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Remove the LinuxDoc version of the FAQ, eviscerate it, spread the bloody

Browse source 
remains on the ground, and walk lightly over them two or three times.

Removing the other LinuxDoc and two letter country code directories
won't be so graphic, but they'll be as fun.
This commit is contained in:
Nik Clayton 1999-08-21 17:36:12 +00:00
parent 963ab773f9
commit c49d00f601
Notes: svn2git 2020-12-08 03:00:23 +00:00 
svn path=/head/; revision=5412
17 changed files with 0 additions and 7197 deletions
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<!-- $Id: FAQ.sgml,v 1.103 1999-07-28 20:26:04 nik Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<!DOCTYPE linuxdoc PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//DTD linuxdoc//EN" [
<!ENTITY % includes SYSTEM "includes.sgml"> %includes;
<!ENTITY preface SYSTEM "preface.sgml">
<!ENTITY install SYSTEM "install.sgml">
<!ENTITY hardware SYSTEM "hardware.sgml">
<!ENTITY troubleshoot SYSTEM "troubleshoot.sgml">
<!ENTITY commercial SYSTEM "commercial.sgml">
<!ENTITY applications SYSTEM "applications.sgml">
<!ENTITY kernelconfig SYSTEM "kernelconfig.sgml">
<!ENTITY admin SYSTEM "admin.sgml">
<!ENTITY x SYSTEM "x.sgml">
<!ENTITY network SYSTEM "network.sgml">
<!ENTITY serial SYSTEM "serial.sgml">
<!ENTITY misc SYSTEM "misc.sgml">
<!ENTITY hackers SYSTEM "hackers.sgml">
<!ENTITY acknowledgments SYSTEM "acknowledgments.sgml">
]>
<article>
<title>Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X</title>
<author>
<name>The FreeBSD Documentation Project</name>
</author>
<date>$Date: 1999-07-28 20:26:04 $</date>
<abstract>
This is the FAQ for FreeBSD systems version 2.X All entries are
assumed to be relevant to FreeBSD 2.0.5 and later, unless otherwise noted.
Any entries with a &lt;XXX&gt; are under construction.
If you are interested in helping with this project, send
email to the the FreeBSD documentation project mailing list <htmlurl
url="mailto:freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org" name="<freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org>">.
The latest version of this document is always available from the <url
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/" name="FreeBSD World Wide Web server">.
It may also be downloaded in <url url="FAQ.latin1" name="plain text">,
<url url="FAQ.ps" name="postscript">,
<url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/FAQ.pdf" name="PDF">
or <url url="FAQ-html.tar.gz"
name="HTML"> with HTTP or gzip'd from the <url
url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc" name="FreeBSD FTP server">.
You may also want to <url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/search/search.html" name="Search the FAQ">.
</abstract>
<toc>
&preface;
&install;
&hardware;
&troubleshoot;
&commercial;
&applications;
&kernelconfig;
&admin;
&x;
&network;
&serial;
&misc;
&hackers;
&acknowledgments;
</article>

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# $Id: Makefile,v 1.8 1999-08-17 21:35:50 nik Exp $
.NOTPARALLEL:
SGMLOPTS=-links
DOC= FAQ
VOLUME= faq
DOCDIR= /usr/local/share/doc/fdp/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books
SRCS= FAQ.sgml acknowledgments.sgml admin.sgml applications.sgml
SRCS+= commercial.sgml hackers.sgml hardware.sgml install.sgml
SRCS+= kernelconfig.sgml misc.sgml network.sgml preface.sgml
SRCS+= serial.sgml troubleshoot.sgml x.sgml
beforeinstall:
[ -d /usr/local/share/doc/fdp/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq ] || \
mkdir -p /usr/local/share/doc/fdp/en_US.ISO_8859-1/books/faq
.include <bsd.sgml.mk>

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<!-- $Id: acknowledgments.sgml,v 1.2 1999-07-28 20:26:05 nik Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<sect>
<heading>ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<label id="acknowledgments"></heading>
<p>
<verb>
If you see a problem with this FAQ, or wish to submit an entry,
please mail us at <FAQ@FreeBSD.org>. We appreciate your
feedback, and cannot make this a better FAQ without your help!
FreeBSD Core Team
</verb>
<descrip>
<tag/Jordan Hubbard/
Occasional fits of FAQ-reshuffling and updating.
<tag/Doug White/
Services above and beyond the call of duty on freebsd-questions
<tag/Joerg Wunsch/
Services above and beyond the call of duty on Usenet
<tag/Garrett Wollman/
Networking and formatting
<tag/Jim Lowe/
Multicast information
<tag/Peter da Silva/
FreeBSD FAQ typing machine slavey
<tag/The FreeBSD Team/
Kvetching, moaning, submitting data
</descrip>
<p>And to any others we've forgotten, apologies and heartfelt thanks!
</sect>

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<!-- $Id: applications.sgml,v 1.14 1999-07-30 17:40:09 sada Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<sect>
<heading>User Applications<label id="applications"></heading>
<sect1>
<heading>So, where are all the user applications?</heading>
<p>Please take a look at <url url="../ports/"
name="the ports page"> for info on software packages ported to
FreeBSD. The list currently tops 1800 and is growing daily, so come
back to check often or subscribe to the <tt/freebsd-announce/
<ref id="mailing" name="mailing list"> for periodic updates on new
entries.
<p>Most ports should be available for the 2.2, 3.x and 4.0
branches, and many of them should work on 2.1.x systems as
well. Each time a FreeBSD release is made, a snapshot of the
ports tree at the time of release in also included in the
<tt>ports/</tt> directory.
<p>We also support the concept of a ``package'', essentially no
more than a gzipped binary distribution with a little extra
intelligence embedded in it for doing whatever custom installation
work is required. A package can be installed and uninstalled
again easily without having to know the gory details of which
files it includes.
<p>Use the package installation menu in <tt>/stand/sysinstall</tt>
(under the post-configuration menu item) or invoke the
<em>pkg_add(1)</em> command on the specific package files you're
interested in installing. Package files can usually be identified by
their <em>.tgz</em> suffix and CDROM distribution people will have
a <tt>packages/All</tt> directory on their CD which contains such
files. They can also be downloaded over the net for various versions
of FreeBSD at the following locations:
<descrip>
<tag>for 2.2.8-release/2.2.8-stable</tag>
<url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-2.2.8/"
name="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-2.2.8/">
<tag>for 3.2-release/3.2-stable</tag>
<url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-3-stable/"
name="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-3-stable/">
<tag>for 4.0-current</tag>
<url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4-current/"
name="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-4-current/">
</descrip>
<p>or your nearest local mirror site.
<p>Note that all ports may not be available as packages since
new ones are constantly being added. It is always a good
idea to check back periodically to see which packages are available
at the <url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/"
name="ftp.FreeBSD.org"> master site.
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>Where do I find libc.so.3.0?</heading>
<p>You are trying to run a package for 2.2/3.x/4.0 on a 2.1.x
system. Please take a look at the previous section and get
the correct port/package for your system.
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>
ghostscript gives lots of errors with my 386/486SX.<label id="emul">
</heading>
<p>You don't have a math co-processor, right?
You will need to add the alternative math emulator to your kernel;
you do this by adding the following to your kernel config file
and it will be compiled in.
<verb>
options GPL_MATH_EMULATE
</verb>
<p><bf/NOTE/ You will need to remove the <tt/MATH&lowbar;EMULATE/
option when you do this.
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>
When I run a SCO/iBCS2 application, it bombs on <tt/socksys/.
</heading>
<p>You first need to edit the <tt>/etc/sysconfig</tt>
(or <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?rc.conf(5)"
name="/etc/rc.conf">) file in the last section to change the
following variable to <tt/YES/:
<verb>
# Set to YES if you want ibcs2 (SCO) emulation loaded at startup
ibcs2=NO
</verb>
<p>It will load the <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?ibcs2" name="ibcs2">
kernel module at startup.
<p>You'll then need to set up /compat/ibcs2/dev to look like:
<verb>
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 9 Oct 15 22:20 X0R@ -> /dev/null
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 7 Oct 15 22:20 nfsd@ -> socksys
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root wheel 0 Oct 28 12:02 null
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 9 Oct 15 22:20 socksys@ -> /dev/null
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 41, 1 Oct 15 22:14 spx
</verb>
<p>You just need socksys to go to <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?null(4)" name="/dev/null">
to fake the open &amp; close. The code in -current will handle the
rest. This is much cleaner than the way it was done before. If you
want the <tt/spx/ driver for a local socket X connection, define
<tt/SPX&lowbar;HACK/ when you compile the system.
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>
How do I configure INN (Internet News) for my machine?
</heading>
<p>After installing the inn package or port, an excellent place to
start is <url url="http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~barr/INN.html"
name="Dave Barr's INN Page"> where you'll find the INN FAQ.
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>What version of Microsoft FrontPage should I get?</heading>
<p>Use the Port, Luke! A pre-patched version of Apache is available
in the ports tree.
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>Does FreeBSD support Java?</heading>
<p>Yes. Please see <url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/java"
name="http://www.FreeBSD.org/java">.
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>Why can't I build this port on my 3.x-stable machine?</heading>
<p>If you're running a FreeBSD version that lags significantly behind
-current or -stable, you may need a ports upgrade kit from
<url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports"
name="http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports">. If you are up to date, then
someone might have committed a change to the port which works for
-current but which broke the port for -stable. Please submit a bug
report on this with the <em>send-pr(1)</em> command, since the ports
collection is supposed to work for both the -current and -stable
branches.
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>Where do I find ld.so?</heading>
<p>If you want to run some aout applications like
Netscape Navigator on an Elf'ened machine such as 3.1-R or later,
it would need /usr/libexec/ld.so and some aout libs.
They are included in the compat22 distribution.
Use /stand/sysinstall or install.sh in the compat22 subdirectory
and install it.
Also read ERRATAs for 3.1-R and 3.2-R.
</sect1>
</sect>

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<!-- $Id: commercial.sgml,v 1.9 1999-06-21 19:42:42 tom Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<sect>
<heading>Commercial Applications<label id="commercial"></heading>
<p><bf/NOTE/ This section is still very sparse, though we're hoping, of
course, that companies will add to it! :) The FreeBSD group has no
financial interest in any of the companies listed here but simply
lists them as a public service (and feels that commercial interest
in FreeBSD can have very positive effects on FreeBSD's long-term
viability). We encourage commercial software vendors to send their
entries here for inclusion. See
<url url="../commercial/commercial.html" name="the Vendors page">
for a longer list.
<sect1>
<heading>Where can I get Motif for FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>Contact <ref id="apps2go" name="Apps2go"> for an ELF Motif 2.1
distribution for FreeBSD.<label id="apps2go">
<p>This distribution includes:
<itemize>
<item>OSF/Motif manager, xmbind, panner, wsm.
<item>Development kit with uil, mrm, xm, xmcxx, include and Imake
files.
<item>Static and dynamic ELF libraries (for use with FreeBSD 3.0
and above).
<item>Demonstration applets.
</itemize>
<p>Be sure to specify that you want the FreeBSD version of Motif
when ordering! Versions for NetBSD and OpenBSD are also sold by
<em>Apps2go</em>. This is currently a FTP only download.
<descrip>
<tag/More info/
<url url="http://www.apps2go.com/" name="Apps2go WWW page">
<tag/or/ <url url="mailto:sales@apps2go.com" name="Sales"> or
<url url="mailto:support@apps2go.com" name="Support"> email addresses.
<tag/or/ phone (817) 431 8775 or +1 817 431-8775
</descrip>
<p>Contact <ref id="metrox" name="Metro Link"> for an either ELF or
a.out Motif 2.1 distribution for FreeBSD.
<p>This distribution includes:
<itemize>
<item>OSF/Motif manager, xmbind, panner, wsm.
<item>Development kit with uil, mrm, xm, xmcxx, include and Imake
files.
<item>Static and dynamic libraries (specify ELF for use with FreeBSD
3.0 and later; or a.out for use with FreeBSD 2.2.8 and eariler).
<item>Demonstration applets.
<item>Preformatted man pages.
</itemize>
<p>Be sure to specify that you want the FreeBSD version of Motif
when ordering! Versions for Linux are also sold by
<em>Metro Link</em>. This is available on either a CDROM or for
FTP download.
<p>Contact <ref id="xig" name="Xi Graphics"> for an a.out Motif 2.0
distribution for FreeBSD.
<p>This distribution includes:
<itemize>
<item>OSF/Motif manager, xmbind, panner, wsm.
<item>Development kit with uil, mrm, xm, xmcxx, include and Imake
files.
<item>Static and dynamic libraries (for use with FreeBSD 2.2.8 and
eariler).
<item>Demonstration applets.
<item>Preformatted man pages.
</itemize>
<p>Be sure to specify that you want the FreeBSD version of Motif
when ordering! Versions for BSDI and Linux are also sold by
<em>Xi Graphics</em>. This is currently a 4 diskette set... in the
future this will change to a unified CD distribution like their CDE.
<sect1>
<heading>Where can I get CDE for FreeBSD?</heading>
<p><ref id="xig" name="Xi Graphics"> used to sell CDE for
FreeBSD, but no longer do.
<p><url url="http://www.kde.org/" name="KDE"> is an open source
X11 desktop which is similar to CDE in many respects.
<sect1>
<heading>
Are there any commercial high-performance X servers?
</heading>
<p>Yes, <url url="http://www.xig.com" name="Xi Graphics"> and
<url url="http://www.metrolink.com" name="Metro Link"> sells
Accelerated-X product for FreeBSD and other Intel based systems.
<label id="xig">
<p>The Metro Link offering is a high performance X Server that offers
easy configuration using the FreeBSD Package suite of tools, support
for multiple concurrent video boards and is distributed in binary
form only, in a convienent FTP download. Not to mention the Metro
Link offering is available at the very reasonable price of $39.
<label id="metrox">
<p>Metro Link also sells both ELF and a.out Motif for FreeBSD (see above).
<descrip>
<tag/More info/
<url url="http://www.metrolink.com/" name="Metro Link WWW page">
<tag/or/ <url url="mailto:sales@metrolink.com" name="Sales"> or
<url url="mailto:tech@metrolink.com" name="Support"> email addresses.
<tag/or/ phone (954) 938-0283 or +1 954 938-0283
</descrip>
<p>The Xi Graphics offering is a high performance X Server that offers
easy configuration, support
for multiple concurrent video boards and is distributed in binary
form only, in a unified diskette distribution for FreeBSD and Linux.
Xi Graphics also offers a high performance X Server taylored for
laptop support.
<p>There is a free "compatibility demo" of version 5.0 available.
<p>Xi Graphics also sells Motif and CDE for FreeBSD (see above).
<descrip>
<tag/More info/
<url url="http://www.xig.com/" name="Xi Graphics WWW page">
<tag/or/ <url url="mailto:sales@xig.com" name="Sales"> or
<url url="mailto:support@xig.com" name="Support"> email addresses.
<tag/or/ phone (800) 946 7433 or +1 303 298-7478.
</descrip>
<sect1>
<heading>Are there any Database systems for FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>Yes! See the <url
url="../commercial/software_bycat.html#CATEGORY_DATABASE"
name="Commercial Vendors"> section of FreeBSD's Web site.
<p>Also see the <url url="../ports/databases.html"
name="Databases"> section of the Ports collection.
<sect1>
<heading>Can I run Oracle on FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>Yes. The following pages tell you exactly how to setup Linux-Oracle
on FreeBSD:
<itemize>
<item><url url="http://www.scc.nl/~marcel/howto-oracle.html"
name="http://www.scc.nl/~marcel/howto-oracle.html">
<item><url url="http://www.lf.net/lf/pi/oracle/install-linux-oracle-on-freebsd" name="http://www.lf.net/lf/pi/oracle/install-linux-oracle-on-freebsd">
</itemize>
</sect>

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<!-- $Id: hackers.sgml,v 1.17 1999-07-28 20:26:06 nik Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<sect>
<heading>For serious FreeBSD hackers only<label id="hackers"></heading>
<sect1>
<heading>
What are SNAPs and RELEASEs?
</heading>
<p>There are currently three active/semi-active branches in the FreeBSD
<url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi" name="CVS Repository">:
<itemize>
<item><bf/RELENG_2_2/ AKA <bf/2.2-stable/ AKA <bf/"2.2 branch"/
<item><bf/RELENG_3/ AKA <bf/3.x-stable/ AKA <bf/"3.0 branch"/
<item><bf/HEAD/ AKA <bf/-current/ AKA <bf/4.0-current/
</itemize>
<p><bf/HEAD/ is not an actual branch tag, like the other two, it's
simply a symbolic constant for
<em/"the current, non-branched development stream"/ which we simply
refer to as <bf/-current/.
<p>Right now, <bf/-current/ is the 4.0 development stream and the
<bf/3.0-stable/ branch, <bf/RELENG_3/, forked off from
<bf/-current/ in Jan 1999.
<p>The <bf/2.2-stable/ branch, <bf/RELENG_2_2/, departed -current in
November 1996.
<p>The <bf/2.1-stable/ branch, <bf/RELENG_2_1_0/, departed -current in
September of 1994. This branch has been fully retired.
<sect1>
<heading>
How do I make my own custom release?<label id="custrel">
</heading>
<p>To make a release you need to do three things: First, you need to
be running a kernel with the <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?vn" name="vn"> driver configured
in. Add this to your kernel config file and build a new kernel:
<verb>
pseudo-device vn #Vnode driver (turns a file into a device)
</verb>
<p>Second, you have to have the whole CVS repository at hand.
To get this you can use <url url="../handbook/synching.html#CVSUP" name="CVSUP">
but in your supfile set the release name to cvs and remove any tag or
date fields:
<verb>
*default prefix=/home/ncvs
*default base=/a
*default host=cvsup.FreeBSD.org
*default release=cvs
*default delete compress use-rel-suffix
## Main Source Tree
src-all
src-eBones
src-secure
# Other stuff
ports-all
www
doc-all
</verb>
<p>Then run <tt/cvsup -g supfile/ to suck all the good bits onto your
box...
<p>Finally, you need a chunk of empty space to build into. Let's
say it's in <tt>/some/big/filesystem</tt>, and from the example
above you've got the CVS repository in <tt>/home/ncvs</tt>:
<verb>
setenv CVSROOT /home/ncvs # or export CVSROOT=/home/ncvs
cd /usr/src/release
make release BUILDNAME=3.0-MY-SNAP CHROOTDIR=/some/big/filesystem/release
</verb>
<p>An entire release will be built in
<tt>/some/big/filesystem/release</tt> and you will have a full FTP-type
installation in <tt>/some/big/filesystem/release/R/ftp</tt> when you're
done. If you want to build your SNAP along some other branch than
-current, you can also add <tt/RELEASETAG=SOMETAG/ to
the make release command line above, e.g. <tt/RELEASETAG=RELENG_2_2/
would build an up-to-the- minute 2.2-STABLE snapshot.
<sect1>
<heading>How do I create customized installation disks?</heading>
<p>The entire process of creating installation disks and source and
binary archives is automated by various targets in
<tt>/usr/src/release/Makefile</tt>. The information there should
be enough to get you started. However, it should be said that this
involves doing a ``make world'' and will therefore take up a lot of
time and disk space.
<sect1>
<heading>``make world'' clobbers my existing installed binaries.</heading>
<p>Yes, this is the general idea; as its name might suggest,
``make world'' rebuilds every system binary from scratch, so you can be
certain of having a clean and consistent environment at the end (which
is why it takes so long).
<p>If the environment variable <tt/DESTDIR/ is defined while running
``<tt/make world/'' or ``<tt/make install/'', the newly-created
binaries will be deposited in a directory tree identical to the
installed one, rooted at <tt>&dollar;&lcub;DESTDIR&rcub;</tt>.
Some random combination of shared libraries modifications and
program rebuilds can cause this to fail in ``<tt/make world/'',
however.
<sect1>
<heading>
When my system boots, it says ``(bus speed defaulted)''.
</heading>
<p>The Adaptec 1542 SCSI host adapters allow the user to configure
their bus access speed in software. Previous versions of the
1542 driver tried to determine the fastest usable speed and set
the adapter to that. We found that this breaks some users'
systems, so you now have to define the ``<tt/TUNE&lowbar;1542/'' kernel
configuration option in order to have this take place. Using it
on those systems where it works may make your disks run faster,
but on those systems where it doesn't, your data could be
corrupted.
<sect1>
<heading>
Can I follow current with limited Internet access?<label id="ctm">
</heading>
<p>Yes, you can do this <tt /without/ downloading the whole source tree
by using the <url url="../handbook/synching.html#CTM" name="CTM facility.">
<sect1>
<heading>How did you split the distribution into 240k files?</heading>
<p>Newer BSD based systems have a ``<tt/-b/'' option to split that
allows them to split files on arbitrary byte boundaries.
<p>Here is an example from <tt>/usr/src/Makefile</tt>.
<verb>
bin-tarball:
(cd $&lcub;DISTDIR&rcub;; \
tar cf - . \
gzip --no-name -9 -c | \
split -b 240640 - \
$&lcub;RELEASEDIR&rcub;/tarballs/bindist/bin_tgz.)
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>I've written a kernel extension, who do I send it to?</heading>
<p>Please take a look at <url url="../handbook/contrib.html"
name="The Handbook entry on how to submit code.">
<p>And thanks for the thought!
<sect1>
<heading>How are Plug N Play ISA cards detected and initialized?</heading>
<p>By: <url url="mailto:uhclem@nemesis.lonestar.org"
name="Frank Durda IV">
<p>In a nutshell, there a few I/O ports that all of the PnP boards
respond to when the host asks if anyone is out there. So when
the PnP probe routine starts, he asks if there are any PnP boards
present, and all the PnP boards respond with their model &num; to
a I/O read of the same port, so the probe routine gets a wired-OR
``yes'' to that question. At least one bit will be on in that
reply. Then the probe code is able to cause boards with board
model IDs (assigned by Microsoft/Intel) lower than X to go
``off-line''. It then looks to see if any boards are still
responding to the query. If the answer was ``<tt/0/'', then
there are no boards with IDs above X. Now probe asks if there
are any boards below ``X''. If so, probe knows there are boards
with a model numbers below X. Probe then asks for boards greater
than X-(limit/4) to go off-line. If repeats the query. By
repeating this semi-binary search of IDs-in-range enough times,
the probing code will eventually identify all PnP boards present
in a given machine with a number of iterations that is much lower
than what 2^64 would take.
<p>The IDs are two 32-bit fields (hence 2&circ;64) + 8 bit checksum.
The first 32 bits are a vendor identifier. They never come out
and say it, but it appears to be assumed that different types of
boards from the same vendor could have different 32-bit vendor
ids. The idea of needing 32 bits just for unique manufacturers
is a bit excessive.
<p>The lower 32 bits are a serial &num;, ethernet address, something
that makes this one board unique. The vendor must never produce
a second board that has the same lower 32 bits unless the upper
32 bits are also different. So you can have multiple boards of
the same type in the machine and the full 64 bits will still be
unique.
<p>The 32 bit groups can never be all zero. This allows the
wired-OR to show non-zero bits during the initial binary search.
<p>Once the system has identified all the board IDs present, it will
reactivate each board, one at a time (via the same I/O ports),
and find out what resources the given board needs, what interrupt
choices are available, etc. A scan is made over all the boards
to collect this information.
<p>This info is then combined with info from any ECU files on the
hard disk or wired into the MLB BIOS. The ECU and BIOS PnP
support for hardware on the MLB is usually synthetic, and the
peripherals don't really do genuine PnP. However by examining
the BIOS info plus the ECU info, the probe routines can cause the
devices that are PnP to avoid those devices the probe code cannot
relocate.
<p>Then the PnP devices are visited once more and given their I/O,
DMA, IRQ and Memory-map address assignments. The devices will
then appear at those locations and remain there until the next
reboot, although there is nothing that says you can't move them
around whenever you want.
<p>There is a lot of oversimplification above, but you should get
the general idea.
<p>Microsoft took over some of the primary printer status ports to
do PnP, on the logic that no boards decoded those addresses for
the opposing I/O cycles. I found a genuine IBM printer board
that did decode writes of the status port during the early PnP
proposal review period, but MS said ``tough''. So they do a
write to the printer status port for setting addresses, plus that
use that address + <tt/0x800/, and a third I/O port for reading
that can be located anywhere between <tt/0x200/ and <tt/0x3ff/.
<sect1>
<heading>Does FreeBSD support architectures other than the x86?</heading>
<p>Several groups of people have expressed interest in working on
multi-architecture ports for FreeBSD and the FreeBSD/AXP (ALPHA)
port is one such effort which has been quite successful, now
available in 3.0 SNAPshot release form at <url
url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/alpha/"
name="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/alpha">. The ALPHA
port currently runs on a growing number of ALPHA machine
types, among them the AlphaStation, AXPpci, PC164, Miata and Multia
models. This port is not yet considered a full release and won't be
until a full compliment of system installation tools and a distribution
on CDROM installation media is available, including a reasonable
number of working ports and packages.
FreeBSD/AXP should be considered BETA quality software at this
time. For status information, please join the
<tt>&lt;freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.org&gt;</tt><ref id="mailing"
name="mailing list">.
Interest has also been expressed in a port of FreeBSD to
the SPARC architecture, join the <tt>&lt;freebsd-sparc@FreeBSD.org&gt;
</tt><ref id="mailing" name="mailing list"> if you are interested
in joining that project. For general discussion on new architectures,
join the <tt>&lt;freebsd-platforms@FreeBSD.org&gt;</tt>
<ref id="mailing" name="mailing list">.
<sect1>
<heading>I need a major number for a device driver I've written.</heading>
<p>This depends on whether or not you plan on making the driver
publicly available. If you do, then please send us a copy of the
driver source code, plus the appropriate modifications to
<tt>files.i386</tt>, a sample configuration file entry, and the
appropriate <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?MAKEDEV"
name="MAKEDEV"> code to create any special files your device uses. If
you do not, or are unable to because of licensing restrictions, then
character major number 32 and block major number 8 have been reserved
specifically for this purpose; please use them. In any case, we'd
appreciate hearing about your driver on
<tt>&lt;freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org&gt;</tt>.
<sect1>
<heading>Alternative layout policies for directories</heading>
<p>
In answer to the question of alternative layout policies for
directories, the scheme that is currently in use is unchanged
from what I wrote in 1983. I wrote that policy for the original
fast filesystem, and never revisited it. It works well at keeping
cylinder groups from filling up. As several of you have noted,
it works poorly for find. Most filesystems are created from
archives that were created by a depth first search (aka ftw).
These directories end up being striped across the cylinder groups
thus creating a worst possible senario for future depth first
searches. If one knew the total number of directories to be
created, the solution would be to create (total / fs_ncg) per
cylinder group before moving on. Obviously, one would have to
create some heuristic to guess at this number. Even using a
small fixed number like say 10 would make an order of magnitude
improvement. To differentiate restores from normal operation
(when the current algorithm is probably more sensible), you
could use the clustering of up to 10 if they were all done
within a ten second window. Anyway, my conclusion is that this
is an area ripe for experimentation.</p>
<p>Kirk McKusick, September 1998</p>
<sect1>
<heading>Making the most of a kernel panic</heading>
<p>
<em>[This section was extracted from a mail written by <url
url="mailto:wpaul@FreeBSD.org" name="Bill Paul"> on the
freebsd-current <ref id="mailing" name="mailing list"> by <url
url="mailto:des@FreeBSD.org" name="Dag-Erling Co&iuml;dan
Sm&oslash;rgrav">, who fixed a few typos and added the bracketed
comments]</em>
<p>
<verb>
From: Bill Paul <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: the fs fun never stops
To: ben@rosengart.com
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 15:22:50 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: current@FreeBSD.org
</verb>
<p>
<em>[&lt;ben@rosengart.com&gt; posted the following panic
message]</em>
<verb>
> Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode
> fault virtual address = 0x40
> fault code = supervisor read, page not present
> instruction pointer = 0x8:0xf014a7e5
^^^^^^^^^^
> stack pointer = 0x10:0xf4ed6f24
> frame pointer = 0x10:0xf4ed6f28
> code segment = base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b
> = DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1
> processor eflags = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0
> current process = 80 (mount)
> interrupt mask =
> trap number = 12
> panic: page fault
</verb>
<p> [When] you see a message like this, it's not enough to just
reproduce it and send it in. The instruction pointer value that
I highlighted up there is important; unfortunately, it's also
configuration dependent. In other words, the value varies
depending on the exact kernel image that you're using. If you're
using a GENERIC kernel image from one of the snapshots, then
it's possible for somebody else to track down the offending
function, but if you're running a custom kernel then only
<em/you/ can tell us where the fault occured.
<p> What you should do is this:
<itemize>
<item>Write down the instruction pointer value. Note that the
<tt/0x8:/ part at the begining is not significant in this case:
it's the <tt/0xf0xxxxxx/ part that we want.
<item>When the system reboots, do the following:
<verb>
% nm /kernel.that.caused.the.panic | grep f0xxxxxx
</verb>
where <tt/f0xxxxxx/ is the instruction pointer value. The
odds are you will not get an exact match since the symbols
in the kernel symbol table are for the entry points of
functions and the instruction pointer address will be
somewhere inside a function, not at the start. If you don't
get an exact match, omit the last digit from the instruction
pointer value and try again, i.e.:
<verb>
% nm /kernel.that.caused.the.panic | grep f0xxxxx
</verb>
If that doesn't yield any results, chop off another digit.
Repeat until you get some sort of output. The result will be
a possible list of functions which caused the panic. This is
a less than exact mechanism for tracking down the point of
failure, but it's better than nothing.
</itemize>
<p> I see people constantly show panic messages like this but
rarely do I see someone take the time to match up the
instruction pointer with a function in the kernel symbol table.
<p> The best way to track down the cause of a panic is by
capturing a crash dump, then using <tt/gdb(1)/ to to a stack
trace on the crash dump. Of course, this depends on <tt/gdb(1)/
in -current working correctly, which I can't guarantee (I recall
somebody saying that the new ELF-ized <tt/gdb(1)/ didn't handle
kernel crash dumps correctly: somebody should check this before
3.0 goes out of beta or there'll be a lot of red faces after the
CDs ship).
<p>
In any case, the method I normally use is this:
<itemize>
<item>Set up a kernel config file, optionally adding 'options DDB' if you
think you need the kernel debugger for something. (I use this mainly
for setting beakpoints if I suspect an infinite loop condition of
some kind.)
<item>Use <tt/config -g KERNELCONFIG/ to set up the build directory.
<item><tt>cd /sys/compile/KERNELCONFIG; make</tt>
<item>Wait for kernel to finish compiling.
<item><tt/cp kernel kernel.debug/
<item><tt/strip -d kernel/
<item><tt/mv /kernel /kernel.orig/
<item><tt>cp kernel /</tt>
<item>reboot
</itemize>
<p> <em>[Note: Now that FreeBSD 3.x kernels are Elf by default,
you should use <tt/strip -g/ instead of <tt/strip -d/. If for some
reason your kernel is still a.out, use <tt/strip -aout -d/.]</em>
<p> Note that YOU DO <em/NOT/ WANT TO ACTUALLY BOOT THE KERNEL
WITH ALL THE DEBUG SYMBOLS IN IT. A kernel compiled with <tt/-g/
can easily be close to 10MB in size. You don't have to actually
boot this massive image: you only need it later for <tt/gdb(1)/
(<tt/gdb(1)/ wants the symbol table). Instead, you want to keep
a copy of the full image and create a second image with the
debug symbols stripped out using <tt/strip -d/. It is this
second stripped image that you want to boot.
<p> To make sure you capture a crash dump, you need edit
<tt>/etc/rc.conf</tt> and set <tt/dumpdev/ to point to your swap
partition. This will cause the <tt/rc(8)/ scripts to use the
<tt/dumpon(8)/ command to enable crash dumps. You can also run
<tt/dumpon(8)/ manually. After a panic, the crash dump can be
recovered using <tt/savecore(8)/; if <tt/dumpdev/ is set in
<tt>/etc/rc.conf</tt>, the <tt/rc(8)/ scripts will run
<tt/savecore(8)/ automatically and put the crash dump in
<tt>/var/crash</tt>.
<p> NOTE: FreeBSD crash dumps are usually the same size as the
physical RAM size of your machine. That is, if you have 64MB of
RAM, you will get a 64MB crash dump. Therefore you must make sure
there's enough space in <tt>/var/crash</tt> to hold the dump.
Alternatively, you run <tt/savecore(8)/ manually and have it
recover the crash dump to another directory where you have more
room. It's possible to limit the size of the crash dump by using
<tt/options MAXMEM=(foo)/ to set the amount of memory the kernel
will use to something a little more sensible. For example, if
you have 128MB of RAM, you can limit the kernel's memory usage
to 16MB so that your crash dump size will be 16MB instead of
128MB.
<p> Once you have recovered the crash dump, you can get a stack
trace with <tt/gdb(1)/ as follows:
<p>
<verb>
% gdb -k /sys/compile/KERNELCONFIG/kernel.debug /var/crash/vmcore.0
(gdb) where
</verb>
<p> Note that there may be several screens worth of information;
ideally you should use <tt/script(1)/ to capture all of them.
Using the unstripped kernel image with all the debug symbols
should show the exact line of kernel source code where the panic
occured. Usually you have to read the stack trace from the
bottom up in order to trace the exact sequence of events that
lead to the crash. You can also use <tt/gdb(1)/ to print out the
contents of various variables or structures in order to examine
the system state at the time of the crash.
<p> Now, if you're really insane and have a second computer, you
can also configure <tt/gdb(1)/ to do remote debugging such that
you can use <tt/gdb(1)/ on one system to debug the kernel on
another system, including setting breakpoints, single-stepping
through the kernel code, just like you can do with a normal
user-mode program. I haven't played with this yet as I don't
often have the chance to set up two machines side by side for
debugging purposes.
<p> <em>[Bill adds: "I forgot to mention one thing: if you have
DDB enabled and the kernel drops into the debugger, you can
force a panic (and a crash dump) just by typing 'panic' at the
ddb prompt. It may stop in the debugger again during the panic
phase. If it does, type 'continue' and it will finish the crash
dump." -ed]</em>
<sect1>
<heading>dlsym() stopped working for ELF executables!</heading>
<p>The ELF toolchain does not, by default, make the symbols
defined in an executable visible to the dynamic linker.
Consequently <tt>dlsym()</tt> searches on handles obtained
from calls to <tt>dlopen(NULL, flags)</tt> will fail to find
such symbols.
<p>If you want to search, using <tt>dlsym()</tt>, for symbols
present in the main executable of a process, you need to link
the executable using the <tt>-export-dynamic</tt> option to the
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?ld"
name="ELF linker">.
<sect1>
<heading>Increasing or reducing the kernel address space</heading>
<p>
By default, the kernel address space is 256 MB on FreeBSD 3.x
and 1 GB on FreeBSD 4.x. If you run a network-intensive server
(e.g. a large FTP or HTTP server), you might find that 256 MB is
not enough.
<p>
So how do you increase the address space? There are two aspects
to this. First, you need to tell the kernel to reserve a larger
portion of the address space for itself. Second, since the
kernel is loaded at the top of the address space, you need to
lower the load address so it doesn't bump its head against the
ceiling.
<p>
The first goal is achieved by increasing the value of
<tt/NKPDE/ in <tt>src/sys/i386/include/pmap.h</tt>. Here's what
it looks like for a 1 GB address space:
<verb>
#ifndef NKPDE
#ifdef SMP
#define NKPDE 254 /* addressable number of page tables/pde's */
#else
#define NKPDE 255 /* addressable number of page tables/pde's */
#endif /* SMP */
#endif
</verb>
<p>
To find the correct value of <tt/NKPDE/, divide the desired
address space size (in megabytes) by four, then subtract one for
UP and two for SMP.
<p>
To achieve the second goal, you need to compute the correct load
address: simply subtract the address space size (in bytes) from
0x100100000; the result is 0xc0100000 for a 1 GB address space.
Set <tt/LOAD_ADDRESS/ in <tt>src/sys/i386/conf/Makefile.i386</tt>
to that value; then set the location counter in the beginning of
the section listing in <tt>src/sys/i386/conf/kernel.script</tt>
to the same value, as follows:
<verb>
OUTPUT_FORMAT("elf32-i386", "elf32-i386", "elf32-i386")
OUTPUT_ARCH(i386)
ENTRY(btext)
SEARCH_DIR(/usr/lib); SEARCH_DIR(/usr/obj/elf/home/src/tmp/usr/i386-unknown-freebsdelf/lib);
SECTIONS
{
/* Read-only sections, merged into text segment: */
. = 0xc0100000 + SIZEOF_HEADERS;
.interp : { *(.interp) }
</verb>
<p>
Then reconfig and rebuild your kernel. You will probably have
problems with <tt/ps(1)/, <tt/top(1)/ and the like; <tt/make
world/ should take care of it (or a manual rebuild of
<tt/libkvm/, <tt/ps/ and <tt/top/ after copying the patched
<tt/pmap.h/ to <tt>/usr/include/vm/</tt>.
<p>
NOTE: the size of the kernel address space must be a multiple of
four megabytes.
<p>
[<url url="mailto:dg@FreeBSD.org" name="David Greenman">
adds: <em> I think the kernel address space needs to be a power
of two, but I'm not certain about that. The old(er) boot code
used to monkey with the high order address bits and I think
expected at least 256MB granularity.]</em>
</sect>

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@ -1,419 +0,0 @@
<!-- $Id: hardware.sgml,v 1.21 1999-07-30 08:02:58 kevlo Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<sect>
<heading>Hardware compatibility <label id="hardware"></heading>
<sect1>
<heading>What kind of hard drives does FreeBSD support?</heading>
<p>FreeBSD supports EIDE and SCSI drives (with a compatible
controller; see the next section), and all drives using the
original "Western Digital" interface (MFM, RLL, ESDI, and
of course IDE). A few ESDI controllers that use proprietary
interfaces may not work: stick to WD1002/3/6/7 interfaces
and clones.
<sect1>
<heading>Which SCSI controllers are supported?</heading>
<p>See the complete list in the
<htmlurl url="../handbook/install.html#INSTALL-HW"
name="Handbook">.
<sect1>
<heading>Which CD-ROM drives are supported by FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>Any SCSI drive connected to a supported controller is supported.
<p>The following proprietary CD-ROM interfaces are also supported:
<itemize>
<item>Mitsumi LU002 (8bit), LU005 (16bit) and FX001D (16bit 2x Speed).
<item>Sony CDU 31/33A<newline>
<item>Sound Blaster Non-SCSI CD-ROM<newline>
<item>Matsushita/Panasonic CD-ROM<newline>
<item>ATAPI compatible IDE CD-ROMs<newline>
</itemize>
<p>All non-SCSI cards are known to be extremely slow compared to
SCSI drives, and some ATAPI CDROMs may not work.
<p>As of 2.2 the FreeBSD CDROM from Walnut Creek supports booting
directly from the CD.
<sect1>
<heading>Does FreeBSD support ZIP drives?</heading>
<p>FreeBSD supports the SCSI ZIP drive out of the box, of course. The
ZIP drive can only be set to run at SCSI target IDs 5 or 6, but if
your SCSI host adapter's BIOS supports it you can even boot from
it. I don't know which host adapters let you boot from targets
other than 0 or 1... look at your docs (and let me know if it works
out for you).
<p>ATAPI (IDE) Zip drives are supported in FreeBSD 2.2.6 and
later releases.
<p>FreeBSD has contained support for Parallel Port Zip Drives since
version 3.0. If you are using a sufficiently up to date version, then
you should check that your kernel contains the <tt>scbus0</tt>, <tt>da0
</tt>, <tt>ppbus0</tt>, and <tt>vp0</tt> drivers (the GENERIC kernel
contains everything except vp0). With all these drivers present, the
Parallel Port drive should be available as /dev/da0s4. Disks can
be mounted using <tt>mount /dev/da0s4 /mnt</tt> OR (for dos disks) <tt>
mount_msdos /dev/da0s4 /mnt</tt> as appropriate.
<p>Also check out <ref id="jaz" name="this note on removable drives">,
and <ref id="disklabel" name="this note on 'formatting'">.
<sect1>
<heading>
Does FreeBSD support JAZ, EZ and other removable drives?
</heading>
<p>Apart from the IDE version of the EZ drive, these are all SCSI
devices, so the should all look like SCSI disks to FreeBSD, and
the IDE EZ should look like an IDE drive.
<p><label id="jaz">I'm not sure how well FreeBSD supports changing
the media out while running. You will of course need to dismount the
drive before swapping media, and make sure that any external units are
powered on when you boot the system so FreeBSD can see them.
<p>See <ref id="disklabel" name="this note on 'formatting'">.
<sect1>
<heading>Which multi-port serial cards are supported by FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>There is a list of these in the <htmlurl
url="../handbook/install.html#INSTALL-MISC" name="Miscellaneous devices">
section of the handbook.
<p>Some unnamed clone cards have also been known to work, especially
those that claim to be AST compatible.
<p>Check the <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?sio"
name="sio"> man page to get more information on configuring such cards.
<sect1>
<heading>I have an unusual bus mouse. How do I set it up?<label id="busmouse"></heading>
<p>FreeBSD supports the bus mouse and the InPort bus mouse from such
manufactures as Microsoft, Logitech and ATI. The bus device driver
is compiled in the GENERIC kernel by default. If you are building
a custom kernel with the bus mouse driver, make sure to add the
following line to the kernel config file:
<verb>
device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c tty irq5 vector mseintr
</verb>
<p>The bus mouse usually comes with an dedicatd interface card.
It may allow you to set the port address and the IRQ number other
than shown above. Refer to the manual of your mouse and the
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?mse" name="mse">
man page for more information.
<sect1>
<heading>
How do I use my PS/2 (``mouse port'' or ``keyboard'') mouse?<label id="ps2mouse"></heading>
<p>If you're running a post-2.2.5 version of FreeBSD, the necessary
driver, psm, is included and enabled in the kernel. The kernel
should detect your PS/2 mouse at boot time.
<p>If you're running a previous but relatively recent version of
FreeBSD (2.1.x or better) then you can simply enable it in the
kernel configuration menu at installation time, otherwise later with
-c at the boot: prompt. It is disabled by default, so you will need
to enable it explicitly.
<p>If you're running an older version of FreeBSD then you'll have to
add the following lines to your kernel configuration file and compile
a new kernel:
<verb>
device psm0 at isa? port "IO_KBD" conflicts tty irq 12 vector psmintr
</verb>
<p>See the <htmlurl url="../handbook/kernelconfig.html"
name="Handbook entry on configuring the kernel"> if you've no
experience with building kernels.
<p>Once you have a kernel detecting psm0 correctly at boot time,
make sure that an entry for psm0 exists in /dev. You can do this
by typing:
<verb>
cd /dev; sh MAKEDEV psm0
</verb>
<p>when logged in as root.
<sect1>
<heading>Is it possible to make use of a mouse in any way outside the X Window?<label id="moused"></heading>
<p>If you are using the default console driver, syscons, you can
use a mouse pointer in text consoles to cut & paste text.
Run the mouse daemon, moused, and turn on the mouse pointer
in the virtual console:
<verb>
moused -p /dev/xxxx -t yyyy
vidcontrol -m on
</verb>
<p>Where <tt>xxxx</tt> is the mouse device name and <tt>yyyy</tt>
is a protocol type for the mouse. See the
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?moused" name="moused">
man page for supported protocol types.
<p>You may wish to run the mouse daemon automatically when the
system starts. In version 2.2.1, set the following variables in
<tt>/etc/sysconfig</tt>.
<verb>
mousedtype="yyyy"
mousedport="xxxx"
mousedflags=""
</verb>
In versions 2.2.2 or later, set the following variables in
<tt>/etc/rc.conf</tt>.
<verb>
moused_type="yyyy"
moused_port="xxxx"
moused_flags=""
</verb>
<p>Staring from FreeBSD 2.2.6, the mouse daemon is capable of
determining the correct protocol type automatically unless the mouse
is a relatively old serial mouse model. Specify ``<tt>auto</tt>'' as
the protocol to invoke automatic detection.
<p>When the mouse daemon is running, access to the mouse needs to be
coordinated between the mouse daemon and other programs such as the
X Window. Refer to <ref id="x-and-moused" name="another section">
on this issue".
<sect1>
<heading>How do I cut and paste text with mouse in the text console?</heading>
<p>Once you get the mouse daemon running (see <ref id="moused"
name="previous section">), hold down the button 1 (left button)
and move the mouse to select a region of
text. Then, press the button 2 (middle button) or the button 3 (right
button) to paste it at the text cursor.
<p>In versions 2.2.6 and later, pressing the button 2 will paste
the text. Pressing the button 3 will ``extend'' the selected region
of text. If your mouse does not have the middle button, you may wish
to emulate it or remap buttons using moused options. See the
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?moused" name="moused">
man page for details.
<sect1>
<heading>My mouse has a fancy wheel and buttons. Can I use them in FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>The answer is, unfortunately, ``It depends.'' These mice with
additional features require specialized driver in most cases.
Unless the mouse device driver or the user program has specific
support for the mouse, it will act just like a standard two, or
three button mouse.
<sect1>
<heading>
How do I use the mouse/trackball/touchpad on my laptop?
</heading>
<p>Please refer to <ref id="ps2mouse" name="the answer to the previous
question">. And check out <ref id="pao" name="this note"> on the Mobile
Computing page.
<sect1>
<heading>What types of tape drives are supported?</heading>
<p>FreeBSD supports SCSI, QIC-36 (with a QIC-02 interface) and
QIC-40/80 (Floppy based) tape drives. This includes 8-mm (aka Exabyte)
and DAT drives. The QIC-40/80 drives are known to be slow.
<p>Some of the early 8-mm drives are not quite compatible with SCSI-2,
and may not work well with FreeBSD.
<sect1>
<heading>Does FreeBSD support tape changers?</heading>
<p>FreeBSD 2.2 supports SCSI changers using the <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?ch(4)" name="ch"> device and
the <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?chio" name="chio">
command. The details of how you actually control the changer can be
found in the <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?chio"
name="chio"> man page.
<p>If you're not using <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/ports.cgi?amanda" name="AMANDA"> or
some other product that already understands changers, remember that
they're only know how to move a tape from one point to another, so
you need to keep track of which slot a tape is in, and which slot the
tape currently in the drive needs to go back to.
<sect1>
<heading>Which sound cards are supported by FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>FreeBSD supports the SoundBlaster, SoundBlaster Pro, SoundBlaster
16, Pro Audio Spectrum 16, AdLib and Gravis UltraSound sound cards.
There is also limited support for MPU-401 and compatible MIDI cards.
Cards conforming to the Microsoft Sound System specification are also
supported through the pcm driver.
<p><bf/NOTE/ This is only for sound! This driver does not support
CD-ROMs, SCSI or joysticks on these cards, except for the
SoundBlaster. The SoundBlaster SCSI interface and some non-SCSI
CDROMS are supported, but you can't boot off this device.
<sect1>
<heading>Workarounds for no sound from es1370 with pcm driver?</heading>
<p>You can run the following command everytime the machine booted up:
<p>mixer pcm 100 vol 100 cd 100
<sect1>
<heading>Which network cards does FreeBSD support?</heading>
<p>See the <htmlurl url="../handbook/install.html#INSTALL-NICS"
name="Ethernet cards"> section of the handbook for a more
complete list.
<sect1>
<heading>I don't have a math co-processor - is that bad?</heading>
<p><tt /Note/ This will only affect 386/486SX/486SLC owners - other
machines will have one built into the CPU.
<p>In general this will not cause any problems, but there are
circumstances where you will take a hit, either in performance or
accuracy of the math emulation code (see the section <ref id="emul"
name="on FP emulation">). In particular, drawing arcs in X will be
VERY slow. It is highly recommended that you buy a math
co-processor; it's well worth it.
<p><bf/NOTE/ Some math co-processors are better than others. It pains
us to say it, but nobody ever got fired for buying Intel. Unless
you're sure it works with FreeBSD, beware of clones.
<sect1>
<heading>What other devices does 2.X support?</heading>
<p>See the <htmlurl url="../handbook/install.html#INSTALL-MISC" name="Handbook">
for the list of other devices supported.
<!--
<sect1>
<heading>I am about to buy a new machine. What do you recommend?</heading>
<p>See the <htmlurl url="../handbook/hw.html" name="hardware section">
of the handbook for general tips if you're going to build it
yourself, otherwise see the
FreeBSD <htmlurl url="../commercial/hardware.html"
name="Hardware vendors"> page for various companies who offer
FreeBSD compatible systems.
-->
<sect1>
<heading>Does FreeBSD support power management on my laptop?</heading>
<p>FreeBSD supports APM on certain machines. Please look in the
<tt/LINT/ kernel config file, searching for the <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?apm" name="APM"> keyword.
<sect1>
<heading>Workarounds for specific hardware problems</heading>
<p>This section contains workarounds for specific hardware
problems encountered by our users.
<sect2>
<heading>Micron systems hang at boot time</heading>
<p>Certain Micron motherboards have a non-conforming PCI BIOS
implementation that causes grief when FreeBSD boots because
PCI devices don't get configured at their reported addresses.
<p>Disable the "Plug and Play Operating System" flag in the BIOS
to work around this problem. More information can be found at
<htmlurl
url="http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html#micron"
name="http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html#micron">
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>I have a newer Adaptec controller and FreeBSD can't find it.
</heading>
<p>The newer AIC789x series Adaptec chips are supported under the CAM SCSI
framework which made it's debut in 3.0. Patches against 2.2-STABLE
are in <url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/development/cam/" name="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/development/cam/">.
A CAM-enhanced boot floppy is available at <url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/~abial/cam-boot/"
name="http://www.FreeBSD.org/~abial/cam-boot/">. In both cases read the README before
beginning. </p>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>I have an internal Plug & Play modem and FreeBSD can't find it.
</heading>
<p>You will need to add the modem's PnP ID to the PnP ID list in the serial driver.
To enable Plug & Play support, compile a new kernel with <tt/controller pnp0/ in
the configuration file, then reboot the system. The kernel will print the PnP IDs
of all the devices it finds. Copy the PnP ID from the modem to the table in
<tt>/sys/i386/isa/sio.c</tt>, at about line 2777. Look for the string "SUP1310"
in the structure "siopnp_ids[]" to
find the table. Build the kernel again, install, reboot, and your modem should be found.</p>
<p>You may have to manually configure the PnP devices using the `pnp' command in the
boot-time configuration with a command like
<verb>
pnp 1 0 enable os irq0 3 drq0 0 port0 0x2f8
</verb>
to make the modem show.</p>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>How do I get the boot: prompt to show on the serial console?
</heading>
<p><enum>
<item>Build a kernel with <tt/options COMCONSOLE/.
<item>Create /boot.config and place <tt/-P/ as the only text in the file.
<item>Unplug the keyboard from the system.
</enum></p>
<p>See <tt>/usr/src/sys/i386/boot/biosboot/README.serial</tt> for information.</p>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>Why doesn't my 3Com PCI network card work with my Micron
computer?</heading>
<p>Certain Micron motherboards have a non-conforming PCI BIOS
implementation that does not configure PCI devices at
the addresses reported. This causes grief when FreeBSD boots.
<p>To work around this problem, disable the "Plug and Play Operating
System" flag in the BIOS.
<p>More information on this problem is available at URL:
<htmlurl
url="http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html#micron"
name="http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html#micron">
<sect1>
<heading>Does FreeBSD support Symmetric Multiproccessing (SMP)?
</heading>
<p>SMP is supported in 3.0-STABLE and later releases only.
</sect>

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<!-- $Id: install.sgml,v 1.19 1999-07-28 20:26:06 nik Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<sect>
<heading>Installation<label id="install"></heading>
<sect1>
<heading>Which file do I download to get FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>You generally need just one floppy image, the <em>floppies/boot.flp
</em> file, which you image-copy onto a 1.44MB floppy and then boot from
in order to download the rest (and the installation will manage your
TCP/IP connection, deal with tapes, CDROMs, floppies, DOS
partitions, whatever's necessary to get the rest of the bits
installed).
<p>If you need to download the distributions yourself (for a DOS
filesystem install, for instance), below are some recommendations
for distributions to grab:
<itemize>
<item> bin/<newline>
<item> manpages/<newline>
<item> compat*/<newline>
<item> doc/ <newline>
<item> src/ssys.* <newline>
</itemize>
<p>Full instructions on this procedure and a little bit more about
installation issues in general can be found in the <url
url="../handbook/install.html"
name="Handbook entry on installing FreeBSD.">
<sect1>
<heading>Help! The boot floppy image will not fit on a single floppy!
</heading>
<p>A 3.5 inch (1.44MB) floppy can accomodate 1474560 bytes of data.
The boot image is exactly 1474560 bytes in size.
<p>Common mistakes when preparing the boot floppy are:
<itemize>
<item>Not downloading the floppy image in <tt>binary</tt> mode when
using <tt>FTP</tt>.
<p>Some FTP clients default their transfer mode to <tt>ascii</tt>
and attempt to change any end-of-line characters received to match
the conventions used by the client's system.
This will almost invariably corrupt the boot image. Check the
size of the downloaded boot image: if it is not <em>exactly</em>
that on the server, then the download process is suspect.
<p>To workaround: type <tt>binary</tt> at the FTP command prompt
after getting connected to the server and before starting the
download of the image.
<item>Using the DOS <tt>copy</tt> command (or equivalent GUI tool) to
transfer the boot image to floppy.
<p>Programs like <tt>copy</tt> will not work as the boot
image has been created to be booted into directly. The image has
the complete content of the floppy, track for track, and is not
meant to be placed on the floppy as a regular file.
You have to transfer it to the floppy ``raw'', using the
low-level tools (e.g. <tt>fdimage</tt> or <tt>rawrite</tt>)
described in the <url url="../handbook/install.html"
name="installation guide to FreeBSD">.
</itemize>
<sect1>
<heading>Where are the instructions for installing FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>Installation instructions can be found in the
<url url="../handbook/install.html"
name="Handbook entry on installing FreeBSD.">
<sect1>
<heading>What do I need in order to run FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>You'll need a 386 or better PC, with 5 MB or more of RAM and at
least 60 MB of hard disk space. It can run with a low end MDA
graphics card but to run X11R6, a VGA or better video card is needed.
<p>See also the section on <ref id="hardware"
name="Hardware compatibility">
<sect1>
<heading>I have only 4 MB of RAM. Can I install FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>FreeBSD 2.1.7 was the last version of FreeBSD that could be installed
on a 4MB system. Newer versions of FreeBSD, like 2.2, need at least 5MB
to install on a new system.
<p>All versions of FreeBSD, including 3.0, will RUN in 4MB of ram, they
just can't run the installation program in 4MB. You can add
extra memory for the install process, if you like, and then
after the system is up and running, go back to 4MB. Or you could
always just swap your disk into a system which has >4MB, install onto
it and then swap it back.
<p>There are also situations in which FreeBSD 2.1.7 will not install
in 4 MB. To be exact: it does not install with 640 kB base + 3 MB
extended memory. If your motherboard can remap some of the ``lost''
memory out of the 640kB to 1MB region, then you may still be able
to get FreeBSD 2.1.7 up.
<p>Try to go into your BIOS setup and look for a ``remap'' option.
Enable it. You may also have to disable ROM shadowing.
<p>It may be easier to get 4 more MB just for the install. Build a
custom kernel with only the options you need and then get the 4
MB out again.
<p>You may also install 2.0.5 and then upgrade your system to 2.1.7
with the ``upgrade'' option of the 2.1.7 installation program.
<p>After the installation, if you build a custom kernel, it will run
in 4 MB. Someone has even succeeded in booting with 2 MB (the
system was almost unusable though :-))
<sect1>
<heading>
How can I make my own custom install floppy?
</heading>
<p>Currently there's no way to *just* make a custom install floppy.
You have to cut a whole new release, which will include your install
floppy. There's some code in <tt>/usr/src/release/floppies/Makefile</tt>
that's supposed to let you *just* make those floppies, but it's not
really gelled yet.
<p>To make a custom release, follow the instructions <ref id="custrel"
name="here">.
<sect1>
<heading>Can I have more than one operating system on my PC?</heading>
<p>Have a look at <url url="../tutorials/multios/multios.html"
name="The multi-OS page.">
<sect1>
<heading>Can Windows 95 co-exist with FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>Install Windows 95 first, after that FreeBSD. FreeBSD's boot
manager will then manage to boot Win95 and FreeBSD. If you
install Windows 95 second, it will boorishly overwrite your
boot manager without even asking. If that happens, see
the next section.
<sect1>
<heading>
Windows 95 killed my boot manager! How do I get it back?
</heading>
<p>You can reinstall the boot manager FreeBSD comes with in one of
two ways:
<itemize>
<item>Running DOS, go into the tools/ directory of your FreeBSD
distribution and look for <bf>bootinst.exe</bf>. You run it like so:
<p><bf>bootinst.exe boot.bin</bf>
<p>and the boot manager will be reinstalled.
<item>Boot the FreeBSD boot floppy again and go to the Custom
installation menu item. Choose Partition. Select the drive which
used to contain your boot manager (likely the first one) and when you
come to the partition editor for it, as the very first thing (e.g.
do not make any changes) select (W)rite. This will ask for
confirmation, say yes, and when you get the Boot Manager selection
prompt, be sure to select "Boot Manager."
This will re-write the boot manager to disk. Now quit out of the
installation menu and reboot off the hard disk as normal.
</itemize>
<sect1>
<heading>Can I install on a disk with bad blocks?</heading>
<p>FreeBSD's bad block (the <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?bad144" name="bad144">
command) handling is still not 100&percnt; (to put it charitably) and
it must unfortunately be said that if you've got an IDE or ESDI drive
with lots of bad blocks, then FreeBSD is probably not for you!
That said, it does work on thousands of IDE based systems, so
you'd do well to try it first before simply giving up.
<p>If you have a SCSI drive with bad blocks, see <ref id="awre"
name="this answer">.
<sect1>
<heading>Strange things happen when I boot the install floppy!</heading>
<p>If you're seeing things like the machine grinding to a halt or
spontaneously rebooting when you try to boot the install floppy,
here are three questions to ask yourself:-
<enum>
<item>Did you use a new, freshly-formatted, error-free floppy
(preferably a brand-new one straight out of the box, as
opposed to the magazine coverdisk that's been lying under
the bed for the last three years)?
<item>Did you download the floppy image in binary (or image) mode?
(don't be embarrassed, even the best of us have accidentally
downloaded a binary file in ASCII mode at least once!)
<item>If you're using one of these new-fangled operating systems
like Windows95 or Windows NT, did you shut it down and restart
the system in plain, honest DOS? It seems these OS's can
interfere with programs that write directly to hardware, which
the disk creation program does; even running it inside a DOS
shell in the GUI can cause this problem.
</enum>
<p>There have also been reports of Netscape causing problems when
downloading the boot floppy, so it's probably best to use a different
FTP client if you can.
<sect1>
<heading>Help! I can't install from tape!</heading>
<p>If you are installing 2.1.7R from tape, you must create the tape
using a tar blocksize of 10 (5120 bytes). The default tar
blocksize is 20 (10240 bytes), and tapes created using this
default size cannot be used to install 2.1.7R; with these tapes,
you will get an error that complains about the record size being
too big.
<sect1>
<heading>Connect two FreeBSD boxes over a parallel line (PLIP)
</heading>
<p>Get a laplink cable. Make sure both computer have a kernel
with lpt driver support.
<verb>
$ dmesg | grep lp
lpt0 at 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa
lpt0: Interrupt-driven port
lp0: TCP/IP capable interface
</verb>
<p>Plug in the laplink cable into the parallel interface.
<p>Configure the network interface parameters for lp0 on both
sites as root. For example, if you want connect the host max
with moritz
<verb>
max <-----> moritz
IP Address 10.0.0.1 10.0.0.2
</verb>
on max start
<verb>
# ifconfig lp0 10.0.0.1 10.0.0.2
</verb>
on moritz start
<verb>
# ifconfig lp0 10.0.0.2 10.0.0.1
</verb>
<P>Thats all! Please read also the manpages
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?lp" name="lp(4)"> and
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?lpt" name="lpt(4)">.
<P>You should also add the hosts to /etc/hosts
<verb>
127.0.0.1 localhost.my.domain localhost
10.0.0.1 max.my.domain max
10.0.0.2 moritz.my.domain moritz
</verb>
<P>To check if it works do:
on max:
<verb>
$ ifconfig lp0
lp0: flags=8851<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 10.0.0.1 --> 10.0.0.2 netmask 0xff000000
</verb>
<verb>
$ netstat -r
Routing tables
Internet:
Destination Gateway Flags Refs Use Netif Expire
moritz max UH 4 127592 lp0
</verb>
<verb>
$ ping -c 4 moritz
PING moritz (10.0.0.2): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=2.774 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=2.530 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=2.556 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.2: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=2.714 ms
--- moritz ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 2.530/2.643/2.774/0.103 ms
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>
Can I install on my laptop over PLIP (Parallel Line IP)?
</heading>
<p>Connect the two computers using a Laplink parallel cable to use
this feature:
<verb>
+----------------------------------------+
|A-name A-End B-End Descr. Port/Bit |
+----------------------------------------+
|DATA0 2 15 Data 0/0x01 |
|-ERROR 15 2 1/0x08 |
+----------------------------------------+
|DATA1 3 13 Data 0/0x02 |
|+SLCT 13 3 1/0x10 |
+----------------------------------------+
|DATA2 4 12 Data 0/0x04 |
|+PE 12 4 1/0x20 |
+----------------------------------------+
|DATA3 5 10 Strobe 0/0x08 |
|-ACK 10 5 1/0x40 |
+----------------------------------------+
|DATA4 6 11 Data 0/0x10 |
|BUSY 11 6 1/0x80 |
+----------------------------------------+
|GND 18-25 18-25 GND - |
+----------------------------------------+
</verb>
<p>See also <ref id="pao" name="this note"> on the Mobile Computing page.
<sect1>
<heading>
Which geometry should I use for a disk drive?<label id="geometry">
</heading>
<p>(By the "geometry" of a disk, we mean the number of cylinders,
heads and sectors/track on a disk - I'll refer to this as
C/H/S for convenience. This is how the PC's BIOS works out
which area on a disk to read/write from).
<p>This seems to cause a lot of confusion for some reason. First
of all, the <tt /physical/ geometry of a SCSI drive is totally
irrelevant, as FreeBSD works in term of disk blocks. In fact, there
is no such thing as "the" physical geometry, as the sector density
varies across the disk - what manufacturers claim is the "true"
physical geometry is usually the geometry that they've worked out
results in the least wasted space. For IDE disks, FreeBSD does
work in terms of C/H/S, but all modern drives will convert this
into block references internally as well.
<p>All that matters is the <tt /logical/ geometry - the answer that the
BIOS gets when it asks "what is your geometry?" and then uses to access
the disk. As FreeBSD uses the BIOS when booting, it's very important
to get this right. In particular, if you have more than one operating
system on a disk, they must all agree on the geometry, otherwise you
will have serious problems booting!
<p>For SCSI disks, the geometry to use depends on whether extended
translation support is turned on in your controller (this is
often referred to as "support for DOS disks &gt;1GB" or something
similar). If it's turned off, then use N cylinders, 64 heads
and 32 sectors/track, where 'N' is the capacity of the disk in
MB. For example, a 2GB disk should pretend to have 2048 cylinders,
64 heads and 32 sectors/track.
<p>If it <tt /is/ turned on (it's often supplied this way to get around
certain limitations in MSDOS) and the disk capacity is more than 1GB,
use M cylinders, 63 sectors per track (*not* 64), and 255 heads, where
'M' is the disk capacity in MB divided by 7.844238 (!). So our
example 2GB drive would have 261 cylinders, 63 sectors per track and
255 heads.
<p>If you are not sure about this, or FreeBSD fails to detect the
geometry correctly during installation, the simplest way around
this is usually to create a small DOS partition on the disk. The
correct geometry should then be detected (and you can always remove
the DOS partition in the partition editor if you don't want to keep
it, or leave it around for programming network cards and the like).
<p>Alternatively, there is a freely available utility distributed with
FreeBSD called ``<tt/pfdisk.exe/'' (located in the <tt>tools</tt>
subdirectory on the FreeBSD CDROM or on the various FreeBSD
ftp sites) which can be used to work out what geometry the other
operating systems on the disk are using. You can then enter this
geometry in the partition editor.
<sect1>
<heading>Any restrictions on how I divide the disk up?</heading>
<p>Yes. You must make sure that your root partition is below 1024
cylinders so the BIOS can boot the kernel from it. (Note that this
is a limitation in the PC's BIOS, not FreeBSD).
<p>For a SCSI drive, this will normally imply that the root partition
will be in the first 1024MB (or in the first 4096MB if extended
translation is turned on - see previous question). For IDE, the
corresponding figure is 504MB.
<sect1>
<heading>
What about disk managers? Or, I have a large drive!
</heading>
<p>FreeBSD recognizes the Ontrack Disk Manager and makes allowances
for it. Other disk managers are not supported.
<p>If you just want to use the disk with FreeBSD you don't need a
disk manager. Just configure the disk for as much space as the
BIOS can deal with (usually 504 megabytes), and FreeBSD
should figure out how much space you really have. If you're using
an old disk with an MFM controller, you may need to explicitly
tell FreeBSD how many cylinders to use.
<p>If you want to use the disk with FreeBSD and another operating
system, you may be able to do without a disk manager: just make sure
the the FreeBSD boot partition and the slice for the other
operating system are in the first 1024 cylinders. If you're
reasonably careful, a 20 megabyte boot partition should be plenty.
<sect1>
<heading>
When I boot FreeBSD I get ``Missing Operating System''
<label id="missing_os">
</heading>
<p>This is classically a case of FreeBSD and DOS or some other OS
conflicting over their ideas of disk <ref id="geometry"
name="geometry."> You will have to reinstall FreeBSD, but obeying the
instructions given above will almost always get you going.
<sect1>
<heading>I can't get past the boot manager's `F?' prompt.</heading>
<p>This is another symptom of the problem described in the preceding
question. Your BIOS geometry and FreeBSD geometry settings do
not agree! If your controller or BIOS supports cylinder
translation (often marked as ``&gt;1GB drive support''), try
toggling its setting and reinstalling FreeBSD.
<sect1>
<heading>
I have &gt;16MB of RAM. Will this cause any problems?<label id="bigram">
</heading>
<p>Apart from performance issues, no. FreeBSD 2.X comes with bounce
buffers which allow your bus mastering controller access to greater
than 16MB. (Note that this should only be required if you are using
ISA devices, although one or two broken EISA and VLB devices may
need it as well).
<p>Also look at the section on <ref id="reallybigram"
name="&gt;64M machines"> if you have that much memory,
or if you're using a Compaq or other BIOS that lies about
the available memory.
<sect1>
<heading>Do I need to install the complete sources?</heading>
<p>In general, no. However, we would strongly recommend that you
install, at a minimum, the ``<tt/base/'' source kit, which
includes several of the files mentioned here, and the
``<tt/sys/'' (kernel) source kit, which includes sources for the
kernel. There is nothing in the system which requires the
presence of the sources to operate, however, except for the
kernel-configuration program
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?config"
name="config">. With the exception
of the kernel sources, our build structure is set up so that you
can read-only mount the sources from elsewhere via NFS and still
be able to make new binaries. (Because of the kernel-source
restriction, we recommend that you not mount this on
<tt>/usr/src</tt> directly, but rather in some other location
with appropriate symbolic links to duplicate the top-level
structure of the source tree.)
<p>Having the sources on-line and knowing how to build a system with
them will make it much easier for you to upgrade to future
releases of FreeBSD.
<p>To actually select a subset of the sources, use the Custom
menu item when you are in the Distributions menu of the
system installation tool. The <tt>src/install.sh</tt> script
will also install partial pieces of the source distribution,
depending on the arguments you pass it.
<sect1>
<heading>Do I need to build a kernel?</heading>
<p>Building a new kernel was originally pretty much a required
step in a FreeBSD installation, but more recent releases have
benefited from the introduction of a much friendlier kernel
configuration tool. When at the FreeBSD boot prompt (boot:),
use the "-c" flag and you will be dropped into a visual
configuration screen which allows you to configure the kernel's
settings for most common ISA cards.
<p>It's still recommended that you eventually build a new
kernel containing just the drivers that you need, just to save a
bit of RAM, but it's no longer a strict requirement for most
systems.
<sect1>
<heading>I live outside the US. Can I use DES encryption?</heading>
<p>If it is not absolutely imperative that you use DES style
encryption, you can use FreeBSD's default encryption for even
<bf/better/ security, and with no export restrictions. FreeBSD
2.0's password default scrambler is now <bf/MD5/-based, and is
more CPU-intensive to crack with an automated password cracker
than DES, and allows longer passwords as well. The only reason
for not using the <bf/MD5/-based crypt today would be to use the
the same password entries on FreeBSD and non-FreeBSD systems.
<p>Since the DES encryption algorithm cannot legally be exported
from the US, non-US users should not download this software (as
part of the <tt/secrdist/ from US FTP sites.
<p>There is however a replacement libcrypt available, based on
sources written in Australia by David Burren. This code is now
available on some non-US FreeBSD mirror sites. Sources for the
unencumbered libcrypt, and binaries of the programs which use it,
can be obtained from the following FTP sites:
<descrip>
<tag/South Africa/
<tt>ftp://ftp.internat.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD</tt><newline>
<tt>ftp://storm.sea.uct.ac.za/pub/FreeBSD</tt>
<tag/Brazil/
<tt>ftp://ftp.iqm.unicamp.br/pub/FreeBSD</tt>
<tag/Finland/
<tt>ftp://nic.funet.fi/pub/unix/FreeBSD/eurocrypt</tt>
</descrip>
<p>The non-US <tt/securedist/ can be used as a direct replacement
for the encumbered US <tt/securedist/. This <tt/securedist/
package is installed the same way as the US package (see
installation notes for details). If you are going to install DES
encryption, you should do so as soon as possible, before
installing other software.
<p>Non-US users should please not download any encryption software
from the USA. This can get the maintainers of the sites from
which the software is downloaded into severe legal difficulties.
<p>A non-US distribution of Kerberos is also being developed, and
current versions can generally be obtained by anonymous FTP from
<tt>braae.ru.ac.za</tt>.
<p>There is also a <ref id="mailing" name="mailing list"> for the
discussion of non-US encryption software. For more information, send
an email message with a single line saying ``<tt/help/'' in the body
of your message to
<tt>&lt;majordomo@braae.ru.ac.za&gt;</tt>.
<sect1>
<heading>The boot floppy starts but hangs at the ``Probing Devices...''
screen.</heading>
<p>If you have a IDE Zip or Jaz drive installed, remove it and try again.
The boot floppy can get confused by the drives.
After the system is installed you can reconnect the drive. Hopefully
this will be fixed in a later release.
<sect1>
<heading>I get a ``panic: cant mount root'' error when rebooting the system after installation.</heading>
<p>This error comes from confusion between the boot block's and the
kernel's understanding of the disk devices. The error usually
manifests on two-disk IDE systems, with the hard disks arranged as the
master or single device on separate IDE controllers, with FreeBSD
installed on the secondary IDE controller. The boot blocks think
the system is installed on wd1 (the second BIOS disk) while the kernel
assigns the first disk on the secondary controller device wd2. After
the device probing, the kernel tries to mount what the boot blocks
think is the boot disk, wd1, while it is really wd2, and fails.
<p>To fix the problem, do one of the following:
<enum>
<item>At the Boot: prompt, enter
<tt>1:wd(2,a)kernel</tt> and press Enter. If the system starts, then
run the command
<verb>
echo "1:wd(2,a)kernel" > /boot.config
</verb>
to make it the default boot string.
<item>Move the FreeBSD disk onto the primary IDE controller, so the
hard disks are consecutive.
<item><url url="../handbook/kernelconfig.html" name="Rebuild your kernel,">
modify the wd configuration lines to read:
<verb>
controller wdc0 at isa? port "IO_WD1" bio irq 14 vector wdintr
disk wd0 at wdc0 drive 0
# disk wd1 at wdc0 drive 1 # comment out this line
controller wdc1 at isa? port "IO_WD2" bio irq 15 vector wdintr
disk wd1 at wdc1 drive 0 # change from wd2 to wd1
disk wd2 at wdc1 drive 1 # change from wd3 to wd2
</verb>
Install the new kernel.
If you moved your disks and wish to restore the previous
configuration, replace the disks in the desired configuration and reboot.
Your system should boot successfully.
</enum>
<sect1>
<heading>What are the limits for memory?</heading>
<p>For memory, the (theoretical) limit is 4 gigabytes. One gigabyte
has been tested; you generally can't buy i386 PCs that can support
much more than that.
<sect1>
<heading>What are the limits for ffs filesystems?</heading>
<p>For ffs filesystems, the maximum theoretical limit is 8 terabytes
(2G blocks), or 16TB for the default block size of 8K.
In practice, there is a soft limit of 1 terabyte, but with modifications
filesystems with 4 terabytes are possible (and exist).
<p>The maximum size of a single ffs file is approximately 1G blocks
(4TB) if the block size is 4K.
<verb>
maxfilesize
----------------------------------
2.2.7 3.0
fs block size -stable -current works should-work
------------- ------- -------- ----- -----------
4K 4T-1 4T-1 4T-1 4+T
8K 32+G 8T-1 32+G 16T-1
16K 128+G 16T-1 128+G 32T-1
32K 512+G 32T-1 512+G 64T-1
64K 2048+G 64T-1 2048+G 128T-1
</verb>
<p>When the fs block size is 4K, triple indirect blocks work and
everything should be limited by the maximum fs block number that can
be represented using triple indirect blocks (approx. 1K^3 + 1K^2 +
1K), but everything is limited by a (wrong) limit of 1G-1 on fs block
numbers. The limit on fs block numbers should be 2G-1. There are
some bugs for fs block numbers near 2G-1, but such block numbers are
unreachable when the fs block size is 4K.
<p>For block sizes of 8K and larger, everything should be limited
by the 2G-1 limit on fs block numbers, but is actually limited by the
1G-1 limit on fs block numbers, except under -stable triple indirect
blocks are unreachable, so the limit is the maxiumum fs block number
that can be represented using double indirect blocks
(approx. (blocksize/4)^2 + (blocksize/4)), and under -current
exceeding this limit may cause problems. Using the correct limit of
2G-1 blocks does cause problems.
<sect1>
<heading>How can I put 1TB files on my floppy?</heading>
<p>I keep several virtual ones on floppies :-). The maxiumum
file size is not closely related to the maximum disk size. The
maximum disk size is 1TB. It is a feature that the file size can be
larger than the disk size.
<p>The following example creates a file of size 8T-1 using a
whole 32K of disk space (3 indirect blocks and 1 data block) on a
small root partition. The dd command requires a dd that works with
large files.
<verb>
ttyv0:bde@alphplex:/tmp/q> cat foo
df .
dd if=/dev/zero of=z bs=1 seek=`echo 2^43 - 2 | bc` count=1
ls -l z
du z
df .
ttyv0:bde@alphplex:/tmp/q> sh foo
Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/sd0a 64479 27702 31619 47% /
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
1 bytes transferred in 0.000187 secs (5346 bytes/sec)
-rw-r--r-- 1 bde bin 8796093022207 Sep 7 16:04 z
32 z
Filesystem 1024-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/sd0a 64479 27734 31587 47% /
ttyv0:bde@alphplex:/tmp/q> exit
</verb>
<p>Bruce Evans, September 1998
<sect1>
<heading>I compiled a new kernel and now I get the error message "archsw.readin.failed" when booting.</heading>
<p>You can boot by specifying the kernel directly at the second
stage, pressing any key when the | shows up before loader is
started. More specifically, you have upgraded the source for your
kernel, and installed a new kernel builtin from them <em>without making
world</em>. This is not supported. Make world.
</sect>

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<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<sect>
<heading>Kernel Configuration<label id="kernelconfig"></heading>
<sect1>
<heading>
I'd like to customize my kernel. Is it difficult?
<label id="make-kernel">
</heading>
<p>Not at all! Check out the <url url="../handbook/kernelconfig.html"
name="kernel config section of the Handbook">.
<p><bf/NOTE:/ I recommend making a dated snapshot of your kernel
in <tt/kernel.YYMMDD/ after you get it all working, that way if
you do something dire the next time you play with your configuration
you can boot that kernel instead of having to go all the way back
to <tt/kernel.GENERIC/. This is particularly important if you're
now booting off a controller that isn't supported in the GENERIC
kernel (yes, personal experience).
<sect1>
<heading>
My kernel compiles fail because <tt/&lowbar;hw&lowbar;float/ is missing.
</heading>
<p>Let me guess. You removed <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?npx(4)" name="npx0"> from your
kernel configuration file because you don't have a math co-processor,
right? Wrong! :-) The <tt/npx0/ is <bf/MANDATORY/. Even if you don't
have a mathematic co-processor, you <bf/must/ include the <tt/npx0/
device.
<sect1>
<heading>Interrupt conflicts with multi-port serial code.</heading>
<p><bf/Q./ When I compile a kernel with multi-port serial code, it
tells me that only the first port is probed and the rest skipped due to
interrupt conflicts. How do I fix this?
<p><bf/A./ The problem here is that FreeBSD has code built-in to keep
the kernel from getting trashed due to hardware or software
conflicts. The way to fix this is to leave out the IRQ settings
on all but one port. Here is a example:
<verb>
#
# Multiport high-speed serial line - 16550 UARTS
#
device sio2 at isa? port 0x2a0 tty irq 5 flags 0x501 vector siointr
device sio3 at isa? port 0x2a8 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr
device sio4 at isa? port 0x2b0 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr
device sio5 at isa? port 0x2b8 tty flags 0x501 vector siointr
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>How do I enable support for QIC-40/80 drives?</heading>
<p>You need to uncomment the following line in the generic config
file (or add it to your config file), add a ``<tt/flags 0x1/''
on the <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?fdc(4)"
name="fdc"> line and recompile.
<verb>
controller fdc0 at isa? port "IO_FD1" bio irq 6 drq 2 flags 0x1 vector fdintr
disk fd0 at fdc0 drive 0 ^^^^^^^^^
disk fd1 at fdc0 drive 1
#tape ft0 at fdc0 drive 2
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
</verb>
<p>Next, you create a device called <tt>/dev/ft0</tt> by going into
<tt>/dev</tt> and run the following command:
<verb>
sh ./MAKEDEV ft0
</verb>
<p>for the first device. <tt/ft1/ for a second one and so on.
<p>You will have a device called <tt>/dev/ft0</tt>, which you can
write to through a special program to manage it called
``<tt/ft/'' - see the man page on <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?ft" name="ft">
for further details.
<p>Versions previous to <tt/-current/ also had some trouble dealing
with bad tape media; if you have trouble where <tt/ft/ seems to
go back and forth over the same spot, try grabbing the latest
version of <tt/ft/ from <tt>/usr/src/sbin/ft</tt> in
<tt/-current/ and try that.
</sect>

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<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<sect>
<heading>Miscellaneous Questions<label id="misc"></heading>
<sect1>
<heading>
FreeBSD uses far more swap space than Linux. Why?
</heading>
<p>FreeBSD only appears to use more swap than Linux. In actual fact,
it does not. The main difference between FreeBSD and Linux in this
regard is that FreeBSD will proactively move entirely idle, unused pages
of main memory into swap in order to make more main memory available
for active use. Linux tends to only move pages to swap as a last resort.
The perceived heavier use of swap is balanced by the more efficient use
of main memory.
<p>Note that while FreeBSD is proactive in this regard, it does not
arbitrarily decide to swap pages when the system is truely idle. Thus
you will not find your system all paged out when you get up in the
morning after leaving it idle overnight.
<sect1>
<heading>
Why use (what are) a.out and ELF executable formats?
</heading>
<p>To understand why FreeBSD uses the <tt>a.out</tt> format, you must
first know a little about the 3 currently "dominant" executable
formats for UNIX:
<itemize>
<item><htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?a.out(5)"
name="a.out">
<p>The oldest and `classic' unix object format. It uses a
short and compact header with a magic number at the beginning
that's often used to characterize the format (see
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?a.out(5)"
name="a.out(5)"> for more details). It contains three loaded
segments: .text, .data, and .bss plus a symbol table and a
string table.
<item><bf>COFF</bf>
<p>The SVR3 object format. The header now comprises a section
table, so you can have more than just .text, .data, and .bss
sections.</item>
<item><bf>ELF</bf>
<p>The successor to <tt/COFF/, featuring Multiple sections
and 32-bit or 64-bit possible values. One major drawback:
<tt/ELF/ was also designed with the assumption that there
would be only one ABI per system architecture. That
assumption is actually quite incorrect, and not even in the
commercial SYSV world (which has at least three ABIs: SVR4,
Solaris, SCO) does it hold true.
<p>FreeBSD tries to work around this problem somewhat by
providing a utility for <em>branding</em> a known <tt/ELF/
executable with information about the ABI it's compliant with.
See the man page for
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?brandelf"
name="brandelf"> for more information.
</itemize>
<p>FreeBSD comes from the "classic" camp and has traditionally used
the <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?a.out(5)"
name="a.out"> format, a technology tried and proven through
many generations of BSD releases. Though it has also been possible
for some time to build and run native <tt/ELF/ binaries (and
kernels) on a FreeBSD system, FreeBSD initially resisted the "push"
to switch to <tt/ELF/ as the default format. Why? Well,
when the Linux camp made their painful transition to <tt/ELF/, it
was not so much to flee the <tt/a.out/ executable format
as it was their inflexible jump-table based shared library
mechanism, which made the construction of shared libraries
very difficult for vendors and developers alike. Since the <tt/ELF/
tools available offered a solution to the shared library
problem and were generally seen as "the way forward" anyway, the
migration cost was accepted as necessary and the transition
made.
<p>In FreeBSD's case, our shared
library mechanism is based more closely on Sun's
<tt>SunOS</tt>-style shared library mechanism and, as such, is very
easy to use.
However, starting with 3.0, FreeBSD officially supports <tt/ELF/
binaries as the default format. Even though the <tt/a.out/
executable format has served us well, the GNU people, who author the
compiler tools we use, have dropped support for the <tt/a.out/
format. This has forced us to maintain a divergent version of
the compler and linker, and has kept us from reaping the benefits
of the latest GNU development efforts. Also the demands of
ISO-C++, notably contstructors and destructors, has also led to
native <tt/ELF/ support in future FreeBSD releases.
<sect1>
<heading>Yes, but why are there so many different
formats?</heading>
<p>Back in the dim, dark past, there was simple hardware. This
simple hardware supported a simple, small system. a.out was
completely adequate for the job of representing binaries on this
simple system (a PDP-11). As people ported unix from this
simple system, they retained the a.out format because it was
sufficient for the early ports of unix to architectures like the
Motorola 68k, VAXen, etc.
<p>Then some bright hardware engineer decided that if he could
force software to do some sleazy tricks, then he'd be able to
shave a few gates off the design and allow his CPU core to run
faster. While it was made to work with this new kind of
hardware (known these days as RISC), <tt/a.out/ was ill-suited
for this hardware, so many formats were developed to get to a
better performance from this hardware than the limited, simple
<tt/a.out/ format could offer. Things like <tt/COFF/,
<tt/ECOFF/, and a few obscure others were invented and their
limitations explored before things seemed to settle on <tt/ELF/.
<p>In addition, program sizes were getting huge and disks (and
physical memory) were still relatively small so the concept of a
shared library was born. The VM system also became more
sophisticated. While each one of these advancements was done
using the <tt/a.out/ format, its usefulness was stretched more
and more with each new feature. In addition, people wanted to
dynamically load things at run time, or to junk parts of their
program after the init code had run to save in core memory
and/or swap space. Languages became more sophistocated and
people wanted code called before main automatically. Lots of
hacks were done to the <tt/a.out/ format to allow all of these
things to happen, and they basically worked for a time. In
time, <tt/a.out/ wasn't up to handling all these problems
without an ever increasing overhead in code and complexity.
While <tt/ELF/ solved many of these problems, it would be
painful to switch from the system that basically worked. So
<tt/ELF/ had to wait until it was more painful to remain with
<tt/a.out/ than it was to migrate to <tt/ELF/.
<p>However, as time passed, the build tools that FreeBSD derived
their build tools from (the assembler and loader especially)
evolved in two parallel trees. The FreeBSD tree added shared
libraries and fixed some bugs. The GNU folks that originally
write these programs rewrote them and added simpler support for
building cross compilers, plugging in different formats at will,
etc. Since many people wanted to build cross compilers
targeting FreeBSD, they were out of luck since the older sources
that FreeBSD had for as and ld weren't up to the task. The new
gnu tools chain (binutils) does support cross compiling,
<tt/ELF/, shared libraries, C++ extnensions, etc. In addition,
many vendors are releasing <tt/ELF/ binaries, and it is a good
thing for FreeBSD to run them. And if it is running <tt/ELF/
binaries, why bother having <tt/a.out/ any more? It is a tired
old horse that has proven useful for a long time, but it is time
to turn him out to pasture for his long, faithful years of
service.
<p><tt/ELF/ is more expressive than a.out and will allow more
extensibility in the base system. The <tt/ELF/ tools are better
maintained, and offer cross compilation support, which is
important to many people. <tt/ELF/ may be a little slower than
a.out, but trying to measure it can be difficult. There are
also numerous details that are different between the two in how
they map pages, handle init code, etc. None of these are very
important, but they are differences. In time support for
<tt/a.out/ will be moved out of the GENERIC kernel, and
eventually removed from the kernel once the need to run legacy
<tt/a.out/ programs is past.
<sect1>
<heading>Why won't chmod change the permissions on symlinks?</heading>
<p>You have to use either ``<tt/-H/'' or ``<tt/-L/'' together with
the ``<tt/-R/'' option to make this work. See the <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?chmod" name="chmod"> and
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?symlink" name="symlink">
man pages for more info.
<p><bf/WARNING/ the ``<tt/-R/'' option does a <bf/RECURSIVE/
<tt/chmod/. Be careful about specifying directories or symlinks
to directories to <tt/chmod/. If you want to change the
permissions of a directory referenced by a symlink, use
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?chmod" name="chmod">
without any options and follow the symlink with a trailing slash
(``<tt>/</tt>''). For example, if ``<tt/foo/'' is a symlink to
directory ``<tt/bar/'', and you want to change the permissions of
``<tt/foo/'' (actually ``<tt/bar/''), you would do something like:
<verb>
chmod 555 foo/
</verb>
<p>With the trailing slash, <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?chmod" name="chmod"> will
follow the symlink, ``<tt/foo/'', to change the permissions of the
directory, ``<tt/bar/''.
<sect1>
<heading>
Why are login names <bf/still/ restricted to 8 characters?
</heading>
<p>You'd think it'd be easy enough to change <bf/UT_NAMESIZE/ and rebuild
the whole world, and everything would just work. Unfortunately there
are often scads of applications and utilities (including system tools)
that have hard-coded small numbers (not always "8" or "9", but oddball
ones like "15" and "20") in structures and buffers. Not only will
this get you log files which are trashed (due to variable-length
records getting written when fixed records were expected), but it can
break Sun's NIS clients and potentially cause other problems in
interacting with other UNIX systems.
<p>In FreeBSD 3.0 and later, the maximum name length has been
increased to 16 characters and those various utilities with
hard-coded name sizes have been found and fixed. The fact that this
touched so many areas of the system is why, in fact, the change was
not made until 3.0.</p>
<p>If you're absolutely confident in your ability to find and fix
these sorts of problems for yourself when and if they pop up, you
can increase the login name length in earlier releases by editing
/usr/include/utmp.h and changing UT_NAMESIZE accordingly. You must
also update MAXLOGNAME in /usr/include/sys/param.h to match
the UT_NAMESIZE change. Finally, if you build from sources, don't
forget that /usr/include is updated each time! Change the appropriate
files in /usr/src/.. instead.</p>
<sect1>
<heading>Can I run DOS binaries under FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>Yes, starting with version 3.0 you can using BSDI's <tt/rundos/
DOS emulation which has been integrated and enhanced.
Send mail to <url url="mailto:freebsd-emulation@FreeBSD.org"
name="The FreeBSD emulation discussion list"> if you're interested in
joining this ongoing effort!
<p>For pre-3.0 systems, there is a neat utility called
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/ports.cgi?^pcemu" name="pcemu">
in the ports collection which emulates an 8088 and enough BIOS services
to run DOS text mode applications. It requires the X Window
System (provided as XFree86).
<sect1>
<heading>
What is ``<tt/sup/'', and how do I use it?
</heading>
<p><htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/ports.cgi?^sup" name="SUP">
stands for Software Update Protocol, and was developed by CMU
for keeping their development trees in sync. We used it to keep
remote sites in sync with our central development sources.
<p>SUP is not bandwidth friendly, and has been retired. The current
recommended method to keep your sources up to date is
<url url="../handbook/synching.html#CVSUP" name="Handbook entry on CVSup">
<sect1>
<heading>How cool is FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>Q. Has anyone done any temperature testing while running FreeBSD?
I know Linux runs cooler than dos, but have never seen a mention of
FreeBSD. It seems to run really hot.
<p>A. No, but we have done numerous taste tests on blindfolded
volunteers who have also had 250 micrograms of LSD-25
administered beforehand. 35% of the volunteers said that FreeBSD
tasted sort of orange, whereas Linux tasted like purple haze.
Neither group mentioned any particular variances in temperature
that I can remember. We eventually had to throw the results of
this survey out entirely anyway when we found that too many
volunteers were wandering out of the room during the tests, thus
skewing the results. I think most of the volunteers are at Apple
now, working on their new ``scratch and sniff'' GUI. It's a
funny old business we're in!
<p>Seriously, both FreeBSD and Linux use the ``<tt/HLT/'' (halt)
instruction when the system is idle thus lowering its energy
consumption and therefore the heat it generates. Also if you
have APM (automatic power management) configured, then FreeBSD
can also put the CPU into a low power mode.
<sect1>
<heading>Who's scratching in my memory banks??</heading>
<p>Q. Is there anything "odd" that FreeBSD does when compiling the
kernel which would cause the memory to make a scratchy sound? When
compiling (and for a brief moment after recognizing the floppy drive
upon startup, as well), a strange scratchy sound emanates from what
appears to be the memory banks.
<p>A. Yes! You'll see frequent references to ``daemons'' in the BSD
documentation, and what most people don't know is that this
refers to genuine, non-corporeal entities that now possess your
computer. The scratchy sound coming from your memory is actually
high-pitched whispering exchanged among the daemons as they best
decide how to deal with various system administration tasks.
<p>If the noise gets to you, a good ``<tt>fdisk /mbr</tt>'' from DOS
will get rid of them, but don't be surprised if they react
adversely and try to stop you. In fact, if at any point during
the exercise you hear the satanic voice of Bill Gates coming from
the built-in speaker, take off running and don't ever look back!
Freed from the counterbalancing influence of the BSD daemons, the
twin demons of DOS and Windows are often able to re-assert total
control over your machine to the eternal damnation of your soul.
Given a choice, I think I'd prefer to get used to the scratchy
noises, myself!
<sect1>
<heading>What does 'MFC' mean?</heading>
<p>MFC is an acronym for 'Merged From -CURRENT.' It's used in the CVS
logs to denote when a change was migrated from the CURRENT to the STABLE
branches.
<sect1>
<heading>What does 'BSD' mean?</heading>
<p>It stands for something in a secret language that only
members can know. It doesn't translate literally but its ok to
tell you that BSD's translation is something between, 'Formula-1
Racing Team', 'Penguins are tasty snacks', and 'We have a better
sense of humor than Linux.' :-)
<p>Seriously, BSD is an acronym for 'Berkeley Software
Distribution', which is the name the Berkeley CSRG (Computer
Systems Research Group) chose for their Unix distribution way
back when.
<sect1>
<heading>How many FreeBSD hackers does it take to change a lightbulb?</heading>
<p>One thousand, one hundred and seventy-two:
<p>Twenty-three to complain to -current about the lights being
out;
<p>Four to claim that it is a configuration problem, and that
such matters really belong on -questions;
<p>Three to submit PRs about it, one of which is misfiled under
doc and consists only of "it's dark";
<p>One to commit an untested lightbulb which breaks buildworld,
then back it out five minutes later;
<p>Eight to flame the PR originators for not including patches
in their PRs;
<p>Five to complain about buildworld being broken;
<p>Thirty-one to answer that it works for them, and they must
have cvsupped at a bad time;
<p>One to post a patch for a new lightbulb to -hackers;
<p>One to complain that he had patches for this three years ago,
but when he sent them to -current they were just ignored, and he
has had bad experiences with the PR system; besides, the
proposed new lightbulb is non-reflexive;
<p>Thirty-seven to scream that lightbulbs do not belong in the
base system, that committers have no right to do things like
this without consulting the Community, and WHAT IS -CORE DOING
ABOUT IT!?
<p>Two hundred to complain about the color of the bicycle shed;
<p>Three to point out that the patch breaks style(9);
<p>Seventeen to complain that the proposed new lightbulb is
under GPL;
<p>Five hundred and eighty-six to engage in a flame war about
the comparative advantages of the GPL, the BSD license, the MIT
license, the NPL, and the personal hygiene of unnamed FSF
founders;
<p>Seven to move various portions of the thread to -chat and
-advocacy;
<p>One to commit the suggested lightbulb, even though it shines
dimmer than the old one;
<p>Two to back it out with a furious flame of a commit message,
arguing that FreeBSD is better off in the dark than with a dim
lightbulb;
<p>Forty-six to argue vociferously about the backing out of the
dim lightbulb and demanding a statement from -core;
<p>Eleven to request a smaller lightbulb so it will fit their
Tamagotchi if we ever decide to port FreeBSD to that platform;
<p>Seventy-three to complain about the SNR on -hackers and -chat
and unsubscribe in protest;
<p>Thirteen to post "unsubscribe", "How do I unsubscribe?", or
"Please remove me from the list", followed by the usual footer;
<p>One to commit a working lightbulb while everybody is too busy
flaming everybody else to notice;
<p>Thirty-one to point out that the new lightbulb would shine
0.364% brighter if compiled with TenDRA (although it will have
to be reshaped into a cube), and that FreeBSD should therefore
switch to TenDRA instead of EGCS;
<p>One to complain that the new lightbulb lacks fairings;
<p>Nine (including the PR originators) to ask "what is MFC?";
<p>Fifty-seven to complain about the lights being out two weeks
after the bulb has been changed.
<p><em><url url="mailto:nik@FreeBSD.org" name="Nik Clayton">
adds:</em>
<p><em/I was laughing quite hard at this./
<p><em/And then I thought, "Hang on, shouldn't there be '1 to
document it.' in that list somewhere?"/
<p><em/And then I was enlightened :-)/
</sect>

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<!-- $Id: preface.sgml,v 1.40 1999-07-28 20:26:08 nik Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<sect>
<heading>Preface<label id="preface"></heading>
<p>Welcome to the FreeBSD 2.X FAQ!
<sect1>
<heading>What is the purpose of this FAQ?</heading>
<p>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.
<p>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 <url url="mailto:FAQ@FreeBSD.org"
name="FAQ maintainer">.
<sect1>
<heading>What is FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>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 <url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org"
name="FreeBSD home page">.
<p>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
<url url="../gallery/gallery.html" name="FreeBSD Gallery.">
<p>For more detailed information on FreeBSD, please see the
<url url="../handbook/index.html" name="FreeBSD Handbook.">
<sect1>
<heading>What are the goals of FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>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.
<p>That code in our source tree which falls under the GNU General
Public License (GPL) or GNU Library General Public License (LGPL)
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.
<sect1>
<heading>Why is it called FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
<itemize>
<item>It may be used free of charge, even by commercial users.
<item>Full source for the operating system is freely available, and
the minimum possible restrictions have been placed upon its
use, distribution and incorporation into other work (commercial
or non-commercial).
<item>Anyone who has an improvement and/or bug fix is free to submit
their code and have it added to the source tree (subject to
one or two obvious provisos).
</itemize>
<p>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 <tt /cannot/
do with the FreeBSD code, for example pretending you wrote it, you
really can do whatever you like with it.
<sect1>
<heading>What is the latest version of FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>Version <url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/3.2-RELEASE"
name="3.2"> is the latest <em/stable/ version; it was released
in May, 1999. This is also the latest <em/release/ version.
<p>Briefly explained, <em/-stable/ is aimed at the ISP or other
corporate user who wants stability and a low change count over
the wizzy new features of the latest <em/-current/ snapshot.
Releases can come from either "branch," but you should only use
<em/-current/ if you're sure that you're prepared for its
increased volatility (relative to <em/-stable/, that is).
<p>Releases are only made <ref id="release_freq" name="every few
months">. While many people stay more up-to-date with the
FreeBSD sources (see the questions on <ref id="current"
name="FreeBSD-current"> and <ref id="stable"
name="FreeBSD-stable">) than that, doing so is more of a
commitment, as the sources are a moving target.
<sect1>
<heading>What is FreeBSD-current?<label id="current"></heading>
<p><url url="../handbook/cutting-edge.html#CURRENT" name="FreeBSD-current"> is the
development version of the operating system, which will in due
course become 4.0-RELEASE. As such, it is really only of interest
to developers working on the system and die-hard hobbyists.
See the <url url="../handbook/cutting-edge.html#CURRENT" name="relevant section">
in the <url url="../handbook/index.html" name="handbook"> for
details on running -current.
<p>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.
<p>Every now and again, a <url url="../releases/snapshots.html"
name="snapshot"> release is also made of this -current development
code, CDROM distributions of the occasional snapshot even now being
made available. The goals behind each snapshot release are:
<itemize>
<item>To test the latest version of the installation software.
<item>To give people who would like to run -current but who don't
have the time and/or bandwidth to follow it on a day-to-day
basis an easy way of bootstrapping it onto their systems.
<item>To preserve a fixed reference point for the code in question,
just in case we break something really badly later. (Although
CVS normally prevents anything horrible like this happening :)
<item>To ensure that any new features in need of testing have the
greatest possible number of potential testers.
</itemize>
<p>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.
<p>Snapshot releases are directly available from <url
url="ftp://current.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/"> and are generated,
on the average, once a day for both the 4.0-current and 3.0-stable
branches.
<sect1>
<heading>What is the FreeBSD-stable concept?<label id="stable"></heading>
<p>Back when FreeBSD 2.0.5 was released, we decided to branch FreeBSD
development into two parts. One branch was named <url
url="../handbook/stable.html" name="-stable">, with the
intention that only well-tested bug fixes and small incremental
enhancements would be made to it (for Internet Service Providers
and other commercial enterprises for whom sudden shifts or
experimental features are quite undesirable). The other branch was
<url url="../handbook/cutting-edge.html#CURRENT" name="-current">, which
essentially has been one unbroken line leading towards 4.0-RELEASE
(and beyond) since 2.0 was released. If a little ASCII art would
help, this is how it looks:
<verb>
2.0
|
|
| [2.1-stable]
*BRANCH* 2.0.5 -> 2.1 -> 2.1.5 -> 2.1.6 -> 2.1.7.1 [2.1-stable ends]
| (Mar 1997)
|
|
| [2.2-stable]
*BRANCH* 2.2.1 -> 2.2.2-RELEASE -> 2.2.5 -> 2.2.6 -> 2.2.7 -> 2.2.8 [end]
| (Mar 1997) (Oct 97) (Apr 98) (Jul 98) (Dec 98)
|
|
3.0-SNAPs (started Q1 1997)
|
|
3.0.0-RELEASE (Oct 1998)
|
| [3.0-stable]
*BRANCH* 3.1 (Feb 1999) -> 3.2 -> ... future 3.x releases ...
| (May 1999)
|
\|/
+
[4.0-current continues]
</verb>
<p>The -current branch is slowly progressing towards 4.0 and beyond,
the previous 2.2-stable branch having just retired with the release
of 2.2.8. 3.0-stable has now replaced it, the next release coming
up with 3.3 in Q3 1999. 4.0-current is now the "current branch",
with the first 4.0 releases appearing in Q1 2000.
<sect1>
<heading>When are FreeBSD releases made?<label id="release_freq"></heading>
<p>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...
<p>Releases are made about every 4 months on average.
<p>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.
<sect1>
<heading>Is FreeBSD only available for PCs ?</heading>
<p>FreeBSD 3.x currently runs on the <url
url="../alpha/alpha.html" name="DEC Alpha"> as well as the
x86 architecture. Some interest has also been expressed in a
SPARC port, but details on this project are not yet clear.
If your machine has a different architecture and
you need something right now, we suggest you look at
<url url="http://www.netbsd.org/" name="NetBSD"> or
<url url="http://www.openbsd.org/" name="OpenBSD">.
<sect1>
<heading> Who is responsible for FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>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 <url url="../handbook/staff.html#STAFF-CORE"
name="core team"> of some 15 people. There is a much larger team of
over 150 <url url="../handbook/staff-committers.html"
name="committers"> who are authorized to make changes directly to the
FreeBSD source tree.
<p>However, most non-trivial changes are discussed in advance in the
<ref id="mailing" name="mailing lists">, and there are no restrictions
on who may take part in the discussion.
<sect1>
<heading>Where can I get FreeBSD?<label id="where-get"></heading>
<p>Every significant release of FreeBSD is available via anonymous ftp
from the <url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/"
name="FreeBSD FTP site">:
<itemize>
<item>For the current 2.2-stable release, 2.2.8R, see the
<url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/2.2.8-RELEASE/"
name="2.2.8-RELEASE"> directory.
<item>For the current 3.0-stable release, 3.0-RELEASE, see the
<url url="ftp://current.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/3.0-RELEASE/" name="3.0-RELEASE"> directory.
<item><url url="ftp://releng22.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/"
name="2.2 Snapshot"> releases are made once a day along the
RELENG_2_2 branch (post 2.2.8) as it slowly winds down in
maintenance mode. The RELENG_2_2 branch is currently being carefully
maintained by the legacy support folks and no changes other than
those strictly necessary for security or reliability enhancements
are now made.
<item><url url="ftp://releng30.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/"
name="3.0 Snapshot"> releases are also made once a day along the
RELENG_3 branch (post 3.0-release) as it continues on its way
towards 3.2-RELEASE.
<item><url url="ftp://current.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/"
name="4.0 Snapshot"> releases are made once a day for the
<ref id="current" name="-current"> branch, these being of service
purely to bleeding-edge testers and developers.
</itemize>
<p>FreeBSD is also available via CDROM, from the following place(s):
<p>Walnut Creek CDROM<newline>
4041 Pike Lane, Suite F<newline>
Concord, CA 94520 USA<newline>
Orders: +1 800 786-9907<newline>
Questions: +1 925 674-0783<newline>
FAX: +1 925 674-0821<newline>
email: <url url="mailto:orders@cdrom.com" name="WC Orders address">
<newline>
WWW: <url url="http://www.cdrom.com/" name="WC Home page">
<newline>
<p>In Australia, you may find it at:
<p>Advanced Multimedia Distributors<newline>
Factory 1/1 Ovata Drive<newline>
Tullamarine, Melbourne<newline>
Victoria<newline>
Australia<newline>
Voice: +61 3 9338 6777<newline>
CDROM Support BBS<newline>
17 Irvine St<newline>
Peppermint Grove WA 6011<newline>
Voice: +61 9 385-3793<newline>
Fax: +61 9 385-2360<newline>
And in the UK:
The Public Domain &amp; Shareware Library<newline>
Winscombe House, Beacon Rd<newline>
Crowborough<newline>
Sussex. TN6 1UL<newline>
Voice: +44 1892 663-298<newline>
Fax: +44 1892 667-473<newline>
<sect1>
<heading>
Where do I find info on the FreeBSD mailing lists?<label id="mailing">
</heading>
<p>You can find full information in the <url
url="../handbook/eresources.html#ERESOURCES-MAIL"
name="Handbook entry on mailing-lists.">
<sect1>
<heading>Where do I find the FreeBSD Y2K info?</heading>
<p>You can find full information in the <url
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/y2kbug.html" name="FreeBSD Y2K page.">
<sect1>
<heading>What FreeBSD news groups are available?</heading>
<p>You can find full information in the<url
url="../handbook/eresources-news.html"
name="Handbook entry on newsgroups.">
<sect1>
<heading>
Are there FreeBSD IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels?
</heading>
<p>Yes, most major IRC networks host a FreeBSD chat
channel:
<itemize>
<item>Channel <tt>&num;FreeBSD</tt> on EFNet is
a FreeBSD forum, but don't go there for tech support
or to try and get folks there to help you avoid the pain of
reading man pages or doing your own research. It is a chat
channel, first and foremost, and topics there are just as likely
to involve sex, sports or nuclear weapons as they are FreeBSD.
You Have Been Warned!
Available at server <tt>irc.chat.org</tt>.
<item>Channel <tt>&num;FreeBSD</tt> on DALNET
is available at <tt>irc.dal.net</tt> in the US and
<tt>irc.eu.dal.net</tt> in Europe.
<item>Channel <tt>&num;FreeBSD</tt> on UNDERNET is
available at <tt>us.undernet.org</tt> in the US and
<tt>eu.undernet.org</tt> in Europe. Same provisions as
for EFNET apply - either don't ask questions or learn to
ask amazingly politely if you want help. It's a chat channel,
not a help channel.
<item>Finally, you can also join <tt>&num;FreeBSD</tt> on BSDNET,
a smaller BSD only chat network, at <tt>irc.FreeBSD.org</tt>.
This network attempts to do more tech support and not be
as anarchistic as EFNET, UNDERNET or DALNET, but it's also
nowhere near as popular as a result. Why not volunteer to
answer FreeBSD questions on BSDNET today?
</itemize>
<p>Each of these channels are distinct and are not connected to
each other. Their chat styles also differ, so you may need to try
each to find one suited to your chat style. As with *all* types
of IRC traffic, if you're easily offended or can't deal with lots
of young people (and more than a few older ones) doing the verbal
equivalent of jello wrestling, don't even bother with it.
<sect1>
<heading>Books on FreeBSD</heading>
<p>There is a FreeBSD Documentation Project which you may contact (or
even better, join) on the <tt>doc</tt> mailing list:
<url url="mailto:freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org"
name="&lt;freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org&gt;">.
This list is for discussion of the FreeBSD documentation. For
actual questions about FreeBSD, there is the <tt>questions</tt>
mailing list:
<url url="mailto:freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org"
name="&lt;freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org&gt;">.
<p>A FreeBSD ``handbook'' is available, and can be found as:
<url url="../handbook/index.html" name="the FreeBSD Handbook">.
Note that this is a work in progress, and so parts may be incomplete.
<p>The definitive printed guide on FreeBSD is ``The Complete FreeBSD'',
written by Greg Lehey and published by Walnut Creek CDROM Books. Now
in its second edition, the book contains 1,750 pages of install &
system administration guidance, program setup help, and manual pages.
The book (and current FreeBSD release) can be ordered from
<url url="http://www.cdrom.com" name="Walnut Creek">,
<url url="http://www.cheapbytes.com" name="CheapBytes">, or at your
favorite bookstore. The ISBN is 1-57176-227-2.
<p>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:
<itemize>
<item>4.4BSD System Manager's Manual <newline>
By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley <newline>
1st Edition June 1994, 804 pages <newline>
<url url="&isbn.amazon/1-56592-080-5" name="ISBN">: 1-56592-080-5 <newline>
<item>4.4BSD User's Reference Manual <newline>
By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley <newline>
1st Edition June 1994, 905 pages <newline>
<url url="&isbn.amazon/1-56592-075-9" name="ISBN">: 1-56592-075-9 <newline>
<item>4.4BSD User's Supplementary Documents <newline>
By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley <newline>
1st Edition July 1994, 712 pages <newline>
<url url="&isbn.amazon/1-56592-076-7" name="ISBN">: 1-56592-076-7 <newline>
<item>4.4BSD Programmer's Reference Manual <newline>
By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley <newline>
1st Edition June 1994, 886 pages <newline>
<url url="&isbn.amazon/1-56592-078-3" name="ISBN">: 1-56592-078-3 <newline>
<item>4.4BSD Programmer's Supplementary Documents <newline>
By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley <newline>
1st Edition July 1994, 596 pages <newline>
<url url="&isbn.amazon/1-56592-079-1" name="ISBN">: 1-56592-079-1 <newline>
</itemize>
<p>A description of these can be found via WWW as:
<url url="http://gnn.com/gnn/bus/ora/category/bsd.html"
name="4.4BSD books description">. Due to poor sales, however, these
manuals may be hard to get a hold of.
<p>For a more in-depth look at the 4.4BSD kernel organization,
you can't go wrong with:
<p>McKusick, Marshall Kirk, Keith Bostic, Michael J Karels,
and John Quarterman.<newline>
<p><em>The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating
System</em>. Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley, 1996.<newline>
<url url="&isbn.amazon/0-201-54979-4" name="ISBN"> 0-201-54979-4<newline>
<p>A good book on system administration is:
<p>Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass &amp; Trent R. Hein,<newline>
``Unix System Administration Handbook'', Prentice-Hall, 1995<newline>
<url url="&isbn.amazon/0-13-151051-7" name="ISBN">: 0-13-151051-7<newline>
<p><bf/NOTE/ make sure you get the second edition, with a red cover,
instead of the first edition.
<p>This book covers the basics, as well as TCP/IP, DNS, NFS,
SLIP/PPP, sendmail, INN/NNTP, printing, etc.. It's expensive
(approx. US&dollar;45-&dollar;55), but worth it. It also
includes a CDROM with the sources for various tools; most of
these, however, are also on the FreeBSD 2.2.6R CDROM (and the
FreeBSD CDROM often has newer versions).
<sect1>
<heading>How do I access your Problem Report database?</heading>
<p>The Problem Report database of all open user change requests
may be queried (or submitted to) by using our web-based PR
<url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/send-pr.html" name="submission">
and <url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr-summary.cgi"
name="query"> interfaces. The <em>send-pr(1)</em> command
can also be used to submit problem reports and change requests via
electronic mail.
<sect1>
<heading>Where can I get ASCII/PostScript versions of the FAQ?</heading>
<p>The up-to-date FAQ is available from the FreeBSD Web Server or any
mirror as PostScript and plain text (7 bit ASCII and 8-bit Latin1).
<p>As PostScript (about 370KB):
<itemize>
<item><url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/FAQ/FAQ.ps"
name="http://www.FreeBSD.org/FAQ/FAQ.ps">
</itemize>
<p>As ASCII text (about 220KB):
<itemize>
<item><url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/FAQ/FAQ.ascii"
name="http://www.FreeBSD.org/FAQ/FAQ.ascii">
</itemize>
<p>As ISO 8859-1 text (about 220KB):
<itemize>
<item><url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/FAQ/FAQ.latin1"
name="http://www.FreeBSD.org/FAQ/FAQ.latin1">
</itemize>
<sect1>
<heading>Where can I get ASCII/PostScript versions of the Handbook?</heading>
<p>The up-to-date Handbook is available from the FreeBSD Web Server or any
mirror as PostScript and plain text (7 bit ASCII and 8-bit Latin1).
<p>As PostScript (about 1.7MB):
<itemize>
<item><url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/handbook.ps"
name="http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/handbook.ps">
</itemize>
<p>As ASCII text (about 1080KB):
<itemize>
<item><url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/handbook.ascii"
name="http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/handbook.ascii">
</itemize>
<p>As ISO 8859-1 text (about 1080KB):
<itemize>
<item><url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/handbook.latin1"
name="http://www.FreeBSD.org/handbook/handbook.latin1">
</itemize>
<sect1>
<heading>The ASCII handbook isn't plain text!</heading>
<p>True, the ASCII and Latin1 versions of the FAQ and Handbook aren't
strictly plaintext; they contain underlines and overprints that
assume the output is going directly to a dot matrix printer. If you
need to reformat them to be human-readable, run the file through col:
<verb>
$ col -b < inputfile > outputfile
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>I'd like to become a FreeBSD Web mirror!</heading>
<p>Certainly! There are multiple ways to mirror the Web pages.
<itemize>
<item>Using CVSUP: You can retrieve the formatted files using CVSUP
from cvsup.FreeBSD.org. Add this line to your cvsup file:
<verb>
www release=current hostname=/home base=/usr/local/etc/cvsup
prefix=/usr/local/www/data/www.FreeBSD.org delete old use-rel-suffix
</verb>
<item>Using rsync: See <url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/internal/mirror.html"
name="the mirroring page"> for information.
<item>Using ftp mirror: You can download the FTP server's copy of
the web site using your favorite ftp mirror tool. Simply start at
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/www.
</itemize>
<sect1>
<heading>I'd like to translate the documentation into Friesian.</heading>
<p>Well, we can't pay, but we might arrange a free CD or T-shirt and a
Contributor's Handbook entry if you submit a translation of the
documentation.
<sect1>
<heading>Other sources of information.</heading>
<p>The following newsgroups contain pertinent discussion for FreeBSD
users:
<itemize>
<item><url url="news:comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.announce"
name="comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.announce"> (moderated)
<item><url url="news:comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc"
name="comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc">
<item><url url="news:comp.unix.bsd.misc" name="comp.unix.bsd.misc">
</itemize>
<p>Web resources:
<itemize>
<item>The <url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/" name="FreeBSD Home Page">.
<item><label id="pao">If you have a laptop, be sure and see
<url url="http://www.jp.FreeBSD.org/PAO/"
name="Tatsumi Hosokawa's Mobile Computing page"> in Japan.
<item><label id="smp">For information on SMP (Symmetric
MultiProcessing), please see the <url
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/~fsmp/SMP/SMP.html"
name="SMP support page">.
<item><label id="multimedia">For information on FreeBSD multimedia
applications, please see the <url
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/~faulkner/multimedia/mm.html"
name="multimedia">page. If you're interested specifically in
the <url url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/~ahasty/Bt848.html"
name="Bt848"> video capture chip, then follow that link.
</itemize>
<p>The FreeBSD handbook also has a fairly complete
<url url="../handbook/bibliography.html" name="bibliography">
section which is worth reading if you're looking for actual
books to buy.
</sect>

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<!-- $Id: serial.sgml,v 1.5 1999-07-28 20:26:08 nik Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<sect>
<heading>Serial Communications<label id="serial"></heading>
<p>This section answers common questions about serial communications
with FreeBSD. PPP and SLIP are covered in the <ref id="networking"
name="Networking"> section.
<sect1>
<heading>How do I tell if FreeBSD found my serial ports?</heading>
<p>As the FreeBSD kernel boots, it will probe for the serial ports
in your system for which the kernel was configured. You can
either watch your system closely for the messages it prints or
run the command
<verb>
dmesg | grep sio
</verb>
<p>after your system's up and running.
<p>Here's some example output from the above command:
<verb>
sio0 at 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 on isa
sio0: type 16550A
sio1 at 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa
sio1: type 16550A
</verb>
<p>This shows two serial ports. The first is on irq 4, is using
port address <tt/0x3f8/, and has a 16550A-type UART chip. The
second uses the same kind of chip but is on irq 3 and is at port
address <tt/0x2f8/. Internal modem cards are treated just like
serial ports---except that they always have a modem ``attached''
to the port.
<p>The <tt/GENERIC/ kernel includes support for two serial ports
using the same irq and port address settings in the above
example. If these settings aren't right for your system, or if
you've added modem cards or have more serial ports than your
kernel is configured for, just reconfigure your kernel. See
section <ref id="make-kernel" name="about building a kernel"> for
more details.
<sect1>
<heading>How do I tell if FreeBSD found my modem cards?</heading>
<p>Refer to the answer to the previous question.
<sect1>
<heading>I just upgraded to 2.0.5 and my <tt/tty0X/ are missing!</heading>
<p>Don't worry, they have been merged with the <tt/ttydX/ devices.
You'll have to change any old configuration files you have, though.
<sect1>
<heading>How do I access the serial ports on FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>The third serial port, <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?sio" name="sio2"> (known as
COM3 in DOS), is on <tt>/dev/cuaa2</tt> for dial-out devices, and on
<tt>/dev/ttyd2</tt> for dial-in devices. What's the difference
between these two classes of devices?
<p>You use <tt/ttydX/ for dial-ins. When opening <tt>/dev/ttydX</tt>
in blocking mode, a process will wait for the corresponding
<tt/cuaaX/ device to become inactive, and then wait
for the carrier detect line to go active. When you open the
<tt/cuaaX/ device, it makes sure the serial port isn't already in
use by the <tt/ttydX/ device. If the port's available, it
``steals'' it from the <tt/ttydX/ device. Also, the <tt/cuaXX/
device doesn't care about carrier detect. With this scheme and
an auto-answer modem, you can have remote users log in and you
can still dialout with the same modem and the system will take
care of all the conflicts.
<sect1>
<heading>How do I enable support for a multiport serial card?</heading>
<p>Again, the section on kernel configuration provides information
about configuring your kernel. For a multiport serial card,
place an <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?sio"
name="sio"> line for each serial port on the card in the
kernel configuration file. But place the irq and vector
specifiers on only one of the entries. All of the ports on the
card should share one irq. For consistency, use the last serial
port to specify the irq. Also, specify the <tt/COM&lowbar;MULTIPORT/
option.
<p>The following example is for an AST 4-port serial card on irq 7:
<verb>
options "COM_MULTIPORT"
device sio4 at isa? port 0x2a0 tty flags 0x781
device sio5 at isa? port 0x2a8 tty flags 0x781
device sio6 at isa? port 0x2b0 tty flags 0x781
device sio7 at isa? port 0x2b8 tty flags 0x781 irq 7 vector siointr
</verb>
<p>The flags indicate that the master port has minor number 7
(<tt/0x700/), diagnostics enabled during probe (<tt/0x080/), and
all the ports share an irq (<tt/0x001/).
<sect1>
<heading>Can FreeBSD handle multiport serial cards sharing irqs?</heading>
<p>Not yet. You'll have to use a different irq for each card.
<sect1>
<heading>Can I set the default serial parameters for a port?</heading>
<p>The <tt/ttydX/ (or <tt/cuaaX/) device is the regular device
you'll want to open for your applications. When a process opens
the device, it'll have a default set of terminal I/O settings.
You can see these settings with the command
<verb>
stty -a -f /dev/ttyd1
</verb>
<p>When you change the settings to this device, the settings are in
effect until the device is closed. When it's reopened, it goes
back to the default set. To make changes to the default set, you
can open and adjust the settings of the ``initial state'' device.
For example, to turn on <tt/CLOCAL/ mode, 8 bits, and
<tt>XON/XOFF</tt> flow control by default for ttyd5, do:
<verb>
stty -f /dev/ttyid5 clocal cs8 ixon ixoff
</verb>
<p>A good place to do this is in <tt>/etc/rc.serial</tt>. Now, an
application will have these settings by default when it opens
<tt/ttyd5/. It can still change these settings to its liking,
though.
<p>You can also prevent certain settings from being changed by an
application by making adjustments to the ``lock state'' device.
For example, to lock the speed of <tt/ttyd5/ to 57600 bps, do
<verb>
stty -f /dev/ttyld5 57600
</verb>
<p>Now, an application that opens <tt/ttyd5/ and tries to change the
speed of the port will be stuck with 57600 bps.
<p>Naturally, you should make the initial state and lock state
devices writable only by <tt/root/. The <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?MAKEDEV"
name="MAKEDEV"> script does <bf/NOT/ do this when it creates the
device entries.
<sect1>
<heading>How can I enable dialup logins on my modem?</heading>
<p>So you want to become an Internet service provider, eh? First,
you'll need one or more modems that can auto-answer. Your modem
will need to assert carrier-detect when it detects a carrier and
not assert it all the time. It will need to hang up the phone
and reset itself when the data terminal ready (<tt/DTR/) line
goes from on to off. It should probably use <tt>RTS/CTS</tt>
flow control or no local flow control at all. Finally, it must
use a constant speed between the computer and itself, but (to be
nice to your callers) it should negotiate a speed between itself
and the remote modem.
<p>For many Hayes command-set--compatible modems, this command will
make these settings and store them in nonvolatile memory:
<verb>
AT &amp;C1 &amp;D3 &amp;K3 &amp;Q6 S0=1 &amp;W
</verb>
<p>See the section <ref id="direct-at" name="on sending AT
commands"> below for information on how to make these settings
without resorting to an MS-DOS terminal program.
<p>Next, make an entry in <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?ttys" name="/etc/ttys"> for the
modem. This file lists all the ports on which the operating system will
await logins. Add a line that looks something like this:
<verb>
ttyd1 "/usr/libexec/getty std.57600" dialup on insecure
</verb>
<p>This line indicates that the second serial port
(<tt>/dev/ttyd1</tt>) has a modem connected running at 57600 bps
and no parity (<tt/std.57600/, which comes from the file
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?gettytab"
name="/etc/gettytab">). The terminal type for this port is
``dialup.'' The port is ``on'' and is ``insecure''---meaning
root logins on the port aren't allowed. For dialin ports like
this one, use the <tt/ttydX/ entry.
<p>It's common practice to use ``dialup'' as the terminal type.
Many users set up in their .profile or .login files a prompt for
the actual terminal type if the starting type is dialup. The
example shows the port as insecure. To become root on this port,
you have to login as a regular user, then ``<htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?su" name="su">'' to
<tt/root/. If you use ``secure'' then <tt/root/ can login in
directly.
<p>After making modifications to <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?ttys" name="/etc/ttys">, you
need to send a hangup or <tt/HUP/ signal to the <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?init" name="init"> process:
<verb>
kill -HUP 1
</verb>
<p>This forces the init process to reread <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?ttys" name="/etc/ttys">. The
init process will then start getty processes on all ``on'' ports.
You can find out if logins are available for your port by typing
<verb>
ps -ax | grep '[t]tyd1'
</verb>
<p>You should see something like:
<verb>
747 ?? I 0:00.04 /usr/libexec/getty std.57600 ttyd1
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>How can I connect a dumb terminal to my FreeBSD box?</heading>
<p>If you're using another computer as a terminal into your FreeBSD
system, get a null modem cable to go between the two serial
ports. If you're using an actual terminal, see its accompanying
instructions.
<p>Then, modify <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?ttys"
name="/etc/ttys">, like above. For example, if you're hooking up a
WYSE-50 terminal to the fifth serial port, use an entry like this:
<verb>
ttyd4 "/usr/libexec/getty std.38400" wyse50 on secure
</verb>
<p>This example shows that the port on <tt>/dev/ttyd4</tt> has a
wyse50 terminal connected at 38400 bps with no parity
(<tt/std.38400/ from <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?gettytab"
name="/etc/gettytab">) and <tt/root/ logins are allowed (secure).
<sect1>
<heading>Why can't I run <tt/tip/ or <tt/cu/?</heading>
<p>On your system, the programs <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?tip" name="tip"> and <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?cu" name="cu"> are probably
executable only by <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?uucp"
name="uucp"> and group <tt/dialer/. You can use the group <tt/dialer/
to control who has access to your modem or remote systems. Just add
yourself to group dialer.
<p>Alternatively, you can let everyone on your system run <tt/tip/
and <tt/cu/ by typing:
<verb>
# chmod 4511 /usr/bin/cu
# chmod 4511 /usr/bin/tip
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>My stock Hayes modem isn't supported---what can I do?</heading>
<p>Actually, the man page for <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?tip" name="tip"> is out of
date. There is a generic Hayes dialer already built in. Just use
``<tt/at=hayes/'' in your <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?remote" name="/etc/remote"> file.
<p>The Hayes driver isn't smart enough to recognize some of the
advanced features of newer modems---messages like <tt/BUSY/,
<tt/NO DIALTONE/, or <tt/CONNECT 115200/ will just confuse it.
You should turn those messages off when you use <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?tip" name="tip"> (using
<tt/ATX0&amp;W/).
<p>Also, the dial timeout for <tt/tip/ is 60 seconds. Your modem
should use something less, or else tip will think there's a
communication problem. Try <tt/ATS7=45&amp;W/.
<p>Actually, as shipped <tt/tip/ doesn't yet support it fully. The
solution is to edit the file <tt/tipconf.h/ in the directory
<tt>/usr/src/usr.bin/tip/tip</tt>. Obviously you need the source
distribution to do this.
<p>Edit the line ``<tt/#define HAYES 0/'' to ``<tt/#define HAYES
1/''. Then ``<tt/make/'' and ``<tt/make install/''. Everything
works nicely after that.
<sect1>
<heading>
How am I expected to enter these AT commands?<label id="direct-at">
</heading>
<p>Make what's called a ``<tt/direct/'' entry in your
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?remote"
name="/etc/remote"> file. For example, if your modem's hooked
up to the first serial port, <tt>/dev/cuaa0</tt>, then put in the
following line:
<verb>
cuaa0:dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#19200:pa=none
</verb>
<p>Use the highest bps rate your modem supports in the br
capability. Then, type <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?tip" name="tip cuaa0"> and
you'll be connected to your modem.
<p>If there is no <tt>/dev/cuaa0</tt> on your system, do this:
<verb>
# cd /dev
# ./MAKEDEV cuaa0
</verb>
<p>Or use cu as root with the following command:
<verb>
# cu -l``line'' -s``speed''
</verb>
<p>with line being the serial port (e.g.<tt>/dev/cuaa0</tt>)
and speed being the speed (e.g.<tt>57600</tt>). When you are done
entering the AT commands hit <tt>~.</tt> to exit.
<sect1>
<heading>The <tt/@/ sign for the pn capability doesn't work!</heading>
<p>The <tt/@/ sign in the phone number capability tells tip to look in
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?phones(5)"
name="/etc/phones"> for a phone number. But the <tt/@/ sign is
also a special character in capability files like
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?remote"
name="/etc/remote">. Escape it with a backslash:
<verb>
pn=\@
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>How can I dial a phone number on the command line?</heading>
<p>Put what's called a ``<tt/generic/'' entry in your
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?remote"
name="/etc/remote"> file. For example:
<verb>
tip115200|Dial any phone number at 115200 bps:\
:dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#115200:at=hayes:pa=none:du:
tip57600|Dial any phone number at 57600 bps:\
:dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#57600:at=hayes:pa=none:du:
</verb>
<p>Then you can do something like ``<tt/tip -115200 5551234/''. If you
prefer <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?cu"
name="cu"> over <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?tip" name="tip">, use a
generic cu entry:
<verb>
cu115200|Use cu to dial any number at 115200bps:\
:dv=/dev/cuaa1:br#57600:at=hayes:pa=none:du:
</verb>
<p>and type ``<tt/cu 5551234 -s 115200/''.
<sect1>
<heading>Do I have to type in the bps rate every time I do that?</heading>
<p>Put in an entry for <tt/tip1200/ or <tt/cu1200/, but go ahead and
use whatever bps rate is appropriate with the br capability. <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?tip" name="tip"> thinks a good
default is 1200 bps which is why it looks for a ``<tt/tip1200/'' entry.
You don't have to use 1200 bps, though.
<sect1>
<heading>I access a number of hosts through a terminal server.</heading>
<p>Rather than waiting until you're connected and typing
``<tt/CONNECT &lt;host&gt;/'' each time, use tip's <tt/cm/
capability. For example, these entries in
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?remote"
name="/etc/remote">:
<verb>
pain|pain.deep13.com|Forrester's machine:\
:cm=CONNECT pain\n:tc=deep13:
muffin|muffin.deep13.com|Frank's machine:\
:cm=CONNECT muffin\n:tc=deep13:
deep13:Gizmonics Institute terminal server:\
:dv=/dev/cua02:br#38400:at=hayes:du:pa=none:pn=5551234:
</verb>
<p>will let you type ``<tt/tip pain/'' or ``<tt/tip muffin/'' to
connect to the hosts pain or muffin; and ``<tt/tip deep13/'' to
get to the terminal server.
<sect1>
<heading>Can tip try more than one line for each site?</heading>
<p>This is often a problem where a university has several modem lines
and several thousand students trying to use them...
<p>Make an entry for your university in <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?remote" name="/etc/remote">
and use <tt>\@</tt> for the <tt/pn/ capability:
<verb>
big-university:\
:pn=\@:tc=dialout
dialout:\
:dv=/dev/cuaa3:br#9600:at=courier:du:pa=none:
</verb>
<p>Then, list the phone numbers for the university in
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?phones"
name="/etc/phones">:
<verb>
big-university 5551111
big-university 5551112
big-university 5551113
big-university 5551114
</verb>
<p><htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?tip"
name="tip"> will try each one in the listed order, then give up. If
you want to keep retrying, run <tt/tip/ in a while loop.
<sect1>
<heading>Why do I have to hit CTRL+P twice to send CTRL+P once?</heading>
<p>CTRL+P is the default ``force'' character, used to tell
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?tip" name="tip">
that the next character is literal data. You can set the force
character to any other character with the <tt/~s/ escape, which
means ``set a variable.''
<p>Type ``<tt/~sforce=&lt;single-char&gt;/'' followed by a newline.
<tt/&lt;single-char&gt;/ is any single character. If you leave
out <tt/&lt;single-char&gt;/, then the force character is the nul
character, which you can get by typing CTRL+2 or CTRL+SPACE. A
pretty good value for <tt/&lt;single-char&gt;/ is SHIFT+CTRL+6,
which I've seen only used on some terminal servers.
<p>You can have the force character be whatever you want by
specifying the following in your <tt>&dollar;HOME/.tiprc</tt>
file:
<verb>
force=<single-char>
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>Suddenly everything I type is in UPPER CASE??</heading>
<p>You must've pressed CTRL+A, <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?tip" name="tip"> ``raise
character,'' specially designed for people with broken caps-lock keys.
Use <tt/~s/ as above and set the variable ``raisechar'' to something
reasonable. In fact, you can set it to the same as the force
character, if you never expect to use either of these features.
<p>Here's a sample .tiprc file perfect for Emacs users who need to
type CTRL+2 and CTRL+A a lot:
<verb>
force=^^
raisechar=^^
</verb>
<p>The ^^ is SHIFT+CTRL+6.
<sect1>
<heading>How can I do file transfers with <tt/tip/?</heading>
<p>If you're talking to another UNIX system, you can send and
receive files with <tt/~p/ (put) and <tt/~t/ (take). These
commands run <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?cat"
name="cat"> and <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?echo"
name="echo"> on the remote system to accept and send files. The syntax
is:
<verb>
~p <local-file> [<remote-file>]
~t <remote-file> [<local-file>]
</verb>
<p>There's no error checking, so you probably should use another
protocol, like zmodem.
<sect1>
<heading>How can I run zmodem with <tt/tip/?</heading>
<p>First, install one of the zmodem programs from the ports
collection (such as one of the two from the comms category,
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/ports.cgi?^lrzsz" name="lrzsz">
and <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/ports.cgi?^rzsz"
name="rzsz">).
<p>To receive files, start the sending program on the remote end.
Then, press enter and type ``<tt/~C rz/'' (or ``<tt/~C lrz/'' if
you installed lrzsz) to begin receiving them locally.
<p>To send files, start the receiving program on the remote end.
Then, press enter and type ``<tt/~C sz &lt;files&gt;/'' (or
``<tt/~C lsz &lt;files&gt;/'') to send them to the
remote system.
<sect1>
<heading>FreeBSD can't seem to find my serial ports, even when the
settings are correct.</heading>
<p>Motherboards and cards with Acer UARTs do not probe properly under
the FreeBSD sio probe. Obtain a patch from
<url url="http://www.lemis.com/serial-port-patch.html"
name="www.lemis.com"> to fix your problem.
</sect>

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<!-- $Id: troubleshoot.sgml,v 1.10 1999-07-28 20:26:09 nik Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<sect>
<heading>Troubleshooting<label id="troubleshoot"></heading>
<sect1>
<heading>I have bad blocks on my hard drive!<label id="awre"></heading>
<p>With SCSI drives, the drive should be capable of re-mapping
these automatically. However, many drives are shipped with
this feature disabled, for some mysterious reason...
<p>To enable this, you'll need to edit the first device page mode,
which can be done on FreeBSD by giving the command (as root)
<verb>
scsi -f /dev/rsd0c -m 1 -e -P 3
</verb>
<p>and changing the values of AWRE and ARRE from 0 to 1:-
<verb>
AWRE (Auto Write Reallocation Enbld): 1
ARRE (Auto Read Reallocation Enbld): 1
</verb>
<p>The following paragraphs were submitted by
<url url="mailto:tedm@toybox.placo.com" name="Ted Mittelstaedt">:
<p>For IDE drives, any bad block is usually a sign of potential trouble.
All modern IDE drives come with internal bad-block remapping turned
on. All IDE hard drive manufacturers today offer extensive
warranties and will replace drives with bad blocks on them.
<p>If you still want to attempt to rescue an IDE drive with bad blocks,
you can attempt to download the IDE drive manufacturer's IDE diagnostic
program, and run this against the drive. Sometimes these programs can
be set to force the drive electronics to rescan the drive for bad blocks
and lock them out.
<p>For ESDI, RLL and MFM drives, bad blocks are a normal part of the
drive and are no sign of trouble, generally. With a PC, the disk drive
controller card and BIOS handle the task of locking out bad sectors.
This is fine for operating systems like DOS that use BIOS code to
access the disk. However, FreeBSD's disk driver does not go through
BIOS, therefore a mechanism, bad144, exists that replaces this
functionality. bad144 only works with the wd driver,
it is NOT able to be used with SCSI. bad144 works by entering all bad
sectors found into a special file.
<p>One caveat with bad144 - the bad block special file is placed on the
last track of the disk. As this file may possibly contain a listing for
a bad sector that would occur near the beginning of the disk, where the
/kernel file might be located, it therefore must be accessible to the
bootstrap program that uses BIOS calls to read the kernel file. This
means that the disk with bad144 used on it must not exceed 1024
cylinders, 16 heads, and 63 sectors. This places an effective limit
of 500MB on a disk that is mapped with bad144.
<p>To use bad144, simply set the "Bad Block" scanning to ON in the
FreeBSD fdisk screen during the initial install. This works up through
FreeBSD 2.2.7. The disk must have less than 1024 cylinders. It is
generally recommended that the disk drive has been in operation for at
least 4 hours prior to this to allow for thermal expansion and track
wandering.
<p>If the disk has more than 1024 cylinders (such as a large ESDI drive)
the ESDI controller uses a special translation mode to make it work
under DOS. The wd driver understands about these translation modes,
IF you enter the "translated" geometry with the "set geometry" command
in fdisk. You must also NOT use the "dangerously dedicated" mode of
creating the FreeBSD partition, as this ignores the geometry. Also,
even though fdisk will use your overridden geometry, it still knows the
true size of the disk, and will attempt to create a too large FreeBSD
partition. If the disk geometry is changed to the translated geometry,
the partition MUST be manually created with the number of blocks.
<p>A quick trick to use is to set up the large ESDI disk with the ESDI
controller, boot it with a DOS disk and format it with a DOS partition.
Then, boot the FreeBSD install and in the fdisk screen, read off and
write down the blocksize and block numbers for the DOS partition. Then,
reset the geometry to the same that DOS uses, delete the DOS partition,
and create a "cooperative" FreeBSD partition using the blocksize you
recorded earlier. Then, set the partition bootable and turn on bad
block scanning. During the actual install, bad144 will run first,
before any filesystems are created. (you can view this with an Alt-F2)
If it has any trouble creating the badsector file, you have set too
large a disk geometry - reboot the system and start all over again
(including repartitioning and reformatting with DOS).
<p>If remapping is enabled and you are seeing bad blocks, consider
replacing the drive. The bad blocks will only get worse as time goes on.
<sect1>
<heading>FreeBSD does not recognize my Bustek 742a EISA SCSI!</heading>
<p>This info is specific to the 742a but may also cover other
Buslogic cards. (Bustek = Buslogic)
<p>There are 2 general ``versions'' of the 742a card. They are
hardware revisions A-G, and revisions H - onwards. The revision
letter is located after the Assembly number on the edge of the
card. The 742a has 2 ROM chips on it, one is the BIOS chip and
the other is the Firmware chip. FreeBSD doesn't care what
version of BIOS chip you have but it does care about what version
of firmware chip. Buslogic will send upgrade ROMS out if you
call their tech support dept. The BIOS and Firmware chips are
shipped as a matched pair. You must have the most current
Firmware ROM in your adapter card for your hardware revision.
<p>The REV A-G cards can only accept BIOS/Firmware sets up to
2.41/2.21. The REV H- up cards can accept the most current
BIOS/Firmware sets of 4.70/3.37. The difference between the
firmware sets is that the 3.37 firmware supports ``round robin''
<p>The Buslogic cards also have a serial number on them. If you
have a old hardware revision card you can call the Buslogic RMA
department and give them the serial number and attempt to
exchange the card for a newer hardware revision. If the card is
young enough they will do so.
<p>FreeBSD 2.1 only supports Firmware revisions 2.21 onward. If you
have a Firmware revision older than this your card will not be
recognized as a Buslogic card. It may be recognized as an
Adaptec 1540, however. The early Buslogic firmware contains an
AHA1540 ``emulation'' mode. This is not a good thing for an EISA
card, however.
<p>If you have an old hardware revision card and you obtain the 2.21
firmware for it, you will need to check the position of jumper W1
to B-C, the default is A-B.
<p>The 742a EISA cards never had the ``&gt;16MB'' problem mentioned in
the section <ref id="bigram" name="on &gt;16 MB machines">. This is a
problem that occurs with the Vesa-Local Buslogic SCSI cards.
<sect1>
<heading>
My HP Netserver's SCSI controller is not detected!
</heading>
<p>This is basically a known problem. The EISA on-board SCSI controller
in the HP Netserver machines occupies EISA slot number 11, so all
the ``true'' EISA slots are in front of it. Alas, the address space
for EISA slots >= 10 collides with the address space assigned to PCI,
and FreeBSD's auto-configuration currently cannot handle this
situation very well.
<p>So now, the best you can do is to pretend there is no address
range clash :), by bumping the kernel option <tt/EISA_SLOTS/
to a value of 12.
Configure and compile a kernel, as described in the
<url url="../handbook/kernelconfig.html"
name="Handbook entry on configuring the kernel">.
<p>Of course, this does present you with a chicken-and-egg problem when
installing on such a machine. In order to work around this
problem, a special hack is available inside <em>UserConfig</em>.
Do not use the ``visual'' interface, but the plain command-line
interface there. Simply type
<verb>
eisa 12
quit
</verb>
<p>at the prompt, and install your system as usual. While it's
recommended you compile and install a custom kernel anyway,
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?dset" name="dset">
now also understands to save this value.
<p>Hopefully, future versions will have a proper fix for this problem.
<p><tt/NOTE:/ You can not use a <bf/dangerously dedicated/ disk with
an HP Netserver. See <ref id="dedicate" name="this note"> for
more info.
<sect1>
<heading>What's up with this CMD640 IDE controller?</heading>
<p>It's broken. It cannot handle commands on both channels
simultaneously.
<p>There's a workaround available now and it is enabled automatically
if your system uses this chip. For the details refer to the
manual page of the disk driver (man 4 wd).
<p>If you're already running FreeBSD 2.2.1 or 2.2.2 with a
CMD640 IDE controller and you want to use the second channel,
build a new kernel with <tt/options "CMD640"/ enabled. This
is the default for 2.2.5 and later.
<sect1>
<heading>I keep seeing messages like ``<tt/ed1: timeout/''.</heading>
<p>This is usually caused by an interrupt conflict (e.g., two boards
using the same IRQ). FreeBSD prior to 2.0.5R used to be tolerant
of this, and the network driver would still function in the
presence of IRQ conflicts. However, with 2.0.5R and later, IRQ
conflicts are no longer tolerated. Boot with the -c option and
change the ed0/de0/... entry to match your board.
<p>If you're using the BNC connector on your network card, you may
also see device timeouts because of bad termination. To check this,
attach a terminator directly to the NIC (with no cable) and see if
the error messages go away.
<p>Some NE2000 compatible cards will give this error if there is
no link on the UTP port or if the cable is disconnected.
<sect1>
<heading>When I mount a CDROM, I get ``Incorrect super block''.</heading>
<p>You have to tell
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?mount" name="mount">
the type of the device that you want to mount. By default,
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?mount" name="mount">
will assume the filesystem is of type ``<tt/ufs/''. You want to mount
a CDROM filesystem, and you do this by specifying the ``<tt/-t cd9660/''
option to <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?mount"
name="mount">. This does, of course, assume that the
CDROM contains an ISO 9660 filesystem, which is what most CDROMs
have. As of 1.1R, FreeBSD automatically understands the Rock Ridge
(long filename) extensions as well.
<p>As an example, if you want to mount the CDROM device,
``<tt>/dev/cd0c</tt>'', under <tt>/mnt</tt>, you would execute:
<verb>
mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0c /mnt
</verb>
<p>Note that your device name (``<tt>/dev/cd0c</tt>'' in this
example) could be different, depending on the CDROM interface.
Note that the ``<tt/-t cd9660/'' option just causes the
``<tt/mount&lowbar;cd9660/'' command to be executed, and so the
above example could be shortened to:
<verb>
mount_cd9660 /dev/cd0c /mnt
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>When I mount a CDROM, I get ``Device not configured''.</heading>
<p>This generally means that there is no CDROM in the CDROM drive,
or the drive is not visible on the bus. Feed the drive
something, and/or check its master/slave status if it is
IDE (ATAPI). It can take a couple of seconds for a CDROM drive
to notice that it's been fed, so be patient.
<p>Sometimes a SCSI CD-ROM may be missed because it hadn't enough time
to answer the bus reset. If you have a SCSI CD-ROM please try to
add the following symbol into your kernel configuration file
and recompile.
<verb>
options "SCSI_DELAY=15"
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>My printer is ridiculously slow. What can I do ?</heading>
<p>If it's parallel, and the only problem is that it's terribly
slow, try setting your printer port into ``polled'' mode:
<verb>
lptcontrol -p
</verb>
<p>Some newer HP printers are claimed not to work correctly in
interrupt mode, apparently due to some (not yet exactly
understood) timing problem.
<sect1>
<heading>My programs occasionally die with ``Signal 11'' errors.</heading>
<p>This can be caused by bad hardware (memory, motherboard, etc.).
Try running a memory-testing program on your PC. Note that, even
though every memory testing program you try will report your
memory as being fine, it's possible for slightly marginal memory
to pass all memory tests, yet fail under operating conditions
(such as during bus mastering DMA from a SCSI controller like the
Adaptec 1542, when you're beating on memory by compiling a kernel,
or just when the system's running particularly hot).
<p>The SIG11 FAQ (listed below) points up slow memory as being the
most common problem. Increase the number of wait states in your
BIOS setup, or get faster memory.
<p>For me the guilty party has been bad cache RAM or a bad on-board
cache controller. Try disabling the on-board (secondary) cache in
the BIOS setup and see if that solves the problem.
<p>There's an extensive FAQ on this at
<url url="http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/" name="the SIG11 problem FAQ">
<sect1>
<heading>When I boot, the screen goes black and loses sync!</heading>
<p>This is a known problem with the ATI Mach 64 video card.
The problem is that this card uses address <tt/2e8/, and
the fourth serial port does too. Due to a bug (feature?) in the
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?sio" name="sio.c">
driver it will touch this port even if you don't have the
fourth serial port, and <bf/even/ if you disable sio3 (the fourth
port) which normally uses this address.
<p>Until the bug has been fixed, you can use this workaround:
<enum>
<item>Enter <tt/-c/ at the bootprompt. (This will put the kernel
into configuration mode).
<item>Disable <tt/sio0/, <tt/sio1/, <tt/sio2/ and <tt/sio3/
(all of them). This way the sio driver doesn't get activated
-> no problems.
<item>Type exit to continue booting.
</enum>
<p>If you want to be able to use your serial ports,
you'll have to build a new kernel with the following
modification: in <tt>/usr/src/sys/i386/isa/sio.c</tt> find the
one occurrence of the string <tt/0x2e8/ and remove that string
and the preceding comma (keep the trailing comma). Now follow
the normal procedure of building a new kernel.
<p>Even after applying these workarounds, you may still find that
X Window does not work properly. Some newer ATI Mach 64 video
cards (notably ATI Mach Xpression) do not run with the current
version of <tt/XFree86/; the screen goes black when you start
X Window, or it works with strange problems. You can get
a beta-version of a new X-server that works better, by looking at
<url url="http://www.xfree86.org" name="the XFree86 site">
and following the links to the new beta release. Get the
following files:
<p><tt>AccelCards, BetaReport, Cards, Devices, FILES, README.ati,
README.FreeBSD, README.Mach64, RELNOTES, VGADriver.Doc,
X312BMa64.tgz</tt>
<p>Replace the older files with the new versions and make sure you
run <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?manpath=xfree86&amp;query=xf86config"
name="xf86config"> again.
<sect1>
<heading>
I have 128 MB of RAM but the system only uses 64 MB.
<label id="reallybigram">
</heading>
<p>Due to the manner in which FreeBSD gets the memory size from the
BIOS, it can only detect 16 bits worth of Kbytes in size (65535
Kbytes = 64MB) (or less... some BIOSes peg the memory size to 16M).
If you have more than 64MB, FreeBSD will attempt to detect it;
however, the attempt may fail.
<p>To work around this problem, you need to use the
kernel option specified below. There is a way to get complete
memory information from the BIOS, but we don't have room in the
bootblocks to do it. Someday when lack of room in the bootblocks
is fixed, we'll use the extended BIOS functions to get the full
memory information...but for now we're stuck with the kernel
option.
<tt>
options "MAXMEM=&lt;n>"
</tt>
<p>Where <tt/n/ is your memory in Kilobytes. For a 128 MB machine,
you'd want to use <tt/131072/.
<sect1>
<heading>FreeBSD 2.0 panics with ``kmem_map too small!''</heading>
<p><tt /Note/ The message may also be ``mb_map too small!''
<p>The panic indicates that the system ran out of virtual memory for
network buffers (specifically, mbuf clusters). You can increase
the amount of VM available for mbuf clusters by adding:
<p><tt>options "NMBCLUSTERS=&lt;n>"</tt>
<p>to your kernel config file, where &lt;n&gt; is a number in the
range 512-4096, depending on the number of concurrent TCP
connections you need to support. I'd recommend trying 2048 - this
should get rid of the panic completely. You can monitor the
number of mbuf clusters allocated/in use on the system with
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?netstat"
name="netstat -m">. The default value for NMBCLUSTERS is
<tt/512 + MAXUSERS * 16/.
<sect1>
<heading>``CMAP busy panic'' when rebooting with a new kernel.</heading>
<p>The logic that attempts to detect an out of date
<tt>/var/db/kvm_*.db</tt> files sometimes fails and using a
mismatched file can sometimes lead to panics.
<p>If this happens, reboot single-user and do:
<verb>
rm /var/db/kvm_*.db
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>ahc0: brkadrint, Illegal Host Access at seqaddr 0x0</heading>
<p>This is a conflict with an Ultrastor SCSI Host Adapter.
<p>During the boot process enter the kernel configuration menu and
disable <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?uha(4)"
name="uha0">, which is causing the problem.
<sect1>
<heading>Sendmail says ``mail loops back to myself''</heading>
<p>This is answered in the sendmail FAQ as follows:-
<verb>
* I'm getting "Local configuration error" messages, such as:
553 relay.domain.net config error: mail loops back to myself
554 <user@domain.net>... Local configuration error
How can I solve this problem?
You have asked mail to the domain (e.g., domain.net) to be
forwarded to a specific host (in this case, relay.domain.net)
by using an MX record, but the relay machine doesn't recognize
itself as domain.net. Add domain.net to /etc/sendmail.cw
(if you are using FEATURE(use_cw_file)) or add "Cw domain.net"
to /etc/sendmail.cf.
</verb>
<p>The current version of the <url
url="ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/mail/sendmail-faq"
name="sendmail FAQ"> is no longer maintained with the sendmail
release. It is however regularly posted to
<url url="news:comp.mail.sendmail" name="comp.mail.sendmail">,
<url url="news:comp.mail.misc" name="comp.mail.misc">,
<url url="news:comp.mail.smail" name="comp.mail.smail">,
<url url="news:comp.answers" name="comp.answers">, and
<url url="news:news.answers" name="news.answers">.
You can also receive a copy via email by sending a message to
<url url="mailto:mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu"
name="mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu"> with the command "send
usenet/news.answers/mail/sendmail-faq" as the body of the
message.
<sect1>
<heading>Full screen applications on remote machines misbehave!
</heading>
<p>The remote machine may be setting your terminal type
to something other than the <tt>cons25</tt> terminal type used
by the FreeBSD console.
<p>There are a number of work-arounds for this problem:
<itemize>
<item>After logging on to the remote machine, set your TERM shell
variable to either <tt>ansi</tt> or <tt>sco</tt>.
<item>Use a VT100 emulator like <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/ports.cgi?screen-" name="screen">
locally. <tt>screen</tt> offers you the ability to run
multiple concurrent sessions from one terminal, and is a neat
program in its own right.
<item>Install the <tt>cons25</tt> terminal database entry on
the remote machine.
<item>Fire up X and login to the remote machine from an
<tt>xterm</tt>.
</itemize>
<sect1>
<heading>My machine prints "calcru: negative time..."</heading>
<p>This can be caused by various hardware and/or software ailments
relating to interrupts. It may be due to bugs but can also happen
by nature of certain devices. Running TCP/IP over the parallel
port using a large MTU is one good way to provoke this problem.
Graphics accelleratorscan also get you here, in which case you
should check the interrupt setting of the card first.
<p>A side effect of this problem are dying processes with the
message "SIGXCPU exceeded cpu time limit".
<p>For FreeBSD 3.0 and later from Nov 29, 1998 forward: If the
problem cannot be fixed otherwise the solution is to set
this sysctl variable:
<verb>
sysctl -w kern.timecounter.method=1
</verb>
<p> This means a performance impact, but considering the cause of
this problem, you probably will not notice. If the problem
persists, keep the sysctl set to one and set the "NTIMECOUNTER"
option in your kernel to increasingly large values. If by the
time you have reached "NTIMECOUNTER=20" the problem isn't
solved, interrupts are too hosed on your machine for reliable
timekeeping.
</sect>

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FAQ/x.sgml
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@ -1,458 +0,0 @@
<!-- $Id: x.sgml,v 1.10 1999-07-28 20:26:09 nik Exp $ -->
<!-- The FreeBSD Documentation Project -->
<sect>
<heading>The X Window System and Virtual Consoles<label id="x"></heading>
<sect1>
<heading>I want to run X, how do I go about it?</heading>
<p>The easiest way is to simply specify that you want to run X
during the installation process.
<p>Then read and follow the documentation on the <htmlurl url=
"http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?manpath=xfree86&amp;query=xf86config"
name="xf86config"> tool, which assists you in configuring XFree86(tm)
for your particular graphics card/mouse/etc.
<p>You may also wish to investigate the Xaccel server.
See the section on <ref id="xig" name="Xi Graphics"> or
<ref id="metrox" name="Metro Link"> for more details.
<sect1>
<heading>Why doesn't my mouse work with X<label id="x-and-moused"></heading>
<p>If you are using syscons (the default console driver), you can
configure FreeBSD to support a mouse pointer on each virtual
screen. In order to avoid conflicting with X, syscons supports
a virtual device called ``<tt>/dev/sysmouse</tt>''. All mouse events
received from the real mouse device are written to the sysmouse
device, using the MouseSystems protocol. If you wish to use your
mouse on one or more virtual consoles, <bf/and/ use X, the
following configuration is recommended:
<verb>
/etc/rc.conf:
moused_type=ps/2 # or whatever your actual type is
moused_port=/dev/psm0 # or whatever your real port is
moused_flags=
/etc/XF86Config
Section Pointer
Protocol "MouseSystems"
Device "/dev/sysmouse"
.....
</verb>
<p>Some people prefer to use ``<tt>/dev/mouse</tt>'' under X. To
make this work, ``<tt>/dev/mouse</tt>'' should be linked to
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?sysmouse"
name="/dev/sysmouse">:
<verb>
# cd /dev
# rm -f mouse
# ln -s sysmouse mouse
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>X Window menus and dialog boxes don't work right!</heading>
<p>Try turning off the Num Lock key.
<p>If your Num Lock key is on by default at boot-time, you may add
the following line in the ``<tt/Keyboard/'' section of the
<tt/XF86Config/ file.
<verb>
# Let the server do the NumLock processing. This should only be
# required when using pre-R6 clients
ServerNumLock
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>What is a virtual console and how do I make more?</heading>
<p>Virtual consoles, put simply, enable you to have several
simultaneous sessions on the same machine without doing anything
complicated like setting up a network or running X.
<p>When the system starts, it will display a login prompt on
the monitor after displaying all the boot messages. You can
then type in your login name and password and start working (or
playing!) on the first virtual console.
<p>At some point, you will probably wish to start another
session, perhaps to look at documentation for a program
you are running or to read your mail while waiting for an
FTP transfer to finish. Just do Alt-F2 (hold down the Alt
key and press the F2 key), and you will find a login prompt
waiting for you on the second ``virtual console''! When you
want to go back to the original session, do Alt-F1.
<p>The default FreeBSD installation has three virtual consoles
enabled, and Alt-F1, Alt-F2, and Alt-F3 will switch between
these virtual consoles.
To enable more of them, edit <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?ttys" name="/etc/ttys">
and add entries for ``<tt/ttyv4/'' to ``<tt/ttyvc/'' after the
comment on ``Virtual terminals'':
<verb>
# Edit the existing entry for ttyv3 in /etc/ttys and change
# "off" to "on".
ttyv3 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
ttyv4 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
ttyv5 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
ttyv6 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
ttyv7 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
ttyv8 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
ttyv9 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
ttyva "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
</verb>
<p>Use as many or as few as you want. The more virtual terminals
you have, the more resources that are used; this can be important
if you have 8MB RAM or less. You may also want to change the
``<tt/secure/'' to ``<tt/insecure/''.
<p><bf/IMPORTANT NOTE/ if you want to run an X server you <bf/MUST/
leave at least one virtual terminal unused (or turned off) for it
to use. That is to say that if you want to have a login
prompt pop up for all twelve of your Alt-function keys,
you're out of luck - you can only do this for eleven of them
if you also want to run an X server on the same machine.
<p>The easiest way to disable a console is by turning it off. For
example, if you had the full 12 terminal allocation mentioned
above and you wanted to run X, you would change settings for
virtual terminal 12 from:
<verb>
ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
</verb>
<p>to:
<verb>
ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure
</verb>
<p>If your keyboard has only ten function keys, you would end up with:
<verb>
ttyv9 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure
ttyva "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure
ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure
</verb>
<p>(You could also just delete these lines.)
<p>Once you have edited <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?ttys" name="/etc/ttys">,
the next step is to make sure that you have enough virtual terminal
devices. The easiest way to do this is:
<verb>
# cd /dev
# ./MAKEDEV vty12 # For 12 devices
</verb>
<p>Next, the easiest (and cleanest) way to activate the virtual
consoles is to reboot. However, if you really don't want to
reboot, you can just shut down the X Window system and execute (as
<tt/root/):
<verb>
kill -HUP 1
</verb>
<p>It's imperative that you completely shut down X Window if it is
running, before running this command. If you don't, your system
will probably appear to hang/lock up after executing the kill
command.
<sect1>
<heading>How do I access the virtual consoles from X?</heading>
<p>If the console is currently displaying X Window, you can use
Ctrl-Alt-F1, etc. to switch to a virtual console. Note, however,
that once you've switched away from X Window to a virtual
terminal, you may use only the Alt- function key to switch to another
virtual terminal or back to X Window. You do not need to also press the
Ctrl key. If you use the control key to switch back to X on some
older releases, you can find your text console stuck in ``control-lock''
mode. Tap the control key to wake it up again.
<sect1>
<heading>How do I start XDM on boot?</heading>
<p>There are two schools of thought on how to start <htmlurl url=
"http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?manpath=xfree86&amp;query=xdm"
name="xdm">. One school starts xdm from
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?ttys"
name="/etc/ttys"> using the supplied example, while the other
simply runs xdm from <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?rc"
name="rc.local"> or
from a <tt/X.sh/ script in <tt>/usr/local/etc/rc.d</tt>.
Both are equally valid, and one may work in
situations where the other doesn't. In both cases the result is the
same: X will popup a graphical login: prompt.
<p>The ttys method has the advantage
of documenting which vty X will start on and passing the responsibility
of restarting the X server on logout to init. The rc.local method
makes it easy to kill xdm if there is a problem starting the X server.
<p>If loaded from rc.local, <tt/xdm/ should be started without any
arguments (i.e., as a daemon). xdm must start AFTER getty runs, or
else getty and xdm will conflict, locking out the console. The best
way around this is to have the script sleep 10 seconds or so then
launch xdm.
<p>A previous version of the FAQ said to add the
<tt/vt/ you want X to use to the
<tt>/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/Xservers</tt> file. This is not necessary:
X will use the first free <tt/vt/ it finds.
<sect1>
<heading>When I run xconsole, I get ``Couldn't open console''.</heading>
<p>If you start <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?manpath=xfree86&amp;query=X"
name="X"> with <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?manpath=xfree86&amp;query=startx"
name="startx">, the permissions on /dev/console will <tt /not/ get
changed, resulting in things like <htmlurl
url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?manpath=xfree86&amp;query=xterm"
name="xterm -C"> and <htmlurl url=
"http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?manpath=xfree86&amp;query=xconsole"
name="xconsole"> not working.
<p>This is because of the way console permissions are set by default.
On a multi-user system, one doesn't necessarily want just any user
to be able to write on the system console. For users who are logging
directly onto a machine with a VTY, the
<htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?fbtab" name="fbtab">
file exists to solve such problems.
<p>In a nutshell, make sure an uncommented line of the form
<verb>
/dev/ttyv0 0600 /dev/console
</verb>
<p>is in <htmlurl url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?fbtab(5)"
name="/etc/fbtab"> and it will ensure that whomever logs in on
<tt>/dev/ttyv0</tt> will own the console.
<sect1>
<heading>My PS/2 mouse doesn't behave properly under X.</heading>
<p>Your mouse and the mouse driver may have somewhat become out of
synchronization.
<p>In versions 2.2.5 and earlier, switching away from X to a
virtual terminal and getting back to X again may make them
re-synchronized. If the problem occurs often, you may add the
following option in your kernel configuration file and recompile it.
<verb>
options PSM_CHECKSYNC
</verb>
<p>See the section on <ref id="make-kernel" name="building a kernel">
if you've no experience with building kernels.
<p>With this option, there should be less chance of synchronization
problem between the mouse and the driver. If, however, you
still see the problem, click any mouse button while holding
the mouse still to re-synchronize the mouse and the driver.
<p>Note that unfortunately this option may not work with all the
systems and voids the ``tap'' feature of the ALPS GlidePoint
device attached to the PS/2 mouse port.
<p>In versions 2.2.6 and later, synchronization check is done
in a slightly better way and is standard in the PS/2 mouse driver.
It should even work with GlidePoint. (As the check code has become
a standard feature, PSM_CHECKSYNC option is not available in these
versions.) However, in rare case the driver may erroneously report
synchronization problem and you may see the kernel message:
<verb>
psmintr: out of sync (xxxx != yyyy)
</verb>
and find your mouse doesn't seem to work properly.
<p>If this happens, disable the synchronization check code by
setting the driver flags for the PS/2 mouse driver to 0x100.
Enter <em>UserConfig</em> by giving the ``<tt>-c</tt>'' option
at the boot prompt:
<verb>
boot: -c
</verb>
Then, in the <em>UserConfig</em> command line, type:
<verb>
UserConfig> flags psm0 0x100
UserConfig> quit
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>My PS/2 mouse from MouseSystems doesn't seem to work.</heading>
<p>There have been some reports that certain model of PS/2 mouse
from MouseSystems works only if it is put into the ``high resolution''
mode. Otherwise, the mouse cursor may jump to the upper-left
corner of the screen every so often.
<p>Unfortunately there is no workaround for versions 2.0.X and
2.1.X. In versions 2.2 through 2.2.5, apply the following patch
to <tt>/sys/i386/isa/psm.c</tt> and rebuild the kernel. See the
section on <ref id="make-kernel" name="building a kernel">
if you've no experience with building kernels.
<verb>
diff -u psm.c.orig psm.c
@@ -766,6 +766,8 @@
if (verbose >= 2)
log(LOG_DEBUG, "psm%d: SET_DEFAULTS return code:%04x\n",
unit, i);
+ set_mouse_resolution(sc->kbdc, PSMD_RES_HIGH);
+
#if 0
set_mouse_scaling(sc->kbdc); /* 1:1 scaling */
set_mouse_mode(sc->kbdc); /* stream mode */
</verb>
<p>In versions 2.2.6 or later, specify the flags 0x04 to the PS/2
mouse driver to put the mouse into the high resolution mode.
Enter <em>UserConfig</em> by giving the ``<tt>-c</tt>'' option
at the boot prompt:
<verb>
boot: -c
</verb>
Then, in the <em>UserConfig</em> command line, type:
<verb>
UserConfig> flags psm0 0x04
UserConfig> quit
</verb>
<p>See the previous section for another possible cause of mouse
problems.
<sect1>
<heading>When building an X app, <tt/imake/ can't find <tt/Imake.tmpl/. Where is it?
</heading>
<p>Imake.tmpl is part of the Imake package, a standard X application building tool.
Imake.tmpl, as well as several header files that are required to build X apps,
is contained in the X prog distribution. You can install this from sysinstall or
manually from the X distribution files. </p>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>How do I reverse the mouse buttons?
</heading>
<p>Run the command <tt/ xmodmap -e "pointer = 3 2 1"/ from your .xinitrc or .xsession.
</p>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>How do I install a splash screen and where do I find them?
</heading>
<p>Just prior to the release of FreeBSD 3.1, a new feature was
added to allow the display of &quot;splash&quot; screens during
the boot messages. The splash screens currently must be a 256
color bitmap (<tt>*.BMP</tt>) or ZSoft PCX
(<tt>*.PCX</tt>) file. In addition, they must have a
resolution of 320x200 or less to work on standard VGA adapters.
If you compile VESA support into your kernel, then you can use
larger bitmaps up to 1024x768. Note that VESA support requires
the <tt>VM86</tt> kernel option to be compiled into the
kernel. The actual VESA support can either be compiled directly
into the kernel with the <tt>VESA</tt> kernel config option
or by loading the VESA kld module during bootup.</p>
<p>To use a splash screen, you need to modify the startup files
that control the boot process for FreeBSD. The files for this
changed prior to the release of FreeBSD 3.2, so there are now
two ways of loading a splash screen:
<itemize>
<item>FreeBSD 3.1
<p>The first step is to find a bitmap version of your splash
screen. Release 3.1 only supports Windows bitmap splash
screens. Once you've found your splash screen of choice
copy it to <tt>/boot/splash.bmp</tt>. Next, you need to
have a <tt>/boot/loader.rc</tt> file that contains the
following lines:
<verb>
load kernel
load -t splash_image_data /boot/splash.bmp
load splash_bmp
autoboot
</verb>
</item>
<item>FreeBSD 3.2+
<p>In addition to adding support for PCX splash screens,
FreeBSD 3.2 includes a nicer way of configuring the boot
process. If you wish, you can use the method listed above
for FreeBSD 3.1. If you do and you want to use PCX, replace
<tt>splash_bmp</tt> with <tt>splash_pcx</tt>. If,
on the other hand, you want to use the newer boot
configuration, you need to create a
<tt>/boot/loader.rc</tt> file that contains the
following lines:
<verb>
include /boot/loader.4th
start
</verb>
<p>and a <tt>/boot/loader.conf</tt> that contains the
following:
<verb>
splash_bmp_load="YES"
bitmap_load="YES"
</verb>
<p>This assumes you are using <tt>/boot/splash.bmp</tt>
for your splash screen. If you'd rather use a PCX file,
copy it to <tt>/boot/splash.pcx</tt>, create a
<tt>/boot/loader.rc</tt> as instructed above, and
create a <tt>/boot/loader.conf</tt> that contains:
<verb>
splash_pcx_load="YES"
bitmap_load="YES"
bitmap_name="/boot/splash.pcx"
</verb>
</item>
</itemize>
<p>Now all you need is a splash screen. For that you can surf
on over to the gallery at <htmlurl
url="http://www.cslab.vt.edu/~jobaldwi/splash/"
name="http://www.cslab.vt.edu/~jobaldwi/splash/">.</p>
</sect1>
</sect>