Welcome to the FreeBSD 2.X FAQ!
As is usual with Usenet FAQs, this document aims to cover the most
frequently asked questions concerning the FreeBSD operating system
(and of course answer them!). Although originally intended to reduce
bandwidth and avoid the same old questions being asked over and over
again, FAQs have become recognized as valuable information resources.
Every effort has been made to make this FAQ as informative as
possible; if you have any suggestions as to how it may be improved,
please feel free to mail them to the Briefly, FreeBSD 2.X is a UN*X-like operating system based on
U.C. Berkeley's 4.4BSD-lite release for the i386 platform. It is
also based indirectly on William Jolitz's port of U.C. Berkeley's
Net/2 to the i386, known as 386BSD, though very little of the 386BSD
code remains. A fuller description of what FreeBSD is and how
it can work for you may be found on the FreeBSD is used by companies, Internet Service Providers, researchers,
computer professionals, students and home users all over the world
in their work, education and recreation. See some of them in the
For more detailed information on FreeBSD, please see the
The goals of the FreeBSD Project are to provide software that may
be used for any purpose and without strings attached. Many of us
have a significant investment in the code (and project) and would
certainly not mind a little financial compensation now and then,
but we're definitely not prepared to insist on it. We believe
that our first and foremost "mission" is to provide code to any
and all comers, and for whatever purpose, so that the code gets
the widest possible use and provides the widest possible benefit.
This is, we believe, one of the most fundamental goals of Free
Software and one that we enthusiastically support.
That code in our source tree which falls under the GNU Public License
(GPL) or GNU Library Public License (GLPL) comes with slightly more
strings attached, though at least on the side of enforced
access rather than the usual opposite. Due to the additional
complexities that can evolve in the commercial use of GPL software,
we do, however, endeavor to replace such software with submissions
under the more relaxed BSD copyright whenever possible.
For those of our readers whose first language is not English, it
may be worth pointing out that the word ``free'' is being used in two
ways here, one meaning ``at no cost'', the other meaning ``you can do
whatever you like''. Apart from one or two things you
Version Briefly explained, This is not to say that a 3.0-current snapshot is unusable for
business services, and many people who need some 3.0 specific feature
(newer compiler technology, faster networking code, etc) have decided
to take a chance with it with very good results. We simply do not
wish to "certify" 3.0 as mission-worthy until it's been better
shaken-out.
If you are not familiar with the operating system or are not
capable of identifying the difference between a real problem and
a temporary problem, you should not use FreeBSD-current. This
branch sometimes evolves quite quickly and can be un-buildable
for a number of days at a time. People that use FreeBSD-current
are expected to be able to analyze any problems and only report them
if they are deemed to be mistakes rather than ``glitches''. Questions
such as ``make world produces some error about groups'' on the
-current mailing list are sometimes treated with contempt.
Every now and again, a No claims are made that any snapshot can be considered
``production quality'' for any purpose. For stability
and tested mettle, you will have to stick to full releases.
Snapshot releases are directly available from Back when FreeBSD 2.0.5 was released, we decided to branch FreeBSD
development into two parts. One branch was named The -current branch is slowly progressing towards 3.0 and beyond,
whereas the previous 2.1-stable branch was superceded by the
release of 2.2.0, the new "stability branch" aka 2.2-stable.
3.0-current will continue to be where the active development takes
place, up until the actual release of 3.0. At that point, 3.0 will
become yet another branch and 3.1-current will become the next
"current branch".
While we'd certainly like to be able to continue 3 branches of
development, we've found that the version control tools available to
us are not particularly well-suited for this; in fact, they quickly
result in a maintenance nightmare for any branch which lives much
beyond 2-3 months. The 2.1-stable branch has, by contrast, lasted for
well over a year and what little sanity the FreeBSD developers have
left would be in serious jeopardy if we continued in this way.
Perhaps in the future we'll figure out another model which gives
everyone what they want, and we are working on such a model, but in
the meantime it's probably best to think of the old -stable coming
to an end with As a general principle, the FreeBSD core team only release a new
version of FreeBSD when they believe that there are sufficient new
features and/or bug fixes to justify one, and are satisfied that the
changes made have settled down sufficiently to avoid compromising the
stability of the release. Many users regard this caution as one of
the best things about FreeBSD, although it can be a little
frustrating when waiting for all the latest goodies to become
available...
Releases are made about every 6 months on average.
For people needing (or wanting) a little more excitement, there are
SNAPs released more frequently, particularly during the month or so
leading up to a release.
At present, yes, though a port to the The key decisions concerning the FreeBSD project, such as the
overall direction of the project and who is allowed to add code to
the source tree, are made by a However, most non-trivial changes are discussed in advance in the
, and there are no restrictions
on who may take part in the discussion.
Every significant release of FreeBSD is available via anonymous ftp
from the FreeBSD is also available via CDROM, from the following place(s):
Walnut Creek CDROM In Australia, you may find it at:
Advanced Multimedia Distributors You can find full information in the You can find full information in the There are two channels about FreeBSD on IRC:
Greg Lehey's book ``Installing and Running FreeBSD'' is available
from Walnut Creek and ships with the 2.2.6 CDROM. There is also
a larger book entitled ``The Complete FreeBSD'', which comes with
additional printed manpages and includes the 2.2.6 CDROM set. It
should be available in most good book shops now.
There is a FreeBSD Documentation Project which you may contact (or
even better, join) on the doc mailing list:
A FreeBSD ``handbook'' is available, and can be found as:
However, as FreeBSD 2.2.X is based upon Berkeley 4.4BSD-Lite2, most
of the 4.4BSD manuals are applicable to FreeBSD 2.2.X. O'Reilly
and Associates publishes these manuals:
A description of these can be found via WWW as:
For a more in-depth look at the 4.4BSD kernel organization,
you can't go wrong with:
McKusick, Marshall Kirk, Keith Bostic, Michael J Karels,
and John Quarterman. The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating
System. Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley, 1996. A good book on system administration is:
Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass & Trent R. Hein, The Problem Report database of all open user change requests
may be queried (or submitted to) by using our web-based PR
The following newsgroups contain pertinent discussion for FreeBSD
users:
Web resources:
The FreeBSD handbook also has a fairly complete