Absolute BSD—The Ultimate Guide to FreeBSD Table of Contents Absolute BSD—The Ultimate Guide to FreeBSD............................................................................1 Dedication..........................................................................................................................................3 Foreword............................................................................................................................................4 Introduction........................................................................................................................................5 What Is FreeBSD?...................................................................................................................5 How Did FreeBSD Get Here?..................................................................................................5 The BSD License: BSD Goes Public.......................................................................................6 The Birth of Modern FreeBSD.................................................................................................6 FreeBSD Development............................................................................................................7 Committers.........................................................................................................................7 Contributors........................................................................................................................8 Users..................................................................................................................................8 Other BSDs..............................................................................................................................8 NetBSD..............................................................................................................................8 OpenBSD...........................................................................................................................9 BSD/OS..............................................................................................................................9 Mac OS X...........................................................................................................................9 Other UNIXes...........................................................................................................................9 Solaris................................................................................................................................9 AIX...................................................................................................................................10 Linux................................................................................................................................10 IRIX, HPUX, etc...............................................................................................................10 FreeBSD's Strengths.............................................................................................................10 Portability.........................................................................................................................10 Power...............................................................................................................................10 Simplified Software Management....................................................................................11 Optimized Upgrade Process............................................................................................11 Filesystem........................................................................................................................11 Who Should Use FreeBSD....................................................................................................11 FreeBSD as Your Desktop.....................................................................................................11 Who Should Run Another BSD..............................................................................................12 Who Should Run a Proprietary Operating System................................................................12 How to Read This Book.........................................................................................................13 What Must You Know?..........................................................................................................13 How to Think About UNIX......................................................................................................14 Channels of Communication............................................................................................14 Working with Channels....................................................................................................14 The Command Line..........................................................................................................14 Chapter 1: Installation.....................................................................................................................16 FreeBSD Hardware................................................................................................................16 Processor.........................................................................................................................16 Memory (RAM).................................................................................................................16 Hard Drives......................................................................................................................16 Downloading FreeBSD..........................................................................................................17 Installing by FTP..............................................................................................................18 Other FTP Install Information...........................................................................................19 i Table of Contents Chapter 1: Installation Hardware Setup.....................................................................................................................19 Actually Installing FreeBSD...................................................................................................20 Configuring the Kernel for ISA Cards...............................................................................21 Sysinstall: The Ugly FreeBSD Installer............................................................................21 Disk Usage.......................................................................................................................22 Partitioning.............................................................................................................................24 Root.......................................................................................................................................25 Swap Space...........................................................................................................................25 Swap Splitting..................................................................................................................26 /var, /usr, and /home..............................................................................................................26 A Second Hard Drive.............................................................................................................27 Soft Updates....................................................................................................................28 Block Size........................................................................................................................28 What to Install..................................................................................................................28 Installation Media.............................................................................................................29 Committing.......................................................................................................................30 Post−Install Setup..................................................................................................................30 Root Password.................................................................................................................30 Adding Users....................................................................................................................31 Time Zone........................................................................................................................32 Mouse..............................................................................................................................32 Configuring Network Cards..............................................................................................33 Xfree86............................................................................................................................35 Software...........................................................................................................................35 Restart...................................................................................................................................36 A Note on Editors...................................................................................................................37 Chapter 2: Getting More Help.........................................................................................................38