FreeBSD Handbook

The FreeBSD Documentation Project

FreeBSD Handbook
by The FreeBSD Documentation Project
Published February 1999
Copyright © 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 by The FreeBSD Documentation Project

Welcome to FreeBSD! This handbook covers the installation and day to day use of FreeBSD 4.4-RELEASE. This
manual is a work in progress and is the work of many individuals. Many sections do not yet exist and some of those
that do exist need to be updated. If you are interested in helping with this project, send email to the FreeBSD
documentation project mailing list <freebsd-doc@[Link]>. The latest version of this document is always
available from the FreeBSD web site (../../../../[Link]). It may also be downloaded in a variety of formats and
compression options from the FreeBSD FTP server ([Link] or one of the
numerous mirror sites. If you would prefer to have a hard copy of the handbook, you can purchase one at the
FreeBSD Mall ([Link] You may also want to search the handbook
(../../../../search/[Link]).

Redistribution and use in source (SGML DocBook) and ’compiled’ forms (SGML, HTML, PDF, PostScript, RTF and so forth) with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code (SGML DocBook) must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions
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2. Redistributions in compiled form (transformed to other DTDs, converted to PDF, PostScript, RTF and other
formats) must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

Important: THIS DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED BY THE FREEBSD DOCUMENTATION PROJECT "AS IS"
AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN
NO EVENT SHALL THE FREEBSD DOCUMENTATION PROJECT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
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TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR
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DAMAGE.
Table of Contents
Preface.............................................................................................................................................................................i
I. Getting Started ...........................................................................................................................................................i
1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................1
1.1 Synopsis.................................................................................................................................................1
1.2 Welcome to FreeBSD! ...........................................................................................................................1
1.3 About the FreeBSD Project ...................................................................................................................4
2 Installing FreeBSD.............................................................................................................................................9
2.1 Synopsis.................................................................................................................................................9
2.2 Pre-installation Tasks.............................................................................................................................9
2.3 Starting the Installation........................................................................................................................14
2.4 Introducing Sysinstall ..........................................................................................................................23
2.5 Allocating Disk Space .........................................................................................................................28
2.6 Choosing What To Install ....................................................................................................................46
2.7 Choosing Your Installation Media .......................................................................................................48
2.8 Committing to the Installation .............................................................................................................49
2.9 Post-installation ...................................................................................................................................50
2.10 Supported Hardware ..........................................................................................................................80
2.11 Troubleshooting .................................................................................................................................80
2.12 Advanced Installation Guide .............................................................................................................82
2.13 Preparing Your Own Installation Media ............................................................................................84
3 Unix Basics ......................................................................................................................................................89
3.1 Synopsis...............................................................................................................................................89
3.2 Permissions ..........................................................................................................................................89
3.3 Directory Structure ..............................................................................................................................90
3.4 Mounting and Unmounting Filesystems..............................................................................................92
3.5 Processes..............................................................................................................................................94
3.6 Daemons, Signals, and Killing Processes............................................................................................95
3.7 Shells....................................................................................................................................................97
3.8 Text Editors..........................................................................................................................................99
3.9 Devices and Device Nodes ................................................................................................................100
3.10 For More Information... ...................................................................................................................100
4 Installing Applications: Packages and Ports ..................................................................................................103
4.1 Synopsis.............................................................................................................................................103
4.2 Overview of Software Installation .....................................................................................................103
4.3 Finding Your Application ..................................................................................................................105
4.4 Using the Packages System ...............................................................................................................105
4.5 Using the Ports Collection .................................................................................................................107
4.6 Troubleshooting .................................................................................................................................112
5 The X Window System ..................................................................................................................................118
5.1 Synopsis.............................................................................................................................................118
5.2 Understanding X................................................................................................................................118
5.3 Installing XFree86 .............................................................................................................................120
5.4 XFree86 Configuration ......................................................................................................................121
5.5 Using Fonts in XFree86.....................................................................................................................123
5.6 The X Display Manager.....................................................................................................................126

iii
 5.7 Desktop Environments.......................................................................................................................129
II. System Administration ........................................................................................................................................134
6 Configuration and Tuning...............................................................................................................................135
6.1 Synopsis.............................................................................................................................................135
6.2 Initial Configuration...........................................................................................................................135
6.3 Core Configuration ............................................................................................................................137
6.4 Application Configuration .................................................................................................................137
6.5 Starting Services ................................................................................................................................138
6.6 Virtual Hosts ......................................................................................................................................139
6.7 Configuration Files ............................................................................................................................140
6.8 Tuning with sysctl..............................................................................................................................144
6.9 Tuning Disks......................................................................................................................................144
6.10 Tuning Kernel Limits.......................................................................................................................145
7 The FreeBSD Booting Process.......................................................................................................................147
7.1 Synopsis.............................................................................................................................................147
7.2 The Booting Problem.........................................................................................................................147
7.3 The MBR, and Boot Stages One, Two, and Three ............................................................................148
7.4 Kernel Interaction During Boot .........................................................................................................151
7.5 Init: Process Control Initialization.....................................................................................................152
7.6 Shutdown Sequence...........................................................................................................................153
8 Users and Basic Account Management..........................................................................................................154
8.1 Synopsis.............................................................................................................................................154
8.2 Introduction........................................................................................................................................154
8.3 The Superuser Account......................................................................................................................155
8.4 System Accounts ...............................................................................................................................156
8.5 User Accounts....................................................................................................................................156
8.6 Modifying Accounts ..........................................................................................................................156
8.7 Limiting Users ...................................................................................................................................161
8.8 Personalizing Users ...........................................................................................................................163
8.9 Groups................................................................................................................................................163
9 Configuring the FreeBSD Kernel ...................................................................................................................166
9.1 Synopsis.............................................................................................................................................166
9.2 Why Build a Custom Kernel?............................................................................................................166
9.3 Building and Installing a Custom Kernel ..........................................................................................167
9.4 The Configuration File.......................................................................................................................169
9.5 Making Device Nodes .......................................................................................................................180
9.6 If Something Goes Wrong .................................................................................................................180
10 Security.........................................................................................................................................................183
10.1 Synopsis...........................................................................................................................................183
10.2 Introduction......................................................................................................................................183
10.3 Securing FreeBSD ...........................................................................................................................185
10.4 DES, MD5, and Crypt .....................................................................................................................191
10.5 S/Key ...............................................................................................................................................192
10.6 Kerberos...........................................................................................................................................197
10.7 Firewalls...........................................................................................................................................204
10.8 OpenSSL..........................................................................................................................................212
10.9 IPsec.................................................................................................................................................212

iv
 10.10 OpenSSH .......................................................................................................................................218
11 Printing .........................................................................................................................................................223
11.1 Synopsis...........................................................................................................................................223
11.2 Introduction......................................................................................................................................223
11.3 Basic Setup ......................................................................................................................................224
11.4 Advanced Printer Setup ...................................................................................................................236
11.5 Using Printers ..................................................................................................................................264
11.6 Alternatives to the Standard Spooler ...............................................................................................271
11.7 Troubleshooting ...............................................................................................................................271
12 Storage..........................................................................................................................................................275
12.1 Synopsis...........................................................................................................................................275
12.2 Device Names ..................................................................................................................................275
12.3 Adding Disks ...................................................................................................................................275
12.4 Network, Memory, and File-Based Filesystems..............................................................................278
12.5 File System Quotas ..........................................................................................................................279
12.6 Creating and Using Optical Media (CDs & DVDs) ........................................................................282
12.7 RAID................................................................................................................................................284
12.8 Tape Backup Media .........................................................................................................................287
12.9 Backup Programs.............................................................................................................................290
12.10 Backups to Floppies.......................................................................................................................296
13 Localization - I18N/L10N Usage and Setup ................................................................................................298
13.1 Synopsis...........................................................................................................................................298
13.2 The Basics........................................................................................................................................298
13.3 Using Localization...........................................................................................................................299
13.4 Compiling I18N Programs...............................................................................................................305
13.5 Localizing FreeBSD to Specific Languages ....................................................................................305
14 Sound............................................................................................................................................................309
14.1 Synopsis...........................................................................................................................................309
14.2 Locating the Correct Device ............................................................................................................309
14.3 Recompiling the Kernel ...................................................................................................................311
14.4 Creating and Testing the Device Nodes...........................................................................................311
14.5 Common Problems ..........................................................................................................................312
14.6 MP3 Audio.......................................................................................................................................312
15 Serial Communications ................................................................................................................................315
15.1 Synopsis...........................................................................................................................................315
15.2 Introduction......................................................................................................................................315
15.3 Terminals .........................................................................................................................................319
15.4 Dial-in Service .................................................................................................................................323
15.5 Dial-out Service ...............................................................................................................................331
15.6 Setting Up the Serial Console..........................................................................................................334
16 PPP and SLIP ...............................................................................................................................................343
16.1 Synopsis...........................................................................................................................................343
16.2 Using User PPP................................................................................................................................343
16.3 Using Kernel PPP ............................................................................................................................356
16.4 Using PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE) ..................................................................................................364
16.5 Using PPP over ATM (PPPoA).......................................................................................................366
16.6 Using SLIP.......................................................................................................................................366
17 Advanced Networking..................................................................................................................................376

v
 17.1 Synopsis...........................................................................................................................................376
17.2 Gateways and Routes.......................................................................................................................376
17.3 Bridging ...........................................................................................................................................380
17.4 NFS ..................................................................................................................................................382
17.5 Diskless Operation...........................................................................................................................387
17.6 ISDN ................................................................................................................................................392
17.7 NIS/YP.............................................................................................................................................396
17.8 DHCP...............................................................................................................................................411
17.9 DNS .................................................................................................................................................413
17.10 NTP................................................................................................................................................423
17.11 Network Address Translation ........................................................................................................426
17.12 inetd “Super-Server”......................................................................................................................429
18 Electronic Mail.............................................................................................................................................434
18.1 Synopsis...........................................................................................................................................434
18.2 Using Electronic Mail......................................................................................................................434
18.3 sendmail Configuration...................................................................................................................435
18.4 Troubleshooting ...............................................................................................................................438
18.5 Advanced Topics..............................................................................................................................440
19 The Cutting Edge .........................................................................................................................................443
19.1 Synopsis...........................................................................................................................................443
19.2 FreeBSD-CURRENT vs. FreeBSD-STABLE.................................................................................443
19.3 Synchronizing Your Source .............................................................................................................447
19.4 Using make world .........................................................................................................................448
20 Linux Binary Compatibility .........................................................................................................................461
20.1 Synopsis...........................................................................................................................................461
20.2 Installation .......................................................................................................................................461
20.3 Installing Mathematica ....................................................................................................................464
20.4 Installing Maple ...............................................................................................................................466
20.5 Installing Oracle...............................................................................................................................468
20.6 Installing SAP R/3 (4.6B - IDES)....................................................................................................471
20.7 Advanced Topics..............................................................................................................................487
III. Appendices ..........................................................................................................................................................490
A. Obtaining FreeBSD ......................................................................................................................................491
A.1 CDROM Publishers ..........................................................................................................................491
A.2 DVD Publishers ................................................................................................................................492
A.3 FTP Sites...........................................................................................................................................492
A.4 Anonymous CVS ..............................................................................................................................499
A.5 Using CTM .......................................................................................................................................501
A.6 Using CVSup ....................................................................................................................................505
A.7 CVS Tags ..........................................................................................................................................522
A.8 AFS Sites ..........................................................................................................................................524
B. Bibliography .................................................................................................................................................525
B.1 Books & Magazines Specific to FreeBSD ........................................................................................525
B.2 Users’ Guides....................................................................................................................................525
B.3 Administrators’ Guides .....................................................................................................................526
B.4 Programmers’ Guides .......................................................................................................................526
B.5 Operating System Internals...............................................................................................................527

vi
 B.6 Security Reference ............................................................................................................................527
B.7 Hardware Reference..........................................................................................................................528
B.8 Unix History......................................................................................................................................528
B.9 Magazines and Journals ....................................................................................................................529
C. Resources on the Internet .............................................................................................................................530
C.1 Mailing Lists .....................................................................................................................................530
C.2 Usenet Newsgroups...........................................................................................................................539
C.3 World Wide Web Servers ..................................................................................................................541
C.4 Email Addresses................................................................................................................................543
C.5 Shell Accounts ..................................................................................................................................543
D. PGP Keys......................................................................................................................................................544
D.1 Officers..............................................................................................................................................544
D.2 Core Team Members.........................................................................................................................544
D.3 Developers ........................................................................................................................................545
Colophon....................................................................................................................................................................554

vii
List of Tables
2-1. Sample Device Inventory.........................................................................................................................................9
2-2. Disk Device Codes ................................................................................................................................................33
2-3. Partition Layout for First Disk...............................................................................................................................38
2-4. Partition Layout for Subsequent Disks..................................................................................................................41
12-1. Physical Disk Naming Conventions ..................................................................................................................275

List of Figures
2-1. Kernel Configuration Menu...................................................................................................................................18
2-2. The Kernel Device Configuration Visual Interface ...............................................................................................18
2-3. Expanded Driver List.............................................................................................................................................19
2-4. Driver Configuration With No Conflicts ...............................................................................................................20
2-5. Sysinstall Main Menu............................................................................................................................................21
2-6. Typical Device Probe Results ................................................................................................................................21
2-7. Select Sysinstall Exit .............................................................................................................................................22
2-8. Selecting Usage From Sysinstall Main Menu .......................................................................................................23
2-9. Selecting Documentation Menu ............................................................................................................................24
2-10. Sysinstall Documentation Menu..........................................................................................................................24
2-11. Sysinstall Main Menu..........................................................................................................................................25
2-12. Sysinstall Keymap Menu.....................................................................................................................................26
2-13. Sysinstall Main Menu..........................................................................................................................................26
2-14. Sysinstall Options ................................................................................................................................................26
2-15. Begin Standard Installation .................................................................................................................................27
2-16. Select Drive for FDisk .........................................................................................................................................35
2-17. Typical Fdisk Partitions Before Editing ..............................................................................................................36
2-18. Fdisk Partition Using Entire Disk........................................................................................................................36
2-19. Sysinstall Boot Manager Menu ...........................................................................................................................37
2-20. Exit Select Drive..................................................................................................................................................38
2-21. Sysinstall Disklabel Editor ..................................................................................................................................42
2-22. Sysinstall Disklabel Editor With Auto Defaults ..................................................................................................43
2-23. Free Space For Root Partition..............................................................................................................................43
2-24. Edit Root Partition Size .......................................................................................................................................44
2-25. Choose The Root Partition Type..........................................................................................................................44
2-26. Choose The Root Mount Point ............................................................................................................................45
2-27. Sysinstall Disklabel Editor ..................................................................................................................................45
2-28. Choose Distributions ...........................................................................................................................................46
2-29. Confirm Distributions ..........................................................................................................................................47
2-30. Choose Installation Media ...................................................................................................................................48
2-31. Selecting An Ethernet Device..............................................................................................................................51
2-32. Set Network Configuration For ed0.....................................................................................................................51
2-33. Editing [Link] ...........................................................................................................................................53
2-34. Default Anonymous FTP Configuration..............................................................................................................55
2-35. Edit The FTP Welcome Message ........................................................................................................................56
2-36. Editing the Exports File.......................................................................................................................................57

viii
2-37. Security Profile Options.......................................................................................................................................58
2-38. System Console Configuration Options ..............................................................................................................59
2-39. Screensaver Options ............................................................................................................................................59
2-40. Screensaver Timeout............................................................................................................................................60
2-41. System Console Configuration Exit ....................................................................................................................60
2-42. Select Your Region ..............................................................................................................................................61
2-43. Select Your Country.............................................................................................................................................62
2-44. Select Your Timezone..........................................................................................................................................62
2-45. Select Mouse Protocol Type ................................................................................................................................64
2-46. Set Mouse Protocol..............................................................................................................................................64
2-47. Configure Mouse Port..........................................................................................................................................64
2-48. Setting The Mouse Port .......................................................................................................................................65
2-49. Enable The Mouse Daemon ................................................................................................................................65
2-50. Test The Mouse Daemon.....................................................................................................................................66
2-51. Select Configuration Method Menu ....................................................................................................................67
2-52. Select Default Desktop ........................................................................................................................................70
2-53. Select Package Category......................................................................................................................................71
2-54. Select Packages....................................................................................................................................................71
2-55. Install Packages ...................................................................................................................................................72
2-56. Confirm Package Installation...............................................................................................................................72
2-57. Select Add User ...................................................................................................................................................73
2-58. Add User Information..........................................................................................................................................74
2-59. Exit User and Group Management ......................................................................................................................75
2-60. Exit Install............................................................................................................................................................76

List of Examples
2-1. Using an existing partition unchanged ..................................................................................................................11
2-2. Shrinking an existing partition ..............................................................................................................................11
2-3. Sample Disk, Slice, and Partition Names ..............................................................................................................33
2-4. Conceptual Model of a Disk..................................................................................................................................33
4-1. Downloading a Package and then Installing It Locally .......................................................................................105
7-1. boot0 Screenshot................................................................................................................................................148
7-2. boot2 Screenshot................................................................................................................................................149
7-3. An Insecure Console in /etc/ttys..........................................................................................................................152
8-1. Configuring adduser ............................................................................................................................................157
8-2. rmuser Interactive Account Removal ..................................................................................................................159
8-3. Interactive chpass by Superuser...........................................................................................................................159
8-4. Interactive chpass by Normal User......................................................................................................................159
8-5. Changing Your Password.....................................................................................................................................160
8-6. Changing Another User’s Password as the Superuser.........................................................................................160
8-7. Adding a Group Using pw(8) ..............................................................................................................................164
8-8. Adding Somebody to a Group Using pw(8)........................................................................................................164
8-9. Using id(1) to Determine Group Membership ....................................................................................................164
12-1. Using vnconfig to mount an Existing Filesystem Image...................................................................................278
12-2. Creating a New File-Backed Disk with vnconfig ..............................................................................................278
12-3. md Memory Disk...............................................................................................................................................279

ix
12-4. Using rdump over ssh .......................................................................................................................................290
12-5. A Script for Creating a Bootable Floppy...........................................................................................................293
15-1. Adding Terminal Entries to /etc/ttys ...........................................................................................................321
17-1. Mounting an Export with amd ..........................................................................................................................385
17-2. Branch Office or Home Network.......................................................................................................................395
17-3. Head Office or Other LAN ................................................................................................................................395
17-4. Sending inetd a HangUP Signal........................................................................................................................431
18-1. Configuring the sendmail Access Database......................................................................................................436
18-2. Mail Aliases.......................................................................................................................................................436
18-3. Example Virtual Domain Mail Map ..................................................................................................................437
A-1. Checking Out Something from -CURRENT (ls(1)) and Deleting It Again: ......................................................500
A-2. Checking Out the Version of ls(1) in the 3.X-STABLE Branch:........................................................................500
A-3. Creating a List of Changes (as unified diffs) to ls(1)..........................................................................................500
A-4. Finding Out What Other Module Names Can Be Used: ....................................................................................500

x
Preface

Intended Audience
The FreeBSD newcomer will find that the first section of this book guides the user through the FreeBSD installation
process, and gently introduces the concepts and conventions that underpin Unix. Working through this section
requires little more than the desire to explore, and the ability to take on board new concepts as they are introduced.
Once you’ve have travelled this far, the second, far larger, section of the Handbook is a comprehensive reference to
all manner of topics of interest to FreeBSD system administrators. Some of these chapters may recommend that you
do some prior reading, and this is noted in the synopsis at the beginning of each chapter.
For a list of additional sources of information, please see Appendix B.

Changes from the First Edition

This second edition is the culmination of over two years of work by the dedicated members of the FreeBSD
Documentation Project. The following are the major changes in this new edition:

• A complete Index has been added.

• All ASCII figures have been replaced by graphical diagrams.
• A standard synopsis has been added to each chapter to give a quick summary of what information the chapter
contains, and what the reader is expected to know.
• The content has been logically reorganized into three parts: "Getting Started", "System Administration", and
"Appendices".
• Chapter 2 ("Installing FreeBSD") was completely rewritten with many screenshots to make it much easier for new
users to grasp the text.
• Chapter 3 ("Unix Basics") has been expanded to contain additional information about processes, daemons, and
signals.
• Chapter 4 ("Installing Applications") has been expanded to contain additional information about binary package
management.
• Chapter 5 ("The X Window System") has been completely rewritten with an emphasis on using modern desktop
technologies such as KDE and GNOME on XFree86 4.X.
• Chapter 7 ("The FreeBSD Booting Process") has been expanded.
• Chapter 12 ("Storage") has been written from what used to be two separate chapters on "Disks" and "Backups".
We feel that the topics are easier to comprehend when presented as a single chapter. A section on RAID (both
hardware and software) has also been added.
• Chapter 15 ("Serial Communications") has been completely reorganized and updated for FreeBSD 4.X/5.X.
• Chapter 16 ("PPP and SLIP") has been substantially updated.
• Many new sections have been added to Chapter 17 ("Advanced Networking").
• Chapter 18 ("Electronic Mail") has been expanded to include more information about configuring sendmail.

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 Preface

• Chapter 20 ("Linux Compatibility") has been expanded to include information about installing Oracle and
SAP/R3.
• The following new topics are covered in this second edition:
• Configuration and Tuning (Chapter 6).
• Sound (Chapter 14)

Organization of This Book

This book is split into three logically distinct sections. The first section, Getting Started, covers the installation and
basic usage of FreeBSD. It is expected that the reader will follow these chapters in sequence, possibly skipping
chapters covering familiar topics. The second section, System Administration, covers a broad collection of subjects
that are of interest to more advanced FreeBSD users. Each section begins with a succinct synopsis that describes
what the chapter covers and what the reader is expected to already know. This is meant to allow the casual reader to
skip around to find chapters of interest. The third section contains appendices of reference information.

Chapter 1, Introduction
Introduces FreeBSD to a new user. It describes the history of the FreeBSD Project, the goals, development
model, and everything else they’ve done for the FreeBSD project.

Chapter 2, Installation
Walks a user through the entire installation process. Some advanced installation topics, such as installing
through a serial console, are also covered.

Chapter 3, Unix Basics

Covers the basic commands and functionality of the FreeBSD operating system. If you are familiar with Linux
or another flavor of Unix then you can probably skip this chapter.

Chapter 4, Installing Applications

Covers the installation of third-party software with both FreeBSD’s innovative "Ports Collection" and standard
binary packages.

Chapter 5, The X Window System

Describes the X Window System in general and using XFree86 on FreeBSD in particular. Also describes
common desktop environments such as KDE and GNOME.

Chapter 6, Configuration and Tuning

Describes the parameters available for system administrators to tune a FreeBSD system for optimum
performance. Also describes the various configuration files used in FreeBSD and where to find them.

Chapter 7, Booting Process

Describes the FreeBSD boot process and explains how to control this process with configuration options.

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 Preface

Chapter 8, Users and Basic Account Management

Describes the creation and manipulation of user accounts. Also discusses resource limitations that can be set on
users and other account management tasks.

Chapter 9, Configuring the FreeBSD Kernel

Explains why you might need to configure a new kernel and provides detailed instructions for configuring,
building, and installing a custom kernel.

Chapter 10, Security

Describes many different tools available to help keep your FreeBSD system secure, including Kerberos, IPSec,
OpenSSH, and network firewalls.

Chapter 11, Printing

Describes managing printers on FreeBSD, including information about banner pages, printer accounting, and
initial setup.

Chapter 12, Storage

Describes how to manage storage media and filesystems with FreeBSD. This includes physical disks, RAID
arrays, optical and tape media, memory-backed disks, and network filesystems.

Chapter 13, Localization

Describes how to use FreeBSD in languages other than English. Covers both system and application level
localization.

Chapter 14, Sound

Shows how to setup sound support for your system. Also describes some sample audio applications.

Chapter 15, Serial Communications

Explains how to connect terminals and modems to your FreeBSD system for both dial in and dial out
connections.

Chapter 16, PPP and SLIP

Describes how to use PPP, SLIP, or PPP over Ethernet to connect to remote systems with FreeBSD.

Chapter 17, Advanced Networking

Describes many networking topics, including sharing an Internet connection with other computers on your
LAN, using network filesystems, sharing account information via NIS, setting up a name server, and much
more.

Chapter 18, Electronic Mail

Explains the different components of an email server and dives into simple configuration topics for the most
popular mail server software: sendmail.

Chapter 19, The Cutting Edge

Explains the different between FreeBSD-STABLE, FreeBSD-CURRENT, and FreeBSD releases. Describes
which users would benefit from tracking a development system and outlines that process.

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 Preface

Chapter 20, Linux Binary Compatibility

Describes the Linux compatibility features of FreeBSD. Also provides detailed installation instructions for
many popular Linux applications such as Oracle, SAP/R3, and Mathematica.

Appendix A, Obtaining FreeBSD

Lists different sources for obtaining FreeBSD media on CDROM or DVD as well as different sites on the
Internet that allow you to download and install FreeBSD.

Appendix B, Bibliography
This book touches on many different subjects that may leave you hungry for a more detailed explanation. The
bibliography lists many excellent books that are referenced in the text.

Appendix C, Resources on the Internet

Describes the many forums available for FreeBSD users to post questions and engage in technical conversations
about FreeBSD.

Appendix D, PGP Keys

Lists the PGP fingerprints of several FreeBSD Developers.

Conventions used in this book

To provide a consistent and easy to read text, several conventions are followed throughout the book.

Typographic Conventions

Italic
An italic font is used for filenames, URLs, emphasized text, and the first usage of technical terms.

Monospace

A monospaced font is used for error messages, commands, environment variables, names of ports, hostnames,
user names, group names, device names, variables, and code fragments.

Bold
A bold font is used for applications, commands, and keys.

User Input
Keys are rendered in bold to stand out from other text. Key combinations that are meant to be typed simultaneously
are rendered with ‘+’ between the keys, such as :
Ctrl+Alt+Del
Keys that are meant to be typed in sequence will be separated with commas, for example :
Ctrl+X, Ctrl+S
Would mean that the user is expected to type the Ctrl and X keys simultaneously and then to type the Ctrl and S
keys simultaneously.

iv
 Preface

Examples
Examples starting with E:\ indicate a MS-DOS command. Unless otherwise noted, these commands may be
executed from a "Command Prompt" window in a modern Microsoft Windows environment.

E:\
tools\fdimage floppies\[Link] A:

Examples starting with # indicate a command that must be invoked as the superuser in FreeBSD. You can login as
root to type the command, or login as your normal account and use su to gain superuser privileges.

# dd if=[Link] of=/dev/fd0

Examples starting with % indicate a command that should be invoked from a normal user account. Unless otherwise
noted, C-shell syntax is used for setting environment variables and other shell commands.

% top

Acknowledgments
The book you are holding represents the efforts of many hundreds of people around the world. Whether they sent in
fixes for typos, or submitted complete chapters, all the contributions have been useful.
Several companies have supported the development of this document by paying authors to work on it full-time,
paying for publication, etc. In particular, BSDi (subsequently acquired by Wind River Systems
([Link] paid members of the FreeBSD Documentation Project to work on improving this book
full time leading up to the publication of the first printed edition in March 2000 (ISBN 1-57176-241-8). Wind River
Systems then paid several additional authors to make a number of improvements to the print-output infrastructure
and to add additional chapters to the text. This work culminated in the publication of the second printed edition in
November 2001 (ISBN 1-57176-303-1).

v
 I. Getting Started
This part of the FreeBSD Handbook is for users and administrators who are new to FreeBSD. These chapters:

• Introduce you to FreeBSD.

• Guide you through the installation process.
• Teach you some Unix basics.
• Show you how to install the wealth of third party applications available for FreeBSD.
• Introduce you to X, the Unix windowing system, and detail how to configure a desktop environment that makes
you more productive.
We have tried to keep the number of forward references in the text to a minimum so that you can read this section of
the Handbook from front to back with the minimum of page flipping required.
Chapter 1 Introduction
Restructured, reorganized, and parts rewritten by Jim Mock.

1.1 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.
After reading this chapter, you will know:

• How FreeBSD relates to other computer operating systems.

• The history of the FreeBSD Project.
• The goals of the FreeBSD Project.
• The basics of the FreeBSD open-source development model.
• And of course: where the name "FreeBSD" comes from.

1.2 Welcome to FreeBSD!

FreeBSD is a 4.4BSD-Lite 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 (../../articles/contributing/[Link])
article.

1.2.1 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 interoperate easily with other systems as well as act as an enterprise server,
providing vital functions such as NFS (remote file access) and email services or putting your organization on the
Internet with WWW, FTP, routing and firewall (security) services.

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 Chapter 1 Introduction

• 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.
• 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 online documentation.
• And many more!
FreeBSD is based on the 4.4BSD-Lite 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

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 Chapter 1 Introduction

• 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. Please see Appendix A
for more information about obtaining FreeBSD.

1.2.2 Who uses FreeBSD?

FreeBSD is used to power some of the biggest sites on the Internet, including:

• Yahoo! ([Link]
• Apache ([Link]
• Be, Inc. ([Link]
• Blue Mountain Arts ([Link]
• Pair Networks ([Link]
• Whistle Communications ([Link]
• Microsoft ([Link]
• Hotmail ([Link]
• Sony Japan ([Link]

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 Chapter 1 Introduction

and many more.

1.3 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.

1.3.1 A Brief History of FreeBSD

Contributed by Jordan Hubbard.

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 [Link].
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

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 Chapter 1 Introduction

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 [Link], 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 4.X-STABLE branch, now
considered to be the "current -stable branch". There have been several releases from it so far: 4.0-RELEASE came
out in March 2000, 4.1 was released in July 2000, 4.2 in November 2000, 4.3 in April 2001, and 4.4 in September
2001. There will be more releases along the 4.X-stable (RELENG_4) branch well into 2002.
Long-term development projects continue to take place in the 5.0-CURRENT (trunk) branch, and SNAPshot releases
of 5.0 on CDROM (and, of course, on the net) are continually made available from the snapshot server
([Link] as work progresses.

1.3.2 FreeBSD Project Goals

Contributed by Jordan Hubbard.

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 is a reasonable option to do so.

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 Chapter 1 Introduction

1.3.3 The FreeBSD Development Model

Contributed by Satoshi 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 our list of contributors
(../../articles/contributors/[Link]). 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 FreeBSD technical
discussions mailing list <freebsd-hackers@[Link]>. The FreeBSD announcements mailing list
<freebsd-announce@[Link]> 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 ([Link] (Concurrent Versions
System), a freely available source code control tool that comes bundled with FreeBSD. The primary CVS
repository ([Link] resides on a machine in Santa Clara 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 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 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@[Link]>.

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. The current core
team was elected from a pool of committer candidates in October 2000. Elections are held every 2 years.
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. For a complete list of FreeBSD developers
and their areas of responsibility, please see the Contributors List (../../articles/contributors/[Link])

Note: 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!

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 Chapter 1 Introduction

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 FreeBSD technical discussions mailing list
<freebsd-hackers@[Link]> (see mailing list info) where such things are discussed.
The FreeBSD Contributors List (../../articles/contributors/[Link]) 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 FreeBSD Project web site (../../../../[Link]).

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!

1.3.4 The Current FreeBSD Release

FreeBSD is a freely available, full source 4.4BSD-Lite 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. At the time of this printing, there were over 6,000 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 100MB 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

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 Chapter 1 Introduction

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

/usr/share/doc/handbook/[Link]

The FreeBSD FAQ

/usr/share/doc/faq/[Link]
You can also view the master (and most frequently updated) copies at [Link] (../../../../[Link]).

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Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD
Restructured, reorganized, and parts rewritten by Jim Mock. The sysinstall walkthrough, screenshots, and general
copy by Randy Pratt.

2.1 Synopsis
FreeBSD is provided with a text-based, easy to use installation program called Sysinstall. This is the default
installation program for FreeBSD, although vendors are free to provide their own installation suite if they wish. This
chapter describes how to use Sysinstall to install FreeBSD.
After reading this chapter, you will know:

• How to create the FreeBSD installation disks.

• How FreeBSD refers to, and subdivides, your hard disks.
• How to start Sysinstall.
• The questions Sysinstall will ask you, what they mean, and how to answer them.
Before reading this chapter, you should:

• Read the supported hardware list that shipped with the version of FreeBSD you are installing, and verify that your
hardware is supported.

Note: In general, these installation instructions are written for i386 (“PC compatible”) architecture computers.
Where applicable, instructions specific to other platforms (for example, Alpha) will be listed.

2.2 Pre-installation Tasks

2.2.1 Inventory Your Computer

Before installing FreeBSD you should attempt to inventory the components in your computer. The FreeBSD
installation routines will show you the components (hard disks, network cards, CDROM drives, and so forth) with
their model number and manufacturer. FreeBSD will also attempt to determine the correct configuration for these
devices, which includes information about IRQ and IO port usage. Due to the vagaries of PC hardware this process is
not always completely successful, and you may need to correct FreeBSD’s determination of your configuration.
If you already have another operating system installed, such as Windows or Linux, it is a good idea to use the
facilities provided by those operating systems to see how your hardware is already configured. If you are really not
sure what settings an expansion card is using, you may find it printed on the card itself. Popular IRQ numbers are 3,
5, and 7, and IO port addresses are normally written as hexadecimal numbers, such as 0x330.
We recommend you print or write down this information before installing FreeBSD. It may help to use a table, like
this:

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Table 2-1. Sample Device Inventory

Device Name IRQ IO port(s) Notes

First hard disk N/A N/A 4GB, made by Seagate, first
IDE master
CDROM N/A N/A First IDE slave
Second hard disk N/A N/A 2GB, made by IBM, second
IDE master
First IDE controller 14 0x1f0
Network card N/A N/A Intel 10/100
Modem N/A N/A 3Com 56K faxmodem, on
COM1:
...

2.2.2 Backup Your Data

If the computer you will be installing FreeBSD on contains valuable data then ensure you have it backed up, and that
you have tested the backups before installing FreeBSD. The FreeBSD installation routine will prompt you several
times before writing any data to your disk, but once that process has started it cannot be undone.

2.2.3 Decide Where to Install FreeBSD

If you want FreeBSD to use all your disk, then there is nothing more to concern yourself with at this point — you
can skip to the next section.
However, if you need FreeBSD to co-exist with other operating systems then you need to have a rough understanding
of how data is laid out on the disk, and how this affects you.

[Link] Disk Layouts for the i386

A PC disk can be divided in to discrete chunks. These chunks are called partitions. By design, the PC only supports
four partitions per disk. These partitions are called primary partitions. To work around this limitation and allow more
than four partitions, a new partition type was created, the extended partition. A disk may contain only one extended
partition. Special partitions, called logical partitions, can be created inside this extended partition.
Each partition has a partition ID, which is a number used to identify the type of data on the partition. FreeBSD
partitions have the partition ID 165.
In general, each operating system that you use will identify partitions in a particular way. For example, DOS, and its
descendants, like Windows, assign each primary and logical partition a drive letter, starting with C:.
FreeBSD must be installed into a primary partition. FreeBSD can keep all its data, including any files that you create,
on this one partition. However, if you have multiple disks, then you can create a FreeBSD partition on all, or some,
of them. When you install FreeBSD, you must have one partition available. This might be a blank partition that you
have prepared, or it might be an existing partition that contains data that you no longer care about.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

If you are already using all the partitions on all your disks, then you will have to free one of them for FreeBSD using
the tools provided by the other operating systems you use (e.g., fdisk on DOS or Windows).
If you have a spare partition then you can use that. However, you may need to shrink one or more of your existing
partitions first.
A minimal installation of FreeBSD takes as little as 100MB of disk space. However, that is a very minimal install,
leaving almost no space for your own files. A more realistic minimum is 250MB without a graphical environment,
and 350MB or more if you want a graphical user interface. If you intend to install a lot of third party software as
well, then you will need more space.
You can use a commercial tool such as Partition Magic to resize your partitions to make space for FreeBSD. The
tools directory on the CDROM contains two free software tools which can carry out this task, FIPS and PResizer.
Documentation for both of these is in the same directory.

Warning: Incorrect use of these tools can delete the data on your disk. Be sure that you have recent, working
backups before using them.

Example 2-1. Using an existing partition unchanged

Suppose that you have a computer with a single 4GB disk that already has a version of Windows installed, and you
have split the disk in to two drive letters, C: and D:, each of which is 2GB in size. You have 1GB of data on C:, and
0.5GB of data on D:.
This means that your disk has two partitions on it, one per drive letter. You can copy all your existing data from D: to
C:, which will free up the second partition, ready for FreeBSD.

Example 2-2. Shrinking an existing partition

Suppose that you have a computer with a single 4GB disk, that already has a version of Windows installed. When
you installed Windows you created one large partition, giving you a C: drive that is 4GB in size. You are currently
using 1.5GB of space, and want FreeBSD to have 2GB of space.
In order to install FreeBSD you will need to either:

1. Backup your Windows data, and then reinstall Windows, asking for a 2GB partition at install time.
2. Use one of the tools such as Partition Magic, described above, to shrink your Windows partition.

[Link] Disk Layouts for the Alpha

You will need a dedicated disk for FreeBSD on the Alpha. It is not possible to share a disk with another operating
system at this time. Depending on the specific Alpha machine you have, this disk can either be a SCSI disk or an IDE
disk, as long as your machine is capable of booting from it.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Following the conventions of the Digital / Compaq manuals all SRM input is shown in uppercase. SRM is case
insensitive.
To find the names and types of disks in your machine, use the SHOW DEVICE command from the SRM console
prompt:

show device
dka0.[Link] DKA0 TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-57 3476
dkc0.0.0.1009.0 DKC0 RZ1BB-BS 0658
dkc100.1.0.1009.0 DKC100 SEAGATE ST34501W 0015
dva0.[Link] DVA0
ewa0.[Link] EWA0 00-00-F8-75-6D-01
pkc0.7.0.1009.0 PKC0 SCSI Bus ID 7 5.27
pqa0.[Link] PQA0 PCI EIDE
pqb0.[Link] PQB0 PCI EIDE

This example is from a Digital Personal Workstation 433au and shows three disks attached to the machine. The first
is a CDROM drive called DKA0 and the other two are disks and are called DKC0 and DKC100 respectively.
Disks with names of the form DKx are SCSI disks. For example DKA100 refers to a SCSI with SCSI target ID 1 on
the first SCSI bus (A), whereas DKC300 refers to a SCSI disk with SCSI ID 3 on the third SCSI bus (C). Devicename
PKx refers to the SCSI host bus adapter. As seen in the SHOW DEVICE output SCSI CDROM drives are treated as
any other SCSI hard disk drive.
IDE disks have names similar to DQx, while PQx is the associated IDE controller.

2.2.4 Collect Your Network Configuration Details

If you intend to connect to a network as part of your FreeBSD installation (for example, if you will be installing from
an FTP site, or an NFS server), then you need to know your network configuration. You will be prompted for this
information during the installation so that FreeBSD can connect to the network to complete the install.

[Link] Connecting to an Ethernet Network, or Cable/DSL Modem

If you connect to an Ethernet network, or you have an Internet connection via cable or DSL, then you will need the
following information:

1. IP address.
2. IP address of the default gateway.
3. Hostname.
4. DNS server IP addresses.
If you do not know this information, then ask your system administrator or service provider. They may say that this
information is assigned automatically, using DHCP. If so, make a note of this.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

[Link] Connecting Using a Modem

If you dial up to an ISP using a regular modem then you can still install FreeBSD over the Internet, it will just take a
very long time.
You will need to know:

1. The phone number to dial for your ISP.

2. The COM: port your modem is connected to.
3. The username and password for your ISP account.

2.2.5 Check for FreeBSD Errata

Although the FreeBSD project strives to ensure that each release of FreeBSD is as stable as possible, bugs do
occasionally creep in to the process. On very rare occasions those bugs affect the installation process. As these
problems are discovered and fixed they are noted in the FreeBSD Errata, posted on the FreeBSD web site. You
should check the errata before installing to make sure that there are no late-breaking problems which you should be
aware of.
Information about all the releases, including the errata for each release, can be found on the release information
(../../../../releases/[Link]) section of the FreeBSD web site (../../../../[Link]).

2.2.6 Prepare the Boot Discs

FreeBSD can be installed from a number of different media; CDROM, DVD, FTP (both anonymous and
non-anonymous), NFS, tape, or an existing MS-DOS partition.

Tip: If you have FreeBSD on CDROM or DVD, and your computer allows you to boot from the CDROM or DVD
(typically a BIOS option called “Boot Order” or similar) then you can skip this section. The FreeBSD CDROM and
DVD images are bootable and can be used to install FreeBSD without any other special preparation.

The FreeBSD installation process is started by booting your computer into the FreeBSD installer—it is not a
program you run within another operating system. To do this, you must create some floppy disks that can be booted
from, and then boot from them.
If you are not installing directly from CDROM, DVD, or FTP then you are probably preparing your own installation
media (e.g., an MS-DOS partition), which must be prepared before you install FreeBSD. This is a slightly more
advanced, infrequent activity, and is documented in Section 2.13. This includes the scenario where you want to create
your own FTP site on your own network so that other computers can use your site as a FreeBSD FTP installation site.
In general, to create boot floppy images, follow these steps:

1. Acquire the Boot Floppy Images

The boot discs are available on your installation media in the floppies directory, and can also be downloaded
from the floppies directory ([Link]

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The floppy images have a .flp extension. The floppies/ directory contains a number of different images, and
the ones you will need to use depends on the version of FreeBSD you are installing, and in some cases, the
hardware you are installing to. In most cases you will need two files, [Link] and [Link], but check
[Link] in the same directory to be sure.

Important: Your FTP program must use binary mode to download these disk images. Some web browsers
have been known to use text (or ASCII) mode, which will be apparent if you cannot boot from the disks.

2. Prepare the Floppy Disks

You must prepare one floppy disk per image file you had to download. It is imperative that these disks are free
from defects. The easiest way to test this is to format the disks for yourself. Do not trust pre-formatted floppies.

Important: If you try to install FreeBSD and the installation program crashes, freezes, or otherwise
misbehaves, one of the first things to suspect is the floppies. Try writing the floppy image files to some other
disks and try again.

3. Write the Image Files to the Floppy Disks.

The .flp files are not regular files you copy to the disk. Instead, they are images of the complete contents of the
disk. This means that you cannot use commands like DOS’ copy to write the files. Instead, you must use
specific tools to write the images directly to the disk.
If you are creating the floppies on a computer running DOS/Windows, then we provide a tool to do this called
fdimage.
If you are using the floppies from the CDROM, and your CDROM is the E: drive, then you would run this:
E:\
tools\fdimage floppies\[Link] A:
Repeat this command for each .flp file, replacing the floppy disk each time, being sure to label the disks with
the name of the file that you copied to them. Adjust the command line as necessary, depending on where you
have placed the .flp files. If you do not have the CDROM, then fdimage can be downloaded from the tools
directory ([Link] on the FreeBSD FTP site.
If you are writing the floppies on a Unix system (such as another FreeBSD system) you can use the dd(1)
command to write the image files directly to disk. On FreeBSD, you would run:
# dd if=[Link] of=/dev/fd0

On FreeBSD, /dev/fd0 refers to the first floppy disk (the A: drive). /dev/fd1 would be the B: drive, and so
on. Other Unix variants might have different names for the floppy disk devices, and you will need to check the
documentation for the system as necessary.

You are now ready to start installing FreeBSD.

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2.3 Starting the Installation

Important: By default, the installation will not make any changes to your disk(s) until you see the following
message.

Last Chance: Are you SURE your want continue the installation?

If you’re running this on a disk with data you wish to save then WE
STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO MAKE PROPER BACKUPS before proceeding!

We can take no responsibility for lost disk contents!

The install can be exited at any time prior to the final warning without changing the contents of the hard drive. If
you are concerned that you have configured something incorrectly you can just turn the computer off before this
point, and no damage will be done.

2.3.1 Booting

[Link] Booting for the i386

1. Start with your computer turned off.

2. Turn on the computer. As it starts it should display an option to enter the system set up menu, or BIOS,
commonly reached by keys like F2, F10, Del, or Alt+S. Use whichever keystroke is indicated on screen. In
some cases your computer may display a graphic while it starts. Typically, pressing Esc will dismiss the graphic
and allow you to see the necessary messages.
3. Find the setting that controls which devices the system boots from. This is commonly shown as a list of devices,
such as Floppy, CDROM, First Hard Disk, and so on.
If you needed to prepare boot floppies, then make sure that the floppy disk is selected. If you are booting from
the CDROM then make sure that that is selected instead. In case of doubt, you should consult the manual that
came with your computer, and/or its motherboard.
Make the change, then save and exit. The computer should now restart.
4. If you needed to prepare boot floppies, as described in Section 2.2.6 then one of them will be the first boot disc,
probably the one containing [Link]. Put this disc in your floppy drive.
If you are booting from CDROM, then you will need to turn on the computer, and insert the CDROM at the first
opportunity.
If your computer starts up as normal, and loads your existing operating system then either:

1. The disks were not inserted early enough in the boot process. Leave them in, and try restarting your
computer.
2. The BIOS changes earlier did not work correctly. You should redo that step until you get the right option.
5. FreeBSD will start to boot. If you are booting from CDROM you will see a display similar to this:
Verifying DMI Pool Data ........

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM :

1. FD 2.88MB System Type-(00)
/[Link]: -P
Keyboard: yes
BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01
Console: internal video/keyboard
BIOS drive A: is disk0
BIOS drive B: is disk1
BIOS drive C: is disk2
BIOS drive C: is disk3
BIOS 639kB/64512kB available memory
FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 0.8
(jkh@[Link], Mon Nov 20 [Link] GMT 2000)
|
Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt.
Booting [kernel] in 9 seconds... _
If you are booting from floppy disc, you will see a display similar to this:
Verifying DMI Pool Data ........

BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01

Console: internal video/keyboard
BIOS drive A: is disk0
BIOS drive C: is disk1
BIOS 639kB/261120kB available memory

FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 0.8

(jkh@[Link], Sat Apr 21 [Link] GMT 2001)
/kernel text=0x24f1bb data=0x307ac+0x2062c |

Please insert MFS root floppy and press enter:

Follow these instructions by removing the [Link] disc, insert the [Link] disc, and press Enter.
6. Irrespective of whether you booted from floppy or CDROM, the boot process will then get to this point.
Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt.
Booting [kernel] in 9 seconds... _
Either wait ten seconds, or press Enter. This will then launch the kernel configuration menu.

[Link] Booting for the Alpha

1. Start with your computer turned off.

2. Turn on the computer and wait for a boot monitor prompt.
3. If you needed to prepare boot floppies, as described in Section 2.2.6 then one of them will be the first boot disc,
probably the one containing [Link]. Put this disc in your floppy drive and type the following command to
boot the disk (substituting the name of your floppy drive if necessary):
BOOT DVA0 -FLAGS ” -FILE ”

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If you are booting from CDROM, insert the CDROM into the drive and type the following command to start the
installation (substituting the name of the appropriate CDROM drive if necessary):
BOOT DKA0 -FLAGS ” -FILE ”
4. FreeBSD will start to boot. If you are booting from a floppy disc, at some point you will see the message:
Please insert MFS root floppy and press enter:

Follow these instructions by removing the [Link] disc, insert the [Link] disc, and press Enter.
5. Irrespective of whether you booted from floppy or CDROM, the boot process will then get to this point.
Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt.
Booting [kernel] in 9 seconds... _
Either wait ten seconds, or press Enter. This will then launch the kernel configuration menu.

2.3.2 Kernel Configuration

The kernel is the core of the operating system. It is responsible for many things, including access to all the devices
you may have on your system, such as hard disks, network cards, sound cards, and so on. Each piece of hardware
supported by the FreeBSD kernel has a driver associated with it. Each driver has a two or three letter name, such as
sa for the SCSI sequential access driver, or sio for the Serial I/O driver (which manages COM ports).

When the kernel starts, each driver checks the system to see whether or not the hardware it supports exists on your
system. If it does, then the driver configures the hardware and makes it available to the rest of the kernel.
This checking is commonly referred to as device probing. Unfortunately, it is not always possible to do this in a safe
way. Some hardware drivers do not co-exist well together, and probing for one piece of hardware can sometimes
leave another in an inconsistent state. This is a basic limitation of the design of the PC.
Many older devices are called ISA devices—as opposed to PCI devices. The ISA specification requires each device
to have some information hard coded into it, typically the Interrupt Request Line number (IRQ) and IO port address
that the driver uses. This information is commonly set by using physical jumpers on the card, or by using a DOS
based utility.
This was often a source of problems, because it was not possible to have two devices that shared the same IRQ or
port address.
Newer devices follow the PCI specification, which does not require this, as the devices are supposed to cooperate
with the BIOS, and be told which IRQ and IO port addresses to use.
If you have any ISA devices in your computer then FreeBSD’s driver for that device will need to be configured with
the IRQ and port address that you have set the card to. This is why carrying out an inventory of your hardware (see
Section 2.2.1) can be useful.
Unfortunately, the default IRQs and memory ports used by some drivers clash. This is because some ISA devices are
shipped with IRQs or memory ports that clash. The defaults in FreeBSD’s drivers are deliberately set to mirror the
manufacturer’s defaults, so that, out of the box, as many devices as possible will work.
This is almost never an issue when running FreeBSD day-to-day. Your computer will not normally contain two pieces
of hardware that clash, because one of them would not work (irrespective of the operating system you are using).

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It becomes an issue when you are installing FreeBSD for the first time because the kernel used to carry out the install
has to contain as many drivers as possible, so that many different hardware configurations can be supported. This
means that some of those drivers will have conflicting configurations. The devices are probed in a strict order, and if
you own a device that is probed late in the process, but conflicted with an earlier probe, then your hardware might not
function or be probed correctly when you install FreeBSD.
Because of this, the first thing you have the opportunity to do when installing FreeBSD is look at the list of drivers
that are configured in to the kernel, and either disable some of them, if you do not own that device, or confirm (and
alter) the driver’s configuration if you do own the device but the defaults are wrong.
This probably sounds much more complicated than it actually is.
Figure 2-1 shows the first kernel configuration menu. We recommend that you choose the Start kernel
configuration in full-screen visual mode option, as it presents the easiest interface for the new user.

Figure 2-1. Kernel Configuration Menu

The kernel configuration screen (Figure 2-2) is then divided into four sections.

1. A collapsible list of all the drivers that are currently marked as “active”, subdivided in to groups such as
Storage, and Network. Each driver is shown as a description, its two three letter driver name, and the IRQ and
memory port used by that driver. In addition, if an active driver conflicts with another active driver then CONF is
shown next to the driver name. This section also shows the total number of conflicting drivers that are currently
active.
2. Drivers that have been marked inactive. They remain in the kernel, but they will not probe for their device when
the kernel starts. These are subdivided in to groups in the same way as the active driver list.
3. More detail about the currently selected driver, including its IRQ and memory port address.
4. Information about the keystrokes that are valid at this point in time.

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Figure 2-2. The Kernel Device Configuration Visual Interface

At this point there will always be conflicts listed. Do not worry about this, it is to be expected; all the drivers are
enabled, and as has already been explained, some of them will conflict with one another.
You now have to work through the list of drivers, resolving the conflicts.

Resolving Driver Conflicts

1. Press X. This will completely expand the list of drivers, so you can see all of them. You will need to use the
arrow keys to scroll back and forth through the active driver list.
Figure 2-3 shows the result of pressing X.

Figure 2-3. Expanded Driver List

2. Disable all the drivers for devices that you do not have. To disable a driver, highlight it with the arrow keys and
press Del. The driver will be moved to the Inactive Drivers list.

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If you inadvertently disable a device that you need then press Tab to switch to the Inactive Drivers list,
select the driver that you disabled, and press Enter to move it back to the active list.

Important: Do not disable sc0. This controls the screen, and you will need this unless you are installing over
a serial cable.

Important: Only disable atkbd0 if you are using a USB keyboard. If you have a normal keyboard then you
must keep atkbd0.

3. If there are no conflicts listed then you can skip this step. Otherwise, the remaining conflicts need to be
examined. If they do not have the indication of an "allowed conflict" in the message area, then either the
IRQ/address for device probe will need to be changed, or the IRQ/address on the hardware will need to be
changed.
To change the driver’s configuration for IRQ and IO port address, select the device and press Enter. The cursor
will move to the third section of the screen, and you can change the values. You should enter the values for IRQ
and port address that you discovered when you made your hardware inventory. Press Q to finish editing the
device’s configuration and return to the active driver list.
If you are not sure what these figures should be then you can try using -1. Some FreeBSD drivers can safely
probe the hardware to discover what the correct value should be, and a value of -1 configures them to do this.
The procedure for changing the address on the hardware varies from device to device. For some devices you may
need to physically remove the card from your computer and adjust jumper settings or DIP switches. Other cards
may have come with a DOS floppy that contains the programs used to reconfigure the card. In any case, you
should refer to the documentation that came with the device. This will obviously entail restarting your computer,
so you will need to boot back in to the FreeBSD installation routine when you have reconfigured the card.
4. When all the conflicts have been resolved the screen will look similar to Figure 2-4.

Figure 2-4. Driver Configuration With No Conflicts

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As you can see, the active driver list is now much smaller, with only drivers for the hardware that actually exists
being listed.
You can now save these changes, and move on to the next step of the install. Press Q to quit the device
configuration interface. This message will appear.
Save these parameters before exiting? ([Y]es/[N]o/[C]ancel)

Answer Y to save the parameters and the probing will start. After displaying the probe results in white on black
text Sysinstall will start and display its main menu (Figure 2-5).

Figure 2-5. Sysinstall Main Menu

2.3.3 Reviewing the Device Probe Results

The last few hundred lines that have been displayed on screen are stored and can be reviewed.
To review the buffer, press Scroll Lock. This turns on scrolling in the display. You can then use the arrow keys, or
PageUp and PageDown to view the results. Press Scroll Lock again to stop scrolling,
Do this now, to review the text that scrolled off the screen when the kernel was carrying out the device probes. You
will see text similar to Figure 2-6, although the precise text will differ depending on the devices that you have in your
computer.

Figure 2-6. Typical Device Probe Results

avail memory = 58880000 (57500K bytes)

Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc065d000.
md1: Malloc disk
npx0: math processor> on motherboard
npx0: INT 16 interface
pcib0: Host to PCI bridge> on motherboard
pci0: PCI bus> on pcib0
pcib1: VIA 82C598MVP (Apollo MVP3) PCI-PCI (AGP bridge> at device 1.0 on pci0

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pci1: PCI bus> on pcib1

pci1: Matrox MGA G200 AGP graphics accelerator> at 0.0 irq 11
isab0: VIA 82C586 PCI-ISA bridge> at device 7.0 on pci0
isa0: ISA bus> on isab0
atapci0: VIA 82C586 ATA33 controller> port 0xe000-0xe00f at device 7.1 on pci0
ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0
uhci0: VIA 83C572 USB controller> port 0xe400-0xe41f irq 10 at device 7.2 on pci0
usb0: VIA 83C572 USB controller> on uhci0
usb0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0: VIA UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
chip1: VIA 82C586B ACPI interface> at device 7.3 on pci0
fdc0: NEC 72065B or clone> at port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq6 drq2 on isa0
fdc0: FIFO enabled, 8 bytes threshold
fd0: 1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0
atkbdc0: keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x60-0x6f on isa0
atkbd0: AT Keyboard> flags 0x1 irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
psm0: PS/2 Mouse> irq 12 on atkbdc0
psm0: model Generic PS/2 mouse, device ID 0
vga0: Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0c3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
sc0: System console> at flags 0x100 on isa0
sc0: VGA 16 virtual consoles, flags-0x300>
sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0
sio0: type 16550A
sio1: at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq3 on isa0
sio1: type 16550A
ppc0: Parallel port> at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0
ppc0: SMC-like chipset (ECP/EPP/PS2/NIBBLE) in COMPATIBLE mode
ppc0: FIFO with 16/16/15 bytes threshold
ppi0: Parallel I/O> on ppbus0
plip0: PLIP network interface> on ppbus0
ad0: 8063MB IBM-DHEA-38451> [16383/16/63] at ata0-master using UDMA33
acd0: CDROM DELTA OTC-H101/ST3 F/W by OIPD> at ata0-slave using PIO4
Mounting root from ufs:/dev/md0c
/stand/sysinstall running as init on vty0

Check the probe results carefully to make sure that FreeBSD found all the devices you expected. If a device was not
found, then it will not be listed. If the device’s driver required configuring with the IRQ and port address then you
should check that you entered them correctly.
If you need to make changes to the UserConfig device probing, its easy to exit the sysinstall program and start
over again. Its also a good way to become more familiar with the process.

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Figure 2-7. Select Sysinstall Exit

Use the arrow keys to select Exit Install from the Main Install Screen menu. The following message will display:

User Confirmation Requested

Are you sure you wish to exit? The system will reboot
(be sure to remove any floppies from the drives).

[ Yes ] No

The install program will start again if the CDROM is left in the drive and [Yes] is selected.
If you are booting from floppies it will be necessary to remove the [Link] floppy and replace it with [Link]
before rebooting.

2.4 Introducing Sysinstall

Sysinstall is the installation application provided by the FreeBSD Project. It is console based and is divided into a
number of menus and screens that you can use to configure and control the installation process.
The Sysinstall menu system is controlled by the arrow keys, Enter, Space. and other keys. A detailed description of
these keys, and what they do, is contained in Sysinstall’s usage information.
To review this information, ensure that the Usage entry is highlighted and that the [Select] button is selected, as
shown in Figure 2-8, then press Enter.
The instructions for using the menu system will be displayed. After reviewing them, press Enter to return to the
Main Menu.

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Figure 2-8. Selecting Usage From Sysinstall Main Menu

2.4.1 Selecting The Documentation Menu

From the Main Menu, select Doc with the arrow keys and press Enter.

Figure 2-9. Selecting Documentation Menu

This will display the Documentation Menu.

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Figure 2-10. Sysinstall Documentation Menu

It is important to read the documents provided.

To view a document, select it with the arrow keys and press Enter. When finished reading a document, pressing
Enter will return to the Documentation Menu.
To return to the Main Installation Menu, select Exit with the arrow keys and press Enter.

2.4.2 Selecting The Keymap Menu

To change the keyboard mapping, use the arrow keys to select Keymap from the menu and press Enter

Figure 2-11. Sysinstall Main Menu

A different keyboard mapping may be chosen by selecting the menu item using up/down arrow keys and pressing
Space. Pressing Space again will unselect the item. When finished, choose the [ OK ] using the arrow keys and press

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Enter.
Only a partial list is shown in this screen representation. Selecting [ Cancel ] will use the default keymap and return
to the Main Install Menu.

Figure 2-12. Sysinstall Keymap Menu

2.4.3 Installation Options Screen

Select Options and press Enter

Figure 2-13. Sysinstall Main Menu

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Figure 2-14. Sysinstall Options

The default values are usually fine for most users and do not need to be changed.
The description of the selected item will appear at the bottom of the screen highlighted in blue. Notice that one of the
options is Use Defaults to reset all values to startup defaults.
Press F1 to read the help screen about the various options.
Pressing Q will return to the Main Install menu.

2.4.4 Begin A Standard Installation

The Standard installation is the option recommended for those new to Unix or FreeBSD. Use the arrow keys to
select Standard and then press Enter to start the installation.

Figure 2-15. Begin Standard Installation

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2.5 Allocating Disk Space

Your first task is to allocate disk space for FreeBSD, and label that space so that Sysinstall can prepare it. In order to
do this you need to know how FreeBSD expects to find information on the disk.

2.5.1 BIOS Drive Numbering

Before you install and configure FreeBSD on your system, there is an important subject that you should be aware of,
especially if you have multiple hard drives.
In a PC running a BIOS-dependent operating system such as MS-DOS or Microsoft Windows, the BIOS is able to
abstract the normal disk drive order, and the operating system goes along with the change. This allows the user to
boot from a disk drive other than the so-called “primary master”. This is especially convenient for some users who
have found that the simplest and cheapest way to keep a system backup is to buy an identical second hard drive, and
perform routine copies of the first drive to the second drive using Ghost or XCOPY . Then, if the first drive fails, or
is attacked by a virus, or is scribbled upon by an operating system defect, he can easily recover by instructing the
BIOS to logically swap the drives. It is like switching the cables on the drives, but without having to open the case.
More expensive systems with SCSI controllers often include BIOS extensions which allow the SCSI drives to be
re-ordered in a similar fashion for up to seven drives.
A user who is accustomed to taking advantage of these features may become surprised when the results with
FreeBSD are not as expected. FreeBSD does not use the BIOS, and does not know the “logical BIOS drive
mapping”. This can lead to very perplexing situations, especially when drives are physically identical in geometry,
and have also been made as data clones of one another.
When using FreeBSD, always restore the BIOS to natural drive numbering before installing FreeBSD, and then leave
it that way. If you need to switch drives around, then do so, but do it the hard way, and open the case and move the
jumpers and cables.

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An Illustration from the Files of Bill and Fred’s Exceptional Adventures:

Bill breaks-down an older Wintel box to make another FreeBSD box for Fred. Bill installs a single SCSI drive as
SCSI unit zero and installs FreeBSD on it.
Fred begins using the system, but after several days notices that the older SCSI drive is reporting numerous soft
errors and reports this fact to Bill.
After several more days, Bill decides it is time to address the situation, so he grabs an identical SCSI drive from the
disk drive “archive” in the back room. An initial surface scan indicates that this drive is functioning well, so Bill
installs this drive as SCSI unit four and makes an image copy from drive zero to drive four. Now that the new drive
is installed and functioning nicely, Bill decides that it is a good idea to start using it, so he uses features in the SCSI
BIOS to re-order the disk drives so that the system boots from SCSI unit four. FreeBSD boots and runs just fine.
Fred continues his work for several days, and soon Bill and Fred decide that it is time for a new adventure -- time to
upgrade to a newer version of FreeBSD. Bill removes SCSI unit zero because it was a bit flaky and replaces it with
another identical disk drive from the “archive.” Bill then installs the new version of FreeBSD onto the new SCSI
unit zero using Fred’s magic Internet FTP floppies. The installation goes well.
Fred uses the new version of FreeBSD for a few days, and certifies that it is good enough for use in the engineering
department...it is time to copy all of his work from the old version. So Fred mounts SCSI unit four (the latest copy
of the older FreeBSD version). Fred is dismayed to find that none of his precious work is present on SCSI unit four.
Where did the data go?
When Bill made an image copy of the original SCSI unit zero onto SCSI unit four, unit four became the “new
clone,” When Bill re-ordered the SCSI BIOS so that he could boot from SCSI unit four, he was only fooling
himself. FreeBSD was still running on SCSI unit zero. Making this kind of BIOS change will cause some or all of
the Boot and Loader code to be fetched from the selected BIOS drive, but when the FreeBSD kernel drivers
take-over, the BIOS drive numbering will be ignored, and FreeBSD will transition back to normal drive numbering.
In the illustration at hand, the system continued to operate on the original SCSI unit zero, and all of Fred’s data was
there, not on SCSI unit four. The fact that the system appeared to be running on SCSI unit four was simply an
artifact of human expectations.
We are delighted to mention that no data bytes were killed or harmed in any way by our discovery of this
phenomenon. The older SCSI unit zero was retrieved from the bone pile, and all of Fred’s work was returned to
him, (and now Bill knows that he can count as high as zero).
Although SCSI drives were used in this illustration, the concepts apply equally to IDE drives.

2.5.2 Disk Organization

The smallest unit of organization that FreeBSD uses to find files is the filename. Filenames are case-sensitive, which
means that [Link] and [Link] are two separate files. FreeBSD does not use the extension (.txt) of a
file to determine whether the file is program, or a document, or some other form of data.
Files are stored in directories. A directory may contain no files, or it may contain many hundreds of files. A directory
can also contain other directories, allowing you to build up a hierarchy of directories within one another. This makes
it much easier to organize your data.
Files and directories are referenced by giving the file or directory name, followed by a forward slash, /, followed by
any other directory names that are necessary. If you have directory foo, which contains directory bar, which

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contains the file [Link], then the full name, or path to the file is foo/bar/[Link].
Directories and files are stored in a filesystem. Each filesystem contains exactly one directory at the very top level,
called the root directory for that filesystem. This root directory can then contain other directories.
So far this is probably similar to any other operating system you may have used. There are a few differences; for
example, DOS uses \ to separate file and directory names, while MacOS uses :.
FreeBSD does not use drive letters, or other drive names in the path. You would not write
c:/foo/bar/[Link] on FreeBSD.
Instead, one filesystem is designated the root filesystem. The root filesystem’s root directory is referred to as /. Every
other filesystem is then mounted under the root filesystem. No matter how many disks you have on your FreeBSD
system, every directory appears to be part of the same disk.
Suppose you have three filesystems, called A, B, and C. Each filesystem has one root directory, which contains two
other directories, called A1, A2 (and likewise B1, B2 and C1, C2).
Call A the root filesystem. If you used the ls command to view the contents of this directory you would see two
subdirectories, A1 and A2. The directory tree looks like this.

/
|
+--- A1
|
‘--- A2

A filesystem must be mounted on to a directory in another filesystem. So now suppose that you mount filesystem B
on to the directory A1. The root directory of B replaces A1, and the directories in B appear accordingly.

/
|
+--- A1
| |
| +--- B1
| |
| ‘--- B2
|
‘--- A2

Any files that are in the B1 or B2 directories can be reached with the path /A1/B1 or /A1/B2 as necessary. Any files
that were in /A1 have been temporarily hidden. They will reappear if B is unmounted from A.
If B had been mounted on A2 then the diagram would look like this;

/
|
+--- A1
|
‘--- A2
|
+--- B1
|
‘--- B2

and the paths would be /A2/B1 and /A2/B2 respectively.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Filesystems can be mounted on top of one another. Continuing the last example, the C filesystem could be mounted
on top of the B1 directory in the B filesystem, leading to this arrangement.

/
|
+--- A1
|
‘--- A2
|
+--- B1
| |
| +--- C1
| |
| ‘--- C2
|
‘--- B2

Or C could be mounted directly on to the A filesystem, under the A1 directory.

/
|
+--- A1
| |
| +--- C1
| |
| ‘--- C2
|
‘--- A2
|
+--- B1
|
‘--- B2

If you are familiar with DOS, this is similar, although not identical, to the join command.
This is not normally something you need to concern yourself with. Typically you create filesystems when installing
FreeBSD and decide where to mount them, and then never change them unless you add a new disk.
It is entirely possible to have one large root filesystem, and not need to create any others. There are some drawbacks
to this approach, and one advantage.

Benefits of multiple filesystems

• Different filesystems can have different mount options. For example, with careful planning, the root filesystem can
be mounted read-only, making it impossible for you to inadvertently delete or edit a critical file.
• FreeBSD automatically optimizes the layout of files on a filesystem, depending on how the filesystem is being
used. So a filesystem that contains many small files that are written frequently will have a different optimization to
one that contains fewer, larger files. By having one big filesystem this optimization breaks down.
• FreeBSD’s filesystems are very robust should you lose power. However, a power loss at a critical point could still
damage the structure of the filesystem. By splitting your data over multiple filesystems it is more likely that the
system will still come up, making it easier for you to restore from backup as necessary.

Benefit of a single filesystem

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

• Filesystems are a fixed size. If you create a filesystem when you install FreeBSD and give it a specific size, you
may later discover that you need to make the partition bigger. This is not easily accomplished without backing up,
recreating the filesystems with the size, and then restoring.

Important: FreeBSD 5.0 will feature a new command, growfs, which will make it possible to increase the size
of a filesystem on the fly, removing this limitation.

Filesystems are contained in partitions. This does not have the same meaning as the earlier usage of the term
partition in this chapter, because of FreeBSD’s Unix heritage. Each partition is identified by a letter, a through to h.
Each partition can only contain one filesystem, which means that filesystems are often described by either their
typical mount point on the root filesystem, or the letter of the partition they are contained in.
FreeBSD also uses disk space for swap space. Swap space provides FreeBSD with virtual memory. This allows your
computer to behave as though it has much more memory than it actually does. When FreeBSD runs out of memory it
moves some of the data that is not currently being used to the swap space, and moves it back in (moving something
else out) when it needs it.
Some partitions have certain conventions associated with them.

Partition Convention
a Normally contains the root filesystem
b Normally contains swap space
c Normally the same size as the enclosing slice. This allows
utilities that need to work on the entire slice (for example,
a bad block scanner) to work on the c partition. You
would not normally create a filesystem on this partition.
d Partition d used to have a special meaning associated with
it, although that is now gone. To this day, some tools may
operate oddly if told to work on partition d, so Sysinstall
will not normally create partition d.

Each partition-that-contains-a-filesystem is stored in what FreeBSD calls a slice. Slice is FreeBSD’s term for what
were earlier called partitions, and again, this is because of FreeBSD’s Unix background. Slices are numbered,
starting at 1, through to 4.
Slice numbers follow the device name, prefixed with an s, starting at 1. So “da0s1” is the first slice on the first SCSI
drive. There can only be four physical slices on a disk, but you can have logical slices inside physical slices of the
appropriate type. These extended slices are numbered starting at 5, so “ad0s5” is the first extended slice on a disk.
These devices are used by file systems that expect to occupy a slice.
Slices, “dangerously dedicated” physical drives, and other drives contain partitions, which are represented as letters
from a to h. This letter is appended to the device name, so “da0a” is the a partition on the first da drive, which is
“dangerously dedicated”. “ad1s3e” is the fifth partition in the third slice of the second IDE disk drive.
Finally, each disk on the system is identified. A disk name starts with a code that indicates the type of disk, and then
a number, indicating which disk it is. Unlike slices, disk numbering starts at 0. Common codes that you will see are
listed in Table 2-2.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

When referring to a partition FreeBSD requires that you also name the slice and disk that contains the partition, and
when referring to a slice you should also refer to the disk name. Do this by listing the disk name, s, the slice number,
and then the partition letter. Examples are shown in Example 2-3.
Example 2-4 shows a conceptual model of the disk layout that should help make things clearer.
In order to install FreeBSD you must first configure the disk slices, then create partitions within the slice you will use
for FreeBSD, and then create a filesystem (or swap space) in each partition, and decide where that filesystem will be
mounted.

Table 2-2. Disk Device Codes

Code Meaning
ad ATAPI (IDE) disk
da SCSI direct access disk
acd ATAPI (IDE) CDROM
cd SCSI CDROM
fd Floppy disk

Example 2-3. Sample Disk, Slice, and Partition Names

Name Meaning
ad0s1a The first partition (a) on the first slice (s1) on the first IDE
disk (ad0).
da1s2e The fifth partition (e) on the second slice (s2) on the
second SCSI disk (da1).

Example 2-4. Conceptual Model of a Disk

This diagram shows FreeBSD’s view of the first IDE disk attached to the system. Assume that the disk is 4GB in
size, and contains two 2GB slices (DOS partitions). The first slice contains a DOS disk, C:, and the second slice
contains a FreeBSD installation. The FreeBSD installation has three partitions, and a swap partition.
The three partitions will each hold a filesystem. Partition a will be used for the root filesystem, e for the /var
directory hierarchy, and f for the /usr directory hierarchy.

33
 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD



  

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2.5.3 Creating Slices using FDisk

Note: No changes you make at this point will be written to the disk. If you think you have made a mistake and
want to start again you can use the menus to exit Sysinstall and try again. If you get confused and can not see
how to exit you can always turn your computer off.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

After choosing to begin a standard installation in Sysinstall you will be shown this message.

Message
In the next menu, you will need to set up a DOS-style ("fdisk")
partitioning scheme for your hard disk. If you simply wish to devote
all disk space to FreeBSD (overwriting anything else that might be on
the disk(s) selected) then use the (A)ll command to select the default
partitioning scheme followed by a (Quit. If you wish to allocate only
free space to FreeBSD, move to a partition marked "unused" and use the
(C)reate command.
[ OK ]

[ Press enter to continue ]

Press Enter as instructed. You will then be shown a list of all the hard drives that the kernel found when it carried out
the device probes. Figure 2-16 shows an example from a system with two IDE disks. They have been called ad0 and
ad2.

Figure 2-16. Select Drive for FDisk

You might be wondering why ad1 is not listed here. Why has it been missed?
Consider what would happen if you had two IDE hard disks, one as the master on the first IDE controller, and one as
the master on the second IDE controller. If FreeBSD numbered these as it found them, as ad0 and ad1 then
everything would work.
But if you then added a third disk, as the slave device on the first IDE controller, it would now be ad1, and the
previous ad1 would become ad2. Because device names (such as ad1s1a) are used to find filesystems, you may
suddenly discover that some of your filesystems no longer appear correctly, and you would need to change your
FreeBSD configuration.
To work around this, the kernel can be configured to name IDE disks based on where they are, and not the order in
which they were found. With this scheme the master disk on the second IDE controller will always be ad2, even if
there are no ad0 or ad1 devices.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

This configuration is the default for the FreeBSD kernel, which is why this display shows ad0 and ad2. The machine
on which this screenshot was taken had IDE disks on both master channels of the IDE controllers, and no disks on
the slave channels.
You should select the disk on which you want to install FreeBSD, and then press [ OK ]. FDisk will start, with a
display similar to that shown in Figure 2-17.
The FDisk display is broken in to three sections.
The first section, covering the first two lines of the display, shows details about the currently selected disk, including
its FreeBSD name, the disk geometry, and the total size of the disk.
The second section shows the slices that are currently on the disk, where they start and end, how large they are, the
name FreeBSD gives them, and their description and sub-type. This example shows two small unused slices, which
are artifacts of disk layout schemes on the PC. It also shows one large FAT slice, which almost certainly appears as
C: in DOS / Windows, and an extended slice, which may contain other drive letters for DOS / Windows.
The third section shows the commands that are available in FDisk.

Figure 2-17. Typical Fdisk Partitions Before Editing

What you do now will depend on how you want to slice up your disk.
If you want to use FreeBSD for the entire disk (which will delete all the other data on this disk when you confirm
that you want Sysinstall to continue later in the installation process) then you can press A, which corresponds to the
Use Entire Disk option. The existing slices will be removed, and replaced with a small area flagged as unused
(again, an artifact of PC disk layout), and then one large slice for FreeBSD. If you do this then you should then select
the newly created FreeBSD slice using the arrow keys, and press S to mark the slice as being bootable. The screen
will then look very similar to Figure 2-18. Note the A in the Flags column, which indicates that this slice is active,
and will be booted from.
If you will be deleting an existing slice to make space for FreeBSD then you should select the slice using the arrow
keys, and then press D. You can then press C, and be prompted for size of slice you want to create. Enter the
appropriate figure and press Enter.
If you have already made space for FreeBSD (perhaps by using a tool such as Partition Magic) then you can press C
to create a new slice. Again, you will be prompted for the size of slice you would like to create.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Figure 2-18. Fdisk Partition Using Entire Disk

When finished, press Q. Your changes will be saved in Sysinstall, but will not yet be written to disk.

2.5.4 Install a Boot Manager

You now have the option to install a boot manager. In general, you should choose to install the FreeBSD boot
manager if:

• You have more than one drive, and have installed FreeBSD onto a drive other than the first one.
• You have installed FreeBSD alongside another operating system on the same disk, and you want to choose
whether to start FreeBSD or the other operating system when you start the computer.
Make your choice and press Enter.

Figure 2-19. Sysinstall Boot Manager Menu

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

The help screen, reached by pressing F1, discusses the problems that can be encountered when trying to share the
hard disk between operating systems.

2.5.5 Creating Slices on Another Drive

If there is more than one drive, it will return to the Select Drives screen after the boot manager selection. If you wish
to install FreeBSD on to more than one disk, then you can select another disk here and repeat the slice process using
FDisk,

Figure 2-20. Exit Select Drive

The Tab key toggles between the last drive selected, [ OK ], and [ Cancel ].
Press the Tab once to toggle to the [ OK ], then press Enter to continue with the installation.

2.5.6 Creating Partitions using Disklabel

You must now create some partitions inside each slice that you have just created. Remember that each partition is
lettered, from a through to h, and that partitions b, c, and d have conventional meanings that you should adhere to.
Certain applications can benefit from particular partition schemes, especially if you are laying out partitions across
more than one disk. However, for this, your first FreeBSD installation, you do not need to give too much thought to
how you partition the disk. It is more important that you install FreeBSD and start learning how to use it. You can
always re-install FreeBSD to change your partition scheme when you are more familiar with the operating system.
This scheme features four partitions—one for swap space, and three for filesystems.

Table 2-3. Partition Layout for First Disk

Partition Filesystem Size Description

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Partition Filesystem Size Description

a / 64MB This is the root file system.
Every other filesystem will
be mounted somewhere
under this one. 64MB is a
reasonable size for this
filesystem. You will not be
storing too much data on it,
as a regular FreeBSD install
will put about 40MB of data
here. The remaining space is
for temporary data, and also
leaves expansion space if
future versions of FreeBSD
need more space in /

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Partition Filesystem Size Description

b N/A 2-3 x RAM The system’s swap space is
kept on this partition.
Choosing the right amount
of swap space can be a bit
of an art. A good rule of
thumb is that you should
have two or three times the
amount of RAM as swap
space. So if you have 64MB
of RAM then you should
have between 128MB and
196MB of swap. You
should also have at least
64MB of swap, so if you
have less than 32MB of
RAM in your computer
then set the swap amount to
64MB.
If you have more than one
disk then you can put swap
space on each disk.
FreeBSD will then use each
disk for swap, which
effectively speeds up the act
of swapping. In this case,
calculate the total amount
of swap you need (e.g.,
128MB), and then divide
this by the number of disks
you have (e.g., two disks) to
give the amount of swap
you should put on each
disk, in this example, 64MB
of swap per disk.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Partition Filesystem Size Description

e /var 50MB The /var directory contains
variable length files; log
files, and other
administrative files. Many of
these files are read-from or
written-to extensively during
FreeBSD’s day-to-day
running. Putting these files
on another filesystem allows
FreeBSD to optimise the
access of these files without
affecting other files in other
directories that do not have
the same access pattern.
f /usr Rest of disk All your other files will
typically be stored in /usr,
and its subdirectories.

If you will be installing FreeBSD on to more than one disk then you must also create partitions in the other slices that
you configured. The easiest way to do this is to create two partitions on each disk, one for the swap space, and one
for a filesystem.

Table 2-4. Partition Layout for Subsequent Disks

Partition Filesystem Size Description

b N/A See description As already discussed, you
can split swap space across
each disk. Even though the a
partition is free, convention
dictates that swap space
stays on the b partition.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Partition Filesystem Size Description

e /diskn Rest of disk The rest of the disk is taken
up with one big partition.
This could easily be put on
the a partition, instead of the
e partition. However,
convention says that the a
partition on a slice is
reserved for the filesystem
that will be the root (/)
filesystem. You do not have
to follow this convention, but
Sysinstall does, so following
it yourself makes the
installation slightly cleaner.
You can choose to mount
this filesystem anywhere;
this example suggests that
you mount them as
directories /diskn, where n
is a number that changes for
each disk. But you can use
another scheme if you prefer.

Having chosen your partition layout you can now create it using Sysinstall. You will see this message.

Message
Now, you need to create BSD partitions inside of the fdisk
partition(s) just created. If you have a reasonable amount of disk
space (200MB or more) and don’t have any special requirements, simply
use the (A)uto command to allocate space automatically. If you have
more specific needs or just don’t care for the layout chosen by
(A)uto, press F1 for more information on manual layout.

[ OK ]

Press Enter to start the FreeBSD partition editor, called Disklabel.

Figure 2-21 shows the display when you first start Disklabel. The display is divided in to three sections.
The first few lines show the name of the disk you are currently working on, and the slice that contains the partitions
you are creating (at this point Disklabel calls this the Partition name rather than slice name). This display also
shows the amount of free space within the slice; that is, space that was set aside in the slice, but that has not yet been
assigned to a partition.
The middle of the display shows the partitions that have been created, the name of the filesystem that each partition
contains, their size, and some options pertaining to the creation of the filesystem.
The bottom third of the screen shows the keystrokes that are valid in Disklabel.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Figure 2-21. Sysinstall Disklabel Editor

Disklabel can automatically create partitions for you and assign them default sizes. Try this now, by Pressing A. You
will see a display similar to that shown in Figure 2-22. Depending on the size of the disk you are using the defaults
may or may not be appropriate. This does not matter, as you do not have to accept the defaults.

Figure 2-22. Sysinstall Disklabel Editor With Auto Defaults

To delete the suggested partitions, and replace them with your own, use the arrow keys to select the first partition,
and press D to delete it. Repeat this to delete all the suggested partitions.
To create the first partition (a, mounted as /), make sure the disk information at the top of the screen is selected, and
press C. A dialog box will appear prompting you for the size of the new partition (as shown in Figure 2-23). You can
enter the size as the number of disk blocks you want to use, or, more usefully, as a number followed by either M for
megabytes, G for gigabytes, or C for cylinders.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Figure 2-23. Free Space For Root Partition

The default size shown will create a partition that takes up the rest of the slice. If you are using the partition sizes
described earlier, then delete the existing figure using Backspace, and then type in 64M, as shown in Figure 2-24.
Then press [ OK ].

Figure 2-24. Edit Root Partition Size

Having chosen the partition’s size you will then asked whether this partition will contain a filesystem or swap space.
The dialog box is shown in Figure 2-25. This first partition will contain a filesystem, so check that FS is selected and
then press Enter.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Figure 2-25. Choose The Root Partition Type

Finally, because you are creating a filesystem, you must tell Disklabel where the filesystem is to be mounted. The
dialog box is shown in Figure 2-26. The root filesystem’s mount point is /, so type /, and then press Enter.

Figure 2-26. Choose The Root Mount Point

The display will then update to show you the newly created partition. You should repeat this procedure for the other
partitions. When you create the swap partition you will not be prompted for the filesystem mount point, as swap
partitions are never mounted. When you create the final partition, /usr, you can leave the suggested size as is, to use
the rest of the slice.
Your final FreeBSD DiskLabel Editor screen will appear similar to Figure 2-27, although your values chosen may be
different. Press Q to finish.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Figure 2-27. Sysinstall Disklabel Editor

2.6 Choosing What To Install

2.6.1 Select The Distribution Set

Deciding which distribution set to install will depend largely on the intended use of the system and the amount of
disk space available. The predefined options range from installing the smallest possible configuration to everything.
Those who are new to Unix and/or FreeBSD should almost certainly select one of these canned options. Customizing
a distribution set is typically for the more experienced user.
Press F1 for more information on the distribution set options and what they contain. When finished reviewing the
help, pressing Enter will return to the Select Distributions Menu.
If a graphical user interface is desired then a distribution set that is preceded by an X should be chosen. The
configuration of XFree86 and selection of a default desktop is part of the post-installation steps.
The default XFree86 version installed is the 3.x branch. You should check to see whether your video card is
supported at the XFree86 ([Link] web site. If it is only supported under the 4.x branch, then you
will need to install and configure XFree86 4.x after installation. Select a distribution without X and refer to Chapter 5
for more information.
If compiling a custom kernel is anticipated, select an option which includes the source code. For more information
on why a custom kernel should be built or how to build a custom kernel see Chapter 9.
Obviously, the most versatile system is one that includes everything. If there is adequate disk space, select All as
shown in Figure 2-28 by using the arrow keys and press Enter. If there is a concern about disk space consider using
an option that is more suitable for the situation. Other distributions can be added after installation.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Figure 2-28. Choose Distributions

2.6.2 Installing The Ports Collection

After selecting the desired distribution, an opportunity to install the FreeBSD Ports Collection is presented. The ports
collection is an easy and convenient way to install software. The ports collection does not contain the source code
necessary to compile the software. It is a collection of files which automates the downloading, compiling and
installation. Chapter 4 discusses how to use the ports collection.
The installation program does not check to see if you have adequate space. Select this option only if you have
adequate hard disk space.

User Confirmation Requested

Would you like to install the FreeBSD ports collection?

This will give you ready access to over 6,000 ported software packages,
at a cost of around 100MB of disk space when "clean" and possibly much
more than that if a lot of the distribution tarballs are loaded
(unless you have the extra CDs from a FreeBSD CD/DVD distribution
available and can mount it on /cdrom, in which case this is far less
of a problem).

The ports collection is a very valuable resource and well worth having
on your /usr partition, so it is advisable to say Yes to this option.

For more information on the ports collection & the latest ports,
visit:
[Link]

[ Yes ] No

Select [ Yes ] with the arrow keys to install the ports collection or [ No ] to skip this option. Press Enter to continue.
The Choose Distributions menu will redisplay.

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Figure 2-29. Confirm Distributions

If satisfied with the options, select Exit with the arrow keys, ensure that [ OK ] is highlighted, and press Enter to
continue.

2.7 Choosing Your Installation Media

If Installing from a CDROM, use the arrow keys to highlight Install from a FreeBSD CD/DVD. Ensure that [ OK ]
is highlighted, then press Enter to proceed with the installation.
For other methods of installation, select the appropriate option and follow the instructions.
Press F1 to display the Online Help for installation media. Press Enter to return to the media selection menu.

Figure 2-30. Choose Installation Media

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

FTP Installation Modes: There are three FTP installation modes you can choose from: active FTP, passive FTP,
or via a HTTP proxy.

FTP Active, Install from an FTP server

This option will make all FTP transfers use “Active” mode. This will not work through firewalls, but will often
work with older FTP servers that do not support passive mode. If your connection hangs with passive mode
(the default), try active!

FTP Passive, Install from an FTP server through a firewall

This option instructs FreeBSD to use “Passive” mode for all FTP operations. This allows the user to pass
through firewalls that do not allow incoming connections on random port addresses.

FTP via a HTTP proxy, Install from an FTP server through a http proxy

This option instructs FreeBSD to use the HTTP protocol (like a web browser) to connect to a proxy for all
FTP operations. The proxy will translate the requests and send them to the FTP server. This allows the user
to pass through firewalls that do not allow FTP at all, but offer a HTTP proxy. In this case, you have to
specify the proxy in addition to the FTP server.

For a proxy FTP server, you should usually give the name of the server you really want as a part of the
username, after an “@” sign. The proxy server then “fakes” the real server. For example, assuming you want to
install from [Link], using the proxy FTP server [Link], listening on port 1024.
In this case, you go to the options menu, set the FTP username to ftp@[Link], and the password to
your email address. As your installation media, you specify FTP (or passive FTP, if the proxy supports it), and the
URL [Link]
Since /pub/FreeBSD from [Link] is proxied under [Link], you are able to install from that
machine (which will fetch the files from [Link] as your installation requests them.

2.8 Committing to the Installation

The installation can now proceed if desired. This is also the last chance for aborting the installation to prevent
changes to the hard drive.

User Confirmation Requested

Last Chance! Are you SURE you want to continue the installation?

If you’re running this on a disk with data you wish to save then WE
STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU TO MAKE PROPER BACKUPS before proceeding!

We can take no responsibility for lost disk contents!

[ Yes ] No

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

Select [ Yes ] and press Enter to proceed.

The installation time will vary according to the distribution chosen, installation media used, and the speed of the
computer. There will be a series of messages displayed indicating the status.
The installation is complete when the following message is displayed:

Message

Congratulations! You now have FreeBSD installed on your system.

We will now move on to the final configuration questions.

For any option you do not wish to configure, simply select No.

If you wish to re-enter this utility after the system is up, you may
do so by typing: /stand/sysinstall .

[ OK ]

[ Press enter to continue ]

Press Enter to proceed with post-installation configurations.

Selecting [ No ] and pressing Enter will abort the installation so no changes will be made to your system. The
following message will appear :

Message
Installation complete with some errors. You may wish to scroll
through the debugging messages on VTY1 with the scroll-lock feature.
You can also choose "No" at the next prompt and go back into the
installation menus to try and retry whichever operations have failed.

[ OK ]

This message is generated because nothing was installed. Pressing Enter will return to the Main Installation Menu to
exit the installation.

2.9 Post-installation
Configuration of various options follows the successful installation. An option can be configured by re-entering the
configuration options before booting the new FreeBSD system or after installation using /stand/sysinstall and
selecting Configure.

2.9.1 Network Device Configuration

If you previously configured PPP for an FTP install, this screen will not display and can be configured later as
described above.
For detailed information on Local Area Networks and configuring FreeBSD as a gateway/router refer to the tutorial
PPP- Pendantic PPP Primer (../ppp-primer/[Link]).

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 Chapter 2 Installing FreeBSD

User Confirmation Requested

Would you like to configure Ethernet or SLIP/PPP network devices?

[ Yes ] No

To configure a network device, select [ Yes ] and press Enter. Otherwise, select [ No ] to continue.

Figure 2-31. Selecting An Ethernet Device

Select the interface to be configured with the arrow keys and press Enter.

User Confirmation Requested

Do you want to try IPv6 configuration of the interface?

Yes [ No ]

In this private local area network the current Internet type protocol (IPv4) was sufficient and [ No ] was selected with
the arrow keys and Enter pressed.
If you want to try the new Internet protocol (IPv6), choose [ Yes ] and press Enter. It will take several seconds to
scan for RA servers.

User Confirmation Requested

Do you want to try DHCP configuration of the interface?

Yes [ No ]

If DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) is not required select [ No ] with the arrow keys and press Enter.
Selecting [ Yes ] will execute dhclient, and if successful, will fill in the network configuration information
automatically. Refer to Section 17.8 for more information.
The following Network Configuration screen shows the configuration of the Ethernet device for a system that will act
as the gateway for a Local Area Network.

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Figure 2-32. Set Network Configuration For ed0

Use Tab to select the information fields and fill in appropriate information:

Host
The fully-qualified hostname, e.g. [Link] in this case.

Domain
The name of the domain that your machine is in, e.g. [Link] for this case.

IPv4 Gateway
IP address of host forwarding packets to non-local destinations. Fill this in only if the machine is a node on the
network. Leave this field blank if the machine is the gateway to the Internet for the network.

Name server
IP address of your local DNS server. There is no local DNS server on this private local area network so the IP
address of the provider’s DNS server ([Link]) was used.

IPv4 address
The IP address to be used for this interface was ([Link]).

Netmask
The address block being used for this local area network is a Class C block ([Link] - [Link]).
The default netmask is for a Class C network ([Link]).

Extra options to ifconfig

Any interface-specific options to ifconfig you would like to add. There were none in this case.
Use Tab to select [ OK ] when finished and press Enter.

User Confirmation Requested

Would you like to Bring Up the ed0 interface right now?

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[ Yes ] No

Choosing [ Yes ] and pressing Enter will bring the machine up on the network and be ready for use after leaving
leaving the installation.

2.9.2 Configure Internet Services

User Confirmation Requested
Do you want to configure inetd and the network services that it provides?

Yes [ No ]

If [ No ] is selected, various services such telnetd will not be enabled. This means that remote users will not be able
to telnet into this machine. Local users will be still be able to access remote machines with telnet.
These services can be enabled after installation by editing /etc/[Link] with your favorite text editor. See
Section 17.12.1 for more information.
Select [ Yes ] if you wish to configure these services during install. An additional confirmation will display.

User Confirmation Requested

The Internet Super Server (inetd) allows a number of simple Internet
services to be enabled, including finger, ftp and telnetd. Enabling
these services may increase risk of security problems by increasing
the exposure of your system.

With this in mind, do you wish to enable inetd?

[ Yes ] No

Select [ Yes ] to continue.

User Confirmation Requested

inetd(8) relies on its configuration file, /etc/[Link], to determine
which of its Internet services will be available. The default FreeBSD
[Link](5) leaves all services disabled by default, so they must be
specifically enabled in the configuration file before they will
function, even once inetd(8) is enabled. Note that services for
IPv6 must be seperately enabled from IPv4 services.

Select [Yes] now to invoke an editor on /etc/[Link], or [No] to

use the current settings.

[ Yes ] No

Selecting [ Yes ] will allow adding services by deleting the # at the beginning of a line.

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Figure 2-33. Editing [Link]

After adding the desired services, pressing Esc will display a menu which will allow exiting and saving the changes.

2.9.3 Configure Gateway

User Confirmation Requested
Do you want this machine to function as a network gateway?

[ Yes ] No

If the machine will be acting as the gateway for a local area network and forwarding packets between other machines
then select [ Yes ] and press Enter. If the machine is a node on a network then select [ No ] and press Enter to
continue.

2.9.4 Anonymous FTP

User Confirmation Requested
Do you want to have anonymous FTP access to this machine?

Yes [ No ]

[Link] Deny Anonymous FTP

Selecting the default [ No ] and pressing Enter will still allow users who have accounts with passwords to use FTP to
access the machine.

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[Link] Allow Anonymous FTP

Anyone can access your machine if you elect to allow anonymous FTP connections. The security implications
should be considered before enabling this option. For more information about security see Chapter 10.
To allow anonymous FTP, use the arrow keys to select [ Yes ] and press Enter. The following screens (or similar)
will display :

Figure 2-34. Default Anonymous FTP Configuration

Pressing F1 will display the help :

This screen allows you to configure the anonymous FTP user.

The following configuration values are editable:

UID: The user ID you wish to assign to the anonymous FTP user.
All files uploaded will be owned by this ID.

Group: Which group you wish the anonymous FTP user to be in.

Comment: String describing this user in /etc/passwd

FTP Root Directory:

Where files available for anonymous FTP will be kept.

Upload subdirectory:

Where files uploaded by anonymous FTP users will go.

The ftp root directory will be put in /var by default. If you do not have enough room there for the anticipated FTP
needs, the /usr directory could be used by setting the FTP Root Directory to /usr/ftp.
When you are satisfied with the values, press Enter to continue.

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User Confirmation Requested

Create a welcome message file for anonymous FTP users?

[ Yes ] No

If you select [ Yes ] and press Enter, an editor will automatically start allowing you to edit the message.

Figure 2-35. Edit The FTP Welcome Message

This is a text editor called ee. Use the instructions to change the message or change the message later using a text
editor of your choice. Note the file name/location at the bottom.
Press Esc and a pop-up menu will default to a) leave editor. Press Enter to exit and continue.

2.9.5 Configure Network File Services

Network File Services (NFS) allows sharing of files across a network. A machine can be configured as a server, a
client, or both. Refer to Section 17.4 for a more information.

[Link] NFS Server

User Confirmation Requested
Do you want to configure this machine as an NFS server?

Yes [ No ]

If there is no need for a Network File System server or client, select [ No ] and press Enter.
If [ Yes ] is chosen, a message will pop-up indicating that the exports file must be created.

Message
Operating as an NFS server means that you must first configure an
/etc/exports file to indicate which hosts are allowed certain kinds of

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access to your local file systems.

Press [Enter] now to invoke an editor on /etc/exports
[ OK ]

Press Enter to continue. A text editor will start allowing the exports file to be created and edited.

Figure 2-36. Editing the Exports File

Use the instructions to add the actual exported filesystems now or later using a text editor of your choice. Note the
filename/location at the bottom of the editor screen.
Press Esc and a pop-up menu will default to a) leave editor. Press Enter to exit and continue.

[Link] NFS Client

User Confirmation Requested
Do you want to configure this machine as an NFS client?

Yes [ No ]

With the arrow keys, select [ Yes ] or [ No ] as appropriate and press Enter.

2.9.6 Security Profile

A security profile is a set of configuration options that attempts to achieve the desired ratio of security to convenience
by enabling and disabling certain programs and other settings.
More information about security profiles can be found in the FreeBSD FAQ
(../faq/[Link]#SECURITY-PROFILES).

User Confirmation Requested

Do you want to select a default security profile for this host (select

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No for "medium" security)?

[ Yes ] No

Selecting [ No ] and pressing Enter will set the security profile to medium.
Selecting [ Yes ] and pressing Enter will allow selecting a different security profile.

Figure 2-37. Security Profile Options

Press F1 to display the help. Press Enter to return to selection menu.

Use the arrow keys to choose Medium unless your are sure that another level is required for your needs. With [ OK ]
highlighted, press Enter.
An appropriate confirmation message will display depending on which security setting was chosen.

Message

Moderate security settings have been selected.

Sendmail and SSHd have been enabled, securelevels are

disabled, and NFS server setting have been left intact.
PLEASE NOTE that this still does not save you from having
to properly secure your system in other ways or exercise
due diligence in your administration, this simply picks
a standard set of out-of-box defaults to start with.

To change any of these settings later, edit /etc/[Link]

[OK]

Message

Extreme security settings have been selected.

Sendmail, SSHd, and NFS services have been disabled, and

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securelevels have been enabled.

PLEASE NOTE that this still does not save you from having
to properly secure your system in other ways or exercise
due diligence in your administration, this simply picks
a more secure set of out-of-box defaults to start with.

To change any of these settings later, edit /etc/[Link]

[OK]

Press Enter to continue with the post-installation configuration.

2.9.7 System Console Settings

There are several options available to customize the system console.

User Confirmation Requested

Would you like to customize your system console settings?

[ Yes ] No

To view and configure the options, select [ Yes ] and press Enter.

Figure 2-38. System Console Configuration Options

A commonly used option is the screensaver. Use the arrow keys to select Saver and then press Enter.

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Figure 2-39. Screensaver Options

Select the desired screen saver using the arrow keys and then press Enter. The System Console Configuration menu
will redisplay.
The default time interval is 300 seconds. To change the time interval, select Saver again. At the Screensaver Options
menu, select Timeout using the arrow keys and press Enter. A pop-up menu will appear :

Figure 2-40. Screensaver Timeout

The value can be changed, then select [ OK ] and press Enter to return to the System Console Configuration menu.

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Figure 2-41. System Console Configuration Exit

Selecting Exit and pressing Enter will continue with the post-installation configurations.

2.9.8 Setting The Time Zone

Setting the timezone for your machine will allow it to automatically correct for any regional time changes and
perform other timezone related functions properly.
The example shown is for a machine located in the Eastern time zone of the United States. Your selections will vary
according to your geographical location.

User Confirmation Requested

Would you like to set this machine’s time zone now?

[ Yes ] No

Select [ Yes ] and press Enter to set the time zone.

User Confirmation Requested

Is this machine’s CMOS clock set to UTC? If it is set to local time
or you don’t know, please choose NO here!

Yes [ No ]

Select [ Yes ] or [ No ] according to how the machine’s clock is configured and press Enter.

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Figure 2-42. Select Your Region

The appropriate region is selected using the arrow keys and then press Enter.

Figure 2-43. Select Your Country

Select the appropriate country using the arrow keys and press Enter.

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Figure 2-44. Select Your Timezone

The appropriate time zone is selected using the arrow keys and pressing Enter.

Confirmation
Does the abbreviation ’EDT’ look reasonable?

[ Yes ] No

Confirm the abbreviation for the time zone is correct. If it looks okay, press Enter to continue with the
post-installation configuration.

2.9.9 Linux Compatibility

User Confirmation Requested
Would you like to enable Linux binary compatibility?

[ Yes ] No

Selecting [ Yes ] and pressing Enter will allow running Linux software on FreeBSD. The install will proceed to add
the appropriate packages for Linux compatibility.
If installing by FTP, the machine will need to be connected to the Internet. Sometimes a remote ftp site will not have
all the distributions like the Linux binary compatibility. This can be installed later if necessary.

2.9.10 Mouse Settings

This option will allow you to cut and paste text in the console and user programs with a 3-button mouse. If using a
2-button mouse, refer to manual page, moused(8), after installation for details on emulating the 3-button style. This
example depicts a non-USB mouse.

User Confirmation Requested

Does this system have a non-USB mouse attached to it?

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[ Yes ] No

Select [ Yes ] for a non-USB mouse or [ No ] for a USB mouse and press Enter.

Figure 2-45. Select Mouse Protocol Type

Use the arrow keys to select Type and press Enter

Figure 2-46. Set Mouse Protocol

The mouse used in this example is a PS/2 type, so the default Auto was appropriate. To change protocol, use the
arrow keys to select another option. Ensure that [ OK ] is highlighted and press Enter to exit this menu.

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Figure 2-47. Configure Mouse Port

Use the arrow keys to select Port and press Enter.

Figure 2-48. Setting The Mouse Port

This system had a PS/2 mouse, so the default PS/2 was appropriate. To change the port, use the arrow keys and then
press Enter.

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Figure 2-49. Enable The Mouse Daemon

Last, the mouse daemon is enabled and tested.

Figure 2-50. Test The Mouse Daemon

The cursor moved around the screen so the mouse daemon is running:
Select [ Yes ] to return to the previous menu then select Exit with the arrow keys and press Enter to return to
continue with the post-installation configuration.

2.9.11 Configure X-Server

In order to use a graphical user interface such as KDE, GNOME, or others, the X server will need to be configured.
To see whether your video card is supported, check the XFree86 ([Link] web site. If your video
card is only supported under XFree86 4.x, refer to Chapter 5 for installation and configuration.

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User Confirmation Requested

Would you like to configure your X server at this time?

[ Yes ] No

Warning: It is necessary to know your monitor specifications and video card information. Equipment damage can
occur if settings are incorrect. If you do not have this information, select [ No ] and perform the configuration after
installation when you have the information using /stand/sysinstall, selecting Configure and then XFree86.

If you have graphics card and monitor information, select [ Yes ] and press Enter to proceed with configuring the X
server.

Figure 2-51. Select Configuration Method Menu

There are several ways to configure the X server. XF86Setup is fully graphical and probably the easiest. Use the
arrow keys to select the XF86Setup and press Enter.

Message
You have configured and been running the mouse daemon.
Choose "/dev/sysmouse" as the mouse port and "SysMouse" or
"MouseSystems" as the mouse protocol in the X configuration utility.

[ OK ]

[ Press enter to continue ]

This indicates that the mouse daemon previously configured has been detected. Press Enter to continue.

Press [Enter] to switch to graphics mode.

This may take a while...

[ OK ]

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Press Enter to switch to the graphics mode and continue. It will not try to switch to the graphics mode until Enter is
pressed. The screen will go black and then shortly a screen with a large X in the center will appear. Be patient and
wait.
After a few more moments, the XF86Setup introduction will display. Read all instructions carefully. Press Enter to
continue.

XF86Setup Overview

There are several areas of configuration to be completed. The configuration choices you make will depend on the
hardware in the system so only a general overview can be given here.
Along the top of the configuration tool there are buttons indicating the areas to be configured. You should be able to
use the mouse if it was previously configured and select each item by clicking on it. Review each area and make
appropriate selections for your system.
1. Mouse
The mouse is the first item to be configured. If you previously configured your mouse, the mouse daemon will
already be running and should indicate SysMouse automatically for the mouse protocol. If you are use a two
button mouse, you should also select Emulate3Buttons. There are other settings that can be tweaked if
necessary.
After completing your selections, click on the Apply and check the mouse actions are working properly. If
further adjustment is needed, make them and recheck the operation by clicking on Apply again. When finished,
move on to the next item.
2. Keyboard
Select the appropriate keyboard model. The default keyboard is Generic 101-key PC.
Select the language layout for your keyboard. The default layout is U.S. English. If you are not using a U.S.
keyboard, you may need to additionally select a variant.
There are other options under Group Shift/Lock behavior and Control Key Position that can be selected if
desired. Generally the default settings are fine.
After completing the keyboard configuration, click on Apply and move on to the next item.
3. Card
Click on Read README file for additional help in configuring your video card.
Select the appropriate video card from the list using the scrollbar. Clicking on your card will show as “Card
selected:” above the list box.
Next, the Detailed Setup was selected just to check details. Typically, if your video card was in the list, no
changes will be needed here.
When finished, move on to the next item.
4. Monitor
There are two ways to proceed. One method requires that you enter the horizontal and vertical sweep
capabilities of your monitor in the text boxes.
Choosing one of the monitor options listed that the monitor is the other method. After selecting a listed option,
the horizontal and vertical sweep rates that will be used will display. Compare those to your monitor
specifications. The monitor must be capable of using those ranges.

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Do not exceed the ratings of your monitor. Damage could occur. If you have doubts select ABORT and get the
information. The remainder of the installation process will be unaffected and configuring the X-Server can be
done later using /stand/sysinstall.
When finished, move on to the next item.
5. Mode
Select the video mode(s) that you want to use. You can select more than one option. Typically, useful ranges are
640x480, 800x600, and 1024x768 but those are a function of video card capability, monitor size, and eye
comfort.
Next, select the default color depth you want to use. Your choices are 8bpp, 16bpp, 24bpp, and 32bpp. Select the
highest color depth that your video card will support.
When finished, move on to the next item.
6. Other
The default settings are reasonable values, so you probably will not need to change anything here.
The default setting which allows the server to be killed with the hotkey sequence Ctrl+Alt+Backspace should
be left on. This can be executed if something is wrong with the server settings and prevent hardware damage.
The default setting that allows video mode switching will permit changing of the mode while running X with the
hotkey sequence Alt++ or Alt+-.
7. Testing the Server
Verify all the settings once again and select Done and the following message will display :
If you’ve finished configuring everything press the
Okay button to start the X server using the configuration
you’ve selected. If you still wish to configure some things,
press one of the buttons at the top and then press "Done" again,
when you’ve finished.
After selecting Okay, some messages will briefly appear advising to wait and attempting to start the X-server.
This process takes a few moments, so be patient.
The screen will go blank for a short period of time and then a screen will appear with the message
“Congratulations, you’ve got a running server!”
If nothing appears or the display is distorted, kill the X-server using Ctrl+Alt+Backspace and adjust the
settings or revisit them after installation.
8. Running xvidtune
The display can be adjusted for height, width, or centering by using xvidtune.
There are warnings that improper settings can damage your equipment. Heed them. If in doubt, do not do it.
Instead, use the monitor controls to adjust the display for x-windows. There may be some display differences
when switching back to text mode, but it is better than damaging equipment. xvidtune can be ran later using
/stand/sysinstall.

Read the xvidtune(1) man page before making any adjustments.

9. Saving Configuration
When you are satisfied, the configuration can now be saved. Select Save the configuration and Exit The
configuration file will be saved to /etc/XF86Config.

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Once the configuration is done, the installation program will need to create a link to the server :

Do you want to create an ’X’ link to the SVGA server?

(the link will be created in the directory:

/usr/X11R6/bin) Okay?

[ Yes ] No

Select [ Yes ] and press Enter to create the link.

Link created successfully.

[ OK ]

Press Enter to continue configuration.

2.9.12 Select Default X Desktop

There are a variety of window managers available. They range from very basic environments to full desktop
environments with a large suite of software. Some require only minimal disk space and low memory while others
with more features require much more. The best way to determine which is most suitable for you is to try a few
different ones. Those are available from the ports collection or as packages and can be added after installation.
You can select one of the popular desktops to be installed and configured as the default desktop. This will allow you
to start it right after installation.

Figure 2-52. Select Default Desktop

Use the arrow keys to select a desktop and press Enter. Installation of the selected desktop will proceed.

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2.9.13 Install Packages

The packages are pre-compiled binaries and are a convenient way to install software.
Installation of one package is shown for purposes of illustration. Additional packages can also be added at this time
if desired. After installation /stand/sysinstall can be used to add additional packages.

User Confirmation Requested

The FreeBSD package collection is a collection of hundreds of
ready-to-run applications, from text editors to games to WEB servers
and more. Would you like to browse the collection now?

[ Yes ] No

Selecting [ Yes ] and pressing Enter will be followed by the Package Selection screens:

Figure 2-53. Select Package Category

All packages available will be displayed if All is selected or you can select a particular category. Highlight your
selection with the arrow keys and press Enter.
A menu will display showing all the packages available for the selection made.

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Figure 2-54. Select Packages

The bash shell is shown selected. Select as many as desired by highlighting the package and pressing the Space. A
short description of each package will appear in the lower left corner of the screen.
Pressing the Tab key will toggle between the last selected package, [ OK ], and [ Cancel ].
When you have finished marking the packages for installation, press Tab once to toggle to the [ OK ] and press
Enter to return to the Package Selection menu.
The left and right arrow keys will also toggle between [ OK ] and [ Cancel ]. This method can also be used to select
[ OK ] and press Enter to return to the Package Selection menu.

Figure 2-55. Install Packages

Use the arrow keys to select [ Install ] and press Enter. You will then need to confirm that you want to install the
packages.

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Figure 2-56. Confirm Package Installation

Selecting [ OK ] and pressing Enter will start the package installation. Installing messages will appear until
completed. Make note if there are any error messages.
The final configuration continues after packages are installed.

2.9.14 Add User/Groups

You should add at least one user during the installation so that you can use the system without being logged in as
root. The root partition is generally small and running applications as root can quickly fill it. A bigger danger is noted
below :

User Confirmation Requested

Would you like to add any initial user accounts to the system? Adding
at least one account for yourself at this stage is suggested since
working as the "root" user is dangerous (it is easy to do things which
adversely affect the entire system).

[ Yes ] No

Select [ Yes ] and press Enter to continue with adding a user.

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Figure 2-57. Select Add User

Select Add User with the arrow keys and press Enter.

Figure 2-58. Add User Information

The following descriptions will appear in the lower part of the screen as the items are selected with Tab to assist with
entering the required information.

Login ID
The login name of the new user (mandatory)

UID
The numerical ID for this user (leave blank for automatic choice)

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Group
The login group name for this user (leave blank for automatic choice)

Password
The password for this user (enter this field with care!)

Full name
The user’s full name (comment)

Member groups
The groups this user belongs to (i.e. gets access rights for)

Home directory
The user’s home directory (leave blank for default)

Login shell
The user’s login shell (leave blank for default). (/bin/sh)
The login shell was changed from /bin/sh to /usr/local/bin/bash to use the bash shell that was previously
installed as a package. Do not try to use a shell that does not exist or you will not be able to login.
The user was also added to the group "wheel" to be able to become a superuser with root privileges.
When you are satisfied, press [ OK ] and the User and Group Management menu will redisplay.

Figure 2-59. Exit User and Group Management

Groups could also be added at this time if specific needs are known. Otherwise, this may be accessed through using
/stand/sysinstall after installation is completed.

When you are finished adding users, select Exit with the arrow keys and press Enter to continue the installation.

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2.9.15 Set root Password

Message
Now you must set the system manager’s password.
This is the password you’ll use to log in as "root".

[ OK ]

[ Press enter to continue ]

Press Enter to set the root password.

The password will need to be typed in twice correctly. Needless to say, make sure you have a way of finding the
password if you forget.

Changing local password for root.

New password :
Retype new password :

The installation will continue after the password is successfully entered.

2.9.16 Exiting Install

If you need to configure additional network devices or to do any other configurations, you can do it at this point or
after installation with /stand/sysinstall.

User Confirmation Requested

Visit the general configuration menu for a chance to set any last
options?

Yes [ No ]

Selecting [ No ] with the arrow keys and pressing Enter returns to the Main Installation Menu

Figure 2-60. Exit Install

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Select [X Exit Install] with the arrow keys and press Enter. You will be asked to confirm exiting the installation :

User Confirmation Requested

Are you sure you wish to exit? The system will reboot (be sure to
remove any floppies from the drives).

[ Yes ] No

Select [ Yes ] and remove floppy if booting from floppy. The CDROM drive is locked until the machine starts to
reboot. The CDROM drive is then unlocked and can be removed from drive (quickly).
The system will reboot so watch for any error messages that may appear.

2.9.17 FreeBSD Bootup

[Link] FreeBSD Bootup on the i386

If everything went well, you will see messages scroll off the screen and you will arrive at a login prompt. You can
view the content of the messages by pressing Scroll-Lock and using PgUp and PgDn. Pressing Scroll-Lock again
will return to the prompt.
The entire message may not display (buffer limitation) but it can be viewed from the command line after logging in
by typing dmesg at the prompt.
Login using the username/password you set during installation (rpratt, in this example). Avoid logging in as root
except when necessary.
Typical boot messages :

Copyright (c) 1992-2001 The FreeBSD Project.

Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE #0: Sat Apr 21 [Link] GMT 2001
jkh@[Link]:/usr/src/sys/compile/GENERIC
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz
CPU: AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor (300.68-MHz 586-class CPU)
Origin = "AuthenticAMD" Id = 0x580 Stepping = 0
Features=0x8001bf FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,MCE,CX8,MMX
AMD Features=0x80000800 SYSCALL,3DNow!
real memory = 268435456 (262144K bytes)
config di sn0
config di lnc0
config di le0
config di ie0
config di fe0
config di cs0
config di bt0
config di ata1
config di aic0
config di aha0
config di adv0
config q

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avail memory = 256983040 (250960K bytes)

Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc044d000.
Preloaded userconfig_script "/boot/[Link]" at 0xc044d09c.
md0: Malloc disk
npx0: math processor on motherboard
npx0: INT 16 interface
pcib0: Host to PCI bridge on motherboard
pci0: PCI bus on pcib0
pcib1: VIA 82C598MVP (Apollo MVP3) PCI-PCI (AGP) bridge at device 1.0 on pci0
pci1: PCI bus on pcib1
pci1: Matrox MGA G200 AGP graphics accelerator at 0.0 irq 11
isab0: VIA 82C586 PCI-ISA bridge at device 7.0 on pci0
isa0: ISA bus on isab0
atapci0: VIA 82C586 ATA33 controller port 0xe000-0xe00f at device 7.1 on pci0
ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0
ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0
uhci0: VIA 83C572 USB controller port 0xe400-0xe41f irq 10 at device 7.2 on pci0
usb0: VIA 83C572 USB controller on uhci0
usb0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0: VIA UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
chip1: VIA 82C586B ACPI interface at device 7.3 on pci0
ed0: NE2000 PCI Ethernet (RealTek 8029) port 0xe800-0xe81f irq 9 at
device 10.0 on pci0
ed0: address [Link], type NE2000 (16 bit)
isa0: too many dependant configs (8)
isa0: unexpected small tag 14
fdc0: NEC 72065B or clone at port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2 on isa0
fdc0: FIFO enabled, 8 bytes threshold
fd0: 1440-KB 3.5" drive on fdc0 drive 0
atkbdc0: keyboard controller (i8042) at port 0x60-0x6f on isa0
atkbd0: AT Keyboard flags 0x1 irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
psm0: PS/2 Mouse irq 12 on atkbdc0
psm0: model Generic PS/2 mouse, device ID 0
vga0: Generic ISA VGA at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
sc0: System console at flags 0x1 on isa0
sc0: VGA 16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300
sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0
sio0: type 16550A
sio1 at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa0
sio1: type 16550A
ppc0: Parallel port at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0
ppc0: SMC-like chipset (ECP/EPP/PS2/NIBBLE) in COMPATIBLE mode
ppc0: FIFO with 16/16/15 bytes threshold
ppi0: Parallel I/O on ppbus0
lpt0: Printer on ppbus0
lpt0: Interrupt-driven port
plip0: PLIP network interface on ppbus0
ad0: 8063MB IBM-DHEA-38451 [16383/16/63] at ata0-master using UDMA33
ad2: 8063MB IBM-DHEA-38451 [16383/16/63] at ata1-master using UDMA33
acd0: CDROM DELTA OTC-H101/ST3 F/W by OIPD at ata0-slave using PIO4
Mounting root from ufs:/dev/ad0s1a

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swapon: adding /dev/ad0s1b as swap device

Automatic boot in progress...
/dev/ad0s1a: FILESYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS
/dev/ad0s1a: clean, 70119 free (655 frags, 8683 blocks, 0.7% fragmentation)
/dev/ad0s1f: FILESYSTEM CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS
/dev/ad0s1f: clean, 6976313 free (51774 frags, 829297 blocks, 0.7% fragmentation)
/dev/ad0s1e: filesystem CLEAN; SKIPPING CHECKS
/dev/ad0s1e: clean, 97952 free (9 frags, 12381 blocks, 0.0% fragmentation)
Doing initial network setup: hostname.
lo0: flags=8049 UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST mtu 16384
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x8
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet [Link] netmask 0xff000000
Additional routing options: tcp extensions=NO IP gateway=YES TCP
keepalive=YES
routing daemons:.
additional daemons: syslogd.
Doing additional network setup: portmap.
Starting final network daemons: creating ssh RSA host key
Generating RSA keys: Key generation complete.
Your identification has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key.
Your public key has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
[Link] root@[Link]
creating ssh DSA host key
Generating DSA parameter and key.
Your identification has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key.
Your public key has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
[Link] root@[Link].
setting ELF ldconfig path: /usr/lib /usr/lib/compat /usr/X11R6/lib
/usr/local/lib
setting [Link] ldconfig path: /usr/lib/aout /usr/lib/compat/aout
/usr/X11R6/lib/aout
starting standard daemons: inetd cron sendmail sshd usbd.
Initial rc.i386 initialization: linux.
rc.i386 configuring syscons: blank_time screensaver moused.
Additional ABI support: linux.
Local package initilization:.
Additional TCP options:.

FreeBSD/i386 ([Link]) (ttyv0)

login: rpratt
Password:

Generating the RSA and DSA keys may take some time on slower machines. This happens only on the initial
boot-up of a new installation. Subsequent boots will be faster.
If the X server has been configured and a Default Desktop chosen, it can be started by typing startx at the
command line.

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[Link] Bootup of FreeBSD on the Alpha

Once the install procedure has finished, you will be able to start FreeBSD by typing something like this to the SRM
prompt:

BOOT DKC0

This instructs the firmware to boot the specified disk. To make FreeBSD boot automatically in the future, use these
commands:

SET BOOT_OSFLAGS A



SET BOOT_FILE ”



SET BOOTDEF_DEV DKC0



SET AUTO_ACTION BOOT

The boot messages will be similar (but not identical) to those produced by FreeBSD booting on the i386.

2.9.18 FreeBSD Shutdown

It is important to properly shutdown the operating system. Do not just turn off power. First, become a superuser by
typing su at the command line and entering the root password. This will work only if the user is a member of the
group wheel. Otherwise, login as root and use shutdown -h now.

The operating system has halted.

Please press any key to reboot.

It is safe to turn off the power after the shutdown command has been issued and the message "Please press any key to
reboot" appears. If any key is pressed instead of turning off the power switch, the system will reboot.

2.10 Supported Hardware

FreeBSD currently runs on a wide variety of ISA, VLB, EISA, and PCI bus-based PCs with Intel, AMD, Cyrix, or
NexGen “x86” processors, as well as a number of machines based on the Compaq Alpha processor. Support for
generic IDE or ESDI drive configurations, various SCSI controllers, PCMCIA cards, USB devices, and network and
serial cards is also provided. FreeBSD also supports IBM’s microchannel (MCA) bus.
A list of supported hardware is provided with each FreeBSD release in the FreeBSD Hardware Notes. This document
can usually be found in a file named [Link], in the top-level directory of a CDROM or FTP distribution or
in sysinstall’s documentation menu. It lists, for a given architecture, what hardware devices are known to be
supported by each release of FreeBSD.

2.11 Troubleshooting
The following section covers basic installation troubleshooting, such as common problems people have reported.
There are also a few questions and answers for people wishing to dual-boot FreeBSD with MS-DOS.

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2.11.1 What to Do If Something Goes Wrong...

Due to various limitations of the PC architecture, it is impossible for probing to be 100% reliable, however, there are
a few things you can do if it fails.
Check the Hardware Notes document for your version of FreeBSD to make sure your hardware is supported.
If your hardware is supported and you still experience lock-ups or other problems, reset your computer, and when the
visual kernel configuration option is given, choose it. This will allow you to go through your hardware and supply
information to the system about it. The kernel on the boot disks is configured assuming that most hardware devices
are in their factory default configuration in terms of IRQs, IO addresses, and DMA channels. If your hardware has
been reconfigured, you will most likely need to use the configuration editor to tell FreeBSD where to find things.
It is also possible that a probe for a device not present will cause a later probe for another device that is present to
fail. In that case, the probes for the conflicting driver(s) should be disabled.

Warning: Do not disable any drivers you will need during the installation, such as your screen (sc0). If the
installation wedges or fails mysteriously after leaving the configuration editor, you have probably removed or
changed something you should not have. Reboot and try again.

In configuration mode, you can:

• List the device drivers installed in the kernel.

• Change device drivers for hardware that is not present in your system.
• Change IRQs, DRQs, and IO port addresses used by a device driver.
After adjusting the kernel to match your hardware configuration, type Q to boot with the new settings. Once the
installation has completed, any changes you made in the configuration mode will be permanent so you do not have to
reconfigure every time you boot. It is still highly likely that you will eventually want to build a custom kernel.

2.11.2 MS-DOS User’s Questions and Answers

Many users wish to install FreeBSD on PCs inhabited by MS-DOS. Here are some commonly asked questions about
installing FreeBSD on such systems.

1. Help, I have no space! Do I need to delete everything first?

If your machine is already running MS-DOS and has little or no free space available for the FreeBSD installation, all
hope is not lost! You may find the FIPS utility, provided in the tools directory on the FreeBSD CDROM or various
FreeBSD FTP sites to be quite useful.
FIPS allows you to split an existing MS-DOS partition into two pieces, preserving the original partition and allowing
you to install onto the second free piece. You first defragment your MS-DOS partition using the Windows DEFRAG
utility (go into Explorer, right-click on the hard drive, and choose to defrag your hard drive), or Norton Disk Tools.
You then must run FIPS. It will prompt you for the rest of the information it needs. Afterwards, you can reboot and
install FreeBSD on the new free slice. See the Distributions menu for an estimate of how much free space you will
need for the kind of installation you want.
There is also a very useful product from PowerQuest ([Link] called Partition Magic. This
application has far more functionality than FIPS, and is highly recommended if you plan to often add/remove

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operating systems (like me). However, it does cost money, and if you plan to install FreeBSD once and then leave it
there, FIPS will probably be fine for you.

2. Can I use compressed MS-DOS filesystems from FreeBSD?

No. If you are using a utility such as Stacker(tm) or DoubleSpace(tm), FreeBSD will only be able to use whatever
portion of the filesystem you leave uncompressed. The rest of the filesystem will show up as one large file (the
stacked/double spaced file!). Do not remove that file or you will probably regret it greatly!
It is probably better to create another uncompressed primary MS-DOS partition and use this for communications
between MS-DOS and FreeBSD.

3. Can I mount my extended MS-DOS partition?

Yes. DOS extended partitions are mapped in at the end of the other “slices” in FreeBSD, e.g., your D: drive might be
/dev/da0s5, your E: drive, /dev/da0s6, and so on. This example assumes, of course, that your extended partition
is on SCSI drive 0. For IDE drives, substitute ad for da appropriately if installing 4.0-RELEASE or later, and
substitute wd for da if you are installing a version of FreeBSD prior to 4.0. You otherwise mount extended partitions
exactly like you would any other DOS drive, for example:

# mount -t msdos /dev/ad0s5 /dos_d

2.11.3 Alpha User’s Questions and Answers

This section answers some commonly asked questions about installing FreeBSD on Alpha systems.

1. Can I boot from the ARC or Alpha BIOS Console?

No. FreeBSD, like Compaq Tru64 and VMS, will only boot from the SRM console.

2. Help, I have no space! Do I need to delete everything first?

Unfortunately, yes.

3. Can I mount my Compaq Tru64 or VMS filesystems?

No, not at this time.

2.12 Advanced Installation Guide

Contributed by Valentino Vaschetto.

This section describes how to install FreeBSD in exceptional cases.

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2.12.1 Installing FreeBSD on a System without a Monitor or

Keyboard
This type of installation is called a "headless install", because the machine that you are trying to install FreeBSD on
either does not have a monitor attached to it, or does not even have a VGA output. How is this possible you ask?
Using a serial console. A serial console is basically using another machine to act as the main display and keyboard
for a system. To do this, just follow these steps:

1. Fetch the Right Boot Floppy Images

First you will need to get the right disk images so that you can boot into the install program. The secret with
using a serial console is that you tell the boot loader to send I/O through a serial port instead of displaying
console output to the VGA device and trying to read input from a local keyboard. Enough of that now, let’s get
back to getting these disk images.
You will need to get [Link]
([Link] and [Link]
([Link] from the floppies
directory ([Link]
2. Write the Image Files to the Floppy Disks.
The image files, such as [Link], are not regular files that you copy to the disk. Instead, they are images of the
complete contents of the disk.
This means that you can not use commands like DOS’ copy to write the files. Instead, you must use specific
tools to write the images directly to the disk.
If you are creating the floppies on a computer running DOS then we provide a tool to do this called fdimage.
If you are using the floppies from the CDROM, and your CDROM is the E: drive then you would run this:
E:\
tools\fdimage floppies\[Link] A:

Repeat this command for each .flp file, replacing the floppy disk each time. Adjust the command line as
necessary, depending on where you have placed the .flp files. If you do not have the CDROM then fdimage
can be downloaded from the tools directory ([Link] on the FreeBSD FTP
site.
If you are writing the floppies on a Unix system (such as another FreeBSD system) you can use the dd(1)
command to write the image files directly to disk. On FreeBSD you would run:
# dd if=[Link] of=/dev/fd0

On FreeBSD /dev/fd0 refers to the first floppy disk (the A: drive). /dev/fd1 would be the B: drive, and so
on. Other Unix variants might have different names for the floppy disk devices, and you will need to check the
documentation for the system as necessary.
3. Enabling the Boot Floppies to Boot into a Serial Console

Warning: Do not try to mount the floppy if it is write-protected

If you were to boot into the floppies that you just made, FreeBSD would boot into its normal install mode. We
want FreeBSD to boot into a serial console for our install. To do this, you have to mount the [Link] floppy
onto your FreeBSD system using the mount(8) command.

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# mount /dev/fd0 /mnt

Now that you have the floppy mounted, you must change into the floppy directory
# cd /mnt

Here is where you must set the floppy to boot into a serial console. You have to make a file called [Link]
containing "/boot/loader -h". All this does is pass a flag to the bootloader to boot into a serial console.
# echo "/boot/loader -h" > [Link]

Now that you have your floppy configured correctly, you must unmount the floppy using the umount(8)
command
# cd /
# umount /mnt

Now you can remove the floppy from the floppy drive
4. Connecting Your Null Modem Cable
You now need to connect a null modem cable between the two machines. Just connect the cable to the serial
ports of the 2 machines. A normal serial cable will not work here, you need a null modem cable because it has
some of the wires inside crossed over.
5. Booting Up for the Install
It is now time to go ahead and start the install. Put the [Link] floppy in the floppy drive of the machine you
are doing the headless install on, and power on the machine.
6. Connecting to Your Headless Machine
Now you have to connect to that machine with cu(1):
# cu -l /dev/cuaa0

That’s it! You should be able to control the headless machine through your cu session now. It will ask you to put in
the [Link], and then it will come up with a selection of what kind of terminal to use. Just select the FreeBSD
color console and proceed with your install!

2.13 Preparing Your Own Installation Media

Note: To prevent repetition, “FreeBSD disk” in this context means a FreeBSD CDROM or DVD that you have
purchased, or produced yourself.

There may be some situations in which you need to create your own FreeBSD installation media and/or source. This
might be physical media, such as a tape, or a source that Sysinstall can use to retrieve the files, such as a local FTP
site, or an MS-DOS partition. For example;

• You have many machines connected to your local network, and one FreeBSD disk. You want to create a local FTP
site using the contents of the FreeBSD disk, and then have your machines use this local FTP site instead of
needing to connect to the Internet.

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• You have a FreeBSD disk, FreeBSD does not recognize your CD/DVD drive, but DOS/Windows does. You want
to copy the FreeBSD installations files to a DOS partition on the same computer, and then install FreeBSD using
those files.
• The computer you want to install on does not have a CD/DVD drive, or a network card, but you can connect a
“Laplink-style” serial or parallel cable to a computer that does.
• You want to create a tape that can be used to install FreeBSD.

2.13.1 Creating a Local FTP Site with a FreeBSD Disk

FreeBSD disks are laid out in the same way as the FTP site. This makes it very easy for you to create a local FTP site
that can be used by other machines on your network when installing FreeBSD.

1. On the FreeBSD computer that will host the FTP site, ensure that the CDROM is in the drive, and mounted on
/cdrom.
# mount /cdrom

2. Create an account for anonymous FTP in /etc/passwd. Do this by editing /etc/passwd using vipw(8) and
adding this line.
ftp:*:99:99::0:0:FTP:/cdrom:/nonexistent
3. Ensure that the FTP service is enabled in /etc/[Link].

Anyone with network connectivity to your machine can now chose a media type of FTP and type in [Link]
machine after picking “Other” in the FTP sites menu during the install.

Warning: This approach is OK for a machine that is on your local network, and that is protected by your firewall.
Offering up FTP services to other machines over the Internet (and not your local network) exposes your
computer to the attention of crackers and other undesirables. We strongly recommend that you follow good
security practices if you do this.

2.13.2 Creating Installation Floppies

If you must install from floppy disk (which we suggest you do not do), either due to unsupported hardware or simply
because you insist on doing things the hard way, you must first prepare some floppies for the installation.
At a minimum, you will need as many 1.44MB or 1.2MB floppies as it takes to hold all the files in the bin (binary
distribution) directory. If you are preparing the floppies from DOS, then they MUST be formatted using the MS-DOS
FORMAT command. If you are using Windows, use Explorer to format the disks (right-click on the A: drive, and
select "Format".
Do not trust factory pre-formatted floppies. Format them again yourself, just to be sure. Many problems reported by
our users in the past have resulted from the use of improperly formatted media, which is why we are making a point
of it now.

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If you are creating the floppies on another FreeBSD machine, a format is still not a bad idea, though you do not need
to put a DOS filesystem on each floppy. You can use the disklabel and newfs commands to put a UFS filesystem
on them instead, as the following sequence of commands (for a 3.5" 1.44MB floppy) illustrates:

# fdformat -f 1440 fd0.1440

# disklabel -w -r fd0.1440 floppy3
# newfs -t 2 -u 18 -l 1 -i 65536 /dev/fd0

Note: Use fd0.1200 and floppy5 for 5.25" 1.2MB disks.

Then you can mount and write to them like any other filesystem.
After you have formatted the floppies, you will need to copy the files to them. The distribution files are split into
chunks conveniently sized so that 5 of them will fit on a conventional 1.44MB floppy. Go through all your floppies,
packing as many files as will fit on each one, until you have all of the distributions you want packed up in this fashion.
Each distribution should go into a subdirectory on the floppy, e.g.: a:\bin\[Link], a:\bin\[Link], and so on.
Once you come to the Media screen during the install process, select “Floppy” and you will be prompted for the rest.

2.13.3 Installing from an MS-DOS Partition

To prepare for an installation from an MS-DOS partition, copy the files from the distribution into a directory on that
partition. For example, c:\freebsd. The directory structure of the CDROM or FTP site must be partially
reproduced within this directory, so we suggest using the DOS xcopy command if you are copying it from a CD. For
example, to prepare for a minimal installation of FreeBSD:

C:\
md c:\freebsd
C:\
xcopy e:\bin c:\freebsd\bin\ /s
C:\
xcopy e:\manpages c:\freebsd\manpages\ /s

Assuming that C: is where you have free space and E: is where your CDROM is mounted.
If you do not have a CDROM drive, you can download the distribution from [Link]
([Link] Each distribution is in its own directory; for
example, the bin distribution can be found in the 4.4/bin/
([Link] directory.
For as many distributions you wish to install from an MS-DOS partition (and you have the free space for), install
each one under c:\freebsd — the BIN distribution is the only one required for a minimum installation.

2.13.4 Creating an Installation Tape

Installing from tape is probably the easiest method, short of an online FTP install or CDROM install. The installation
program expects the files to be simply tarred onto the tape. After getting all of the distribution files you are interested
in, simply tar them onto the tape;

# cd /freebsd/distdir
# tar cvf /dev/rwt0 dist1 ... dist2

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When you go to do the installation, you should also make sure that you leave enough room in some temporary
directory (which you will be allowed to choose) to accommodate the full contents of the tape you have created. Due
to the non-random access nature of tapes, this method of installation requires quite a bit of temporary storage. You
should expect to require as much temporary storage as you have stuff written on tape.

Note: When starting the installation, the tape must be in the drive before booting from the boot floppy. The
installation probe may otherwise fail to find it.

2.13.5 Before Installing over a Network

There are three types of network installations you can do. Serial port (SLIP or PPP), Parallel port (PLIP (laplink
cable)), or Ethernet (a standard Ethernet controller (includes some PCMCIA)).
The SLIP support is rather primitive, and limited primarily to hard-wired links, such as a serial cable running
between a laptop computer and another computer. The link should be hard-wired as the SLIP installation does not
currently offer a dialing capability; that facility is provided with the PPP utility, which should be used in preference
to SLIP whenever possible.
If you are using a modem, then PPP is almost certainly your only choice. Make sure that you have your service
provider’s information handy as you will need to know it fairly early in the installation process.
If you use PAP or CHAP to connect your ISP (in other words, if you can connect to the ISP in Windows without
using a script), then all you will need to do is type in dial at the ppp prompt. Otherwise, you will need to know how
to dial your ISP using the “AT commands” specific to your modem, as the PPP dialer provides only a very simple
terminal emulator. Please refer to the user-ppp handbook and FAQ (../faq/[Link]) entries for further information. If
you have problems, logging can be directed to the screen using the command set log local ....
If a hard-wired connection to another FreeBSD (2.0-R or later) machine is available, you might also consider
installing over a “laplink” parallel port cable. The data rate over the parallel port is much higher than what is
typically possible over a serial line (up to 50kbytes/sec), thus resulting in a quicker installation.
Finally, for the fastest possible network installation, an Ethernet adapter is always a good choice! FreeBSD supports
most common PC Ethernet cards; a table of supported cards (and their required settings) is provided in the Hardware
Notes for each release of FreeBSD. If you are using one of the supported PCMCIA Ethernet cards, also be sure that
it is plugged in before the laptop is powered on! FreeBSD does not, unfortunately, currently support hot insertion of
PCMCIA cards during installation.
You will also need to know your IP address on the network, the netmask value for your address class, and the name
of your machine. If you are installing over a PPP connection and do not have a static IP, fear not, the IP address can
be dynamically assigned by your ISP. Your system administrator can tell you which values to use for your particular
network setup. If you will be referring to other hosts by name rather than IP address, you will also need a name
server and possibly the address of a gateway (if you are using PPP, it is your provider’s IP address) to use in talking
to it. If you want to install by FTP via a HTTP proxy (see below), you will also need the proxy’s address. If you do
not know the answers to all or most of these questions, then you should really probably talk to your system
administrator or ISP before trying this type of installation.

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[Link] Before Installing via NFS

The NFS installation is fairly straight-forward. Simply copy the FreeBSD distribution files you want onto a server
somewhere and then point the NFS media selection at it.
If this server supports only “privileged port” (as is generally the default for Sun workstations), you will need to set
this option in the Options menu before installation can proceed.
If you have a poor quality Ethernet card which suffers from very slow transfer rates, you may also wish to toggle the
appropriate Options flag.
In order for NFS installation to work, the server must support subdir mounts, e.g., if your FreeBSD 3.4 distribution
directory lives on:ziggy:/usr/archive/stuff/FreeBSD, then ziggy will have to allow the direct mounting of
/usr/archive/stuff/FreeBSD, not just /usr or /usr/archive/stuff.

In FreeBSD’s /etc/exports file, this is controlled by the -alldirs. Other NFS servers may have different
conventions. If you are getting “permission denied” messages from the server, then it is likely that you do not have
this enabled properly.

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Rewritten by Chris Shumway.

3.1 Synopsis
The following chapter will cover the basic commands and functionality of the FreeBSD operating system. Much of
this material is relevant for any Unix-like operating system. Feel free to skim over this chapter if you are familiar
with the material. If you are new to FreeBSD, then you will definitely want to read through this chapter carefully.
After reading this chapter, you will know:

• How Unix file permissions work.

• What processes, daemons, and signals are.
• What a shell is, and how to change your default login environment.
• How to use basic text editors.
• How to read manual pages for more information.

3.2 Permissions
FreeBSD, being a direct descendant of BSD Unix, is based on several key Unix concepts. The first, and most
pronounced, is that FreeBSD is a multi-user operating system. The system can handle several users all working
simultaneously on completely unrelated tasks. The system is responsible for properly sharing and managing requests
for hardware devices, peripherals, memory, and CPU time evenly to each user.
Because the system is capable of supporting multiple users, everything the system manages has a set of permissions
governing who can read, write, and execute the resource. These permissions are stored as two octets broken into
three pieces, one for the owner of the file, one for the group that the file belongs to, and one for everyone else. This
numerical representation works like this:

Value Permission Directory Listing

0 No read, no write, no execute ---
1 No read, no write, execute --x
2 No read, write, no execute -w-
3 No read, write, execute -wx
4 Read, no write, no execute r--
5 Read, no write, execute r-x
6 Read, write, no execute rw-
7 Read, write, execute rwx

You can use the -l command line argument to ls(1) to view a long directory listing that includes a column with
information about a file’s permissions for the owner, group, and everyone else. Here’s how the first column of ls -l
is broken up:

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-rw-r--r--

The first character, from left to right, is a special character that tells if this is a regular file, a directory, a special
character or block device, a socket, or any other special pseudo-file device. The next three characters, designated as
rw- gives the permissions for the owner of the file. The next three characters, r-- gives the permissions for the
group that the file belongs to. The final three characters, r--, gives the permissions for the rest of the world. A dash
means that the permission is turned off. In the case of this file, the permissions are set so the owner can read and
write to the file, the group can read the file, and the rest of the world can only read the file. According to the table
above, the permissions for this file would be 644, where each digit represents the three parts of the file’s permission.
This is all well and good, but how does the system control permissions on devices? FreeBSD actually treats most
hardware devices as a file that programs can open, read, and write data to just like any other file. These special device
files are stored on the /dev directory.
Directories are also treated as files. They have read, write, and execute permissions. The executable bit for a
directory has a slightly different meaning than that of files. When a directory is marked executable, it means it can be
searched into, for example, a directory listing can be done in that directory.
There are more to permissions, but they are primarily used in special circumstances such as setuid binaries and sticky
directories. If you want more information on file permissions and how to set them, be sure to look at the chmod(1)
man page.

3.3 Directory Structure

The FreeBSD directory hierarchy is fundamental to obtaining an overall understanding of the system. The most
important concept to grasp is that of the root directory, “/”. This directory is the first one mounted at boot time and it
contains the base system necessary to prepare the operating system for multi-user operation. The root directory also
contains mount points for every other file system that you may want to mount.
A mount point is a directory where additional file systems can be grafted onto the root file system. Standard mount
points include /usr, /var, /mnt, and /cdrom. These directories are usually referenced to entries in the file
/etc/fstab. /etc/fstab is a table of various file systems and mount points for reference by the system. Most of
the file systems in /etc/fstab are mounted automatically at boot time from the script rc(8) unless they contain the
noauto option. Consult the fstab(5) manual page for more information on the format of the /etc/fstab file and
the options it contains.
A complete description of the filesystem hierarchy is available in hier(7). For now, a brief overview of the most
common directories will suffice.

Directory Description
/ Root directory of the filesystem.
/bin/ User utilities fundamental to both single-user and
multi-user environments.
/boot/ Programs and configuration files used during operating
system bootstrap.
/boot/defaults/ Default bootstrapping configuration files; see
[Link](5).
/dev/ Device nodes; see intro(4).

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Directory Description
/etc/ System configuration files and scripts.
/etc/defaults/ Default system configuration files; see rc(8).
/etc/mail/ Configuration files for mail transport agents such as
sendmail(8).
/etc/namedb/ named configuration files; see named(8).
/etc/periodic/ Scripts that are run daily, weekly, and monthly, via
cron(8); see periodic(8).
/etc/ppp/ ppp configuration files; see ppp(8).
/mnt/ Empty directory commonly used by system administrators
as a temporary mount point.
/proc/ Process file system; see procfs(5), mount_procfs(8).
/root/ Home directory for the root account.
/sbin/ System programs and administration utilities fundamental
to both single-user and multi-user environments.
/stand/ Programs used in a standalone environment.
/tmp/ Temporary files, usually a mfs(8) memory-based
filesystem (the contents of /tmp are usually NOT
preserved across a system reboot).
/usr/ The majority of user utilities and applications.
/usr/bin/ Common utilities, programming tools, and applications.
/usr/include/ Standard C include files.
/usr/lib/ Archive libraries.
/usr/libdata/ Miscellaneous utility data files.
/usr/libexec/ System daemons & system utilities (executed by other
programs).
/usr/local/ Local executables, libraries, etc. Also used as the default
destination for the FreeBSD ports framework. Within
/usr/local, the general layout sketched out by hier(7)
for /usr should be used. Exceptions are the man directory
is directly under /usr/local rather than under
/usr/local/share. Ports documentation is in
share/doc/port.
/usr/obj/ Architecture-specific target tree produced by building the
/usr/src tree.
/usr/ports The FreeBSD ports collection (optional).
/usr/sbin/ System daemons & system utilities (executed by users).
/usr/share/ Architecture-independent files.
/usr/src/ BSD and/or local source files.
/usr/X11R6/ X11R6 distribution executables, libraries, etc (optional).
/var/ Multi-purpose log, temporary, transient, and spool files.
/var/log/ Miscellaneous system log files.
/var/mail/ User mailbox files.

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Directory Description
/var/spool/ Miscellaneous printer and mail system spooling
directories.
/var/tmp/ Temporary files that are kept between system reboots.
/var/yp NIS maps.

3.4 Mounting and Unmounting Filesystems

The filesystem is best visualized as a tree, rooted, as it were, at /. /dev, /usr, and the other directories in the root
directory are branches, which may have their own branches, such as /usr/local, and so on.
There are various reasons to house some of these directories on separate filesystems. /var contains the directories
log/, spool/, and various types of temporary files, and as such, may get filled up. Filling up the root filesystem is
not a good idea, so splitting /var from / is often favorable.
Another common reason to contain certain directory trees on other filesystems is if they are to be housed on separate
physical disks, or are separate virtual disks, such as Network File System mounts, or CDROM drives.

3.4.1 The fstab File

During the boot process, filesystems listed in /etc/fstab are automatically mounted (unless they are listed with the
noauto option).

The /etc/fstab file contains a list of lines of the following format:

device /mount-point fstype options dumpfreq passno

device
A device name (which should exist), as explained in Disk naming conventions above.

mount-point

A directory (which should exist), on which to mount the filesystem.

fstype
The filesystem type to pass to mount(8). The default FreeBSD filesystem is ufs.

options
Either rw for read-write filesystems, or ro for read-only filesystems, followed by any other options that may be
needed. A common option is noauto for filesystems not normally mounted during the boot sequence. Other
options are listed in the mount(8) manual page.

dumpfreq

The number of days the filesystem should be dumped, and passno is the pass number during which the
filesystem is checked during the boot sequence.

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3.4.2 The mount Command

The mount(8) command is what is ultimately used to mount filesystems.
In its most basic form, you use:

# mount device mountpoint

There are plenty of options, as mentioned in the mount(8) manual page, but the most common are:

Mount Options
-a

Mount all the filesystems listed in /etc/fstab. Exceptions are those marked as “noauto”, excluded by the -t
flag, or those that are already mounted.

-d

Do everything except for the actual system call. This option is useful in conjunction with the -v flag to
determine what the mount is actually trying to do.

-f
Force the mount of an unclean filesystem (dangerous), or forces the revocation of write access when
downgrading a filesystem’s mount status from read-write to read-only.

-r

Mount the filesystem read-only. This is identical to using the rdonly argument to the -o option.

-t fstype

Mount the given filesystem as the given filesystem type, or mount only filesystems of the given type, if given the
-a option.
“ufs” is the default filesystem type.

-u
Update mount options on the filesystem.

-v

Be verbose.

-w

Mount the filesystem read-write.

The -o option takes a comma-separated list of the options, including the following:

nodev
Do not interpret special devices on the filesystem. This is a useful security option.

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noexec
Do not allow execution of binaries on this filesystem. This is also a useful security option.

nosuid
Do not interpret setuid or setgid flags on the filesystem. This is also a useful security option.

3.4.3 The umount Command

The umount(8) command takes, as a parameter, one of a mountpoint, a device name, or the -a or -A option.
All forms take -f to force unmounting, and -v for verbosity. Be warned that -f is not generally a good idea.
Forcibly unmounting filesystems might crash the computer or damage data on the filesystem.
-a and -A are used to unmount all mounted filesystems, possibly modified by the filesystem types listed after -t. -A,
however, does not attempt to unmount the root filesystem.

3.5 Processes
FreeBSD is a multi-tasking operating system. This means that it seems as though more than one program is running
at once. Each program running at any one time is called a process. Every command you run will start at least one
new process, and there are a number of system processes that run all the time, keeping the system functional.
Each process is uniquely identified by a number called a process ID, or PID, and, like files, each process also has one
owner and group. The owner and group information is used to determine what files and devices the process can open,
using the file permissions discussed earlier. Most processes also have a parent process. The parent process is the
process that started them. For example, if you are typing commands to the shell then the shell is a process, and any
commands you run are also processes. Each process you run in this way will have your shell as its parent process.
The exception to this is a special process called init. init is always the first process, so its PID is always 1. init
is started automatically by the kernel when FreeBSD starts.
Two commands are particularly useful to see the processes on the system, ps(1) and top(1). The ps(1) command is
used to show a static list of the currently running processes, and can show their PID, how much memory they are
using, the command line they were started with, and so on. The top(1) command displays all the running processes,
and updates the display every few seconds, so that you can interactively see what your computer is doing.
By default, ps(1) only shows you the commands that are running and are owned by you. For example;

% ps
PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
298 p0 Ss 0:01.10 tcsh
7078 p0 S 2:40.88 xemacs [Link] (xemacs-21.1.14)
37393 p0 I 0:03.11 xemacs [Link] (xemacs-21.1.14)
48630 p0 S 2:50.89 /usr/local/lib/netscape-linux/[Link]
48730 p0 IW 0:00.00 (dns helper) (navigator-linux-)
72210 p0 R+ 0:00.00 ps
390 p1 Is 0:01.14 tcsh
7059 p2 Is+ 1:36.18 /usr/local/bin/mutt -y
6688 p3 IWs 0:00.00 tcsh

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10735 p4 IWs 0:00.00 tcsh

20256 p5 IWs 0:00.00 tcsh
262 v0 IWs 0:00.00 -tcsh (tcsh)
270 v0 IW+ 0:00.00 /bin/sh /usr/X11R6/bin/startx -- -bpp 16
280 v0 IW+ 0:00.00 xinit /home/nik/.xinitrc -- -bpp 16
284 v0 IW 0:00.00 /bin/sh /home/nik/.xinitrc
285 v0 S 0:38.45 /usr/X11R6/bin/sawfish

As you can see in this example, the output from ps(1) is organized in to a number of columns. PID is the process ID
discussed earlier. PIDs are assigned starting from 1, go up to 65536, and wrap around back to the beginning when
you run out. TT shows the tty the program is running on, and can safely be ignored for the moment. STAT shows the
program’s state, and again, can be safely ignored. TIME is the amount of time the program has been running on the
CPU—this is not necessarily the elapsed time since you started the program, as some programs spend a lot of time
waiting for things to happen before they need to spend time on the CPU. Finally, COMMAND is the command line that
was used to run the program.
ps(1) supports a number of different options to change the information that is displayed. One of the most useful sets
is auxww. a displays information about all the running processes, not just your own. u displays the username of the
process’ owner, as well as memory usage. x displays information about daemon processes, and ww causes ps(1) to
display the full command line, rather than truncating it once it gets too long to fit on the screen.
The output from top(1) is similar. A sample session looks like this;

% top
last pid: 72257; load averages: 0.13, 0.09, 0.03 up 0+[Link] [Link]
47 processes: 1 running, 46 sleeping
CPU states: 12.6% user, 0.0% nice, 7.8% system, 0.0% interrupt, 79.7% idle
Mem: 36M Active, 5256K Inact, 13M Wired, 6312K Cache, 15M Buf, 408K Free
Swap: 256M Total, 38M Used, 217M Free, 15% Inuse

PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU CPU COMMAND
72257 nik 28 0 1960K 1044K RUN 0:00 14.86% 1.42% top
7078 nik 2 0 15280K 10960K select 2:54 0.88% 0.88% xemacs-21.1.14
281 nik 2 0 18636K 7112K select 5:36 0.73% 0.73% XF86_SVGA
296 nik 2 0 3240K 1644K select 0:12 0.05% 0.05% xterm
48630 nik 2 0 29816K 9148K select 3:18 0.00% 0.00% navigator-linu
175 root 2 0 924K 252K select 1:41 0.00% 0.00% syslogd
7059 nik 2 0 7260K 4644K poll 1:38 0.00% 0.00% mutt
...

The output is split in to two sections. The header (the first five lines) shows the PID of the last process to run, the
system load averages (which are a measure of how busy the system is), the system uptime (time since the last reboot)
and the current time. The other figures in the header relate to how many processes are running (47 in this case), how
much memory and swap space has been taken up, and how much time the system is spending in different CPU states.
Below that are a series of columns containing similar information to the output from ps(1). As before you can see the
PID, the username, the amount of CPU time taken, and the command that was run. top(1) also defaults to showing
you the amount of memory space taken by the process. This is split in to two columns, one for total size, and one for
resident size—total size is how much memory the application has needed, and the resident size is how much it is
actually using at the moment. In this example you can see that Netscape has required almost 30 MB of RAM, but is
currently only using 9 MB.
top(1) automatically updates this display every two seconds; this can be changed with the s option.

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3.6 Daemons, Signals, and Killing Processes

When you run an editor it is easy to control the editor, tell it to load files, and so on. You can do this because the
editor provides facilities to do so, and because the editor is attached to a terminal. Some programs are not designed
to be run with continuous user input, and so they disconnect from the terminal at the first opportunity. For example, a
web server spends all day responding to web requests, it normally does not need any input from you. Programs that
transport email from site to site are another example of this class of application.
We call these programs daemons. Daemons were characters in Greek mythology; neither good or evil, they were
little attendant spirits that, by and large, did useful things for mankind. Much like the web servers and mail servers of
today do useful things. This is why the BSD mascot has, for a long time, been the cheerful looking daemon with
sneakers and a pitchfork.
There is a convention to name programs that normally run as daemons with a trailing “d”. BIND is the Berkeley
Internet Name Daemon (and the actual program that executes is called named), the Apache web server program is
called httpd, the line printer spooling daemon is lpd and so on. This is a convention, not a hard and fast rule; for
example, the main mail daemon for the Sendmail application is called sendmail, and not maild, as you might
imagine.
Sometimes you will need to communicate with a daemon process. These communications are called signals, and you
can communicate with daemons (or with any running process) by sending it a signal. There are a number of different
signals that you can send—some of them have a specific meaning, others are interpreted by the application, and the
application’s documentation will tell you how that application interprets signals. You can only send a signal to a
process that you own. If you try and send a signal to someone else’s process it will be ignored. The exception to this
is the root user, who can send signals to everyone’s processes.
FreeBSD will also send applications signals in some cases. If an application is badly written, and tries to access
memory that it is not supposed to, FreeBSD sends the process the Segmentation Violation signal (SIGSEGV). If an
application has used the alarm(3) system call to be alerted after a period of time has elapsed then it will be sent the
Alarm signal (SIGALRM), and so on.
Two signals can be used to stop a process, SIGTERM and SIGKILL. SIGTERM is the polite way to kill a process; the
process can catch the signal, realize that you want it to shut down, close any log files it may have open, and generally
finish whatever it is doing at the time before shutting down. In some cases a process may even ignore SIGTERM if it
is in the middle of some task that can not be interrupted.
SIGKILL can not be ignored by a process. This is the “I do not care what you are doing, stop right now” signal. If
you send SIGKILL to a process then FreeBSD will stop that process there and then 1.
The other signals you might want to use are SIGHUP, SIGUSR1, and SIGUSR2. These are general purpose signals,
and different applications will do different things when they are sent.
Suppose that you have changed your web server’s configuration file—you would like to tell the web server to re-read
its configuration. You could stop and restart httpd, but this would result in a brief outage period on your web server,
which may be undesirable. Most daemons are written to respond to the SIGHUP signal by re-reading their
configuration file. So instead of killing and restarting httpd you would send it the SIGHUP signal. Because there is
no standard way to respond to these signals, different daemons will have different behavior, so be sure and read the
documentation for the daemon in question.
Signals are sent using the kill(1) command, as this example shows.

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Sending a Signal to a Process

This example shows how to send a signal to inetd(8). The inetd(8) configuration file is /etc/[Link], and
inetd(8) will re-read this configuration file when it is sent SIGHUP.
1. Find the process ID of the process you want to send the signal to. Do this using ps(1) and grep(1). The grep(1)
command is used to search through output, looking for the string you specify. This command is run as a normal
user, and inetd(8) is run as root, so the ax options must be given to ps(1).
% ps -ax | grep inetd
198 ?? IWs 0:00.00 inetd -wW

So the inetd(8) PID is 198. In some cases the grep inetd command might also occur in this output. This is
because of the way ps(1) has to find the list of running processes.
2. Use kill(1) to send the signal. Because inetd(8) is being run by root you must use su(1) to become root first.
% su
Password:
# /bin/kill -s HUP 198

In common most with Unix commands, kill(1) will not print any output if it is successful. If you try and send a
signal to a process that you do not own then you will see kill: PID: Operation not permitted. If you
mistype the PID you will either send the signal to the wrong process, which could be bad, or, if you are lucky,
you will have sent the signal to a PID that is not currently in use, and you will see kill: PID: No such
process.

Why Use /bin/kill?: Many shells provide the kill command as a built in command; that is, the shell will
send the signal directly, rather than running /bin/kill. This can be very useful, but different shells have a
different syntax for specifying the name of the signal to send. Rather than try to learn all of them, it can be
simpler just to use the /bin/kill ... command directly.

Sending other signals is very similar, just substitute TERM or KILL in the command line as necessary.

Important: Killing random process on the system can be a bad idea. In particular, init(8), process ID 1, is very
special. Running /bin/kill -s KILL 1 is a quick way to shutdown your system. Always double check the
arguments you run kill(1) with before you press Return.

3.7 Shells
In FreeBSD, a lot of everyday work is done in a command line interface called a shell. A shell’s main job is to take
commands from the input channel and execute them. A lot of shells also have built in functions to help everyday
tasks such a file management, file globing, command line editing, command macros, and environment variables.
FreeBSD comes with a set of shells, such as sh, the Bourne Shell, and tcsh, the improved C-shell. Many other
shells are available from the FreeBSD Ports Collection, such as zsh and bash.

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Which shell do you use? It is really a matter of taste. If you are a C programmer you might feel more comfortable
with a C-like shell such as tcsh. If you have come from Linux or are new to a Unix command line interface you
might try bash. The point is that each shell has unique properties that may or may not work with your preferred
working environment, and that you have a choice of what shell to use.
One common feature in a shell is file-name completion. Given the typing of the first few letters of a command or
filename, you can usually have the shell automatically complete the rest of the command or filename by hitting the
Tab key on the keyboard. Here is an example. Suppose you have two files called foobar and [Link]. You want to
delete [Link]. So what you would type on the keyboard is: rm fo[Tab].[Tab].
The shell would print out rm foo[BEEP].bar.
The [BEEP] is the console bell, which is the shell telling me it was unable to totally complete the filename because
there is more than one match. Both foobar and [Link] start with fo, but it was able to complete to foo. If you
type in ., then hit Tab again, the shell would be able to fill in the rest of the filename for you.
Another function of the shell is environment variables. Environment variables are a variable key pair stored in the
shell’s environment space. This space can be read by any program invoked by the shell, and thus contains a lot of
program configuration. Here is a list of common environment variables and what they mean:

Variable Description
USER Current logged in user’s name.
PATH Colon separated list of directories to search for binaries.
DISPLAY Network name of the X11 display to connect to, if
available.
SHELL The current shell.
TERM The name of the user’s terminal. Used to determine the
capabilities of the terminal.
TERMCAP Database entry of the terminal escape codes to perform
various terminal functions.
OSTYPE Type of operating system. e.g., FreeBSD.
MACHTYPE The CPU architecture that the system is running on.
EDITOR The user’s preferred text editor.
PAGER The user’s preferred text pager.
MANPATH Colon separated list of directories to search for manual
pages.

To view or set an environment variable differs somewhat from shell to shell. For example, in the C-Style shells such
as tcsh and csh, you would use setenv to set and view environment variables. Under Bourne shells such as sh and
bash, you would use set and export to view and set your current environment variables. For example, to set or
modify the EDITOR environment variable, under csh or tcsh a command like this would set EDITOR to
/usr/local/bin/emacs:

% setenv EDITOR /usr/local/bin/emacs

Under Bourne shells:

% export EDITOR="/usr/local/bin/emacs"

You can also make most shells expand the environment variable by placing a $ character in front of it on the

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command line. For example, echo $TERM would print out whatever $TERM is set to, because the shell expands
$TERM and passes it on to echo.

Shells treat a lot of special characters, called meta-characters as special representations of data. The most common
one is the * character, which represents any number of characters in a filename. These special meta-characters can be
used to do file name globing. For example, typing in echo * is almost the same as typing in ls because the shell
takes all the files that match * and puts them on the command line for echo to see.
To prevent the shell from interpreting these special characters, they can be escaped from the shell by putting a
backslash (\) character in front of them. echo $TERM prints whatever your terminal is set to. echo \$TERM prints
$TERM as is.

3.7.1 Changing Your Shell

The easiest way to change your shell is to use the chsh command. Running chsh will place you into the editor that is
in your EDITOR environment variable; if it is not set, you will be placed in vi. Change the “Shell:” line accordingly.
You can also give chsh the -s option; this will set your shell for you, without requiring you to enter an editor. For
example, if you wanted to change your shell to bash, the following should do the trick:

% chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash

Running chsh with no parameters and editing the shell from there would work also.

Note: The shell that you wish to use must be present in the /etc/shells file. If you have installed a shell from
the ports collection, then this should have been done for you already. If you installed the shell by hand, you must
do this.
For example, if you installed bash by hand and placed it into /usr/local/bin, you would want to:

# echo "/usr/local/bin/bash"

/etc/shells

Then rerun chsh.

3.8 Text Editors

A lot of configuration in FreeBSD is done by editing text files. Because of this, it would be a good idea to become
familiar with a text editor. FreeBSD comes with a few as part of the base system, and many more are available in the
ports collection.
The easiest and simplest editor to learn is an editor called ee, which stands for easy editor. To start ee, one would
type at the command line ee filename where filename is the name of the file to be edited. For example, to edit
/etc/[Link], type in ee /etc/[Link]. Once inside of ee, all of the commands for manipulating the editor’s
functions are listed at the top of the display. The caret ^ character means the control key on the keyboard, so ^e
expands to pressing the control key plus the letter e. To leave ee, hit the escape key, then choose leave editor. The
editor will prompt you to save any changes if the file has been modified.

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FreeBSD also comes with more powerful text editors such as vi as part of the base system, and emacs and vim as
part of the FreeBSD Ports Collection. These editors offer much more functionality and power at the expense of being
a little more complicated to learn. However if you plan on doing a lot of text editing, learning a more powerful editor
such as vim or emacs will save you much more time in the long run.

3.9 Devices and Device Nodes

A device is a term used mostly for hardware-related activities in a system, including disks, printers, graphics cards,
and keyboards. When FreeBSD boots, the majority of what FreeBSD displays are devices being detected. You can
look through the boot messages again by viewing /var/run/[Link].
For example, acd0 is the first IDE CDROM drive, while kbd0 represents the keyboard.
Most of these devices in a Unix operating system must be accessed through a special file called device nodes, which
are located in the /dev directory.

3.9.1 Creating Device Nodes

When adding a new device to your system, or compiling in support for additional devices, a device driver often-times
needs to be created.

[Link] MAKEDEV Script

On systems without DEVFS, device nodes are created using the MAKEDEV(8) script as shown below:

# cd /dev
# sh MAKEDEV ad1

This example would make the proper device nodes for the second IDE drive when installed.

[Link] devfs (Device File System)

The device file system, or devfs, provides access to kernel’s device namespace in the global filesystem namespace.
Instead of having to create and modify device nodes, devfs maintains this particular filesystem for you.
See the devfs(5) man page for more information.
devfs is used by default in FreeBSD 5.0.

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3.10 For More Information...

3.10.1 Manual Pages

The most comprehensive documentation on FreeBSD is in the form of manual pages. Nearly every program on the
system comes with a short reference manual explaining the basic operation and various arguments. These manuals
can be viewed with the man command. Use of the man command is simple:

% man command

command is the name of the command you wish to learn about. For example, to learn more about ls command type:

% man ls

The online manual is divided up into numbered sections:

1. User commands.
2. System calls and error numbers.
3. Functions in the C libraries.
4. Device drivers.
5. File formats.
6. Games and other diversions.
7. Miscellaneous information.
8. System maintenance and operation commands.
9. Kernel developers.
In some cases, the same topic may appear in more than one section of the online manual. For example, there is a
chmod user command and a chmod() system call. In this case, you can tell the man command which one you want
by specifying the section:

% man 1 chmod

This will display the manual page for the user command chmod. References to a particular section of the online
manual are traditionally placed in parenthesis in written documentation, so chmod(1) refers to the chmod user
command and chmod(2) refers to the system call.
This is fine if you know the name of the command and simply wish to know how to use it, but what if you cannot
recall the command name? You can use man to search for keywords in the command descriptions by using the -k
switch:

% man -k mail

With this command you will be presented with a list of commands that have the keyword “mail” in their descriptions.
This is actually functionally equivalent to using the apropos command.
So, you are looking at all those fancy commands in /usr/bin but do not have the faintest idea what most of them
actually do? Simply do:

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% cd /usr/bin
% man -f *

or

% cd /usr/bin
% whatis *

which does the same thing.

3.10.2 GNU Info Files

FreeBSD includes many applications and utilities produced by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). In addition to
manual pages, these programs come with more extensive hypertext documents called info files which can be
viewed with the info command or, if you installed emacs, the info mode of emacs.
To use the info(1) command, simply type:

% info

For a brief introduction, type h. For a quick command reference, type ?.

Notes
1. Not quite true—there are a few things that can not be interrupted. For example, if the process is trying to read
from a file that is on another computer on the network, and the other computer has gone away for some reason
(been turned off, or the network has a fault), then the process is said to be “uninterruptible”. Eventually the
process will time out, typically after two minutes. As soon as this time out occurs the process will be killed.

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and Ports

4.1 Synopsis
FreeBSD is bundled with a rich collection of system tools as part of the base system. However, there is only so much
one can do before needing to install an additional third-party application to get real work done. FreeBSD provides
two complementary technologies for installing third party software on your system; the FreeBSD Ports Collection,
and binary software packages. Either system may be used to install the newest version of your favorite applications
from local media or straight off the network.
After reading this chapter, you will know:

• How to install third-party binary software packages.

• How to build third-party software from the ports collection.
• How to remove previously installed packages or ports.

4.2 Overview of Software Installation

If you have used a Unix system before you will know that the typical procedure for installing third party software
goes something like this:

1. Download the software, which might be distributed in source code format, or as a binary.
2. Unpack the software from its distribution format (typically a tarball compressed with either compress(1) or
gzip(1)).
3. Locate the documentation (perhaps a README file, or some files in a doc/ subdirectory) and read up on how to
install the software.
4. If the software was distributed in source format, compile it. This may involve editing a Makefile, or running a
configure script, and other work.
5. Test and install the software.

And that is only if everything goes well. If you are installing a software package that was not deliberately ported to
FreeBSD you may even have to go in and edit the code to make it work properly.
Should you want to, you can continue to install software the “traditional” way with FreeBSD. However, FreeBSD
provides two technologies which can save you a lot of effort; packages and ports. At the time of writing, over 6,000
third party applications have been made available in this way.
For any given application, the FreeBSD package for that application is a single file which you must download. The
package contains pre-compiled copies of all the commands for the application, as well as any configuration files or
documentation. A downloaded package file can be manipulated with FreeBSD package management commands,
such as pkg_add(1), pkg_delete(1), pkg_info(1), and so on.

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Installing a new application can be carried out with a single command.

A FreeBSD port for an application is a collection of files designed to automate the process of compiling an
application from source code.
Remember that there are a number of steps you would normally carry out if you compiled a program yourself
(unpacking, patching, compiling, installing). The files that make up a port contain all the necessary information to
allow the system to do this for you. You run a handful of simple commands and the source code for the application is
automatically downloaded, extracted, patched, compiled, and installed for you.
In fact, the ports system can also be used to generate packages which can later be manipulated with pkg_add and the
other package management commands that will be introduced shortly.
Both packages and ports understand dependencies. Suppose you want to install an application that depends on a
specific library being installed. Both the application and the library have been made available as FreeBSD ports and
packages. If you use the pkg_add command or the ports system to add the application, both will notice that the
library has not been installed, and the commands will install the library first.
Given that the two technologies are quite similar, you might be wondering why FreeBSD bothers with both.
Packages and ports both have their own strengths, and which one you use will depend on your own preference.

Package Benefits
• A compressed package tarball is typically smaller than the compressed tarball containing the source code for the
application.
• Packages do not require any additional compilation. For large applications, such as Mozilla, KDE, or GNOME
this can be important, particularly if you are on a slow system.
• Packages do not require you to understand the process involved in compiling software on FreeBSD.

Ports Benefits
• Packages are normally compiled with conservative options, because they have to run on the maximum number of
systems. By installing from the port, you can tweak the compilation options to (for example) generate code that is
specific to a Pentium III or Athlon processor.
• Some packages have compile time options relating to what they can and cannot do. For example, Apache can be
configured with a wide variety of different built-in options. By building from the port you do not have to accept
the default options, and can set them yourself.
In some cases, multiple packages will exist for the same application to specify certain settings. For example,
Ghostscript is available as a ghostscript package and a ghostscript-nox11 package, depending on
whether or not you have installed an X11 server. This sort of rough tweaking is possible with packages, but rapidly
becomes impossible if an application has more than one or two different compile time options.

• The licensing conditions of some software distributions forbid binary distribution. They must be distributed as
source code.
• Some people do not trust binary distributions. At least with source code, you can (in theory) read through it and
look for potential problems yourself.
• If you have local patches, you will need the source in order to apply them.
• Some people like having code around, so they can read it if they get bored, hack it, borrow from it (license
permitting, of course), and so on.

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To keep track of updated ports, subscribe to the <freebsd-ports@[Link]> mailing list.

The remainder of this chapter will explain how to use packages and ports to install and manage third party software
on FreeBSD.

4.3 Finding Your Application

Before you can install any applications you need to know what you want, and what the application is called.
FreeBSD’s list of available applications is growing all the time. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to find what
you want.

• The FreeBSD web site maintains an up-to-date searchable list of all the available applications, at
[Link] (../../../../ports/[Link]). The name space is divided in to categories, and you
may either search for an application by name (if you know it), or you can list all the applications available in a
category.
• Dan Langille maintains FreshPorts, at [Link] FreshPorts tracks changes to the applications in
the ports tree as they happen, and allows you to “watch” one or more ports, and will send you an email when they
are updated.
• If you do not know the name of the application you want, try using a site like FreshMeat
([Link] or AppWatch ([Link] to find an application, then check back at
the FreeBSD site to see if the application has been ported yet.

4.4 Using the Packages System

Contributed by Chern Lee.

4.4.1 Installing a Package

You can use the pkg_add(1) utility to install a FreeBSD software package from a local file or from a server on the
network.

Example 4-1. Downloading a Package and then Installing It Locally

# ftp -a [Link]
Connected to [Link].
220 [Link] FTP server (Version 6.00LS) ready.
331 Guest login ok, send your email address as password.
230-
230- This machine is in Vienna, VA, USA, hosted by Verio.
230- Questions? E-mail freebsd@[Link].
230-
230-
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.

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ftp> cd /pub/FreeBSD/ports/packages/sysutils/
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> get [Link]
local: [Link] remote: [Link]
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for ’[Link]’ (92375 bytes).
100% |**************************************************| 92375 00:00 ETA
226 Transfer complete.
92375 bytes received in 5.60 seconds (16.11 KB/s)
ftp> exit
# pkg_add [Link]

If you do not have a source of local packages (such as a FreeBSD CDROM set) then it will probably be easier to use
the -r option to pkg_add(1). This will cause the utility to automatically determine the correct object format and
release and then to fetch and install the package from an FTP site.

# pkg_add -r lsof-4.56.4

The example above would download the correct package and add it without any further user intervention.
Package files are distributed in .tgz format. You can find them at
[Link] ([Link] or on
the FreeBSD CDROM distribution. Every CD on the FreeBSD 4-CD set (and PowerPak, etc) contains packages in
the /packages directory. The layout of the packages is similar to that of the /usr/ports tree. Each category has
its own directory, and every package can be found within the All directory.
The directory structure of the package system is identical to that of the ports; they work with each other to form the
entire package/port system.

4.4.2 Deleting a Package

To remove a previously installed software package, use the pkg_delete(1) utility.

# pkg_delete xchat-1.7.1

4.4.3 Managing Packages

pkg_info(1) is a utility that lists and describes the various packages installed.

# pkg_info
cvsup-16.1 A general network file distribution system optimized for CV
docbook-1.2 Meta-port for the different versions of the DocBook DTD
...

pkg_version(1) is a utility that summarizes the versions of all installed packages. It compares the package version to
the current version found in the ports tree.

# pkg_version
cvsup =
docbook =

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...

The symbols in the second column indicate the relative age of the installed version and the version available in the
local ports tree.

Symbol Meaning
= The version of the installed package matches that of the
one found in the local ports tree.
The installed version is older then the one available in the
ports tree.
The installed version is newer than the one found in the

local ports tree. (local ports tree is probably out of date)

? The installed package cannot be found in the ports index.
* There are multiple versions of the package.

4.4.4 Miscellaneous
All package information is stored within the /var/db/pkg directory. The installed file list and descriptions of each
package can be found within files in this directory.

4.5 Using the Ports Collection

The following sections provide basic instructions on using the ports collection to install or remove programs from
your system.

4.5.1 Obtaining the Ports Collection

Before you can install ports, you must first obtain the ports collection—which is essentially a set of Makefiles,
patches, and description files usually placed in /usr/ports.
When installing your FreeBSD system, Sysinstall asked if you would like to install the ports collection. If you chose
no, you can follow these instructions to obtain the ports collection.

Sysinstall Method

This method involves using sysinstall again to manually install the ports collection.
1. As root, run /stand/sysinstall as shown below:
# /stand/sysinstall

2. Scroll down and select Configure, Press Enter

3. Scroll down and select Distributions, Press Enter
4. Scroll down to ports, Press the Space key

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5. Scroll up to Exit, Press Enter

6. Select your desired installation media, such as CDROM, FTP, and so on.
7. Follow the menus to Exit sysinstall

The alternative method to obtain and keep your ports collection up to date is by using CVSup. Look at the ports
CVSup file, /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile. See Using CVSup (Section A.6) for more
information on using CVSup and the mentioned file.

CVSup Method

This is a quick method to getting the ports collection using CVSup. If you want to keep your ports tree up to date, or
learn more about CVSup, read the previously mentioned sections.
1. Install the net/cvsup port. See CVSup Installation (Section A.6.2) for more details.
2. As root, copy /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile to a new location, such as /root or your
home directory
3. Edit ports-supfile
4. Change CHANGE_THIS.[Link] to a CVSup near you. See CVSupp Mirrors (Section A.6.7) for a
complete listing of mirror sites.
5. Run cvsup -g -L 2 path_to_supfile
# cvsup -g -L 2 /root/ports-supfile

6. Running this consequent times at later dates will download all the recent changes to your ports collection.

4.5.2 Installing Ports

The first thing that should be explained when it comes to the ports collection is what is actually meant by a
“skeleton”. In a nutshell, a port skeleton is a minimal set of files that tell your FreeBSD system how to cleanly
compile and install a program. Each port skeleton includes:

• A Makefile. The Makefile contains various statements that specify how the application should be compiled and
where it should be installed on your system
• A distinfo file. This file contains information about the files that must be downloaded to build the port, and
checksums, to ensure that those files have not been corrupted during the download.
• A files directory. This directory contains patches to make the program compile and install on your FreeBSD
system. Patches are basically small files that specify changes to particular files. They are in plain text format, and
basically say “Remove line 10” or “Change line 26 to this ...”. Patches are also known as “diffs” because they are
generated by the diff program.
This directory may also contain other files used in building the port.

• A pkg-comment file. This is a one-line description of the program.

• A pkg-descr file. This is a more detailed, often multiple-line, description of the program.

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• A pkg-plist file. This is a list of all the files that will be installed by the port. It also tells the ports system what
files to remove upon deinstallation.
Now that you have enough background information to know what the ports collection is used for, you are ready to
install your first port. There are two ways this can be done, and each is explained below.
Before we get into that however, you will need to choose a port to install. There are a few ways to do this, with the
easiest method being the ports listing on the FreeBSD web site (../../../../ports/[Link]). You can browse through
the ports listed there or use the search function on the site. Each port also includes a description so you can read a bit
about each port before deciding to install it.
Another method is to use the whereis command. To use whereis, simply type “whereis program you want
to install ” at the prompt, and if it is found on your system, you will be told where it is, like so:

# whereis lsof
lsof: /usr/ports/sysutils/lsof

This tells us that lsof (a system utility) can be found in the /usr/ports/sysutils/lsof directory.
Yet another way of finding a particular port is by using the ports collection’s built-in search mechanism. To use the
search feature, you will need to be in the /usr/ports directory. Once in that directory, run make search
key=program-name where “program-name” is the name of the program you want to find. For example, if you were
looking for lsof:

# cd /usr/ports
# make search key=lsof
Port: lsof-4.56.4
Path: /usr/ports/sysutils/lsof
Info: Lists information about open files (similar to fstat(1))
Maint: obrien@[Link]
Index: sysutils
B-deps:
R-deps:

The part of the output you want to pay particular attention to is the “Path:” line, since that tells you where to find it.
The other information provided is not needed in order to install the port directly, so it will not be covered here.

Note: You must be the root user to install ports.

Now that you have found a port you would like to install, you are ready to do the actual installation.

[Link] Installing Ports from a CDROM

As you may have guessed from the title, everything described in this section assumes you have a FreeBSD CDROM
set. If you do not, you can order one from the FreeBSD Mall ([Link]
Assuming that your FreeBSD CDROM is in the drive and is mounted on /cdrom (and the mount point must be
/cdrom), you are ready to install the port. To begin, change to the directory where the port you want to install lives:

# cd /usr/ports/sysutils/lsof

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Once inside the lsof directory, you will see the port skeleton. The next step is to compile (also called build) the port.
This is done by simply typing make at the prompt. Once you have done so, you should see something like this:

# make
lsof_4.[Link] doesn’t seem to exist in /usr/ports/distfiles/.
Attempting to fetch from file:/cdrom/ports/distfiles/.
=== Extracting for lsof-4.57
...
[extraction output snipped]
...
Checksum OK for lsof_4.[Link].
=== Patching for lsof-4.57
=== Applying FreeBSD patches for lsof-4.57
=== Configuring for lsof-4.57
...
[configure output snipped]
...
=== Building for lsof-4.57
...
[compilation snipped]
...
#

Take notice that once the compile is complete you are returned to your prompt. The next step is to install the port. In
order to install it, you simply need to tack one word onto the make command, and that word is install:

# make install
=== Installing for lsof-4.57
...
[install routines snipped]
...
=== Generating temporary packing list
=== Compressing manual pages for lsof-4.57
=== Registering installation for lsof-4.57
=== SECURITY NOTE:
This port has installed the following binaries which execute with
increased privileges.
#

Once you are returned to your prompt, you should be able to run the application you just installed. Since lsof is a
program that runs with increased privileges, a security warning is shown. During the building and installation of
ports, you should take heed of any other warnings that may appear.

Note: You can save an extra step by just running make install instead of make and make install as two
separate steps.

Note: Please be aware that the licenses of a few ports do not allow for inclusion on the CDROM. This could be
because a registration form needs to be filled out before downloading, redistribution is not allowed, and so on. If
you wish to install a port not included on the CDROM, you will need to be online in order to do so (see the next
section).

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[Link] Installing Ports from the Internet

As with the last section, this section makes an assumption that you have a working Internet connection. If you do not,
you will need to perform the CDROM installation.
Installing a port from the Internet is done exactly the same way as it would be if you were installing from a CDROM.
The only difference between the two is that the program’s source code is downloaded from the Internet instead of
pulled from the CDROM.
The steps involved are identical:

# make install
lsof_4.[Link] doesn’t seem to exist in /usr/ports/distfiles/.
Attempting to fetch from [Link]
Receiving lsof_4.[Link] (439860 bytes): 100%
439860 bytes transferred in 18.0 seconds (23.90 kBps)
=== Extracting for lsof-4.57
...
[extraction output snipped]
...
Checksum OK for lsof_4.[Link].
=== Patching for lsof-4.57
=== Applying FreeBSD patches for lsof-4.57
=== Configuring for lsof-4.57
...
[configure output snipped]
...
=== Building for lsof-4.57
...
[compilation snipped]
...
=== Installing for lsof-4.57
...
[install routines snipped]
...
=== Generating temporary packing list
=== Compressing manual pages for lsof-4.57
=== Registering installation for lsof-4.57
=== SECURITY NOTE:
This port has installed the following binaries which execute with
increased privileges.
#

As you can see, the only difference is the line that tells you where the system is fetching the port from.
That about does it for installing ports onto your system. In the next section you will learn how to remove a port from
your system.

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4.5.3 Removing Installed Ports

Now that you know how to install ports, you are probably wondering how to remove them, just in case you install
one and later on you decide that you installed the wrong port. The next few paragraphs will cover just that.
Now we will remove our previous example (which was lsof for those of you not paying attention). As with
installing ports, the first thing you must do is change to the port directory, which if you remember was
/usr/ports/irc/lsof. After you change directories, you are ready to uninstall lsof. This is done with the make
deinstall command:

# cd /usr/ports/irc/lsof
# make deinstall
=== Deinstalling for lsof-4.57

That was easy enough. You have now managed to remove lsof from your system. If you would like to reinstall it,
you can do so by running make reinstall from the /usr/ports/irc/lsof directory.

4.6 Troubleshooting
The following sections cover some of the more frequently asked questions about the ports collection and some basic
troubleshooting techniques, and what do to if a port is broken.

4.6.1 Some Questions and Answers

1. I thought this was going to be a discussion about modems??!
Ah, you must be thinking of the serial ports on the back of your computer. We are using “port” here to mean the
result of “porting” a program from one version of Unix to another.

2. What is a patch?
A patch is a small file that specifies how to go from one version of a file to another. It contains plain text, and
basically says things like “delete line 23”, “add these two lines after line 468”, or “change line 197 to this”. They are
also known as diffs because they are generated by the diff program.

3. What is all this about tarballs?

It is a file ending in .tar, or with variations such as .[Link], .tar.Z, .tar.bz2, and even .tgz.
Basically, it is a directory tree that has been archived into a single file (.tar) and optionally compressed (.gz). This
technique was originally used for Tape ARchives (hence the name tar), but it is a widely used way of distributing
program source code around the Internet.
You can see what files are in them, or even extract them yourself by using the standard Unix tar program, which
comes with the base FreeBSD system, like this:

% tar tvzf [Link]

% tar xzvf [Link]
% tar tvf [Link]
% tar xvf [Link]

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4. And a checksum?
It is a number generated by adding up all the data in the file you want to check. If any of the characters change, the
checksum will no longer be equal to the total, so a simple comparison will allow you to spot the difference.

5. I did what you said for compiling ports from a CDROM and it worked great until I tried to install the kermit port.

# make install
[Link] doesn’t seem to exist on this system.
Attempting to fetch from [Link]

Why can it not be found? Have I got a dud CDROM?

As explained in the compiling ports from CDROM section, some ports cannot be put on the CDROM set due to
licensing restrictions. Kermit is an example of that. The licensing terms for kermit do not allow us to put the tarball
for it on the CDROM, so you will have to fetch it by hand—sorry!
The reason why you got all those error messages was because you were not connected to the Internet at the time.
Once you have downloaded it from any of the MASTER_SITES (listed in the Makefile), you can restart the install
process.

6. I did that, but when I tried to put it into /usr/ports/distfiles I got some error about not having permission.
The ports mechanism looks for the tarball in /usr/ports/distfiles, but you will not be able to copy anything
there because it is symlinked to the CDROM, which is read-only. You can tell it to look somewhere else by doing:

# make DISTDIR=/where/you/put/it install

7. Does the ports scheme only work if you have everything in /usr/ports? My system administrator says I must
put everything under /u/people/guests/wurzburger, but it does not seem to work.
You can use the PORTSDIR and PREFIX variables to tell the ports mechanism to use different directories. For
instance,

# make PORTSDIR=/u/people/guests/wurzburger/ports install

will compile the port in /u/people/guests/wurzburger/ports and install everything under /usr/local.

# make PREFIX=/u/people/guests/wurzburger/local install

will compile it in /usr/ports and install it in /u/people/guests/wurzburger/local.

And of course,

# make PORTSDIR=../ports PREFIX=../local install

will combine the two (it is too long to write fully on the page, but it should give you the general idea).

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Some ports that use imake(1) (a part of the X Windows System) do not work well with PREFIX, and will insist on
installing under /usr/X11R6. Similarly, some Perl ports ignore PREFIX and install in the Perl tree. Making these
ports respect PREFIX is a difficult or impossible job.
If you do not fancy typing all that in every time you install a port, it is a good idea to put these variables into your
environment. Read the manual page for your shell for instructions on doing so.

8. I do not have a FreeBSD CDROM, but I would like to have all the tarballs handy on my system so I do not have to
wait for a download every time I install a port. Is there any way to get them all at once?
To get every single tarball for the ports collection, do:

# cd /usr/ports
# make fetch

For all the tarballs for a single ports directory, do:

# cd /usr/ports/directory
# make fetch

and for just one port—well, you have probably guessed already.

9. I know it is probably faster to fetch the tarballs from one of the FreeBSD mirror sites close by. Is there any way to
tell the port to fetch them from servers other than the ones listed in the MASTER_SITES?
Yes. If you know, for example, that [Link] is much closer to you than the sites listed in
MASTER_SITES, do as follows:

# cd /usr/ports/directory
# make MASTER_SITE_OVERRIDE= \
[Link] fetch

10. I want to know what files make is going to need before it tries to pull them down.
make fetch-list will display a list of the files needed for a port.

11. Is there any way to stop the port from compiling? I want to do some hacking on the source before I install it, but
it is a bit tiresome to watch it and hit control-C every time.
Doing make extract will stop it after it has fetched and extracted the source code.

12. I am trying to make my own port and I want to be able to stop it compiling until I have had a chance to see if my
patches worked properly. Is there something like make extract, but for patches?
Yes, make patch is what you want. You will probably find the PATCH_DEBUG option useful as well. And by the
way, thank you for your efforts!

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13. I have heard that some compiler options can cause bugs. Is this true? How can I make sure that I compile ports
with the right settings?
Yes, with version 2.6.3 of gcc (the version shipped with FreeBSD 2.1.0 and 2.1.5), the -O2 option could result in
buggy code unless you used the -fno-strength-reduce option as well. (Most of the ports do not use -O2). You
should be able to specify the compiler options used by something like:

# make CFLAGS=’-O2 -fno-strength-reduce’ install

or by editing /etc/[Link], but unfortunately not all ports respect this. The surest way is to do make
configure, then go into the source directory and inspect the Makefiles by hand, but this can get tedious if the
source has lots of sub-directories, each with their own Makefiles.
The default FreeBSD compiler options are quite conservative, so if you have not changed them you should not have
any problems.

14. There are so many ports it is hard to find the one I want. Is there a list anywhere of what ports are available?
Look in the INDEX file in /usr/ports. If you would like to search the ports collection for a keyword, you can do
that too. For example, you can find ports relevant to the LISP programming language using:

% cd /usr/ports
% make search key=lisp

15. I went to install the foo port but the system suddenly stopped compiling it and starting compiling the bar port.
What is going on?
The foo port needs something that is supplied with bar — for instance, if foo uses graphics, bar might have a
library with useful graphics processing routines. Or bar might be a tool that is needed to compile the foo port.

16. I installed the grizzle program from the ports and frankly it is a complete waste of disk space. I want to delete
it but I do not know where it put all the files. Any clues?
No problem, just type:

# pkg_delete grizzle-6.5

Alternatively, you can type:

# cd /usr/ports/somewhere/grizzle
# make deinstall

17. Hang on a minute, you have to know the version number to use that command. You do not seriously expect me to
remember that, do you?
Not at all, you can find it out by doing:

# pkg_info -I ’grizzle*’
Information for grizzle-6.5:
grizzle-6.5 - the combined piano tutorial, LOGO interpreter and shoot ’em up

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arcade game.

The version number can also be found using the pkg_info or by typing: ls /var/db/pkg

18. Talking of disk space, the ports directory seems to be taking up an awful lot of room. Is it safe to go in there and
delete things?
Yes, if you have installed the program and are fairly certain you will not need the source again, there is no point in
keeping it hanging around. The surest way to do this is:

# cd /usr/ports
# make clean

which will go through all the ports subdirectories and delete everything except the skeletons for each port.

Tip: It is possible to achieve the same effect without recursively calling each makefile. For example, you can
delete all of the work subdirectories directly with the following command:

# find /usr/ports -depth -name work -exec rm -rf {} \;

19. I tried that and it still left all those tarballs or whatever you called them in the distfiles directory. Can I delete
those as well?
Yes, if you are sure you have finished with them, those can go as well. They can be removed manually, or by using
make distclean.

20. I like having lots and lots of programs to play with. Is there any way of installing all the ports in one go?
Just do:

# cd /usr/ports
# make install

Be careful, as some ports may install files with the same name. If you install two graphics ports and they both install
/usr/local/bin/plot then you will obviously have problems.

21. OK, I tried that, but I thought it would take a very long time so I went to bed and left it to get on with it. When I
looked at the computer this morning, it had only done three and a half ports. Did something go wrong?
No, the problem is that some of the ports need to ask you questions that we cannot answer for you (e.g., “Do you
want to print on A4 or US letter sized paper?”) and they need to have someone on hand to answer them.

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22. I really do not want to spend all day staring at the monitor. Any better ideas?
OK, do this before you go to bed/work/the local park:

# cd /usr/ports
# make -DBATCH install

This will install every port that does not require user input. Then, when you come back, do:

# cd /usr/ports
# make -DINTERACTIVE install

to finish the job.

23. At work, we are using frobble, which is in your ports collection, but we have altered it quite a bit to get it to do
what we need. Is there any way of making our own packages, so we can distribute it more easily around our sites?
No problem, assuming you know how to make patches for your changes:

# cd /usr/ports/somewhere/frobble
# make extract
# cd work/frobble-2.8
[Apply your patches]
# cd ../..
# make package

24. This ports stuff is really clever. I am desperate to find out how you did it. What is the secret?
Nothing secret about it at all, just look at the [Link] and [Link] files in /usr/ports/Mk/.
(Readers with an aversion to intricate shell-scripts are advised not to look at the files in this directory.)

4.6.2 Help! This Port Is Broken!

If you come across a port that does not work for you, there are a few things you can do, including:

1. Fix it! The Porter’s Handbook (../porters-handbook/[Link]) includes detailed information on the "Ports"
infrastructure so that you can fix the occasional broken port or even submit your own!
2. Gripe—by email only! Send email to the maintainer of the port first. Type make maintainer or read the
Makefile to find the maintainer’s email address. Remember to include the name and version of the port (send
the $FreeBSD: line from the Makefile) and the output leading up to the error when you email the maintainer.
If you do not get a response from the maintainer, you can use send-pr to submit a bug report.
3. Grab the package from an ftp site near you. The “master” package collection is on [Link] in the
packages directory ([Link] but be sure to check your local mirror
first! These are more likely to work than trying to compile from source and are a lot faster as well. Use the
pkg_add(1) program to install the package on your system.

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5.1 Synopsis
FreeBSD uses XFree86 to provide users with a powerful graphical user interface. XFree86 is a open-source
implementation of the X Window System. This chapter will cover installation and configuration of XFree86 on a
FreeBSD system. For more information on XFree86 and video hardware that it supports, check the XFree86
([Link] web site.
After reading this chapter, you will know:

• The various components of the X window system, and how they interoperate.
• How to install and configure XFree86.
• How to install and use different window managers.
• How to use TrueType fonts in XFree86.
• How to setup your system for graphical logins (XDM).
Before reading this chapter, you should:

• Know how to install additional third-party software (Chapter 4).

5.2 Understanding X
Using X for the first time can be somewhat of a shock to someone familiar with other graphical environments, such
as Microsoft Windows or MacOS.
It is not necessary to understand all of the details of various X components and how they interact, however, some
basic knowledge makes it possible to take advantage of X’s strengths.

5.2.1 Why X?
X is not the first window system written for Unix, but it is the most popular. X’s original development team had
worked on another window system before writing X. That system’s name was “W” (for “Window”). X is just the
next letter in the Roman alphabet.
X can be called “X”, “X Window System”, “X11”, and other terms. “X Windows” is to be avoided wherever
possible; see X(1) for more information.

5.2.2 The X Client/Server Model

X was designed from the beginning to be network-centric, and adopts a “client-server” model. In the X model, the
“X server” runs on the computer that has the keyboard, monitor, and mouse attached. The server is responsible for
managing the display, handling input from the keyboard and mouse, and so on. Each X application (such as XTerm,

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or Netscape) is a “client”. A client sends messages to the server such as “Please draw a window at these
coordinates”, and the server sends back messages such as “The user just clicked on the OK button”.
If there is only one computer involved, such as in a home or small office environment, the X server and the X clients
will be running on the same computer. However, it is perfectly possible to run the X server on a less powerful
desktop computer, and run X applications (the clients) on, say, the powerful and expensive machine that serves the
office. In this scenario the communication between the X client and server takes place over the network.
This confuses some people, because the X terminology is exactly backward to what they expect. They expect the “X
server” to be the big powerful machine down the hall, and the “X client” to be the machine on their desk.
Remember that the X server is the machine with the monitor and keyboard, and the X clients are the programs that
display the windows.
There is nothing in the protocol that forces the client and server machines to be running the same operating system,
or even to be running on the same type of computer. It is certainly possible to run an X server on Microsoft Windows
or Apple’s MacOS, and there are various free and commercial applications available that do exactly that.
The X server that ships with FreeBSD is called XFree86, and is available for free, under a license very similar to the
FreeBSD license. Commercial X servers for FreeBSD are also available.

5.2.3 The Window Manager

The X design philosophy is much like the Unix design philosophy, “tools, not policy”. This means that X does not
try to dictate how a task is to be accomplished. Instead, tools are provided to the user, and it is the user’s
responsibility to decide how to use those tools.
This philosophy extends to X not dictating what windows should look like on screen, how to move them around with
the mouse, what keystrokes to should use to move between windows (i.e., Alt+Tab, in the case of Microsoft
Windows), what the title bars on each window should look like, whether or not they have close buttons on them, and
so on.
Instead, X delegates this responsibility to an application called a “Window Manager”. There are dozens of window
managers available for X; AfterStep, Blackbox, ctwm, Enlightenment, fvwm, Sawfish, twm, Window Maker,
and more. Each of these window managers provides a different look and feel; some of them support “virtual
desktops”; some of them allow customized keystrokes to manage the desktop; some have a “Start” button or similar
device; some are “themeable”, allowing a complete change of look-and-feel by applying a new theme. These window
managers, and many more, are available in the x11-wm category of the Ports Collection.
In addition, the KDE and GNOME desktop environments both have their own window managers which integrate
with the desktop.
Each window manager also has a different configuration mechanism; some expect configuration file written by hand,
others feature GUI tools for most of the configuration tasks; at least one (sawfish) has a configuration file written in a
dialect of the Lisp language.

Focus Policy: Another feature the window manager is responsible for is the mouse “focus policy”. Every
windowing system needs some means of choosing a window to be actively receiving keystrokes, and should
visibly indicate which window is active as well.
A familiar focus policy is called “click-to-focus”. This is the model utilized by Microsoft Windows, in which a
window becomes active upon receiving a mouse click.

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X does not support any particular focus policy. Instead, the window manager controls which window has the
focus at any one time. Different window managers will support different focus methods. All of them support click
to focus, and the majority of them support several others.
The most popular focus policies are:

focus-follows-mouse
The window that is under the mouse pointer is the window that has the focus. This may not necessarily be
the window that is on top of all the other windows. The focus is changed by pointing at another window,
there is no need to click in it as well.

sloppy-focus
This policy is a small extension to focus-follows-mouse. With focus-follows-mouse, if the mouse is moved
over the root window (or background) then no window has the focus, and keystrokes are simply lost. With
sloppy-focus, focus is only changed when the cursor enters a new window, and not when exiting the current
window.

click-to-focus
The active window is selected by mouse click. The window may then be “raised”, and appear in front of all
other windows. All keystrokes will now be directed to this window, even if the cursor is moved to another
window.
Many window managers support other policies, as well as variations on these. Be sure to consult the
documentation for the window manager itself.

5.2.4 Widgets
The X approach of providing tools and not policy extends to the widgets that seen on screen in each application.
“Widget” is a term for all the items in the user interface that can be clicked or manipulated in some way; buttons,
check boxes, radio buttons, icons, lists, and so on. Microsoft Windows calls these “controls”.
Microsoft Windows and Apple’s MacOS both have a very rigid widget policy. Application developers are supposed
to ensure that their applications share a common look and feel. With X, it was not considered sensible to mandate a
particular graphical style, or set of widgets to adhere to.
As a result, do not expect X applications to have a common look and feel. There are several popular widget sets and
variations, including the original Athena widget set from MIT, Motif (on which the widget set in Microsoft Windows
was modeled, all bevelled edges and three shades of grey), OpenLook, and others.
Most newer X applications today will use a modern-looking widget set, either Qt, used by KDE, or GTK, used by
the GNOME project. In this respect, there is some convergence in look-and-feel of the Unix desktop, which
certainly makes things easier for the novice user.

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5.3 Installing XFree86

Before installing XFree86, decide on which version to run. XFree86 3.X is a maintenance branch of XFree86
development. It is very stable, and it supports a huge number of graphics cards. However, no new development is
being done on the software. XFree86 4.X is a complete redesign of the system with many new features such as better
support for fonts and anti-aliasing. Unfortunately this new architecture requires that the video drivers be rewritten,
and some of the older cards that were supported in 3.X are not yet supported in 4.X.
The FreeBSD setup program offers users the opportunity to install and configure XFree86 3.3.6 during installation
(covered in Section 2.9.11). To run XFree86 4.X, wait until after the base FreeBSD system is installed, and then
install XFree86. For example, to build and install XFree86 4.X from the ports collection:

# cd /usr/ports/x11/XFree86-4
# make all install clean

Alternatively, XFree86 4.X can be installed from a binary package with the pkg_add tool or directly from the
FreeBSD binaries provided on the XFree86 web site ([Link]
The rest of this chapter will explain how to configure XFree86, and how to setup a productive desktop environment.

5.4 XFree86 Configuration

Contributed by Christopher Shumway.

5.4.1 Before Starting

Before configuration of XFree86 4.X, the the following information about the target system is needed:

• Monitor specifications
• Video Adapter chipset
• Video Adapter memory
The specifications for the monitor are used by XFree86 to determine the resolution and refresh rate to run at. These
specifications can usually be obtained from the documentation that came with the monitor or from the
manufacturer’s website. There are two ranges of numbers that are needed, the horizontal scan rate and the vertical
synchronization rate.
The video adapter’s chipset defines what driver module XFree86 uses to talk to the graphics hardware. With most
chipsets, this can be automatically determined, but it is still useful to know in case the automatic detection does not
work correctly.
Video memory on the graphic adapter determines the resolution and color depth the system can run at. This is
important to know so the user knows the limitations of the system.

5.4.2 Configuring XFree86 4.X

Configuration of XFree86 4.X is a multi-step process. The first step is to build an initial configuration file with the
-configure option to XFree86. As the super user, simply run:

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# XFree86 -configure

This will generate a skeleton XFree86 configuration file in the current working directory called [Link].
The XFree86 program will attempt to probe the graphics hardware on the system and will write a configuration file
to load the proper drivers for the detected hardware on the target system.
The next step is to test the existing configuration to verify that XFree86 can work with the graphics hardware on the
target system. To preform this task, the user needs to run:

# XFree86 -xf86config [Link]

If a black and grey grid and an X mouse cursor appears, then the configuration was successful. To exit the test, just
press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace simultaneously.
Next, tune the [Link] configuration file to taste. Open up the file in a text editor such as emacs(1) or
ee(1). The first thing to do is add the frequencies for the target system’s monitor. These are usually expressed as a
horizontal and vertical synchronization rate. These values are added to the [Link] file under the
"Monitor" section:

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
Horizsync 30-107
VertRefresh 48-120
EndSection

The Horizsync and VertRefresh keywords may not exist in the configuration file. If they do not, they need to be
added, with the correct horizontal synchronization rate placed after the Horizsync keyword and the vertical
synchronization rate after the VertRefresh keyword. In the example above the target monitor’s rates where entered.
While the [Link] configuration file is still open in an editor, next select what the default resolution and
color depth is desired. This is defined in the Screen section:

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultColorDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

The DefaultColorDepth keyword describes the color depth to run at by default. This can be overridden with the
-bpp command line switch to XFree86(1) The Modes keyword describes the resolution to run at for the given color
depth. In the example above, the default color depth is twenty four bits per pixel. At this color depth, the accepted
resolution is one thousand twenty four pixels by seven hundred and sixty eight pixels.
To run at a resolution of one thousand twenty four pixels by seven hundred sixty eight pixels at twenty four bits per
pixel, then add the DefaultColorDepth keyword with the value of twenty four, and add to the "Display"
subsection with the desired Depth the Modes keyword with the resolution the user wishes to run at. Note that only
VESA standard modes are supported as defined by the target system’s graphics hardware.

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Finally, write out the configuration file and test it using the test mode given above. If all is well, then the
configuration file needs to be installed in a common location where XFree86(1) can find it. This is typically
/etc/X11/XF86Config or /usr/X11R6/etc/X11/XF86Config.

# cp [Link] /etc/X11/XF86Config

Once the configuration file has been placed in a common location, configuration is complete. In order to start
XFree86 4.X with startx(1), install the x11/wrapper port. XFree86 4.X can also be started with xdm(1).

5.4.3 Advanced Configuration Topics

[Link] Configuration with Intel i810 Graphics Chipsets

Configuration with Intel i810 integrated chipsets requires the agpgart AGP programming interface for XFree86 to
to drive the card. To agpgart, the [Link] kernel loadable module needs to be loaded into the kernel with
kldload(8). This can be done automatically with the loader(8) at boot time. Simply add this line to
/boot/[Link]:

agp_load="YES"

Next, a device node needs to be created for the programming interface. To create the AGP device node, run
MAKEDEV(8) in the /dev directory:

# cd /dev
# sh MAKEDEV agpgart

This will allow configuration the hardware as any other graphics board.
If you are using XFree86 4.1.0 (or later) and messages about unresolved symbols like fbPictureInit appear, try
adding the following line after Driver "i810" in the XFree86 config file:

Option "NoDDC"

5.5 Using Fonts in XFree86

Contributed by Murray Stokely.

5.5.1 Type1 Fonts

The default fonts that ship with XFree86 are less than ideal for typical desktop publishing applications. Large
presentation fonts show up jagged and unprofessional looking, and small fonts in Netscape are almost completely
unintelligible. However, there are several free, high quality Type1 (PostScript) fonts available which can be readily
used with XFree86, either version 3.X or version 4.X. For instance, the URW font collection (x11-fonts/urwfonts)
includes high quality versions of standard type1 fonts (Times Roman, Helvetica, Palatino and others). The Freefont
collection (x11-fonts/freefont) includes many more fonts, but most of them are intended for use in graphics software

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such as the Gimp, and are not complete enough to serve as screen fonts. In addition, XFree86 can be configured to
use TrueType fonts with a minimum of effort: see the section on TrueType fonts later.
To install the above Type1 font collections from the ports collection, run the following commands:

# cd /usr/ports/x11-fonts/urwfonts
# make install clean

And likewise with the freefont or other collections. To tell the X server that these fonts exist, add an appropriate line
to the XF86Config file (in /etc/ for XFree86 version 3, or in /etc/X11/ for version 4), which reads:

FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/URW/"

Alternatively, at the command line in the X session run:

% xset fp+ /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/URW

% xset fp rehash

This will work but will be lost when the X session is closed, unless it is added to the startup file (~/.xinitrc for a
normal startx session, or ~/.xsession when logging in through a graphical login manager like XDM). A third
way is to use the new XftConfig file: see the section on anti-aliasing.

5.5.2 TrueType Fonts

XFree86 4.X has built in support for rendering TrueType fonts. There are two different modules that can enable this
functionality. The "freetype" module is used in this example because it is more consistent with the other font
rendering back-ends. To enable the freetype module just add the following line to the module section of the
/etc/X11/XF86Config file.

Load "freetype"

For XFree86 3.3.X, a separate TrueType font server is needed. Xfstt is commonly used for this purpose. To install
Xfstt, simply install the port x11-servers/Xfstt.
Now make a directory for the TrueType fonts (for example, /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType) and copy
all of the TrueType fonts into this directory. Keep in mind that TrueType fonts cannot be directly taken from a
Macintosh; they must be in Unix/DOS/Windows format for use by XFree86. Once the files have been copied into
this directory, use ttmkfdir to create a [Link] file, so that the X font renderer knows that these new files have
been installed. ttmkfdir is available from the FreeBSD Ports Collection as x11-fonts/ttmkfdir.

# cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType
# ttmkfdir > [Link]

Now add the TrueType directory to the font path. This is just the same as described above for Type1 fonts, that is, use

% xset fp+ /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType

% xset fp rehash

or add a FontPath line to the XF86Config file.

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That’s it. Now Netscape, Gimp, StarOffice, and all of the other X applications should now recognize the installed
TrueType fonts. Extremely small fonts (as with text in a high resolution display on a web page) and extremely large
fonts (within StarOffice) will look much better now.

5.5.3 Anti-Aliased Fonts

Starting with version 4.0.2, XFree86 supports anti-aliased fonts. Currently, most software has not been updated to
take advantage of this new functionality. However, Qt (the toolkit for the KDE desktop) does; so if XFree86 4.0.2 is
used (or higher), Qt 2.3 (or higher) and KDE, all KDE/Qt applications can be made to use anti-aliased fonts.
To configure anti-aliasing, create (or edit, if it already exists) the file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XftConfig. Several
advanced things can be done with this file; this section describes only the simplest possibilities.
First, tell the X server about the fonts that are to be anti-aliased. For each font directory, add a line similar to this:

dir "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/Type1"

Likewise for the other font directories (URW, truetype, etc) containing fonts to be anti-aliased. Anti-aliasing makes
sense only for scalable fonts (basically, Type1 and TrueType) so do not include bitmap font directories here. The
directories included here can now be commented out of the XF86Config file.
Antialiasing makes borders slightly fuzzy, which makes very small text more readable and removes “staircases” from
large text, but can cause eyestrain if applied to normal text. To exclude point sizes between 9 and 13 from
anti-aliasing, include these lines:

match
any size > 8
any size < 14
edit
antialias = false;

Spacing for some monospaced fonts may also be inappropriate with anti-aliasing. This seems to be an issue with
KDE, in particular. One possible fix for this is to force the spacing for such fonts to be 100. Add the following lines:

match any family == "fixed" edit family =+ "mono";

match any family == "console" edit family =+ "mono";

(this aliases the other common names for fixed fonts as "mono"), and then add:

match any family == "mono" edit spacing = 100;

Supposing the Lucidux fonts as desired whenever monospaced fonts are required (these look nice, and do not seem
to suffer from the spacing problem), replace that last line with these:

match any family == "mono" edit family += "LuciduxMono";

match any family == "Lucidux Mono" edit family += "LuciduxMono";
match any family == "LuciduxMono" edit family =+ "Lucidux Mono";

(the last lines alias different equivalent family names).

Finally, it is nice to allow users to add commands to this file, via their personal .xftconfig files. To do this, add a
last line:

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includeif "~/.xftconfig"

One last point: with an LCD screen, sub-pixel sampling may be desired. This basically treats the (horizontally
separated) red, green and blue components separately to improve the horizontal resolution; the results can be
dramatic. To enable this, add the line somewhere in the XftConfig file

match edit rgba=rgb;

(depending on the sort of display, the last word may need to be changed from from “rgb” to “bgr”, “vrgb” or “vbgr”:
experiment and see which works best.)
Anti-aliasing should be enabled the next time the X server is started. However, note that programs must know how to
take advantage of it. At the present time, the toolkit Qt does, so the entire KDE environment can use anti-aliased
fonts (see Section [Link] on KDE for details); there are patches for gtk+ to do the same, so if compiled against such
a patched gtk+, the GNOME environment and Mozilla can also use anti-aliased fonts. In fact, there is now a port
called x11/gdkxft which allows one to use antialiased fonts without recompiling: see Section [Link] for details.
Anti-aliasing is still new to FreeBSD and XFree86; configuring it should get easier with time, and it will soon be
supported by many more applications.

5.6 The X Display Manager

Contributed by Seth Kingsley.

5.6.1 Overview
The X Display Manager (XDM) is an optional part of the X Window System that is used for login session
management. This is useful for several types of situations, including minimal “X Terminals”, desktops, and large
network display servers. Since the X Window System is network and protocol independent, there are a wide variety
of possible configurations for running X clients and servers on different machines connected by a network. XDM
provides a graphical interface for choosing which display server to connect to, and entering authorization
information such as a login and password combination.
Think of XDM as providing the same functionality to the user as the getty(8) utility (see Section 15.3.2 for details).
That is, it performs system logins to the display being connected to and then runs a session manager on behalf of the
user (usually an X window manager). XDM then waits for this program to exit, signaling that the user is done and
should be logged out of the display. At this point, XDM can display the login and display chooser screens for the
next user to login.

5.6.2 Using XDM

The XDM daemon program is located in /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm. This program can be run at any time as root and
it will start managing the X display on the local machine. If XDM is to be run every time the machine boots up, a
convenient way to do this is by adding an entry to /etc/ttys. For more information about the format and usage of

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this file, see Section [Link]. There is a line in the default /etc/ttys file for running the XDM daemon on a virtual
terminal:

ttyv8 "/usr/X11R6/bin/xdm -nodaemon" xterm off secure

By default this entry is disabled, and in order to enable it change field 5 from off to on and then restart init(8) using
the directions in Section [Link]. The first field, the name of the terminal this program will manage, is ttyv8. This
means that XDM will start running on the 9th virtual terminal.

5.6.3 Configuring XDM

The XDM configuration directory is located in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm. In this directory there are several files
used to change the behavior and appearance of XDM. Typically these files will be found:

File Description
Xaccess Client authorization ruleset.
Xresources Default X resource values.
Xservers List of remote and local displays to manage.
Xsession Default session script for logins.
Xsetup_* Script to launch applications before the login interface.
xdm-config Global configuration for all displays running on this
machine.
xdm-errors Errors generated by the server program.
xdm-pid The process ID of the currently running XDM.

Also in this directory are a few scripts and programs used to setup the desktop when XDM is running. The purpose
of each of these files will be briefly described. The exact syntax and usage of all of these files is described in xdm(1)
The default configuration is a simple rectangular login window with the hostname of the machine displayed at the
top in a large font and “Login:” and “Password:” prompts below. This is a good starting point for changing the look
and feel of XDM screens.

[Link] Xaccess
The protocol for connecting to XDM controlled displays is called the X Display Manager Connection Protocol
(XDMCP). This file is a ruleset for controlling XDMCP connections from remote machines. By default, it allows any
client to connect, but that does not matter unless the xdm-config is changed to listen for for remote connections.

[Link] Xresources
This is an application-defaults file for the display chooser and the login screens. This is where the appearance of the
login program can be modified. The format is identical to the app-defaults file described in the XFree86
documentation.

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[Link] Xservers
This is a list of the remote displays the chooser should provide as choices.

[Link] Xsession
This is the default session script for XDM to run after a user has logged in. Normally each user will have a
customized session script in ~/.xsessionrc that overrides this script.

[Link] Xsetup_*
These will be run automatically before displaying the chooser or login interfaces. There is a script for each display
being used, named Xsetup_ followed by the local display number (for instance Xsetup_0). Typically these scripts
will run one or two programs in the background such as xconsole.

[Link] xdm-config
This contains settings in the form of app-defaults that are applicable to every display that this installation manages.

[Link] xdm-errors
This contains the output of the X servers that XDM is trying to run. If a display that XDM is trying to start hangs for
some reason, this is a good place to look for error messages. These messages are also written to the user’s
~/.xsession-errors file on a per-session basis.

5.6.4 Running a Network Display Server

In order for other clients to connect to the display server, edit the access control rules, and enable the connection
listener. By default these are set to conservative values. To make XDM listen for connections, first comment out a
line in the xdm-config file:

! SECURITY: do not listen for XDMCP or Chooser requests

! Comment out this line if you want to manage X terminals with xdm
[Link]: 0

and then restart XDM. Remember that comments in app-defaults files begin with a “!” character, not the usual “#”.
More strict access controls may be desired. Look at the example entries in Xaccess file, and refer to the xdm(1)
manual page.

5.6.5 Replacements for XDM

Several replacements for the default XDM program exist. One of them, KDM (bundled with KDE) is described later
in this chapter. KDM offers many visual improvements and cosmetic frills, as well as the functionality to allow users
to choose their window manager of choice at login time.

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5.7 Desktop Environments

Contributed by Valentino Vaschetto.

This section describes the different desktop environments available for X on FreeBSD. A “desktop environment” will
mean anything ranging from a simple window manager, to a complete suite of desktop applications such as KDE or
GNOME.

5.7.1 GNOME

[Link] About GNOME

GNOME is a user-friendly desktop environment that enables users to easily use and configure their computers.
GNOME includes a panel (for starting applications and displaying status), a desktop (where data and applications
can be placed), a set of standard desktop tools and applications, and a set of conventions that make it easy for
applications to cooperate and be consistent with each other. Users of other operating systems or environments should
feel right at home using the powerful graphics-driven environment that GNOME provides.

[Link] Installing GNOME

The easiest way to install GNOME is through the “Desktop Configuration” menu during the FreeBSD installation
process as described in Chapter 2. They can also be easily installed from a package or the ports collection:
To install the GNOME package from the network, simply type:

# pkg_add -r gnome

To build GNOME from source, use the ports tree:

# cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome
# make install clean

Once GNOME is installed, the X server must be told to start GNOME instead of a default window manager. If a
custom .xinitrc is already in place, simply replace the line that starts the current window manager with one that
starts /usr/X11R6/bin/gnome-session instead. If nothing special has been done to configuration file, then it is
enough to simply type:

# echo "/usr/X11R6/bin/gnome-session" > ~/.xinitrc

Next, type startx, and the GNOME desktop environment will be started.

Note: If a display manager, like XDM, is being used, this will not work. Instead, create an executable .xsession
file with the same command in it. To do this, edit the file and replace the existing window manager command with
/usr/X11R6/bin/gnome-session:

# echo "#!/bin/sh" > ~/.xsession

# echo "/usr/X11R6/bin/gnome-session" >> ~/.xsession
# chmod +x ~/.xsession

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Another option is to configure the display manager to allow choosing the window manager at login time; the section
on KDE2 details explains how to do this for kdm, the display manager of KDE.

[Link] Anti-aliased fonts with GNOME

While anti-aliased fonts made their first appearance on XFree86 desktops in the KDE environment and are supported
there in the standard installation, it is also possible to use them with gtk applications such as the GNOME
environment. The most straightforward way is probably by using the libgdkxft library, in the x11/gdkxft port. After
installing this port, read the /usr/X11R6/share/doc/gdkxft/README file carefully.
Then, all that is needed is to do is tell gtk applications to look for their font-rendering functions in [Link]
before looking in the standard place, [Link]. This is easily accomplished by setting an environment variable to
point to the right place; with the Bourne shell (/bin/sh) or similar shells, type the command (to start The Gimp, say)

% LD_PRELOAD=/usr/X11R6/lib/[Link] gimp

and with csh and similar shells, type

% setenv LD_PRELOAD /usr/X11R6/lib/[Link]

% gimp

Or, the commands

LD_PRELOAD=/usr/X11R6/lib/[Link]
export LD_PRELOAD

can be put into .xinitrc, .xsession or in the appropriate place(s) in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xsession,

depending on how X is normally started. However, this short-cut may cause problems if Linux GTK binaries are run.

5.7.2 KDE2

[Link] About KDE2

KDE is an easy to use contemporary desktop environment. Some of the things that KDE brings to the user are:

• A beautiful contemporary desktop

• A desktop exhibiting complete network transparency
• An integrated help system allowing for convenient, consistent access to help on the use of the KDE desktop and
its applications
• Consistent look and feel of all KDE applications
• Standardized menu and toolbars, keybindings, color-schemes, etc.
• Internationalization: KDE is available in more than 40 languages
• Centralized consisted dialog driven desktop configuration
• A great number of useful KDE applications

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KDE has an office application suite based on KDE’s “KParts” technology consisting of a spread-sheet, a
presentation application, an organizer, a news client and more. KDE also comes with a web browser called
Konqueror, which represents a solid competitor to other existing web browsers on Unix systems. More information
on KDE can be found on the KDE website. ([Link]

[Link] Installing KDE2

Just like with GNOME or any other desktop environment, the easiest way to install KDE is through the “Desktop
Configuration” menu during the FreeBSD installation process as described in Chapter 2. Once again, the software
can be easily installed from a package or from the ports collection:
To install the KDE2 package from the network, simply type:

# pkg_add -r kde2

To build KDE from source, use the ports tree:

# cd /usr/ports/x11/kde2
# make install clean

After KDE2 has been installed, the X server must be told to launch this application instead of the default window
manager. This is accomplished by editing the .xinitrc file:

# echo "/usr/X11R6/bin/startkde" > ~/.xinitrc

Now, whenever invoke X-Windows with startx, KDE2 will be the desktop.
If a display manager such as xdm is being used, then configuration is slightly different. Edit the .xsession file
instead. Instructions for kdm are described later in this chapter.

5.7.3 More Details on KDE2

Now that KDE2 is installed on the system, most things can be discovered through the help pages, or just by pointing
and clicking at various menus. Windows or Mac users will feel quite at home.
The best reference for KDE is the on-line documentation. KDE comes with its own web browser, Konqueror,
dozens of useful applications, and extensive documentation. The remainder of this section discusses the technical
items that are difficult to learn by random exploration.

[Link] The KDE display manager

An administrator of a multi-user system may wish to have a graphical login screen to welcome users. xdm can be
used, as described earlier. However, KDE includes an alternative, KDM, which is designed to look more attractive
and include more login-time options. In particular, users can easily choose (via a menu) which desktop environment
(KDE2, GNOME, or something else) to run after logging on.
To begin with, run the KDE2 control panel, kcontrol, as root. It is generally considered unsafe to run the entire X
environment as root. Instead, run the window manager as a normal user, open a terminal window (such as xterm or
KDE’s konsole, become root with su (the user must be in the wheel group in /etc/group for this), and then
type kcontrol.

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Click on the icon on the left marked System, then on Login manager. On the right there are various configurable
options, which the KDE manual will explain in greater detail. Click on sessions on the right. Click New type to
add various window managers and desktop environments. These are just labels, so they can say KDE and GNOME
rather than startkde or gnome-session. Include a label failsafe.
Play with the other menus as well, they are mainly cosmetic and self-explanatory. When are done, click on Apply at
the bottom, and quit the control center.
To make sure kdm understands what the labels (KDE, GNOME etc) mean, edit the files used by xdm.

Note: In KDE 2.2 this has changed: kdm now uses its own configuration files. Please see the KDE 2.2
documentation for details.

In a terminal window, as root, edit the file /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xsession. There is a section in the
middle like this:

case $# in
1)
case $1 in
failsafe)
exec xterm -geometry 80x24-0-0
;;
esac
esac

A few lines need to be added to this section. Assuming the labels from used were “KDE2” and “GNOME”, use the
following:

case $# in
1)
case $1 in
KDE2)
exec /usr/X11R6/bin/startkde
;;
GNOME)
exec /usr/X11R6/bin/gnome-session
;;
failsafe)
exec xterm -geometry 80x24-0-0
;;
esac
esac

For the KDE login-time desktop background to be honored, the following line needs to be added to
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xsetup_0:

/usr/X11R6/bin/kdmdesktop

Now, make sure kdm is listed in /etc/ttys to be started at the next bootup. To do this, simply follow the
instructions from the previous section on xdm and replace references to the /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm program with
/usr/local/bin/kdm.

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[Link] Anti-aliased Fonts

Starting with version 4.0.2, XFree86 supports anti-aliasing via its "RENDER" extension, and starting with version
2.3, Qt (the toolkit used by KDE) supports this extension. Configuring this is described in Section 5.5.3 on
antialiasing X11 fonts. So, with up-to-date software, anti-aliasing is possible on a KDE2 desktop. Just go to the
KDE2 menu, go to Preferences -> Look and Feel -> Fonts, and click on the check box “Use Anti-Aliasing for Fonts
and Icons”. For a Qt application which is not part of KDE, the environment variable QT_XFT needs to be set to true
before starting the program.

5.7.4 XFCE

[Link] About XFCE

XFCE is a desktop environment based on the GTK toolkit used by GNOME, but is much more lightweight and
meant for those who want a simple, efficient desktop which is nevertheless easy to use and configure. Visually, it
looks very much like CDE, found on commercial Unix systems. Some of XFCE’s features are:

• A simple, easy-to-handle desktop

• Fully configurable via mouse, with drag and drop, etc
• Main panel similar to CDE, with menus, applets and app launchers
• Integrated window manager, file manager, sound manager, GNOME compliance module, and other things
• Themeable (since it uses GTK)
• Fast, light and efficient: ideal for older/slower machines or machines with memory limitations
More information on XFCE can be found on the XFCE website ([Link]

[Link] Installing XFCE

A binary package for xfce exists (at the time of writing). To install, simply type:

# pkg_add -r xfce

Alternatively, to build from source, use the ports collection:

# cd /usr/ports/x11-wm/xfce
# make install clean

Now, tell the X server to launch XFCE the next time X is started. Simply type this:

# echo "/usr/X11R6/bin/startxfce" > ~/.xinitrc

The next time X is started, XFCE will be the desktop. As before, if a display manager like xdm is being used, create
an .xsession, as described in the section on GNOME, but with the /usr/X11R6/bin/startxfce command; or,
configure the display manager to allow choosing a desktop at login time, as explained in the section on kdm.

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 II. System Administration
The remaining chapters of the FreeBSD Handbook cover all aspects of FreeBSD system administration. Each
chapter starts by describing what you will learn as a result of reading the chapter, and also details what you are
expected to know before tackling the material.
These chapters are designed to be read when you need the information. You do not have to read them in any
particular order, nor do you need to read all of them before you can begin using FreeBSD.
Chapter 6 Configuration and Tuning
Written by Chern Lee. Based on a tutorial written by Mike Smith. Also based on tuning(7) written by Matt Dillon.

6.1 Synopsis
Configuring a system correctly can substantially reduce the amount of work involved in maintaining and upgrading it
in the future. This chapter describes some of the aspects of administrative configuration of FreeBSD systems.
This chapter will also describe some of the parameters that can be set to tune a FreeBSD system for optimum
performance.
After reading this chapter, you will know:

• Why and how to efficiently size, layout, and place filesystems and swap partition on your hard drive.
• The basics of the [Link] configuration and /usr/local/etc/rc.d startup systems.
• How to configure virtual hosts on your network device.
• How to use the various configuration files in /etc.
• How to tune FreeBSD using sysctl variables.
• How to tune disk performance and modify kernel limitations.
Before reading this chapter, you should:

• Understand the basics of Unix and FreeBSD (Chapter 3).

• Be familiar with keeping FreeBSD sources up to date (Chapter 19), and the basics of kernel
configuration/compilation (Chapter 9).

6.2 Initial Configuration

6.2.1 Partition Layout

[Link] Base Partitions

When laying out your filesystem with disklabel(8) or sysinstall(8), it is important to remember that hard drives can
transfer data at a faster rate from the outer tracks than the inner. Knowing this, you should place your smaller,
heavily-accessed filesystems, such as root and swap, closer to the outside of the drive, while placing larger partitions,
such as /usr, towards the inner. To do so, it is a good idea to create partitions in a similar order: root, swap, /var,
/usr.

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The size of your /var partition reflects the intended use of your machine. /var is primarily used to hold: mailboxes,
print spool and log files. Mail boxes and log files, in particular, can grow to unexpected sizes based upon how many
users are on your system and how long your log files are kept. If you intend to run a mail server, a /var partition of
over a gigabyte can be suitable. Additionally, /var/tmp must be large enough to contain any packages you may
wish to add.
The /usr partition holds the bulk of the files required to support the system and a subdirectory within it called
/usr/local holds the bulk of the files installed from the ports(7) hierarchy. If you do not use ports all that much and
do not intend to keep system source (/usr/src) on the machine, you can get away with a 1 gigabyte /usr partition.
However, if you install a lot of ports (especially window managers and Linux binaries), we recommend at least a two
gigabyte /usr and if you also intend to keep system source on the machine, we recommend a three gigabyte /usr.
Do not underestimate the amount of space you will need in this partition, it can creep up and surprise you!
When sizing your partitions, keep in mind the space requirements for your system to grow. Running out of space in
one partition while having plenty in another can lead to much frustration.

Note: Some users who have used sysinstall(8)’s Auto-defaults partition sizer have found either their root or
/var partitions too small later on. Partition wisely and generously.

[Link] Swap Partition

As a rule of thumb, your swap space should typically be double the amount of main memory. For example, if the
machine has 128 megabytes of memory, the swap file should be 256 megabytes. Systems with lesser memory may
perform better with a lot more swap. It is not recommended that you configure any less than 256 megabytes of swap
on a system and you should keep in mind future memory expansion when sizing the swap partition. The kernel’s VM
paging algorithms are tuned to perform best when the swap partition is at least two times the size of main memory.
Configuring too little swap can lead to inefficiencies in the VM page scanning code as well as create issues later on if
you add more memory to your machine.
Finally, on larger systems with multiple SCSI disks (or multiple IDE disks operating on different controllers), it is
strongly recommend that you configure swap on each drive (up to four drives). The swap partitions on the drives
should be approximately the same size. The kernel can handle arbitrary sizes but internal data structures scale to 4
times the largest swap partition. Keeping the swap partitions near the same size will allow the kernel to optimally
stripe swap space across the disks. Do not worry about overdoing it a little, swap space is the saving grace of Unix.
Even if you do not normally use much swap, it can give you more time to recover from a runaway program before
being forced to reboot.

[Link] Why Partition?

Why partition at all? Why not create one big root partition and be done with it? Then I do not have to worry about
undersizing things!
There are several reasons this is not a good idea. First, each partition has different operational characteristics and
separating them allows the filesystem to tune itself to those characteristics. For example, the root and /usr partitions
are read-mostly, with very little writing, while a lot of reading and writing could occur in /var and /var/tmp.
By properly partitioning your system, fragmentation introduced in the smaller more heavily write-loaded partitions
will not bleed over into the mostly-read partitions. Additionally, keeping the write-loaded partitions closer to the

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edge of the disk, for example before the really big partition instead of after in the partition table, will increase I/O
performance in the partitions where you need it the most. Now it is true that you might also need I/O performance in
the larger partitions, but they are so large that shifting them more towards the edge of the disk will not lead to a
significant performance improvement whereas moving /var to the edge can have a huge impact. Finally, there are
safety concerns. Having a small neat root partition that is essentially read-only gives it a greater chance of surviving
a bad crash intact.

6.3 Core Configuration

The principal location for system configuration information is within /etc/[Link]. This file contains a wide
range of configuration information, principally used at system startup to configure the system. Its name directly
implies this; it is configuration information for the rc* files.
An administrator should make entries in the [Link] file to override the default settings from
/etc/defaults/[Link]. The defaults file should not be copied verbatim to /etc - it contains default values, not
examples. All system-specific changes should be made in the [Link] file itself.
A number of strategies may be applied in clustered applications to separate site-wide configuration from
system-specific configuration in order to keep administration overhead down. The recommended approach is to place
site-wide configuration into another file, such as /etc/[Link], and then include this file into
/etc/[Link], which will contain only system-specific information.
As [Link] is read by sh(1) it is trivial to achieve this. For example:

• [Link]:
. [Link]
hostname="[Link]"
network_interfaces="fxp0 lo0"
ifconfig_fxp0="inet [Link]"

• [Link]:
defaultrouter="[Link]"
saver="daemon"
blanktime="100"

The [Link] file can then be distributed to every system using rsync or similar program, whilst the
[Link] file remains unique.

Upgrading the system using sysinstall(8) or make world will not overwrite the [Link] file, so system
configuration information will not be lost.

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6.4 Application Configuration

Typically, installed applications have their own configuration files, with their own syntax, etc. It is important that
these files be kept separate from the base system, so that they may be easily located and managed by the package
management tools.
Typically, these files are installed in /usr/local/etc. In the case where an application has a large number of
configuration files, a subdirectory will be created to hold them.
Normally, when a port or package is installed, sample configuration files are also installed. These are usually
identified with a “.default” suffix. If there are no existing configuration files for the application, they will be created
by copying the .default files.
For example, here is /usr/local/etc/apache:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2184 May 20 1998 [Link]

-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2184 May 20 1998 [Link]
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 9555 May 20 1998 [Link]
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 9555 May 20 1998 [Link]
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 12205 May 20 1998 magic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 12205 May 20 1998 [Link]
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2700 May 20 1998 [Link]
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 2700 May 20 1998 [Link]
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 7980 May 20 1998 [Link]
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 7933 May 20 1998 [Link]

It can be quickly seen that only the [Link] file has been changed. A later update of the apache port would not
overwrite this changed file.

6.5 Starting Services

It is common for a system to host a number of services. These may be started in several different fashions, each
having different advantages.
Software installed from a port or the packages collection will often place a script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d which
is invoked at system startup with a start argument, and at system shutdown with a stop argument. This is the
recommended way for starting system-wide services that are to be run as root, or that expect to be started as root.
These scripts are registered as part of the installation of the package, and will be removed when the package is
removed.
A generic startup script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d looks like:

#!/bin/sh
echo -n ’ FooBar’

case "$1" in
start)
/usr/local/bin/foobar
;;
stop)
kill -9 ‘cat /var/run/[Link]‘
;;

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*)
echo "Usage: ‘basename $0‘ {start|stop}" >&2
exit 64
;;
esac

exit 0

This script is called with start at startup, and the stop at shutdown to allow it to carry out its purpose.
Some services expect to be invoked by inetd(8) when a connection is received on a suitable port. This is common for
mail reader servers (POP and IMAP, etc.). These services are enabled by editing the file /etc/[Link]. See
inetd(8) for details on editing this file.
Some additional system services may not be covered by the toggles in /etc/[Link]. These are traditionally
enabled by placing the command(s) to invoke them in /etc/[Link]. As of FreeBSD 3.1 there is no default
/etc/[Link]; if it is created by the administrator it will however be honored in the normal fashion. Note that
[Link] is generally regarded as the location of last resort; if there is a better place to start a service, do it there.

Note: Do not place any commands in /etc/[Link]. To start daemons, or run any commands at boot time,
place a script in /usr/local/etc/rc.d instead.

It is also possible to use the cron(8) daemon to start system services. This approach has a number of advantages, not
least being that because cron(8) runs these processes as the owner of the crontab, services may be started and
maintained by non-root users.
This takes advantage of a feature of cron(8): the time specification may be replaced by @reboot, which will cause
the job to be run when cron(8) is started shortly after system boot.

6.6 Virtual Hosts

A very common use of FreeBSD is virtual site hosting, where one server appears to the network as many servers.
This is achieved by assigning multiple network addresses to a single interface.
A given network interface has one “real” address, and may have any number of “alias” addresses. These aliases are
normally added by placing alias entries in /etc/[Link].
An alias entry for the interface fxp0 looks like:

ifconfig_fxp0_alias0="inet [Link] netmask [Link]"

Note that alias entries must start with alias0 and proceed upwards in order, (for example, _alias1, _alias2, and so on).
The configuration process will stop at the first missing number.
The calculation of alias netmasks is important, but fortunately quite simple. For a given interface, there must be one
address which correctly represents the network’s netmask. Any other addresses which fall within this network must
have a netmask of all 1’s.

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For example, consider the case where the fxp0 interface is connected to two networks, the [Link] network with a
netmask of [Link] and the [Link] network with a netmask of [Link]. We want the system to
appear at [Link] through [Link] and at [Link] through [Link].
The following entries configure the adapter correctly for this arrangement:

ifconfig_fxp0="inet [Link] netmask [Link]"

ifconfig_fxp0_alias0="inet [Link] netmask [Link]"
ifconfig_fxp0_alias1="inet [Link] netmask [Link]"
ifconfig_fxp0_alias2="inet [Link] netmask [Link]"
ifconfig_fxp0_alias3="inet [Link] netmask [Link]"
ifconfig_fxp0_alias4="inet [Link] netmask [Link]"
ifconfig_fxp0_alias5="inet [Link] netmask [Link]"
ifconfig_fxp0_alias6="inet [Link] netmask [Link]"
ifconfig_fxp0_alias7="inet [Link] netmask [Link]"

6.7 Configuration Files

6.7.1 /etc Layout

There are a number of directories in which configuration information is kept. These include:

/etc Generic system configuration information; data here is

system-specific.
/etc/defaults Default versions of system configuration files.
/etc/mail Extra sendmail(8) configuration, other MTA configuration
files.
/etc/ppp Configuration for both user- and kernel-ppp programs.
/etc/namedb Default location for named(8) data. Normally the boot file
is located here, and contains a directive to refer to other
data in /var/db.
/usr/local/etc Configuration files for installed applications. May contain
per-application subdirectories.
/usr/local/etc/rc.d Start/stop scripts for installed applications.
/var/db Persistent system-specific data files, such as named(8)
zone files, database files, and so on.

6.7.2 Hostnames

[Link] /etc/[Link]
/etc/[Link] dictates how FreeBSD’s resolver accesses the Internet Domain Name System (DNS).

The most common entries to [Link] are:

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nameserver The IP address of a name server the resolver should query.

The servers are queried in the order listed with a
maximum of three.
search Search list for hostname lookup. This is normally
determined by the domain of the local hostname.
domain The local domain name.

A typical [Link]:

search [Link]
nameserver [Link]
nameserver [Link]

If you are using DHCP, dhclient(8) usually rewrites [Link] with information received from the DHCP server.

[Link] /etc/hosts
/etc/hosts is a simple text database reminiscent of the old Internet. It works in conjunction with DNS and NIS
providing name to IP address mappings. Local computers connected via a LAN can be placed in here for simplistic
naming purposes instead of setting up a named(8) server. Additionally, /etc/hosts can be used to provide a local
record of Internet names, reducing the need to query externally for commonly accessed names.

# $FreeBSD$
#
# Host Database
# This file should contain the addresses and aliases
# for local hosts that share this file.
# In the presence of the domain name service or NIS, this file may
# not be consulted at all; see /etc/[Link] for the resolution order.
#
#
::1 localhost [Link] [Link]
[Link] localhost [Link] [Link]

#
# Imaginary network.
#[Link] [Link] myname
#[Link] [Link] myfriend
#
# According to RFC 1918, you can use the following IP networks for
# private nets which will never be connected to the Internet:
#
# [Link] - [Link]
# [Link] - [Link]
# [Link] - [Link]
#
# In case you want to be able to connect to the Internet, you need
# real official assigned numbers. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not try
# to invent your own network numbers but instead get one from your
# network provider (if any) or from the Internet Registry (ftp to

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# [Link], directory ‘/templates’).

#

/etc/hosts takes on the simple format of:

[Internet address] [official hostname] [alias1] [alias2] ...

For example:

[Link] [Link] myRealHostname foobar1 foobar2

Consult hosts(5) for more information.

6.7.3 Log File Configuration

[Link] [Link]
[Link] is the configuration file for the syslogd(8) program. It indicates which types of syslog messages are
logged to particular log files.

# $FreeBSD$
#
# Spaces ARE valid field separators in this file. However,
# other *nix-like systems still insist on using tabs as field
# separators. If you are sharing this file between systems, you
# may want to use only tabs as field separators here.
# Consult the [Link](5) manual page.
*.err;[Link];[Link];[Link] /dev/console
*.notice;[Link];[Link];[Link];[Link] /var/log/messages
security.* /var/log/security
[Link] /var/log/maillog
[Link] /var/log/lpd-errs
cron.* /var/log/cron
*.err root
*.notice;[Link] root
*.alert root
*.emerg *
# uncomment this to log all writes to /dev/console to /var/log/[Link]
#[Link] /var/log/[Link]
# uncomment this to enable logging of all log messages to /var/log/[Link]
#*.* /var/log/[Link]
# uncomment this to enable logging to a remote log host named loghost
#*.* @loghost
# uncomment these if you’re running inn
# [Link] /var/log/news/[Link]
# [Link] /var/log/news/[Link]
# [Link] /var/log/news/[Link]
!startslip
*.* /var/log/[Link]
!ppp

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*.* /var/log/[Link]

Consult the [Link](5) manual page for more information.

[Link] [Link]
[Link] is the configuration file for newsyslog(8), a program that is scheduled to run normally by cron(8).
newsyslog(8) determines when log files require archiving or rearranging. logfile is moved to logfile.0,
logfile.0 is moved to logfile.1, and so on. Additionally, the log files may be archived in gzip(1) format
causing them to be named: [Link], [Link], and so on.
[Link] indicates which log files are to be managed, how many are to be kept, and when they are to be
touched. Log files can be rearranged and/or archived when they have either reached a certain size, or at a certain
periodic time/date.

# configuration file for newsyslog

# $FreeBSD$
#
# filename [owner:group] mode count size when [ZB] [/pid_file] [sig_num]
/var/log/cron 600 3 100 * Z
/var/log/[Link] 644 7 100 * Z
/var/log/[Link] 644 7 100 * Z
/var/log/lpd-errs 644 7 100 * Z
/var/log/maillog 644 7 * @T00 Z
/var/log/[Link] 644 10 * 168 B
/var/log/messages 644 5 100 * Z
/var/log/[Link] 600 7 * @T00 Z
/var/log/[Link] 600 3 100 * Z
/var/log/[Link] 600 3 100 * Z
/var/log/security 600 10 100 * Z
/var/log/wtmp 644 3 * @01T05 B
/var/log/[Link] 640 7 * @T00 Z
/var/log/[Link] 640 5 1 $W6D0 Z
/var/log/[Link] 640 12 * $M1D0 Z
/var/log/[Link] 640 5 100 * Z

Consult the newsyslog(8) manual page for more information.

6.7.4 [Link]
[Link] looks much like [Link]. Values are set in a variable=value form. The specified values are set
after the system goes into multi-user mode. Not all variables are settable in this mode.
A sample [Link] turning off logging of fatal signal exits and letting Linux programs know they are really
running under FreeBSD.

[Link]=0 # Do not log fatal signal exits (e.g. sig 11)

[Link]=FreeBSD
[Link]=4.3-STABLE

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6.8 Tuning with sysctl

sysctl(8) is an interface that allows you to make changes to a running FreeBSD system. This includes many advanced
options of the TCP/IP stack and virtual memory system that can dramatically improve performance for an
experienced system administrator. Over five hundred system variables can be read and set using sysctl(8).
At its core, sysctl(8) serves to do two functions: read and modify system settings.
To view all readable variables:

% sysctl -a

To read a particular variable, for example, [Link]:

% sysctl [Link]
[Link]: 1044

To set a particular variable, use the intuitive variable=value syntax:

# sysctl [Link]=5000
[Link]: 2088 -> 5000

Settings of sysctl variables are usually either strings, numbers, or booleans. A boolean being 1 for yes or a 0 for no.

6.9 Tuning Disks

6.9.1 Sysctl Variables

[Link] [Link]
The [Link] sysctl variable defaults to 0 (off) (though soon it will default to 1) and may be set to 0
(off) or 1 (on). This parameter controls how directories are cached by the system. Most directories are small and use
but a single fragment (typically 1K) in the filesystem and even less (typically 512 bytes) in the buffer cache.
However, when operating in the default mode the buffer cache will only cache a fixed number of directories even if
you have a huge amount of memory. Turning on this sysctl allows the buffer cache to use the VM Page Cache to
cache the directories. The advantage is that all of memory is now available for caching directories. The disadvantage
is that the minimum in-core memory used to cache a directory is the physical page size (typically 4K) rather than 512
bytes. We recommend turning this option on if you are running any services which manipulate large numbers of files.
Such services can include web caches, large mail systems, and news systems. Turning on this option will generally
not reduce performance even with the wasted memory but you should experiment to find out.

[Link] [Link]
FreeBSD 4.3 flirted with turning off IDE write caching. This reduced write bandwidth to IDE disks but was
considered necessary due to serious data consistency issues introduced by hard drive vendors. Basically the problem
is that IDE drives lie about when a write completes. With IDE write caching turned on, IDE hard drives will not only
write data to disk out of order, they will sometimes delay some of the blocks indefinitely when under heavy disk

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loads. A crash or power failure can result in serious filesystem corruption. So our default was changed to be safe.
Unfortunately, the result was such a huge loss in performance that we caved in and changed the default back to on
after the release. You should check the default on your system by observing the [Link] sysctl variable. If IDE
write caching is turned off, you can turn it back on by setting the kernel variable back to 1. This must be done from
the boot loader at boot time. Attempting to do it after the kernel boots will have no effect.
For more information, please see ata(4).

6.9.2 Soft Updates

The tunefs(8) program can be used to fine-tune a filesystem. This program has many different options, but for now
we are only concerned with toggling Soft Updates on and off, which is done by :

# tunefs -n enable /filesystem

# tunefs -n disable /filesystem

A filesystem cannot be modified with tunefs(8) while it is mounted. A good time to enable Soft Updates is before
any partitions have been mounted, in single-user mode.
Soft Updates drastically improves meta-data performance, mainly file creation and deletion, through the use of a
memory cache. We recommend turning Soft Updates on on all of your filesystems. There are two downsides to Soft
Updates that you should be aware of: First, Soft Updates guarantees filesystem consistency in the case of a crash but
could very easily be several seconds (even a minute!) behind updating the physical disk. If you crash you may lose
more work than otherwise. Secondly, Soft Updates delays the freeing of filesystem blocks. If you have a filesystem
(such as the root filesystem) which is close to full, doing a major update of it, e.g. make installworld, can run it
out of space and cause the update to fail.

6.10 Tuning Kernel Limits

6.10.1 File/Process Limits

[Link] [Link]
[Link] can be raised or lowered based upon your system requirements. This variable indicates the
maximum number of file descriptors on your system. When the file descriptor table is full, file: table is full
will show up repeatedly in the system message buffer, which can be viewed with the dmesg command.
Each open file, socket, or fifo uses one file descriptor. A large-scale production server may easily require many
thousands of file descriptors, depending on the kind and number of services running concurrently.
[Link]’s default value is dictated by the maxusers option in your kernel configuration file.
[Link] grows proportionally to the value of maxusers. When compiling a custom kernel, it is a good idea
to set this kernel configuration option according to the uses of your system. From this number, the kernel is given
most of its pre-defined limits. Even though a production machine may not actually have 256 users connected as once,
the resources needed may be similar to a high-scale webserver.

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6.10.2 Network Limits

The NMBCLUSTERS kernel configuration option dictate the amount of network mbufs available to the system. A
heavily-trafficked server with a low number of MBUFs will hinder FreeBSD’s ability. Each cluster represents
approximately 2K of memory, so a value of 1024 represents 2 megabytes of kernel memory reserved for network
buffers. A simple calculation can be done to figure out how many are needed. If you have a web server which maxes
out at 1000 simultaneous connections, and each connection eats a 16K receive and 16K send buffer, you need
approximately 32MB worth of network buffers to cover the webserver. A good rule of thumb is to multiply by 2, so
32MBx2 = 64MB/2K = 32768.

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7.1 Synopsis
The process of starting a computer and loading the operating system is referred to as “the bootstrap process”, or
simply “booting”. FreeBSD’s boot process provides a great deal of flexibility in customizing what happens when you
start the system, allowing you to select from different operating systems installed on the same computer, or even
different versions of the same operating system or installed kernel.
This chapter details the configuration options you can set and how to customize the FreeBSD boot process. This
includes everything that happens until the FreeBSD kernel has started, probed for devices, and started init(8). If you
are not quite sure when this happens, it occurs when the text color changes from bright white to grey.
After reading this chapter, you will know:

• What the components of the FreeBSD bootstrap system are, and how they interact.
• The options you can give to the components in the FreeBSD bootstrap to control the boot process.

x86 only: This chapter only describes the boot process for FreeBSD running on Intel x86 systems.

7.2 The Booting Problem

Turning on a computer and starting the operating system poses an interesting dilemma. By definition, the computer
does not know how to do anything until the operating system is started. This includes running programs from the
disk. So if the computer can not run a program from the disk without the operating system, and the operating system
programs are on the disk, how is the operating system started?
This problem parallels one in the book The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. A character had fallen part way down
a manhole, and pulled himself out by grabbing his bootstraps, and lifting. In the early days of computing the term
bootstrap was applied to the mechanism used to load the operating system, which has become shortened to
“booting”.
On x86 hardware the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) is responsible for loading the operating system. To do this,
the BIOS looks on the hard disk for the Master Boot Record (MBR), which must be located on a specific place on the
disk. The BIOS has enough knowledge to load and run the MBR, and assumes that the MBR can then carry out the
rest of the tasks involved in loading the operating system.
If you only have one operating system installed on your disks then the standard MBR will suffice. This MBR
searches for the first bootable slice on the disk, and then runs the code on that slice to load the remainder of the
operating system.
If you have installed multiple operating systems on your disks then you can install a different MBR, one that can
display a list of different operating systems, and allows you to choose the one to boot from. FreeBSD comes with one
such MBR which can be installed, and other operating system vendors also provide alternative MBRs.

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The remainder of the FreeBSD bootstrap system is divided into three stages. The first stage is run by the MBR,
which knows just enough to get the computer into a specific state and run the second stage. The second stage can do
a little bit more, before running the third stage. The third stage finishes the task of loading the operating system. The
work is split into these three stages because the PC standards put limits on the size of the programs that can be run at
stages one and two. Chaining the tasks together allows FreeBSD to provide a more flexible loader.
The kernel is then started and it begins to probe for devices and initialize them for use. Once the kernel boot process
is finished, the kernel passes control to the user process init(8), which then makes sure the disks are in a usable state.
init(8) then starts the user-level resource configuration which mounts filesystems, sets up network cards to
communicate on the network, and generally starts all the processes that usually are run on a FreeBSD system at
startup.

7.3 The MBR, and Boot Stages One, Two, and Three

7.3.1 MBR, /boot/boot0

The FreeBSD MBR is located in /boot/boot0. This is a copy of the MBR, as the real MBR must be placed on a
special part of the disk, outside the FreeBSD area.
boot0 is very simple, since the program in the MBR can only be 512 bytes in size. If you have installed the
FreeBSD MBR and have installed multiple operating systems on your hard disks then you will see a display similar
to this one at boot time.

Example 7-1. boot0 Screenshot

F1 DOS
F2 FreeBSD
F3 Linux
F4 ??
F5 Drive 1

Default: F2

Other operating systems, in particular Windows 95, have been known to overwrite an existing MBR with their own.
If this happens to you, or you want to replace your existing MBR with the FreeBSD MBR then use the following
command.

# fdisk -B -b /boot/boot0 device

Where device is the device that you boot from, such as ad0 for the first IDE disk, ad2 for the first IDE disk on a
second IDE controller, da0 for the first SCSI disk, and so on.

7.3.2 Stage One, /boot/boot1, and Stage Two, /boot/boot2

Conceptually the first and second stages are part of the same program, on the same area of the disk. Because of space
constraints they have been split into two, but you would always install them together.

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They are found on the boot sector of the boot slice, which is where boot0, or any other program on the MBR expects
to find the program to run to continue the boot process. The files in the /boot directory are copies of the real files,
which are stored outside of the FreeBSD filesystem.
boot1 is very simple, since it too can only be 512 bytes in size, and knows just enough about the FreeBSD disklabel,
which stores information about the slice, to find and execute boot2.
boot2 is slightly more sophisticated, and understands the FreeBSD filesystem enough to find files on it, and can
provide a simple interface to choose the kernel or loader to run.
Since the loader is much more sophisticated, and provides a nice easy-to-use boot configuration, boot2 usually runs
it, but previously it was tasked to run the kernel directly.

Example 7-2. boot2 Screenshot

FreeBSD/i386 BOOT
Default: 0:ad(0,a)/kernel
boot:

If you ever need to replace the installed boot1 and boot2 use disklabel(8).

# disklabel -B diskslice

Where diskslice is the disk and slice you boot from, such as ad0s1 for the first slice on the first IDE disk.

Dangerously Dedicated Mode: If you use just the disk name, such as ad0, in the disklabel(8) command you will
create a dangerously dedicated disk, without slices. This is almost certainly not what you want to do, so make
sure you double check the disklabel(8) command before you press Return.

7.3.3 Stage Three, /boot/loader

The loader is the final stage of the three-stage bootstrap, and is located on the filesystem, usually as /boot/loader.
The loader is intended as a user-friendly method for configuration, using an easy-to-use built-in command set,
backed up by a more powerful interpreter, with a more complex command set.

[Link] Loader Program Flow

During initialization, the loader will probe for a console and for disks, and figure out what disk it is booting from. It
will set variables accordingly, and an interpreter is started where user commands can be passed from a script or
interactively.
The loader will then read /boot/[Link], which by default reads in /boot/defaults/[Link] which
sets reasonable defaults for variables and reads /boot/[Link] for local changes to those variables.
[Link] then acts on these variables, loading whichever modules and kernel are selected.

Finally, by default, the loader issues a 10 second wait for key presses, and boots the kernel if it is not interrupted. If
interrupted, the user is presented with a prompt which understands the easy-to-use command set, where the user may
adjust variables, unload all modules, load modules, and then finally boot or reboot.

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[Link] Loader Built-In Commands

These are the most commonly used loader commands. For a complete discussion of all available commands, please
see loader(8)

autoboot seconds
Proceeds to boot the kernel if not interrupted within the time span given, in seconds. It displays a countdown,
and the default time span is 10 seconds.

boot [-options] [kernelname]

Immediately proceeds to boot the kernel, with the given options, if any, and with the kernel name given, if it is.

boot-conf
Goes through the same automatic configuration of modules based on variables as what happens at boot. This
only makes sense if you use unload first, and change some variables, most commonly kernel.

help [topic]
Shows help messages read from /boot/[Link]. If the topic given is index, then the list of available
topics is given.

include filename . . .
Processes the file with the given filename. The file is read in, and interpreted line by line. An error immediately
stops the include command.

load [-t type] filename

Loads the kernel, kernel module, or file of the type given, with the filename given. Any arguments after filename
are passed to the file.

ls [-l] [path]
Displays a listing of files in the given path, or the root directory, if the path is not specified. If -l is specified,
file sizes will be shown too.

lsdev [-v]
Lists all of the devices from which it may be possible to load modules. If -v is specified, more details are
printed.

lsmod [-v]
Displays loaded modules. If -v is specified, more details are shown.

more filename
Displays the files specified, with a pause at each LINES displayed.

reboot
Immediately reboots the system.

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set variable
set variable=value
Sets the loader’s environment variables.

unload
Removes all loaded modules.

[Link] Loader Examples

Here are some practical examples of loader usage.

• To simply boot your usual kernel, but in single-user mode:

boot -s

• To unload your usual kernel and modules, and then load just your old (or another) kernel:
unload
load [Link]
You can use [Link] to refer to the generic kernel that comes on the install disk, or [Link] to
refer to your previously installed kernel (when you have upgraded or configured your own kernel, for example).

Note: Use the following to load your usual modules with another kernel:
unload
set kernel="[Link]"
boot-conf

• To load a kernel configuration script (an automated script which does the things you would normally do in the
kernel boot-time configurator):
load -t userconfig_script /boot/[Link]

7.4 Kernel Interaction During Boot

Once the kernel is loaded by either loader (as usual) or boot2 (bypassing the loader), it examines its boot flags, if any,
and adjusts its behavior as necessary.

7.4.1 Kernel Boot Flags

Here are the more common boot flags:

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-a

during kernel initialization, ask for the device to mount as the root file system.

-C
boot from CDROM.

-c

run UserConfig, the boot-time kernel configurator

-s
boot into single-user mode

-v
be more verbose during kernel startup

Note: There are other boot flags, read boot(8) for more information on them.

7.5 Init: Process Control Initialization

Once the kernel has finished booting, it passes control to the user process init, which is located at /sbin/init, or
the program path specified in the init_path variable in loader.

7.5.1 Automatic Reboot Sequence

The automatic reboot sequence makes sure that the filesystems available on the system are consistent. If they are not,
and fsck cannot fix the inconsistencies, init drops the system into single-user mode for the system administrator to
take care of the problems directly.

7.5.2 Single-User Mode

This mode can be reached through the automatic reboot sequence, or by the user booting with the -s option or
setting the boot_single variable in loader.
It can also be reached by calling shutdown without the reboot (-r) or halt (-h) options, from multi-user mode.
If the system console is set to insecure in /etc/ttys, then the system prompts for the root password before
initiating single-user mode.

Example 7-3. An Insecure Console in /etc/ttys

# name getty type status comments

#
# This entry needed for asking password when init goes to single-user mode

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# If you want to be asked for password, change "secure" to "insecure" here

console none unknown off insecure

Note: An insecure console means that you consider your physical security to the console to be insecure, and
want to make sure only someone who knows the root password may use single-user mode, and it does not mean
that you want to run your console insecurely. Thus, if you want security, choose insecure, not secure.

7.5.3 Multi-User Mode

If init finds your filesystems to be in order, or once the user has finished in single-user mode, the system enters
multi-user mode, in which it starts the resource configuration of the system.

[Link] Resource Configuration (rc)

The resource configuration system reads in configuration defaults from /etc/defaults/[Link], and
system-specific details from /etc/[Link], and then proceeds to mount the system filesystems mentioned in
/etc/fstab, start up networking services, start up miscellaneous system daemons, and finally runs the startup
scripts of locally installed packages.
The rc(8) manual page is a good reference to the resource configuration system, as is examining the scripts
themselves.

7.6 Shutdown Sequence

Upon controlled shutdown, via shutdown, init will attempt to run the script /etc/[Link], and then
proceed to send all processes the TERM signal, and subsequently the KILL signal to any that do not terminate timely.

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Chapter 8 Users and Basic Account
Management
Contributed by Neil Blakey-Milner.

8.1 Synopsis
FreeBSD allows multiple users to use the computer at the same time. Obviously, only one of those users can be
sitting in front of the screen and keyboard at any one time 1, but any number of users can log in through the network
to get their work done. To use the system every user must have an account.
After reading this chapter, you will know:

• The differences between the various user accounts on a FreeBSD system.

• How to add user accounts.
• How to remove user accounts.
• How to change account details, such as the user’s full name, or preferred shell.
• How to set limits on a per-account basis, to control the resources such as memory and CPU time that accounts and
groups of accounts are allowed to access.
• How to use groups to make account management easier.
Before reading this chapter, you should:

• Understand the basics of Unix and FreeBSD (Chapter 3).

8.2 Introduction
All access to the system is achieved via accounts, and all processes are run by users, so user and account
management are of integral importance on FreeBSD systems.
Every account on a FreeBSD system has certain information associated with it to identify the account.

User name
The user name as it would be typed at the login: prompt. User names must be unique across the computer;
you may not have two users with the same user name. There are a number of rules for creating valid user names,
documented in passwd(5); you would typically use user names that consist of eight or fewer all lower case
characters.

Password
Each account has a password associated with it. The password may be blank, in which case no password will be
required to access the system. This is normally a very bad idea; every account should have a password.

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User ID (UID)
The UID is a number from 0 to 65536 used to uniquely identify the user to the system. Internally, FreeBSD uses
the UID to identify users—any FreeBSD commands that allow you to specify a user name will convert it to the
UID before working with it. This means that you can have several accounts with different user names but the
same UID. As far as FreeBSD is concerned these accounts are one user. It is unlikely you will ever need to do
this.

Group ID (GID)
The GID is a number from 0 to 65536 used to uniquely identify the primary group that the user belongs to.
Groups are a mechanism for controlling access to resources based on a user’s GID rather than their UID. This
can significantly reduce the size of some configuration files. A user may also be in more than one group.

Login class
Login classes are an extension to the group mechanism that provide additional flexibility when tailoring the
system to different users.

Password change time

By default FreeBSD does not force users to change their passwords periodically. You can enforce this on a
per-user basis, forcing some or all of your users to change their passwords after a certain amount of time has
elapsed.

Account expiry time

By default FreeBSD does not expire accounts. If you are creating accounts that you know have a limited
lifespan, for example, in a school where you have accounts for the students, then you can specify when the
account expires. After the expiry time has elapsed the account cannot be used to log in to the system, although
the account’s directories and files will remain.

User’s full name

The user name uniquely identifies the account to FreeBSD, but does not necessarily reflect the user’s real name.
This information can be associated with the account.

Home directory
The home directory is the full path to a directory on the system in which the user will start when logging on to
the system. A common convention is to put all user home directories under /home/username or
/usr/home/username. The user would store their personal files in their home directory, and any directories
they may create in there.

User shell
The shell provides the default environment users use to interact with the system. There are many different kinds
of shells, and experienced users will have their own preferences, which can be reflected in their account settings.
There are three main types of accounts; the Superuser, system users, and user accounts. The Superuser account,
usually called root, is used to manage the system with no limitations on privileges. System users run services.
Finally, user accounts are used by real people, who log on, read mail, and so forth.

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8.3 The Superuser Account

The superuser account, usually called root, comes preconfigured to facilitate system administration, and should not
be used for day-to-day tasks like sending and receiving mail, general exploration of the system, or programming.
This is because the superuser, unlike normal user accounts, can operate without limits, and misuse of the superuser
account may result in spectacular disasters. User accounts are unable to destroy the system by mistake, so it is
generally best to use normal user accounts whenever possible, unless you especially need the extra privilege.
You should always double and triple-check commands you issue as the superuser, since an extra space or missing
character can mean irreparable data loss.
So, the first thing you should do after reading this chapter is to create an unprivileged user account for yourself for
general usage if you have not already. This applies equally whether you are running a multi-user or single-user
machine. Later in this chapter, we discuss how to create additional accounts, and how to change between the normal
user and superuser.

8.4 System Accounts

System users are those used to run services such as DNS, mail, web servers, and so forth. The reason for this is
security; if all services ran as the superuser, they could act without restriction.
Examples of system users are daemon, operator, bind (for the Domain Name Service), and news. Often
sysadmins create httpd to run web servers they install.
nobody is the generic unprivileged system user. However, it is important to keep in mind that the more services that
use nobody, the more files and processes that user will become associated with, and hence the more privileged that
user becomes.

8.5 User Accounts

User accounts are the primary means of access for real people to the system, and these accounts insulate the user and
the environment, preventing the users from damaging the system or other users, and allowing users to customize their
environment without affecting others.
Every person accessing your system should have a unique user account. This allows you to find out who is doing
what, prevent people from clobbering each others’ settings or reading each others’ mail, and so forth.
Each user can set up their own environment to accommodate their use of the system, by using alternate shells,
editors, key bindings, and language.

8.6 Modifying Accounts

There are a variety of different commands available in the Unix environment to manipulate user accounts. The most
common commands are summarized below, followed by more detailed examples of their usage.

Command Summary

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Command Summary
adduser The recommended command-line application for adding
new users.
rmuser The recommended command-line application for
removing users.
chpass A flexible tool to change user database information.
passwd The simple command-line tool to change user passwords.
pw A powerful and flexible tool to modify all aspects of user
accounts.

8.6.1 adduser
adduser is a simple program for adding new users. It creates entries in the system passwd and group files. It will
also create a home directory for the new user, copy in the default configuration files (“dotfiles”) from
/usr/share/skel, and can optionally mail the new user a welcome message.

To create the initial configuration file, use adduser -s -config_create. 2 Next, we configure adduser defaults,
and create our first user account, since using root for normal usage is evil and nasty.

Example 8-1. Configuring adduser

# adduser -v
Use option “-silent” if you don’t want to see all warnings and questions.
Check /etc/shells
Check /etc/[Link]
Check /etc/group
Enter your default shell: csh date no sh tcsh zsh [sh]: zsh
Your default shell is: zsh - /usr/local/bin/zsh
Enter your default HOME partition: [/home]:
Copy dotfiles from: /usr/share/skel no [/usr/share/skel]:
Send message from file: /etc/[Link] no
[/etc/[Link]]: no
Do not send message
Use passwords (y/n) [y]: y

Write your changes to /etc/[Link]? (y/n) [n]: y

Ok, let’s go.

Don’t worry about mistakes. I will give you the chance later to correct any input.
Enter username [a-z0-9_-]: jru
Enter full name []: J. Random User
Enter shell csh date no sh tcsh zsh [zsh]:
Enter home directory (full path) [/home/jru]:
Uid [1001]:
Enter login class: default []:
Login group jru [jru]:
Login group is “jru”. Invite jru into other groups: guest no
[no]: wheel
Enter password []:
Enter password again []:

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Name: jru
Password: ****
Fullname: J. Random User
Uid: 1001
Gid: 1001 (jru)
Class:
Groups: jru wheel
HOME: /home/jru
Shell: /usr/local/bin/zsh
OK? (y/n) [y]: y
Added user “jru”
Copy files from /usr/share/skel to /home/jru
Add another user? (y/n) [y]: n
Goodbye!
#

In summary, we changed the default shell to zsh (an additional shell found in the Ports Collection), and turned off the
sending of a welcome mail to added users. We then saved the configuration, created an account for jru, and made
sure jru is in wheel group (so that she may assume the role of root with the su command.)

Note: The password you type in is not echoed, nor are asterisks displayed. Make sure you do not mistype the
password twice.

Note: Just use adduser without arguments from now on, and you will not have to go through changing the
defaults. If the program asks you to change the defaults, exit the program, and try the -s option.

8.6.2 rmuser
You can use rmuser to completely remove a user from the system. rmuser performs the following steps:

1. Removes the user’s crontab(1) entry (if any).

2. Removes any at(1) jobs belonging to the user.
3. Kills all processes owned by the user.
4. Removes the user from the system’s local password file.
5. Removes the user’s home directory (if it is owned by the user).
6. Removes the incoming mail files belonging to the user from /var/mail.
7. Removes all files owned by the user from temporary file storage areas such as /tmp.
8. Finally, removes the username from all groups to which it belongs in /etc/group.

Note: If a group becomes empty and the group name is the same as the username, the group is removed; this
complements the per-user unique groups created by adduser(8).

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rmuser cannot be used to remove superuser accounts, since that is almost always an indication of massive
destruction.
By default, an interactive mode is used, which attempts to make sure you know what you are doing.

Example 8-2. rmuser Interactive Account Removal

# rmuser jru
Matching password entry:
jru:*:1001:1001::0:0:J. Random User:/home/jru:/usr/local/bin/tcsh
Is this the entry you wish to remove? y
Remove user’s home directory (/home/jru)? y
Updating password file, updating databases, done.
Updating group file: trusted (removing group jru -- personal group is empty) done.
Removing user’s incoming mail file /var/mail/jru: done.
Removing files belonging to jru from /tmp: done.
Removing files belonging to jru from /var/tmp: done.
Removing files belonging to jru from /var/tmp/[Link]: done.
#

8.6.3 chpass
chpass changes user database information such as passwords, shells, and personal information.
Only system administrators, as the superuser, may change other users’ information and passwords with chpass.
When passed no options, aside from an optional username, chpass displays an editor containing user information.
When the user exists from the editor, the user database is updated with the new information.

Example 8-3. Interactive chpass by Superuser

#Changing user database information for jru.

Login: jru
Password: *
Uid [#]: 1000
Gid [# or name]: 1000
Change [month day year]:
Expire [month day year]:
Class:
Home directory: /home/jru
Shell: /usr/local/bin/tcsh
Full Name: J. Random User
Office Location:
Office Phone:
Home Phone:
Other information:

The normal user can change only a small subset of this information, and only for themselves.

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Example 8-4. Interactive chpass by Normal User

#Changing user database information for jru.

Shell: /usr/local/bin/tcsh
Full Name: J. Random User
Office Location:
Office Phone:
Home Phone:
Other information:

Note: chfn and chsh are just links to chpass, as are ypchpass, ypchfn, and ypchsh. NIS support is automatic,
so specifying the yp before the command is not necessary. If this is confusing to you, do not worry, NIS will be
covered in Chapter 17

8.6.4 passwd
passwd is the usual way to change your own password as a user, or another user’s password as the superuser.

Note: Users must type in their original password before changing their password, to prevent an unauthorized
person from changing their password when the user is away from their console.

Example 8-5. Changing Your Password

% passwd
Changing local password for jru.
Old password:
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: updating the database...
passwd: done

Example 8-6. Changing Another User’s Password as the Superuser

# passwd jru
Changing local password for jru.
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: updating the database...
passwd: done

Note: As with chpass, yppasswd is just a link to passwd, so NIS works with either command.

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8.6.5 pw
pw(8) is a command line utility to create, remove, modify, and display users and groups. It functions as a front end to
the system user and group files. pw has a very powerful set of command line options that make it suitable for use in
shell scripts, but new users may find it more complicated than the other commands presented here.

8.7 Limiting Users

If you run a multi-user system, chances are that you do not trust all of your users not to damage your system.
FreeBSD provides a number of ways a system administrator can limit the amount of system resources an individual
user can use. These limits are generally divided into two sections: disk quotas, and other resource limits.
Disk quotas are a way for the system administrator to tell the filesystem the amount of disk space a user may use;
moreover, they provide a way to quickly check on the disk usage of a user without having to calculate it every time.
Quotas are discussed in Section 12.5.
The other resource limits include ways to limit the amount of CPU, memory, and other resources a user may
consume. These are defined using login classes and are discussed here.
Login classes are defined in /etc/[Link]. The precise semantics are beyond the scope of this section, but are
described in detail in the [Link](5) manual page. It is sufficient to say that each user is assigned to a login class
(default by default), and that each login class has a set of login capabilities associated with it. A login capability is
a name=value pair, where name is a well-known identifier and value is an arbitrary string processed accordingly
depending on the name. Setting up login classes and capabilities is rather straight-forward and is also described in
[Link](5).
Resource limits are different from plain vanilla login capabilities in two ways. First, for every limit, there is a soft
(current) and hard limit. A soft limit may be adjusted by the user or application, but may be no higher than the hard
limit. The latter may be lowered by the user, but never raised. Second, most resource limits apply per process to a
specific user, not the user as a whole. Note, however, that these differences are mandated by the specific handling of
the limits, not by the implementation of the login capability framework (i.e., they are not really a special case of
login capabilities).
And so, without further ado, below are the most commonly used resource limits (the rest, along with all the other
login capabilities, may be found in [Link](5)).

coredumpsize

The limit on the size of a core file generated by a program is, for obvious reasons, subordinate to other limits on
disk usage (e.g., filesize, or disk quotas). Nevertheless, it is often used as a less-severe method of controlling
disk space consumption: since users do not generate core files themselves, and often do not delete them, setting
this may save them from running out of disk space should a large program (e.g., emacs) crash.

cputime

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This is the maximum amount of CPU time a user’s process may consume. Offending processes will be killed by
the kernel.

Note: This is a limit on CPU time consumed, not percentage of the CPU as displayed in some fields by
top(1) and ps(1). A limit on the latter is, at the time of this writing, not possible, and would be rather useless:
a compiler—probably a legitimate task—can easily use almost 100% of a CPU for some time.

filesize

This is the maximum size of a file the user may possess. Unlike disk quotas, this limit is enforced on individual
files, not the set of all files a user owns.

maxproc

This is the maximum number of processes a user may be running. This includes foreground and background
processes alike. For obvious reasons, this may not be larger than the system limit specified by the
[Link] sysctl. Also note that setting this too small may hinder a user’s productivity: it is often useful
to be logged in multiple times or execute pipelines. Some tasks, such as compiling a large program, also spawn
multiple processes (e.g., make(1), cc(1), and other intermediate preprocessors).

memorylocked

This is the maximum amount a memory a process may have requested to be locked into main memory (e.g., see
mlock(2)). Some system-critical programs, such as amd(8), lock into main memory such that in the event of
being swapped out, they do not contribute to a system’s trashing in time of trouble.

memoryuse

This is the maximum amount of memory a process may consume at any given time. It includes both core
memory and swap usage. This is not a catch-all limit for restricting memory consumption, but it is a good start.

openfiles

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This is the maximum amount of files a process may have open. In FreeBSD, files are also used to represent
sockets and IPC channels; thus, be careful not to set this too low. The system-wide limit for this is defined by
the [Link] sysctl.

sbsize

This is the limit on the amount of network memory, and thus mbufs, a user may consume. This originated as a
response to an old DoS attack by creating a lot of sockets, but can be generally used to limit network
communications.

stacksize

This is the maximum size a process’ stack may grow to. This alone is not sufficient to limit the amount of
memory a program may use; consequently, it should be used in conjunction with other limits.

There are a few other things to remember when setting resource limits. Following are some general tips, suggestions,
and miscellaneous comments.

• Processes started at system startup by /etc/rc are assigned to the daemon login class.
• Although the /etc/[Link] that comes with the system is a good source of reasonable values for most
limits, only you, the administrator, can know what is appropriate for your system. Setting a limit too high may
open your system up to abuse, while setting it too low may put a strain on productivity.
• Users of the X Window System (X11) should probably be granted more resources than other users. X11 by itself
takes a lot of resources, but it also encourages users to run more programs simultaneously.
• Remember that many limits apply to individual processes, not the user as a whole. For example, setting
openfiles to 50 means that each process the user runs may open up to 50 files. Thus, the gross amount of files a
user may open is the value of openfiles multiplied by the value of maxproc. This also applies to memory
consumption.
For further information on resource limits and login classes and capabilities in general, please consult the relevant
manual pages: cap_mkdb(1), getrlimit(2), [Link](5).

8.8 Personalizing Users

Localization is an environment set up by the system administrator or user to accommodate different languages,
character sets, date and time standards, and so on. This is discussed in the localization chapter.

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8.9 Groups
A group is simply a list of users. Groups are identified by their group name and gid (group ID). In FreeBSD (and
most other Unix systems), the two factors the kernel uses to decide whether a process is allowed to do something is
its user ID and list of groups it belongs to. Unlike a user ID, a process has a list of groups associated with it. You may
hear some things refer to the "group ID" of a user or process; most of the time, this just means the first group in the
list.
The group name to group ID map is in /etc/group. This is a plain text file with four colon-delimited fields. The
first field is the group name, the second is the encrypted password, the third the group ID, and the fourth the
comma-delimited list of members. It can safely be edited by hand (assuming, of course, that you do not make any
syntax errors!). For a more complete description of the syntax, see the group(5) manual page.
If you do not want to edit /etc/group manually, you can use the pw(8) command to add and edit groups. For
example, to add a group called teamtwo and then confirm that it exists you can use:

Example 8-7. Adding a Group Using pw(8)

# pw groupadd teamtwo
# pw groupshow teamtwo
teamtwo:*:1100:

The number 1100 above is the group ID of the group teamtwo. Right now, teamtwo has no members, and is thus
rather useless. Let’s change that by inviting jru to the teamtwo group.

Example 8-8. Adding Somebody to a Group Using pw(8)

# pw groupmod teamtwo -M jru

# pw groupshow teamtwo
teamtwo:*:1100:jru

The argument to the -M option is a comma-delimited list of users who are members of the group. From the preceding
sections, we know that the password file also contains a group for each user. The latter (the user) is automatically
added to the group list by the system; the user will not show up as a member when using the groupshow command
to pw(8), but will show up when the information is queried via id(1) or similar tool. In other words, pw(8) only
manipulates the /etc/group file; it will never attempt to read additionally data from /etc/passwd.

Example 8-9. Using id(1) to Determine Group Membership

% id jru
uid=1001(jru) gid=1001(jru) groups=1001(jru), 1100(teamtwo)

As you can see, jru is a member of the groups jru and teamtwo.
For more information about pw(8), see its manual page, and for more information on the format of /etc/group,
consult the group(5) manual page.

Notes
1. Well, unless you hook up multiple terminals, but we’ll save that for Chapter 15

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2. The -s makes adduser default to quiet. We use -v later when we want to change defaults.

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Updated and restructured by Jim Mock. Originally contributed by Jake Hamby.

9.1 Synopsis
The kernel is the core of the FreeBSD operating system. It is responsible for managing memory, enforcing security
controls, networking, disk access, and much more. While more and more of FreeBSD becomes dynamically
configurable it is still occasionally necessary to reconfigure and recompile your kernel.
After reading this chapter, you will know:

• Why you might need to build a custom kernel.

• How to write a kernel configuration file, or alter an existing configuration file.
• How to use the kernel configuration file to create and build a new kernel.
• How to install the new kernel.
• How to create any entries in /dev that may be required.
• How to troubleshoot if things go wrong.

9.2 Why Build a Custom Kernel?

Traditionally, FreeBSD has had what is called a “monolithic” kernel. This means that the kernel was one large
program, supported a fixed list of devices, and if you wanted to change the kernel’s behavior then you had to compile
a new kernel, and then reboot your computer with the new kernel.
Today, FreeBSD is rapidly moving to a model where much of the kernel’s functionality is contained in modules
which can be dynamically loaded and unloaded from the kernel as necessary. This allows the kernel to adapt to new
hardware suddenly becoming available (such as PCMCIA cards in a laptop), or for new functionality to be brought in
to the kernel that was not necessary when the kernel was originally compiled. Colloquially these are called KLDs.
Despite this, it is still necessary to carry out some static kernel configuration. In some cases this is because the
functionality is so tied to the kernel that it can not be made dynamically loadable. In others it may simply be because
no one has yet taken the time to write a dynamic loadable kernel module for that functionality yet.
Building a custom kernel is one of the most important rites of passage nearly every Unix user must endure. This
process, while time consuming, will provide many benefits to your FreeBSD system. Unlike the GENERIC kernel,
which must support a wide range of hardware, a custom kernel only contains support for your PC’s hardware. This
has a number of benefits, such as:

• Faster boot time. Since the kernel will only probe the hardware you have on your system, the time it takes your
system to boot will decrease dramatically.
• Less memory use. A custom kernel often uses less memory than the GENERIC kernel, which is important because
the kernel is one process that must always be present in memory. For this reason, a custom kernel is especially
useful on a system with a small amount of RAM.

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• Additional hardware support. A custom kernel allows you to add in support for devices such as sound cards, which
are not present in the GENERIC kernel.

9.3 Building and Installing a Custom Kernel

First, let us take a quick tour of the kernel build directory. All directories mentioned will be relative to the main
/usr/src/sys directory, which is also accessible through /sys. There are a number of subdirectories here
representing different parts of the kernel, but the most important, for our purposes, are arch/conf, where you will
edit your custom kernel configuration, and compile, which is the staging area where your kernel will be built. arch
represents either i386, alpha, or pc98 (an alternative development branch of PC hardware, popular in Japan).
Everything inside a particular architecture’s directory deals with that architecture only; the rest of the code is
common to all platforms to which FreeBSD could potentially be ported. Notice the logical organization of the
directory structure, with each supported device, filesystem, and option in its own subdirectory.

Note: If there is not a /usr/src/sys directory on your system, then the kernel source has not been installed.
The easiest way to do this is by running /stand/sysinstall as root, choosing Configure, then
Distributions, then src, then sys.

Next, move to the arch/conf directory and copy the GENERIC configuration file to the name you want to give your
kernel. For example:

# cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf
# cp GENERIC MYKERNEL

Traditionally, this name is in all capital letters and, if you are maintaining multiple FreeBSD machines with different
hardware, it is a good idea to name it after your machine’s hostname. We will call it MYKERNEL for the purpose of
this example.

Tip: Storing your kernel config file directly under /usr/src can be a bad idea. If you are experiencing problems it
can be tempting to just delete /usr/src and start again. Five seconds after you do that you realize that you have
deleted your custom kernel config file.
You might want to keep your kernel config file elsewhere, and then create a symbolic link to the file in the i386
directory.
For example:

# cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf
# mkdir /root/kernels
# cp GENERIC /root/kernels/MYKERNEL
# ln -s /root/kernels/MYKERNEL

Note: You must execute these and all of the following commands under the root account or you will get
permission denied errors.

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Now, edit MYKERNEL with your favorite text editor. If you are just starting out, the only editor available will probably
be vi, which is too complex to explain here, but is covered well in many books in the bibliography. However,
FreeBSD does offer an easier editor called “ee” which, if you are a beginner, should be your editor of choice. Feel
free to change the comment lines at the top to reflect your configuration or the changes you have made to
differentiate it from GENERIC.
If you have built a kernel under SunOS or some other BSD operating system, much of this file will be very familiar
to you. If you are coming from some other operating system such as DOS, on the other hand, the GENERIC
configuration file might seem overwhelming to you, so follow the descriptions in the Configuration File section
slowly and carefully.

Note: Be sure to always check the file /usr/src/UPDATING, before you perform any update steps, in the case
you sync your source-tree with the latest sources of the FreeBSD project. In this file all important issues with
updating FreeBSD are written down. /usr/src/UPDATING always fits to your version of the FreeBSD source, and
is therefore more accurate for those information than the handbook.

You must now compile the source code for the kernel. There are two procedures you can use to do this, and the one
you will use depends on why you are rebuilding the kernel, and the version of FreeBSD you are running.

• If you have installed only the kernel source code, use procedure 1.
• If you are running a FreeBSD version prior to 4.0, and you are not upgrading to FreeBSD 4.0 or higher using the
“make world” procedure, use procedure 1.
• If you are building a new kernel without updating the source code (perhaps just to add a new option, such as
IPFIREWALL) you can use either procedure.
• If you are rebuilding the kernel as part of a “make world” process, use procedure 2.

Procedure 1. Building a kernel the “traditional” way

1. Run config(8) to generate the kernel source code.

# /usr/sbin/config MYKERNEL

2. Change in to the build directory.

# cd ../../compile/MYKERNEL

3. Compile the kernel.

# make depend
# make

4. Install the new kernel.

# make install

Procedure 2. Building a kernel the “new” way

1. Change to the /usr/src directory

# cd /usr/src

2. Compile the kernel.

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# make buildkernel KERNCONF=MYKERNEL

3. Install the new kernel.

# make installkernel KERNCONF=MYKERNEL

Note: In FreeBSD 4.2 and older you must replace KERNCONF= with KERNEL=. 4.2-STABLE that was fetched after
Feb 2nd, 2001 does recognize KERNCONF=

If you have not upgraded your source tree in any way (you have not run CVSup, CTM, or used anoncvs), then you
should use the config, make depend, make, make install sequence.
The new kernel will be copied to the root directory as /kernel and the old kernel will be moved to /[Link].
Now, shutdown the system and reboot to use your kernel. In case something goes wrong, there are some
troubleshooting instructions at the end of this chapter. Be sure to read the section which explains how to recover in
case your new kernel does not boot.

Note: If you have added any new devices (such as sound cards) you may have to add some device nodes to
your /dev directory before you can use them. For more information, take a look at "Making Device Nodes" later
on in this chapter.

9.4 The Configuration File

The general format of a configuration file is quite simple. Each line contains a keyword and one or more arguments.
For simplicity, most lines only contain one argument. Anything following a # is considered a comment and ignored.
The following sections describe each keyword, generally in the order they are listed in GENERIC, although some
related keywords have been grouped together in a single section (such as Networking) even though they are actually
scattered throughout the GENERIC file. An exhaustive list of options and more detailed explanations of the device
lines is present in the LINT configuration file, located in the same directory as GENERIC. If you are in doubt as to the
purpose or necessity of a line, check first in LINT.

Quoting numbers: In all versions of FreeBSD up to and including 3.X, config(8) required that any strings in the
configuration file that contained numbers used as text had to be enclosed in double quotes.
This requirement was removed in the 4.X branch, which this book covers, so if you are on a pre-4.X system, see
the /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/LINT and /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC files on your system for examples.

The following is an example GENERIC kernel configuration file with various additional comments where needed for
clarity. This example should match your copy in /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC fairly closely. For details
of all the possible kernel options, see /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/LINT.

#
# GENERIC -- Generic kernel configuration file for FreeBSD/i386
#
# For more information on this file, please read the handbook section on

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# Kernel Configuration Files:

#
# [Link]
#
# The handbook is also available locally in /usr/share/doc/handbook
# if you’ve installed the doc distribution, otherwise always see the
# FreeBSD World Wide Web server ([Link] for the
# latest information.
#
# An exhaustive list of options and more detailed explanations of the
# device lines is also present in the ./LINT configuration file. If you are
# in doubt as to the purpose or necessity of a line, check first in LINT.
#
# $FreeBSD: src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC,v 1.246 2000/03/09 [Link] jlemon Exp $

The following are the mandatory keywords required in every kernel you build:

machine i386

This is the machine architecture. It must be either i386, alpha, or pc98.

cpu I386_CPU
cpu I486_CPU
cpu I586_CPU
cpu I686_CPU

The above specifies the type of CPU you have in your system. You may have multiple instances of the CPU line (i.e.,
you are not sure whether you should use I586_CPU or I686_CPU), however, for a custom kernel, it is best to specify
only the CPU you have. If you are unsure of your CPU type, you can use the dmesg command to view your boot up
messages.
The Alpha architecture has different values for cpu. They include:

cpu EV4
cpu EV5

If you are using an Alpha machine, you should be using one of the above CPU types.

ident GENERIC

This is the identification of the kernel. You should change this to whatever you named your kernel, as in our previous
example, MYKERNEL. The value you put in the ident string will print when you boot up the kernel, so it is useful to
give the new kernel a different name if you want to keep it separate from your usual kernel (i.e., you want to build an
experimental kernel).

maxusers 32

The maxusers option sets the size of a number of important system tables. This number is supposed to be roughly
equal to the number of simultaneous users you expect to have on your machine. However, under normal
circumstances, you will want to set maxusers to at least 4, especially if you are using the X Window System or
compiling software. The reason is that the most important table set by maxusers is the maximum number of
processes, which is set to 20 + 16 * maxusers, so if you set maxusers to 1, then you can only have 36
simultaneous processes, including the 18 or so that the system starts up at boot time, and the 15 or so you will

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probably create when you start the X Window System. Even a simple task like reading a manual page will start up
nine processes to filter, decompress, and view it. Setting maxusers to 64 will allow you to have up to 1044
simultaneous processes, which should be enough for nearly all uses. If, however, you see the dreaded proc table full
error when trying to start another program, or are running a server with a large number of simultaneous users (like
[Link]), you can always increase the number and rebuild.

Note: maxusers does not limit the number of users which can log into your machine. It simply sets various table
sizes to reasonable values considering the maximum number of users you will likely have on your system and
how many processes each of them will be running. One keyword which does limit the number of simultaneous
remote logins is pseudo-device pty 16.

# Floating point support - do not disable.

device npx0 at nexus? port IO_NPX irq 13

npx0 is the interface to the floating point math unit in FreeBSD, which is either the hardware co-processor or the
software math emulator. This is not optional.

# Pseudo devices - the number indicates how many units to allocate.

pseudo-device loop # Network loopback

This is the generic loopback device for TCP/IP. If you telnet or FTP to localhost (a.k.a., [Link]) it will come
back at you through this pseudo-device. This is mandatory.
Everything that follows is more or less optional. See the notes underneath or next to each option for more
information.

#makeoptions DEBUG=-g #Build kernel with gdb(1) debug symbols

options MATH_EMULATE #Support for x87 emulation

This line allows the kernel to simulate a math co-processor if your computer does not have one (386 or 486SX). If
you have a 486DX, or a 386 or 486SX (with a separate 387 or 487 chip), or higher (Pentium, Pentium II, etc.), you
can comment this line out.

Note: The normal math co-processor emulation routines that come with FreeBSD are not very accurate. If you
do not have a math co-processor, and you need the best accuracy, it is recommended that you change this option
to GPL_MATH_EMULATE to use the GNU math support, which is not included by default for licensing reasons.

options INET #InterNETworking

Networking support. Leave this in, even if you do not plan to be connected to a network. Most programs require at
least loopback networking (i.e., making network connections within your PC), so this is essentially mandatory.

options INET6 #IPv6 communications protocols

This enables the IPv6 communication protocols.

options FFS #Berkeley Fast Filesystem

options FFS_ROOT #FFS usable as root device [keep this!]

This is the basic hard drive filesystem. Leave it in if you boot from the hard disk.

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options MFS #Memory Filesystem

options MD_ROOT #MD is a potential root device

This is the memory-mapped filesystem. This is basically a RAM disk for fast storage of temporary files, useful if you
have a lot of swap space that you want to take advantage of. A perfect place to mount an MFS partition is on the
/tmp directory, since many programs store temporary data here. To mount an MFS RAM disk on /tmp, add the
following line to /etc/fstab:

/dev/ad1s2b /tmp mfs rw 0 0

Now you simply need to either reboot, or run the command mount /tmp.

options NFS #Network Filesystem

options NFS_ROOT #NFS usable as root device, NFS required

The network filesystem. Unless you plan to mount partitions from a Unix file server over TCP/IP, you can comment
these out.

options MSDOSFS #MSDOS Filesystem

The MS-DOS filesystem. Unless you plan to mount a DOS formatted hard drive partition at boot time, you can safely
comment this out. It will be automatically loaded the first time you mount a DOS partition, as described above. Also,
the excellent mtools software (in the ports collection) allows you to access DOS floppies without having to mount
and unmount them (and does not require MSDOSFS at all).

options CD9660 #ISO 9660 Filesystem

options CD9660_ROOT #CD-ROM usable as root, CD9660 required

The ISO 9660 filesystem for CDROMs. Comment it out if you do not have a CDROM drive or only mount data CDs
occasionally (since it will be dynamically loaded the first time you mount a data CD). Audio CDs do not need this
filesystem.

options PROCFS #Process filesystem

The process filesystem. This is a “pretend” filesystem mounted on /proc which allows programs like ps(1) to give
you more information on what processes are running.

options COMPAT_43 #Compatible with BSD 4.3 [KEEP THIS!]

Compatibility with 4.3BSD. Leave this in; some programs will act strangely if you comment this out.

options SCSI_DELAY=15000 #Delay (in ms) before probing SCSI

This causes the kernel to pause for 15 seconds before probing each SCSI device in your system. If you only have
IDE hard drives, you can ignore this, otherwise you will probably want to lower this number, perhaps to 5 seconds, to
speed up booting. Of course, if you do this, and FreeBSD has trouble recognizing your SCSI devices, you will have
to raise it back up.

options UCONSOLE #Allow users to grab the console

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Allow users to grab the console, which is useful for X users. For example, you can create a console xterm by typing
xterm -C, which will display any write, talk, and any other messages you receive, as well as any console
messages sent by the kernel.

options USERCONFIG #boot -c editor

This option allows you to boot the configuration editor from the boot menu.

options VISUAL_USERCONFIG #visual boot -c editor

This option allows you to boot the visual configuration editor from the boot menu.

options KTRACE #ktrace(1) support

This enables kernel process tracing, which is useful in debugging.

options SYSVSHM #SYSV-style shared memory

This option provides for System V shared memory. The most common use of this is the XSHM extension in X,
which many graphics-intensive programs will automatically take advantage of for extra speed. If you use X, you will
definitely want to include this.

options SYSVSEM #SYSV-style semaphores

Support for System V semaphores. Less commonly used but only adds a few hundred bytes to the kernel.

options SYSVMSG #SYSV-style message queues

Support for System V messages. Again, only adds a few hundred bytes to the kernel.

Note: The ipcs(1) command will list any processes using each of these System V facilities.

options P1003_1B #Posix P1003_1B real-time extensions

options _KPOSIX_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING

Real-time extensions added in the 1993 POSIX. Certain applications in the ports collection use these (such as Star
Office).

options ICMP_BANDLIM #Rate limit bad replies

This option enables ICMP error response bandwidth limiting. You typically want this option as it will help protect
the machine from denial of service packet attacks.

# To make an SMP kernel, the next two are needed

#options SMP # Symmetric MultiProcessor Kernel
#options APIC_IO # Symmetric (APIC) I/O

The above are both required for SMP support.

device isa

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All PCs supported by FreeBSD have one of these. If you have an IBM PS/2 (Micro Channel Architecture), you
cannot run FreeBSD at this time (support is being worked on).

device eisa

Include this if you have an EISA motherboard. This enables auto-detection and configuration support for all devices
on the EISA bus.

device pci

Include this if you have a PCI motherboard. This enables auto-detection of PCI cards and gatewaying from the PCI
to ISA bus.

# Floppy drives
device fdc0 at isa? port IO_FD1 irq 6 drq 2
device fd0 at fdc0 drive 0
device fd1 at fdc0 drive 1

This is the floppy drive controller. fd0 is the A: floppy drive, and fd1 is the B: drive.

device ata

This driver supports all ATA and ATAPI devices. You only need one device ata line for the kernel to detect all PCI
ATA/ATAPI devices on modern machines.

device atadisk # ATA disk drives

This is needed along with device ata for ATAPI disk drives.

device atapicd # ATAPI CDROM drives

This is needed along with device ata for ATAPI CDROM drives.

device atapifd # ATAPI floppy drives

This is needed along with device ata for ATAPI floppy drives.

device atapist # ATAPI tape drives

This is needed along with device ata for ATAPI tape drives.

options ATA_STATIC_ID #Static device numbering

This makes the controller number static (like the old driver) or else the device numbers are dynamically allocated.

# ATA and ATAPI devices

device ata0 at isa? port IO_WD1 irq 14
device ata1 at isa? port IO_WD2 irq 15

Use the above for older, non-PCI systems.

# SCSI Controllers
device ahb # EISA AHA1742 family

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device ahc # AHA2940 and onboard AIC7xxx devices

device amd # AMD 53C974 (Teckram DC-390(T))
device dpt # DPT Smartcache - See LINT for options!
device isp # Qlogic family
device ncr # NCR/Symbios Logic
device sym # NCR/Symbios Logic (newer chipsets)

device adv0 at isa?

device adw
device bt0 at isa?
device aha0 at isa?
device aic0 at isa?

SCSI controllers. Comment out any you do not have in your system. If you have an IDE only system, you can
remove these altogether.

# SCSI peripherals
device scbus # SCSI bus (required)
device da # Direct Access (disks)
device sa # Sequential Access (tape etc)
device cd # CD
device pass # Passthrough device (direct SCSI
access)

SCSI peripherals. Again, comment out any you do not have, or if you have only IDE hardware, you can remove them
completely.

# RAID controllers
device ida # Compaq Smart RAID
device amr # AMI MegaRAID
device mlx # Mylex DAC960 family

Supported RAID controllers. If you do not have any of these, you can comment them out or remove them.

# atkbdc0 controls both the keyboard and the PS/2 mouse

device atkbdc0 at isa? port IO_KBD

The keyboard controller (atkbdc) provides I/O services for the AT keyboard and PS/2 style pointing devices. This
controller is required by the keyboard driver (atkbd) and the PS/2 pointing device driver (psm).

device atkbd0 at atkbdc? irq 1

The atkbd driver, together with atkbdc controller, provides access to the AT 84 keyboard or the AT enhanced
keyboard which is connected to the AT keyboard controller.

device psm0 at atkbdc? irq 12

Use this device if your mouse plugs into the PS/2 mouse port.

device vga0 at isa?

The video card driver.

# splash screen/screen saver

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pseudo-device splash

Splash screen at start up! Screen savers require this too.

# syscons is the default console driver, resembling an SCO console

device sc0 at isa?

sc0 is the default console driver, which resembles a SCO console. Since most full-screen programs access the
console through a terminal database library like termcap, it should not matter whether you use this or vt0, the
VT220 compatible console driver. When you log in, set your TERM variable to scoansi if full-screen programs have
trouble running under this console.

# Enable this and PCVT_FREEBSD for pcvt vt220 compatible console driver
#device vt0 at isa?
#options XSERVER # support for X server on a vt console
#options FAT_CURSOR # start with block cursor
# If you have a ThinkPAD, uncomment this along with the rest of the PCVT lines
#options PCVT_SCANSET=2 # IBM keyboards are non-std

This is a VT220-compatible console driver, backward compatible to VT100/102. It works well on some laptops
which have hardware incompatibilities with sc0. Also set your TERM variable to vt100 or vt220 when you log in.
This driver might also prove useful when connecting to a large number of different machines over the network,
where termcap or terminfo entries for the sc0 device are often not available — vt100 should be available on
virtually any platform.

# Power management support (see LINT for more options)

device apm0 at nexus? disable flags 0x20 # Advanced Power Management

Advanced Power Management support. Useful for laptops.

# PCCARD (PCMCIA) support

device card
device pcic0 at isa? irq 10 port 0x3e0 iomem 0xd0000
device pcic1 at isa? irq 11 port 0x3e2 iomem 0xd4000 disable

PCMCIA support. You want this if you are using a laptop.

# Serial (COM) ports

device sio0 at isa? port IO_COM1 flags 0x10 irq 4
device sio1 at isa? port IO_COM2 irq 3
device sio2 at isa? disable port IO_COM3 irq 5
device sio3 at isa? disable port IO_COM4 irq 9

These are the four serial ports referred to as COM1 through COM4 in the MS-DOS/Windows world.

Note: If you have an internal modem on COM4 and a serial port at COM2, you will have to change the IRQ of the
modem to 2 (for obscure technical reasons, IRQ2 = IRQ 9) in order to access it from FreeBSD. If you have a
multiport serial card, check the manual page for sio(4) for more information on the proper values for these lines.
Some video cards (notably those based on S3 chips) use IO addresses in the form of 0x*2e8, and since many
cheap serial cards do not fully decode the 16-bit IO address space, they clash with these cards making the
COM4 port practically unavailable.

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Each serial port is required to have a unique IRQ (unless you are using one of the multiport cards where shared
interrupts are supported), so the default IRQs for COM3 and COM4 cannot be used.

# Parallel port
device ppc0 at isa? irq 7

This is the ISA-bus parallel port interface.

device ppbus # Parallel port bus (required)

Provides support for the parallel port bus.

device lpt # Printer

Support for parallel port printers.

Note: All three of the above are required to enable parallel printer support.

device plip # TCP/IP over parallel

This is the driver for the parallel network interface.

device ppi # Parallel port interface device

The general-purpose I/O (“geek port”) + IEEE1284 I/O.

#device vpo # Requires scbus and da

This is for an Iomega Zip drive. It requires scbus and da support. Best performance is achieved with ports in EPP
1.9 mode.

# PCI Ethernet NICs.

device de # DEC/Intel DC21x4x (“Tulip”)
device fxp # Intel EtherExpress PRO/100B (82557, 82558)
device tx # SMC 9432TX (83c170 “EPIC”)
device vx # 3Com 3c590, 3c595 (“Vortex”)
device wx # Intel Gigabit Ethernet Card (“Wiseman”)

Various PCI network card drivers. Comment out or remove any of these not present in your system.

# PCI Ethernet NICs that use the common MII bus controller code.
device miibus # MII bus support

MII bus support is required for some PCI 10/100 Ethernet NICs, namely those which use MII-compliant transceivers
or implement transceiver control interfaces that operate like an MII. Adding device miibus to the kernel config
pulls in support for the generic miibus API and all of the PHY drivers, including a generic one for PHYs that are not
specifically handled by an individual driver

device dc # DEC/Intel 21143 and various workalikes

device rl # RealTek 8129/8139
device sf # Adaptec AIC-6915 (“Starfire”)

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device sis # Silicon Integrated Systems SiS 900/SiS 7016

device ste # Sundance ST201 (D-Link DFE-550TX)
device tl # Texas Instruments ThunderLAN
device vr # VIA Rhine, Rhine II
device wb # Winbond W89C840F
device xl # 3Com 3c90x (“Boomerang”, “Cyclone”)

Drivers that use the MII bus controller code.

# ISA Ethernet NICs.

device ed0 at isa? port 0x280 irq 10 iomem 0xd8000
device ex
device ep
# WaveLAN/IEEE 802.11 wireless NICs. Note: the WaveLAN/IEEE really
# exists only as a PCMCIA device, so there is no ISA attachment needed
# and resources will always be dynamically assigned by the pccard code.
device wi
# Aironet 4500/4800 802.11 wireless NICs. Note: the declaration below will
# work for PCMCIA and PCI cards, as well as ISA cards set to ISA PnP
# mode (the factory default). If you set the switches on your ISA
# card for a manually chosen I/O address and IRQ, you must specify
# those parameters here.
device an
# The probe order of these is presently determined by i386/isa/isa_compat.c.
device ie0 at isa? port 0x300 irq 10 iomem 0xd0000
device fe0 at isa? port 0x300
device le0 at isa? port 0x300 irq 5 iomem 0xd0000
device lnc0 at isa? port 0x280 irq 10 drq 0
device cs0 at isa? port 0x300
device sn0 at isa? port 0x300 irq 10
# requires PCCARD (PCMCIA) support to be activated
#device xe0 at isa?

ISA Ethernet drivers. See /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/LINT for which cards are supported by which driver.

pseudo-device ether # Ethernet support

ether is only needed if you have an Ethernet card. It includes generic Ethernet protocol code.

pseudo-device sl 1 # Kernel SLIP

sl is for SLIP support. This has been almost entirely supplanted by PPP, which is easier to set up, better suited for
modem-to-modem connection, and more powerful. The number after sl specifies how many simultaneous SLIP
sessions to support.

pseudo-device ppp 1 # Kernel PPP

This is for kernel PPP support for dial-up connections. There is also a version of PPP implemented as a userland
application that uses tun and offers more flexibility and features such as demand dialing. The number after ppp
specifies how many simultaneous PPP connections to support.

pseudo-device tun # Packet tunnel.

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This is used by the userland PPP software. A number after tun specifies the number of simultaneous PPP sessions
to support. See the PPP section of this book for more information.

pseudo-device pty # Pseudo-ttys (telnet etc)

This is a “pseudo-terminal” or simulated login port. It is used by incoming telnet and rlogin sessions, xterm,
and some other applications such as emacs. A number after pty indicates the number of ptys to create. If you need
more than the default of 16 simultaneous xterm windows and/or remote logins, be sure to increase this number
accordingly, up to a maximum of 256.

pseudo-device md # Memory “disks”

Memory disk pseudo-devices.

pseudo-device gif 4 # IPv6 and IPv4 tunneling

This implements IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling, IPv4 over IPv6 tunneling, IPv4 over IPv4 tunneling, and IPv6 over IPv6
tunneling.

pseudo-device faith 1 # IPv6-to-IPv4 relaying (translation)

This pseudo-device captures packets that are sent to it and diverts them to the IPv4/IPv6 translation daemon.

# The ‘bpf’ pseudo-device enables the Berkeley Packet Filter.

# Be aware of the administrative consequences of enabling this!
pseudo-device bpf # Berkeley packet filter

This is the Berkeley Packet Filter. This pseudo-device allows network interfaces to be placed in promiscuous mode,
capturing every packet on a broadcast network (e.g., an Ethernet). These packets can be captured to disk and or
examined with the tcpdump(1) program.

Note: The bpf pseudo-device is also used by dhclient(8) to obtain the IP address of the default router
(gateway) and so on. If you use DHCP, leave this uncommented.

# USB support
#device uhci # UHCI PCI- USB interface
#device ohci # OHCI PCI- USB interface
#device usb # USB Bus (required)
#device ugen # Generic
#device uhid # “Human Interface Devices”
#device ukbd # Keyboard
#device ulpt # Printer
#device umass # Disks/Mass storage - Requires scbus and da
#device ums # Mouse
# USB Ethernet, requires mii
#device aue # ADMtek USB ethernet
#device cue # CATC USB ethernet
#device kue # Kawasaki LSI USB ethernet

Support for various USB devices.

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For more information and additional devices supported by FreeBSD, see /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/LINT.

9.5 Making Device Nodes

Almost every device in the kernel has a corresponding “node” entry in the /dev directory. These nodes look like
regular files, but are actually special entries into the kernel which programs use to access the device. The shell script
/dev/MAKEDEV, which is executed when you first install the operating system, creates nearly all of the device nodes
supported. However, it does not create all of them, so when you add support for a new device, it pays to make sure
that the appropriate entries are in this directory, and if not, add them. Here is a simple example:
Suppose you add the IDE CD-ROM support to the kernel. The line to add is:

device acd0

This means that you should look for some entries that start with acd0 in the /dev directory, possibly followed by a
letter, such as c, or preceded by the letter r, which means a “raw” device. It turns out that those files are not there, so
you must change to the /dev directory and type:

# sh MAKEDEV acd0

When this script finishes, you will find that there are now acd0c and racd0c entries in /dev so you know that it
executed correctly.
For sound cards, the following command creates the appropriate entries:

# sh MAKEDEV snd0

Note: When creating device nodes for devices such as sound cards, if other people have access to your
machine, it may be desirable to protect the devices from outside access by adding them to the /etc/fbtab file.
See fbtab(5) for more information.

Follow this simple procedure for any other non-GENERIC devices which do not have entries.

Note: All SCSI controllers use the same set of /dev entries, so you do not need to create these. Also, network
cards and SLIP/PPP pseudo-devices do not have entries in /dev at all, so you do not have to worry about these
either.

9.6 If Something Goes Wrong

There are five categories of trouble that can occur when building a custom kernel. They are:

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config fails:

If the config command fails when you give it your kernel description, you have probably made a simple error
somewhere. Fortunately, config will print the line number that it had trouble with, so you can quickly skip to it
with vi. For example, if you see:
config: line 17: syntax error

You can skip to the problem in vi by typing 17G in command mode. Make sure the keyword is typed correctly,
by comparing it to the GENERIC kernel or another reference.

make fails:

If the make command fails, it usually signals an error in your kernel description, but not severe enough for
config to catch it. Again, look over your configuration, and if you still cannot resolve the problem, send mail
to the FreeBSD general questions mailing list <freebsd-questions@[Link]> with your kernel
configuration, and it should be diagnosed very quickly.

Installing the new kernel fails

If the kernel compiled fine, but failed to install (the make install or make installkernel command
failed), the first thing to check is if your system is running at securelevel 1 or higher (see init(8)). The kernel
installation tries to remove the immutable flag from your kernel and set the immutable flag on the new one.
Since securelevel 1 or higher prevents unsetting the immutable flag for any files on the system, the kernel
installation needs to be performed at securelevel 0 or lower.

The kernel will not boot:

If your new kernel does not boot, or fails to recognize your devices, do not panic! Fortunately, BSD has an
excellent mechanism for recovering from incompatible kernels. Simply choose the kernel you want to boot from
at the FreeBSD boot loader. You can access this when the system counts down from 10. Hit any key except for
the enter key, type unload and then type boot [Link] , or the filename of any other kernel that will boot
properly. When reconfiguring a kernel, it is always a good idea to keep a kernel that is known to work on hand.
After booting with a good kernel you can check over your configuration file and try to build it again. One
helpful resource is the /var/log/messages file which records, among other things, all of the kernel messages
from every successful boot. Also, the dmesg(8) command will print the kernel messages from the current boot.

Note: If you are having trouble building a kernel, make sure to keep a GENERIC, or some other kernel that is
known to work on hand as a different name that will not get erased on the next build. You cannot rely on
[Link] because when installing a new kernel, [Link] is overwritten with the last installed kernel
which may be non-functional. Also, as soon as possible, move the working kernel to the proper kernel
location or commands such as ps(1) will not work properly. The proper command to “unlock” the kernel file
that make installs (in order to move another kernel back permanently) is:
# chflags noschg /kernel

If you find you cannot do this, you are probably running at a securelevel(8) greater than zero. Edit
kern_securelevel in /etc/[Link] and set it to -1, then reboot. You can change it back to its previous
setting when you are happy with your new kernel.
And, if you want to “lock” your new kernel into place, or any file for that matter, so that it cannot be moved or
tampered with:
# chflags schg /kernel

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The kernel works, but ps does not work any more!:

If you have installed a different version of the kernel from the one that the system utilities have been built with,
for example, a 4.X kernel on a 3.X system, many system-status commands like ps(1) and vmstat(8) will not
work any more. You must recompile the libkvm library as well as these utilities. This is one reason it is not
normally a good idea to use a different version of the kernel from the rest of the operating system.

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Much of this chapter has been taken from the security(7) manual page by Matthew Dillon.

10.1 Synopsis
This chapter will provide a basic introduction to system security concepts, some general good rules of thumb, and
some advanced topics under FreeBSD. A lot of the topics covered here can be applied to system and Internet security
in general as well. The Internet is no longer a “friendly” place in which everyone wants to be your kind neighbor.
Securing your system is imperative to protect your data, intellectual property, time, and much more from the hands of
hackers and the like.
FreeBSD provides an array of utilities and mechanisms to ensure the integrity and security of your system and
network.
After reading this chapter, you will know:

• Basic system security concepts, in respect to FreeBSD.

• About the various crypt mechanisms available in FreeBSD, such as DES and MD5.
• How to setup S/Key, an alternative, one-time password authentication system.
• How to setup Kerberos, another alternative authentication system.
• How to create firewalls using IPFW.
• How to configure IPSec.
• How to configure and use OpenSSH, FreeBSD’s SSH implementation.
Before reading this chapter, you should:

• Understand basic FreeBSD and Internet concepts.

10.2 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 even 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 chflags(1)) on every

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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 compromise the root account (“break root”). Security
concerns can be split up into several categories:

1. Denial of service attacks.

2. User account compromises.
3. Root compromise through accessible servers.
4. Root compromise via user accounts.
5. Backdoor creation.
A denial of service attack is an action that deprives the machine of needed resources. Typically, DoS attacks are
brute-force mechanisms that attempt to crash or otherwise make a machine unusable by overwhelming its servers or
network stack. Some DoS attacks try to take advantage 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 saturate your
Internet connection.
A user account compromise is even more common than a DoS 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 than 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 a 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 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.
A backdoor provides 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:

1. Securing root and staff accounts.

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2. Securing root – root-run servers and suid/sgid binaries.

3. Securing user accounts.
4. Securing the password file.
5. Securing the kernel core, raw devices, and filesystems.
6. Quick detection of inappropriate changes made to the system.
7. Paranoia.
The next section of this chapter will cover the above bullet items in greater depth.

10.3 Securing FreeBSD

Command vs. Protocol: Throughout this document, we will use bold text to refer to a command or application.
This is used for instances such as ssh, since it’s a protocol as well as command.

The sections that follow will cover the methods of securing your FreeBSD system that were mentioned in the last
section of this chapter.

10.3.1 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 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. You can do this by editing your
/etc/ssh/sshd_config file, and making sure that PermitRootLogin is set to NO. 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
th