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@@ -1,6431 +1,6431 @@
13-CURRENT">
X">
head/">
X">
12-STABLE">
stable/12/">
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11-STABLE">
stable/11/">
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Frequently Asked Questions for &os;
&rel2.relx; and &rel.relx;The &os; Documentation Project19951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020The &os; Documentation Project
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$FreeBSD$This is the Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ) for &os; versions
&rel.relx; and &rel2.relx;. Every effort has been made to
make this FAQ as informative as possible;
if you have any suggestions as to how it may be improved, send
them to the &a.doc;.The latest version of this document is always available
from the &os;
website. It may also be downloaded as one large
HTML file with HTTP or as
a variety of other formats from the &os; FTP
server.IntroductionWhat is &os;?&os; is a modern operating system for desktops,
laptops, servers, and embedded systems with support for a
large number of platforms.It is based on U.C. Berkeley's
4.4BSD-Lite release, with some
4.4BSD-Lite2 enhancements. It is also
based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C.
Berkeley's Net/2 to the &i386;, known as
386BSD, though very little of the 386BSD
code remains.&os; is used by companies, Internet Service Providers,
researchers, computer professionals, students and home
users all over the world in their work, education and
recreation.For more detailed information on &os;, refer to the
&os;
Handbook.What is the goal of the &os; Project?The goal of the &os; Project is to provide a stable
and fast general purpose operating system that may be used
for any purpose without strings attached.Does the &os; license have any restrictions?Yes. Those restrictions do not control how the code
is used, but how to treat the &os; Project itself.
The license itself is available at
license
and can be summarized like this:Do not claim that you wrote this.Do not sue us if it breaks.Do not remove or modify the license.Many of us have a significant investment in the
project and would certainly not mind a little financial
compensation now and then, but we definitely do not insist
on it. We believe that our first and foremost
mission is to provide code to any and all
comers, and for whatever purpose, so that the code gets
the widest possible use and provides the widest possible
benefit. This, we believe, is one of the most fundamental
goals of Free Software and one that we enthusiastically
support.Code in our source tree which falls under the GNU
General Public License (GPL) or GNU
Library General Public License (LGPL) comes with
slightly more strings attached, though at least on the
side of enforced access rather than the usual opposite.
Due to the additional complexities that can evolve in the
commercial use of GPL software, we do, however, endeavor
to replace such software with submissions under the more
relaxed &os;
license whenever possible.Can &os; replace my current operating system?For most people, yes. But this question is not quite
that cut-and-dried.Most people do not actually use an operating system.
They use applications. The applications are what really
use the operating system. &os; is designed to provide a
robust and full-featured environment for applications. It
supports a wide variety of web browsers, office suites,
email readers, graphics programs, programming
environments, network servers, and much more.
Most of these applications can be
managed through the Ports
Collection.If an application is only available on one operating
system, that operating system cannot just be replaced.
Chances are, there is a very similar application on &os;,
however. As a solid office or Internet server or a
reliable workstation, &os; will almost certainly do
everything you need. Many computer users across the
world, including both novices and experienced &unix;
administrators, use &os; as their only desktop operating
system.Users migrating to &os; from another &unix;-like
environment will find &os; to be similar.
&windows; and &macos; users may be interested in instead
using FuryBSD,
+ xlink:href="https://ghostbsd.org/">GhostBSD,
GhostBSD
- or MidnightBSD
+ or NomadBSD
three &os;-based desktop distributions. Non-&unix; users
should expect to invest some additional time learning the
&unix; way of doing things. This FAQ
and the &os;
Handbook are excellent places to start.Why is it called &os;?It may be used free of charge, even by commercial
users.Full source for the operating system is freely
available, and the minimum possible restrictions have
been placed upon its use, distribution and
incorporation into other work (commercial or
non-commercial).Anyone who has an improvement or bug fix is free
to submit their code and have it added to the source
tree (subject to one or two obvious
provisions).It is worth pointing out that the word
free is being used in two ways here: one
meaning at no cost and the other meaning
do whatever you like. Apart from
one or two things you cannot do with
the &os; code, for example pretending you wrote it, you
can really do whatever you like with it.What are the differences between &os; and NetBSD,
OpenBSD, and other open source BSD operating
systems?James Howard wrote a good explanation of the history
and differences between the various projects, called The
BSD Family Tree which goes a fair way to
answering this question. Some of the information is out
of date, but the history portion in particular remains
accurate.Most of the BSDs share patches and code, even today.
All of the BSDs have common ancestry.The design goals of &os; are described in , above. The design goals of
the other most popular BSDs may be summarized as
follows:OpenBSD aims for operating system security above
all else. The OpenBSD team wrote &man.ssh.1; and
&man.pf.4;, which have both been ported to
&os;.NetBSD aims to be easily ported to other hardware
platforms.DragonFly BSD is a fork of &os; 4.8 that
has since developed many interesting features of its
own, including the HAMMER file system and support for
user-mode vkernels.What is the latest version of &os;?At any point in the development of &os;, there can be
multiple parallel branches. &rel.relx; releases are made
from the &rel.stable; branch, and &rel2.relx; releases are
made from the &rel2.stable; branch.Up until the release of 12.0, the &rel2.relx; series
was the one known as -STABLE.
However, as of &rel.head.relx;, the &rel2.relx; branch
will be designated for an extended support
status and receive only fixes for major problems, such as
security-related fixes.
Releases are made every
few months. While many people stay more
up-to-date with the &os; sources (see the questions on
&os.current; and &os.stable;) than that, doing so
is more of a commitment, as the sources are a moving
target.More information on &os; releases can be found on the
Release
Engineering page and in &man.release.7;.What is &os;-CURRENT?&os.current;
is the development version of the operating system, which
will in due course become the new &os.stable; branch. As
such, it is really only of interest to developers working
on the system and die-hard hobbyists. See the relevant
section in the Handbook
for details on running
-CURRENT.Users not familiar with &os; should not use
&os.current;. This branch sometimes evolves quite quickly
and due to mistake can be un-buildable at times. People
that use &os.current; are expected to be able to analyze,
debug, and report problems.What is the &os;-STABLE
concept?&os;-STABLE is the development branch
from which major releases are made. Changes go into this
branch at a slower pace and with the general assumption
that they have first been tested in &os;-CURRENT.
However, at any given time, the sources for &os;-STABLE
may or may not be suitable for general use, as it may
uncover bugs and corner cases that were not yet found in
&os;-CURRENT. Users who do not have the resources to
perform testing should instead run the most recent release
of &os;.
&os;-CURRENT, on the other hand, has
been one unbroken line since 2.0 was released.For more
detailed information on branches see &os;
Release Engineering: Creating the Release
Branch, the status of the branches and
the upcoming release schedule can be found on the Release
Engineering Information page.Version &rel121.current;
is the latest release from the &rel.stable; branch; it was
released in &rel121.current.date;. Version &rel1.current;
is the latest release from the &rel2.stable; branch; it
was released in &rel1.current.date;.When are &os; releases made?The &a.re; releases a new major version of &os; about
every 18 months and a new minor version about every 8
months, on average. Release dates are announced well in
advance, so that the people working on the system know
when their projects need to be finished and tested. A
testing period precedes each release, to ensure that the
addition of new features does not compromise the stability
of the release. Many users regard this caution as one of
the best things about &os;, even though waiting for all
the latest goodies to reach -STABLE
can be a little frustrating.More information on the release engineering process
(including a schedule of upcoming releases) can be found
on the release
engineering pages on the &os; Web site.For people who need or want a little more excitement,
binary snapshots are made weekly as discussed
above.When are &os; snapshots made?&os; snapshot
releases are made based on the current state of the
-CURRENT and
-STABLE branches. The goals behind
each snapshot release are:To test the latest version of the installation
software.To give people who would like to run
-CURRENT or
-STABLE but who do not have the
time or bandwidth to follow it on a day-to-day basis
an easy way of bootstrapping it onto their
systems.To preserve a fixed reference point for the code
in question, just in case we break something really
badly later. (Although Subversion normally prevents
anything horrible like this happening.)To ensure that all new features and fixes in need
of testing have the greatest possible number of
potential testers.No claims are made that any
-CURRENT snapshot can be considered
production quality for any purpose.
If a stable and fully tested system is needed,
stick to full releases.Snapshot releases are directly available from snapshot.Official snapshots are generated on a regular
basis for all actively developed branches.Who is responsible for &os;?The key decisions concerning the &os; project, such as
the overall direction of the project and who is allowed to
add code to the source tree, are made by a core
team of 9 people. There is a much larger team of
more than 350 committers
who are authorized to make changes directly to the &os;
source tree.However, most non-trivial changes are discussed in
advance in the mailing
lists, and there are no restrictions on who may
take part in the discussion.Where can I get &os;?Every significant release of &os; is available via
anonymous FTP from the &os;
FTP site:The latest &rel.stable; release,
&rel121.current;-RELEASE can be found in the &rel121.current;-RELEASE
directory.Snapshot
releases are made monthly for the -CURRENT and -STABLE branch, these being
of service purely to bleeding-edge testers and
developers.The latest &rel2.stable; release,
&rel1.current;-RELEASE can be found in the &rel1.current;-RELEASE
directory.Information about obtaining &os; on CD, DVD, and other
media can be found in the
Handbook.How do I access the Problem Report database?The Problem Report database of all user change
requests may be queried by using our web-based PR query
interface.The web-based
problem report submission interface can be used
to submit problem reports through a web browser.Before submitting a problem report, read Writing
&os; Problem Reports, an article on how to write
good problem reports.Documentation and SupportWhat good books are there about &os;?The project produces a wide range of documentation,
available online from this link: https://www.FreeBSD.org/docs.html.
Is the documentation available in other formats, such
as plain text (ASCII), or PDF?Yes. The documentation is available in a number of
different formats and compression schemes on the &os; FTP
site, in the /ftp/doc/
directory.The documentation is categorized in a number of
different ways. These include:The document's name, such as
faq, or
handbook.The document's language and encoding. These are
based on the locale names found under
/usr/share/locale on a &os;
system. The current languages and encodings
are as follows:NameMeaningen_US.ISO8859-1English (United States)bn_BD.ISO10646-1Bengali or Bangla (Bangladesh)da_DK.ISO8859-1Danish (Denmark)de_DE.ISO8859-1German (Germany)el_GR.ISO8859-7Greek (Greece)es_ES.ISO8859-1Spanish (Spain)fr_FR.ISO8859-1French (France)hu_HU.ISO8859-2Hungarian (Hungary)it_IT.ISO8859-15Italian (Italy)ja_JP.eucJPJapanese (Japan, EUC encoding)ko_KR.UTF-8Korean (Korea, UTF-8 encoding)mn_MN.UTF-8Mongolian (Mongolia, UTF-8
encoding)nl_NL.ISO8859-1Dutch (Netherlands)pl_PL.ISO8859-2Polish (Poland)pt_BR.ISO8859-1Portuguese (Brazil)ru_RU.KOI8-RRussian (Russia, KOI8-R encoding)tr_TR.ISO8859-9Turkish (Turkey)zh_CN.UTF-8Simplified Chinese (China, UTF-8
encoding)zh_TW.UTF-8Traditional Chinese (Taiwan, UTF-8
encoding)Some documents may not be available in all
languages.The document's format. We produce the
documentation in a number of different output formats.
Each format has its own advantages and disadvantages.
Some formats are better suited for online reading,
while others are meant to be aesthetically pleasing
when printed on paper. Having the documentation
available in any of these formats ensures that our
readers will be able to read the parts they are
interested in, either on their monitor, or on paper
after printing the documents. The currently available
formats are:FormatMeaninghtml-splitA collection of small, linked, HTML
files.htmlOne large HTML file containing the entire
documentpdfAdobe's Portable Document FormattxtPlain textThe compression and packaging scheme.Where the format is
html-split, the files are
bundled up using &man.tar.1;. The resulting
.tar is then compressed
using the compression schemes detailed in the next
point.All the other formats generate one file. For
example,
article.pdf,
book.html, and so on.These files are then compressed using either
the zip or
bz2 compression schemes.
&man.tar.1; can be used to uncompress these
files.So the PDF version of the Handbook,
compressed using bzip2 will be
stored in a file called
book.pdf.bz2 in the
handbook/ directory.After choosing the format and compression mechanism,
download the
compressed files, uncompress them, and then copy
the appropriate documents into place.For example, the split HTML version of the
FAQ, compressed using &man.bzip2.1;,
can be found in
doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.html-split.tar.bz2
To download and uncompress that file, type:&prompt.root; fetch https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/book.html-split.tar.bz2
&prompt.root; tar xvf book.html-split.tar.bz2If the file is compressed,
tar will automatically
detect the appropriate format and decompress it correctly,
resulting in a collection of
.html files. The main one is called
index.html, which will contain the
table of contents, introductory material, and links to the
other parts of the document.Where do I find info on the &os; mailing lists? What
&os; news groups are available?Refer to the Handbook
entry on mailing-lists and the Handbook
entry on newsgroups.Are there &os; IRC (Internet Relay Chat)
channels?Yes, most major IRC networks host a &os; chat
channel:Channel #FreeBSDhelp on EFNet
is a channel dedicated to helping &os; users.Channel #FreeBSD on Freenode is
a general help channel with many users at any time.
The conversations have been known to run off-topic for
a while, but priority is given to users with &os;
questions. Other users can help with
the basics, referring to the Handbook whenever
possible and providing links for learning more about
a particular topic. This is primarily an English
speaking channel, though it does have users from all
over the world. Non-native English speakers should
try to ask the question in English first and then
relocate to ##freebsd-lang as
appropriate.Channel #FreeBSD on DALNET is
available at irc.dal.net in
the US and irc.eu.dal.net in
Europe.Channel #FreeBSD on UNDERNET
is available at
us.undernet.org in the US and
eu.undernet.org in Europe.
Since it is a help channel, be prepared to read the
documents you are referred to.Channel #FreeBSD on RUSNET
is a Russian language channel dedicated to
helping &os; users. This is also a good place for
non-technical discussions.Channel #bsdchat on Freenode is
a Traditional Chinese (UTF-8 encoding) language
channel dedicated to helping &os; users.
This is also a good place for non-technical
discussions.The &os; wiki has a good
list of IRC channels.Each of these channels are distinct and are not
connected to each other. Since their chat styles differ,
try each to find one suited to your
chat style.Are there any web based forums to discuss &os;?The official &os; forums are located at https://forums.FreeBSD.org/.Where can I get commercial &os; training and
support?iXsystems,
Inc., parent company of the &os;
Mall, provides commercial &os; and TrueOS
software support,
in addition to &os; development and tuning
solutions.BSD Certification Group, Inc. provides system
administration certifications for DragonFly BSD,
&os;, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. Refer to their
site for more information.Any other organizations providing training and support
should contact the Project to be listed here.InstallationNikClaytonnik@FreeBSD.orgWhich platform should I download? I have a 64
bit capable &intel; CPU,
but I only see amd64.&arch.amd64; is the term &os; uses for 64-bit
compatible x86 architectures (also known as "x86-64" or
"x64"). Most modern computers should use &arch.amd64;.
Older hardware should use &arch.i386;. When installing
on a non-x86-compatible architecture, select the
platform which best matches the hardware.Which file do I download to get &os;?On the Getting
&os; page, select [iso] next
to the architecture that matches the hardware.Any of the following can be used:filedescriptiondisc1.isoContains enough to install &os; and
a minimal set of packages.dvd1.isoSimilar to disc1.iso
but with additional packages.memstick.imgA bootable image sufficient for writing to a
USB stick.bootonly.isoA minimal image that requires network access
during installation to completely install
&os;.Full instructions on this procedure and a little bit
more about installation issues in general can be found in
the Handbook
entry on installing &os;.What do I do if the install image does not
boot?This can be caused by not downloading the image in
binary mode when using
FTP.Some FTP clients default their transfer mode to
ascii and attempt to change any
end-of-line characters received to match the
conventions used by the client's system. This will
almost invariably corrupt the boot image. Check the
SHA-256 checksum of the downloaded boot image: if it
is not exactly that on the
server, then the download process is suspect.When using a command line FTP client, type
binary at the FTP command prompt
after getting connected to the server and before
starting the download of the image.Where are the instructions for installing &os;?Installation instructions
can be found at Handbook
entry on installing &os;.How can I make my own custom release or install
disk?Customized &os; installation media can be created by
building a custom release. Follow the instructions in the
Release
Engineering article.Can &windows; co-exist with &os;? (x86-specific)If &windows; is installed first, then yes. &os;'s
boot manager will then manage to boot &windows; and &os;.
If &windows; is installed afterwards, it will
overwrite the boot manager. If that
happens, see the next section.Another operating system destroyed my Boot Manager.
How do I get it back? (x86-specific)This depends upon the boot manager.
The &os; boot selection menu can be reinstalled using
&man.boot0cfg.8;. For example, to restore the boot menu
onto the disk ada0:&prompt.root; boot0cfg -B ada0The non-interactive MBR bootloader can be installed
using &man.gpart.8;:&prompt.root; gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr ada0For more complex situations, including GPT disks, see
&man.gpart.8;.Do I need to install the source?In general, no. There is nothing in the base system
which requires the presence of the source to operate.
Some ports, like sysutils/lsof, will
not build unless the source is installed. In particular,
if the port builds a kernel module or directly operates on
kernel structures, the source must be installed.Do I need to build a kernel?Usually not. The supplied GENERIC
kernel contains the drivers an ordinary computer will
need. &man.freebsd-update.8;, the &os; binary upgrade
tool, cannot upgrade custom kernels, another reason to
stick with the GENERIC kernel when
possible. For computers with very limited RAM, such as
embedded systems, it may be worthwhile to build a smaller
custom kernel containing just the required drivers.Should I use DES, Blowfish, or MD5 passwords and how
do I specify which form my users receive?&os; uses
SHA512 by
default. DES
passwords are still available for backwards compatibility
with operating systems that still
use the less secure password format. &os; also supports
the Blowfish and MD5 password formats. Which
password format to use for new passwords is controlled by
the passwd_format login capability in
/etc/login.conf, which takes values
of des, blf (if
these are available) or md5. See the
&man.login.conf.5; manual page for more information about
login capabilities.What are the limits for FFS file systems?For FFS file systems, the largest file system is
practically limited by the amount of memory required to
&man.fsck.8; the file system. &man.fsck.8; requires one
bit per fragment, which with the default fragment size of
4 KB equates to 32 MB of memory per TB of disk.
This does mean that on architectures which limit userland
processes to 2 GB (e.g., &i386;), the maximum
&man.fsck.8;'able filesystem is ~60 TB.If there was not a &man.fsck.8; memory limit the
maximum filesystem size would be 2 ^ 64 (blocks)
* 32 KB => 16 Exa * 32 KB => 512
ZettaBytes.The maximum size of a single FFS file is approximately
2 PB with the default block size of 32 KB. Each
32 KB block can point to 4096 blocks. With triple
indirect blocks, the calculation is 32 KB * 12 +
32 KB * 4096 + 32 KB * 4096^2 + 32 KB *
4096^3. Increasing the block size to 64 KB will
increase the max file size by a factor of 16.Why do I get an error message, readin
failed after compiling and booting a new
kernel?The world and kernel are out of sync. This
is not supported. Be sure to use make
buildworld and make
buildkernel to update the kernel.Boot the system by specifying the kernel directly at
the second stage, pressing any key when the
| shows up before loader is
started.Is there a tool to perform post-installation
configuration tasks?Yes. bsdconfig provides a
nice interface to configure &os; post-installation.Hardware CompatibilityGeneralI want to get a piece of hardware for my &os;
system. Which model/brand/type is best?This is discussed continually on the &os; mailing
lists but is to be expected since hardware changes so
quickly. Read through the Hardware Notes
for &os; &rel121.current;
or &rel1.current;
and search the mailing list archives
before asking about the latest and greatest hardware.
Chances are a discussion about that type of hardware
took place just last week.Before purchasing a laptop, check the archives for
&a.questions;, or possibly a specific
mailing list for a particular hardware type.What are the limits for memory?&os; as an operating system generally supports
as much physical memory (RAM) as the platform it is
running on does. Keep in mind that different platforms
have different limits for memory; for example &i386;
without PAE supports at most
4 GB of memory (and usually less than that because
of PCI address space) and &i386; with PAE supports at
most 64 GB memory. As of &os; 10, AMD64
platforms support up to 4 TB of physical
memory.Why does &os; report less than 4 GB memory when
installed on an &i386; machine?The total address space on &i386; machines is
32-bit, meaning that at most 4 GB of memory is
addressable (can be accessed). Furthermore, some
addresses in this range are reserved by hardware for
different purposes, for example for using and
controlling PCI devices, for accessing video memory, and
so on. Therefore, the total amount of memory usable by
the operating system for its kernel and applications is
limited to significantly less than 4 GB. Usually,
3.2 GB to 3.7 GB is the maximum usable
physical memory in this configuration.To access more than 3.2 GB to 3.7 GB of
installed memory (meaning up to 4 GB but also more
than 4 GB), a special tweak called
PAE must be used. PAE stands for
Physical Address Extension and is a way for 32-bit x86
CPUs to address more than 4 GB of memory. It
remaps the memory that would otherwise be overlaid by
address reservations for hardware devices above the
4 GB range and uses it as additional physical
memory (see &man.pae.4;). Using PAE has some drawbacks;
this mode of memory access is a little bit slower than
the normal (without PAE) mode and loadable modules (see
&man.kld.4;) are not supported. This means all drivers
must be compiled into the kernel.The most common way to enable PAE is to build a new
kernel with the special ready-provided kernel
configuration file called PAE,
which is already configured to build a safe kernel.
Note that some entries in this kernel configuration file
are too conservative and some drivers marked as unready
to be used with PAE are actually usable. A rule of
thumb is that if the driver is usable on 64-bit
architectures (like AMD64), it is also usable with PAE.
When creating a custom kernel configuration
file, PAE can be enabled by adding the following
line:options PAEPAE is not much used nowadays because most new x86
hardware also supports running in 64-bit mode, known as
AMD64 or &intel; 64. It has a much larger address
space and does not need such tweaks. &os; supports
AMD64 and it is recommended that this version of &os; be
used instead of the &i386; version if 4 GB or more
memory is required.Architectures and ProcessorsDoes &os; support architectures other than the
x86?Yes. &os; divides support into multiple tiers.
Tier 1 architectures, such as i386 or amd64; are fully
supported. Tiers 2 and 3 are supported on a
best-effort basis. A full explanation of the tier
system is available in the Committer's
Guide.A complete list of supported architectures can be
found on the platforms
page.Does &os; support Symmetric Multiprocessing
(SMP)?&os; supports symmetric multi-processor (SMP) on all
non-embedded platforms (e.g, &arch.i386;, &arch.amd64;,
etc.). SMP is also supported in arm and MIPS kernels,
although some CPUs may not support this. &os;'s SMP
implementation uses fine-grained locking, and
performance scales nearly linearly with number of
CPUs.&man.smp.4; has more details.What is microcode?
How do I install &intel; CPU microcode updates?Microcode is a method of programmatically
implementing hardware level instructions. This allows
for CPU bugs to be fixed without replacing the on board
chip.Install sysutils/devcpu-data,
then add:microcode_update_enable="YES"to /etc/rc.confPeripheralsWhat kind of peripherals does &os; support?See the complete list in the Hardware Notes for &os;
&rel121.current;
or &rel1.current;.Keyboards and MiceIs it possible to use a mouse outside the
X Window system?The default console driver,
&man.vt.4;, provides the ability to use a mouse
pointer in text consoles to cut & paste text. Run
the mouse daemon, &man.moused.8;, and turn on the mouse
pointer in the virtual console:&prompt.root; moused -p /dev/xxxx -t yyyy
&prompt.root; vidcontrol -m onWhere xxxx is the mouse
device name and yyyy is a
protocol type for the mouse. The mouse daemon can
automatically determine the protocol type of most mice,
except old serial mice. Specify the
auto protocol to invoke automatic
detection. If automatic detection does not work, see
the &man.moused.8; manual page for a list of supported
protocol types.For a PS/2 mouse, add
moused_enable="YES" to
/etc/rc.conf to start the mouse
daemon at boot time. Additionally, to
use the mouse daemon on all virtual terminals instead of
just the console, add allscreens_flags="-m
on" to
/etc/rc.conf.When the mouse daemon is running, access to the
mouse must be coordinated between the mouse daemon and
other programs such as X Windows. Refer to the
FAQ
Why does my mouse not work
with X? for more details on this issue.How do I cut and paste text with a mouse in the text
console?It is not possible to remove data using the mouse.
However, it is possible to copy and paste. Once the
mouse daemon is running as described in the previous question, hold down
button 1 (left button) and move the mouse to select a
region of text. Then, press button 2 (middle button) to
paste it at the text cursor. Pressing button 3 (right
button) will extend the selected region
of text.If the mouse does not have a middle button, it is
possible to emulate one or remap buttons using mouse
daemon options. See the &man.moused.8; manual page for
details.My mouse has a fancy wheel and buttons. Can I use
them in &os;?The answer is, unfortunately, It
depends. These mice with additional features
require specialized driver in most cases. Unless the
mouse device driver or the user program has specific
support for the mouse, it will act just like a standard
two, or three button mouse.For the possible usage of wheels in the X Window
environment, refer to that section.How do I use my delete key in sh
and csh?For the Bourne Shell, add
the following lines to ~/.shrc.
See &man.sh.1; and &man.editrc.5;.bind ^[[3~ ed-delete-next-char # for xtermFor the C Shell, add the
following lines to ~/.cshrc.
See &man.csh.1;.bindkey ^[[3~ delete-char # for xtermOther HardwareWorkarounds for no sound from my &man.pcm.4; sound
card?Some sound cards set their output volume to 0 at
every boot. Run the following command every time the
machine boots:&prompt.root; mixer pcm 100 vol 100 cd 100Does &os; support power management on my
laptop?&os; supports the ACPI features
found in modern hardware. Further information can be
found in &man.acpi.4;.TroubleshootingWhy is &os; finding the wrong amount of memory on
&i386; hardware?The most likely reason is the difference between
physical memory addresses and virtual addresses.The convention for most PC hardware is to use the
memory area between 3.5 GB and 4 GB for a
special purpose (usually for PCI). This address space is
used to access PCI hardware. As a result real, physical
memory cannot be accessed by that address space.What happens to the memory that should appear in that
location is hardware dependent. Unfortunately,
some hardware does nothing and the ability to use that
last 500 MB of RAM is entirely lost.Luckily, most hardware remaps the memory to a higher
location so that it can still be used. However, this can
cause some confusion when watching the boot
messages.On a 32-bit version of &os;, the memory appears lost,
since it will be remapped above 4 GB, which a 32-bit
kernel is unable to access. In this case, the solution is
to build a PAE enabled kernel. See the entry on memory
limits for more information.On a 64-bit version of &os;, or when running a
PAE-enabled kernel, &os; will correctly detect and remap
the memory so it is usable. During boot, however, it may
seem as if &os; is detecting more memory than the system
really has, due to the described remapping. This is
normal and the available memory will be corrected as the
boot process completes.Why do my programs occasionally die with
Signal 11 errors?Signal 11 errors are caused when a process has
attempted to access memory which the operating system has
not granted it access to. If something like this is
happening at seemingly random intervals,
start investigating the cause.These problems can usually be attributed to
either:If the problem is occurring only in a specific
custom application, it is
probably a bug in the code.If it is a problem with part of the base &os;
system, it may also be buggy code, but more often than
not these problems are found and fixed long before us
general FAQ readers get to use
these bits of code (that is what -CURRENT is
for).It is probably
not a &os; bug if the
problem occurs compiling a program, but the activity
that the compiler is carrying out changes each
time.For example, if make
buildworld fails while trying
to compile ls.c into
ls.o and, when run again, it fails
in the same place, this is a broken build. Try
updating source and try again. If the compile fails
elsewhere, it is almost certainly due to hardware.In the first case, use a debugger such as
&man.gdb.1; to find the point in the program which is
attempting to access a bogus address and fix
it.In the second case, verify which piece of
hardware is at fault.Common causes of this include:The hard disks might be overheating: Check that
the fans are still working, as the disk and
other hardware might be overheating.The processor running is overheating: This might
be because the processor has been overclocked, or the
fan on the processor might have died. In either case,
ensure that the hardware is running at
what it is specified to run at, at least while trying
to solve this problem. If it is not, clock it back
to the default settings.)Regarding overclocking, it is far
cheaper to have a slow system than a fried system that
needs replacing! Also the community is not
sympathetic to problems on overclocked systems.Dodgy memory: if multiple memory
SIMMS/DIMMS are installed, pull them all out and try
running the machine with each SIMM or DIMM
individually to narrow the problem down to either the
problematic DIMM/SIMM or perhaps even a
combination.Over-optimistic motherboard settings: the BIOS
settings, and some motherboard jumpers, provide
options to set various timings. The defaults
are often sufficient, but sometimes setting the wait
states on RAM too low, or setting the RAM
Speed: Turbo option
will cause strange behavior. A possible idea is to
set to BIOS defaults, after noting
the current settings first.Unclean or insufficient power to the motherboard.
Remove any unused I/O boards, hard disks, or
CD-ROMs,
or disconnect the power cable from them, to see if
the power supply can manage a smaller load. Or try
another power supply, preferably one with a little
more power. For instance, if the current power supply
is rated at 250 Watts, try one rated at
300 Watts.Read the section on
Signal 11 for a further
explanation and a discussion on how memory testing
software or hardware can still pass faulty memory. There
is an extensive FAQ on this at the SIG11
problem FAQ.Finally, if none of this has helped, it is possibly
a bug in &os;.
Follow these instructions
to send a problem report.My system crashes with either Fatal trap
12: page fault in kernel mode, or
panic:, and spits out a bunch of
information. What should I do?The &os; developers are interested in these
errors, but need more information than just the error
message. Copy the full crash message. Then consult the
FAQ section on kernel
panics, build a debugging kernel, and get a
backtrace. This might sound difficult, but does not
require any programming skills. Just follow the
instructions.What is the meaning of the error maxproc
limit exceeded by uid %i, please see tuning(7) and
login.conf(5)?The &os; kernel will only allow a certain number of
processes to exist at one time. The number is based on
the kern.maxusers &man.sysctl.8;
variable. kern.maxusers also affects
various other in-kernel limits, such as network buffers.
If the machine is heavily loaded,
increase kern.maxusers. This will
increase these other system limits in addition to the
maximum number of processes.To adjust the kern.maxusers value,
see the File/Process
Limits section of the Handbook. While that
section refers to open files, the same limits apply to
processes.If the machine is lightly loaded but running a very
large number of processes, adjust the
kern.maxproc tunable by defining it in
/boot/loader.conf. The tunable will
not get adjusted until the system is rebooted. For more
information about tuning tunables, see
&man.loader.conf.5;. If these processes are being run by
a single user, adjust
kern.maxprocperuid to be one less than
the new kern.maxproc value. It must
be at least one less because one system program,
&man.init.8;, must always be running.Why do full screen applications on remote machines
misbehave?The remote machine may be setting the terminal type to
something other than xterm which is
required by the &os; console. Alternatively the kernel
may have the wrong values for the width and height of the
terminal.Check the value of the TERM
environment variable is xterm. If the
remote machine does not support that try
vt100.Run stty -a to check what the
kernel thinks the terminal dimensions are. If they are
incorrect, they can be changed by running
stty rows RR cols
CC.Alternatively, if the client machine has
x11/xterm installed, then running
resize will query the terminal for the
correct dimensions and set them.Why does it take so long to connect to my computer via
ssh or
telnet?The symptom: there is a long delay between the time
the TCP connection is established and the time when the
client software asks for a password (or, in
&man.telnet.1;'s case, when a login prompt
appears).The problem: more likely than not, the delay is caused
by the server software trying to resolve the client's IP
address into a hostname. Many servers, including the
Telnet and
SSH servers that come with
&os;, do this to store the hostname in a log file for
future reference by the administrator.The remedy: if the problem occurs whenever connecting
the client computer to any server, the problem
is with the client. If the problem only occurs
when someone connects to the server computer, the
problem is with the server.If the problem is with the client, the only remedy is
to fix the DNS so the server can resolve it. If this is
on a local network, consider it a server problem and keep
reading. If this is on the Internet,
contact your ISP.If the problem is with the server on a
local network, configure the server
to resolve address-to-hostname queries for the local
address range. See &man.hosts.5; and &man.named.8;
for more information. If this is on the
Internet, the problem may be that the local server's
resolver is not functioning correctly. To check, try to
look up another host such as
www.yahoo.com. If it does not
work, that is the problem.Following a fresh install of &os;, it is also possible
that domain and name server information is missing from
/etc/resolv.conf. This will often
cause a delay in SSH, as the
option UseDNS is set to
yes by default in
/etc/ssh/sshd_config. If this is
causing the problem, either fill in the
missing information in
/etc/resolv.conf or set
UseDNS to no in
sshd_config as a temporary
workaround.Why does file: table is full
show up repeatedly in &man.dmesg.8;?This error message indicates that the number of
available file descriptors have been exhausted on the
system. Refer to the kern.maxfiles
section of the Tuning
Kernel Limits section of the Handbook for a
discussion and solution.Why does the clock on my computer keep incorrect
time?The computer has two or more clocks, and &os; has
chosen to use the wrong one.Run &man.dmesg.8;, and check for lines that contain
Timecounter. The one with the highest
quality value that &os; chose.&prompt.root; dmesg | grep Timecounter
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
Timecounter "ACPI-fast" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000
Timecounter "TSC" frequency 2998570050 Hz quality 800
Timecounters tick every 1.000 msecConfirm this by checking the
kern.timecounter.hardware
&man.sysctl.3;.&prompt.root; sysctl kern.timecounter.hardware
kern.timecounter.hardware: ACPI-fastIt may be a broken ACPI timer. The simplest solution
is to disable the ACPI timer in
/boot/loader.conf:debug.acpi.disabled="timer"Or the BIOS may modify the TSC clock—perhaps to
change the speed of the processor when running from
batteries, or going into a power saving mode, but &os; is
unaware of these adjustments, and appears to gain or lose
time.In this example, the i8254 clock is
also available, and can be selected by writing its name to
the kern.timecounter.hardware
&man.sysctl.3;.&prompt.root; sysctl kern.timecounter.hardware=i8254
kern.timecounter.hardware: TSC -> i8254The computer should now start keeping more accurate
time.To have this change automatically run at boot time,
add the following line to
/etc/sysctl.conf:kern.timecounter.hardware=i8254What does the error swap_pager: indefinite
wait buffer: mean?This means that a process is trying to page memory
from
disk, and the page attempt has hung trying to access the
disk for more than 20 seconds. It might be caused by bad
blocks on the disk drive, disk wiring, cables, or any
other disk I/O-related hardware. If the drive itself is
bad, disk errors will appear in
/var/log/messages and in the output
of dmesg. Otherwise, check the cables
and connections.What is a lock order
reversal?The &os; kernel uses a number of resource locks to
arbitrate contention for certain resources. When multiple
kernel threads try to obtain multiple resource locks,
there's always the potential for a deadlock, where two
threads have each obtained one of the locks and blocks
forever waiting for the other thread to release one of the
other locks. This sort of locking problem can be avoided
if all threads obtain the locks in the same order.A run-time lock diagnostic system called
&man.witness.4;, enabled in &os.current; and disabled by
default for stable branches and releases, detects the
potential for deadlocks due to locking errors, including
errors caused by obtaining multiple resource locks with a
different order from different parts of the kernel. The
&man.witness.4; framework tries to detect this problem as
it happens, and reports it by printing a message to the
system console about a lock order
reversal (often referred to also as
LOR).It is possible to get false positives, as
&man.witness.4; is conservative. A true positive report
does not mean that a system is
dead-locked; instead it should be understood as a warning
that a deadlock could have happened here.Problematic LORs tend to get
fixed quickly, so check the &a.current; before posting
to it.What does Called ... with the following
non-sleepable locks held mean?This means that a function that may sleep was called
while a mutex (or other unsleepable) lock was held.The reason this is an error is because mutexes are not
intended to be held for long periods of time; they are
supposed to only be held to maintain short periods of
synchronization. This programming contract allows device
drivers to use mutexes to synchronize with the rest of the
kernel during interrupts. Interrupts (under &os;) may not
sleep. Hence it is imperative that no subsystem in the
kernel block for an extended period while holding a
mutex.To catch such errors, assertions may be added to the
kernel that interact with the &man.witness.4; subsystem to
emit a warning or fatal error (depending on the system
configuration) when a potentially blocking call is made
while holding a mutex.In summary, such warnings are non-fatal, however with
unfortunate timing they could cause undesirable effects
ranging from a minor blip in the system's responsiveness
to a complete system lockup.For additional information about locking in &os; see
&man.locking.9;.Why does
buildworld/installworld
die with the message touch: not
found?This error does not mean that the &man.touch.1;
utility is missing. The error is instead probably due to
the dates of the files being set sometime in the future.
If the CMOS clock is set to local time, run
adjkerntz -i to adjust
the kernel clock when booting into single-user
mode.User ApplicationsWhere are all the user applications?Refer to the ports
page for info on software packages ported to
&os;.Most ports should work on all supported versions of
&os;. Those that do not are specifically marked as such.
Each time a &os; release is made, a snapshot of the ports
tree at the time of release is also included in the
ports/ directory.&os; supports compressed binary packages to easily
install and uninstall ports. Use &man.pkg.7; to control
the installation of packages.How do I download the Ports tree? Should I be using
Subversion?Any of the methods listed here work:Use portsnap for most use cases. Refer to Using
the Ports Collection for instructions on how to
use this tool.Use Subversion if custom patches to the
ports tree are needed or if running &os.current;.
Refer to Using
Subversion for details.Why can I not build this port on my
&rel2.relx; -, or
&rel.relx; -STABLE machine?If the installed &os; version lags significantly
behind -CURRENT or
-STABLE, update the Ports Collection
using the instructions in Using
the Ports Collection. If the system is
up-to-date, someone might have committed a change to the
port which works for -CURRENT but
which broke the port for -STABLE.
Submit
a bug report, since the Ports Collection is supposed to
work for both the -CURRENT and
-STABLE branches.I just tried to build INDEX using
make index, and it failed. Why?First, make sure that the Ports Collection is
up-to-date. Errors that affect building
INDEX from an up-to-date copy of the
Ports Collection are high-visibility and are thus almost
always fixed immediately.There are rare cases where INDEX
will not build due to odd cases involving
OPTIONS_SET
being set in make.conf. If
you suspect that this is the case, try to make
INDEX with those variables
turned off before reporting it to &a.ports;.I updated the sources, now how do I update my
installed ports?&os; does not include a port upgrading tool, but it
does have some tools to make the upgrade process somewhat
easier. Additional tools are available to simplify
port handling and are described the Upgrading
Ports section in the &os; Handbook.Do I need to recompile every port each time I perform
a major version update?Yes! While a recent system will run with
software compiled under an older release,
things will randomly crash and fail to work once
other ports are installed or updated.When the system is upgraded, various shared libraries,
loadable modules, and other parts of the system will be
replaced with newer versions. Applications linked against
the older versions may fail to start or, in other cases,
fail to function properly.For more information, see the
section on upgrades in the &os; Handbook.Do I need to recompile every port each time I perform
a minor version update?In general, no. &os; developers do their utmost to
guarantee binary compatibility across all releases with
the same major version number. Any exceptions will be
documented in the Release Notes, and advice given there
should be followed.Why is /bin/sh so minimal? Why
does &os; not use bash or another
shell?Many people need to write shell scripts which will be
portable across many systems. That is why &posix;
specifies the shell and utility commands in great detail.
Most scripts are written in Bourne shell (&man.sh.1;), and
because several important programming interfaces
(&man.make.1;, &man.system.3;, &man.popen.3;, and
analogues in higher-level scripting languages like Perl
and Tcl) are specified to use the Bourne shell to
interpret commands. Because the Bourne shell is so often
and widely used, it is important for it to be quick to
start, be deterministic in its behavior, and have a small
memory footprint.The existing implementation is our best effort at
meeting as many of these requirements simultaneously as we
can. To keep /bin/sh small, we have
not provided many of the convenience features that other
shells have. That is why other more featureful shells
like bash, scsh,
&man.tcsh.1;, and zsh are available.
Compare the memory utilization of
these shells by looking at the VSZ and
RSS columns in a ps -u
listing.Kernel ConfigurationI would like to customize my kernel. Is it
difficult?Not at all! Check out the kernel
config section of the Handbook.The new kernel will be
installed to the /boot/kernel
directory along with its modules, while the old kernel
and its modules will be moved to the
/boot/kernel.old directory. If
a mistake is made in the
configuration, simply boot the previous version of the
kernel.Why is my kernel so big?GENERIC kernels shipped with &os;
are compiled in debug mode.
Kernels built in debug mode contain debug data in
separate files that are used for debugging.
&os; releases prior to 11.0 store these debug files in
the same directory as the kernel itself,
/boot/kernel/.
In &os; 11.0 and later the debug files are stored in
/usr/lib/debug/boot/kernel/.
Note that there will be little or no performance loss from
running a debug kernel, and it is useful to keep one
around in case of a system panic.When running low on disk space, there
are different options to reduce the size of
/boot/kernel/ and
/usr/lib/debug/.To not install the symbol files,
make sure the following line exists in
/etc/src.conf:WITHOUT_KERNEL_SYMBOLS=yesFor more information see &man.src.conf.5;.If you want to avoid building debug files altogether,
make sure that both of the following are true:This line does not exist in the kernel
configuration file:makeoptions DEBUG=-gDo not run &man.config.8; with
.Either of the above settings will cause the kernel to
be built in debug mode.To build and install only the specified modules, list
them in
/etc/make.conf:MODULES_OVERRIDE= accf_http ipfwReplace accf_httpd ipfw with a
list of needed modules. Only the listed modules will be
built. This reduces the size of the kernel
directory and decreases the amount of time needed to
build the kernel. For more information, read
/usr/share/examples/etc/make.conf.Unneeded devices can be removed from the kernel
to further reduce the size. See for more information.To put any of these options into effect, follow the
instructions to build
and install the new kernel.For reference, the &os; 11 &arch.amd64; kernel
(/boot/kernel/kernel) is
approximately 25 MB.Why does every kernel I try to build fail to compile,
even GENERIC?There are a number of possible causes for this
problem:The source
tree is different from the one used to build the
currently running system. When attempting an upgrade,
read /usr/src/UPDATING, paying
particular attention to the COMMON
ITEMS section at the end.The make buildkernel did not
complete successfully. The make
buildkernel target relies on files
generated by the make buildworld
target to complete its job correctly.Even when building &os;-STABLE, it is possible
that the source tree was fetched at a time when it was
either being modified or it was broken.
Only releases are guaranteed to be
buildable, although &os;-STABLE builds fine the
majority of the time. Try re-fetching the source tree
and see if the problem goes away. Try using a
different mirror in case the previous one is having
problems.Which scheduler is in use on a
running system?The name of the scheduler currently being used is
directly available as the value of the
kern.sched.name sysctl:&prompt.user; sysctl kern.sched.name
kern.sched.name: ULEWhat is kern.sched.quantum?kern.sched.quantum is the maximum
number of ticks a process can run without being preempted
in the 4BSD scheduler.Disks, File Systems, and Boot LoadersHow can I add my new hard disk to my &os;
system?See the Adding
Disks section in the &os; Handbook.How do I move my system over to my huge new
disk?The best way is to reinstall the operating system on
the new disk, then move the user data over. This is
highly recommended when tracking
-STABLE for more than one release or
when updating a release instead of installing a new one.
Install booteasy on both disks with &man.boot0cfg.8; and
dual boot until you are happy with the new configuration.
Skip the next paragraph to find out how to move the data
after doing this.Alternatively, partition and label the new disk with
either &man.sade.8; or &man.gpart.8;. If the disks are
MBR-formatted, booteasy can be installed on both disks
with &man.boot0cfg.8; so that the computer can dual boot
to the old or new system after the copying is done.Once the new disk set up,
the data cannot just be copied. Instead, use tools that
understand device files and system flags, such as
&man.dump.8;. Although it is recommended
to move the data while in single-user mode, it
is not required.When the disks are formatted with
UFS, never use anything but
&man.dump.8; and &man.restore.8; to move the root file
system. These commands should also be used when moving a
single partition to another empty partition. The sequence
of steps to use dump to move the data
from one UFS partitions to a new
partition is:newfs the new partition.mount it on a temporary mount
point.cd to that directory.dump the old partition, piping
output to the new one.For example, to move
/dev/ada1s1a with
/mnt as the temporary mount point,
type:&prompt.root; newfs /dev/ada1s1a
&prompt.root; mount /dev/ada1s1a /mnt
&prompt.root; cd /mnt
&prompt.root; dump 0af - / | restore rf -Rearranging partitions with
dump takes a bit more work. To merge a
partition like /var into its parent,
create the new partition large enough for both, move the
parent partition as described above, then move the child
partition into the empty directory that the first move
created:&prompt.root; newfs /dev/ada1s1a
&prompt.root; mount /dev/ada1s1a /mnt
&prompt.root; cd /mnt
&prompt.root; dump 0af - / | restore rf -
&prompt.root; cd var
&prompt.root; dump 0af - /var | restore rf -To split a directory from its parent, say putting
/var on its own partition when it was
not before, create both partitions, then mount the child
partition on the appropriate directory in the temporary
mount point, then move the old single partition:&prompt.root; newfs /dev/ada1s1a
&prompt.root; newfs /dev/ada1s1d
&prompt.root; mount /dev/ada1s1a /mnt
&prompt.root; mkdir /mnt/var
&prompt.root; mount /dev/ada1s1d /mnt/var
&prompt.root; cd /mnt
&prompt.root; dump 0af - / | restore rf -The &man.cpio.1; and &man.pax.1; utilities are also
available for moving user data. These are known to lose
file flag information, so use them with caution.Which partitions can safely use Soft Updates? I have
heard that Soft Updates on / can
cause problems. What about Journaled Soft Updates?Short answer: Soft Updates can usually be safely used
on all partitions.Long answer: Soft Updates has two characteristics
that may be undesirable on certain partitions. First, a
Soft Updates partition has a small chance of losing data
during a system crash. The partition will not be
corrupted as the data will simply be lost. Second, Soft
Updates can cause temporary space shortages.When using Soft Updates, the kernel can take up to
thirty seconds to write changes to the physical disk.
When a large file is deleted the file still resides on
disk until the kernel actually performs the deletion.
This can cause a very simple race condition. Suppose
one large file is deleted and another large file is
immediately created. The first large file is not yet
actually removed from the physical disk, so the disk might
not have enough room for the second large file. This will
produce an error that the partition does not have enough
space, even though a large chunk of space has just been
released. A few seconds later, the file creation works as
expected.If a system should crash after the kernel accepts a
chunk of data for writing to disk, but before that data is
actually written out, data could be lost. This risk is
extremely small, but generally manageable.These issues affect all partitions using Soft Updates.
So, what does this mean for the root partition?Vital information on the root partition changes very
rarely. If the system crashed during the thirty-second
window after such a change is made, it is possible that
data could be lost. This risk is negligible for most
applications, but be aware that it exists. If
the system cannot tolerate this much risk, do not use
Soft Updates on the root file system!/ is traditionally one of the
smallest partitions. If
/tmp is on
/, there may be intermittent
space problems. Symlinking /tmp to
/var/tmp will solve this
problem.Finally, &man.dump.8; does not work in live mode (-L)
on a filesystem, with Journaled Soft Updates
(SU+J).Can I mount other foreign file systems under
&os;?&os; supports a variety of other file systems.UFSUFS CD-ROMs can be mounted directly on &os;.
Mounting disk partitions from Digital UNIX and other
systems that support UFS may be more complex,
depending on the details of the disk partitioning
for the operating system in question.ext2/ext3&os; supports ext2fs and
ext3fs partitions. See
&man.ext2fs.5; for more information.NTFSFUSE based NTFS support is available as a port
(sysutils/fusefs-ntfs). For more
information see ntfs-3g.FAT&os; includes a read-write FAT driver. For more
information, see &man.mount.msdosfs.8;.ZFS&os; includes a port of &sun;'s ZFS driver. The
current recommendation is to use it only on
&arch.amd64; platforms with sufficient memory. For
more information, see &man.zfs.8;.&os; includes the Network File System
NFS and the &os; Ports Collection
provides several FUSE applications to support many other
file systems.How do I mount a secondary DOS partition?The secondary DOS partitions are found after
all the primary partitions. For
example, if E is the
second DOS partition on the second SCSI drive, there will
be a device file for slice 5 in
/dev. To mount it:&prompt.root; mount -t msdosfs /dev/da1s5 /dos/eIs there a cryptographic file system for &os;?Yes, &man.gbde.8; and &man.geli.8;.
See the Encrypting
Disk Partitions section of the &os;
Handbook.How do I boot &os; and &linux; using
GRUB?To boot &os; using GRUB,
add the following to either
/boot/grub/menu.lst or
/boot/grub/grub.conf, depending upon
which is used by the &linux; distribution.title &os; 9.1
root (hd0,a)
kernel /boot/loaderWhere hd0,a points to the
root partition on the first disk. To specify
the slice number, use something like this
(hd0,2,a). By default, if the
slice number is omitted, GRUB
searches the first slice
which has the a partition.How do I boot &os; and &linux; using
BootEasy?Install LILO at the start of the &linux; boot
partition instead of in the Master Boot Record. Then boot
LILO from BootEasy.This is recommended when running &windows; and &linux;
as it makes it simpler to get &linux; booting again if
&windows; is reinstalled.How do I change the boot prompt from
??? to something more
meaningful?This cannot be accomplished with the standard boot
manager without rewriting it. There are a number of other
boot managers in the sysutils
category of the Ports Collection.How do I use a new removable drive?If the drive already has a file system on it,
use a command like this:&prompt.root; mount -t msdosfs /dev/da0s1 /mntIf the drive will only be used with &os; systems,
partition it with UFS or
ZFS. This will provide long filename
support, improvement in performance, and stability. If
the drive will be used by other operating systems, a more
portable choice, such as msdosfs, is better.&prompt.root; dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 count=2
&prompt.root; gpart create -s GPT /dev/da0
&prompt.root; gpart add -t freebsd-ufs /dev/da0Finally, create a new file system:&prompt.root; newfs /dev/da0p1and mount it:&prompt.root; mount /dev/da0s1 /mntIt is a good idea to add a line to
/etc/fstab (see &man.fstab.5;) so you
can just type mount /mnt in the
future:/dev/da0p1 /mnt ufs rw,noauto 0 0Why do I get Incorrect super
block when mounting a CD?The type of device to mount must be specified. This
is described in the Handbook section on Using
Data CDs.Why do I get Device not
configured when mounting a CD?This generally means that there is no CD in the
drive, or the drive is not visible on the bus.
Refer to the Using
Data CDs section of the Handbook for a detailed
discussion of this issue.Why do all non-English characters in filenames show up
as ? on my CDs when mounted in &os;?The CD probably uses the Joliet
extension for storing information about files and
directories. This is discussed in the Handbook section on
Using
Data CD-ROMs.A CD burned under &os; cannot be read
under any other operating system. Why?This means a raw file was burned to the CD, rather
than creating an ISO 9660 file system. Take a look
at the Handbook section on Using
Data CDs.How can I create an image of a data CD?This is discussed in the Handbook section on Writing
Data to an ISO File System.
For more on working with CD-ROMs, see the Creating
CDs Section in the Storage chapter in the
Handbook.Why can I not mount an audio
CD?Trying to mount an audio CD will produce an error
like cd9660: /dev/cd0: Invalid
argument. This is because
mount only works on file systems.
Audio CDs do not have file systems; they just have data.
Instead, use a program that reads audio CDs, such as the
audio/xmcd package or port.How do I mount a multi-session
CD?By default, &man.mount.8; will attempt to mount the
last data track (session) of a CD. To
load an earlier session, use the
command line argument. Refer to
&man.mount.cd9660.8; for specific examples.How do I let ordinary users mount CD-ROMs, DVDs,
USB drives, and other removable media?As root set
the sysctl variable vfs.usermount to
1.&prompt.root; sysctl vfs.usermount=1To make this persist across reboots, add the line
vfs.usermount=1 to
/etc/sysctl.conf so that it is reset
at system boot time.Users can only mount devices they have read
permissions to. To allow users to mount a device
permissions must be set in
/etc/devfs.conf.For example, to allow users to mount the first USB
drive add:# Allow all users to mount a USB drive.
own /dev/da0 root:operator
perm /dev/da0 0666All users can now mount devices they could read onto a
directory that they own:&prompt.user; mkdir ~/my-mount-point
&prompt.user; mount -t msdosfs /dev/da0 ~/my-mount-pointUnmounting the device is simple:&prompt.user; umount ~/my-mount-pointEnabling vfs.usermount, however,
has negative security implications. A better way to
access &ms-dos; formatted media is to use the
emulators/mtools package in the Ports
Collection.The device name used in the previous examples must
be changed according to the configuration.The du and df
commands show different amounts of disk space available.
What is going on?This is due to how these commands actually work.
du goes through the directory tree,
measures how large each file is, and presents the totals.
df just asks the file system how much
space it has left. They seem to be the same thing, but a
file without a directory entry will affect
df but not
du.When a program is using a file, and the file is
deleted, the file is not really removed from the file
system until the program stops using it. The file is
immediately deleted from the directory listing, however.
As an example, consider a file large enough
to affect the output of
du and df. A
file being viewed with more can be
deleted wihout causing an error.
The entry is
removed from the directory so no other program or user can
access it. However, du shows that it
is gone as it has walked the directory tree and the
file is not listed. df shows that it
is still there, as the file system knows that
more is still using that space. Once
the more session ends,
du and df will
agree.This situation is common on web servers. Many people
set up a &os; web server and forget to rotate the log
files. The access log fills up /var.
The new administrator deletes the file, but the system
still complains that the partition is full. Stopping and
restarting the web server program would free the file,
allowing the system to release the disk space. To prevent
this from happening, set up &man.newsyslog.8;.Note that Soft Updates can delay the freeing of disk
space and it can take up to 30 seconds for the
change to be visible.How can I add more swap space?This section of
the Handbook describes how to do this.Why does &os; see my disk as smaller than the
manufacturer says it is?Disk manufacturers calculate gigabytes as a billion
bytes each, whereas &os; calculates them as
1,073,741,824 bytes each. This explains why, for
example, &os;'s boot messages will report a disk that
supposedly has 80 GB as holding
76,319 MB.Also note that &os; will (by default) reserve 8% of the
disk space.How is it possible for a partition to be more than
100% full?A portion of each UFS partition (8%, by default) is
reserved for use by the operating system and the
root user.
&man.df.1; does not count that space when calculating the
Capacity column, so it can exceed 100%.
Notice that the Blocks
column is always greater than the sum of the
Used and Avail
columns, usually by a factor of 8%.For more details, look up in
&man.tunefs.8;.ZFSWhat is the minimum amount of RAM one should have to
run ZFS?A minimum of 4GB of RAM is required for comfortable
usage, but individual workloads can vary widely.What is the ZIL and when does it get used?The ZIL (ZFS
intent log) is a write log used to implement posix write
commitment semantics across crashes. Normally writes are
bundled up into transaction groups and written to disk
when filled (Transaction Group Commit).
However syscalls like &man.fsync.2; require a commitment
that the data is written to stable storage before
returning. The ZIL is needed for writes that have been
acknowledged as written but which are not yet on disk as
part of a transaction. The transaction groups are
timestamped. In the event of a crash the last valid
timestamp is found and missing data is merged in from the
ZIL.Do I need a SSD for ZIL?By default, ZFS stores the ZIL in the pool with all
the data. If an application has a heavy write load,
storing the ZIL in a separate device that has very fast
synchronous, sequential write performance can improve
overall system performance. For other workloads, a SSD
is unlikely to make much of an improvement.What is the L2ARC?The L2ARC is a read cache stored on
a fast device such as an SSD. This
cache is not persistent across reboots. Note that RAM is
used as the first layer of cache and the L2ARC is only
needed if there is insufficient RAM.L2ARC needs space in the ARC to index it. So,
perversely, a working set that fits perfectly in the ARC
will not fit perfectly any more if a L2ARC is used because
part of the ARC is holding the L2ARC index, pushing part
of the working set into the L2ARC which is slower than
RAM.Is enabling deduplication advisable?Generally speaking, no.Deduplication takes up a significant amount of RAM and
may slow down read and write disk access times. Unless
one is storing data that is very heavily duplicated, such
as virtual machine images or user backups, it is possible
that deduplication will do more harm than good. Another
consideration is the inability to revert deduplication
status. If data is written when deduplication is enabled,
disabling dedup will not cause those blocks which were
deduplicated to be replicated until they are next
modified.Deduplication can also lead to some unexpected
situations. In particular, deleting files may become much
slower.I cannot delete or create files on my ZFS pool. How
can I fix this?This could happen because the pool is 100% full. ZFS
requires space on the disk to write transaction metadata.
To restore the pool to a usable state, truncate the file
to delete:&prompt.user; truncate -s 0 unimportant-fileFile truncation works because a new transaction is not
started, new spare blocks are created instead.On systems with additional ZFS dataset tuning, such
as deduplication, the space may not be immediately
availableDoes ZFS support TRIM for Solid State Drives?ZFS TRIM support was added to &os; 10-CURRENT
with revision r240868. ZFS TRIM
support was added to all &os;-STABLE branches in
r252162 and
r251419, respectively.ZFS TRIM is enabled by default, and can be turned off
by adding this line to
/etc/sysctl.conf:vfs.zfs.trim.enabled=0ZFS TRIM support was added to GELI as of
r286444. Please see
&man.geli.8; and the switch.System AdministrationWhere are the system start-up configuration
files?The primary configuration file is
/etc/defaults/rc.conf which is
described in &man.rc.conf.5;. System startup scripts
such as /etc/rc and
/etc/rc.d, which are described in
&man.rc.8;, include this file. Do not edit this
file! Instead, to edit an entry in
/etc/defaults/rc.conf, copy the line
into /etc/rc.conf and change it
there.For example, if to start &man.named.8;, the
included DNS server:&prompt.root; echo 'named_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.confTo start up local services, place shell scripts in the
/usr/local/etc/rc.d directory. These
shell scripts should be set executable, the default file
mode is 555.How do I add a user easily?Use the &man.adduser.8; command, or the &man.pw.8;
command for more complicated situations.To remove the user, use the &man.rmuser.8; command or,
if necessary, &man.pw.8;.Why do I keep getting messages like root:
not found after editing
/etc/crontab?This is normally caused by editing the system crontab.
This is not the correct way to do things as the system
crontab has a different format to the per-user crontabs.
The system
crontab has an extra field, specifying which user to run
the command as. &man.cron.8; assumes this user is the
first word of the command to execute. Since no such
command exists, this error message is displayed.To delete the extra, incorrect crontab:&prompt.root; crontab -rWhy do I get the error, you are not in the
correct group to su root when I try to
su to root?This is a security feature. In order to
su to
root, or any
other account with superuser privileges, the user account
must be a member of the
wheel group.
If this feature were not there, anybody with an
account on a system who also found out root's password would be
able to gain superuser level access to the system.To allow someone to su to
root, put
them in the wheel group using
pw:&prompt.root; pw groupmod wheel -m lisaThe above example will add user lisa to the group
wheel.I made a mistake in rc.conf, or
another startup file, and now I cannot edit it because the
file system is read-only. What should I do?Restart the system using boot
-s at the loader prompt to enter single-user
mode. When prompted for a shell pathname, press
Enter and run mount -urw
/ to re-mount the root file system in
read/write mode. You may also need to run mount
-a -t ufs to mount the file system where your
favorite editor is defined. If that editor is on a
network file system, either configure the network manually
before mounting the network file systems, or use an editor
which resides on a local file system, such as
&man.ed.1;.In order to use a full screen editor such as
&man.vi.1; or &man.emacs.1;, run
export TERM=xterm
so that these editors can load the correct data from the
&man.termcap.5; database.After performing these steps, edit
/etc/rc.conf to
fix the syntax error. The error message displayed
immediately after the kernel boot messages should indicate
the number of the line in the file which is at
fault.Why am I having trouble setting up my printer?See the Handbook
entry on printing for troubleshooting
tips.How can I correct the keyboard mappings for my
system?Refer to the Handbook section on using
localization, specifically the section on console
setup.Why can I not get user quotas to work properly?It is possible that the kernel is not configured
to use quotas. In this case,
add the following line to the kernel configuration
file and recompile the kernel:options QUOTARefer to the Handbook
entry on quotas for full details.Do not turn on quotas on
/.Put the quota file on the file system that the
quotas are to be enforced on:File SystemQuota file/usr/usr/admin/quotas/home/home/admin/quotas……Does &os; support System V IPC primitives?Yes, &os; supports System V-style IPC, including
shared memory, messages and semaphores, in the
GENERIC kernel. With a custom
kernel, support may be loaded with the
sysvshm.ko,
sysvsem.ko and
sysvmsg.ko kernel modules, or
enabled in the custom kernel by adding the following lines
to the kernel configuration file:options SYSVSHM # enable shared memory
options SYSVSEM # enable for semaphores
options SYSVMSG # enable for messagingRecompile and install the kernel.What other mail-server software can I use instead of
Sendmail?The Sendmail
server is the default mail-server software for &os;, but
it can be replaced with another
MTA installed from the Ports Collection. Available ports
include mail/exim,
mail/postfix, and
mail/qmail. Search the mailing lists
for discussions regarding the advantages and disadvantages
of the available MTAs.I have forgotten the root password! What do I
do?Do not panic! Restart the system, type
boot -s at the
Boot: prompt to enter single-user mode.
At the question about the shell to use, hit
Enter which will display a
&prompt.root; prompt. Enter mount
-urw / to remount the root file system
read/write, then run mount -a to
remount all the file systems. Run passwd
root to change the root password then run
&man.exit.1; to continue booting.If you are still prompted to give the root password when
entering the single-user mode, it means that the console
has been marked as insecure in
/etc/ttys. In this case, it will
be required to boot from a &os; installation disk,
choose the Live CD or
Shell at the beginning of the
install process and issue the commands mentioned above.
Mount the specific partition in this
case and then chroot to it. For example, replace
mount -urw / with
mount /dev/ada0p1 /mnt; chroot /mnt
for a system on
ada0p1.If the root partition cannot be mounted from
single-user mode, it is possible that the partitions are
encrypted and it is impossible to mount them without the
access keys. For more information see the section
about encrypted disks in the &os; Handbook.How do I keep ControlAltDelete
from rebooting the system?When using &man.vt.4;, the default console
driver, this can be done by setting the following
&man.sysctl.8;:&prompt.root; sysctl kern.vt.kbd_reboot=0How do I reformat DOS text files to &unix;
ones?Use this &man.perl.1; command:&prompt.user; perl -i.bak -npe 's/\r\n/\n/g' file(s)where file(s) is one or
more files to process. The modification is done in-place,
with the original file stored with a
.bak extension.Alternatively, use &man.tr.1;:&prompt.user; tr -d '\r' < dos-text-file > unix-filedos-text-file is the file
containing DOS text while
unix-file will contain the
converted output. This can be quite a bit faster than
using perl.Yet another way to reformat DOS text files is to use
the converters/dosunix port from the
Ports Collection. Consult its documentation about the
details.How do I re-read /etc/rc.conf and
re-start /etc/rc without a
reboot?Go into single-user mode and then back to multi-user
mode:&prompt.root; shutdown now
&prompt.root; return
&prompt.root; exitI tried to update my system to the latest
-STABLE, but got
-BETAx,
-RC or
-PRERELEASE! What is going
on?Short answer: it is just a name.
RC stands for Release
Candidate. It signifies that a release is
imminent. In &os;, -PRERELEASE is
typically synonymous with the code freeze before a
release. (For some releases, the
-BETA label was used in the same way
as -PRERELEASE.)Long answer: &os; derives its releases from one of two
places. Major, dot-zero, releases, such as 9.0-RELEASE
are branched from the head of the development stream,
commonly referred to as -CURRENT. Minor releases, such
as 6.3-RELEASE or 5.2-RELEASE, have been snapshots of the
active -STABLE branch.
Starting with 4.3-RELEASE, each release also now has its
own branch which can be tracked by people requiring an
extremely conservative rate of development (typically only
security advisories).When a release is about to be made, the branch from
which it will be derived from has to undergo a certain
process. Part of this process is a code freeze. When a
code freeze is initiated, the name of the branch is
changed to reflect that it is about to become a release.
For example, if the branch used to be called 6.2-STABLE,
its name will be changed to 6.3-PRERELEASE to signify the
code freeze and signify that extra pre-release testing
should be happening. Bug fixes can still be committed to
be part of the release. When the source code is in shape
for the release the name will be changed to 6.3-RC to
signify that a release is about to be made from it. Once
in the RC stage, only the most critical bugs found can be
fixed. Once the release (6.3-RELEASE in this example) and
release branch have been made, the branch will be renamed
to 6.3-STABLE.For more information on version numbers and the
various Subversion branches, refer to the Release
Engineering article.I tried to install a new kernel, and the
&man.chflags.1; failed. How do I get around this?Short answer: the security level is
greater than 0. Reboot directly to single-user mode to
install the kernel.Long answer: &os; disallows changing system flags at
security levels greater than 0. To check the current
security level:&prompt.root; sysctl kern.securelevelThe security level cannot be lowered in multi-user
mode, so boot to single-user mode to install the kernel,
or change the security level in
/etc/rc.conf then reboot. See the
&man.init.8; manual page for details on
securelevel, and see
/etc/defaults/rc.conf and the
&man.rc.conf.5; manual page for more information on
rc.conf.I cannot change the time on my system by more than one
second! How do I get around this?Short answer: the system is at a security level
greater than 1. Reboot directly to single-user mode to
change the date.Long answer: &os; disallows changing the time by more
that one second at security levels greater than 1. To
check the security level:&prompt.root; sysctl kern.securelevelThe security level cannot be lowered in multi-user
mode. Either boot to single-user mode to change the date
or change the security level in
/etc/rc.conf and reboot. See the
&man.init.8; manual page for details on
securelevel, and see
/etc/defaults/rc.conf and the
&man.rc.conf.5; manual page for more information on
rc.conf.Why is rpc.statd using 256 MB
of memory?No, there is no memory leak, and it is not using
256 MB of memory. For convenience,
rpc.statd maps an obscene amount of
memory into its address space. There is nothing terribly
wrong with this from a technical standpoint; it just
throws off things like &man.top.1; and &man.ps.1;.&man.rpc.statd.8; maps its status file (resident on
/var) into its address space; to save
worrying about remapping the status file later when it
needs to grow, it maps the status file with a generous
size. This is very evident from the source code, where
one can see that the length argument to &man.mmap.2; is
0x10000000, or one sixteenth of the
address space on an IA32, or exactly 256 MB.Why can I not unset the schg file
flag?The system is running at securelevel greater than 0.
Lower the securelevel and try again. For more
information, see the
FAQ entry on securelevel and
the &man.init.8; manual page.What is vnlru?vnlru flushes and frees vnodes when
the system hits the kern.maxvnodes
limit. This kernel thread sits mostly idle, and only
activates when there is a huge amount of RAM and users are
accessing tens of thousands of tiny files.What do the various memory states displayed by
top mean?Active: pages recently
statistically used.Inactive: pages recently
statistically unused.Laundry: pages recently
statistically unused but known to be dirty, that is,
whose contents needs to be paged out before they can
be reused.Free: pages without data
content, which can be immediately reused.Wired: pages that are fixed
into memory, usually for kernel purposes, but also
sometimes for special use in processes.Pages are most often written to disk (sort of a VM
sync) when they are in the laundry state, but active or
inactive pages can also be synced. This depends upon the
CPU tracking of the modified bit being available, and in
certain situations there can be an advantage for a block
of VM pages to be synced, regardless of the queue they
belong to. In most common cases, it is best to think of
the laundry queue as a queue of relatively unused
pages that might or might not be in the process of being
written to disk. The inactive queue contains a mix of
clean and dirty pages; clean pages near the head of the
queue are reclaimed immediately to alleviate a free page
shortage, and dirty pages are moved to the laundry queue
for deferred processing.There are some other flags (e.g., busy flag or busy
count) that might modify some of the described
rules.How much free memory is available?There are a couple of kinds of free
memory. The most common is the amount of memory
immediately available without reclaiming memory already
in use. That is the size of the free pages queue plus
some other reserved pages. This amount is exported by the
vm.stats.vm.v_free_count
&man.sysctl.8;, shown, for instance, by &man.top.1;.
Another kind of free memory is
the total amount of virtual memory available to userland
processes, which depends on the sum of swap space and
usable memory. Other kinds of free memory
descriptions are also possible, but it is relatively
useless to define these, but rather it is important to
make sure that the paging rate is kept low, and to avoid
running out of swap space.What is /var/empty?/var/empty is a directory that
the &man.sshd.8; program uses when performing privilege
separation. The /var/empty
directory is empty, owned by root and has the
schg flag set. This directory should
not be deleted.I just changed
/etc/newsyslog.conf. How can I check
if it does what I expect?To see what &man.newsyslog.8; will do, use the
following:&prompt.user; newsyslog -nrvvMy time is wrong, how can I change the
timezone?Use &man.tzsetup.8;.The X Window System and Virtual ConsolesWhat is the X Window System?The X Window System (commonly X11)
is the most widely available windowing system capable of
running on &unix; or &unix; like systems, including
&os;. The X.Org
Foundation administers the X
protocol standards, with the current reference
implementation, version 11 release &xorg.version;, so
references are often shortened to
X11.Many implementations are available for different
architectures and operating systems. An implementation of
the server-side code is properly known as an X
server.I want to run &xorg;, how do I go about it?To install &xorg; do one of the following:Use the x11/xorg
meta-port, which builds and installs every &xorg;
component.Use x11/xorg-minimal, which builds
and installs only the necessary &xorg; components.Install &xorg; from &os; packages:&prompt.root; pkg install xorgAfter the installation of &xorg;, follow the
instructions from the X11
Configuration section of the &os;
Handbook.I tried to run X, but I get a
No devices detected. error when I
type startx. What do I do now?The system is probably running at a raised
securelevel. It is not possible to
start X at a raised securelevel because
X requires write access to &man.io.4;. For more
information, see at the &man.init.8; manual page.There are two solutions to the problem: set the
securelevel back down to zero or run
&man.xdm.1; (or an alternative display manager) at boot
time before the securelevel is
raised.See for more information
about running &man.xdm.1; at boot time.Why does my mouse not work with X?When using &man.vt.4;, the default console
driver, &os; can be configured to support a mouse pointer
on each virtual screen. To avoid conflicting with X,
&man.vt.4; supports a virtual device called
/dev/sysmouse. All mouse events
received from the real mouse device are written to the
&man.sysmouse.4; device via &man.moused.8;. To use the
mouse on one or more virtual consoles,
and use X, see and set up
&man.moused.8;.Then edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and
make sure the following lines exist:Section "InputDevice"
Option "Protocol" "SysMouse"
Option "Device" "/dev/sysmouse"
.....Starting with &xorg; version 7.4, the
InputDevice sections in
xorg.conf are ignored in favor of
autodetected devices. To restore the old behavior, add
the following line to the ServerLayout
or ServerFlags section:Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"Some people prefer to use
/dev/mouse under X. To make this
work, /dev/mouse should be linked
to /dev/sysmouse (see
&man.sysmouse.4;) by adding the following line to
/etc/devfs.conf (see
&man.devfs.conf.5;):link sysmouse mouseThis link can be created by restarting &man.devfs.5;
with the following command (as root):&prompt.root; service devfs restartMy mouse has a fancy wheel. Can I use it in X?Yes, if X is configured for a 5 button mouse. To
do this, add the lines Buttons 5
and ZAxisMapping 4 5 to the
InputDevice section of
/etc/X11/xorg.conf, as seen in this
example:Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/sysmouse"
Option "Buttons" "5"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSectionThe mouse can be enabled in
Emacs by adding these
lines to ~/.emacs:;; wheel mouse
(global-set-key [mouse-4] 'scroll-down)
(global-set-key [mouse-5] 'scroll-up)My laptop has a Synaptics touchpad. Can I use it in
X?Yes, after configuring a few things to make
it work.In order to use the Xorg synaptics driver,
first remove moused_enable from
rc.conf.To enable synaptics, add the following line to
/boot/loader.conf:hw.psm.synaptics_support="1"Add the following to
/etc/X11/xorg.conf:Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Touchpad0"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "Protocol" "psm"
Option "Device" "/dev/psm0"
EndSectionAnd be sure to add the following into the
ServerLayout section:InputDevice "Touchpad0" "SendCoreEvents"How do I use remote X displays?For security reasons, the default setting is to not
allow a machine to remotely open a window.To enable this feature, start
X with the optional
argument:&prompt.user; startx -listen_tcpWhat is a virtual console and how do I make
more?Virtual consoles provide
several simultaneous sessions on the same machine without
doing anything complicated like setting up a network or
running X.When the system starts, it will display a login prompt
on the monitor after displaying all the boot messages.
Type in your login name and password to
start working on the first virtual
console.To start another
session, perhaps to look at documentation for a program
or to read mail while waiting for an
FTP transfer to finish,
hold down Alt and press
F2. This will display the login prompt
for the second virtual
console. To go back to the
original session, press AltF1.The default &os; installation has eight virtual
consoles enabled. AltF1,
AltF2,
AltF3,
and so on will switch between these virtual
consoles.To enable more of virtual consoles, edit
/etc/ttys (see &man.ttys.5;) and add
entries for ttyv8 to
ttyvc, after the comment on
Virtual terminals:# Edit the existing entry for ttyv8 in /etc/ttys and change
# "off" to "on".
ttyv8 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" xterm on secure
ttyv9 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" xterm on secure
ttyva "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" xterm on secure
ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" xterm on secureThe more virtual
terminals, the more resources that are used. This can be
problematic on systems with 8 MB RAM or less.
Consider changing secure to
insecure.In order to run an X server, at least one virtual
terminal must be left to off for it
to use. This means that only eleven of the Alt-function
keys can be used as virtual consoles so that one is left
for the X server.For example, to run X and eleven virtual consoles, the
setting for virtual terminal 12 should be:ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" xterm off secureThe easiest way to activate the
virtual consoles is to reboot.How do I access the virtual consoles from X?Use CtrlAltFn
to switch back to a virtual console. Press CtrlAltF1
to return to the first virtual console.Once at a text console, use
AltFn
to move between them.To return to the X session, switch to the
virtual console running X. If X was started from the
command line using startx,
the X session will attach to the next unused virtual
console, not the text console from which it was invoked.
For eight active virtual terminals, X will
run on the ninth, so use AltF9.How do I start XDM on
boot?There are two schools of thought on how to start
&man.xdm.1;. One school starts xdm
from /etc/ttys (see &man.ttys.5;)
using the supplied example, while the other runs
xdm from
rc.local (see &man.rc.8;) or from an
X script in
/usr/local/etc/rc.d. Both are
equally valid, and one may work in situations where the
other does not. In both cases the result is the same: X
will pop up a graphical login prompt.The &man.ttys.5; method has the advantage of
documenting which vty X will start on and passing the
responsibility of restarting the X server on logout to
&man.init.8;. The &man.rc.8; method makes it easy to
killxdm if there is
a problem starting the X server.If loaded from &man.rc.8;, xdm
should be started without any arguments.
xdm must start
after &man.getty.8; runs, or else
getty and xdm will
conflict, locking out the console. The best way around
this is to have the script sleep 10 seconds or so then
launch xdm.When starting xdm from
/etc/ttys, there still is a chance of
conflict between xdm and &man.getty.8;.
One way to avoid this is to add the vt
number in
/usr/local/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers::0 local /usr/local/bin/X vt4The above example will direct the X server to run in
/dev/ttyv3. Note the number is
offset by one. The X server counts the vty from one,
whereas the &os; kernel numbers the vty from zero.Why do I get Couldn't open
console when I run
xconsole?When X is started with
startx, the permissions on
/dev/console will
not get changed, resulting in things
like xterm -C and
xconsole not working.This is because of the way console permissions are set
by default. On a multi-user system, one does not
necessarily want just any user to be able to write on the
system console. For users who are logging directly onto a
machine with a VTY, the &man.fbtab.5; file exists to solve
such problems.In a nutshell, make sure an uncommented line of the
form is in /etc/fbtab (see
&man.fbtab.5;):/dev/ttyv0 0600 /dev/consoleIt will ensure that whomever logs in on
/dev/ttyv0 will own the
console.Why does my PS/2 mouse misbehave under X?The mouse and the mouse driver may have become out of
synchronization. In rare cases, the driver may also
erroneously report synchronization errors:psmintr: out of sync (xxxx != yyyy)If this happens, disable the synchronization check
code by setting the driver flags for the PS/2 mouse driver
to 0x100. This can be easiest achieved
by adding hint.psm.0.flags="0x100" to
/boot/loader.conf and
rebooting.How do I reverse the mouse buttons?Type
xmodmap -e "pointer = 3 2 1". Add this
command to ~/.xinitrc or
~/.xsession to make it happen
automatically.How do I install a splash screen and where do I find
them?The detailed answer for this question can be found in
the Boot
Time Splash Screens section of the &os;
Handbook.Can I use the Windows keys on my
keyboard in X?Yes. Use &man.xmodmap.1; to
define which functions the keys should perform.Assuming all Windows keyboards are
standard, the keycodes for these three keys are the
following:115 —
Windows key, between the left-hand
Ctrl and Alt
keys116 —
Windows key, to the right of
AltGr117 —
Menu, to the left of the right-hand
CtrlTo have the left Windows key print a
comma, try this.&prompt.root; xmodmap -e "keycode 115 = comma"To have the Windows key-mappings
enabled automatically every time X is started, either put
the xmodmap commands in
~/.xinitrc or, preferably, create
a ~/.xmodmaprc and include the
xmodmap options, one per line, then add
the following line to
~/.xinitrc:xmodmap $HOME/.xmodmaprcFor example, to map the 3 keys to be
F13, F14, and
F15, respectively. This would make it
easy to map them to useful functions within applications
or the window manager.To do this, put the following in
~/.xmodmaprc.keycode 115 = F13
keycode 116 = F14
keycode 117 = F15For the x11-wm/fvwm2 desktop
manager, one could map the keys so that
F13 iconifies or de-iconifies the
window the cursor is in, F14 brings the
window the cursor is in to the front or, if it is already
at the front, pushes it to the back, and
F15 pops up the main Workplace
menu even if the cursor is not on the
desktop, which is useful when no part of
the desktop is visible.The following entries in
~/.fvwmrc implement the
aforementioned setup:Key F13 FTIWS A Iconify
Key F14 FTIWS A RaiseLower
Key F15 A A Menu Workplace NopHow can I get 3D hardware acceleration for
&opengl;?The availability of 3D acceleration depends on the
version of &xorg; and the type of video
chip. For an nVidia chip, use
the binary drivers provided for &os; by installing one of
the following ports:The latest versions of nVidia cards are supported
by the x11/nvidia-driver
port.Older drivers are available as
x11/nvidia-driver-###nVidia provides detailed information on which
card is supported by which driver on their web site: http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_32667.html.For Matrox G200/G400, check the
x11-drivers/xf86-video-mga
port.For ATI Rage 128 and Radeon see
&man.ati.4x;, &man.r128.4x; and &man.radeon.4x;.NetworkingWhere can I get information on diskless
booting?Diskless booting means that the &os;
box is booted over a network, and reads the necessary
files from a server instead of its hard disk. For full
details, see the
Handbook entry on diskless booting.Can a &os; box be used as a dedicated network
router?Yes. Refer to the Handbook entry on advanced
networking, specifically the section on routing
and gateways.Does &os; support NAT or Masquerading?Yes. For instructions on how to use NAT over a PPP
connection, see the Handbook
entry on PPP. To use NAT over
some other sort of network connection, look at the
natd
section of the Handbook.How can I set up Ethernet aliases?If the alias is on the same subnet as an address
already configured on the interface, add
netmask 0xffffffff to this
command:&prompt.root; ifconfig ed0 alias 192.0.2.2 netmask 0xffffffffOtherwise, specify the network address and
netmask as usual:&prompt.root; ifconfig ed0 alias 172.16.141.5 netmask 0xffffff00More information can be found in the &os; Handbook.Why can I not NFS-mount from a &linux; box?Some versions of the &linux; NFS code only accept
mount requests from a privileged port; try to issue the
following command:&prompt.root; mount -o -P linuxbox:/blah /mntWhy does mountd keep telling me it
can't change attributes and that I
have a bad exports list on my &os;
NFS server?The most frequent problem is not understanding the
correct format of /etc/exports.
Review &man.exports.5; and the NFS
entry in the Handbook, especially the section on configuring
NFS.How do I enable IP multicast support?Install the net/mrouted package
or port and add
mrouted_enable="YES" to
/etc/rc.conf start this service at
boot time.Why do I have to use the FQDN for hosts on my
site?See the answer in the &os; Handbook.Why do I get an error, Permission
denied, for all networking
operations?If the kernel is compiled with the
IPFIREWALL option, be aware
that the default policy is to deny all packets that are
not explicitly allowed.If the firewall is unintentionally misconfigured,
restore network operability by
typing the following as root:&prompt.root; ipfw add 65534 allow all from any to anyConsider setting
firewall_type="open" in
/etc/rc.conf.For further information on configuring this
firewall, see the Handbook
chapter.Why is my ipfwfwd
rule to redirect a service to another machine not
working?Possibly because network address translation (NAT) is
needed instead of just forwarding packets. A
fwd rule only forwards packets, it does not
actually change the data inside the packet. Consider this
rule:01000 fwd 10.0.0.1 from any to foo 21When a packet with a destination address of
foo arrives at the machine with
this rule, the packet is forwarded to
10.0.0.1, but it still has the
destination address of foo.
The destination address of the packet is
not changed to
10.0.0.1. Most machines would
probably drop a packet that they receive with a
destination address that is not their own. Therefore,
using a fwd rule does not often work the
way the user expects. This behavior is a feature and not
a bug.See the FAQ about
redirecting services, the &man.natd.8; manual, or
one of the several port redirecting utilities in the Ports
Collection for a correct way to do this.How can I redirect service requests from one machine
to another?FTP and other service requests can be redirected with
the sysutils/socket package or port.
Replace the entry for the service in
/etc/inetd.conf to call
socket, as seen in this example for
ftpd:ftp stream tcp nowait nobody /usr/local/bin/socket socket ftp.example.comftpwhere ftp.example.com and
ftp are the host and port to
redirect to, respectively.Where can I get a bandwidth management tool?There are three bandwidth management tools available
for &os;. &man.dummynet.4; is integrated into &os; as
part of &man.ipfw.4;. ALTQ
has been integrated into &os; as part of &man.pf.4;.
Bandwidth Manager from Emerging
Technologies is a commercial product.Why do I get /dev/bpf0: device not
configured?The running application requires the Berkeley
Packet Filter (&man.bpf.4;), but it was removed from a
custom kernel. Add this to the kernel config file and
build a new kernel:device bpf # Berkeley Packet FilterHow do I mount a disk from a &windows; machine that is
on my network, like smbmount in &linux;?Use the SMBFS toolset. It
includes a set of kernel modifications and a set of
userland programs. The programs and information are
available as &man.mount.smbfs.8; in the base
system.What are these messages about: Limiting
icmp/open port/closed port response in my
log files?This kernel message indicates that some activity is
provoking it to send a large amount of ICMP or TCP reset
(RST) responses. ICMP responses are
often generated as a result of attempted connections to
unused UDP ports. TCP resets are generated as a result of
attempted connections to unopened TCP ports. Among
others, these are the kinds of activities which may cause
these messages:Brute-force denial of service (DoS) attacks (as
opposed to single-packet attacks which exploit a
specific vulnerability).Port scans which attempt to connect to a large
number of ports (as opposed to only trying a few
well-known ports).The first number in the message indicates how many
packets the kernel would have sent if the limit was not in
place, and the second indicates the limit. This limit
is controlled using
net.inet.icmp.icmplim. This example
sets the limit to 300
packets per second:&prompt.root; sysctl net.inet.icmp.icmplim=300To disable these messages
without disabling response
limiting, use
net.inet.icmp.icmplim_output
to disable the output:&prompt.root; sysctl net.inet.icmp.icmplim_output=0Finally, to disable response limiting completely,
set net.inet.icmp.icmplim to
0. Disabling response limiting is
discouraged for the reasons listed above.What are these arp: unknown hardware
address format error messages?This means that some device on the local Ethernet is
using a MAC address in a format that &os; does not
recognize. This is probably caused by someone
experimenting with an Ethernet card somewhere else on the
network. This is most commonly seen on cable modem
networks. It is harmless, and should not affect the
performance of the &os; system.Why do I keep seeing messages like:
192.168.0.10 is on
fxp1 but got reply from 00:15:17:67:cf:82 on
rl0, and how do I disable it?Because a packet is coming from outside the network
unexpectedly. To disable them, set
net.link.ether.inet.log_arp_wrong_iface
to 0.How do I compile an IPv6 only kernel?Configure your kernel with these settings:
include GENERIC
ident GENERIC-IPV6ONLY
makeoptions MKMODULESENV+="WITHOUT_INET_SUPPORT="
nooptions INET
nodevice greSecurityWhat is a sandbox?Sandbox is a security term. It can
mean two things:A process which is placed inside a set of virtual
walls that are designed to prevent someone who breaks
into the process from being able to break into the
wider system.The process is only able to run inside the walls.
Since nothing the process does in regards to executing
code is supposed to be able to breach the walls, a
detailed audit of its code is not needed in order to
be able to say certain things about its
security.The walls might be a user ID, for example.
This is the definition used in the &man.security.7;
and &man.named.8; man pages.Take the ntalk service, for
example (see &man.inetd.8;). This service used to run
as user ID root. Now it runs as
user ID tty. The tty user is a sandbox
designed to make it more difficult for someone who has
successfully hacked into the system via
ntalk from being able to hack
beyond that user ID.A process which is placed inside a simulation of
the machine. It means that someone who is able to
break into the process may believe that he can break
into the wider machine but is, in fact, only breaking
into a simulation of that machine and not modifying
any real data.The most common way to accomplish this is to build
a simulated environment in a subdirectory and then run
the processes in that directory chrooted so that
/ for that process is this
directory, not the real / of the
system).Another common use is to mount an underlying file
system read-only and then create a file system layer
on top of it that gives a process a seemingly
writeable view into that file system. The process may
believe it is able to write to those files, but only
the process sees the effects — other processes
in the system do not, necessarily.An attempt is made to make this sort of sandbox so
transparent that the user (or hacker) does not realize
that he is sitting in it.&unix; implements two core sandboxes. One is at the
process level, and one is at the userid level.Every &unix; process is completely firewalled off from
every other &unix; process. One process cannot modify the
address space of another.A &unix; process is owned by a particular userid. If
the user ID is not the root user, it serves to
firewall the process off from processes owned by other
users. The user ID is also used to firewall off
on-disk data.What is securelevel?securelevel is a security
mechanism implemented in the kernel. When the securelevel
is positive, the kernel restricts certain tasks; not even
the superuser (root) is allowed to do
them. The securelevel mechanism limits the ability
to:Unset certain file flags, such as
schg (the system immutable
flag).Write to kernel memory via
/dev/mem and
/dev/kmem.Load kernel modules.Alter firewall rules.To check the status of the securelevel on a running
system:&prompt.root; sysctl -n kern.securelevelThe output contains the current value of the
securelevel. If it is greater than 0, at
least some of the securelevel's protections are
enabled.The securelevel of a running system cannot be lowered
as this would defeat its purpose. If a task requires that
the securelevel be non-positive, change the
kern_securelevel and
kern_securelevel_enable variables in
/etc/rc.conf and reboot.For more information on securelevel and the specific
things all the levels do, consult &man.init.8;.Securelevel is not a silver bullet; it has many
known deficiencies. More often than not, it provides a
false sense of security.One of its biggest problems is that in order for it
to be at all effective, all files used in the boot
process up until the securelevel is set must be
protected. If an attacker can get the system to execute
their code prior to the securelevel being set (which
happens quite late in the boot process since some things
the system must do at start-up cannot be done at an
elevated securelevel), its protections are invalidated.
While this task of protecting all files used in the boot
process is not technically impossible, if it is
achieved, system maintenance will become a nightmare
since one would have to take the system down, at least
to single-user mode, to modify a configuration
file.This point and others are often discussed on the
mailing lists, particularly the &a.security;.
Search the archives here
for an extensive discussion. A more fine-grained
mechanism is preferred.What is this UID 0 toor account? Have I been
compromised?Do not worry. toor is an
alternative superuser account, where toor
is root spelled backwards. It is intended to be used with
a non-standard shell so the default shell for root does not need to
change. This is important as shells which are not part of
the base distribution, but are instead installed from
ports or packages, are installed in
/usr/local/bin which, by default,
resides on a different file system. If root's shell is located in
/usr/local/bin and the
file system
containing /usr/local/bin) is not
mounted, root will not be able to
log in to fix a problem and will have to reboot into
single-user mode in order to enter the path to a
shell.Some people use toor for day-to-day
root tasks with
a non-standard shell, leaving root, with a standard
shell, for single-user mode or emergencies. By default, a
user cannot log in using toor as it does not have a
password, so log in as root and set a password
for toor before
using it to login.Serial CommunicationsThis section answers common questions about serial
communications with &os;.How do I get the boot: prompt to show on the serial
console?See this
section of the Handbook.How do I tell if &os; found my serial ports or modem
cards?As the &os; kernel boots, it will probe for the serial
ports for which the kernel is configured.
Either watch the boot messages closely
or run this command after the system is up and
running:&prompt.user; grep -E '^(sio|uart)[0-9]' < /var/run/dmesg.boot
sio0: <16550A-compatible COM port> port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on acpi0
sio0: type 16550A
sio1: <16550A-compatible COM port> port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on acpi0
sio1: type 16550AThis example shows two serial ports. The first is on
IRQ4, port address
0x3f8, and has a 16550A-type UART chip.
The second uses the same kind of chip but is on
IRQ3 and is at port address
0x2f8. Internal modem cards are
treated just like serial ports, except that they
always have a modem attached to the
port.The GENERIC kernel includes
support for two serial ports using the same IRQ and port
address settings in the above example. If these settings
are not right for the system, or if there are more modem
cards or serial ports than the kernel is
configured for, reconfigure using the instructions in
building a kernel
for more details.How do I access the serial ports on &os;? (x86-specific)The third serial port, sio2,
or COM3,
is on /dev/cuad2 for dial-out
devices, and on /dev/ttyd2 for
dial-in devices. What is the difference between these two
classes of devices?When
opening /dev/ttydX in blocking mode,
a process will wait for the corresponding
cuadX device to become inactive, and
then wait for the carrier detect line to go active. When
the cuadX device is opened, it makes
sure the serial port is not already in use by the
ttydX device. If the port is
available, it steals it from the
ttydX device. Also, the
cuadX device does not care about
carrier detect. With this scheme and an auto-answer
modem, remote users can log in and local users can still
dial out with the same modem and the system will take care
of all the conflicts.How do I enable support for a multi-port serial
card?The section on kernel configuration provides
information about configuring the kernel. For a
multi-port serial card, place an &man.sio.4; line for each
serial port on the card in the &man.device.hints.5; file.
But place the IRQ specifiers on only one of the entries.
All of the ports on the card should share one IRQ. For
consistency, use the last serial port to specify the IRQ.
Also, specify the following option in the kernel
configuration file:options COM_MULTIPORTThe following /boot/device.hints
example is for an AST 4-port serial card on
IRQ 12:hint.sio.4.at="isa"
hint.sio.4.port="0x2a0"
hint.sio.4.flags="0x701"
hint.sio.5.at="isa"
hint.sio.5.port="0x2a8"
hint.sio.5.flags="0x701"
hint.sio.6.at="isa"
hint.sio.6.port="0x2b0"
hint.sio.6.flags="0x701"
hint.sio.7.at="isa"
hint.sio.7.port="0x2b8"
hint.sio.7.flags="0x701"
hint.sio.7.irq="12"The flags indicate that the master port has minor
number 7 (0x700),
and all the ports share an IRQ
(0x001).Can I set the default serial parameters for a
port?See the Serial
Communications section in the &os;
Handbook.Why can I not run tip or
cu?The built-in &man.tip.1; and
&man.cu.1; utilities can only access the
/var/spool/lock directory via user
uucp and group
dialer.
Use the dialer group to control
who has access to the modem or remote systems by adding
user accounts to dialer.Alternatively, everyone can be configured to run
&man.tip.1; and &man.cu.1; by typing:&prompt.root; chmod 4511 /usr/bin/cu
&prompt.root; chmod 4511 /usr/bin/tipMiscellaneous Questions&os; uses a lot of swap space even when the computer
has free memory left. Why?&os; will proactively move entirely idle, unused pages
of main memory into swap in order to make more main memory
available for active use. This heavy use of swap is
balanced by using the extra free memory for
caching.Note that while &os; is proactive in this regard, it
does not arbitrarily decide to swap pages when the system
is truly idle. Thus, the system will not be all
paged out after leaving it
idle overnight.Why does top show very little free
memory even when I have very few programs running?The simple answer is that free memory is wasted
memory. Any memory that programs do not actively
allocate is used within the &os; kernel as disk cache.
The values shown by &man.top.1; labeled as
Inact and Laundry
are cached data at different
aging levels. This cached data means the system does not
have to access a slow disk again for data it has accessed
recently, thus increasing overall performance. In
general, a low value shown for Free
memory in &man.top.1; is good, provided it is not
very low.Why will chmod not change the
permissions on symlinks?Symlinks do not have permissions, and by default,
&man.chmod.1; will follow symlinks to change the
permissions on the source file, if possible. For
the file, foo with a symlink named
bar, this command
will always succeed.&prompt.user; chmod g-w barHowever, the permissions on bar
will not have changed.When changing modes of the file hierarchies rooted in
the files instead of the files themselves, use
either or together
with to make this work. See
&man.chmod.1; and &man.symlink.7; for more
information. does a
recursive &man.chmod.1;. Be
careful about specifying directories or symlinks to
directories to &man.chmod.1;. To change the
permissions of a directory referenced by a symlink, use
&man.chmod.1; without any options and follow the symlink
with a trailing slash (/). For
example, if foo is a symlink to
directory bar, to
change the permissions of foo
(actually bar), do
something like:&prompt.user; chmod 555 foo/With the trailing slash, &man.chmod.1; will follow
the symlink, foo, to change the
permissions of the directory,
bar.Can I run DOS binaries under &os;?Yes. A DOS emulation program,
emulators/doscmd, is available in the
&os; Ports Collection.If doscmd will not suffice,
emulators/pcemu
emulates an 8088 and enough BIOS services to run many DOS
text-mode applications. It requires the X Window
System.The Ports Collection also has
emulators/dosbox. The main focus of
this application is emulating old DOS games using the
local file system for files.What do I need to do to translate a &os; document into
my native language?See the Translation
FAQ in the &os; Documentation
Project Primer.Why does my email to any address at FreeBSD.org
bounce?The FreeBSD.org mail
system implements some Postfix
checks on incoming mail and rejects mail that is either
from misconfigured relays or otherwise appears likely to
be spam. Some of the specific requirements are:The IP address of the SMTP client must
"reverse-resolve" to a forward confirmed
hostname.The fully-qualified hostname given in the
SMTP conversation (either HELO or EHLO) must resolve
to the IP address of the client.Other advice to help mail reach its destination
include:Mail should be sent in plain text, and messages
sent to mailing lists should generally be no more than
200KB in length.Avoid excessive cross posting. Choose
one mailing list which seems most
relevant and send it there.If you still have trouble with email infrastructure at
FreeBSD.org,
send a note with the details to
postmaster@freebsd.org; Include a
date/time interval so that logs may be reviewed —
and note that we only keep one week's worth of mail logs.
(Be sure to specify the time zone or offset from
UTC.)Where can I find a free &os; account?While &os; does not provide open access to any of
their servers, others do provide open access &unix;
systems. The charge varies and limited services may be
available.Arbornet,
Inc, also known as M-Net,
has been providing open access to &unix; systems since
1983. Starting on an Altos running System III, the site
switched to BSD/OS in 1991. In June of 2000, the site
switched again to &os;. M-Net can be
accessed via telnet and
SSH and provides basic access
to the entire &os; software suite. However, network
access is limited to members and patrons who donate to the
system, which is run as a non-profit organization.
M-Net also provides an bulletin board
system and interactive chat.What is the cute little red guy's name?He does not have one, and is just called the
BSD daemon. If you insist upon using a name,
call him beastie. Note that
beastie is pronounced
BSD.More about the BSD daemon is available on his home
page.Can I use the BSD daemon image?Perhaps. The BSD daemon is copyrighted by Marshall
Kirk McKusick. Check his Statement
on the Use of the BSD Daemon Figure for detailed
usage terms.In summary, the image can be used in a tasteful
manner, for personal use, so long as appropriate credit
is given. Before using the logo commercially, contact
&a.mckusick.email; for permission. More details are
available on the BSD
Daemon's home page.Do you have any BSD daemon images I could use?Xfig and eps drawings are available under
/usr/share/examples/BSD_daemon/.I have seen an acronym or other term on the mailing
lists and I do not understand what it means. Where should
I look?Refer to the &os;
Glossary.Why should I care what color the bikeshed is?The really, really short answer is that you should
not. The somewhat longer answer is that just because you
are capable of building a bikeshed does not mean you
should stop others from building one just because you do
not like the color they plan to paint it. This is a
metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every
little feature just because you know enough to do so.
Some people have commented that the amount of noise
generated by a change is inversely proportional to the
complexity of the change.The longer and more complete answer is that after a
very long argument about whether &man.sleep.1; should take
fractional second arguments, &a.phk.email; posted a long
message entitled A
bike shed (any color will do) on greener
grass.... The appropriate portions of
that message are quoted below.
&a.phk.email; on &a.hackers.name;, October 2,
1999What is it about this bike shed?
Some of you have asked me.It is a long story, or rather it is an old story,
but it is quite short actually. C. Northcote Parkinson
wrote a book in the early 1960s, called
Parkinson's Law, which contains a lot of
insight into the dynamics of management.[snip a bit of commentary on the
book]In the specific example involving the bike shed, the
other vital component is an atomic power-plant, I guess
that illustrates the age of the book.Parkinson shows how you can go into the board of
directors and get approval for building a multi-million
or even billion dollar atomic power plant, but if you
want to build a bike shed you will be tangled up in
endless discussions.Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic
plant is so vast, so expensive and so complicated that
people cannot grasp it, and rather than try, they fall
back on the assumption that somebody else checked all
the details before it got this far. Richard P. Feynmann
gives a couple of interesting, and very much to the
point, examples relating to Los Alamos in his
books.A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one
of those over a weekend, and still have time to watch
the game on TV. So no matter how well prepared, no
matter how reasonable you are with your proposal,
somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing
his job, that he is paying attention, that he is
here.In Denmark we call it setting your
fingerprint. It is about personal pride and
prestige, it is about being able to point somewhere and
say There! I did
that. It is a strong trait in politicians, but
present in most people given the chance. Just think
about footsteps in wet cement.
The &os; FunniesHow cool is &os;?Q. Has anyone done any temperature testing while
running &os;? I know &linux; runs cooler than DOS, but
have never seen a mention of &os;. It seems to run really
hot.A. No, but we have done numerous taste tests on
blindfolded volunteers who have also had 250 micrograms of
LSD-25 administered beforehand. 35% of the volunteers
said that &os; tasted sort of orange, whereas &linux;
tasted like purple haze. Neither group mentioned any
significant variances in temperature. We eventually had
to throw the results of this survey out entirely anyway
when we found that too many volunteers were wandering out
of the room during the tests, thus skewing the results.
We think most of the volunteers are at Apple now, working
on their new scratch and sniff GUI. It is
a funny old business we are in!Seriously, &os; uses the HLT (halt)
instruction when the system is idle thus lowering its
energy consumption and therefore the heat it generates.
Also if you have ACPI (Advanced
Configuration and Power Interface) configured, then &os;
can also put the CPU into a low power mode.Who is scratching in my memory banks??Q. Is there anything odd that &os;
does when compiling the kernel which would cause the
memory to make a scratchy sound? When compiling (and for
a brief moment after recognizing the floppy drive upon
startup, as well), a strange scratchy sound emanates from
what appears to be the memory banks.A. Yes! You will see frequent references to
daemons in the BSD documentation, and what
most people do not know is that this refers to genuine,
non-corporeal entities that now possess your computer.
The scratchy sound coming from your memory is actually
high-pitched whispering exchanged among the daemons as
they best decide how to deal with various system
administration tasks.If the noise gets to you, a good fdisk
/mbr from DOS will get rid of them, but do not
be surprised if they react adversely and try to stop you.
In fact, if at any point during the exercise you hear the
satanic voice of Bill Gates coming from the built-in
speaker, take off running and do not ever look back!
Freed from the counterbalancing influence of the BSD
daemons, the twin demons of DOS and &windows; are often
able to re-assert total control over your machine to the
eternal damnation of your soul. Now that you know, given
a choice you would probably prefer to get used to the
scratchy noises, no?How many &os; hackers does it take to change a
lightbulb?One thousand, one hundred and sixty-nine:Twenty-three to complain to -CURRENT about the lights
being out;Four to claim that it is a configuration problem, and
that such matters really belong on -questions;Three to submit PRs about it, one of which is misfiled
under doc and consists only of it's
dark;One to commit an untested lightbulb which breaks
buildworld, then back it out five minutes later;Eight to flame the PR originators for not including
patches in their PRs;Five to complain about buildworld being broken;Thirty-one to answer that it works for them, and they
must have updated at a bad time;One to post a patch for a new lightbulb to
-hackers;One to complain that he had patches for this three
years ago, but when he sent them to -CURRENT they were
just ignored, and he has had bad experiences with the PR
system; besides, the proposed new lightbulb is
non-reflexive;Thirty-seven to scream that lightbulbs do not belong
in the base system, that committers have no right to do
things like this without consulting the Community, and
WHAT IS -CORE DOING ABOUT IT!?Two hundred to complain about the color of the bicycle
shed;Three to point out that the patch breaks
&man.style.9;;Seventeen to complain that the proposed new lightbulb
is under GPL;Five hundred and eighty-six to engage in a flame war
about the comparative advantages of the GPL, the BSD
license, the MIT license, the NPL, and the personal
hygiene of unnamed FSF founders;Seven to move various portions of the thread to -chat
and -advocacy;One to commit the suggested lightbulb, even though it
shines dimmer than the old one;Two to back it out with a furious flame of a commit
message, arguing that &os; is better off in the dark than
with a dim lightbulb;Forty-six to argue vociferously about the backing out
of the dim lightbulb and demanding a statement from
-core;Eleven to request a smaller lightbulb so it will fit
their Tamagotchi if we ever decide to port &os; to that
platform;Seventy-three to complain about the SNR on -hackers
and -chat and unsubscribe in protest;Thirteen to post unsubscribe,
How do I unsubscribe?, or Please
remove me from the list, followed by the usual
footer;One to commit a working lightbulb while everybody is
too busy flaming everybody else to notice;Thirty-one to point out that the new lightbulb would
shine 0.364% brighter if compiled with TenDRA (although it
will have to be reshaped into a cube), and that &os;
should therefore switch to TenDRA instead of GCC;One to complain that the new lightbulb lacks
fairings;Nine (including the PR originators) to ask what
is MFC?;Fifty-seven to complain about the lights being out two
weeks after the bulb has been changed.&a.nik.email; adds:I was laughing quite hard at
this.And then I thought, Hang on,
shouldn't there be '1 to document it.' in that list
somewhere?And then I was enlightened
:-)&a.tabthorpe.email; says:
None, real &os; hackers are
not afraid of the dark!Where does data written to
/dev/null go?It goes into a special data sink in the CPU where it
is converted to heat which is vented through the heatsink
/ fan assembly. This is why CPU cooling is increasingly
important; as people get used to faster processors, they
become careless with their data and more and more of it
ends up in /dev/null, overheating
their CPUs. If you delete /dev/null
(which effectively disables the CPU data sink) your CPU
may run cooler but your system will quickly become
constipated with all that excess data and start to behave
erratically. If you have a fast network connection you
can cool down your CPU by reading data out of
/dev/random and sending it off
somewhere; however you run the risk of overheating your
network connection and / or angering
your ISP, as most of the data will end up getting
converted to heat by their equipment, but they generally
have good cooling, so if you do not overdo it you should
be OK.Paul Robinson adds:There are other methods. As every good sysadmin
knows, it is part of standard practice to send data to the
screen of interesting variety to keep all the pixies that
make up your picture happy. Screen pixies (commonly
mis-typed or re-named as pixels) are
categorized by the type of hat they wear (red, green or
blue) and will hide or appear (thereby showing the color
of their hat) whenever they receive a little piece of
food. Video cards turn data into pixie-food, and then
send them to the pixies — the more expensive the
card, the better the food, so the better behaved the
pixies are. They also need constant stimulation —
this is why screen savers exist.To take your suggestions further, you could just throw
the random data to console, thereby letting the pixies
consume it. This causes no heat to be produced at all,
keeps the pixies happy and gets rid of your data quite
quickly, even if it does make things look a bit messy on
your screen.Incidentally, as an ex-admin of a large ISP who
experienced many problems attempting to maintain a stable
temperature in a server room, I would strongly discourage
people sending the data they do not want out to the
network. The fairies who do the packet switching and
routing get annoyed by it as well.My colleague sits at the computer too much, how
can I prank her?Install games/sl and
wait for her to mistype sl for
ls.Advanced TopicsHow can I learn more about &os;'s internals?See the &os;
Architecture Handbook.Additionally, much general &unix; knowledge is
directly applicable to &os;.How can I contribute to &os;? What can I do to
help?We accept all types of contributions: documentation,
code, and even art. See the article on Contributing
to &os; for specific advice on how to do
this.And thanks for the thought!What are snapshots and releases?There are currently &rel.numbranch; active/semi-active
branches in the &os; Subversion
Repository. (Earlier branches are only changed
very rarely, which is why there are only &rel.numbranch;
active branches of development):&rel2.releng; AKA
&rel2.stable;&rel.releng; AKA
&rel.stable;&rel.head.releng; AKA
-CURRENT AKA
&rel.head;HEAD is not an actual branch tag.
It is a symbolic constant for
the current, non-branched development
stream known as
-CURRENT.Right now, -CURRENT is the
&rel.head.relx; development stream; the &rel.stable;
branch, &rel.releng;, forked off from
-CURRENT in &rel.relengdate; and the
&rel2.stable; branch, &rel2.releng;, forked off from
-CURRENT in &rel2.relengdate;.How can I make the most of the data I see when my
kernel panics?Here is typical kernel panic:Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode
fault virtual address = 0x40
fault code = supervisor read, page not present
instruction pointer = 0x8:0xf014a7e5
stack pointer = 0x10:0xf4ed6f24
frame pointer = 0x10:0xf4ed6f28
code segment = base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b
= DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1
processor eflags = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0
current process = 80 (mount)
interrupt mask =
trap number = 12
panic: page faultThis message is not enough. While the instruction
pointer value is important, it is also configuration
dependent as it varies depending on the kernel image.
If it is a GENERIC kernel
image from one of the snapshots, it is possible for
somebody else to track down the offending function, but
for a custom kernel, only you can tell us where the fault
occurred.To proceed:Write down the instruction pointer value. Note
that the 0x8: part at the beginning
is not significant in this case: it is the
0xf0xxxxxx part that we
want.When the system reboots, do the following:&prompt.user; nm -n kernel.that.caused.the.panic | grep f0xxxxxxwhere f0xxxxxx is the
instruction pointer value. The odds are you will not
get an exact match since the symbols in the kernel
symbol table are for the entry points of functions and
the instruction pointer address will be somewhere
inside a function, not at the start. If you do not
get an exact match, omit the last digit from the
instruction pointer value and try again:&prompt.user; nm -n kernel.that.caused.the.panic | grep f0xxxxxIf that does not yield any results, chop off
another digit. Repeat until there is some sort of
output. The result will be a possible list of
functions which caused the panic. This is a less than
exact mechanism for tracking down the point of
failure, but it is better than nothing.However, the best way to track down the cause of a
panic is by capturing a crash dump, then using
&man.kgdb.1; to generate a stack trace on the crash
dump.In any case, the method is this:Make sure that the following line is included in
the kernel configuration file:makeoptions DEBUG=-g # Build kernel with gdb(1) debug symbolsChange to the /usr/src
directory:&prompt.root; cd /usr/srcCompile the kernel:&prompt.root; make buildkernel KERNCONF=MYKERNELWait for &man.make.1; to finish compiling.&prompt.root; make installkernel KERNCONF=MYKERNELReboot.If KERNCONF is not included,
the GENERIC kernel will instead
be built and installed.The &man.make.1; process will have built two kernels.
/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/MYKERNEL/kernel
and
/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/MYKERNEL/kernel.debug.
kernel was installed as
/boot/kernel/kernel, while
kernel.debug can be used as the
source of debugging symbols for &man.kgdb.1;.To capture a crash dump, edit
/etc/rc.conf and set
dumpdev to point to either the swap
partition or AUTO. This will cause the
&man.rc.8; scripts to use the &man.dumpon.8; command to
enable crash dumps. This command can also be run
manually. After a panic, the crash dump can be recovered
using &man.savecore.8;; if dumpdev is
set in /etc/rc.conf, the &man.rc.8;
scripts will run &man.savecore.8; automatically and put
the crash dump in /var/crash.&os; crash dumps are usually the same size as
physical RAM. Therefore, make sure there is enough
space in /var/crash to hold the
dump. Alternatively, run &man.savecore.8; manually
and have it recover the crash dump to another directory
with more room. It is possible to limit the
size of the crash dump by using options
MAXMEM=N where
N is the size of kernel's
memory usage in KBs. For example, for 1 GB
of RAM, limit the kernel's memory usage to
128 MB, so that the crash dump size
will be 128 MB instead of 1 GB.Once the crash dump has been recovered , get a
stack trace as follows:&prompt.user; kgdb /usr/obj/usr/src/sys/MYKERNEL/kernel.debug /var/crash/vmcore.0(kgdb)backtraceNote that there may be several screens worth of
information. Ideally, use &man.script.1; to
capture all of them. Using the unstripped kernel image
with all the debug symbols should show the exact line of
kernel source code where the panic occurred. The stack
trace is usually read from the bottom up to trace
the exact sequence of events that lead to the crash.
&man.kgdb.1; can also be used to print out the contents of
various variables or structures to examine the system
state at the time of the crash.If a second computer is available, &man.kgdb.1; can
be configured to do remote debugging, including setting
breakpoints and single-stepping through the kernel
code.If DDB is enabled and the
kernel drops into the debugger, a panic
and a crash dump can be forced by typing
panic at the ddb
prompt. It may stop in the debugger again during the
panic phase. If it does, type
continue and it will finish the crash
dump.Why has dlsym() stopped working
for ELF executables?The ELF toolchain does not, by default, make the
symbols defined in an executable visible to the dynamic
linker. Consequently dlsym()
searches on handles obtained from calls to
dlopen(NULL, flags) will fail to find
such symbols.To search, using
dlsym(), for symbols present in the
main executable of a process, link the
executable using the
option to the ELF linker (&man.ld.1;).How can I increase or reduce the kernel address space
on i386?By default, the kernel address space is 1 GB
(2 GB for PAE) for i386. When running a
network-intensive server or using
ZFS, this will probably not be
enough.Add the following line to the kernel configuration
file to increase available space and rebuild the
kernel:options KVA_PAGES=NTo find the correct value of
N, divide the desired address
space size (in megabytes) by four. (For example, it is
512 for 2 GB.)AcknowledgmentsThis innocent little Frequently Asked Questions document has
been written, rewritten, edited, folded, spindled, mutilated,
eviscerated, contemplated, discombobulated, cogitated,
regurgitated, rebuilt, castigated, and reinvigorated over the
last decade, by a cast of hundreds if not thousands.
Repeatedly.We wish to thank every one of the people responsible, and we
encourage you to join
them in making this FAQ even
better.
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall/chapter.xml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall/chapter.xml
index 3a40f23413..c20e796c67 100644
--- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall/chapter.xml
+++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall/chapter.xml
@@ -1,3018 +1,3018 @@
Installing &os;JimMockRestructured, reorganized, and parts rewritten
by GavinAtkinsonUpdated for bsdinstall by WarrenBlockAllanJudeUpdated for root-on-ZFS by SynopsisinstallationThere are several different ways of getting &os; to run,
depending on the environment. Those are:Virtual Machine images, to download and import on a
virtual environment of choice. These can be downloaded from
the Download
FreeBSD page. There are images for KVM
(qcow2), VMWare (vmdk),
Hyper-V (vhd), and raw device images that are
universally supported. These are not installation images,
but rather the preconfigured (already
installed) instances, ready to run and perform
post-installation tasks.Virtual Machine images available at Amazon's AWS
Marketplace, Microsoft
Azure Marketplace, and Google
Cloud Platform, to run on their respective hosting
services. For more information on deploying &os; on Azure
please consult the relevant chapter in the Azure
Documentation.SD card images, for embedded systems such as Raspberry
Pi or BeagleBone Black. These can be downloaded from the
Download
FreeBSD page. These files must be uncompressed and
written as a raw image to an SD card, from which the board
will then boot.Installation images, to install &os; on
a hard drive for the usual desktop, laptop, or server
systems.The rest of this chapter describes the fourth case,
explaining how to install &os; using the text-based
installation program named
bsdinstall.In general, the installation instructions in this chapter
are written for the &i386; and AMD64
architectures. Where applicable, instructions specific to other
platforms will be listed. There may be minor differences
between the installer and what is shown here, so use this
chapter as a general guide rather than as a set of literal
instructions.Users who prefer to install &os; using a graphical
installer may be interested in
- FuryBSD,
- GhostBSD or
+ GhostBSD,
MidnightBSD.
+ xlink:href="https://www.midnightbsd.org">MidnightBSD or
+ NomadBSD.
After reading this chapter, you will know:The minimum hardware requirements and &os; supported
architectures.How to create the &os; installation media.How to start
bsdinstall.The questions bsdinstall will
ask, what they mean, and how to answer them.How to troubleshoot a failed installation.How to access a live version of &os; before committing
to an installation.Before reading this chapter, you should:Read the supported hardware list that shipped with the
version of &os; to be installed and verify that the system's
hardware is supported.Minimum Hardware RequirementsThe hardware requirements to install &os; vary by
architecture. Hardware architectures and devices supported by a
&os; release are listed on the &os; Release
Information page. The &os; download page
also has recommendations for choosing the correct image for
different architectures.A &os; installation requires a minimum of 96 MB of
RAM and 1.5 GB of free hard drive space.
However, such small amounts of memory and disk space are really
only suitable for custom applications like embedded appliances.
General-purpose desktop systems need more resources.
2-4 GB RAM and at least 8 GB hard drive space is a
good starting point.These are the processor requirements for each
architecture:&arch.amd64;This is the most common desktop and laptop processor
type, used in most modern systems. &intel; calls it
Intel64. Other manufacturers sometimes
call it x86-64.Examples of &arch.amd64; compatible processors
include: &amd.athlon;64, &amd.opteron;,
multi-core &intel; &xeon;, and
&intel; &core; 2 and later processors.&arch.i386;Older desktops and laptops often use this 32-bit, x86
architecture.Almost all i386-compatible processors with a floating
point unit are supported. All &intel; processors 486 or
higher are supported.&os; will take advantage of Physical Address
Extensions (PAE) support on
CPUs with this feature. A kernel with
the PAE feature enabled will detect
memory above 4 GB and allow it to be used by the
system. However, using PAE places
constraints on device drivers and other features of
&os;.&arch.powerpc;All New World ROM &apple;
&mac; systems with built-in USB
are supported. SMP is supported on
machines with multiple CPUs.A 32-bit kernel can only use the first 2 GB of
RAM.&arch.sparc64;Systems supported by &os;/&arch.sparc64; are listed at
the FreeBSD/sparc64
Project.SMP is supported on all systems
with more than 1 processor. A dedicated disk is required
as it is not possible to share a disk with another
operating system at this time.Pre-Installation TasksOnce it has been determined that the system meets the
minimum hardware requirements for installing &os;, the
installation file should be downloaded and the installation
media prepared. Before doing this, check that the system is
ready for an installation by verifying the items in this
checklist:Back Up Important DataBefore installing any operating system,
always backup all important data first.
Do not store the backup on the system being installed.
Instead, save the data to a removable disk such as a
USB drive, another system on the network,
or an online backup service. Test the backup before
starting the installation to make sure it contains all of
the needed files. Once the installer formats the system's
disk, all data stored on that disk will be lost.Decide Where to Install &os;If &os; will be the only operating system installed,
this step can be skipped. But if &os; will share the disk
with another operating system, decide which disk or
partition will be used for &os;.In the &arch.i386; and &arch.amd64; architectures, disks
can be divided into multiple partitions using one of two
partitioning schemes. A traditional Master Boot
Record (MBR) holds a
partition table defining up to four primary
partitions. For historical reasons, &os;
calls these primary partition
slices. One of these primary
partitions can be made into an extended
partition containing multiple
logical partitions. The
GUID Partition Table
(GPT) is a newer and simpler method of
partitioning a disk. Common GPT
implementations allow up to 128 partitions per disk,
eliminating the need for logical partitions.The &os; boot loader requires either a primary or
GPT partition. If all of the primary or
GPT partitions are already in use, one
must be freed for &os;. To create a partition without
deleting existing data, use a partition resizing tool to
shrink an existing partition and create a new partition
using the freed space.A variety of free and commercial partition resizing
tools are listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disk_partitioning_software.
GParted Live (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php)
is a free live CD which includes the
GParted partition editor.
GParted is also included with
many other Linux live CD
distributions.When used properly, disk shrinking utilities can
safely create space for creating a new partition. Since
the possibility of selecting the wrong partition exists,
always backup any important data and verify the integrity
of the backup before modifying disk partitions.Disk partitions containing different operating systems
make it possible to install multiple operating systems on
one computer. An alternative is to use virtualization
() which allows multiple
operating systems to run at the same time without modifying
any disk partitions.Collect Network InformationSome &os; installation methods require a network
connection in order to download the installation files.
After any installation, the installer will offer to setup
the system's network interfaces.If the network has a DHCP server, it
can be used to provide automatic network configuration. If
DHCP is not available, the following
network information for the system must be obtained from the
local network administrator or Internet service
provider:Required Network InformationIP addressSubnet maskIP address of default
gatewayDomain name of the networkIP addresses of the network's
DNS serversCheck for &os; ErrataAlthough the &os; Project strives to ensure that
each release of &os; is as stable as possible, bugs
occasionally creep into the process. On very rare occasions
those bugs affect the installation process. As these
problems are discovered and fixed, they are noted in the
&os; Errata (https://www.freebsd.org/releases/&rel121.current;R/errata.html)
on the &os; web site. Check the errata before installing to
make sure that there are no problems that might affect the
installation.Information and errata for all the releases can be found
on the release information section of the &os; web site
(https://www.freebsd.org/releases/index.html).Prepare the Installation MediaThe &os; installer is not an application that can be run
from within another operating system. Instead, download a
&os; installation file, burn it to the media associated with
its file type and size (CD,
DVD, or USB), and boot
the system to install from the inserted media.&os; installation files are available at www.freebsd.org/where.html#download.
Each installation file's name includes the release version of
&os;, the architecture, and the type of file. For example, to
install &os; 12.1 on an &arch.amd64; system from a
DVD, download
FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso, burn
this file to a DVD, and boot the system
with the DVD inserted.Installation files are available in several formats.
The formats vary depending on computer architecture and media
type.Additional
installation files are included for computers that boot with
UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware
Interface). The names of these files include the string
uefi.File types:-bootonly.iso: This is the smallest
installation file as it only contains the installer. A
working Internet connection is required during
installation as the installer will download the files it
needs to complete the &os; installation. This file should
be burned to a CD using a
CD burning application.-disc1.iso: This file contains all
of the files needed to install &os;, its source, and the
Ports Collection. It should be burned to a
CD using a CD
burning application.-dvd1.iso: This file contains all
of the files needed to install &os;, its source, and the
Ports Collection. It also contains a set of popular
binary packages for installing a window manager and some
applications so that a complete system can be installed
from media without requiring a connection to the Internet.
This file should be burned to a DVD
using a DVD burning application.-memstick.img: This file contains
all of the files needed to install &os;, its source, and
the Ports Collection. It should be burned to a
USB stick using the instructions
below.-mini-memstick.img: Like
-bootonly.iso, does not include
installation files, but downloads them as needed. A
working internet connection is required during
installation. Write this file to a USB
stick as shown in .After downloading the image file, download
CHECKSUM.SHA256 from
the same directory. Calculate a
checksum for the image file.
&os; provides &man.sha256.1; for this, used as sha256
imagefilename.
Other operating systems have similar programs.Compare the calculated checksum with the one shown in
CHECKSUM.SHA256. The checksums must
match exactly. If the checksums do not match, the image file
is corrupt and must be downloaded again.Writing an Image File to USBThe *.img file is an
image of the complete contents of a
memory stick. It cannot be copied to
the target device as a file. Several applications are
available for writing the *.img to a
USB stick. This section describes two of
these utilities.Before proceeding, back up any important data on the
USB stick. This procedure will erase
the existing data on the stick.Using dd to Write the
ImageThis example uses /dev/da0 as
the target device where the image will be written. Be
very careful that the correct
device is used as this command will destroy the existing
data on the specified target device.The &man.dd.1; command-line utility is
available on BSD, &linux;, and &macos; systems. To burn
the image using dd, insert the
USB stick and determine its device
name. Then, specify the name of the downloaded
installation file and the device name for the
USB stick. This example burns the
&arch.amd64; installation image to the first
USB device on an existing &os;
system.&prompt.root; dd if=FreeBSD-12.1-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=1M conv=syncIf this command fails, verify that the
USB stick is not mounted and that the
device name is for the disk, not a partition. Some
operating systems might require this command to be run
with &man.sudo.8;. The &man.dd.1; syntax varies slightly
across different platforms; for example, &macos; requires
a lower-case .
Systems like &linux; might buffer
writes. To force all writes to complete, use
&man.sync.8;.Using &windows; to Write the ImageBe sure to give the correct drive letter as the
existing data on the specified drive will be overwritten
and destroyed.Obtaining Image Writer for
&windows;Image Writer for
&windows; is a free application that can
correctly write an image file to a memory stick.
Download it from https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
and extract it into a folder.Writing the Image with Image WriterDouble-click the
Win32DiskImager icon to start
the program. Verify that the drive letter shown under
Device is the drive
with the memory stick. Click the folder icon and select
the image to be written to the memory stick. Click
[ Save ] to accept the
image file name. Verify that everything is correct, and
that no folders on the memory stick are open in other
windows. When everything is ready, click
[ Write ] to write the
image file to the memory stick.You are now ready to start installing &os;.Starting the InstallationBy default, the installation will not make any changes to
the disk(s) before the following message:Your changes will now be written to disk. If you
have chosen to overwrite existing data, it will
be PERMANENTLY ERASED. Are you sure you want to
commit your changes?The install can be exited at any time prior to this
warning. If
there is a concern that something is incorrectly configured,
just turn the computer off before this point and no changes
will be made to the system's disks.This section describes how to boot the system from the
installation media which was prepared using the instructions in
. When using a
bootable USB stick, plug in the USB stick
before turning on the computer. When booting from
CD or DVD, turn on the
computer and insert the media at the first opportunity. How to
configure the system to boot from the inserted media depends
upon the architecture.Booting on &i386; and &arch.amd64;These architectures provide a BIOS
menu for selecting the boot device. Depending upon the
installation media being used, select the
CD/DVD or
USB device as the first boot device. Most
systems also provide a key for selecting the boot device
during startup without having to enter the
BIOS. Typically, the key is either
F10, F11,
F12, or Escape.If the computer loads the existing operating system
instead of the &os; installer, then either:The installation media was not inserted early enough
in the boot process. Leave the media inserted and try
restarting the computer.The BIOS changes were incorrect or
not saved. Double-check that the right boot device is
selected as the first boot device.This system is too old to support booting from the
chosen media. In this case, the Plop Boot
Manager ()
can be used to boot the system from the selected
media.Booting on &powerpc;On most machines, holding C on the
keyboard during boot will boot from the CD.
Otherwise, hold CommandOptionOF, or
WindowsAltOF on non-&apple; keyboards. At the
0 > prompt, enterboot cd:,\ppc\loader cd:0&os; Boot MenuOnce the system boots from the installation media, a menu
similar to the following will be displayed:By default, the menu will wait ten seconds for user input
before booting into the &os; installer or, if &os; is already
installed, before booting into &os;. To pause the boot timer
in order to review the selections, press
Space. To select an option, press its
highlighted number, character, or key. The following options
are available.Boot Multi User: This will
continue the &os; boot process. If the boot timer has
been paused, press 1, upper- or
lower-case B, or
Enter.Boot Single User: This mode can be
used to fix an existing &os; installation as described in
. Press
2 or the upper- or lower-case
S to enter this mode.Escape to loader prompt: This will
boot the system into a repair prompt that contains a
limited number of low-level commands. This prompt is
described in . Press
3 or Esc to boot into
this prompt.Reboot: Reboots the system.Kernel: Loads a different
kernel.Configure Boot Options: Opens the
menu shown in, and described under, .The boot options menu is divided into two sections. The
first section can be used to either return to the main boot
menu or to reset any toggled options back to their
defaults.The next section is used to toggle the available options
to On or Off by pressing
the option's highlighted number or character. The system will
always boot using the settings for these options until they
are modified. Several options can be toggled using this
menu:ACPI Support: If the system hangs
during boot, try toggling this option to
Off.Safe Mode: If the system still
hangs during boot even with ACPI
Support set to Off, try
setting this option to On.Single User: Toggle this option to
On to fix an existing &os; installation
as described in . Once
the problem is fixed, set it back to
Off.Verbose: Toggle this option to
On to see more detailed messages during
the boot process. This can be useful when troubleshooting
a piece of hardware.After making the needed selections, press
1 or Backspace to return to
the main boot menu, then press Enter to
continue booting into &os;. A series of boot messages will
appear as &os; carries out its hardware device probes and
loads the installation program. Once the boot is complete,
the welcome menu shown in will be displayed.Press Enter to select the default of
[ Install ] to enter the
installer. The rest of this chapter describes how to use this
installer. Otherwise, use the right or left arrows or the
colorized letter to select the desired menu item. The
[ Shell ] can be used to
access a &os; shell in order to use command line utilities to
prepare the disks before installation. The
[ Live CD ] option can be
used to try out &os; before installing it. The live version
is described in .To review the boot messages, including the hardware
device probe, press the upper- or lower-case
S and then Enter to access
a shell. At the shell prompt, type more
/var/run/dmesg.boot and use the space bar to
scroll through the messages. When finished, type
exit to return to the welcome
menu.Using bsdinstallThis section shows the order of the
bsdinstall menus and the type of
information that will be asked before the system is installed.
Use the arrow keys to highlight a menu option, then
Space to select or deselect that menu item.
When finished, press Enter to save the
selection and move onto the next screen.Selecting the Keymap MenuBefore starting the process,
bsdinstall will load the keymap
files as show in .After the keymaps have been loaded
bsdinstall displays the
menu shown in . Use the
up and down arrows to select the keymap that most closely
represents the mapping of the keyboard attached to the system.
Press Enter to save the selection.Pressing Esc will exit this menu
and use the default keymap. If the choice of keymap is not
clear, United States of America
ISO-8859-1 is also a safe option.In addition, when selecting a different keymap, the user
can try the keymap and ensure it is correct before proceeding
as shown in .Setting the HostnameThe next bsdinstall menu is
used to set the hostname for the newly installed
system.Type in a hostname that is unique for the network. It
should be a fully-qualified hostname, such as machine3.example.com.Selecting Components to InstallNext, bsdinstall will prompt to
select optional components to install.Deciding which components to install will depend largely
on the intended use of the system and the amount of disk space
available. The &os; kernel and userland, collectively known
as the base system, are always
installed. Depending on the architecture, some of these
components may not appear:base-dbg - Base tools like
cat,
ls among many others with
debug symbols activated.kernel-dbg - Kernel and modules with
debug symbols activated.lib32-dbg - Compatibility libraries
for running 32-bit applications on a 64-bit version of
&os; with debug symbols activated.lib32 - Compatibility libraries for
running 32-bit applications on a 64-bit version of
&os;.ports - The &os; Ports Collection
is a collection of files which automates the downloading,
compiling and installation of third-party software
packages. discusses how to use
the Ports Collection.The installation program does not check for
adequate disk space. Select this option only if
sufficient hard disk space is available. The &os; Ports
Collection takes up about &ports.size; of disk
space.src - The complete &os; source code
for both the kernel and the userland. Although not
required for the majority of applications, it may be
required to build device drivers, kernel modules, or some
applications from the Ports Collection. It is also used
for developing &os; itself. The full source tree requires
1 GB of disk space and recompiling the entire &os;
system requires an additional 5 GB of space.tests - &os; Test Suite.Installing from the NetworkThe menu shown in
only appears
when installing from a -bootonly.iso or
-mini-memstick.img as this installation
media does not hold copies of the installation files.
Since the installation files must be retrieved over a network
connection, this menu indicates that the network interface must
be configured first. If this menu is shown in any step of the
process remember to follow the instructions in
.Allocating Disk SpaceThe next menu is used to determine the method for
allocating disk space.bsdinstall gives the user four
methods for allocating disk space:Auto (UFS) partitioning
automatically sets up the disk partitions using the
UFS file system.Manual partitioning allows
advanced users to create customized partitions from menu
options.Shell opens a shell prompt where
advanced users can create customized partitions using
command-line utilities like &man.gpart.8;, &man.fdisk.8;,
and &man.bsdlabel.8;.Auto (ZFS) partitioning creates a
root-on-ZFS system with optional GELI encryption support for
boot environments.This section describes what to consider when laying out the
disk partitions. It then demonstrates how to use the different
partitioning methods.Designing the Partition Layoutpartition layout/etc/var/usrWhen laying out file systems, remember that hard drives
transfer data faster from the outer tracks to the inner.
Thus, smaller and heavier-accessed file systems should be
closer to the outside of the drive, while larger partitions
like /usr should be placed toward the
inner parts of the disk. It is a good idea to create
partitions in an order similar to: /,
swap, /var, and
/usr.The size of the /var partition
reflects the intended machine's usage. This partition is
used to hold mailboxes, log files, and printer spools.
Mailboxes and log files can grow to unexpected sizes
depending on the number of users and how long log files are
kept. On average, most users rarely need more than about a
gigabyte of free disk space in
/var.Sometimes, a lot of disk space is required in
/var/tmp. When new software is
installed, the packaging tools extract a temporary copy of
the packages under /var/tmp. Large
software packages, like Firefox
or LibreOffice may be tricky to
install if there is not enough disk space under
/var/tmp.The /usr partition holds many of the
files which support the system, including the &os; Ports
Collection and system source code. At least 2 gigabytes of
space is recommended for this partition.When selecting partition sizes, keep the space
requirements in mind. Running out of space in one partition
while barely using another can be a hassle.swap sizingswap partitionAs a rule of thumb, the swap partition should be about
double the size of physical memory (RAM).
Systems with minimal RAM may perform
better with more swap. Configuring too little swap can lead
to inefficiencies in the VM page scanning
code and might create issues later if more memory is
added.On larger systems with multiple SCSI
disks or multiple IDE disks operating on
different controllers, it is recommended that swap be
configured on each drive, up to four drives. The swap
partitions should be approximately the same size. The
kernel can handle arbitrary sizes but internal data structures
scale to 4 times the largest swap partition. Keeping the swap
partitions near the same size will allow the kernel to
optimally stripe swap space across disks. Large swap sizes
are fine, even if swap is not used much. It might be easier
to recover from a runaway program before being forced to
reboot.By properly partitioning a system, fragmentation
introduced in the smaller write heavy partitions will not
bleed over into the mostly read partitions. Keeping the
write loaded partitions closer to the disk's edge will
increase I/O performance in the
partitions where it occurs the most. While
I/O performance in the larger partitions
may be needed, shifting them more toward the edge of the disk
will not lead to a significant performance improvement over
moving /var to the edge.Guided Partitioning Using UFSWhen this method is selected, a menu will display the
available disk(s). If multiple disks are connected, choose
the one where &os; is to be installed.Once the disk is selected, the next menu prompts to
install to either the entire disk or to create a partition
using free space. If
[ Entire Disk ] is
chosen, a general partition layout filling the whole disk is
automatically created. Selecting
[ Partition ] creates a
partition layout from the unused space on the disk.After
[ Entire Disk ] is
chosen bsdinstall displays a
dialog indicating that the disk will be erased.The next menu shows a list with the partition schemes
types. GPT is usually the most appropriate choice for amd64
computers. Older computers that are not compatible with GPT
should use MBR. The other partition schemes are generally
used for uncommon or older computers. More information is
available in .After the partition layout has been created, review it to
ensure it meets the needs of the installation. Selecting
[ Revert ] will reset the
partitions to their original values and pressing
[ Auto ] will recreate the
automatic &os; partitions. Partitions can also be manually
created, modified, or deleted. When the partitioning is
correct, select [ Finish ] to
continue with the installation.Once the disks are configured, the next menu provides the
last chance to make changes before the selected drives are
formatted. If changes need to be made, select
[ Back ] to return to the
main partitioning menu.
[ Revert & Exit ]
exits the installer without making any changes to the drive.
Select [ Commit ] to start
the installation process.To continue with the installation process go to
.Manual PartitioningSelecting this method opens the partition editor:Highlight the installation drive
(ada0 in this example) and select
[ Create ] to display a menu
of available partition schemes:GPT is usually the most appropriate
choice for &arch.amd64; computers. Older computers that are
not compatible with GPT should use
MBR. The other partition schemes are
generally used for uncommon or older computers.
Partitioning SchemesAbbreviationDescriptionAPMApple Partition Map, used by &powerpc;.BSDBSD label without an
MBR, sometimes called
dangerously dedicated mode as
non-BSD disk utilities may not
recognize it.GPTGUID Partition Table (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table).MBRMaster Boot Record (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record).VTOC8Volume Table Of Contents used by Sun SPARC64 and
UltraSPARC computers.
After the partitioning scheme has been selected and
created, select [ Create ]
again to create the partitions. The Tab
key is used to move the cursor between fields.A standard &os; GPT installation uses
at least three partitions:freebsd-boot - Holds the &os; boot
code.freebsd-ufs - A &os;
UFS file system.freebsd-zfs - A &os;
ZFS file system. More information about
ZFS is available in .freebsd-swap - &os; swap
space.Refer to &man.gpart.8; for descriptions of the available
GPT partition types.Multiple file system partitions can be created and some
people prefer a traditional layout with separate partitions
for /, /var,
/tmp, and /usr. See
for an
example.The Size may be entered with common
abbreviations: K for kilobytes,
M for megabytes, or
G for gigabytes.Proper sector alignment provides the best performance,
and making partition sizes even multiples of 4K bytes helps
to ensure alignment on drives with either 512-byte or
4K-byte sectors. Generally, using partition sizes that are
even multiples of 1M or 1G is the easiest way to make sure
every partition starts at an even multiple of 4K. There is
one exception: the freebsd-boot
partition should be no larger than 512K due to current boot
code limitations.A Mountpoint is needed if the partition
will contain a file system. If only a single
UFS partition will be created, the
mountpoint should be /.The Label is a name by which the
partition will be known. Drive names or numbers can change if
the drive is connected to a different controller or port, but
the partition label does not change. Referring to labels
instead of drive names and partition numbers in files like
/etc/fstab makes the system more tolerant
to hardware changes. GPT labels appear in
/dev/gpt/ when a disk is attached. Other
partitioning schemes have different label capabilities and
their labels appear in different directories in
/dev/.Use a unique label on every partition to avoid
conflicts from identical labels. A few letters from the
computer's name, use, or location can be added to the label.
For instance, use labroot or
rootfslab for the UFS
root partition on the computer named
lab.Creating Traditional Split File System
PartitionsFor a traditional partition layout where the
/, /var,
/tmp, and /usr
directories are separate file systems on their own
partitions, create a GPT partitioning
scheme, then create the partitions as shown. Partition
sizes shown are typical for a 20G target disk. If more
space is available on the target disk, larger swap or
/var partitions may be useful. Labels
shown here are prefixed with ex for
example, but readers should use other unique
label values as described above.By default, &os;'s gptboot expects
the first UFS partition to be the
/ partition.Partition TypeSizeMountpointLabelfreebsd-boot512Kfreebsd-ufs2G/exrootfsfreebsd-swap4Gexswapfreebsd-ufs2G/varexvarfsfreebsd-ufs1G/tmpextmpfsfreebsd-ufsaccept the default (remainder of the
disk)/usrexusrfsAfter the custom partitions have been created, select
[ Finish ] to continue with
the installation and go to
.Guided Partitioning Using Root-on-ZFSThis partitioning mode only works with whole disks and
will erase the contents of the entire disk. The main
ZFS configuration menu offers a number of
options to control the creation of the pool.Here is a summary of the options which can be used in
this menu:Install - Proceed with the
installation with the selected options.Pool Type/Disks - Allow to configure
the Pool Type and the disk(s) that will
constitute the pool. The automatic ZFS
installer currently only supports the creation of a single top
level vdev, except in stripe mode. To create more complex
pools, use the instructions in
to create the pool.Rescan Devices - Repopulate the list
of available disks.Disk Info - Disk Info menu can be
used to inspect each disk, including its partition table and
various other information such as the device model number
and serial number, if available.Pool Name - Establish the name of the
pool. The default name is
zroot.Force 4K Sectors? - Force the use of
4K sectors. By default, the installer will automatically
create partitions aligned to 4K boundaries and force ZFS to
use 4K sectors. This is safe even with 512 byte sector
disks, and has the added benefit of ensuring that pools
created on 512 byte disks will be able to have 4K sector
disks added in the future, either as additional storage
space or as replacements for failed disks. Press the
Enter key to chose to activate it or
not.Encrypt Disks? - Encrypting the disks
allows the user to encrypt the disks using
GELI. More information about disk
encryption is available in .
Press the Enter key to chose activate it or
not.Partition Scheme - Allow to choose
the partition scheme. GPT is the recommended option in
most cases. Press the Enter key to chose
between the different options.Swap Size - Establish the amount of
swap space.Mirror Swap? - Allows the user to
mirror the swap between the disks. Be aware, enabling
mirror swap will break crash dumps. Press the
Enter key to activate it or not.Encrypt Swap? - Allow the user the
possibility to encrypt the swap. Encrypts the swap with a
temporary key each time that the system boots and discards
it on reboot. Press the Enter key to chose
activate it or not. More information about swap encryption
in .Select T to configure the Pool
Type and the disk(s) that will constitute the
pool.Here is a summary of the Pool Type
which can be selected in this menu:stripe - Striping provides maximum
storage of all connected devices, but no redundancy. If
just one disk fails the data on the pool is lost
irrevocably.mirror - Mirroring stores a complete
copy of all data on every disk. Mirroring provides a good
read perfomance because data is read from all disks in
parallel. Write performance is slower as the data must be
written to all disks in the pool. Allows all but one disk
to fail. This option requires at least two disks.raid10 - Striped mirrors. Provides
the best performance, but the least storage. This option
needs at least an even number of disks and a minimum of four
disks.raidz1 - Single Redundant RAID.
Allow one disk to fail concurrently. This option needs at
least three disks.raidz2 - Double Redundant RAID.
Allows two disks to fail concurrently. This option needs
at least four disks.raidz3 - Triple Redundant RAID.
Allows three disks to fail concurrently. This option needs
at least five disks.Once a Pool Type has been selected, a
list of available disks is displayed, and the user is prompted
to select one or more disks to make up the pool. The
configuration is then validated, to ensure enough disks are
selected. If not, select <Change
Selection> to return to the list of disks, or
<Back> to change the
Pool Type.If one or more disks are missing from the list, or if
disks were attached after the installer was started, select
- Rescan Devices to repopulate the list
of available disks.To avoid accidentally erasing the wrong disk, the
- Disk Info menu can be used to inspect
each disk, including its partition table and various other
information such as the device model number and serial number,
if available.Select N to configure the
Pool Name. Enter the desired name then
select <OK> to establish it or
<Cancel> to return to the
main menu and leave the default name.Select S to set the amount of
swap. Enter the desired amount of swap and then select
<OK> to establish it or
<Cancel> to return to the
main menu and let the default amount.Once all options have been set to the desired values,
select the >>> Install
option at the top of the menu. The installer then offers a
last chance to cancel before the contents of the selected
drives are destroyed to create the ZFS
pool.If GELI disk encryption was enabled,
the installer will prompt twice for the passphrase to be used
to encrypt the disks. And after that the initializing of the
encryption begins.The installation then proceeds normally. To continue
with the installation go to
.Shell Mode PartitioningWhen creating advanced installations, the
bsdinstall partitioning menus may
not provide the level of flexibility required. Advanced users
can select the Shell option from the
partitioning menu in order to manually partition the drives,
create the file system(s), populate
/tmp/bsdinstall_etc/fstab, and mount the
file systems under /mnt. Once this is
done, type exit to return to
bsdinstall and continue the
installation.Fetching Distribution FilesInstallation time will vary depending on the distributions
chosen, installation media, and speed of the computer. A series
of messages will indicate the progress.First, the installer formats the selected disk(s) and
initializes the partitions. Next, in the case of a
bootonly media or
mini memstick, it downloads the selected
components:Next, the integrity of the distribution files is verified
to ensure they have not been corrupted during download or
misread from the installation media:Finally, the verified distribution files are extracted to
the disk:Once all requested distribution files have been extracted,
bsdinstall displays the first
post-installation configuration screen. The available
post-configuration options are described in the next
section.Accounts, Time Zone, Services and HardeningSetting the
root
PasswordFirst, the root
password must be set. While entering the password, the
characters being typed are not displayed on the screen. After
the password has been entered, it must be entered again. This
helps prevent typing errors.Setting the Time ZoneThe next series of menus are used to determine the correct
local time by selecting the geographic region, country, and
time zone. Setting the time zone allows the system to
automatically correct for regional time changes, such as
daylight savings time, and perform other time zone related
functions properly.The example shown here is for a machine located in the
mainland time zone of Spain, Europe. The selections will
vary according to the geographical location.The appropriate region is selected using the arrow keys
and then pressing Enter.Select the appropriate country using the arrow keys and
press Enter.The appropriate time zone is selected using the arrow keys
and pressing Enter.Confirm the abbreviation for the time zone is
correct.The appropriate date is selected using the arrow keys
and then pressing
[ Set Date ].
Otherwise, the date selection can be skipped by pressing
[ Skip ].The appropriate time is selected using the arrow keys
and then pressing
[ Set Time ].
Otherwise, the time selection can be skipped by pressing
[ Skip ].Enabling ServicesThe next menu is used to configure which system services
will be started whenever the system boots. All of these
services are optional. Only start the services that are
needed for the system to function.Here is a summary of the services which can be enabled in
this menu:local_unbound - Enable the DNS
local unbound. It is necessary to keep in mind that this
is the unbound of the base system and is only meant for
use as a local caching forwarding resolver. If the
objective is to set up a resolver for the entire network
install dns/unbound.sshd - The Secure Shell
(SSH) daemon is used to remotely access
a system over an encrypted connection. Only enable this
service if the system should be available for remote
logins.moused - Enable this service if the
mouse will be used from the command-line system
console.ntpdate - Enable the automatic
clock synchronization at boot time. The functionality of
this program is now available in the &man.ntpd.8; daemon.
After a suitable period of mourning, the &man.ntpdate.8;
utility will be retired.ntpd - The Network Time Protocol
(NTP) daemon for automatic clock
synchronization. Enable this service if there is a
&windows;, Kerberos, or LDAP server on
the network.powerd - System power control
utility for power control and energy saving.dumpdev - Enabling crash dumps is
useful in debugging issues with the system, so users are
encouraged to enable crash dumps.Enabling Hardening Security OptionsThe next menu is used to configure which security
options will be enabled. All of these options are optional.
But their use is encouraged.Here is a summary of the options which can be enabled in
this menu:hide_uids - Hide processes running
as other users to prevent the unprivileged users to see
other running processes in execution by other users (UID)
preventing information leakage.hide_gids - Hide processes running
as other groups to prevent the unprivileged users to see
other running processes in execution by other groups (GID)
preventing information leakage.hide_jail - Hide processes running
in jails to prevent the unprivileged users to see
processes running inside the jails.read_msgbuf - Disabling reading
kernel message buffer for unprivileged users prevent from
using &man.dmesg.8; to view messages from the kernel's log
buffer.proc_debug - Disabling process
debugging facilities for unprivileged users disables
a variety of unprivileged inter-process debugging
services, including some procfs functionality, ptrace(),
and ktrace(). Please note that this will also prevent
debugging tools, for instance &man.lldb.1;, &man.truss.1;,
&man.procstat.1;, as well as some built-in debugging
facilities in certain scripting language like PHP, etc.,
from working for unprivileged users.random_pid - Randomize the PID of
newly created processes.clear_tmp - Clean
/tmp when the system starts
up.disable_syslogd - Disable opening
syslogd network socket. By
default &os; runs syslogd in a
secure way with -s. That prevents the
daemon from listening for incoming UDP requests
at port 514. With this option enabled
syslogd will run with the flag
-ss which prevents
syslogd from opening any port.
To get more information consult &man.syslogd.8;.disable_sendmail - Disable the
sendmail mail transport agent.secure_console - When this option
is enabled, the prompt requests the root password when
entering single-user mode.disable_ddtrace - &dtrace; can run
in a mode that will actually affect the running kernel.
Destructive actions may not be used unless they have
been explicitly enabled. To enable this option when using
&dtrace; use -w. To get more
information consult &man.dtrace.1;.Add UsersThe next menu prompts to create at least one user account.
It is recommended to login to the system using a user account
rather than as root.
When logged in as root, there are essentially no
limits or protection on what can be done. Logging in as a
normal user is safer and more secure.Select [ Yes ] to add new
users.Follow the prompts and input the requested information for
the user account. The example shown in creates the asample user account.Here is a summary of the information to input:Username - The name the user will
enter to log in. A common convention is to use the first
letter of the first name combined with the last name, as
long as each username is unique for the system. The
username is case sensitive and should not contain any
spaces.Full name - The user's full name.
This can contain spaces and is used as a description for
the user account.Uid - User ID.
Typically, this is left blank so the system will assign a
value.Login group - The user's group.
Typically this is left blank to accept the default.Invite user into
other groups? - Additional groups to which the
user will be added as a member. If the user needs
administrative access, type wheel
here.Login class - Typically left blank
for the default.Shell - Type in one of the listed
values to set the interactive shell for the user. Refer
to for more information about
shells.Home directory - The user's home
directory. The default is usually correct.Home directory permissions -
Permissions on the user's home directory. The default is
usually correct.Use password-based authentication?
- Typically yes so that the user is
prompted to input their password at login.Use an empty password? -
Typically no as it is insecure to have
a blank password.Use a random password? - Typically
no so that the user can set their own
password in the next prompt.Enter password - The password for
this user. Characters typed will not show on the
screen.Enter password again - The password
must be typed again for verification.Lock out the account after
creation? - Typically no so
that the user can login.After entering everything, a summary is shown for review.
If a mistake was made, enter no and try
again. If everything is correct, enter yes
to create the new user.If there are more users to add, answer the Add
another user? question with
yes. Enter no to finish
adding users and continue the installation.For more information on adding users and user management,
see .Final ConfigurationAfter everything has been installed and configured, a
final chance is provided to modify settings.Use this menu to make any changes or do any additional
configuration before completing the installation.Add User - Described in .Root Password - Described in .Hostname - Described in .Network - Described in .Services - Described in .System Hardening - Described in
.Time Zone - Described in .Handbook - Download and install the
&os; Handbook.After any final configuration is complete, select
Exit.bsdinstall will prompt if there
are any additional configuration that needs to be done before
rebooting into the new system. Select
[ Yes ] to exit to a shell
within the new system or
[ No ] to proceed to the last
step of the installation.If further configuration or special setup is needed,
select [ Live CD ] to
boot the install media into Live CD
mode.If the installation is complete, select
[ Reboot ] to reboot the
computer and start the new &os; system. Do not forget to
remove the &os; install media or the computer may boot from it
again.As &os; boots, informational messages are displayed.
After the system finishes booting, a login prompt is
displayed. At the login: prompt, enter the
username added during the installation. Avoid logging in as
root. Refer to
for instructions on how to
become the superuser when administrative access is
needed.The messages that appeared during boot can be reviewed by
pressing Scroll-Lock to turn on the
scroll-back buffer. The PgUp,
PgDn, and arrow keys can be used to scroll
back through the messages. When finished, press
Scroll-Lock again to unlock the display and
return to the console. To review these messages once the
system has been up for some time, type less
/var/run/dmesg.boot from a command prompt. Press
q to return to the command line after
viewing.If sshd was enabled in , the first boot may be
a bit slower as the system will generate the
RSA and DSA keys.
Subsequent boots will be faster. The fingerprints of the keys
will be displayed, as seen in this example:Generating public/private rsa1 key pair.
Your identification has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key.
Your public key has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_key.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
10:a0:f5:af:93:ae:a3:1a:b2:bb:3c:35:d9:5a:b3:f3 root@machine3.example.com
The key's randomart image is:
+--[RSA1 1024]----+
| o.. |
| o . . |
| . o |
| o |
| o S |
| + + o |
|o . + * |
|o+ ..+ . |
|==o..o+E |
+-----------------+
Generating public/private dsa key pair.
Your identification has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key.
Your public key has been saved in /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
7e:1c:ce:dc:8a:3a:18:13:5b:34:b5:cf:d9:d1:47:b2 root@machine3.example.com
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ DSA 1024]----+
| .. . .|
| o . . + |
| . .. . E .|
| . . o o . . |
| + S = . |
| + . = o |
| + . * . |
| . . o . |
| .o. . |
+-----------------+
Starting sshd.Refer to for more information
about fingerprints and SSH.&os; does not install a graphical environment by default.
Refer to for more information about
installing and configuring a graphical window manager.Proper shutdown of a &os; computer helps protect data and
hardware from damage. Do not turn off the power
before the system has been properly shut down! If
the user is a member of the wheel group, become the
superuser by typing su at the command line
and entering the root password. Then, type
shutdown -p now and the system will shut
down cleanly, and if the hardware supports it, turn itself
off.Network InterfacesConfiguring Network InterfacesNext, a list of the network interfaces found on the
computer is shown. Select the interface to configure.If an Ethernet interface is selected, the installer will
skip ahead to the menu shown in . If a wireless
network interface is chosen, the system will instead scan for
wireless access points:Wireless networks are identified by a Service Set
Identifier (SSID), a short, unique name
given to each network. SSIDs found during
the scan are listed, followed by a description of the
encryption types available for that network. If the desired
SSID does not appear in the list, select
[ Rescan ] to scan again. If
the desired network still does not appear, check for problems
with antenna connections or try moving the computer closer to
the access point. Rescan after each change is made.Next, enter the encryption information for connecting to
the selected wireless network. WPA2
encryption is strongly recommended as older encryption types,
like WEP, offer little security. If the
network uses WPA2, input the password, also
known as the Pre-Shared Key (PSK). For
security reasons, the characters typed into the input box are
displayed as asterisks.Next, choose whether or not an IPv4
address should be configured on the Ethernet or wireless
interface:There are two methods of IPv4
configuration. DHCP will automatically
configure the network interface correctly and should be used
if the network provides a DHCP server.
Otherwise, the addressing information needs to be input
manually as a static configuration.Do not enter random network information as it will not
work. If a DHCP server is not available,
obtain the information listed in from
the network administrator or Internet service
provider.If a DHCP server is available, select
[ Yes ] in the next menu to
automatically configure the network interface. The installer
will appear to pause for a minute or so as it finds the
DHCP server and obtains the addressing
information for the system.If a DHCP server is not available,
select [ No ] and input the
following addressing information in this menu:IP Address - The
IPv4 address assigned to this computer.
The address must be unique and not already in use by
another piece of equipment on the local network.Subnet Mask - The subnet mask for
the network.Default Router - The
IP address of the network's default
gateway.The next screen will ask if the interface should be
configured for IPv6. If
IPv6 is available and desired, choose
[ Yes ] to select it.IPv6 also has two methods of
configuration. StateLess Address AutoConfiguration
(SLAAC) will automatically request the
correct configuration information from a local router. Refer
to rfc4862
for more information. Static configuration requires manual
entry of network information.If an IPv6 router is available, select
[ Yes ] in the next menu to
automatically configure the network interface. The installer
will appear to pause for a minute or so as it finds the router
and obtains the addressing information for the system.If an IPv6 router is not available,
select [ No ] and input the
following addressing information in this menu:IPv6 Address - The
IPv6 address assigned to this computer.
The address must be unique and not already in use by
another piece of equipment on the local network.Default Router - The
IPv6 address of the network's default
gateway.The last network configuration menu is used to configure
the Domain Name System (DNS) resolver,
which converts hostnames to and from network addresses. If
DHCP or SLAAC was used
to autoconfigure the network interface, the Resolver
Configuration values may already be filled in.
Otherwise, enter the local network's domain name in the
Search field. DNS #1
and DNS #2 are the IPv4
and/or IPv6 addresses of the
DNS servers. At least one
DNS server is required.Once the interface is configured, select a mirror site
that is located in the same region of the world as the
computer on which &os; is being installed. Files can be
retrieved more quickly when the mirror is close to the
target computer, reducing installation time.TroubleshootinginstallationtroubleshootingThis section covers basic installation
troubleshooting, such as common problems people have
reported.Check the Hardware Notes (https://www.freebsd.org/releases/index.html)
document for the version of &os; to make sure the hardware is
supported. If the hardware is supported and lock-ups or other
problems occur, build a custom kernel using the instructions in
to add support for devices which
are not present in the GENERIC kernel. The
default kernel assumes that most hardware devices are in their
factory default configuration in terms of
IRQs, I/O addresses, and
DMA channels. If the hardware has been
reconfigured, a custom kernel configuration file can tell &os;
where to find things.Some installation problems can be avoided or alleviated by
updating the firmware on various hardware components, most
notably the motherboard. Motherboard firmware is usually
referred to as the BIOS. Most motherboard
and computer manufacturers have a website for upgrades and
upgrade information.Manufacturers generally advise against upgrading the
motherboard BIOS unless there is a good
reason for doing so, like a critical update. The upgrade
process can go wrong, leaving the
BIOS incomplete and the computer
inoperative.If the system hangs while probing hardware during boot, or
it behaves strangely during install, ACPI may
be the culprit. &os; makes extensive use of the system
ACPI service on the &arch.i386; and
&arch.amd64; platforms to aid in system configuration
if it is detected during boot. Unfortunately, some bugs still
exist in both the ACPI driver and within
system motherboards and BIOS firmware.
ACPI can be disabled by setting the
hint.acpi.0.disabled hint in the third stage
boot loader:set hint.acpi.0.disabled="1"This is reset each time the system is booted, so it is
necessary to add hint.acpi.0.disabled="1" to
the file /boot/loader.conf. More
information about the boot loader can be found in .Using the Live CDThe welcome menu of bsdinstall,
shown in , provides a
[ Live CD ] option. This
is useful for those who are still wondering whether &os; is the
right operating system for them and want to test some of the
features before installing.The following points should be noted before using the
[ Live CD ]:To gain access to the system, authentication is
required. The username is root and the password is
blank.As the system runs directly from the installation media,
performance will be significantly slower than that of a
system installed on a hard disk.This option only provides a command prompt and not a
graphical interface.
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop/chapter.xml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop/chapter.xml
index 9daff7a2f3..9fbd69a5dc 100644
--- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop/chapter.xml
+++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/desktop/chapter.xml
@@ -1,919 +1,920 @@
Desktop ApplicationsSynopsisWhile &os; is popular as a server for its performance and
stability, it is also suited for day-to-day use as a desktop.
With over &os.numports; applications available as &os; packages
or ports, it is easy to build a customized desktop that runs
a wide variety of desktop applications. This chapter
demonstrates how to install numerous desktop applications,
including web browsers, productivity software, document viewers,
and financial software.Users who prefer to install a pre-built desktop version
of FreeBSD rather than configuring one from scratch should
refer to FuryBSD,
- GhostBSD or
+ xlink:href="https://ghostbsd.org">GhostBSD,
MidnightBSD.
+ xlink:href="https://www.midnightbsd.org">MidnightBSD
+ or NomadBSD.
Readers of this chapter should know how to:Install additional software using packages or
ports as described in .Install X and a window manager as described in
.For information on how to configure a multimedia
environment, refer to .Browsersbrowsersweb&os; does not come with a pre-installed web browser.
Instead, the www
category of the Ports Collection contains many browsers which
can be installed as a package or compiled from the Ports
Collection.The KDE and
GNOME desktop environments include
their own HTML browser. Refer to
for more information on how to set up these complete
desktops.Some lightweight browsers include
www/dillo2, www/links, and
www/w3m.This section demonstrates how to install the following
popular web browsers and indicates if the application is
resource-heavy, takes time to compile from ports, or has any
major dependencies.Application NameResources NeededInstallation from PortsNotesFirefoxmediumheavy&os;, &linux;, and localized versions are
availableKonquerormediumheavyRequires KDE
librariesChromiummediumheavyRequires Gtk+FirefoxFirefoxFirefox is an open source
browser that features a
standards-compliant HTML display engine, tabbed browsing,
popup blocking, extensions, improved security, and more.
Firefox is based on the
Mozilla codebase.To install the package of the latest release version of
Firefox, type:&prompt.root; pkg install firefoxTo instead install Firefox
Extended Support Release (ESR) version, use:&prompt.root; pkg install firefox-esrThe Ports Collection can instead be used to compile the
desired version of Firefox from
source code. This example builds
www/firefox, where
firefox can be replaced with the ESR or
localized version to install.&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/www/firefox
&prompt.root; make install cleanKonquerorKonquerorKonqueror is more than a web
browser as it is also a file manager and a multimedia
viewer. Supports WebKit as well as its own KHTML. WebKit is
a rendering engine used by many modern browsers including
Chromium.Konqueror can be installed as
a package by typing:&prompt.root; pkg install konquerorTo install from the Ports Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/x11-fm/konqueror/
&prompt.root; make install cleanChromiumChromiumChromium is an open source
browser project that aims to build a safer, faster, and more
stable web browsing experience.
Chromium features tabbed browsing,
popup blocking, extensions, and much more.
Chromium is the open source project
upon which the Google Chrome web browser is based.Chromium can be installed as a
package by typing:&prompt.root; pkg install chromiumAlternatively, Chromium can be
compiled from source using the Ports Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/www/chromium
&prompt.root; make install cleanThe executable for Chromium
is /usr/local/bin/chrome, not
/usr/local/bin/chromium.ProductivityWhen it comes to productivity, users often look for an
office suite or an easy-to-use word processor. While some
desktop environments like
KDE provide an office suite, there
is no default productivity package. Several office suites and
graphical word processors are available for &os;, regardless
of the installed window manager.This section demonstrates how to install the following
popular productivity software and indicates if the application
is resource-heavy, takes time to compile from ports, or has any
major dependencies.Application NameResources NeededInstallation from PortsMajor DependenciesCalligralightheavyKDEAbiWordlightlightGtk+ or
GNOMEThe GimplightheavyGtk+Apache
OpenOfficeheavyhuge&jdk; and
MozillaLibreOfficesomewhat heavyhugeGtk+, or
KDE/
GNOME, or
&jdk;CalligraCalligraoffice suiteCalligraThe KDE desktop environment includes
an office suite which can be installed separately from
KDE.
Calligra includes standard
components that can be found in other office suites.
Words is the word processor,
Sheets is the spreadsheet program,
Stage manages slide presentations,
and Karbon is used to draw
graphical documents.In &os;, editors/calligra can be
installed as a package or a port. To install the
package:&prompt.root; pkg install calligraIf the package is not available, use the Ports Collection
instead:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/editors/calligra
&prompt.root; make install cleanAbiWordAbiWordAbiWord is a free word
processing program similar in look and feel to
µsoft; Word. It is fast,
contains many features, and is user-friendly.AbiWord can import or export
many file formats, including some proprietary ones like
µsoft; .rtf.To install the AbiWord
package:&prompt.root; pkg install abiwordIf the package is not available, it can be compiled from
the Ports Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/editors/abiword
&prompt.root; make install cleanThe GIMPThe GIMPFor image authoring or picture retouching,
The GIMP provides a sophisticated
image manipulation program. It can be used as a simple paint
program or as a quality photo retouching suite. It supports a
large number of plugins and features a scripting interface.
The GIMP can read and write a wide
range of file formats and supports interfaces with scanners
and tablets.To install the package:&prompt.root; pkg install gimpAlternately, use the Ports Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/graphics/gimp
&prompt.root; make install cleanThe graphics category (freebsd.org/ports/graphics.html)
of the Ports Collection contains several
GIMP-related plugins, help files,
and user manuals.Apache OpenOfficeApache OpenOfficeoffice suiteApache OpenOfficeApache OpenOffice is an open
source office suite which is developed under the wing of the
Apache Software Foundation's Incubator. It includes all of
the applications found in a complete office productivity
suite: a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager,
and drawing program. Its user interface is similar to other
office suites, and it can import and export in various popular
file formats. It is available in a number of different
languages and internationalization has been extended to
interfaces, spell checkers, and dictionaries.The word processor of Apache
OpenOffice uses a native XML file format for
increased portability and flexibility. The spreadsheet
program features a macro language which can be interfaced
with external databases. Apache
OpenOffice is stable and runs natively on
&windows;, &solaris;, &linux;, &os;, and &macos; X.
More information about Apache
OpenOffice can be found at openoffice.org.
For &os; specific information refer to porting.openoffice.org/freebsd/.To install the Apache
OpenOffice package:&prompt.root; pkg install apache-openofficeOnce the package is installed, type the following command
to launch Apache OpenOffice:&prompt.user; openoffice-X.Y.Zwhere X.Y.Z is the version
number of the installed version of Apache
OpenOffice. The first time
Apache OpenOffice launches, some
questions will be asked and a
.openoffice.org folder will be created in
the user's home directory.If the desired Apache
OpenOffice package is not available, compiling
the port is still an option. However, this requires a lot of
disk space and a fairly long time to compile:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/editors/openoffice-4
&prompt.root; make install cleanTo build a localized version, replace the previous
command with:&prompt.root; make LOCALIZED_LANG=your_language install cleanReplace
your_language with the correct
language ISO-code. A list of supported language codes is
available in
files/Makefile.localized, located in
the port's directory.LibreOfficeLibreOfficeoffice suiteLibreOfficeLibreOffice is a free software
office suite developed by documentfoundation.org.
It is compatible with other major office suites and available
on a variety of platforms. It is a rebranded fork of
Apache OpenOffice and includes
applications found in a complete office productivity suite:
a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, drawing
program, database management program, and a tool for creating
and editing mathematical formulæ. It is available in
a number of different languages and internationalization has
been extended to interfaces, spell checkers, and
dictionaries.The word processor of
LibreOffice uses a native XML file
format for increased portability and flexibility. The
spreadsheet program features a macro language which can be
interfaced with external databases.
LibreOffice is stable and runs
natively on &windows;, &linux;, &os;, and &macos; X.
More information about LibreOffice
can be found at libreoffice.org.To install the English version of the
LibreOffice package:&prompt.root; pkg install libreofficeThe editors category (freebsd.org/ports/editors.html)
of the Ports Collection contains several localizations for
LibreOffice. When installing a
localized package, replace libreoffice
with the name of the localized package.Once the package is installed, type the following command
to run LibreOffice:&prompt.user; libreofficeDuring the first launch, some questions will be asked
and a .libreoffice folder will be created
in the user's home directory.If the desired LibreOffice
package is not available, compiling the port is still an
option. However, this requires a lot of disk space and a
fairly long time to compile. This example compiles the
English version:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/editors/libreoffice
&prompt.root; make install cleanTo build a localized version,
cd into the port directory of
the desired language. Supported languages can be found
in the editors category (freebsd.org/ports/editors.html)
of the Ports Collection.Document ViewersSome new document formats have gained popularity since
the advent of &unix; and the viewers they require may not be
available in the base system. This section demonstrates how to
install the following document viewers:Application NameResources NeededInstallation from PortsMajor DependenciesXpdflightlightFreeTypegvlightlightXaw3dGeeqielightlightGtk+ or
GNOMEePDFViewlightlightGtk+OkularlightheavyKDEXpdfXpdfPDFviewingFor users that prefer a small &os; PDF viewer,
Xpdf provides a light-weight and
efficient viewer which requires few resources. It uses the
standard X fonts and does not require any additional
toolkits.To install the Xpdf
package:&prompt.root; pkg install xpdfIf the package is not available, use the Ports
Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/graphics/xpdf
&prompt.root; make install cleanOnce the installation is complete, launch
xpdf and use the right mouse button to
activate the menu.gvgvPDFviewingPostScriptviewinggv is a &postscript; and PDF
viewer. It is based on ghostview,
but has a nicer look as it is based on the
Xaw3d widget toolkit.
gv has many configurable features,
such as orientation, paper size, scale, and anti-aliasing.
Almost any operation can be performed with either the
keyboard or the mouse.To install gv as a
package:&prompt.root; pkg install gvIf a package is unavailable, use the Ports
Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/print/gv
&prompt.root; make install cleanGeeqieGeeqieGeeqie is a fork from the
unmaintained GQView project, in an
effort to move development forward and integrate the existing
patches. Geeqie is an image
manager which supports viewing a file with a single click,
launching an external editor, and thumbnail previews. It also
features a slideshow mode and some basic file operations,
making it easy to manage image collections and to find
duplicate files. Geeqie supports
full screen viewing and internationalization.To install the Geeqie
package:&prompt.root; pkg install geeqieIf the package is not available, use the Ports
Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/graphics/geeqie
&prompt.root; make install cleanePDFViewePDFViewPDFviewingePDFView is a lightweight
PDF document viewer that only uses the
Gtk+ and
Poppler libraries. It is currently
under development, but already opens most
PDF files (even encrypted), save copies of
documents, and has support for printing using
CUPS.To install ePDFView as a
package:&prompt.root; pkg install epdfviewIf a package is unavailable, use the Ports
Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/graphics/epdfview
&prompt.root; make install cleanOkularOkularPDFviewingOkular is a universal document
viewer based on KPDF for
KDE. It can open many document
formats, including PDF, &postscript;, DjVu,
CHM, XPS, and
ePub.To install Okular as a
package:&prompt.root; pkg install okularIf a package is unavailable, use the Ports
Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/graphics/okular
&prompt.root; make install cleanFinanceFor managing personal finances on a &os; desktop, some
powerful and easy-to-use applications can be installed. Some
are compatible with widespread file formats, such as the formats
used by Quicken and
Excel.This section covers these programs:Application NameResources NeededInstallation from PortsMajor DependenciesGnuCashlightheavyGNOMEGnumericlightheavyGNOMEKMyMoneylightheavyKDEGnuCashGnuCashGnuCash is part of the
GNOME effort to provide
user-friendly, yet powerful, applications to end-users.
GnuCash can be used to keep track
of income and expenses, bank accounts, and stocks. It
features an intuitive interface while remaining
professional.GnuCash provides a smart
register, a hierarchical system of accounts, and many keyboard
accelerators and auto-completion methods. It can split a
single transaction into several more detailed pieces.
GnuCash can import and merge
Quicken QIF files. It also handles
most international date and currency formats.To install the GnuCash
package:&prompt.root; pkg install gnucashIf the package is not available, use the Ports
Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/finance/gnucash
&prompt.root; make install cleanGnumericGnumericspreadsheetGnumericGnumeric is a spreadsheet
program developed by the GNOME
community. It features convenient automatic guessing of user
input according to the cell format with an autofill system
for many sequences. It can import files in a number of
popular formats, including Excel,
Lotus 1-2-3, and
Quattro Pro. It has a large number
of built-in functions and allows all of the usual cell formats
such as number, currency, date, time, and much more.To install Gnumeric as a
package:&prompt.root; pkg install gnumericIf the package is not available, use the Ports
Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/math/gnumeric
&prompt.root; make install cleanKMyMoneyKMyMoneyspreadsheetKMyMoneyKMyMoney is a personal finance
application created by the KDE
community. KMyMoney aims to
provide the important features found in commercial personal
finance manager applications. It also highlights ease-of-use
and proper double-entry accounting among its features.
KMyMoney imports from standard
Quicken QIF files, tracks
investments, handles multiple currencies, and provides a
wealth of reports.To install KMyMoney as a
package:&prompt.root; pkg install kmymoney-kde4If the package is not available, use the Ports
Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/finance/kmymoney-kde4
&prompt.root; make install clean
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/introduction/chapter.xml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/introduction/chapter.xml
index 34fec5a301..0df8e1f8ec 100644
--- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/introduction/chapter.xml
+++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/introduction/chapter.xml
@@ -1,1162 +1,1162 @@
IntroductionJimMockRestructured, reorganized, and parts rewritten
by SynopsisThank you for your interest in &os;! The following chapter
covers various aspects of the &os; Project, such as its
history, goals, development model, and so on.After reading this chapter you will know:How &os; relates to other computer operating
systems.The history of the &os; Project.The goals of the &os; Project.The basics of the &os; open-source development
model.And of course: where the name &os; comes
from.Welcome to &os;!4.4BSD-Lite&os; is an Open Source, standards-compliant Unix-like
operating system for x86 (both 32 and 64 bit), &arm;, AArch64,
&risc-v;, &mips;, &power;, &powerpc;, and Sun &ultrasparc;
computers. It provides all the features that are
nowadays taken for granted, such as preemptive multitasking,
memory protection, virtual memory, multi-user facilities, SMP
support, all the Open Source development tools for different
languages and frameworks, and desktop features centered around
X Window System, KDE, or GNOME. Its particular strengths
are:Liberal Open Source license,
which grants you rights to freely modify and extend
its source code and incorporate it in both Open Source
projects and closed products without imposing
restrictions typical to copyleft licenses, as well
as avoiding potential license incompatibility
problems.Strong TCP/IP networkingTCP/IP
networking - &os;
implements industry standard protocols with ever
increasing performance and scalability. This makes
it a good match in both server, and routing/firewalling
roles - and indeed many companies and vendors use it
precisely for that purpose.Fully integrated OpenZFS support,
including root-on-ZFS, ZFS Boot Environments, fault
management, administrative delegation, support for jails,
&os; specific documentation, and system installer
support.Extensive security features,
from the Mandatory Access Control framework to Capsicum
capability and sandbox mechanisms.Over 30 thousand prebuilt
packages for all supported architectures,
and the Ports Collection which makes it easy to build your
own, customized ones.Documentation - in addition
to Handbook and books from different authors that cover
topics ranging from system administration to kernel
internals, there are also the &man.man.1; pages, not only
for userspace daemons, utilities, and configuration files,
but also for kernel driver APIs (section 9) and individual
drivers (section 4).Simple and consistent repository structure
and build system - &os; uses a single
repository for all of its components, both kernel and
userspace. This, along with an unified and easy to
customize build system and a well thought out development
process makes it easy to integrate &os; with build
infrastructure for your own product.Staying true to Unix philosophy,
preferring composability instead of monolithic all
in one daemons with hardcoded behavior.binary compatibilityLinuxBinary compatibility with Linux,
which makes it possible to run many Linux binaries without
the need for virtualisation.&os; is based on the 4.4BSD-Lite4.4BSD-Lite release from Computer
Systems Research Group (CSRG)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 &os; Project has put in many thousands of man-hours
into extending the functionality and fine-tuning the system
for maximum performance and reliability
in real-life load situations. &os; offers performance and
reliability on par with other Open Source and commercial
offerings, combined with cutting-edge features not available
anywhere else.What Can &os; Do?The applications to which &os; 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 &os; too! &os; also benefits
significantly from literally thousands of high quality
applications developed by research centers and universities
around the world, often available at little to no cost.Because the source code for &os; itself is freely
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
&os;:Internet Services: The robust
TCP/IP networking built into &os; makes it an ideal
platform for a variety of Internet services such
as:Web serversIPv4 and IPv6 routingFirewallsfirewall
and NATNAT
(IP masquerading) gatewaysFTP serversFTP serverselectronic mailemailemail
Email serversAnd more...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 &os; 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, &os; is an excellent platform
for research in operating systems as well as other
branches of computer science. &os;'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?router A name server (DNS)?DNS Server A firewall to keep people out of your
internal network? &os; can easily turn that unused
PC sitting in the corner into an advanced router with
sophisticated packet-filtering capabilities.Embedded: &os; makes an
excellent platform to build embedded systems upon.
embedded
With support for the &arm;, &mips; and &powerpc;
platforms, coupled with a robust network stack, cutting
edge features and the permissive BSD
license &os; makes an excellent foundation for
building embedded routers, firewalls, and other
devices.X Window SystemGNOMEKDEDesktop: &os; makes a
fine choice for an inexpensive desktop solution
using the freely available X11 server.
&os; offers a choice from many open-source desktop
environments, including the standard
GNOME and
KDE graphical user interfaces.
&os; can even boot diskless from
a central server, making individual workstations
even cheaper and easier to administer.Software Development: The basic
&os; system comes with a full suite of development
tools including a full
C/C++Compiler
compiler and debugger suite.
Support for many other languages are also available
through the ports and packages collection.&os; is available to download free of charge, or can be
obtained on either CD-ROM or DVD. Please see
for more information about obtaining
&os;.Who Uses &os;?userslarge sites running &os;&os; has been known for its web serving capabilities -
sites that run on &os; include
Hacker News,
Netcraft,
NetEase,
Netflix,
Sina,
Sony Japan,
Rambler,
Yahoo!, and
Yandex.
&os;'s advanced features, proven security, predictable
release cycle, and permissive license have led to its use as a
platform for building many commercial and open source
appliances, devices, and products. Many of the world's
largest IT companies use &os;:Apache
Apache - The Apache Software Foundation runs most of
its public facing infrastructure, including possibly one
of the largest SVN repositories in the world with over 1.4
million commits, on &os;.Apple
Apple - OS X borrows heavily from &os; for the
network stack, virtual file system, and many userland
components. Apple iOS also contains elements borrowed
from &os;.Cisco
Cisco - IronPort network security and anti-spam
appliances run a modified &os; kernel.Citrix
Citrix - The NetScaler line of security appliances
provide layer 4-7 load balancing, content caching,
application firewall, secure VPN, and mobile cloud network
access, along with the power of a &os; shell.Dell EMC Isilon
Isilon - Isilon's enterprise storage appliances
are based on &os;. The extremely liberal &os; license
allowed Isilon to integrate their intellectual property
throughout the kernel and focus on building their product
instead of an operating system.Quest
KACE
Quest KACE - The KACE system management appliances run
&os; because of its reliability, scalability, and the
community that supports its continued development.iXsystems
iXsystems - The TrueNAS line of unified storage
appliances is based on &os;. In addition to their
commercial products, iXsystems also manages development of
the open source projects TrueOS and FreeNAS.Juniper
Juniper - The JunOS operating system that powers all
Juniper networking gear (including routers, switches,
security, and networking appliances) is based on &os;.
Juniper is one of many vendors that showcases the
symbiotic relationship between the project and vendors of
commercial products. Improvements generated at Juniper
are upstreamed into &os; to reduce the complexity of
integrating new features from &os; back into JunOS in the
future.McAfee
McAfee - SecurOS, the basis of McAfee enterprise
firewall products including Sidewinder is based on
&os;.NetApp
NetApp - The Data ONTAP GX line of storage
appliances are based on &os;. In addition, NetApp has
contributed back many features, including the new BSD
licensed hypervisor, bhyve.Netflix
Netflix - The OpenConnect appliance that Netflix
uses to stream movies to its customers is based on &os;.
Netflix has made extensive contributions to the codebase
and works to maintain a zero delta from mainline &os;.
Netflix OpenConnect appliances are responsible for
delivering more than 32% of all Internet traffic in North
America.Sandvine
Sandvine - Sandvine uses &os; as the basis of their
high performance real-time network processing platforms
that make up their intelligent network policy control
products.Sony
Sony - The PlayStation 4 gaming console runs a
modified version of &os;.Sophos
Sophos - The Sophos Email Appliance product is based
on a hardened &os; and scans inbound mail for spam and
viruses, while also monitoring outbound mail for malware
as well as the accidental loss of sensitive
information.Spectra
Logic
Spectra Logic - The nTier line of archive grade storage
appliances run &os; and OpenZFS.Stormshield
Stormshield - Stormshield Network Security appliances
are based on a hardened version of &os;. The BSD license
allows them to integrate their own intellectual property with
the system while returning a great deal of interesting
development to the community.The Weather
Channel
The Weather Channel - The IntelliStar appliance that is installed
at each local cable provider's headend and is responsible
for injecting local weather forecasts into the cable TV
network's programming runs &os;.Verisign
Verisign - Verisign is responsible for operating the
.com and .net root domain registries as well as the
accompanying DNS infrastructure. They rely on a number of
different network operating systems including &os; to
ensure there is no common point of failure in their
infrastructure.Voxer
Voxer - Voxer powers their mobile voice messaging
platform with ZFS on &os;. Voxer switched from a Solaris
derivative to &os; because of its superior documentation,
larger and more active community, and more developer
friendly environment. In addition to critical features
like ZFS and DTrace, &os; also offers
TRIM support for ZFS.Fudo
Security
Fudo Security - The FUDO security appliance allows
enterprises to monitor, control, record, and audit
contractors and administrators who work on their systems.
Based on all of the best security features of &os;
including ZFS, GELI, Capsicum, HAST, and
auditdistd.&os; has also spawned a number of related open source
projects:BSD
Router
BSD Router - A &os; based replacement for large
enterprise routers designed to run on standard PC
hardware.FreeNAS
FreeNAS - A customized &os; designed to be used as a
network file server appliance. Provides a python based
web interface to simplify the management of both the UFS
and ZFS file systems. Includes support for NFS, SMB/CIFS,
AFP, FTP, and iSCSI. Includes an extensible plugin system
based on &os; jails.GhostBSD
GhostBSD - is derived from &os;, uses the GTK
environment to provide a beautiful looks and comfortable
experience on the modern BSD platform offering a natural
and native &unix; work environment.mfsBSD
mfsBSD - A toolkit for building a &os; system image
that runs entirely from memory.NAS4Free
NAS4Free - A file server distribution based on &os;
with a PHP powered web interface.OPNSense
OPNsense - OPNsense is an open source, easy-to-use and
easy-to-build FreeBSD based firewall and routing platform.
OPNsense includes most of the features available in
expensive commercial firewalls, and more in many cases.
It brings the rich feature set of commercial offerings
with the benefits of open and verifiable sources.TrueOS
TrueOS - TrueOS is based on the legendary security
and stability of &os;. TrueOS follows &os;-CURRENT, with
the latest drivers, security updates, and packages
available.
-
- FuryBSD
-
- FuryBSD
- - is a brand new, open source &os; desktop.
- FuryBSD pays homage to desktop BSD projects of the past
- like PC-BSD and TrueOS with its graphical interface and
- adds additional tools like a live, hybrid USB/DVD image.
- FuryBSD is completely free to use and distributed under
- the BSD license.
-
-
MidnightBSD
MidnightBSD - is a &os; derived operating system
developed with desktop users in mind. It includes all the
software you'd expect for your daily tasks: mail,
web browsing, word processing, gaming, and much
more.
+
+ NomadBSD
+
+ NomadBSD
+ - is a persistent live system for USB flash
+ drives, based on &os;. Together with automatic hardware
+ detection and setup, it is configured to be used as a
+ desktop system that works out of the box, but can also be
+ used for data recovery, for educational purposes, or to
+ test &os;'s hardware compatibility.
+
+
pfSense
pfSense - A firewall distribution based on &os; with
a huge array of features and extensive IPv6
support.ZRouter
ZRouter - An open source alternative firmware for
embedded devices based on &os;. Designed to replace the
proprietary firmware on off-the-shelf routers.A list of
testimonials from companies basing their products and
services on &os; can be found at the FreeBSD
Foundation website. Wikipedia also maintains a list
of products based on &os;.About the &os; ProjectThe following section provides some background information
on the project, including a brief history, project goals, and
the development model of the project.A Brief History of &os;386BSD PatchkitHubbard, JordanWilliams, NateGrimes, RodFreeBSD ProjecthistoryThe &os; Project had its genesis in the early part
of 1993, partially as the brainchild of the Unofficial
386BSDPatchkit's last 3 coordinators: Nate Williams,
Rod Grimes and Jordan Hubbard.386BSDThe original goal was to produce an intermediate snapshot
of 386BSD in order to fix a number of problems that
the patchkit mechanism was just not capable of solving. The
early working title for the project was 386BSD 0.5 or 386BSD
Interim in reference of that fact.Jolitz, Bill386BSD 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, they decided to 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.Greenman, DavidWalnut Creek CDROMThe trio thought that the goal remained worthwhile, even
without Bill's support, and so they adopted the name "&os;"
coined by David Greenman. The 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, Jordan contacted Walnut Creek CDROM with
an eye toward improving &os;'s distribution channels for those
many unfortunates without easy access to the Internet. Walnut
Creek CDROM not only supported the idea of distributing &os;
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 &os; would have gotten as far, as fast, as
it has today.4.3BSD-LiteNet/2U.C. Berkeley386BSDFree Software
FoundationThe first CD-ROM (and general net-wide) distribution was
&os; 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 they followed it with the highly
successful &os; 1.1 release in May of 1994.NovellU.C. BerkeleyNet/2AT&TAround 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 &os;, 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 &os; 1.1.5.1.&os; then set about the arduous task of literally
re-inventing itself from a completely new and rather
incomplete set of 4.4BSD-Lite bits. The Lite
releases were light in part because Berkeley's CSRG had
removed large chunks of code required for actually
constructing a bootable running system (due to various legal
requirements) and the fact that the Intel port of 4.4 was
highly incomplete. It took the project until November of 1994
to make this transition, and in December it released
&os; 2.0 to the world. 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 &os; 2.0.5 release in June of 1995.Since that time, &os; has made a series of releases each
time improving the stability, speed, and feature set of the
previous version.For now, long-term development projects continue to take
place in the 10.X-CURRENT (trunk) branch, and snapshot
releases of 10.X are continually made available from the
snapshot server as work progresses.&os; Project GoalsJordanHubbardContributed by FreeBSD ProjectgoalsThe goals of the &os; 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.GNU General Public License (GPL)GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL)BSD CopyrightThat 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 license when
it is a reasonable option to do so.The &os; Development ModelSatoshiAsamiContributed by FreeBSD Projectdevelopment modelThe development of &os; is a very open and flexible
process, being literally built from the contributions of
thousands of people around the world, as can be seen from our
list
of contributors. &os;'s development infrastructure
allow these thousands of contributors to collaborate over the
Internet. We are constantly on the lookout for new developers
and ideas, and those interested in becoming more closely
involved with the project need simply contact us at the
&a.hackers;. The &a.announce; is also available to those
wishing to make other &os; users aware of major areas of
work.Useful things to know about the &os; Project and its
development process, whether working independently or in close
cooperation:The SVN repositoriesCVSCVS RepositoryConcurrent Versions SystemCVSSubversionSubversion RepositorySVNSubversion
For several years, the central source tree for &os;
was maintained by
CVS
(Concurrent Versions System), a freely available source
code control tool. In June 2008, the Project switched
to using SVN
(Subversion). The switch was deemed necessary, as the
technical limitations imposed by
CVS were becoming obvious due
to the rapid expansion of the source tree and the amount
of history already stored. The Documentation Project
and Ports Collection repositories also moved from
CVS to
SVN in May 2012 and July
2012, respectively. Please refer to the Obtaining the Source
section for more information on obtaining the
&os; src/ repository and Using the Ports
Collection for details on obtaining the &os;
Ports Collection.The committers listThe committerscommitters are the people who have
write access to the Subversion
tree, and are authorized to make modifications to the
&os; source (the term committer comes
from commit, the source control
command which is used to bring new changes into the
repository). Anyone can submit a bug to the Bug
Database. Before submitting a bug report, the
&os; mailing lists, IRC channels, or forums can be used to
help verify that an issue is actually a bug.The FreeBSD core teamThe &os; core teamcore team would be equivalent to the board of
directors if the &os; 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 June 2020. Elections are held
every 2 years.Like most developers, most members of the
core team are also volunteers when
it comes to &os; 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
very accurate, and it may be more suitable to say that
these are the people who gave up their lives in favor
of &os; against their better judgement!Outside contributorsLast, 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 &os;'s more
non-centralized development is to subscribe to the
&a.hackers; where such things are discussed. See
for more information about
the various &os; mailing lists.The
&os; Contributors Listcontributors is a long and growing one, so why not join
it by contributing something back to &os; 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 &os; Project
web site.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 &os;,
who are 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 — this model works very
well in accomplishing that.All we ask of those who would join us as &os; developers
is some of the same dedication its current people have to its
continued success!Third Party ProgramsIn addition to the base distributions, &os; offers a
ported software collection with thousands of commonly
sought-after programs. At the time of this writing, there
were over &os.numports; ports! The list of ports ranges from
http servers, to games, languages, editors, and almost
everything in between. The entire Ports Collection requires
approximately &ports.size;. 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 so you need only enough disk
space to build the ports you want. Almost every port is also
provided as a pre-compiled package, which can
be installed with a simple command
(pkg install) by those who do not wish to
compile their own ports from source. More information on
packages and ports can be found in
.Additional DocumentationAll supported &os; versions provide an option in the
installer to
install additional documentation under
/usr/local/share/doc/freebsd during the
initial system setup. Documentation may also be installed at
any later time using packages as described in
. You may view the
locally installed manuals with any HTML capable browser using
the following URLs:The FreeBSD Handbook/usr/local/share/doc/freebsd/handbook/index.htmlThe FreeBSD FAQ/usr/local/share/doc/freebsd/faq/index.htmlYou can also view the master (and most frequently updated)
copies at https://www.FreeBSD.org/.
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11/chapter.xml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11/chapter.xml
index 0ebd1bb20f..41c753186e 100644
--- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11/chapter.xml
+++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x11/chapter.xml
@@ -1,2226 +1,2228 @@
The X Window SystemSynopsisAn installation of &os; using
bsdinstall does not automatically
install a graphical user interface. This chapter describes how
to install and configure &xorg;,
which provides the open source X Window System used to provide a
graphical environment. It then describes how to find and
install a desktop environment or window manager.Users who prefer an installation method that automatically
configures the &xorg; should refer
- to FuryBSD,
- GhostBSD or
+ to GhostBSD,
MidnightBSD.
+ xlink:href="https://www.midnightbsd.org">MidnightBSD
+ or
+ NomadBSD.
For more information on the video hardware that
&xorg; supports, refer to the x.org website.After reading this chapter, you will know:The various components of the X Window System, and how
they interoperate.How to install and configure
&xorg;.How to install and configure several window managers
and desktop environments.How to use &truetype; fonts in
&xorg;.How to set up your system for graphical logins
(XDM).Before reading this chapter, you should:Know how to install additional third-party
software as described in .TerminologyWhile it is not necessary to understand all of the details
of the various components in the X Window System and how they
interact, some basic knowledge of these components can be
useful.X serverX was designed from the beginning to be
network-centric, and adopts a client-server
model. In this model, the X server runs on
the computer that has the keyboard, monitor, and mouse
attached. The server's responsibility includes tasks such
as managing the display, handling input from the keyboard
and mouse, and handling input or output from other devices
such as a tablet or a video projector. 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.X clientEach X application, such as
XTerm or
Firefox, 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.In a home or small office environment, the X server
and the X clients commonly run on the same computer. It
is also possible to run the X server on a less powerful
computer and to run the X applications on a more powerful
system. In this scenario, the communication between the X
client and server takes place over the network.window managerX does not dictate what windows should look like
on-screen, how to move them around with the mouse, which
keystrokes should be used to move between 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 a separate window
manager application. There are dozens of window
managers available. Each window manager provides
a different look and feel: some support virtual desktops,
some allow customized keystrokes to manage the desktop,
some have a Start button, and some are
themeable, allowing a complete change of the desktop's
look-and-feel. Window managers are available in the
x11-wm category of the Ports
Collection.Each window manager uses a different configuration
mechanism. Some expect configuration file written by hand
while others provide graphical tools for most
configuration tasks.desktop environmentKDE and
GNOME are considered to be
desktop environments as they include an entire suite of
applications for performing common desktop tasks. These
may include office suites, web browsers, and games.focus policyThe window manager is responsible for the mouse focus
policy. This policy provides some means for choosing
which window is actively receiving keystrokes and it
should also visibly indicate which window is currently
active.One focus policy is called
click-to-focus. In this model, a window
becomes active upon receiving a mouse click. In the
focus-follows-mouse policy, the window that
is under the mouse pointer has focus and the focus is
changed by pointing at another window. If the mouse is
over the root window, then this window is focused. In the
sloppy-focus model, if the mouse is moved
over the root window, the most recently used window still
has the focus. With sloppy-focus, focus is only changed
when the cursor enters a new window, and not when exiting
the current window. In the click-to-focus
policy, 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.Different window managers support different focus
models. All of them support click-to-focus, and the
majority of them also support other policies. Consult the
documentation for the window manager to determine which
focus models are available.widgetsWidget is a term for all of the items in the user
interface that can be clicked or manipulated in some way.
This includes buttons, check boxes, radio buttons, icons,
and lists. A widget toolkit is a set of widgets used to
create graphical applications. There are several popular
widget toolkits, including Qt, used by
KDE, and GTK+, used by
GNOME. As a result,
applications will have a different look and feel,
depending upon which widget toolkit was used to create the
application.Installing &xorg;On &os;, &xorg; can be installed
as a package or port.The binary package can be installed quickly but with
fewer options for customization:&prompt.root; pkg install xorgTo build and install from the Ports Collection:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/x11/xorg
&prompt.root; make install cleanEither of these installations results in the complete
&xorg; system being installed.
Binary packages are the best option for most users.A smaller version of the X system suitable for experienced
users is available in x11/xorg-minimal. Most
of the documents, libraries, and applications will not be
installed. Some applications require these additional
components to function.&xorg; ConfigurationWarrenBlockOriginally contributed by &xorg;&xorg;Quick Start&xorg; supports most common
video cards, keyboards, and pointing devices.Video cards, monitors, and input devices are
automatically detected and do not require any manual
configuration. Do not create xorg.conf
or run a step unless automatic
configuration fails.If &xorg; has been used on
this computer before, move or remove any existing
configuration files:&prompt.root; mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf ~/xorg.conf.etc
&prompt.root; mv /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf ~/xorg.conf.localetcAdd the user who will run
&xorg; to the
video or
wheel group to
enable 3D acceleration when available. To add user
jru to whichever group is
available:&prompt.root; pw groupmod video -m jru || pw groupmod wheel -m jruThe twm window manager is
included by default. It is started when
&xorg; starts:&prompt.user; startxOn some older versions of &os;, the system console
must be set to &man.vt.4; before switching back to the
text console will work properly. See
.User Group for Accelerated VideoAccess to /dev/dri is needed to allow
3D acceleration on video cards. It is usually simplest to add
the user who will be running X to either the video or wheel group. Here,
&man.pw.8; is used to add user
slurms to the
video group, or to
the wheel group if
there is no video
group:&prompt.root; pw groupmod video -m slurms || pw groupmod wheel -m slurmsKernel Mode Setting (KMS)When the computer switches from displaying the console to
a higher screen resolution for X, it must set the video
output mode. Recent versions of
&xorg; use a system inside the kernel to do
these mode changes more efficiently. Older versions of &os;
use &man.sc.4;, which is not aware of the
KMS system. The end result is that after
closing X, the system console is blank, even though it is
still working. The newer &man.vt.4; console avoids this
problem.Add this line to /boot/loader.conf
to enable &man.vt.4;:kern.vty=vtConfiguration FilesManual configuration is usually not necessary. Please do
not manually create configuration files unless
autoconfiguration does not work.Directory&xorg; looks in several
directories for configuration files.
/usr/local/etc/X11/ is the recommended
directory for these files on &os;. Using this directory
helps keep application files separate from operating system
files.Storing configuration files in the legacy
/etc/X11/ still works. However, this
mixes application files with the base &os; files and is not
recommended.Single or Multiple FilesIt is easier to use multiple files that each configure a
specific setting than the traditional single
xorg.conf. These files are stored in
the xorg.conf.d/ subdirectory of the
main configuration file directory. The full path is
typically
/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/.Examples of these files are shown later in this
section.The traditional single xorg.conf
still works, but is neither as clear nor as flexible as
multiple files in the xorg.conf.d/
subdirectory.Video CardsBecause of changes made in recent versions of &os;, it
is now possible to use graphics drivers provided by the Ports
framework or as packages. As such, users can use one of the
following drivers available from
graphics/drm-kmod.&i915kms;&radeonkms;&amdgpu;2D and 3D acceleration is supported on most
&i915kms; graphics cards provided by &intel;.Driver name: i915kms2D and 3D acceleration is supported on most older
&radeonkms; graphics cards provided by &amd;.Driver name: radeonkms2D and 3D acceleration is supported on most newer
&amdgpu; graphics cards provided by &amd;..Driver name: amdgpuFor reference, please see
or
for a list of supported GPUs.&intel;3D acceleration is supported on most &intel;
graphics up to Ivy Bridge (HD Graphics 2500, 4000, and
P4000), including Iron Lake (HD Graphics) and
Sandy Bridge (HD Graphics 2000).Driver name: intelFor reference, see .&amd; Radeon2D and 3D acceleration is supported on Radeon
cards up to and including the HD6000 series.Driver name: radeonFor reference, see .NVIDIASeveral NVIDIA drivers are available in the
x11 category of the Ports
Collection. Install the driver that matches the video
card.For reference, see .Hybrid Combination GraphicsSome notebook computers add additional graphics
processing units to those built into the chipset or
processor. Optimus combines
&intel; and NVIDIA hardware.
Switchable Graphics or
Hybrid Graphics are a combination
of an &intel; or &amd; processor and an &amd; Radeon
GPU.Implementations of these hybrid graphics systems
vary, and &xorg; on &os; is
not able to drive all versions of them.Some computers provide a BIOS
option to disable one of the graphics adapters or select
a discrete mode which can be used
with one of the standard video card drivers. For
example, it is sometimes possible to disable the NVIDIA
GPU in an Optimus system. The
&intel; video can then be used with an &intel;
driver.BIOS settings depend on the model
of computer. In some situations, both
GPUs can be left enabled, but
creating a configuration file that only uses the main
GPU in the Device
section is enough to make such a system
functional.Other Video CardsDrivers for some less-common video cards can be
found in the x11-drivers directory
of the Ports Collection.Cards that are not supported by a specific driver
might still be usable with the
x11-drivers/xf86-video-vesa driver.
This driver is installed by x11/xorg.
It can also be installed manually as
x11-drivers/xf86-video-vesa.
&xorg; attempts to use this
driver when a specific driver is not found for the video
card.x11-drivers/xf86-video-scfb is a
similar nonspecialized video driver that works on many
UEFI and &arm; computers.Setting the Video Driver in a FileTo set the &intel; driver in a configuration
file:Select &intel; Video Driver in a File/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/driver-intel.confSection "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "intel"
# BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSectionIf more than one video card is present, the
BusID identifier can be uncommented
and set to select the desired card. A list of video
card bus IDs can be displayed with
pciconf -lv | grep -B3
display.To set the Radeon driver in a configuration
file:Select Radeon Video Driver in a File/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/driver-radeon.confSection "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "radeon"
EndSectionTo set the VESA driver in a
configuration file:Select VESA Video Driver in a
File/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/driver-vesa.confSection "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "vesa"
EndSectionTo set the scfb driver for use
with a UEFI or &arm; computer:Select scfb Video Driver in a
File/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/driver-scfb.confSection "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "scfb"
EndSectionMonitorsAlmost all monitors support the Extended Display
Identification Data standard (EDID).
&xorg; uses EDID
to communicate with the monitor and detect the supported
resolutions and refresh rates. Then it selects the most
appropriate combination of settings to use with that
monitor.Other resolutions supported by the monitor can be
chosen by setting the desired resolution in configuration
files, or after the X server has been started with
&man.xrandr.1;.Using &man.xrandr.1;Run &man.xrandr.1; without any parameters to see a
list of video outputs and detected monitor modes:&prompt.user; xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 3000 x 1920, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-0 connected primary 1920x1200+1080+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 495mm x 310mm
1920x1200 59.95*+
1600x1200 60.00
1280x1024 85.02 75.02 60.02
1280x960 60.00
1152x864 75.00
1024x768 85.00 75.08 70.07 60.00
832x624 74.55
800x600 75.00 60.32
640x480 75.00 60.00
720x400 70.08
DisplayPort-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)This shows that the DVI-0 output
is being used to display a screen resolution of
1920x1200 pixels at a refresh rate of about 60 Hz.
Monitors are not attached to the
DisplayPort-0 and
HDMI-0 connectors.Any of the other display modes can be selected with
&man.xrandr.1;. For example, to switch to 1280x1024 at
60 Hz:&prompt.user; xrandr --mode 1280x1024 --rate 60A common task is using the external video output on
a notebook computer for a video projector.The type and quantity of output connectors varies
between devices, and the name given to each output
varies from driver to driver. What one driver calls
HDMI-1, another might call
HDMI1. So the first step is to run
&man.xrandr.1; to list all the available
outputs:&prompt.user; xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1366 x 768, maximum 8192 x 8192
LVDS1 connected 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 193mm
1366x768 60.04*+
1024x768 60.00
800x600 60.32 56.25
640x480 59.94
VGA1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
1280x1024 60.02 + 75.02
1280x960 60.00
1152x864 75.00
1024x768 75.08 70.07 60.00
832x624 74.55
800x600 72.19 75.00 60.32 56.25
640x480 75.00 72.81 66.67 60.00
720x400 70.08
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)Four outputs were found: the built-in panel
LVDS1, and external
VGA1, HDMI1, and
DP1 connectors.The projector has been connected to the
VGA1 output. &man.xrandr.1; is now
used to set that output to the native resolution of the
projector and add the additional space to the right side
of the desktop:&prompt.user; xrandr --output VGA1 --auto --right-of LVDS1--auto chooses the resolution and
refresh rate detected by EDID. If
the resolution is not correctly detected, a fixed value
can be given with --mode instead of
the --auto statement. For example,
most projectors can be used with a 1024x768 resolution,
which is set with
--mode 1024x768.&man.xrandr.1; is often run from
.xinitrc to set the appropriate
mode when X starts.Setting Monitor Resolution in a FileTo set a screen resolution of 1024x768 in a
configuration file:Set Screen Resolution in a File/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/screen-resolution.confSection "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
SubSection "Display"
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSectionThe few monitors that do not have
EDID can be configured by setting
HorizSync and
VertRefresh to the range of
frequencies supported by the monitor.Manually Setting Monitor Frequencies/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/monitor0-freq.confSection "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
HorizSync 30-83 # kHz
VertRefresh 50-76 # Hz
EndSectionInput DevicesKeyboardsKeyboard LayoutThe standardized location of keys on a keyboard
is called a layout. Layouts and
other adjustable parameters are listed in
&man.xkeyboard-config.7;.A United States layout is the default. To select
an alternate layout, set the
XkbLayout and
XkbVariant options in an
InputClass. This will be applied
to all input devices that match the class.This example selects a French keyboard
layout.Setting a Keyboard Layout/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/keyboard-fr.confSection "InputClass"
Identifier "KeyboardDefaults"
MatchIsKeyboard "on"
Option "XkbLayout" "fr"
EndSectionSetting Multiple Keyboard LayoutsSet United States, Spanish, and Ukrainian
keyboard layouts. Cycle through these layouts by
pressing
AltShift. x11/xxkb or
x11/sbxkb can be used for
improved layout switching control and
current layout indicators./usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/kbd-layout-multi.confSection "InputClass"
Identifier "All Keyboards"
MatchIsKeyboard "yes"
Option "XkbLayout" "us, es, ua"
EndSectionClosing &xorg; From the
KeyboardX can be closed with a combination of keys.
By default, that key combination is not set because it
conflicts with keyboard commands for some
applications. Enabling this option requires changes
to the keyboard InputDevice
section:Enabling Keyboard Exit from X/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/keyboard-zap.confSection "InputClass"
Identifier "KeyboardDefaults"
MatchIsKeyboard "on"
Option "XkbOptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
EndSectionMice and Pointing DevicesIf using xorg-server 1.20.8 or
later under &os; &rel121.current; and not
using &man.moused.8;, add
kern.evdev.rcpt_mask=12 to
/etc/sysctl.conf.Many mouse parameters can be adjusted with configuration
options. See &man.mousedrv.4x; for a full list.Mouse ButtonsThe number of buttons on a mouse can be set in the
mouse InputDevice section of
xorg.conf. To set the number of
buttons to 7:Setting the Number of Mouse Buttons/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/mouse0-buttons.confSection "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Option "Buttons" "7"
EndSectionManual ConfigurationIn some cases, &xorg;
autoconfiguration does not work with particular hardware, or a
different configuration is desired. For these cases, a custom
configuration file can be created.Do not create manual configuration files unless
required. Unnecessary manual configuration can prevent
proper operation.A configuration file can be generated by
&xorg; based on the detected
hardware. This file is often a useful starting point for
custom configurations.Generating an xorg.conf:&prompt.root; Xorg -configureThe configuration file is saved to
/root/xorg.conf.new. Make any changes
desired, then test that file (using
so there is a visible background) with:&prompt.root; Xorg -retro -config /root/xorg.conf.newAfter the new configuration has been adjusted and tested,
it can be split into smaller files in the normal location,
/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/.Using Fonts in &xorg;Type1 FontsThe default fonts that ship with
&xorg; are less than ideal for
typical desktop publishing applications. Large presentation
fonts show up jagged and unprofessional looking, and small
fonts are almost completely unintelligible. However, there
are several free, high quality Type1 (&postscript;) fonts
available which can be readily used with
&xorg;. For instance, the URW font
collection (x11-fonts/urwfonts) includes
high quality versions of standard type1 fonts (Times Roman, Helvetica, Palatino and others). The
Freefonts collection (x11-fonts/freefonts)
includes many more fonts, but most of them are intended for
use in graphics software such as the
Gimp, and are not complete enough
to serve as screen fonts. In addition,
&xorg; can be configured to use
&truetype; fonts with a minimum of effort. For more details
on this, see the &man.X.7; manual page or .To install the above Type1 font collections from binary
packages, run the following commands:&prompt.root; pkg install urwfontsAlternatively, to build from the Ports Collection, run the
following commands:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/x11-fonts/urwfonts
&prompt.root; make install cleanAnd likewise with the freefont or other collections. To
have the X server detect these fonts, add an appropriate line
to the X server configuration file
(/etc/X11/xorg.conf), which reads:FontPath "/usr/local/share/fonts/urwfonts/"Alternatively, at the command line in the X session
run:&prompt.user; xset fp+ /usr/local/share/fonts/urwfonts
&prompt.user; xset fp rehashThis 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
/usr/local/etc/fonts/local.conf as
demonstrated in .&truetype; FontsTrueType FontsfontsTrueType&xorg; 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 /etc/X11/xorg.conf.Load "freetype"Now make a directory for the &truetype; fonts (for
example, /usr/local/share/fonts/TrueType)
and copy all of the &truetype; fonts into this directory.
Keep in mind that &truetype; fonts cannot be directly taken
from an &apple; &mac;; they must be in
&unix;/&ms-dos;/&windows; format for use by
&xorg;. Once the files have been
copied into this directory, use
mkfontscale to create a
fonts.dir, so that the X font renderer
knows that these new files have been installed.
mkfontscale can be installed as a
package:&prompt.root; pkg install mkfontscaleThen create an index of X font files in a
directory:&prompt.root; cd /usr/local/share/fonts/TrueType
&prompt.root; mkfontscaleNow add the &truetype; directory to the font path. This
is just the same as described in :&prompt.user; xset fp+ /usr/local/share/fonts/TrueType
&prompt.user; xset fp rehashor add a FontPath line to
xorg.conf.Now Gimp,
LibreOffice, 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 LibreOffice) will
look much better now.Anti-Aliased Fontsanti-aliased fontsfontsanti-aliasedAll fonts in &xorg; that are
found in /usr/local/share/fonts/ and
~/.fonts/ are automatically made
available for anti-aliasing to Xft-aware applications. Most
recent applications are Xft-aware, including
KDE,
GNOME, and
Firefox.To control which fonts are anti-aliased, or to
configure anti-aliasing properties, create (or edit, if it
already exists) the file
/usr/local/etc/fonts/local.conf. Several
advanced features of the Xft font system can be tuned using
this file; this section describes only some simple
possibilities. For more details, please see
&man.fonts-conf.5;.XMLThis file must be in XML format. Pay careful attention to
case, and make sure all tags are properly closed. The file
begins with the usual XML header followed by a DOCTYPE
definition, and then the <fontconfig>
tag:<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>As previously stated, all fonts in
/usr/local/share/fonts/ as well as
~/.fonts/ are already made available to
Xft-aware applications. To add another directory
outside of these two directory trees, add a line like
this to
/usr/local/etc/fonts/local.conf:<dir>/path/to/my/fonts</dir>After adding new fonts, and especially new font
directories, rebuild
the font caches:&prompt.root; fc-cache -fAnti-aliasing 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 font sizes
smaller than 14 point from anti-aliasing, include these
lines: <match target="font">
<test name="size" compare="less">
<double>14</double>
</test>
<edit name="antialias" mode="assign">
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<test name="pixelsize" compare="less" qual="any">
<double>14</double>
</test>
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
</match>fontsspacingSpacing for some monospaced fonts might also be
inappropriate with anti-aliasing. This seems to be an issue
with KDE, in particular. One
possible fix is to force the spacing for such fonts
to be 100. Add these lines: <match target="pattern" name="family">
<test qual="any" name="family">
<string>fixed</string>
</test>
<edit name="family" mode="assign">
<string>mono</string>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="pattern" name="family">
<test qual="any" name="family">
<string>console</string>
</test>
<edit name="family" mode="assign">
<string>mono</string>
</edit>
</match>(this aliases the other common names for fixed fonts as
"mono"), and then add: <match target="pattern" name="family">
<test qual="any" name="family">
<string>mono</string>
</test>
<edit name="spacing" mode="assign">
<int>100</int>
</edit>
</match> Certain fonts, such as Helvetica, may have a problem when
anti-aliased. Usually this manifests itself as a font that
seems cut in half vertically. At worst, it may cause
applications to crash. To avoid this, consider adding the
following to local.conf: <match target="pattern" name="family">
<test qual="any" name="family">
<string>Helvetica</string>
</test>
<edit name="family" mode="assign">
<string>sans-serif</string>
</edit>
</match> After editing
local.conf, make certain to end the file
with the </fontconfig> tag. Not
doing this will cause changes to be ignored.Users can add personalized settings by creating their own
~/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf. This
file uses the same XML format described
above.LCD screenFontsLCD screenOne 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
local.conf: <match target="font">
<test qual="all" name="rgba">
<const>unknown</const>
</test>
<edit name="rgba" mode="assign">
<const>rgb</const>
</edit>
</match>Depending on the sort of display,
rgb may need to be changed to
bgr, vrgb or
vbgr: experiment and see which works
best.The X Display ManagerSethKingsleyOriginally contributed by X Display Manager&xorg; provides an X Display
Manager, XDM, which can be used for
login session management. XDM
provides a graphical interface for choosing which display server
to connect to and for entering authorization information such as
a login and password combination.This section demonstrates how to configure the X Display
Manager on &os;. Some desktop environments provide their own
graphical login manager. Refer to for instructions on how to configure
the GNOME Display Manager and for
instructions on how to configure the KDE Display Manager.Configuring XDMTo install XDM, use the
x11/xdm package or port. Once installed,
XDM can be configured to run when
the machine boots up by editing this entry in
/etc/ttys:ttyv8 "/usr/local/bin/xdm -nodaemon" xterm off secureChange the off to on
and save the edit. The ttyv8 in this entry
indicates that XDM will run on the
ninth virtual terminal.The XDM configuration directory
is located in /usr/local/etc/X11/xdm.
This directory contains several files used to change the
behavior and appearance of XDM, as
well as a few scripts and programs used to set up the desktop
when XDM is running. summarizes the function of each
of these files. The exact syntax and usage of these files is
described in &man.xdm.1;.
XDM Configuration FilesFileDescriptionXaccessThe protocol for connecting to
XDM is called the X Display
Manager Connection Protocol
(XDMCP). This file is a client
authorization ruleset for controlling
XDMCP connections from remote
machines. By default, this file does not allow any
remote clients to connect.XresourcesThis file controls the look and feel of the
XDM display chooser and
login screens. 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. The format of this file is identical
to the app-defaults file described in the
&xorg;
documentation.XserversThe list of local and remote displays the chooser
should provide as login choices.XsessionDefault session script for logins which is run by
XDM after a user has logged
in. This points to a customized session
script in ~/.xsession.Xsetup_*Script to automatically launch applications
before displaying the chooser or login interfaces.
There is a script for each display being used, named
Xsetup_*, where
* is the local display number.
Typically these scripts run one or two programs in the
background such as
xconsole.xdm-configGlobal configuration for all displays running
on this machine.xdm-errorsContains errors generated by the server program.
If a display that XDM is
trying to start hangs, look at this file for error
messages. These messages are also written to the
user's ~/.xsession-errors on a
per-session basis.xdm-pidThe running process ID of
XDM.
Configuring Remote AccessBy default, only users on the same system can login using
XDM. To enable users on other
systems to connect to the display server, edit the access
control rules and enable the connection listener.To configure XDM to listen for
any remote connection, comment out the
DisplayManager.requestPort line in
/usr/local/etc/X11/xdm/xdm-config by
putting a ! in front of it:! SECURITY: do not listen for XDMCP or Chooser requests
! Comment out this line if you want to manage X terminals with xdm
DisplayManager.requestPort: 0Save the edits and restart XDM.
To restrict remote access, look at the example entries in
/usr/local/etc/X11/xdm/Xaccess and refer
to &man.xdm.1; for further information.Desktop EnvironmentsValentinoVaschettoContributed by This section describes how to install three popular desktop
environments on a &os; system. A desktop environment can range
from a simple window manager to a complete suite of desktop
applications. Over a hundred desktop environments are available
in the x11-wm category of the Ports
Collection.GNOMEGNOMEGNOME is a user-friendly
desktop environment. It includes a panel for starting
applications and displaying status, a desktop, a set of tools
and applications, and a set of conventions that make it easy
for applications to cooperate and be consistent with each
other. More information regarding
GNOME on &os; can be found at https://www.FreeBSD.org/gnome.
That web site contains additional documentation about
installing, configuring, and managing
GNOME on &os;.This desktop environment can be installed from a
package:&prompt.root; pkg install gnome3To instead build GNOME from
ports, use the following command.
GNOME is a large application and
will take some time to compile, even on a fast
computer.&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome3
&prompt.root; make install cleanGNOME
requires /proc to be mounted. Add this
line to /etc/fstab to mount this file
system automatically during system startup:proc /proc procfs rw 0 0GNOME uses
D-Bus and
HAL for a message bus and hardware
abstraction. These applications are automatically installed
as dependencies of GNOME. Enable
them in /etc/rc.conf so they will be
started when the system boots:dbus_enable="YES"
hald_enable="YES"After installation,
configure &xorg; to start
GNOME. The easiest way to do this
is to enable the GNOME Display Manager,
GDM, which is installed as part of
the GNOME package or port. It can
be enabled by adding this line to
/etc/rc.conf:gdm_enable="YES"It is often desirable to also start all
GNOME services. To achieve this,
add a second line to /etc/rc.conf:gnome_enable="YES"GDM will start
automatically when the system boots.A second method for starting
GNOME is to type
startx from the command-line after
configuring ~/.xinitrc. If this file
already exists, replace the line that starts the current
window manager with one that starts
/usr/local/bin/gnome-session. If this
file does not exist, create it with this command:&prompt.user; echo "exec /usr/local/bin/gnome-session" > ~/.xinitrcA third method is to use XDM as
the display manager. In this case, create an executable
~/.xsession:&prompt.user; echo "exec /usr/local/bin/gnome-session" > ~/.xsessionKDEKDEKDE is another easy-to-use
desktop environment. This desktop provides a suite of
applications with a consistent look and feel, a standardized
menu and toolbars, keybindings, color-schemes,
internationalization, and a centralized, dialog-driven desktop
configuration. More information on
KDE can be found at http://www.kde.org/.
For &os;-specific information, consult http://freebsd.kde.org.To install the KDE package,
type:&prompt.root; pkg install x11/kde5To instead build the KDE port,
use the following command. Installing the port will provide a
menu for selecting which components to install.
KDE is a large application and will
take some time to compile, even on a fast computer.&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/x11/kde5
&prompt.root; make install cleanKDE requires
/proc to be mounted. Add this line to
/etc/fstab to mount this file system
automatically during system startup:proc /proc procfs rw 0 0KDE uses
D-Bus and
HAL for a message bus and hardware
abstraction. These applications are automatically installed
as dependencies of KDE. Enable
them in /etc/rc.conf so they will be
started when the system boots:dbus_enable="YES"
hald_enable="YES"KDEdisplay managerSince KDE Plasma 5, the KDE Display Manager,
KDM is no longer developed.
A possible replacement is SDDM.
To install it, type:&prompt.root; pkg install x11/sddmAdd this line to
/etc/rc.conf:sddm_enable="YES"A second method for launching
KDE Plasma is to type
startx from the command line. For this to
work, the following line is needed in
~/.xinitrc:exec ck-launch-session startplasma-x11A third method for starting KDE
Plasma is through
XDM. To do so, create
an executable ~/.xsession as
follows:&prompt.user; echo "exec ck-launch-session startplasma-x11" > ~/.xsessionOnce KDE Plasma is started,
refer to its built-in help system for more information on how
to use its various menus and applications.XfceXfce is a desktop environment
based on the GTK+ toolkit used by
GNOME. However, it is more
lightweight and provides a simple, efficient, easy-to-use
desktop. It is fully configurable, has a main panel with
menus, applets, and application launchers, provides a file
manager and sound manager, and is themeable. Since it is
fast, light, and efficient, it is ideal for older or slower
machines with memory limitations. More information on
Xfce can be found at http://www.xfce.org.To install the Xfce
package:&prompt.root; pkg install xfceAlternatively, to build the port:&prompt.root; cd /usr/ports/x11-wm/xfce4
&prompt.root; make install cleanXfce uses
D-Bus for a message bus. This
application is automatically installed as dependency of
Xfce. Enable it in
/etc/rc.conf so it will be started when
the system boots:dbus_enable="YES"Unlike GNOME or
KDE,
Xfce does not provide its own login
manager. In order to start Xfce
from the command line by typing startx,
first create ~/.xinitrc with this
command:&prompt.user; echo ". /usr/local/etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc" > ~/.xinitrcAn alternate method is to use
XDM. To configure this method,
create an executable ~/.xsession:&prompt.user; echo ". /usr/local/etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc" > ~/.xsessionInstalling Compiz FusionOne way to make using a desktop
computer more pleasant is with nice 3D effects.Installing the Compiz Fusion
package is easy, but configuring it requires a few steps that
are not described in the port's documentation.Setting up the &os; nVidia DriverDesktop effects can cause quite a load on the graphics
card. For an nVidia-based graphics card, the proprietary
driver is required for good performance. Users of other
graphics cards can skip this section and continue with the
xorg.conf configuration.To determine which nVidia driver is needed see the FAQ question
on the subject.Having determined the correct driver to use for your card,
installation is as simple as installing any other
package.For example, to install the latest driver:&prompt.root; pkg install x11/nvidia-driverThe driver will create a kernel module, which needs to be
loaded at system startup. Add the following line to
/boot/loader.conf:nvidia_load="YES"To immediately load the kernel module into the running
kernel issue a command like kldload
nvidia. However, it has been noted that some
versions of &xorg; will not
function properly if the driver is not loaded at boot time.
After editing /boot/loader.conf, a
reboot is recommended.With the kernel module loaded, you normally only need to
change a single line in xorg.conf
to enable the proprietary driver:Find the following line in
/etc/X11/xorg.conf:Driver "nv"and change it to:Driver "nvidia"Start the GUI as usual, and you should be greeted by the
nVidia splash. Everything should work as usual.Configuring xorg.conf for Desktop
EffectsTo enable Compiz Fusion,
/etc/X11/xorg.conf needs to be
modified:Add the following section to enable composite
effects:Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSectionLocate the Screen section which should look
similar to the one below:Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
...and add the following two lines (after
Monitor will do):DefaultDepth 24
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"Locate the Subsection that refers to the
screen resolution that you wish to use. For example, if you
wish to use 1280x1024, locate the section that follows. If
the desired resolution does not appear in any subsection, you
may add the relevant entry by hand:SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSectionA color depth of 24 bits is needed for desktop
composition, change the above subsection to:SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024"
EndSubSectionFinally, confirm that the glx and
extmod modules are loaded in the
Module section:Section "Module"
Load "extmod"
Load "glx"
...The preceding can be done automatically with
x11/nvidia-xconfig by running (as
root):&prompt.root; nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals
&prompt.root; nvidia-xconfig --composite
&prompt.root; nvidia-xconfig --depth=24Installing and Configuring Compiz FusionInstalling Compiz Fusion
is as simple as any other package:&prompt.root; pkg install x11-wm/compiz-fusionWhen the installation is finished, start your graphic
desktop and at a terminal, enter the following commands (as a
normal user):&prompt.user; compiz --replace --sm-disable --ignore-desktop-hints ccp &
&prompt.user; emerald --replace &Your screen will flicker for a few seconds, as your window
manager (e.g., Metacity if you are
using GNOME) is replaced by
Compiz Fusion.
Emerald takes care of the window
decorations (i.e., close, minimize, maximize buttons, title
bars and so on).You may convert this to a trivial script and have it run
at startup automatically (e.g., by adding to
Sessions in a GNOME
desktop):#! /bin/sh
compiz --replace --sm-disable --ignore-desktop-hints ccp &
emerald --replace &Save this in your home directory as, for example,
start-compiz and make it
executable:&prompt.user; chmod +x ~/start-compizThen use the GUI to add it to Startup
Programs (located in
System,
Preferences,
Sessions on a
GNOME desktop).To actually select all the desired effects and their
settings, execute (again as a normal user) the
Compiz Config Settings Manager:&prompt.user; ccsmIn GNOME, this can also be
found in the System,
Preferences menu.If you have selected gconf support during
the build, you will also be able to view these settings using
gconf-editor under
apps/compiz.TroubleshootingIf the mouse does not work, you will need to first configure
it before proceeding.
In recent Xorg
versions, the InputDevice sections in
xorg.conf are ignored in favor of the
autodetected devices. To restore the old behavior, add the
following line to the ServerLayout or
ServerFlags section of this file:Option "AutoAddDevices" "false"Input devices may then be configured as in previous
versions, along with any other options needed (e.g., keyboard
layout switching).As previously explained the
hald daemon will, by default,
automatically detect your keyboard. There are chances that
your keyboard layout or model will not be correct, desktop
environments like GNOME,
KDE or
Xfce provide tools to configure
the keyboard. However, it is possible to set the keyboard
properties directly either with the help of the
&man.setxkbmap.1; utility or with a
hald's configuration rule.For example if, one wants to use a PC 102 keys keyboard
coming with a french layout, we have to create a keyboard
configuration file for hald
called x11-input.fdi and saved in the
/usr/local/etc/hal/fdi/policy
directory. This file should contain the following
lines:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keyboard">
<merge key="input.x11_options.XkbModel" type="string">pc102</merge>
<merge key="input.x11_options.XkbLayout" type="string">fr</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>If this file already exists, just copy and add to your
file the lines regarding the keyboard configuration.You will have to reboot your machine to force
hald to read this file.It is possible to do the same configuration from an X
terminal or a script with this command line:&prompt.user; setxkbmap -model pc102 -layout fr/usr/local/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst
lists the various keyboard, layouts and options
available.&xorg;
tuningThe xorg.conf.new configuration file
may now be tuned to taste. Open the file in a text editor
such as &man.emacs.1; or &man.ee.1;. If the monitor is an
older or unusual model that does not support autodetection of
sync frequencies, those settings can be added to
xorg.conf.new under the
"Monitor" section:Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Monitor Model"
HorizSync 30-107
VertRefresh 48-120
EndSectionMost monitors support sync frequency autodetection, making
manual entry of these values unnecessary. For the few
monitors that do not support autodetection, avoid potential
damage by only entering values provided by the
manufacturer.X allows DPMS (Energy Star) features to be used with
capable monitors. The &man.xset.1; program controls the
time-outs and can force standby, suspend, or off modes. If
you wish to enable DPMS features for your monitor, you must
add the following line to the monitor section:Option "DPMS"xorg.confWhile the xorg.conf.new configuration
file is still open in an editor, select the default resolution
and color depth desired. This is defined in the
"Screen" section:Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSectionThe DefaultDepth keyword describes the
color depth to run at by default. This can be overridden with
the command line switch to
&man.Xorg.1;. The Modes keyword describes
the resolution to run at for the given color depth. Note that
only VESA standard modes are supported as defined by the
target system's graphics hardware. In the example above, the
default color depth is twenty-four bits per pixel. At this
color depth, the accepted resolution is 1024 by 768
pixels.Finally, write the configuration file and test it using
the test mode given above.One of the tools available to assist you during
troubleshooting process are the
&xorg; log files, which contain
information on each device that the
&xorg; server attaches to.
&xorg; log file names are in the
format of /var/log/Xorg.0.log. The
exact name of the log can vary from
Xorg.0.log to
Xorg.8.log and so forth.If all is well, the configuration file needs to be
installed in a common location where &man.Xorg.1; can find it.
This is typically /etc/X11/xorg.conf or
/usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.&prompt.root; cp xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.confThe &xorg; configuration
process is now complete. &xorg;
may be now started with the &man.startx.1; utility. The
&xorg; server may also be started
with the use of &man.xdm.1;.Configuration with &intel; i810
Graphics Chipsets&intel; i810 graphic chipsetConfiguration with &intel; i810 integrated chipsets
requires the agpgart AGP programming
interface for &xorg; to drive the
card. See the &man.agp.4; driver manual page for more
information.This will allow configuration of the hardware as any
other graphics board. Note on systems without the
&man.agp.4; driver compiled in the kernel, trying to load
the module with &man.kldload.8; will not work. This driver
has to be in the kernel at boot time through being compiled
in or using /boot/loader.conf.Adding a Widescreen Flatpanel to the Mixwidescreen flatpanel configurationThis section assumes a bit of advanced configuration
knowledge. If attempts to use the standard configuration
tools above have not resulted in a working configuration,
there is information enough in the log files to be of use in
getting the setup working. Use of a text editor will be
necessary.Current widescreen (WSXGA, WSXGA+, WUXGA, WXGA, WXGA+,
et.al.) formats support 16:10 and 10:9 formats or aspect
ratios that can be problematic. Examples of some common
screen resolutions for 16:10 aspect ratios are:2560x16001920x12001680x10501440x9001280x800At some point, it will be as easy as adding one of these
resolutions as a possible Mode in the
Section "Screen" as such:Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1680x1050"
EndSubSection
EndSection&xorg; is smart enough to
pull the resolution information from the widescreen via
I2C/DDC information so it knows what the monitor can handle
as far as frequencies and resolutions.If those ModeLines do not exist in
the drivers, one might need to give
&xorg; a little hint. Using
/var/log/Xorg.0.log one can extract
enough information to manually create a
ModeLine that will work. Simply look for
information resembling this:(II) MGA(0): Supported additional Video Mode:
(II) MGA(0): clock: 146.2 MHz Image Size: 433 x 271 mm
(II) MGA(0): h_active: 1680 h_sync: 1784 h_sync_end 1960 h_blank_end 2240 h_border: 0
(II) MGA(0): v_active: 1050 v_sync: 1053 v_sync_end 1059 v_blanking: 1089 v_border: 0
(II) MGA(0): Ranges: V min: 48 V max: 85 Hz, H min: 30 H max: 94 kHz, PixClock max 170 MHzThis information is called EDID information. Creating a
ModeLine from this is just a matter of
putting the numbers in the correct order:ModeLine <name> <clock> <4 horiz. timings> <4 vert. timings>So that the ModeLine in
Section "Monitor" for this example would
look like this:Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Bigname"
ModelName "BestModel"
ModeLine "1680x1050" 146.2 1680 1784 1960 2240 1050 1053 1059 1089
Option "DPMS"
EndSectionNow having completed these simple editing steps, X
should start on your new widescreen monitor.Troubleshooting Compiz FusionI have installed
Compiz Fusion, and
after running the commands you mention, my windows are
left without title bars and buttons. What is
wrong?You are probably missing a setting in
/etc/X11/xorg.conf. Review this
file carefully and check especially the
DefaultDepth and
AddARGBGLXVisuals
directives.When I run the command to start
Compiz Fusion, the X
server crashes and I am back at the console. What is
wrong?If you check
/var/log/Xorg.0.log, you
will probably find error messages during the X
startup. The most common would be:(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the GLX module; please check in your X
(EE) NVIDIA(0): log file that the GLX module has been loaded in your X
(EE) NVIDIA(0): server, and that the module is the NVIDIA GLX module. If
(EE) NVIDIA(0): you continue to encounter problems, Please try
(EE) NVIDIA(0): reinstalling the NVIDIA driver.This is usually the case when you upgrade
&xorg;. You will need to
reinstall the x11/nvidia-driver
package so glx is built again.
diff --git a/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/advocacy/myths.xml b/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/advocacy/myths.xml
index 753e6ca507..731f633fe8 100644
--- a/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/advocacy/myths.xml
+++ b/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/advocacy/myths.xml
@@ -1,398 +1,399 @@
]>
&title;$FreeBSD$
As the BSD projects (including DragonFlyBSD, &os;, NetBSD, and
OpenBSD) have grown in size, a number of persistent myths have
grown up around them. Some of these are perpetuated by well
meaning but misguided individuals, others by people pursuing
their own agendas.
This page aims to dispel those myths while remaining as
dispassionate as possible.
Note: Throughout this page, ''*BSD'' refers to
all of the BSD Projects. Where a myth or response is specific
to a particular project it is indicated as such.
Myth: *BSD has a closed development
model, it's more ''Cathedral'' than ''Bazaar''
Eric Raymond wrote an influential paper,
''The
Cathedral and the Bazaar'' in which the Linux
development model (and the model Eric used for
fetchmail) is held up as an example of how to do
''open'' development. By contrast, the model employed by *BSD
is often characterized as closed.
The implicit value judgment is that ''bazaar'' (open) is good,
and ''cathedral'' (closed) is bad.
If anything, *BSD's development model is probably
more akin to the ''bazaar'' that Eric describes
than either Linux or fetchmail.
Consider the following;
All the *BSD projects: The current, bleeding edge source
code for FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD is available for anyone to download
from the Internet, 24 hours a day. You don't need to wait for
someone else to roll a release.
FreeBSD: An installable snapshot of the current
progress is made weekly. These snapshots can be installed
exactly like an ordinary release, and do not require installation
over an existing system.
OpenBSD: Installable snapshots are generated daily and if
Theo thinks they are good enough, he uploads them to the mirrors.
Contrast this with Linux, where new kernel distributions are
made available on an ad-hoc basis, and where the frequency of
each Linux distribution release is at the whim of the individual
vendor.
There's none of the Linux fanfare every time a new kernel is
released, simply because for most *BSD users it is an every day
event.
Anyone can submit patches, bug reports, documentation, and
other contributions. They can do this
by using a web based
interface.
Pointers to this system litter the documentation.
Not everyone can commit code changes to the *BSD code.
You need to be a committer first. Typically,
people are offered ''commit privs'' after they have made a
few well-thought out submissions to the project using
Bugzilla or similar.
This is identical to the Linux mechanism. Only one person is
(notionally) allowed to change the Kernel, Linus. But specific areas
(such as the networking code) are delegated to other people.
Aside: Nik (nik@FreeBSD.org) is a case in point. After
making several submissions to the &os; Documentation
Project and web pages, he was offered ''commit privs'' so
that he did not have to keep bothering other committers to
commit the changes. He never had to ask for them, they
were freely given.
Myth: You cannot make your own distributions
or derivative works of *BSD
You can. You just need to say in the documentation and source
files where the code is derived from. Multiple derivative
projects exist:
DragonflyBSD
started as a code fork from
FreeBSD 4.X, but it has since its own user community and
development goals.
Gentoo/FreeBSD
is an effort by the Gentoo Project to port their complete
administration facilities to take advantage of the reliable
FreeBSD kernel and userland. This project is purely
incomplete and experimental.
NanoBSD is another
project to produce reduced versions
of FreeBSD to put it on a Compact Flash card or other mass
storage. It is also a part of the FreeBSD source tree, see
/usr/src/tools/tools/nanobsd.
-
FuryBSD is a
- brand new, open source &os; desktop. FuryBSD pays homage to
- desktop BSD projects of the past PC-BSD and TrueOS with its
- graphical interface and adds additional tools like a live,
- hybrid USB/DVD image. FuryBSD is completely free to use and
- distributed under the BSD license.
+
NomadBSD is a
+ persistent live system for USB flash drives, based on &os;.
+ Together with automatic hardware detection and setup, it is
+ configured to be used as a desktop system that works out of
+ the box, but can also be used for data recovery, for
+ educational purposes, or to test &os;'s hardware
+ compatibility.
GhostBSD is derived
from &os;, uses the GTK environment to provide a beautiful
looks and comfortable experience on the modern BSD platform
offering a natural and native &unix; work
environment.
MidnightBSD
is a &os; derived operating system developed with desktop
users in mind. It includes all the software you'd expect
for your daily tasks: mail, web browsing, word processing,
gaming, and much more.
pfSense is an open source
firewall derived from the m0n0wall firewall system with several
different goals and features, such as OpenBSD's Packet Filter (PF),
FreeBSD 6.1, ALTQ support for excellent packet queuing and
finally an integrated package management system for extending the
environment with new features.
HardenedBSD was
Founded in 2014 by Oliver Pinter and Shawn Webb, HardenedBSD
is a security-enhanced fork of &os;. The HardenedBSD
Project is implementing many exploit mitigation and security
technologies on top of &os;.
FreeNAS is an
operating system that can be installed on virtually any
hardware platform to share data over a network. FreeNAS is
the simplest way to create a centralized and easily
accessible place for your data. Use FreeNAS with ZFS to
protect, store, and back up all of your data. FreeNAS is
used everywhere, for the home, small business, and the
enterprise.
XigmaNAS is an
embedded Open Source NAS (Network-Attached Storage)
distribution based on &os;.
Similarly to DragonflyBSD, OpenBSD was not a standalone project,
it started as a spinoff from the NetBSD project, and has since evolved
its own distinctive approach.
Myth: *BSD makes a great server, but a poor
(&unix;) desktop
*BSD makes a great server. It also makes a great desktop. Many of
the requirements for a server (responsiveness under load, stability,
effective use of system resources) are the same requirements as for a
desktop machine.
*BSD has access to the same desktop tools (KDE, GNOME, Firefox,
windowmanagers) as Linux. And ''office'' applications such as
LibreOffice suite work under *BSD too.
Myth: The BSD codebase is old, outdated, and
dying
While the BSD codebase may be more than 20 years old, it is neither
outdated nor dying. Many professional users like the stability that years
of testing has provided FreeBSD.
Myth: The *BSD projects are at war with one another,
splinter groups form each week
No. While occasional advocacy may get a touch heated, the *BSD flavors
continue to work with one another. FreeBSD's Alpha port was initially
heavily based on the work done by the NetBSD team. Both NetBSD and
OpenBSD used the FreeBSD ports collection to bootstrap their own port
sets. FreeBSD and NetBSD both integrate security fixes first discovered
by the OpenBSD team.
The FreeBSD and NetBSD projects separated more than twenty years
ago. OpenBSD and DragonflyBSD are the only new BSD projects to
split off in the last twenty years.
Myth: You can't cluster *BSD systems (parallel
computing)
The free software community started running on predominantly BSD
systems (SunOS and similar). *BSD users can generally compile software
written for these systems without needing to make any changes.
In addition, each *BSD project uses a ''ports'' system to make
the building of ported software much easier.
FreeBSD: There are currently more than 30,000
applications ready to download and install in the FreeBSD ports
collection. On i386 and AMD64, the Linux emulation layer will
also run the vast majority of Linux applications. On the AMD64
architectures there is a compatibility layer to run 32-bit FreeBSD binaries.
NetBSD: The Linux emulation layer will run the vast majority of
i386 Linux applications, and the majority of SunOS4 applications can be
run on a SPARCStation.
OpenBSD: There are currently more than 8000 applications
ready to download and install in the OpenBSD ports collection. The Linux
emulation layer will also run the vast majority of i386 Linux
applications, and the majority of SunOS4 applications can be run on a
SPARCStation.
Both NetBSD and OpenBSD are able to use applications in FreeBSD's ports
collection with minimal effort. Their lower number of ported
applications reflects this.
It is true that most companies when porting to PC Unix will choose Linux
first. Fortunately, *BSD's Linux emulation layer will run these
programs (Acrobat, StarOffice, Mathematica, WordPerfect, Quake, Intel
ICC compiler, Compaq's Alpha compiler ...)
with few, if any, problems.
As a historical note, the first version of Netscape Navigator that ran
on FreeBSD with Java support was the Linux version. These day you can
also use a native FreeBSD version of Mozilla with a native Java
plugin, all compiled conveniently from ports.
Why would you consider using &os;? We think that there are
lots of reasons. Here is a selection of reasons that some of
our existing users gave for their choice of operating system.
The Community
&os; is a community-driven operating system despite it being
to a partial degree sponsored corporately. &os; has active mailing lists,
forums, and IRC channels where experienced users and
developers are always willing to help the less
experienced.
The community is largely driven by technology, not ideology,
and is focused on building the best possible system and making
&os; as widely used as possible, not on pushing any other
agendas.
There is no dictator—benevolent or
otherwise—for the project. The Core Team is elected and
is nominally responsible for overseeing the goals of the project,
but this is a very light touch. Core mediates disputes between
developers, but rarely needs to take an active role in
development, beyond their separate contributions as individual
developers.
Stability
Stability means many different things. &os; very rarely
crashes (and when it does it is usually due to hardware
faults), but while that was a great boast a decade ago, now it
is an expected feature for any operating system.
Stability in &os; means much more than that. It means that
upgrading the system does not require upgrading the user.
Configuration interfaces do change over time, but only when
there is a good reason. If you learned how to use &os; in
2000, most of your knowledge would still be relevant.
Backwards compatibility is very important to the &os; team,
and any release in a major release series is expected to
be able to run any code—including kernel
modules—that ran on an earlier version. The entire base
system is developed together, including the kernel, the core
utilities, and the configuration system, so upgrades are
usually painless. Included tools like mergemaster help update
configuration files with little or no manual intervention.
Early Adoption and Collaboration With Other Projects
&os; has been one of the first adopters of the LLVM
infrastructure, including the clang compiler and the libc++
stack. The entire &os; system, including kernel and
userspace, can build with clang, and from &os; both clang
and the permissively-licensed libc++ are included, giving a
modern, BSD-licensed C++ stack. Several &os; developers are
also active contributors to LLVM, ensuring that both projects
thrive together.
This same collaboration works downstream, with projects like
- FuryBSD, GhostBSD, MidnightBSD and pfSense building on top of
+ GhostBSD, MidnightBSD, NomadBSD and pfSense building on top of
the &os; base to provide desktop and firewall oriented
distributions, respectively. These projects are not forks,
they base their work on the latest version of &os; and
customize the system for specific uses.
Simple Configuration
&os; service initialization is very simple. Each service,
whether part of the base system or installed from a port, comes
with a script that is responsible for starting and stopping it
(and often some other options). The /etc/rc.conf file
contains a list of variables for enabling and configuring
services. Want to enable ssh? Just add sshd_enable="YES" to
your rc.conf file. This system makes it easy to see at a
glance everything that will be started when your system
boots.
The rc system that reads this file understands dependencies
between services and so can automatically launch them in
parallel, or wait until one is finished before starting the
things that it needs. You get all of the benefits of a modern
configuration system, without a complex interface.
Ports
The ports tree contains a large collection of third-party
software, including older versions of some things where the
userbase is divided about the benefits of upgrading, and a lot
of niche programs. The chances are that anything you want to
run which works on &os; will be there.
Unlike some other systems, &os; maintains a clean division
between the base system and third-party ports and packages.
All third-party software goes in /usr/local, so if you want to
repurpose a machine, it is trivial to simply delete all
installed packages and then start installing the ones that you
want.
The pkg(8) tool makes working with binary packages
even easier, although source installs are still supported for
people who want the level of configurability that this
implies.
Security
Security is vital in any network-connected machine. &os;
provides a number of tools for ensuring that you can maintain a
secure system, such as:
Jails, allowing you to run applications or entire systems
in a sandbox that cannot access the rest of the system. With
tools like ezjail and ZFS you can instantly create a new
jail with a clone of an existing system, using a tiny amount
of disk space, and run untrusted code inside it.
Mandatory Access Control, from the TrustedBSD project,
allowing you to configure access control policies for all
operating system resources.
Capsicum, from &os; 9 onwards, allows developers to easily
implement privilege separation, reducing the impact of
compromised code.
The VuXML system for publishing vulnerabilities in ports,
which integrates with tools such as pkg, so that your
daily security email tells you about any known
vulnerabilities in ported software.
Security event auditing, using the BSM standard.
And, of course, all of the standard features that are
expected from a modern &unix; system including IPSec, SSH, and so
on.
ZFS
Cheap snapshots, clones, end-to-end checksums, deduplication,
compression, and no need to decide partition sizes on install.
Using ZFS for a few days makes going back to a more
traditional volume manager painful. If you want to test
something with ZFS, it is trivial to just create a
snapshot and roll back if it didn't work.
ZFS lets you clone an existing
jail in under a second, no matter how big the jail
itself is.
GEOM
Even without ZFS, &os; comes with a rich storage system.
GEOM layers providers and consumers in arbitrary ways,
allowing you to use two networked machines for
high-availability storage, use your choice of RAID level, or
add features like compression or encryption.
Working Sound
&os; 4.x introduced in-kernel sound mixing, so that multiple
applications could play sound at the same time even with cheap
sound cards with no hardware mixing support. &os; 5.x
automatically allocated new channels to applications, without
any configuration.
Now, &os; has low-latency sound mixing with per-application
volume controls and full support for the OSS 4 APIs out of the
box. There is no need to configure a userspace sound daemon.
The same audio APIs that were used a decade ago still work on
&os;, including some compatibility modes to allow
applications that try to manipulate the global volume to only
change their own. If you want to watch DVDs with 5.1 surround
sound, just install your favourite media player and press
play.
My System, How I Want It
&os; gives you an easy-to-use, working, &unix;-like system.
This base system can then be extended easily. If you want to
run KDE or GNOME, then just install the metapackage for the
version that you prefer. If you want a headless server, then
it is equally easy to install the server tools that you want.
It is easy to run the &os; installer via a serial port and to
configure the entire system from the terminal. It is also easy
to install and use an existing desktop environment. The
decisions about the kind of system you want to use are left to
you.
If you are deploying &os; in a corporate environment, then
it is very easy to customise both the base system and the set
of installed packages for your specific requirements. The
build system provides numerous tuneable variables allowing you
to build exactly the base system that meets your needs.
The &os;
Handbook and Frequently Asked Questions
(FAQ) are the main documents for &os;. Essential reading,
they contain a lot of material for newbies as well as advanced
users. For users interested in installing a GUI, see the X Windows chapter.
Manual pages are good for
reference but not always the best introduction for a novice.
They generally provide information on a specific command,
driver or service.
Join the &os;-Questions mailing list to see the questions
you were too afraid to ask, and their answers. Subscribe by
filling out the following form: http://lists.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions.
You can look up old questions and answers via the search
page.
The &os; Forums
offer another support channel. Many users have written various
tutorials and lots of new users receive help there.
You can search the
Handbook and FAQ, the whole web site, or the &os; mailing list
archives.
The Support page
contains a wealth of information about &os;, including mailing
lists, user groups, web and FTP sites, release information,
and links to some sources of &unix; information.
&os; is widely used as a building block for other commercial
and open-source operating systems. Some of the most widely used
and publicly available systems are listed below.
FreeNAS is a storage
solution that can be installed on virtually any hardware
platform to share data over a network. It uses ZFS to protect,
store, backup, all of your data.
-
FuryBSD is a brand
- new, open source &os; desktop. FuryBSD pays homage to desktop
- BSD projects of the past PC-BSD and TrueOS with its graphical
- interface and adds additional tools like a live, hybrid
- USB/DVD image. FuryBSD is completely free to use and
- distributed under the BSD license.
-
GhostBSD is derived
from &os;, GhostBSD uses the GTK environment to provide a
beautiful looks and comfortable experience on the modern BSD
platform offering a natural and native &unix; work
environment.
MidnightBSD is
a BSD-derived operating system developed with desktop users
in mind. It includes all the software you'd expect for your
daily tasks: mail, web browsing, word processing, gaming,
and much more.
+
NomadBSD is a
+ persistent live system for USB flash drives, based on &os;.
+ Together with automatic hardware detection and setup, it is
+ configured to be used as a desktop system that works out
+ of the box, but can also be used for data recovery, for
+ educational purposes, or to test &os;'s hardware
+ compatibility.
+
pfSense is a &os;
based network security solution. pfSense
software, with the help of the package system, is able to
provide the same functionality or more of common commercial
firewalls, without any of the artificial limitations. It has
successfully replaced every big name commercial firewall you can
imagine in numerous installations around the world.
Everyone has something to contribute to the &os; community,
even newbies! Some are busy working with the new advocacy group
and some have become involved with the Documentation Project as
reviewers. Other &os; newbies might have particular skills and
experiences to share, either computer related or not, or just
want to meet new newbies and make them feel welcome. There are
always people around who help others simply because they like
to.
Friends who run &os; are a great resource. No book can replace
chatting on the phone or across a pizza with someone who has the
same interests, enjoys similar accomplishments, and faces the
same challenges. If you do not have many friends who use &os;,
consider using your old &os; CDs to create some more.
User groups are good
places to meet other &os; users. If there is no one nearby, you
might consider starting one!
For more information on getting involved in the community, see
the Contributing
to &os; article.
Most users of &os; will have hardware for either the amd64,
i386, or armv6 architectures.
Modern PCs use the amd64 architecture, including those with
Intel® branded processors. Computers with more than
3 GB of memory should use amd64. If the computer is an
older, 32-bit only model, use i386. For embedded devices and
single-board computers (SBC) such as the Raspberry Pi, Beagle
Bone Black, Panda Board, and Zed Board, use the armv6 SD card
image which supports ARMv6 and ARMv7 processors.
All other users should reference the
complete list
of supported &os; platforms.
Choosing an Image
The &os; installer can be downloaded in a number of different
formats including CD (disc1), DVD (dvd1), and Network Install
(bootonly) sized ISO
Disc Images, as well as regular and mini USB memory stick
images. Recent versions of &os; are also offered as prebuilt
expandable Virtual Machine images, and as SD Card images for embedded
platforms.
&os; Deployment Statistics
While &os; does not gather deployment statistics, having
statistical information available is essential. Please consider
installing the sysutils/bsdstats
package, which collects hardware and software statistics,
helping developers understand how to best focus their
efforts. The information collected is available at the
bsdstats.org website.
If you are interested in a purely experimental
snapshot release of &os;-CURRENT (AKA
&rel.head;-CURRENT), aimed at developers and bleeding-edge
testers only, then please see the &os; Snapshot Releases page. For
more information about past, present and future releases in
general, please visit the release information
page.
If you plan on getting &os; via HTTP or FTP, please check
the listing of mirror
sites in the Handbook to see if there is a site
closer to you.
Install &os;
There are many options for installing &os;, including
installation from CD-ROM, DVD, USB Memory Stick or even directly
using anonymous FTP, HTTP, or NFS. Please read through the &os;
installation guide before downloading the entire &os;
distribution.
For downloading past releases, please visit the FTP
archive.
&os;-derived Operating System Distributions
&os; is widely used as a building block for other commercial
and open-source operating systems. The projects below are
widely used and of particular interest to &os; users.
FreeNAS is an open
source storage platform based on &os; and supports sharing
across Windows, Apple, and UNIX-like systems.
-
FuryBSD is a brand
- new, open source &os; desktop. FuryBSD pays homage to desktop
- BSD projects of the past PC-BSD and TrueOS with its graphical
- interface and adds additional tools like a live, hybrid
- USB/DVD image. FuryBSD is completely free to use and
- distributed under the BSD license.
-
GhostBSD is derived
from &os;, GhostBSD uses the GTK environment to provide a
beautiful looks and comfortable experience on the modern BSD
platform offering a natural and native &unix; work
environment.
MidnightBSD is
a BSD-derived operating system developed with desktop users in
mind. It includes all the software you'd expect for your
daily tasks: mail, web browsing, word processing, gaming,
and much more.
+
NomadBSD is
+ a persistent live system for USB flash drives, based on &os;.
+ Together with automatic hardware detection and setup,
+ it is configured to be used as a desktop system that works out
+ of the box, but can also be used for data recovery, for
+ educational purposes, or to test &os;'s hardware
+ compatibility.
+
+
pfSense is a
&os; based customized distribution tailored for
use as a firewall and router.
Applications and Utility Software
The Ports Collection
The &os; Ports Collection is a diverse collection of utility
and application software that has been ported to &os;.
For information about how you can contribute
your favorite piece of software to the Ports Collection,
have a look at The
Porter's Handbook and the article Contributing
to &os;.