The Complete FreeBSD® If you find errors in this book, please report them to Greg Lehey <grog@Free- BSD.org> for inclusion in the errata list. The Complete FreeBSD® Fourth Edition Tenth anniversary version, 24 February 2006 Greg Lehey The Complete FreeBSD® by Greg Lehey <[email protected]> Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2006 by Greg Lehey. This book is licensed under the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5” license. The full text is located at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/legalcode. You are free: • to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work • to make derivative works under the following conditions: • Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor. • Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. This clause is modified from the original by the provision: You may use this book for commercial purposes if you pay me the sum of USD 20 per copy printed (whether sold or not). You must also agree to allow inspection of printing records and other material necessary to confirm the royalty sums. The purpose of this clause is to make it attractive to negotiate sensible royalties before printing. • Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one. • For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. • Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Parts of this book are derived from the FreeBSD online handbook, which is subject to the BSD documentation license reproduced on page xxxiv. FreeBSD® is currently a registered trade mark of FreeBSD Inc. and Wind River Systems Inc. Changes are planned; see http://www.FreeBSD.org/ for up-to-date information. UNIX® is currently a registered trade mark of The Open Group. For more information, see http://www.rdg.opengroup.org/public/tech/unix/trademark.html. As used in this book, UNIX refers to the operating system development that predated the registration of the UNIX trademark. Significant portions copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995 FreeBSD Inc. Portions copyright © 1994, 1995 The XFree86 Project, Inc. The Berkeley daemon on the cover of the print version was included with kind permission of M. Kirk McKusick. This book was written in troff and formatted on 25 February 2006 with GNU groff Version 1.19 running under FreeBSD 6.0-CURRENT. Contents Foreword ........................................................................................................... xxiv Preface to the free edition ................................................................... xxvii Building the book..................................................................................................... xxix The status of this book .............................................................................................. xxx Preface ................................................................................................................ xxxi The fourth edition..................................................................................................... xxxi Conventions used in this book ................................................................................ xxxii Describing the keyboard ......................................................................................... xxxiii Acknowledgments .................................................................................................. xxxiv Book reviewers ....................................................................................................... xxxv How this book was written..................................................................................... xxxvi 1: Introduction ..................................................................................................... 1 How to use this book..................................................................................................... 1 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 v vi Contents Mailing lists................................................................................................................. 17 How to follow up to a question ..................................................................................... 20 Unsubscribing from the mailing lists ............................................................................. 20 User groups ................................................................................................................ 20 Reporting bugs............................................................................................................ 21 The Berkeley daemon ..................................................................................................21 2: Before you install ....................................................................................... 25 Using old hardware ..................................................................................................... 26 Device drivers ............................................................................................................. 27 PC Hardware ............................................................................................................... 28 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 ............................................................................................................................ 32 Disk data layout........................................................................................................... 33 PC BIOS and disks...................................................................................................... 33 Disk partitioning ......................................................................................................... 34 Block and character devices ......................................................................................... 36 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 ..........................................................................................