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For People New to Both FreeBSD and UnixAnneliseAndersonandrsn@andrsn.stanford.eduAugust 15, 1997Congratulations on installing FreeBSD! This introduction
is for people new to both FreeBSD and
Un*x—so it starts with basics. It assumes you're using
version 2.0.5 or later of FreeBSD as distributed by Walnut
Creek or FreeBSD.org, your system (for now) has a single user
(you)—and you're probably pretty good with DOS/Windows
or OS/2.Logging in and Getting OutLog in (when you see login:) as a user you created during
installation or as root. (Your FreeBSD
installation will already have an account for root; root can go
anywhere and do anything, including deleting essential files, so
be careful!) The symbols &prompt.user; and &prompt.root; in the following stand for the
prompt (yours may be different), with &prompt.user; indicating an ordinary
user and &prompt.root; indicating root.To log out (and get a new login: prompt) type&prompt.root; exitas often as necessary. Yes, press enter
after commands, and remember that Unix is
case-sensitive—exit, not
EXIT.
- To shut down the machine type:
+ To shut down the machine type&prompt.root; /sbin/shutdown -h nowOr to reboot type&prompt.root; /sbin/shutdown -r nowor&prompt.root; /sbin/rebootYou can also reboot with
CtrlAltDelete.
Give it a little time to do its work. This is equivalent to
- /sbin/reboot in recent releases of FreeBSD,
+ /sbin/reboot in recent releases of FreeBSD
and is much, much better than hitting the reset button. You
don't want to have to reinstall this thing, do you?Adding A User with Root PrivilegesIf you didn't create any users when you installed the system
and are thus logged in as root, you should probably create a
user now with&prompt.root; adduserThe first time you use adduser, it might ask for some
defaults to save. You might want to make the default shell csh
instead of sh, if it suggests sh as the default. Otherwise just
press enter to accept each default. These defaults are saved in
/etc/adduser.conf, an editable file.Suppose you create a user jack with
full name Jack Benimble. Give jack a
password if security (even kids around who might pound on the
keyboard) is an issue. When it asks you if you want to invite
jack into other groups, type wheelLogin group is ``jack''. Invite jack into other groups: wheelThis will make it possible to log in as
jack and use the su
command to become root. Then you won't get scolded any more for
logging in as root.You can quit adduser any time by typing
CtrlC,
and at the end you'll have a chance to approve your new user or
simply type n for no. You might want to create
a second new user (jill?) so that when you edit jack's login
files, you'll have a hot spare in case something goes
wrong.Once you've done this, use exit to get
back to a login prompt and log in as jack.
In general, it's a good idea to do as much work as possible as
an ordinary user who doesn't have the power—and
risk—of root.If you already created a user and you want the user to be
able to su to root, you can log in as root
and edit the file /etc/group, adding jack
to the first line (the group wheel). But first you need to
practice vi, the text editor--or use the
simpler text editor, ee, installed on recent
version of FreeBSD.To delete a user, use the rmuser
command.Looking AroundLogged in as an ordinary user, look around and try out some
commands that will access the sources of help and information
within FreeBSD.Here are some commands and what they do:idTells you who you are!pwdShows you where you are—the current working
directory.lsLists the files in the current directory.ls Lists the files in the current directory with a
* after executables, a
/ after directories, and an
@ after symbolic links.ls Lists the files in long format—size, date,
permissions.ls Lists hidden dot files with the others.
- If you're root, thedot files show up
+ If you're root, the dot files show up
without the switch.cdChanges directories. cd
.. backs up one level;
note the space after cd. cd
/usr/local goes there.
cd ~ goes to
the home directory of the person logged in—e.g.,
/usr/home/jack. Try cd
/cdrom, and then
ls, to find out if your CDROM is
mounted and working.view
filenameLets you look at a file (named
- filename without changing it.
+ filename) without changing it.
Try view
/etc/fstab.
:q to quit.cat
filenameDisplays filename on
screen. If it's too long and you can see only the end of
it, press ScrollLock and use the
up-arrow to move backward; you can use
ScrollLock with man pages too. Press
ScrollLock again to quit scrolling. You
might want to try cat on some of the
dot files in your home directory—cat
.cshrc, cat
.login, cat
.profile.You'll notice aliases in .cshrc for
some of the ls commands (they're very
convenient). You can create other aliases by editing
.cshrc. You can make these aliases
available to all users on the system by putting them in the
system-wide csh configuration file,
/etc/csh.cshrc.Getting Help and InformationHere are some useful sources of help.
Text stands for something of your
choice that you type in—usually a command or
filename.apropos
textEverything containing string
text in the whatis
database.man
textThe man page for text. The
major source of documentation for Un*x systems.
man ls will tell
you all the ways to use the ls command.
Press Enter to move through text,
Ctrlb
to go back a page,
Ctrlf
to go forward, q or
Ctrlc
to quit.which
textTells you where in the user's path the command
text is found.locate
textAll the paths where the string
text is found.whatis
textTells you what the command
text does and its man page.
Typing whatis * will tell you about all
the binaries in the current directory.whereis
textFinds the file text, giving
its full path.You might want to try using whatis on
some common useful commands like cat,
more, grep,
mv, find,
tar, chmod,
chown, date, and
script. more lets you
read a page at a time as it does in DOS, e.g., ls -l |
more or more
filename. The
* works as a wildcard—e.g., ls
w* will show you files beginning with
w.Are some of these not working very well? Both
locate and whatis depend
on a database that's rebuilt weekly. If your machine isn't
going to be left on over the weekend (and running FreeBSD), you
might want to run the commands for daily, weekly, and monthly
maintenance now and then. Run them as root and give each one
time to finish before you start the next one, for now.
- &prompt.root; /etc/daily
+ &prompt.root; periodic dailyoutput omitted
-&prompt.root; /etc/weekly
+&prompt.root; periodic weeklyoutput omitted
-&prompt.root; /etc/monthly
+&prompt.root; periodic monthlyoutput omitted
- If you get tired waiting, press
+ If you get tired of waiting, press
AltF2 to
get another virtual console, and log in
again. After all, it's a multi-user, multi-tasking system.
Nevertheless these commands will probably flash messages on your
screen while they're running; you can type
clear at the prompt to clear the screen.
Once they've run, you might want to look at
/var/mail/root and
/var/log/messages.
- Basically running such commands is part of system
+ Running such commands is part of system
administration—and as a single user of a Unix system,
you're your own system administrator. Virtually everything you
need to be root to do is system administration. Such
responsibilities aren't covered very well even in those big fat
books on Unix, which seem to devote a lot of space to pulling
down menus in windows managers. You might want to get one of
the two leading books on systems administration, either Evi
Nemeth et.al.'s UNIX System Administration
Handbook (Prentice-Hall, 1995, ISBN
0-13-15051-7)—the second edition with the red cover; or
Æleen Frisch's Essential System
Administration (O'Reilly & Associates, 1993,
ISBN 0-937175-80-3). I used Nemeth.Editing TextTo configure your system, you need to edit text files. Most
of them will be in the /etc directory; and
you'll need to su to root to be able to
change them. You can use the easy ee, but in
the long run the text editor vi is worth
learning. There's an excellent tutorial on vi in
/usr/src/contrib/nvi/docs/tutorial if you
have that installed; otherwise you can get it by ftp to
ftp.cdrom.com in the directory
FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/src/contrib/nvi/docs/tutorial.Before you edit a file, you should probably back it up.
Suppose you want to edit /etc/rc.conf. You
could just use cd /etc to get to the
/etc directory and do:&prompt.root; cp rc.conf rc.conf.origThis would copy rc.conf to
rc.conf.orig, and you could later copy
rc.conf.orig to
rc.conf to recover the original. But even
better would be moving (renaming) and then copying back:&prompt.root; mv rc.conf rc.conf.orig
&prompt.root; cp rc.conf.orig rc.confbecause the mv command preserves the
original date and owner of the file. You can now edit
rc.conf. If you want the original back,
you'd then mv rc.conf rc.conf.myedit
(assuming you want to preserve your edited version) and
then&prompt.root; mv rc.conf.orig rc.confto put things back the way they were.To edit a file, type&prompt.root; vi filenameMove through the text with the arrow keys.
Esc (the escape key) puts vi
in command mode. Here are some commands:xdelete letter the cursor is ondddelete the entire line (even if it wraps on the
screen)iinsert text at the cursorainsert text after the cursorOnce you type i or a,
you can enter text. Esc puts you back in
command mode where you can type:wto write your changes to disk and continue
editing:wqto write and quit:q!to quit without saving changes/textto move the cursor to text;
/Enter (the enter key)
to find the next instance of
text.Gto go to the end of the filenGto go to line n in the
file, where n is a
numberCtrl>L>to redraw the screenCtrl>b>> and
Ctrl>f>>go back and forward a screen, as they do with
more> and view>.Practice with vi> in your home directory by
creating a new file with vi filename>>
and adding and deleting text, saving the file, and calling it up
again. vi> delivers some surprises because it's
really quite complex, and sometimes you'll inadvertently issue a
command that will do something you don't expect. (Some people
actually like vi>—it's more powerful than DOS
EDIT—find out about the :r> command.) Use
Esc> one or more times to be sure you're in command
mode and proceed from there when it gives you trouble, save
often with :w>, and use :q!> to get out
and start over (from your last :w>) when you need
to.Now you can cd> to /etc,
su> to root, use vi> to edit the file
/etc/group, and add a user to wheel so the
user has root privileges. Just add a comma and the user's login
name to the end of the first line in the file, press
Esc>, and use :wq> to write the file to
disk and quit. Instantly effective. (You didn't put a space
after the comma, did you?)Printing Files from DOSAt this point you probably don't have the printer working,
so here's a way to create a file from a man page, move it to a
floppy, and then print it from DOS. Suppose you want to read
carefully about changing permissions on files (pretty
important). You can use the command man chmod to read about it.
The command&prompt.user; man chmod | col -b > chmod.txt>
will remove formatting codes and send the man page to the
chmod.txt file instead of showing it on
your screen. Now put a dos-formatted diskette in your floppy
drive a, su> to root, and type&prompt.root; /sbin/mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt>
to mount the floppy drive on
/mnt.Now (you no longer need to be root, and you can type
exit> to get back to being user jack) you can go to
the directory where you created chmod.txt and copy the file to
the floppy with:&prompt.user; cp chmod.txt /mnt>
and use ls /mnt to get a directory
listing of /mnt, which should show the file
chmod.txt.You might especially want to make a file from
/sbin/dmesg by typing&prompt.user; /sbin/dmesg > dmesg.txt>
and copying dmesg.txt to the floppy.
/sbin/dmesg is the boot log record, and it's
useful to understand it because it shows what FreeBSD found when
it booted up. If you ask questions on
freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org> or on a USENET
group—like FreeBSD isn't finding my tape drive,
what do I do?—people will want to know what
dmesg> has to say.You can now dismount the floppy drive (as root) to get the
disk out with&prompt.root; /sbin/umount /mnt>
and reboot to go to DOS. Copy these files to a DOS
directory, call them up with DOS EDIT, Windows Notepad or
Wordpad, or a word processor, make a minor change so the file
has to be saved, and print as you normally would from DOS or
Windows. Hope it works! man pages come out best if printed
with the dos print> command. (Copying files from
FreeBSD to a mounted dos partition is in some cases still a
little risky.)Getting the printer printing from FreeBSD involves creating
an appropriate entry in /etc/printcap and
creating a matching spool directory in
/var/spool/output. If your printer is on
lpt0> (what dos calls LPT1>), you may
only need to go to /var/spool/output and
(as root) create the directory lpd> by typing:
mkdir lpd, if it doesn't already exist.
Then the printer should respond if it's turned on when the
system is booted, and lp or lpr should send a file to the
printer. Whether or not the file actually prints depends on
configuring it, which is covered in the FreeBSD handbook.>Other Useful Commandsdf>shows file space and mounted systems.ps aux>shows processes running. ps ax> is a
narrower form.rm filename>>remove filename>.rm -R dir>>removes a directory dir> and all
subdirectories—careful!ls -Rlists files in the current directory and all
subdirectories; I used a variant, ls -AFR >
where.txt, to get a list of all the files in
/ and (separately)
/usr before I found better ways to
find files.passwd>to change user's password (or root's password)man hier>man page on the Unix file systemUse find> to locate filename in
/usr or any of its subdirectories
with&prompt.user; find /usr -name "filename>">
You can use * as a wildcard in
"filename>"> (which should be in
quotes). If you tell find to search in /
instead of /usr it will look for the
file(s) on all mounted file systems, including the CDROM and the
dos partition.An excellent book that explains Unix commands and utilities
is Abrahams & Larson, Unix for the
Impatient (2nd ed., Addison-Wesley, 1996).
There's also a lot of Unix information on the Internet. Try the
Unix Reference
Desk.Next StepsYou should now have the tools you need to get around and
edit files, so you can get everything up and running. There is
a great deal of information in the FreeBSD handbook (which is
probably on your hard drive) and FreeBSD's web site. A
wide variety of packages and ports are on the Walnut Creek CDROM as well
as the web site. The handbook tells you more about how to use
them (get the package if it exists, with pkg_add
/cdrom/packages/All/packagename>>, where
packagename is the filename of the
package). The cdrom has lists of the packages and ports with
brief descriptions in cdrom/packages/index,
cdrom/packages/index.txt, and
cdrom/ports/index, with fuller descriptions
in /cdrom/ports/*/*/pkg/DESCR, where the
*s represent subdirectories of kinds of
programs and program names respectively.If you find the handbook too sophisticated (what with
lndir> and all) on installing ports from the cdrom,
here's what usually works:Find the port you want, say kermit>. There will
be a directory for it on the cdrom. Copy the subdirectory to
/usr/local (a good place for software you
add that should be available to all users) with:&prompt.root; cp -R /cdrom/ports/comm/kermit /usr/local>
This should result in a
/usr/local/kermit subdirectory that has all
the files that the kermit subdirectory on the
CDROM has.Next, create the directory
/usr/ports/distfiles if it doesn't already
exist using mkdir>. Now check check
/cdrom/ports/distfiles for a file with a
name that indicates it's the port you want. Copy that file to
/usr/ports/distfiles; in recent versions
you can skip this step, as FreeBSD will do it for you. In the
case of kermit>, there is no distfile.Then cd> to the subdirectory of
/usr/local/kermit that has the file
Makefile>. Type&prompt.root; make all install>
During this process the port will ftp to get any compressed
files it needs that it didn't find on the cdrom or in
/usr/ports/distfiles. If you don't have
your network running yet and there was no file for the port in
/cdrom/ports/distfiles, you will have to
get the distfile using another machine and copy it to
/usr/ports/distfiles from a floppy or your
dos partition. Read Makefile> (with cat>
or more> or view>) to find out where to go
(the master distribution site) to get the file and what its name
is. Its name will be truncated when downloaded to DOS, and
after you get it into /usr/ports/distfiles
you'll have to rename it (with the mv> command) to
its original name so it can be found. (Use binary file
transfers!) Then go back to
/usr/local/kermit, find the directory with
Makefile>, and type make all
install>.The other thing that happens when installing ports or
packages is that some other program is needed. If the
installation stops with a message can't find
unzip or whatever, you might need to install the
package or port for unzip before you continue.Once it's installed type rehash> to make FreeBSD
reread the files in the path so it knows what's there. (If you
get a lot of path not found> messages when you use
whereis> or which, you might want to make additions
to the list of directories in the path statement in
.cshrc in your home directory. The path
statement in Unix does the same kind of work it does in DOS,
except the current directory is not (by default) in the path for
security reasons; if the command you want is in the directory
you're in, you need to type ./ before the
command to make it work; no space after the slash.)You might want to get the most recent version of Netscape
from their ftp site.
(Netscape requires the X Window System.) There's now a FreeBSD
version, so look around carefully. Just use gunzip
filename>> and tar xvf
filename>> on it, move the binary to
/usr/local/bin or some other place binaries
are kept, rehash>, and then put the following lines
in .cshrc in each user's home directory or
(easier) in /etc/csh.cshrc, the
system-wide csh start-up file:setenv XKEYSYMDB /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB
setenv XNLSPATH /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/nls
>
This assumes that the file XKeysymDB> and the
directory nls> are in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11; if they're not, find
them and put them there.If you originally got Netscape as a port using the CDROM (or
ftp), don't replace /usr/local/bin/netscape
with the new netscape binary; this is just a shell script that
- sets up the environmental variables for you. Instead rename the
+ sets up the environment variables for you. Instead rename the
new binary to netscape.bin and replace the
old binary, which is
- /usr/local/lib/netscape/netscape.bin.
+ /usr/local/netscape/netscape.
Your Working EnvironmentYour shell is the most important part of your working
environment. In DOS, the usual shell is command.com. The shell
is what interprets the commands you type on the command line,
and thus communicates with the rest of the operating system.
You can also write shell scripts, which are like DOS batch
files: a series of commands to be run without your
intervention.Two shells come installed with FreeBSD: csh and sh. csh is
good for command-line work, but scripts should be written with
sh (or bash). You can find out what shell you have by typing
echo $SHELL.The csh shell is okay, but tcsh does everything csh does and
more. It It allows you to recall commands with the arrow keys
and edit them. It has tab-key completion of filenames (csh uses
the escape key), and it lets you switch to the directory you
were last in with cd -. It's also much
easier to alter your prompt with tcsh. It makes life a lot
easier.Here are the three steps for installing a new shell:Install the shell as a port or a package, just as you
would any other port or package. Use
rehash and which tcsh
(assuming you're installing tcsh) to make sure it got
installed.As root, edit /etc/shells, adding a
line in the file for the new shell, in this case
/usr/local/bin/tcsh, and save the file. (Some ports may do
this for you.)Use the chsh command to change your
shell to tcsh permanently, or type tcsh
at the prompt to change your shell without logging in
again.It can be dangerous to change root's shell to something
other than sh or csh on early versions of FreeBSD and many
other versions of Unix; you may not have a working shell when
the system puts you into single user mode. The solution is to
use su -m to become root, which will give
you the tcsh as root, because the shell is part of the
environment. You can make this permanent by adding it to your
.tcshrc file as an alias with
alias su su -m.>When tcsh starts up, it will read the
/etc/csh.cshrc and
/etc/csh.login files, as does csh. It will
also read the .login file in your home
directory and the .cshrc file as well,
unless you provide a .tcshrc file. This
you can do by simply copying .cshrc to
.tcshrc.Now that you've installed tcsh, you can adjust your prompt.
You can find the details in the manual page for tcsh, but here
is a line to put in your .tcshrc that will
tell you how many commands you have typed, what time it is, and
what directory you are in. It also produces a
> if you're an ordinary user and a
# if you're root, but tsch will do that in
any case:set prompt = "%h %t %~ %# "This should go in the same place as the existing set prompt
line if there is one, or under "if($?prompt) then" if not.
Comment out the old line; you can always switch back to it if
you prefer it. Don't forget the spaces and quotes. You can get
the .tcshrc reread by typing
source .tcshrc.You can get a listing of other environmental variables that
have been set by typing env at the prompt.
The result will show you your default editor, pager, and
terminal type, among possibly many others. A useful command if
you log in from a remote location and can't run a program
because the terminal isn't capable is setenv TERM
vt100.OtherAs root, you can dismount the CDROM with
/sbin/umount /cdrom>, take it out of the drive,
insert another one, and mount it with
/sbin/mount_cd9660 /dev/cd0a /cdrom> assuming
cd0a> is the device name for your CDROM drive. The
most recent versions of FreeBSD let you mount the cdrom with
just /sbin/mount /cdrom.Using the live file system—the second of FreeBSD's
CDROM disks—is useful if you've got limited space. What
is on the live file system varies from release to release. You
might try playing games from the cdrom. This involves using
lndir>, which gets installed with the X Window
System, to tell the program(s) where to find the necessary
files, because they're in the /cdrom file
system instead of in /usr and its
subdirectories, which is where they're expected to be. Read
man lndir>.Comments WelcomeIf you use this guide I'd be interested in knowing where it
was unclear and what was left out that you think should be
included, and if it was helpful. My thanks to Eugene W. Stark,
professor of computer science at SUNY-Stony Brook, and John
Fieber for helpful comments.Annelise Anderson,
andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu>
diff --git a/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/new-users/article.sgml b/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/new-users/article.sgml
index bc5ca5f841..81b19eee0d 100644
--- a/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/new-users/article.sgml
+++ b/en_US.ISO_8859-1/articles/new-users/article.sgml
@@ -1,1054 +1,1054 @@
-
+
For People New to Both FreeBSD and UnixAnneliseAndersonandrsn@andrsn.stanford.eduAugust 15, 1997Congratulations on installing FreeBSD! This introduction
is for people new to both FreeBSD and
Un*x—so it starts with basics. It assumes you're using
version 2.0.5 or later of FreeBSD as distributed by Walnut
Creek or FreeBSD.org, your system (for now) has a single user
(you)—and you're probably pretty good with DOS/Windows
or OS/2.Logging in and Getting OutLog in (when you see login:) as a user you created during
installation or as root. (Your FreeBSD
installation will already have an account for root; root can go
anywhere and do anything, including deleting essential files, so
be careful!) The symbols &prompt.user; and &prompt.root; in the following stand for the
prompt (yours may be different), with &prompt.user; indicating an ordinary
user and &prompt.root; indicating root.To log out (and get a new login: prompt) type&prompt.root; exitas often as necessary. Yes, press enter
after commands, and remember that Unix is
case-sensitive—exit, not
EXIT.
- To shut down the machine type:
+ To shut down the machine type&prompt.root; /sbin/shutdown -h nowOr to reboot type&prompt.root; /sbin/shutdown -r nowor&prompt.root; /sbin/rebootYou can also reboot with
CtrlAltDelete.
Give it a little time to do its work. This is equivalent to
- /sbin/reboot in recent releases of FreeBSD,
+ /sbin/reboot in recent releases of FreeBSD
and is much, much better than hitting the reset button. You
don't want to have to reinstall this thing, do you?Adding A User with Root PrivilegesIf you didn't create any users when you installed the system
and are thus logged in as root, you should probably create a
user now with&prompt.root; adduserThe first time you use adduser, it might ask for some
defaults to save. You might want to make the default shell csh
instead of sh, if it suggests sh as the default. Otherwise just
press enter to accept each default. These defaults are saved in
/etc/adduser.conf, an editable file.Suppose you create a user jack with
full name Jack Benimble. Give jack a
password if security (even kids around who might pound on the
keyboard) is an issue. When it asks you if you want to invite
jack into other groups, type wheelLogin group is ``jack''. Invite jack into other groups: wheelThis will make it possible to log in as
jack and use the su
command to become root. Then you won't get scolded any more for
logging in as root.You can quit adduser any time by typing
CtrlC,
and at the end you'll have a chance to approve your new user or
simply type n for no. You might want to create
a second new user (jill?) so that when you edit jack's login
files, you'll have a hot spare in case something goes
wrong.Once you've done this, use exit to get
back to a login prompt and log in as jack.
In general, it's a good idea to do as much work as possible as
an ordinary user who doesn't have the power—and
risk—of root.If you already created a user and you want the user to be
able to su to root, you can log in as root
and edit the file /etc/group, adding jack
to the first line (the group wheel). But first you need to
practice vi, the text editor--or use the
simpler text editor, ee, installed on recent
version of FreeBSD.To delete a user, use the rmuser
command.Looking AroundLogged in as an ordinary user, look around and try out some
commands that will access the sources of help and information
within FreeBSD.Here are some commands and what they do:idTells you who you are!pwdShows you where you are—the current working
directory.lsLists the files in the current directory.ls Lists the files in the current directory with a
* after executables, a
/ after directories, and an
@ after symbolic links.ls Lists the files in long format—size, date,
permissions.ls Lists hidden dot files with the others.
- If you're root, thedot files show up
+ If you're root, the dot files show up
without the switch.cdChanges directories. cd
.. backs up one level;
note the space after cd. cd
/usr/local goes there.
cd ~ goes to
the home directory of the person logged in—e.g.,
/usr/home/jack. Try cd
/cdrom, and then
ls, to find out if your CDROM is
mounted and working.view
filenameLets you look at a file (named
- filename without changing it.
+ filename) without changing it.
Try view
/etc/fstab.
:q to quit.cat
filenameDisplays filename on
screen. If it's too long and you can see only the end of
it, press ScrollLock and use the
up-arrow to move backward; you can use
ScrollLock with man pages too. Press
ScrollLock again to quit scrolling. You
might want to try cat on some of the
dot files in your home directory—cat
.cshrc, cat
.login, cat
.profile.You'll notice aliases in .cshrc for
some of the ls commands (they're very
convenient). You can create other aliases by editing
.cshrc. You can make these aliases
available to all users on the system by putting them in the
system-wide csh configuration file,
/etc/csh.cshrc.Getting Help and InformationHere are some useful sources of help.
Text stands for something of your
choice that you type in—usually a command or
filename.apropos
textEverything containing string
text in the whatis
database.man
textThe man page for text. The
major source of documentation for Un*x systems.
man ls will tell
you all the ways to use the ls command.
Press Enter to move through text,
Ctrlb
to go back a page,
Ctrlf
to go forward, q or
Ctrlc
to quit.which
textTells you where in the user's path the command
text is found.locate
textAll the paths where the string
text is found.whatis
textTells you what the command
text does and its man page.
Typing whatis * will tell you about all
the binaries in the current directory.whereis
textFinds the file text, giving
its full path.You might want to try using whatis on
some common useful commands like cat,
more, grep,
mv, find,
tar, chmod,
chown, date, and
script. more lets you
read a page at a time as it does in DOS, e.g., ls -l |
more or more
filename. The
* works as a wildcard—e.g., ls
w* will show you files beginning with
w.Are some of these not working very well? Both
locate and whatis depend
on a database that's rebuilt weekly. If your machine isn't
going to be left on over the weekend (and running FreeBSD), you
might want to run the commands for daily, weekly, and monthly
maintenance now and then. Run them as root and give each one
time to finish before you start the next one, for now.
- &prompt.root; /etc/daily
+ &prompt.root; periodic dailyoutput omitted
-&prompt.root; /etc/weekly
+&prompt.root; periodic weeklyoutput omitted
-&prompt.root; /etc/monthly
+&prompt.root; periodic monthlyoutput omitted
- If you get tired waiting, press
+ If you get tired of waiting, press
AltF2 to
get another virtual console, and log in
again. After all, it's a multi-user, multi-tasking system.
Nevertheless these commands will probably flash messages on your
screen while they're running; you can type
clear at the prompt to clear the screen.
Once they've run, you might want to look at
/var/mail/root and
/var/log/messages.
- Basically running such commands is part of system
+ Running such commands is part of system
administration—and as a single user of a Unix system,
you're your own system administrator. Virtually everything you
need to be root to do is system administration. Such
responsibilities aren't covered very well even in those big fat
books on Unix, which seem to devote a lot of space to pulling
down menus in windows managers. You might want to get one of
the two leading books on systems administration, either Evi
Nemeth et.al.'s UNIX System Administration
Handbook (Prentice-Hall, 1995, ISBN
0-13-15051-7)—the second edition with the red cover; or
Æleen Frisch's Essential System
Administration (O'Reilly & Associates, 1993,
ISBN 0-937175-80-3). I used Nemeth.Editing TextTo configure your system, you need to edit text files. Most
of them will be in the /etc directory; and
you'll need to su to root to be able to
change them. You can use the easy ee, but in
the long run the text editor vi is worth
learning. There's an excellent tutorial on vi in
/usr/src/contrib/nvi/docs/tutorial if you
have that installed; otherwise you can get it by ftp to
ftp.cdrom.com in the directory
FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/src/contrib/nvi/docs/tutorial.Before you edit a file, you should probably back it up.
Suppose you want to edit /etc/rc.conf. You
could just use cd /etc to get to the
/etc directory and do:&prompt.root; cp rc.conf rc.conf.origThis would copy rc.conf to
rc.conf.orig, and you could later copy
rc.conf.orig to
rc.conf to recover the original. But even
better would be moving (renaming) and then copying back:&prompt.root; mv rc.conf rc.conf.orig
&prompt.root; cp rc.conf.orig rc.confbecause the mv command preserves the
original date and owner of the file. You can now edit
rc.conf. If you want the original back,
you'd then mv rc.conf rc.conf.myedit
(assuming you want to preserve your edited version) and
then&prompt.root; mv rc.conf.orig rc.confto put things back the way they were.To edit a file, type&prompt.root; vi filenameMove through the text with the arrow keys.
Esc (the escape key) puts vi
in command mode. Here are some commands:xdelete letter the cursor is ondddelete the entire line (even if it wraps on the
screen)iinsert text at the cursorainsert text after the cursorOnce you type i or a,
you can enter text. Esc puts you back in
command mode where you can type:wto write your changes to disk and continue
editing:wqto write and quit:q!to quit without saving changes/textto move the cursor to text;
/Enter (the enter key)
to find the next instance of
text.Gto go to the end of the filenGto go to line n in the
file, where n is a
numberCtrl>L>to redraw the screenCtrl>b>> and
Ctrl>f>>go back and forward a screen, as they do with
more> and view>.Practice with vi> in your home directory by
creating a new file with vi filename>>
and adding and deleting text, saving the file, and calling it up
again. vi> delivers some surprises because it's
really quite complex, and sometimes you'll inadvertently issue a
command that will do something you don't expect. (Some people
actually like vi>—it's more powerful than DOS
EDIT—find out about the :r> command.) Use
Esc> one or more times to be sure you're in command
mode and proceed from there when it gives you trouble, save
often with :w>, and use :q!> to get out
and start over (from your last :w>) when you need
to.Now you can cd> to /etc,
su> to root, use vi> to edit the file
/etc/group, and add a user to wheel so the
user has root privileges. Just add a comma and the user's login
name to the end of the first line in the file, press
Esc>, and use :wq> to write the file to
disk and quit. Instantly effective. (You didn't put a space
after the comma, did you?)Printing Files from DOSAt this point you probably don't have the printer working,
so here's a way to create a file from a man page, move it to a
floppy, and then print it from DOS. Suppose you want to read
carefully about changing permissions on files (pretty
important). You can use the command man chmod to read about it.
The command&prompt.user; man chmod | col -b > chmod.txt>
will remove formatting codes and send the man page to the
chmod.txt file instead of showing it on
your screen. Now put a dos-formatted diskette in your floppy
drive a, su> to root, and type&prompt.root; /sbin/mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt>
to mount the floppy drive on
/mnt.Now (you no longer need to be root, and you can type
exit> to get back to being user jack) you can go to
the directory where you created chmod.txt and copy the file to
the floppy with:&prompt.user; cp chmod.txt /mnt>
and use ls /mnt to get a directory
listing of /mnt, which should show the file
chmod.txt.You might especially want to make a file from
/sbin/dmesg by typing&prompt.user; /sbin/dmesg > dmesg.txt>
and copying dmesg.txt to the floppy.
/sbin/dmesg is the boot log record, and it's
useful to understand it because it shows what FreeBSD found when
it booted up. If you ask questions on
freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org> or on a USENET
group—like FreeBSD isn't finding my tape drive,
what do I do?—people will want to know what
dmesg> has to say.You can now dismount the floppy drive (as root) to get the
disk out with&prompt.root; /sbin/umount /mnt>
and reboot to go to DOS. Copy these files to a DOS
directory, call them up with DOS EDIT, Windows Notepad or
Wordpad, or a word processor, make a minor change so the file
has to be saved, and print as you normally would from DOS or
Windows. Hope it works! man pages come out best if printed
with the dos print> command. (Copying files from
FreeBSD to a mounted dos partition is in some cases still a
little risky.)Getting the printer printing from FreeBSD involves creating
an appropriate entry in /etc/printcap and
creating a matching spool directory in
/var/spool/output. If your printer is on
lpt0> (what dos calls LPT1>), you may
only need to go to /var/spool/output and
(as root) create the directory lpd> by typing:
mkdir lpd, if it doesn't already exist.
Then the printer should respond if it's turned on when the
system is booted, and lp or lpr should send a file to the
printer. Whether or not the file actually prints depends on
configuring it, which is covered in the FreeBSD handbook.>Other Useful Commandsdf>shows file space and mounted systems.ps aux>shows processes running. ps ax> is a
narrower form.rm filename>>remove filename>.rm -R dir>>removes a directory dir> and all
subdirectories—careful!ls -Rlists files in the current directory and all
subdirectories; I used a variant, ls -AFR >
where.txt, to get a list of all the files in
/ and (separately)
/usr before I found better ways to
find files.passwd>to change user's password (or root's password)man hier>man page on the Unix file systemUse find> to locate filename in
/usr or any of its subdirectories
with&prompt.user; find /usr -name "filename>">
You can use * as a wildcard in
"filename>"> (which should be in
quotes). If you tell find to search in /
instead of /usr it will look for the
file(s) on all mounted file systems, including the CDROM and the
dos partition.An excellent book that explains Unix commands and utilities
is Abrahams & Larson, Unix for the
Impatient (2nd ed., Addison-Wesley, 1996).
There's also a lot of Unix information on the Internet. Try the
Unix Reference
Desk.Next StepsYou should now have the tools you need to get around and
edit files, so you can get everything up and running. There is
a great deal of information in the FreeBSD handbook (which is
probably on your hard drive) and FreeBSD's web site. A
wide variety of packages and ports are on the Walnut Creek CDROM as well
as the web site. The handbook tells you more about how to use
them (get the package if it exists, with pkg_add
/cdrom/packages/All/packagename>>, where
packagename is the filename of the
package). The cdrom has lists of the packages and ports with
brief descriptions in cdrom/packages/index,
cdrom/packages/index.txt, and
cdrom/ports/index, with fuller descriptions
in /cdrom/ports/*/*/pkg/DESCR, where the
*s represent subdirectories of kinds of
programs and program names respectively.If you find the handbook too sophisticated (what with
lndir> and all) on installing ports from the cdrom,
here's what usually works:Find the port you want, say kermit>. There will
be a directory for it on the cdrom. Copy the subdirectory to
/usr/local (a good place for software you
add that should be available to all users) with:&prompt.root; cp -R /cdrom/ports/comm/kermit /usr/local>
This should result in a
/usr/local/kermit subdirectory that has all
the files that the kermit subdirectory on the
CDROM has.Next, create the directory
/usr/ports/distfiles if it doesn't already
exist using mkdir>. Now check check
/cdrom/ports/distfiles for a file with a
name that indicates it's the port you want. Copy that file to
/usr/ports/distfiles; in recent versions
you can skip this step, as FreeBSD will do it for you. In the
case of kermit>, there is no distfile.Then cd> to the subdirectory of
/usr/local/kermit that has the file
Makefile>. Type&prompt.root; make all install>
During this process the port will ftp to get any compressed
files it needs that it didn't find on the cdrom or in
/usr/ports/distfiles. If you don't have
your network running yet and there was no file for the port in
/cdrom/ports/distfiles, you will have to
get the distfile using another machine and copy it to
/usr/ports/distfiles from a floppy or your
dos partition. Read Makefile> (with cat>
or more> or view>) to find out where to go
(the master distribution site) to get the file and what its name
is. Its name will be truncated when downloaded to DOS, and
after you get it into /usr/ports/distfiles
you'll have to rename it (with the mv> command) to
its original name so it can be found. (Use binary file
transfers!) Then go back to
/usr/local/kermit, find the directory with
Makefile>, and type make all
install>.The other thing that happens when installing ports or
packages is that some other program is needed. If the
installation stops with a message can't find
unzip or whatever, you might need to install the
package or port for unzip before you continue.Once it's installed type rehash> to make FreeBSD
reread the files in the path so it knows what's there. (If you
get a lot of path not found> messages when you use
whereis> or which, you might want to make additions
to the list of directories in the path statement in
.cshrc in your home directory. The path
statement in Unix does the same kind of work it does in DOS,
except the current directory is not (by default) in the path for
security reasons; if the command you want is in the directory
you're in, you need to type ./ before the
command to make it work; no space after the slash.)You might want to get the most recent version of Netscape
from their ftp site.
(Netscape requires the X Window System.) There's now a FreeBSD
version, so look around carefully. Just use gunzip
filename>> and tar xvf
filename>> on it, move the binary to
/usr/local/bin or some other place binaries
are kept, rehash>, and then put the following lines
in .cshrc in each user's home directory or
(easier) in /etc/csh.cshrc, the
system-wide csh start-up file:setenv XKEYSYMDB /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB
setenv XNLSPATH /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/nls
>
This assumes that the file XKeysymDB> and the
directory nls> are in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11; if they're not, find
them and put them there.If you originally got Netscape as a port using the CDROM (or
ftp), don't replace /usr/local/bin/netscape
with the new netscape binary; this is just a shell script that
- sets up the environmental variables for you. Instead rename the
+ sets up the environment variables for you. Instead rename the
new binary to netscape.bin and replace the
old binary, which is
- /usr/local/lib/netscape/netscape.bin.
+ /usr/local/netscape/netscape.
Your Working EnvironmentYour shell is the most important part of your working
environment. In DOS, the usual shell is command.com. The shell
is what interprets the commands you type on the command line,
and thus communicates with the rest of the operating system.
You can also write shell scripts, which are like DOS batch
files: a series of commands to be run without your
intervention.Two shells come installed with FreeBSD: csh and sh. csh is
good for command-line work, but scripts should be written with
sh (or bash). You can find out what shell you have by typing
echo $SHELL.The csh shell is okay, but tcsh does everything csh does and
more. It It allows you to recall commands with the arrow keys
and edit them. It has tab-key completion of filenames (csh uses
the escape key), and it lets you switch to the directory you
were last in with cd -. It's also much
easier to alter your prompt with tcsh. It makes life a lot
easier.Here are the three steps for installing a new shell:Install the shell as a port or a package, just as you
would any other port or package. Use
rehash and which tcsh
(assuming you're installing tcsh) to make sure it got
installed.As root, edit /etc/shells, adding a
line in the file for the new shell, in this case
/usr/local/bin/tcsh, and save the file. (Some ports may do
this for you.)Use the chsh command to change your
shell to tcsh permanently, or type tcsh
at the prompt to change your shell without logging in
again.It can be dangerous to change root's shell to something
other than sh or csh on early versions of FreeBSD and many
other versions of Unix; you may not have a working shell when
the system puts you into single user mode. The solution is to
use su -m to become root, which will give
you the tcsh as root, because the shell is part of the
environment. You can make this permanent by adding it to your
.tcshrc file as an alias with
alias su su -m.>When tcsh starts up, it will read the
/etc/csh.cshrc and
/etc/csh.login files, as does csh. It will
also read the .login file in your home
directory and the .cshrc file as well,
unless you provide a .tcshrc file. This
you can do by simply copying .cshrc to
.tcshrc.Now that you've installed tcsh, you can adjust your prompt.
You can find the details in the manual page for tcsh, but here
is a line to put in your .tcshrc that will
tell you how many commands you have typed, what time it is, and
what directory you are in. It also produces a
> if you're an ordinary user and a
# if you're root, but tsch will do that in
any case:set prompt = "%h %t %~ %# "This should go in the same place as the existing set prompt
line if there is one, or under "if($?prompt) then" if not.
Comment out the old line; you can always switch back to it if
you prefer it. Don't forget the spaces and quotes. You can get
the .tcshrc reread by typing
source .tcshrc.You can get a listing of other environmental variables that
have been set by typing env at the prompt.
The result will show you your default editor, pager, and
terminal type, among possibly many others. A useful command if
you log in from a remote location and can't run a program
because the terminal isn't capable is setenv TERM
vt100.OtherAs root, you can dismount the CDROM with
/sbin/umount /cdrom>, take it out of the drive,
insert another one, and mount it with
/sbin/mount_cd9660 /dev/cd0a /cdrom> assuming
cd0a> is the device name for your CDROM drive. The
most recent versions of FreeBSD let you mount the cdrom with
just /sbin/mount /cdrom.Using the live file system—the second of FreeBSD's
CDROM disks—is useful if you've got limited space. What
is on the live file system varies from release to release. You
might try playing games from the cdrom. This involves using
lndir>, which gets installed with the X Window
System, to tell the program(s) where to find the necessary
files, because they're in the /cdrom file
system instead of in /usr and its
subdirectories, which is where they're expected to be. Read
man lndir>.Comments WelcomeIf you use this guide I'd be interested in knowing where it
was unclear and what was left out that you think should be
included, and if it was helpful. My thanks to Eugene W. Stark,
professor of computer science at SUNY-Stony Brook, and John
Fieber for helpful comments.Annelise Anderson,
andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu>