Chapter 1: Introduction 1
How to use this book 1
FreeBSD features 5
A little history 8
Other free UNIX-like operating systems 10
FreeBSD and Linux 11
Other documentation on FreeBSD 13
Reading the handbook 14
The online manual 15
GNU info 17
The FreeBSD community 18
Support 18
Reporting bugs 21
The Berkeley daemon 21
Page vii
Chapter 2: Before you install 27
Hardware requirements 27
Compaq/Digital Alpha machines 28
Laptops 29
Drivers 30
Supported hardware--Alpha architecture 33
The CD-ROM distribution 33
CD-ROM 1: Installation 34
CD-ROM 2: Live File System, CVS Repository, web pages 36
CD-ROMs 3 and 4: The Ports Collection 37
PC hardware 37
How the system detects hardware 38
Disks 39
PC BIOS and disks 41
Logical and physical disk drives 42
Making the file systems 47
Using a boot manager 48
Interaction with Microsoft 48
Sharing a disk with Microsoft 48
Using compressed MS-DOS file systems from FreeBSD 49
Running Microsoft binaries under FreeBSD 49
Disk size limitations 49
Chapter 3: FreeBSD version 3 54
Multiple processor support 55
The CAM SCSI driver 56
DMA support for IDE disks 57
The new console driver 57
Kernel loadable modules 58
The new bootstrap 59
Boot floppies 60
The ELF object format 61
Converting the source tree to ELF 61
Building a new kernel 62
What happened to my libraries? 67
The Ports Collection and ELF 70
Page viii
Chapter 4: Quick Installation 71
Making things easy for yourself 71
FreeBSD alone on the disk 73
Installing XFree86 74
FreeBSD shared with Microsoft 75
Chapter 5: Installing FreeBSD 77
Installing FreeBSD on the Intel i386 architecture 77
Booting from CD-ROM 78
Preparing a boot floppy 78
Creating floppies for a floppy installation 79
Installing via FTP 80
Installing via NFS 82
Installing from a Microsoft partition 82
Installing from tape 83
Installing from a FreeBSD partition 83
Booting the install kernel 83
Booting from CD-ROM 83
Booting from floppy 84
Installing from a running Microsoft system 84
The boot process 85
Using sysinstall 86
Kinds of installation 87
Creating space on disk 88
Specifying disk labels 91
Selecting distributions 97
Selecting the installation medium 98
Installing via FTP 98
Installing via NFS 99
Installing from floppy disk 99
Performing the installation 99
Network services 101
Setting up network interfaces 101
Other network options 102
Machine configuration 102
Rebooting the new system 102
Where to put /var and /tmp 103
Installing FreeBSD on a Compaq AXP (Alpha) system 104
Upgrade installation 105
Changing configuration 106
Installing additional software 106
How to uninstall FreeBSD 106
Page ix
Chapter 6: Shared OS Installation 107
Repartitioning with FIPS 107
Repartitioning--an example 109
Installing FreeBSD on a second partition 113
Chapter 7: Installation Problems 117
If things go wrong 117
Problems with sysinstall 118
Problems with CD-ROM installation 118
Install tries to install from floppy 118
Can't boot 119
Can't find correct geometry 119
System hangs during boot 120
Panic: cannot mount root 121
Can't find Intel EtherExpress board 122
Can't see 3Com PCMCIA board 122
No packets are transmitted on PCMCIA network board 123
Device timeout on ed Ethernet boards 123
Devices at IRQ 9 don't work 124
Kernel doesn't find Matsushita/Panasonic CD-ROM 124
Can't install from tape 125
Can't detect SCSI boards on HP Netserver 125
Can't install on Panasonic AL-N1 or Rios Chandler 125
Problems with the CMD640 IDE controller 126
Can't find the floppy on Compaq Aero notebook 126
Read errors on Intel AL440LX based systems 126
Can't recognize Dell DSA on Poweredge XE 126
Can't use the AMD PCnet-FAST Ethernet board 127
Can't operate IBM EtherJet board 127
IBM Netfinity 3500 freezes during network installation 127
TEAC CD-220E (rev 1.0D) IDE CD-ROM hangs the system 127
Root file system fills up 128
Panic 128
Fixing a broken installation 130
Chapter 8: The Ports Collection 131
How to install a package 132
Building a port 133
Installing ports during system installation 133
Install ports from the first CD-ROM 133
Installing ports from the ports CD-ROM 133
Ports via FTP 134
Page x
What's in that port? 135
Ports via CVSup 136
Getting the source archive 137
Building the port 138
Port dependencies 138
Getting common software 139
Maintaining ports 140
Submitting a new port 142
Chapter 9: Setting up X11 143
For the impatient 143
Installing XFree86 143
The XFree86 distribution 144
The X Server 144
Installing XFree86 manually 148
Unpacking the archives 148
Installing the server 150
Setting up the environment 150
Assigning a virtual terminal to X 151
Configuring X for Your Hardware 152
Identifying the hardware 152
Running xf86config 153
Chapter 10: XFree86 configuration in depth 167
X configuration: the theory 167
How TVs and monitors work 167
How monitors differ from TVs 169
How to fry your monitor 170
The CRT controller 171
The XF86Config mode line 173
XF86Config 176
The Files section 177
The Keyboard section 178
The Pointer section 179
The Device section 180
Configuring the Monitor and its Modes 184
The Monitor section 184
The Screen section 186
Page xi
Chapter 11: Making friends with FreeBSD 189
Differences from other environments 190
Upper and lower case names 190
File names and extensions 191
Globbing characters 191
Shell parameters 192
Fields which can contain spaces 194
Slashes: backward and forward 194
Tab characters 195
Carriage control characters 195
Users and groups 196
Choosing a user name 197
Adding users 198
Adding or changing passwords 201
The super user 202
Login classes 203
Referring to other classes 205
Using login classes 205
Using the shell 206
Command line editing 208
Command history and other editing functions 210
Environment variables 213
Shell startup files 215
Changing your shell 217
Processes 219
What processes do I have running? 219
What processes are running? 220
top 222
Daemons 222
cron 223
Stopping processes 224
Timekeeping 225
The TZ environment variable 226
Keeping the correct time 226
