The Complete FreeBSD: Documentation from the Source

by Greg Lehey, Marshall Kirk McKusick (Foreword by)

Overview

FreeBSD is by far the most popular version of BSD®, the legendary operating system that has contributed a great deal to every version of Unix® in use today (including Mac OS® X). Originally a community effort by the University of California at Berkeley, FreeBSD was aimed at making Unix a little friendlier and easier to use. By the time other free operating systems came along, BSD was firmly established and very reliable. And it continues to be today. For seven years, the FreeBSD community has relied on Greg Lehey's classic, The Complete FreeBSD, to guide them through its configuration and administration. The 4th edition, covering version 5 of FreeBSD, is now available through O'Reilly Community Press. The Complete FreeBSD is an eminently practical guidebook that explains not only how to get a computer up and running with the FreeBSD operating system, but also how to turn it into a highly functional and secure server that can host large numbers of users and disks, support remote access, and provide web service, mail service, and other key parts of the Internet infrastructure. The book provides in-depth information on installation and updates, back-ups, printers, RAID, various Internet services, firewalls, the graphical X Window system, and much more. Author Greg Lehey is a member of the FreeBSD core team and has been developing, documenting, and advocating for FreeBSD for nearly ten years. Whether you're an experienced Unix user or just interested in learning more about this free operating system and how you can put it to work for you, this do-it-yourself BSD documentation will provide the information you need. The Complete FreeBSD is the second release in the O'Reilly Community Press Series. Unlike classic O'Reilly animal books, which are created to fill an information void, the Community Press titles provide convenient printed copies of documentation that is already available online. O'Reilly's role in the series is limited to providing manufacturing and distribution services rather than editorial development, so that each Community Press title reflects the editorial voice and organization of the community that has created it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780596005160
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	05/01/2003
Edition description:	Fourth Edition
Pages:	714
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.19(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Greg Lehey is an independent computer consultant specializing in UNIX. Born in Australia, he was educated in Malaysia and England before studying chemistry in Germany and chemical engineering in England. He has spent his professional career in Germany, where he worked for computer manufacturers such as Univac and Tandem, the German space research agency, nameless software houses, and a large user before deciding to work for himself. In the course of over 20 years in the industry he has performed most jobs you can think of, ranging from kernel support to product marketing, systems programming to operating, processing satellite data to programming gasoline pumps. About the only thing he hasn't done is write commercial software. He is currently engaged in the production of CD-ROMs of ported free software, and this book is one result of his experience in this area. He is available for short-term contracts and can be reached by mail at [e-mail].

Table of Contents

	Foreword	xxv
	Preface	xxvii
	The fourth edition	xxvii
	Conventions used in this book	xxviii
	Describing the keyboard	xxix
	Acknowledgments	xxx
	Book reviewers	xxxi
	How this book was written	xxxii
1	Introduction	1
	How to use this book	2
	FreeBSD features	4
	Licensing conditions	6
	A little history	7
	The end of the UNIX wars	9
	Other free UNIX-like operating systems	9
	FreeBSD and Linux	10
	FreeBSD system documentation	12
	Reading online documentation	12
	The online manual	13
	GNU info	15
	Other documentation on FreeBSD	16
	The FreeBSD community	17
	Mailing lists	17
	Unsubscribing from the mailing lists	19
	User groups	19
	Reporting bugs	19
	The Berkeley daemon	20
2	Before you install	25
	Using old hardware	25
	Device drivers	27
	PC Hardware	27
	How the system detects hardware	29
	Configuring ISA cards	29
	PCMCIA, PC Card and CardBus	30
	PC Card and CardBus cards	31
	Universal Serial Bus	31
	Disks	31
	Disk data layout	33
	PC BIOS and disks	33
	Disk partitioning	34
	Block and character devices	35
	Making the file systems	39
	Disk size limitations	39
	Display hardware	40
	The hardware	41
	The keyboard	41
	The mouse	41
	The display board and monitor	42
	Laptop hardware	42
	Compaq/Digital Alpha machines	42
	The CD-ROM distribution	43
	Installation CD-ROM	43
	Live File System CD-ROM	46
	CVS Repository CD-ROM	46
	The Ports Collection CD-ROMs	46
3	Quick installation	47
	Making things easy for yourself	47
	FreeBSD on a disk with free space	48
	FreeBSD shared with Microsoft	49
	Configuring XFree86	50
4	Shared OS installation	51
	Separate disks	51
	Sharing a disk	52
	Sharing with Linux or another BSD	52
	Repartitioning with FIPS	52
	Repartitioning--an example	54
5	Installing FreeBSD	59
	Installing on the Intel i386 architecture	59
	Booting to sysinstall	60
	Kinds of installation	61
	Setting installation options	62
	Partitioning the disk	63
	Shared partitions	66
	Defining file systems	67
	What partitions?	68
	How much swap space?	70
	File systems on shared disks	75
	Selecting distributions	75
	Selecting the installation medium	76
	Performing the installation	77
	Installing on an Alpha system	78
	Upgrading and old version of FreeBSD	79
	How to uninstall FreeBSD	79
	If things go wrong	80
	Problems with sysinstall	80
	Problems with CD-ROM installation	80
	Can't boot	80
	Incorrect boot installation	81
	Geometry problems	81
	System hangs during boot	82
	System boots, but doesn't run correctly	82
	Root file system fills up	82
	Panic	83
	Fixing a broken installation	84
	Alternative installation methods	85
	Preparing boot floppies	85
	Booting from floppy	86
	Installing via ftp	86
	Installing via ftp	87
	Installing via NFS	88
	Installing from a Microsoft partition	88
	Creating floppies for a floppy installation	89
6	Post-installation configuration	91
	Installing additional software	92
	Instant workstation	93
	Changing the default shell for root	94
	Adding users	94
	Setting the root password	95
	Time zone	95
	Network services	97
	Setting up network interfaces	98
	Other network options	99
	Startup preferences	100
	Configuring the mouse	101
	Configuring X	102
	Desktop configuration	108
	Additional X configuration	108
	Rebooting the new system	109
7	The tools of the trade	111
	Users and groups	112
	Gaining access	113
	The KDE desktop	116
	The Desktop Menu	116
	The fvwm2 window manager	118
	Starting fvwm2	119
	Changing the X display	120
	Selecting pixel depth	121
	Getting a shell	121
	Shell basics	122
	Options	122
	Shell parameters	123
	Fields that can contain spaces	125
	Files and file names	125
	File names and extensions	126
	Relative paths	126
	Globbing characters	126
	Input and output	127
	Environment variables	128
	Command line editing	131
	Command history and other editing functions	133
	Shell startup files	135
	Changing your shell	136
	Differences from Microsoft	138
	Slashes: backward and forward	138
	Tab characters	138
	Carriage control characters	139
	The Emacs editor	139
	Stopping the system	141
8	Taking control	143
	Users and groups	144
	Choosing a user name	144
	Adding users	145
	The super user	146
	Becoming super user	147
	Adding or changing passwords	147
	Processes	148
	What processes do I have running?	149
	What processes are running?	149
	Daemons	150
	Cron	151
	Processes in FreeBSD Release 5	152
	Top	152
	Stopping processes	154
	Timekeeping	155
	The TZ environment variable	155
	Keeping the correct time	156
	Log files	157
	Multiple processor support	159
	PC Card devices	159
	Devd: The device daemon	159
	Removing PC Card devices	161
	Alternate PC Card code	161
	Configuring PC Card devices at startup	161
	Emulating other systems	162
	Emulators and simulators	162
	Emulating Linux	163
	Running the Linux emulator	163
	Linux procfs	164
	Problems executing Linux binaries	164
	Emulating SCO UNIX	164
	Emulating Microsoft Windows	165
	Accessing Microsoft files	165
9	The Ports Collection	167
	How to install a package	168
	Building a port	169
	Installing ports during system installation	169
	Installing ports from the first CD-ROM	169
	Installing ports from the live file system CD-ROM	169
	Getting new ports	170
	What's in that port?	172
	Getting the source archive	173
	Building the port	174
	Port dependencies	174
	Package documentation	174
	Getting binary-only software	175
	Maintaining ports	176
	Upgrading ports	176
	Using portupgrade	176
	Controlling installed ports	178
	Submitting a new port	180
10	File systems and devices	181
	File permissions	181
	Mandatory Access Control	186
	Links	186
	Directory hierarchy	187
	Standard directories	187
	File system types	190
	Soft updates	191
	Snapshots	191
	Mounting file systems	192
	Mounting files as file systems	193
	Unmounting file systems	194
	FreeBSD devices	195
	Overview of FreeBSD devices	195
	Virtual terminals	197
	Pseudo-terminals	197
11	Disks	199
	Adding a hard disk	199
	Disk hardware installation	200
	Formatting the disk	203
	Using sysinstall	204
	Doing it the hard way	209
	Creating a partition table	210
	Labelling the disk	214
	Disklabel	215
	Problems running disklabel	216
	Creating file systems	217
	Mounting the file systems	217
	Moving file systems	218
	Recovering from disk data errors	218
12	The Vinum Volume Manager	221
	Vinum objects	221
	Mapping disk space to plexes	222
	Data integrity	223
	Which plex organization?	224
	Creating Vinum drives	225
	Starting Vinum	225
	Configuring Vinum	226
	The configuration file	226
	Creating a file system	227
	Increased resilience: mirroring	228
	Adding plexes to an existing volume	229
	Adding subdisks to existing plexes	230
	Optimizing performance	232
	Resilience and performance	233
	Vinum configuration database	235
	Installing FreeBSD on Vinum	236
	Recovering from drive failures	240
	Failed boot disk	241
	Migrating Vinum to a new machine	241
	Things you shouldn't do with Vinum	241
13	Writing CD-Rs	243
	Creating an ISO-9660 image	243
	Testing the CD-R	245
	Burning the CD-R	246
	Burning a CD-R on an ATA burner	246
	Burning a CD-R on a SCSI burner	248
	Copying CD-ROMs	250
14	Tapes, backups and floppy disks	251
	Backing up your data	251
	What backup medium?	252
	Tape devices	252
	Backup software	253
	tar	253
	Using floppy disks under FreeBSD	256
	Formatting a floppy	256
	File systems on floppy	257
	Microsoft file systems	259
	Other uses of floppies	259
	Accessing Microsoft floppies	260
15	Printers	263
	Printer configuration	264
	Testing the printer	265
	Configuring /etc/printcap	265
	Remote printing	266
	Spooler filters	267
	Starting the spooler	268
	Testing the spooler	268
	Troubleshooting	269
	Using the spooler	270
	Removing print jobs	271
	PostScript	271
	Viewing with gv	272
	Printing with ghostscript	273
	Which driver?	274
	PDF	276
16	From the B&N Reads Blog Page 1 of Related Subjects Computers Operating Systems UNIX Computers Operating Systems UNIX Editorial Reviews These three guides cover version 5.0 of the most popular flavor of BSD, the "other" open-source, UNIX-like OS. A useful, friendly, and thorough guide for novices to intermediate users, Complete FreeBSD addresses initial installation, from setting up domain name servers to building and debugging custom kernels. Discussion of configuration files that may need changing and instructions on upgrading are particularly clear and helpful; appendixes provide a bibliography and a discussion of the evolution of the OS; highly recommended. Unleashed includes more information on various applications and working with window managers to manipulate FreeBSD's graphical interface ("X"). A command and configuration file reference, hardware compatibility lists, troubleshooting information, and additional resources make up the appendix, while the CD-ROM contains FreeBSD 5.0, additional languages, utilities, and packages. Although more comprehensive coverage-wise, Unleashed is less clear in its directions. Still, useful cautions and tips do help guide newer users. Complete Reference features FreeBSD v.5.0, in addition to tools and utilities on CD-ROM. Notes and tips provide extra information, and its troubleshooting and maintenance sections are helpful for newer users. Each is appropriate for beginning to intermediate users and large libraries. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information. Library Journal Customer Reviews