDIR is the only place that is guaranteed to be writable during the port build (see compiling ports from CDROM for an example of building ports from a read-only tree). If you need to modify some file in PKGDIR, do so by redefining a variable, not by writing over it. <makevar>WRKDIRPREFIX</makevar> Make sure your port honors WRKDIRPREFIX. Most ports do not have to worry about this. In particular, if you are referring to a WRKDIR of another port, note that the correct location is WRKDIRPREFIXPORTSDIR/subdir/name/work not PORTSDIR/subdir/name/work or .CURDIR/../../subdir/name/work or some such. Also, if you are defining WRKDIR yourself, make sure you prepend ${WRKDIRPREFIX}${.CURDIR} in the front. Differentiating operating systems and OS versions You may come across code that needs modifications or conditional compilation based upon what version of UNIX it is running under. If you need to make such changes to the code for conditional compilation, make sure you make the changes as general as possible so that we can back-port code to FreeBSD 1.x systems and cross-port to other BSD systems such as 4.4BSD from CSRG, BSD/386, 386BSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. The preferred way to tell 4.3BSD/Reno (1990) and newer versions of the BSD code apart is by using the BSD macro defined in <sys/param.h>. Hopefully that file is already included; if not, add the code: #if (defined(__unix__) || defined(unix)) && !defined(USG) #include <sys/param.h> #endif to the proper place in the .c file. We believe that every system that defines these two symbols has sys/param.h. If you find a system that does not, we would like to know. Please send mail to the &a.ports;. Another way is to use the GNU Autoconf style of doing this: #ifdef HAVE_SYS_PARAM_H #include <sys/param.h> #endif Do not forget to add -DHAVE_SYS_PARAM_H to the CFLAGS in the Makefile for this method. Once you have sys/param.h included, you may use: #if (defined(BSD) && (BSD >= 199103)) to detect if the code is being compiled on a 4.3 Net2 code base or newer (e.g. FreeBSD 1.x, 4.3/Reno, NetBSD 0.9, 386BSD, BSD/386 1.1 and below). Use: #if (defined(BSD) && (BSD >= 199306)) to detect if the code is being compiled on a 4.4 code base or newer (e.g. FreeBSD 2.x, 4.4, NetBSD 1.0, BSD/386 2.0 or above). The value of the BSD macro is 199506 for the 4.4BSD-Lite2 code base. This is stated for informational purposes only. It should not be used to distinguish between versions of FreeBSD based only on 4.4-Lite vs. versions that have merged in changes from 4.4-Lite2. The __FreeBSD__ macro should be used instead. Use sparingly: __FreeBSD__ is defined in all versions of FreeBSD. Use it if the change you are making only affects FreeBSD. Porting gotchas like the use of sys_errlist[] vs strerror() are Berkeleyisms, not FreeBSD changes. In FreeBSD 2.x, __FreeBSD__ is defined to be 2. In earlier versions, it is 1. Later versions will bump it to match their major version number. If you need to tell the difference between a FreeBSD 1.x system and a FreeBSD 2.x or 3.x system, usually the right answer is to use the BSD macros described above. If there actually is a FreeBSD specific change (such as special shared library options when using ld) then it is OK to use __FreeBSD__ and #if __FreeBSD__ > 1 to detect a FreeBSD 2.x and later system. If you need more granularity in detecting FreeBSD systems since 2.0-RELEASE you can use the following: #if __FreeBSD__ >= 2 #include <osreldate.h> # if __FreeBSD_version >= 199504 /* 2.0.5+ release specific code here */ # endif #endif Release __FreeBSD_version 2.0-RELEASE 119411 2.1-CURRENT 199501, 199503 2.0.5-RELEASE 199504 2.2-CURRENT before 2.1 199508 2.1.0-RELEASE 199511 2.2-CURRENT before 2.1.5 199512 2.1.5-RELEASE 199607 2.2-CURRENT before 2.1.6 199608 2.1.6-RELEASE 199612 2.1.7-RELEASE 199612 2.2-RELEASE 220000 2.2.1-RELEASE 220000 (no change) 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.1-RELEASE 220000 (no change) 2.2-STABLE after texinfo-3.9 221001 2.2-STABLE after top 221002 2.2.2-RELEASE 222000 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.2-RELEASE 222001 2.2.5-RELEASE 225000 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.5-RELEASE 225001 2.2-STABLE after ldconfig -R merge 225002 2.2.6-RELEASE 226000 2.2.7-RELEASE 227000 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.7-RELEASE 227001 2.2-STABLE after semctl(2) change 227002 2.2.8-RELEASE 228000 2.2-STABLE after 2.2.8-RELEASE 228001 3.0-CURRENT before mount(2) change 300000 3.0-CURRENT after mount(2) change 300001 3.0-CURRENT after semctl(2) change 300002 3.0-CURRENT after ioctl arg changes 300003 3.0-CURRENT after ELF conversion 300004 3.0-RELEASE 300005 3.0-CURRENT after 3.0-RELEASE 300006 3.0-STABLE after 3/4 branch 300007 3.1-RELEASE 310000 3.1-STABLE after 3.1-RELEASE 310001 3.1-STABLE after C++ constructor/destructor order change 310002 3.2-RELEASE 320000 3.2-STABLE 320001 3.2-STABLE after binary-incompatible IPFW and socket changes 320002 3.3-RELEASE 330000 3.3-STABLE 330001 3.3-STABLE after adding mkstemps() to libc 330002 3.4-RELEASE 340000 3.4-STABLE 340001 4.0-CURRENT after 3.4 branch 400000 4.0-CURRENT after change in dynamic linker handling 400001 4.0-CURRENT after C++ constructor/destructor order change 400002 4.0-CURRENT after functioning dladdr(3) 400003 4.0-CURRENT after __deregister_frame_info dynamic linker bug fix (also 4.0-CURRENT after EGCS 1.1.2 integration) 400004 4.0-CURRENT after suser(9) API change (also 4.0-CURRENT after newbus) 400005 4.0-CURRENT after cdevsw registration change 400006 4.0-CURRENT after the addition of so_cred for socket level credentials 400007 4.0-CURRENT after the addition of a poll syscall wrapper to libc_r 400008 4.0-CURRENT after the change of the kernel's dev_t type to struct specinfo pointer 400009 4.0-CURRENT after fixing a hole in jail(2) 400010 4.0-CURRENT after the sigset_t datatype change 400011 4.0-CURRENT after the cutover to the GCC 2.95.2 compiler 400012 4.0-CURRENT after adding pluggable linux-mode ioctl handlers 400013 4.0-CURRENT after importing OpenSSL 400014 4.0-CURRENT after the C++ ABI change in GCC 2.95.2 from -fvtable-thunks to -fno-vtable-thunks by default 400015 4.0-CURRENT after importing OpenSSH 400016 4.0-RELEASE 400017 4.0-STABLE after 4.0-RELEASE 400018 4.0-STABLE after merging libxpg4 code into libc. 400020 4.0-STABLE after upgrading Binutils to 2.10.0, ELF branding changes, and tcsh in the base system. 400021 4.1-RELEASE 410000 4.1-STABLE after 4.1-RELEASE 410001 4.1-STABLE after setproctitle() moved from libutil to libc. 410002 4.1.1-RELEASE 411000 4.1.1-STABLE after 4.1.1-RELEASE 411001 5.0-CURRENT 500000 5.0-CURRENT after adding addition ELF header fields, and changing our ELF binary branding method. 500001 5.0-CURRENT after kld metadata changes. 500002 5.0-CURRENT after buf/bio changes. 500003 5.0-CURRENT after binutils upgrade. 500004 5.0-CURRENT after merging libxpg4 code into libc and after TASKQ interface introduction. 500005 5.0-CURRENT after the addition of AGP interfaces. 500006 5.0-CURRENT after Perl upgrade to 5.6.0 500007 5.0-CURRENT after the update of KAME code to 2000/07 sources. 500008 5.0-CURRENT after ether_ifattach() and ether_ifdetach() changes. 500009 5.0-CURRENT after changing mtree defaults back to original variant, adding -L to follow symlinks. 500010 5.0-CURRENT after kqueue API changed. 500011 5.0-CURRENT after setproctitle() moved from libutil to libc. 500012 5.0-CURRENT after the first SMPng commit. 500013 Note that 2.2-STABLE sometimes identifies itself as “2.2.5-STABLE” after the 2.2.5-RELEASE. The pattern used to be year followed by the month, but we decided to change it to a more straightforward major/minor system starting from 2.2. This is because the parallel development on several branches made it infeasible to classify the releases simply by their real release dates. If you are making a port now, you do not have to worry about old -CURRENTs; they are listed here just for your reference. In the hundreds of ports that have been done, there have only been one or two cases where __FreeBSD__ should have been used. Just because an earlier port screwed up and used it in the wrong place does not mean you should do so too. Writing something after <filename>bsd.port.mk</filename> Do not write anything after the .include <bsd.port.mk> line. It usually can be avoided by including bsd.port.pre.mk somewhere in the middle of your Makefile and bsd.port.post.mk at the end. You need to include either the pre.mk/post.mk pair or bsd.port.mk only; do not mix these two. bsd.port.pre.mk only defines a few variables, which can be used in tests in the Makefile, bsd.port.post.mk defines the rest. Here are some important variables defined in bsd.port.pre.mk (this is not the complete list, please read bsd.port.mk for the complete list). Variable Description ARCH The architecture as returned by uname -m (e.g., i386) OPSYS The operating system type, as returned by uname -s (e.g., FreeBSD) OSREL The release version of the operating system (e.g., 2.1.5 or 2.2.7) OSVERSION The numeric version of the operating system, same as __FreeBSD_version. PORTOBJFORMAT The object format of the system (aout or elf) LOCALBASE The base of the “local” tree (e.g., /usr/local/) X11BASE The base of the “X11” tree (e.g., /usr/X11R6) PREFIX Where the port installs itself (see more on PREFIX). If you have to define the variables USE_IMAKE, USE_X_PREFIX, or MASTERDIR, do so before including bsd.port.pre.mk. Here are some examples of things you can write after bsd.port.pre.mk: # no need to compile lang/perl5 if perl5 is already in system .if ${OSVERSION} > 300003 BROKEN= perl is in system .endif # only one shlib version number for ELF .if ${PORTOBJFORMAT} == "elf" TCL_LIB_FILE= ${TCL_LIB}.${SHLIB_MAJOR} .else TCL_LIB_FILE= ${TCL_LIB}.${SHLIB_MAJOR}.${SHLIB_MINOR} .endif # software already makes link for ELF, but not for a.out post-install: .if ${PORTOBJFORMAT} == "aout" ${LN} -sf liblinpack.so.1.0 ${PREFIX}/lib/liblinpack.so .endif Install additional documentation If your software has some documentation other than the standard man and info pages that you think is useful for the user, install it under PREFIX/share/doc. This can be done, like the previous item, in the post-install target. Create a new directory for your port. The directory name should reflect what the port is. This usually means PORTNAME. However, if you think the user might want different versions of the port to be installed at the same time, you can use the whole PKGNAME. Make the installation dependent to the variable NOPORTDOCS so that users can disable it in /etc/make.conf, like this: post-install: .if !defined(NOPORTDOCS) ${MKDIR} ${PREFIX}/share/doc/xv ${INSTALL_MAN} ${WRKSRC}/docs/xvdocs.ps ${PREFIX}/share/doc/xv .endif Do not forget to add them to pkg/PLIST too! (Do not worry about NOPORTDOCS here; there is currently no way for the packages to read variables from /etc/make.conf.) You can also use the pkg/MESSAGE file to display messages upon installation. See the using pkg/MESSAGE section for details. MESSAGE does not need to be added to pkg/PLIST. <makevar>DIST_SUBDIR</makevar> Do not let your port clutter /usr/ports/distfiles. If your port requires a lot of files to be fetched, or contains a file that has a name that might conflict with other ports (e.g., Makefile), set DIST_SUBDIR to the name of the port (${PORTNAME} or ${PKGNAMEPREFIX}${PORTNAME} should work fine). This will change DISTDIR from the default /usr/ports/distfiles to /usr/ports/distfiles/DIST_SUBDIR, and in effect puts everything that is required for your port into that subdirectory. It will also look at the subdirectory with the same name on the backup master site at ftp.FreeBSD.org. (Setting DISTDIR explicitly in your Makefile will not accomplish this, so please use DIST_SUBDIR.) This does not affect the MASTER_SITES you define in your Makefile. Package information Do include package information, i.e. COMMENT, DESCR, and PLIST, in pkg. Note that these files are not used only for packaging anymore, and are mandatory now, even if NO_PACKAGE is set. RCS strings Do not put RCS strings in patches. CVS will mangle them when we put the files into the ports tree, and when we check them out again, they will come out different and the patch will fail. RCS strings are surrounded by dollar ($) signs, and typically start with $Id or $RCS. Recursive diff Using the recurse () option to diff to generate patches is fine, but please take a look at the resulting patches to make sure you do not have any unnecessary junk in there. In particular, diffs between two backup files, Makefiles when the port uses Imake or GNU configure, etc., are unnecessary and should be deleted. If you had to edit configure.in and run autoconf to regenerate configure, do not take the diffs of configure (it often grows to a few thousand lines!); define USE_AUTOCONF=yes and take the diffs of configure.in. Also, if you had to delete a file, then you can do it in the post-extract target rather than as part of the patch. Once you are happy with the resulting diff, please split it up into one source file per patch file. <makevar>PREFIX</makevar> Do try to make your port install relative to PREFIX. (The value of this variable will be set to LOCALBASE (default /usr/local), unless USE_X_PREFIX or USE_IMAKE is set, in which case it will be X11BASE (default /usr/X11R6).) Not hard-coding /usr/local or /usr/X11R6 anywhere in the source will make the port much more flexible and able to cater to the needs of other sites. For X ports that use imake, this is automatic; otherwise, this can often be done by simply replacing the occurrences of /usr/local (or /usr/X11R6 for X ports that do not use imake) in the various scripts/Makefiles in the port to read PREFIX, as this variable is automatically passed down to every stage of the build and install processes. Do not set USE_X_PREFIX unless your port truly requires it (i.e., it links against X libs or it needs to reference files in X11BASE). The variable PREFIX can be reassigned in your Makefile or in the user's environment. However, it is strongly discouraged for individual ports to set this variable explicitly in the Makefiles. Also, refer to programs/files from other ports with the variables mentioned above, not explicit pathnames. For instance, if your port requires a macro PAGER to be the full pathname of less, use the compiler flag: -DPAGER=\"${PREFIX}/bin/less\" or -DPAGER=\"${LOCALBASE}/bin/less\" if this is an X port, instead of -DPAGER=\"/usr/local/bin/less\". This way it will have a better chance of working if the system administrator has moved the whole `/usr/local' tree somewhere else. Subdirectories Try to let the port put things in the right subdirectories of PREFIX. Some ports lump everything and put it in the subdirectory with the port's name, which is incorrect. Also, many ports put everything except binaries, header files and manual pages in the a subdirectory of lib, which does not bode well with the BSD paradigm. Many of the files should be moved to one of the following: etc (setup/configuration files), libexec (executables started internally), sbin (executables for superusers/managers), info (documentation for info browser) or share (architecture independent files). See man &man.hier.7; for details, the rules governing /usr pretty much apply to /usr/local too. The exception are ports dealing with USENET “news”. They may use PREFIX/news as a destination for their files. Cleaning up empty directories Do make your ports clean up after themselves when they are deinstalled. This is usually accomplished by adding @dirrm lines for all directories that are specifically created by the port. You need to delete subdirectories before you can delete parent directories. : lib/X11/oneko/pixmaps/cat.xpm lib/X11/oneko/sounds/cat.au : @dirrm lib/X11/oneko/pixmaps @dirrm lib/X11/oneko/sounds @dirrm lib/X11/oneko However, sometimes @dirrm will give you errors because other ports also share the same subdirectory. You can call rmdir from @unexec to remove only empty directories without warning. @unexec rmdir %D/share/doc/gimp 2>/dev/null || true This will neither print any error messages nor cause pkg_delete to exit abnormally even if PREFIX/share/doc/gimp is not empty due to other ports installing some files in there. UIDs If your port requires a certain user to be on the installed system, let the pkg/INSTALL script call pw to create it automatically. Look at net/cvsup-mirror for an example. If your port must use the same user/group ID number when it is installed as a binary package as when it was compiled, then you must choose a free UID from 50 to 99 and register it below. Look at japanese/Wnn for an example. Make sure you do not use a UID already used by the system or other ports. This is the current list of UIDs between 50 and 99. majordom:*:54:54:Majordomo Pseudo User:/usr/local/majordomo:/nonexistent cyrus:*:60:60:the cyrus mail server:/nonexistent:/nonexistent gnats:*:61:1:GNATS database owner:/usr/local/share/gnats/gnats-db:/bin/sh uucp:*:66:66:UUCP pseudo-user:/var/spool/uucppublic:/usr/libexec/uucp/uucico xten:*:67:67:X-10 daemon:/usr/local/xten:/nonexistent pop:*:68:6:Post Office Owner (popper):/nonexistent:/nonexistent wnn:*:69:7:Wnn:/nonexistent:/nonexistent ifmail:*:70:66:Ifmail user:/nonexistent:/nonexistent pgsql:*:70:70:PostgreSQL pseudo-user:/usr/local/pgsql:/bin/sh ircd:*:72:72:IRCd hybrid:/nonexistent:/nonexistent alias:*:81:81:QMail user:/var/qmail/alias:/nonexistent qmaill:*:83:81:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmaild:*:82:81:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmailq:*:85:82:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmails:*:87:82:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmailp:*:84:81:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent qmailr:*:86:82:QMail user:/var/qmail:/nonexistent msql:*:87:87:mSQL-2 pseudo-user:/var/db/msqldb:/bin/sh mysql:*:88:88:MySQL Daemon:/var/db/mysql:/sbin/nologin vpopmail:*:89:89::0:0:User &:/usr/local/vpopmail:/nonexistent Please include a notice when you submit a port (or an upgrade) that reserves a new UID or GID in this range. This allows us to keep the list of reserved IDs up to date. Do things rationally The Makefile should do things simply and reasonably. If you can make it a couple of lines shorter or more readable, then do so. Examples include using a make .if construct instead of a shell if construct, not redefining do-extract if you can redefine EXTRACT* instead, and using GNU_CONFIGURE instead of CONFIGURE_ARGS += --prefix=${PREFIX}. Respect <makevar>CFLAGS</makevar> The port should respect the CFLAGS variable. If it does not, please add NO_PACKAGE=ignores cflags to the Makefile. An example of a Makefile respecting the CFLAGS variable follows. Note the +=: CFLAGS += -Wall -Werror Here is an example which does not respect the CFLAGS variable: CFLAGS = -Wall -Werror The CFLAGS variable is defined on FreeBSD systems in /etc/make.conf. The first example appends additional flags to the CFLAGS variable, preserving any system-wide definitions. The second example clobbers anything previously defined. Configuration files If your port requires some configuration files in PREFIX/etc, do not just install them and list them in pkg/PLIST. That will cause pkg_delete to delete files carefully edited by the user and a new installation to wipe them out. Instead, install sample files with a suffix (filename.sample will work well) and print out a message pointing out that the user has to copy and edit the file before the software can be made to work. Portlint Do check your work with portlint before you submit or commit it. Feedback Do send applicable changes/patches to the original author/maintainer for inclusion in next release of the code. This will only make your job that much easier for the next release. <filename>README.html</filename> Do not include the README.html file. This file is not part of the cvs collection but is generated using the make readme command. Miscellanea The files pkg/DESCR, pkg/COMMENT, and pkg/PLIST should each be double-checked. If you are reviewing a port and feel they can be worded better, do so. Do not copy more copies of the GNU General Public License into our system, please. Please be careful to note any legal issues! Do not let us illegally distribute software! If you are stuck… Do look at existing examples and the bsd.port.mk file before asking us questions! ;-) Do ask us questions if you have any trouble! Do not just beat your head against a wall! :-) A Sample <filename>Makefile</filename> Here is a sample Makefile that you can use to create a new port. Make sure you remove all the extra comments (ones between brackets)! It is recommended that you follow this format (ordering of variables, empty lines between sections, etc.). This format is designed so that the most important information is easy to locate. We recommend that you use portlint to check the Makefile. [the header...just to make it easier for us to identify the ports.] # New ports collection makefile for: xdvi [the "version required" line is only needed when the PORTVERSION variable is not specific enough to describe the port.] # Version required: pl18 + japanization patches 18.1 and 18.2 [this is the date when the first version of this Makefile was created. Never change this when doing an update of the port.] # Date created: 26 May 1995 [this is the person who did the original port to FreeBSD, in particular, the person who wrote the first version of this Makefile. Remember, this should not be changed when upgrading the port later.] # Whom: Satoshi Asami <asami@FreeBSD.org> # # $FreeBSD$ [ ^^^^^^^^^ This will be automatically replaced with RCS ID string by CVS when it is committed to our repository. If upgrading a port, do not alter this line back to "$FreeBSD$". CVS deals with it automatically.] # [section to describe the port itself and the master site - PORTNAME and PORTVERSION are always first, followed by CATEGORIES, and then MASTER_SITES, which can be followed by MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR. PKGNAMEPREFIX and PKGNAMESUFFIX, if needed, will be after that. Then comes DISTNAME, EXTRACT_SUFX and/or DISTFILES, and then EXTRACT_ONLY, as necessary.] PORTNAME= xdvi PORTVERSION= 18.2 CATEGORIES= print [do not forget the trailing slash ("/")! if you are not using MASTER_SITE_* macros] MASTER_SITES= ${MASTER_SITE_XCONTRIB} MASTER_SITE_SUBDIR= applications PKGNAMEPREFIX= ja- DISTNAME= xdvi-pl18 [set this if the source is not in the standard ".tar.gz" form] EXTRACT_SUFX= .tar.Z [section for distributed patches -- can be empty] PATCH_SITES= ftp://ftp.sra.co.jp/pub/X11/japanese/ PATCHFILES= xdvi-18.patch1.gz xdvi-18.patch2.gz [maintainer; *mandatory*! This is the person (preferably with commit privileges) whom a user can contact for questions and bug reports - this person should be the porter or someone who can forward questions to the original porter reasonably promptly. If you really do not want to have your address here, set it to "ports@FreeBSD.org".] MAINTAINER= asami@FreeBSD.org [dependencies -- can be empty] RUN_DEPENDS= gs:${PORTSDIR}/print/ghostscript LIB_DEPENDS= Xpm.5:${PORTSDIR}/graphics/xpm [this section is for other standard bsd.port.mk variables that do not belong to any of the above] [If it asks questions during configure, build, install...] IS_INTERACTIVE= yes [If it extracts to a directory other than ${DISTNAME}...] WRKSRC= ${WRKDIR}/xdvi-new [If the distributed patches were not made relative to ${WRKSRC}, you may need to tweak this] PATCH_DIST_STRIP= -p1 [If it requires a "configure" script generated by GNU autoconf to be run] GNU_CONFIGURE= yes [If it requires GNU make, not /usr/bin/make, to build...] USE_GMAKE= yes [If it is an X application and requires "xmkmf -a" to be run...] USE_IMAKE= yes [et cetera.] [non-standard variables to be used in the rules below] MY_FAVORITE_RESPONSE= "yeah, right" [then the special rules, in the order they are called] pre-fetch: i go fetch something, yeah post-patch: i need to do something after patch, great pre-install: and then some more stuff before installing, wow [and then the epilogue] .include <bsd.port.mk> Automated package list creation First, make sure your port is almost complete, with only PLIST missing. Create an empty PLIST. &prompt.root; touch PLIST Next, create a new set of directories which your port can be installed, and install any dependencies. &prompt.root; mtree -U -f /etc/mtree/BSD.local.dist -d -e -p /var/tmp/port-name &prompt.root; make depends PREFIX=/var/tmp/port-name Store the directory structure in a new file. &prompt.root; (cd /var/tmp/port-name && find * -type d) > OLD-DIRS If your port honors PREFIX (which it should) you can then install the port and create the package list. &prompt.root; make install PREFIX=/var/tmp/port-name &prompt.root; (cd /var/tmp/port-name && find * \! -type d) > pkg/PLIST You must also add any newly created directories to the packing list. &prompt.root; (cd /var/tmp/port-name && find * -type d) | comm -13 OLD-DIRS - | sed -e 's#^#@dirrm #' >> pkg/PLIST Finally, you need to tidy up the packing list by hand. I lied when I said this was all automated. Manual pages should be listed in the port's Makefile under MANn, and not in the package list. User configuration files should be removed, or installed as filename.sample. The info/dir file should not be listed and appropriate install-info lines should be added as noted in the info files section. Any libraries installed by the port should be listed as specified in the shared libraries section. Package Names The following are the conventions you should follow in naming your packages. This is to have our package directory easy to scan, as there are already lots and lots of packages and users are going to turn away if they hurt their eyes! The package name should look like language_region-name-compiled.specifics-version.numbers. The package name is defined as ${PKGNAMEPREFIX}${PORTNAME}${PKGNAMESUFFIX}-${PORTVERSION}. Make sure to set the variables to conform to that format. FreeBSD strives to support the native language of its users. The language- part should be a two letter abbreviation of the natural language defined by ISO-639 if the port is specific to a certain language. Examples are ja for Japanese, ru for Russian, vi for Vietnamese, zh for Chinese, ko for Korean and de for German. If the port is specific to a certain region within the language area, add the two letter country code as well. Examples are en_US for US English and fr_CH for Swiss French. The language- part should be set in the PKGNAMEPREFIX variable. The name part should be all lowercase, except for a really large package (with lots of programs in it). Things like XFree86 (yes there really is a port of it, check it out) and ImageMagick fall into this category. Otherwise, convert the name (or at least the first letter) to lowercase. If the capital letters are important to the name (for example, with one-letter names like R or V) you may use capital letters at your discretion. There is a tradition of naming Perl 5 modules by prepending p5- and converting the double-colon separator to a hyphen; for example, the Data::Dumper module becomes p5-Data-Dumper. If the software in question has numbers, hyphens, or underscores in its name, you may include them as well (like kinput2). If the port can be built with different hardcoded defaults (usually part of the directory name in a family of ports), the -compiled.specifics part should state the compiled-in defaults (the hyphen is optional). Examples are papersize and font units. The compiled.specifics part should be set in the PKGNAMESUFFIX variable. The version string should follow a dash (-) and be a period-separated list of integers and single lowercase alphabetics. In particular, it is not pormissible to have another dash inside the version string. The only exception is the string pl (meaning `patchlevel'), which can be used only when there are no major and minor version numbers in the software. If the software version has strings like "alpha", "beta", or "pre", take the first letter and put it immediately after a period. If the version string continues after those names, the numbers should follow the single alphabet without an extra period between them. The idea is to make it easier to sort ports by looking at the version string. In particular, make sure version number components are always delimited by a period, and if the date is part of the string, use the yyyy.mm.dd format, not dd.mm.yyyy or the non-Y2K compliant yy.mm.dd format. Here are some (real) examples on how to convert the name as called by the software authors to a suitable package name: Distribution Name PKGNAMEPREFIX PORTNAME PKGNAMESUFFIX PORTVERSION Reason mule-2.2.2 (empty) mule (empty) 2.2.2 No changes required XFree86-3.3.6 (empty) XFree86 (empty) 3.3.6 No changes required EmiClock-1.0.2 (empty) emiclock (empty) 1.0.2 No uppercase names for single programs rdist-1.3alpha (empty) rdist (empty) 1.3.a No strings like alpha allowed es-0.9-beta1 (empty) es (empty) 0.9.b1 No strings like beta allowed v3.3beta021.src (empty) tiff (empty) 3.3 What the heck was that anyway? tvtwm (empty) tvtwm (empty) pl11 Version string always required piewm (empty) piewm (empty) 1.0 Version string always required xvgr-2.10pl1 (empty) xvgr (empty) 2.10.1 pl allowed only when no major/minor version numbers gawk-2.15.6 ja- gawk (empty) 2.15.6 Japanese language version psutils-1.13 (empty) psutils -letter 1.13 Papersize hardcoded at package build time pkfonts (empty) pkfonts 300 1.0 Package for 300dpi fonts If there is absolutely no trace of version information in the original source and it is unlikely that the original author will ever release another version, just set the version string to 1.0 (like the piewm example above). Otherwise, ask the original author or use the date string (yyyy.mm.dd) as the version. Categories As you already know, ports are classified in several categories. But for this to work, it is important that porters and users understand what each category is for and how we decide what to put in each category. Current list of categories First, this is the current list of port categories. Those marked with an asterisk (*) are virtual categories—those that do not have a corresponding subdirectory in the ports tree. For non-virtual categories, you will find a one-line description in the pkg/COMMENT file in that subdirectory (e.g., archivers/pkg/COMMENT). Category Description afterstep* Ports to support the AfterStep window manager. archivers Archiving tools. astro Astronomical ports. audio Sound support. benchmarks Benchmarking utilities. biology Biology-related software. cad Computer aided design tools. chinese Chinese language support. comms Communication software. Mostly software to talk to your serial port. converters Character code converters. databases Databases. deskutils Things that used to be on the desktop before computers were invented. devel Development utilities. Do not put libraries here just because they are libraries—unless they truly do not belong anywhere else, they should not be in this category. editors General editors. Specialized editors go in the section for those tools (e.g., a mathematical-formula editor will go in math). elisp* Emacs-lisp ports. emulators Emulators for other operating systems. Terminal emulators do not belong here—X-based ones should go to x11 and text-based ones to either comms or misc, depending on the exact functionality. french French language support. ftp FTP client and server utilities. If your port speaks both FTP and HTTP, put it in ftp with a secondary category of www. games Games. german German language support. gnome* Ports from the GNU Object Model Environment (GNOME) Project. graphics Graphics utilities. hebrew Hebrew language support. irc Internet Relay Chat utilities. ipv6* IPv6 related software. japanese Japanese language support. java Java language support. kde* Ports from the K Desktop Environment (KDE) Project. korean Korean language support. lang Programming languages. linux* Linux applications and support utilities. mail Mail software. math Numerical computation software and other utilities for mathematics. mbone MBone applications. misc Miscellaneous utilities—basically things that do not belong anywhere else. This is the only category that should not appear with any other non-virtual category. If you have misc with something else in your CATEGORIES line, that means you can safely delete misc and just put the port in that other subdirectory! net Miscellaneous networking software. news USENET news software. offix* Ports from the OffiX suite. palm Software support for the 3Com Palm(tm) series. perl5* Ports that require perl version 5 to run. plan9* Various programs from Plan9. print Printing software. Desktop publishing tools (previewers, etc.) belong here too. python* Software written in python. ruby* Software written in ruby. russian Russian language support. security Security utilities. shells Command line shells. sysutils System utilities. tcl76* Ports that use Tcl version 7.6 to run. tcl80* Ports that use Tcl version 8.0 to run. tcl81* Ports that use Tcl version 8.1 to run. tcl82* Ports that use Tcl version 8.2 to run. textproc Text processing utilities. It does not include desktop publishing tools, which go to print/. tk42* Ports that use Tk version 4.2 to run. tk80* Ports that use Tk version 8.0 to run. tk81* Ports that use Tk version 8.1 to run. tk82* Ports that use Tk version 8.2 to run. tkstep80* Ports that use TkSTEP version 8.0 to run. vietnamese Vietnamese language support. windowmaker* Ports to support the WindowMaker window manager www Software related to the World Wide Web. HTML language support belongs here too. x11 The X window system and friends. This category is only for software that directly supports the window system. Do not put regular X applications here. If your port is an X application, define USE_XLIB (implied by USE_IMAKE) and put it in the appropriate categories. Also, many of them go into other x11-* categories (see below). x11-clocks X11 clocks. x11-fm X11 file managers. x11-fonts X11 fonts and font utilities. x11-servers X11 servers. x11-toolkits X11 toolkits. x11-wm X11 window managers. zope* Zope support. Choosing the right category As many of the categories overlap, you often have to choose which of the categories should be the primary category of your port. There are several rules that govern this issue. Here is the list of priorities, in decreasing order of precedence. Language specific categories always come first. For example, if your port installs Japanese X11 fonts, then your CATEGORIES line would read japanese x11-fonts. Specific categories win over less-specific ones. For instance, an HTML editor should be listed as www editors, not the other way around. Also, you do not need to list net when the port belongs to any of irc, mail, mbone, news, security, or www. x11 is used as a secondary category only when the primary category is a natural language. In particular, you should not put x11 in the category line for X applications. Emacs modes should be placed in the same ports category as the application supported by the mode, not in editors. For example, an Emacs mode to edit source files of some programming language should go into lang. If your port truly does not belong anywhere else, put it in misc. If you are not sure about the category, please put a comment to that effect in your send-pr submission so we can discuss it before we import it. If you are a committer, send a note to the &a.ports; so we can discuss it first—too often new ports are imported to the wrong category only to be moved right away. Changes to this document and the ports system If you maintain a lot of ports, you should consider following the &a.ports;. Important changes to the way ports work will be announced there. You can always find more detailed information on the latest changes by looking at the bsd.port.mk CVS log. That is It, Folks! Boy, this sure was a long tutorial, wasn't it? Thanks for following us to here, really. Now that you know how to do a port, have at it and convert everything in the world into ports! That is the easiest way to start contributing to the FreeBSD Project! :-)