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<!DOCTYPE linuxdoc PUBLIC "-//FreeBSD//DTD linuxdoc//EN">
<!-- $Id: FAQ.sgml,v 1.18 1996/12/21 03:00:26 alex Exp $ -->
<article>
<title>Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X
<author>Maintainer: Peter da Silva <tt><htmlurl url='mailto:pds@FreeBSD.ORG'
name='&lt;pds@FreeBSD.ORG&gt;'></tt>
<date>$Date: 1996/12/21 03:00:26 $
<abstract>
This is the FAQ for FreeBSD systems version 2.X All entries are
assumed to be relevant to FreeBSD 2.0.5+, unless otherwise noted.
Any entries with a &lt;XXX&gt; are under construction.
</abstract>
<toc>
<sect>
<heading>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 recognised as valuable information resources.
Every effort has been made to make this FAQ as informative as
possible; if you have any suggestions as to how it may be improved,
please feel free to mail them to the
<url url="mailto:questions@FreeBSD.ORG" name="FreeBSD-questions
Mailing list"> or to <url url="mailto:faq@FreeBSD.ORG"
name="FreeBSD FAQ mailing list">
<sect1>
<heading>What is FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
Briefly, FreeBSD 2.X is a UN*X type 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. However, a very considerable
number of bug fixes and enhancements have been made to the original
code base, resulting in an extremely powerful and highly sophisticated
operating system.
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="http://www.freebsd.org/gallery.html" name="FreeBSD Gallery.">
For a more detailed description of FreeBSD, see the Introduction to
<url url="../handbook/handbook.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 renumeration 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, I believe, one of the most fundamental goals of Free
Software and one that we enthusiastically support.
That code in our source tree which falls under the GNU Public License
(GPL) or GNU Library Public License (GLPL) comes with slightly more
strings attached, though at least on the side of enforced
access rather than the usual opposite. Due to the additional
complexities that can evolve in the commercial use of GPL software,
we do, however, endeavor to replace such software with submissions
under the more relaxed BSD copyright whenever possible.
<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>
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 2.1.5 is the latest version; it was released in mid-July, 1996.
<sect1>
<heading>What is FreeBSD-current?</heading>
<p>
FreeBSD-current is the development version of the operating system,
which will in due course become version 2.2. As such, it is really
only of interest to developers working on the system. See the section
``Staying current with FreeBSD'' in the
<url url="../handbook/handbook.html" name="FreeBSD Handbook">
<sect1>
<heading> What are ``snapshots''?<label id="snapshots"></heading>
<p>
Every now and again, a ``snapshot'' is taken of the development
code, which is prepared as if it were an official release; recently,
CDROMs have even been cut from the snapshots. The intention is to:-
<itemize>
<item>Test the latest version of the installation routine.
<item>Allow 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 to do so.
<item>
Preserve a fixed reference point as to when the code was
reasonably reliable.
<item>Ensure that a new feature in need of testing has the
greatest possible number of potential testers.
</itemize>
The astute reader will have noticed that the last two items are
somewhat mutually incompatible. As snapshots are based on
development code, no claim is made that a snapshot is regarded as
being of ``production quality'' - for that, you will have to use
official releases.
<sect1>
<heading> What about FreeBSD-stable?</heading>
<p>
Back when FreeBSD 2.0.5 was released, we branched FreeBSD
development into two parts. One branch was named -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
2.2-current, which essentially has been one unbroken line leading
towards 2.2-RELEASE since 2.0 was released. If a little ASCII art
would help, this is how it looks:
<verb>
2.0
|
|
|
2.0.5 ---> 2.1 ---> 2.1.5 ---> 2.1.6 ---* [-stable ends]
| (Dec 1996)
|
[2.2-current] 2.2-SNAPs
|
|
2.2-RELEASE (scheduled for Q1 1997)
|
|
.
\|/
+
[future releases]
</verb>
<p>
The -current branch is slowly progressing towards 2.2 and beyond,
whereas the -stable branch will effectively end with 2.1.6.
<sect1>
<heading>Why is the -stable branch ending with 2.1.6? </heading>
<p>
While we'd certainly like to be able to continue both branches of
development, we've found that the version control tools available to
us are not particularly well-suited for this; in fact, they quickly
result in a maintenance nightmare for any branch which lives much
beyond 2-3 months. The -stable branch has, by contrast, lasted for
well over a year and what little sanity the FreeBSD developers have
left would be in serious jeopardy if we continued in this way.
Perhaps in the future we'll figure out another model which gives
everyone what they want, and we are working on such a model, but in
the meantime it's probably best to think of -stable coming to an end
with 2.1.6-RELEASE.
<sect1>
<heading> When are FreeBSD releases made?</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 6 months on average.
<sect1>
<heading> Is FreeBSD only available for PCs?</heading>
<p>
At present, yes. If your machine has a different architecture, 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 ``core team'' consisting of 14
people. There is a much larger group, of about 50 people, who can
make changes to the source tree.
<p>
However, most non-trivial changes are discussed in advance in the
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>
The distribution is available via anonymous ftp from:
<url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/FreeBSD/" name="the FreeBSD FTP site">
For the current release, 2.1.5R, look in:
<url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/FreeBSD/2.1.5-RELEASE/" name="FreeBSD 2.1.5-RELEASE">
FreeBSD is also available via CDROM, from the following place(s):
Walnut Creek CDROM<newline>
4041 Pike Lane, Suite D-386<newline>
Concord, CA 94520 USA<newline>
Orders: (800)-786-9907<newline>
Questions: (510)-674-0783<newline>
FAX: (510)-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>
In Australia, you may find it at:
Advanced Multimedia Distributors<newline>
Factory 1/1 Ovata Drive<newline>
Tullamarine, Melbourne<newline>
Victoria<newline>
Australia<newline>
Voice: +61 3 9338 67777<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 01892 663298<newline>
Fax: +44 01892 667473<newline>
(Do not dial the leading zero if calling from outside the UK).
<sect1>
<heading>What FreeBSD mailing lists are available?</heading>
<p>
The following mailing lists are provided for FreeBSD users and
developers. For more information, send to
&lt;majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG&gt; and include a single line saying
``help'' in the body of your message.
<descrip>
<tag/announce/ For announcements about or on FreeBSD.
<tag/hackers/ Useful for persons wishing to work on the internals.
<tag/questions/ General questions on FreeBSD.
<tag/bugs/ Where bugs should be sent.
<tag/SCSI/ Mailing list for SCSI developers.
<tag/current/ This is the mailing list for communications
between the developers and users of freebsd-current. It also
carries announcements and discussions on current. <tt
/Required/ reading for anyone using freebsd-current!
<tag/security/ For issues dealing with system security.
<tag/platforms/ Deals with ports to non-Intel platforms.
<tag/ports/ Discussion of the Ports collection.
<tag/fs/ Discussion of FreeBSD Filesystems.
<tag/hardware/ Discussion on hardware requirements for
FreeBSD.
<tag/committers/ All CVS commit messages
<tag/chat/ Miscellaneous chit-chat that does not belong
anywhere else, humour, etc.
<tag/hubs/ This the mailing-list for all of the generous
people who manage the ``regional'' part of the <tt/freebsd.org/
domain.
<tag/users-groups/ For the local area Users Groups coordinators.
</descrip>
<p>
The FreeBSD-commit list has been broken up into groups dealing
with different areas of interest. Please see the FreeBSD mailing
list FAQ in:
<url url="../handbook/eresources:mail.html" name="Handbook entry on mailing-lists">
<p>
<sect1>
<heading>How can I get on the mailing lists?</heading>
<p>
Example:
<p>
To subscribe to the <tt/questions/ list, you'll to send a message
containing the following command in the <bf/body/ of the message
(the subject will be ignored):
<verb>
subscribe questions john.smith@foo.bar (John Smith)
</verb>
<p>
Unsubscribing is just as easy:-
<verb>
unsubscribe questions john.smith@foo.bar (John Smith)
</verb>
Just remember to send your request
to
<url url="mailto:Majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG" name="the mail administrator">
and <bf/not/ to the list itself! (The last thing the subscribed
users want to see is administrative requests...)
<sect1>
<heading>What FreeBSD news groups are available?</heading>
<p>
There are two newsgroups currently dedicated to FreeBSD:
<descrip>
<tag/comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.announce/ For announcements
<tag/comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc/ General discussion
</descrip>
The following newsgroups may also be of interest to
general BSD enthusiasts:
<descrip>
<tag><tt/comp.unix.bsd/</tag>
General BSD topics
</descrip>
<tt>/usr/ports/news</tt> contains a number of ready-ported
programs not only for reading Usenet News, but even setting
up and running your own News server! You'll find trn, TIN,
Cnews, INN and others there.
For French-speaking people, the <tt/fr.comp.os.bsd/ group is for
you; there is also a Japanese newsgroup, <tt /fj.os.bsd.freebsd/.
If you do not receive these newsgroups, ask your system
administrator to get them for you.
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>Is there anything about FreeBSD on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) ?</heading>
<p>
There are two channels about FreeBSD on IRC:
<enum>
<item>The main channel is &num;FreeBSD on the EFNET. You can
use your regular IRC server for it.
<item>You can point your IRC client to <tt/irc.FreeBSD.org/
This server is on BSDnet and hosts &num;FreeBSD. This
is not the same channel.
</enum>
<sect1>
<heading>Books on FreeBSD</heading>
<p>
Greg Lehey's book ``Installing and Running FreeBSD'' is available
from Walnut Creek and ships with the 2.1.5 CDROM. There is also
a larger book entitled ``The Complete FreeBSD'', which comes with
additional printed manpages and includes the 2.1.5 CDROM set. It
should be available in most good bookshops now.
There is a FreeBSD Documentation Project which you may contact (or
even better, join) on the <tt>doc</tt> mailing list:
<url url="mailto:doc@FreeBSD.ORG" name="&lt;doc@FreeBSD.ORG&gt;">.
A FreeBSD ``handbook'' is being created, and can be found as:
<url url="../handbook/handbook.html" name="the FreeBSD Handbook">
Note that this is a work in progress, and so parts may be incomplete.
However, as FreeBSD 2.X is based upon Berkeley 4.4BSD-Lite, most
of the 4.4BSD manuals are applicable to FreeBSD 2.X. O'Reilly
and Associates publishes these manuals:
4.4BSD System Manager's Manual <newline>
By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley <newline>
1st Edition June 1994, 804 pages <newline>
ISBN: 1-56592-080-5 <NEWLINE>
4.4BSD User's Reference Manual <newline>
By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley <newline>
1st Edition June 1994, 905 pages <newline>
ISBN: 1-56592-075-9 <NEWLINE>
4.4BSD User's Supplementary Documents <newline>
By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley <newline>
1st Edition July 1994, 712 pages <newline>
ISBN: 1-56592-076-7 <NEWLINE>
4.4BSD Programmer's Reference Manual <newline>
By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley <newline>
1st Edition June 1994, 886 pages <newline>
ISBN: 1-56592-078-3 <NEWLINE>
4.4BSD Programmer's Supplementary Documents <newline>
By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley <newline>
1st Edition July 1994, 596 pages <newline>
ISBN: 1-56592-079-1 <NEWLINE>
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">
A good book on system administration is:
Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass &amp; Trent R. Hein,<newline>
``Unix System Administration Handbook'', Prentice-Hall, 1995<newline>
ISBN: 0-13-151051-7<newline>
<bf/NOTE/ make sure you get the second edition, with a red cover,
instead of the first edition.
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 2.1.5R CDROM (and the
FreeBSD CDROM often has newer versions).
<sect1>
<heading>I have heard about the Problem Report database. Is there an easy way to accesss it ?</heading>
<p>
The Problem Report database, filled with all the problems, bugs
and changes requested by users with help of the <url
url="http://www.freebsd.org/send-pr.html" name="send-pr">
command can be reached at
<url url="http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr-summary.cgi"
name="PR Database Summary">
<sect1>
<heading>Other sources of information.</heading>
<p>
One good source of additional information is the
``&lsqb;comp.unix.bsd&rsqb; NetBSD, FreeBSD, and 386BSD (0.1)
FAQ''. Much of the information is relevant to FreeBSD, and this
FAQ is posted around twice a month to the following newsgroups:
<verb>
comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.announce
comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.announce
comp.answers
news.answers
</verb>
If you have WWW access, the FreeBSD home page is at:
<url url="http://www.freebsd.org/" name="Main FreeBSD page">
The FreeBSD handbook has a pretty complete
<url url="../handbook/bibliography.html" name="Bibliography">
<sect>
<heading>Installation</heading>
<p>
<sect1>
<heading>Which file do I download to get FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
I'll answer that in a minute, but first a few words of explanation
might be in order. FreeBSD is not an application that you can
run from inside an existing DOS/Windows setup, it is an operating
system in its own right (in the same way as Windows NT or OS/2).
To install it involves making a ``primary partition'' for it on
the hard disk and arranging for it to be booted at system startup.
(FreeBSD gives you the option of installing a boot manager, so you
will be able to choose which operating system to use every time the
system starts up. Alternatively, you can use the boot managers
provided with oher operating systems, such as OS/2 or Linux).
Obviously, this is not as simple as using an operating system that
those nice people you bought your PC from pre-installed for you,
but it's not too difficult provided you read (and, if possible, print
out) all the instructions before starting. It may be a lot to
read, but it's very complete. You should also make full note of the
exhortations to back everything up first and the legal disclaimers.
These are not there for amusement value - we mean it! However,
most people find the installation goes fairly smoothly.
If you are able to be connected to the Internet for the duration
of the FreeBSD installation (lucky you!), the simplest way to
install FreeBSD is to download
<url
url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/FreeBSD/2.1.5-RELEASE/floppies/boot.flp"
name="the boot image,"> make a boot floppy, boot with it and watch it
pull down all the necessary files. Depending on connection speed and
how much of FreeBSD you wish to install, this could take several hours
(even the minimal installation requires downloading about 15MB of
compressed files).
For people who do not have good Internet connectivity, the best
way to install FreeBSD is to buy a CDROM (see <ref id="where-get"
name="Where to get FreeBSD"> for details). Unfortunately, this
is problematic for some people, as the support for IDE CDROMs in
FreeBSD is still in alpha (not because of some violent antipathy
towards IDE CDROMs, but simply due to a lack of people with the
necessary combination of skill, inclination and time).
Finally, if you already have a copy of the necessary files, FreeBSD
can be installed from floppy disks, a DOS hard disk partition or
tape or over a network via SLIP, PPP, NFS, PLIP and Ethernet.
For further information, please see
<url url="../handbook/install.html"
name="Handbook entry on installing FreeBSD.">
<sect1>
<heading>Where are the instructions for installing FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
Installation instructions can be found as:
<url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/FreeBSD/2.1.5-RELEASE/INSTALL"
name="INSTALL from 2.1.5R">
Release notes are also available as:
<url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/FreeBSD/2.1.5-RELEASE/RELNOTES"
name="RELNOTES from 2.1.5R">
On the CDROM, the following files are in the top-most directory:
<verb>
HARDWARE.TXT -- Hardware information
INSTALL -- Installation instructions
README.TXT -- Basic README file
RELNOTES -- Release notes
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>What do I need to run FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
you'll need a 386 or better PC, with 4 MB or more of RAM and at
least 60 MB of hard disk space. It can run with a low end MDA
card but to run X11R6, a VGA or better video card is needed.
See the section on <ref id="hardware" name="Hardware compatibility">
<sect1>
<heading>I have only 4 MB of RAM. Can I install FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
The latest version of FreeBSD (2.1.5) will install on a 4MB
system, provided you use the <url
url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/FreeBSD/2.1.5-RELEASE/floppies/boot4.flp"
name="special boot floppy for 4MB systems.">
FreeBSD 2.1.5 does 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
2.1.5 up.
Try to go into your BIOS setup and look for a ``remap'' option.
Enable it. You may also have to disable ROM shadowing.
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.
You may also install 2.0.5 and then upgrade your system to 2.1.5
with the ``upgrade'' option of the 2.1.5 installation program.
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>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.
<sect1>
<heading>How can I have more than one operating system on my PC?</heading>
<p>
Have a look at <url url="http://www.in.net/~jayrich/doc/multios.html" name="The multi-OS page.">
<sect1>
<heading>Can I install on an IDE disk with bad blocks?</heading>
<p>
FreeBSD's bad block (the ``<tt/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.
<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 made this
mistake at least once when FTP'ing things!)
<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, as
the disk creation program does; even running it inside a DOS
shell in the GUI can cause this problem.
</enum>
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 2.1.5R 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 2.1.5R; with these tapes,
you will get an error that complains about the record size being
too big.
<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>
<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).
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.
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!
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.
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 heads (*not* 64), and 255 sectors per track, where
'M' is the disk capacity in MB divided by 7.844238 (!). So our
example 2GB drive would have 261 cylinders, 63 heads and 255 sectors
per track.
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).
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).
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>When I boot FreeBSD I get ``Missing Operating System''.</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>How can I add my new hard disk to my FreeBSD system?</heading>
<p>
The easiest way to do this is from the installation program. You
can start the installation program by running
<tt>/stand/sysinstall</tt> as root.
<p>
Alternatively, if you still have the install floppy, you can just
reboot from that.
<p>
Select the ``Express Install'' option, which will put you
straight into the partition editor, and create a single slice on the
disk with the (A)ll option (make sure you are editing the right
disk!). Say ``No'' when asked if you want to remain compatible with
other operating systems, and ``Yes'' when asked if you know what
you're doing. Then write it out with the (W)rite command and
press (Q)uit to transfer to the disklabel editor.
<p>
Divide up your FreeBSD slice according to taste and press `w' when
you are happy with the way it looks. Again, say ``Yes'' when asked
for confirmation, and press `q' to quit.
<p>
<label id="2_1-disklabel-fix">
<bf>Using disklabel(8) manually with 2.1.5-RELEASE</bf>
<p>
<em>WARNING: There is no substitute for reading carefully
&amp; understanding what you are doing! Things described here may
DESTROY your system. Proceed with caution! Remember, a BACKUP is your
friend!</em>
<p>
<tt /sysinstall/ is broken with 2.1.5-RELEASE and will
insist on mounting something at / in the disklabel editor. You will
have to manually run <tt /disklabel(8)/ before you can run
<tt /newfs(8)/. This means doing the math for partitions
yourself. This is rumoured to be easy :-) See if you can obtain a
skeletal label with ''<tt>disklabel -r &lt;diskname&gt;</tt>''
<em>(eg. </em>''<tt>disklabel -r /dev/rwd0s2</tt>''<em>, assuming
that your new disk is wd0, the first IDE drive, and the FreeBSD
slice is the second one, s2)</em>. You should see something
like:-
<verb>
# /dev/rwd0s2:
type: ESDI
disk: wd0s2
label:
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 64
sectors/cylinder: 4032
cylinders: 610
sectors/unit: 2459520
rpm: 3600
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0 # milliseconds
track-to-track seek: 0 # milliseconds
drivedata: 0
8 partitions:
# size offset fstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
c: 2459520 0 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 609)
e: 2459520 0 4.2BSD 0 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 609)
</verb>
Make sure that the size is correct, in this case, 2459520
sectors/unit x 512 bytes/sector / 2**20 (1 Megabyte) = 1200
Megabytes. The rest of the stuff (b/s, t/c, s/c, interleave, etc.)
should get suitable defaults from <tt /disklabel/, but see
<ref id="ESDI" name="this note"> for older disks. 'fsize' is the
<ref id="fsize" name="Fragment size"> for the filesystem,
and 'bsize' is the <ref id="bsize" name="Block size">. 'c' is
the partition covering the entire slice (or entire disk for a
non-sliced disk), and must remain as it is. <em>It should not be
used for a filesystem</em>. The 'c' partition is magic in that it
is faked by the kernel even if no disklabel exists.
<p>
In the trivial case, where you want a single filesystem spanning
the whole slice, the entry for 'e' has to be corrected. Setting fsize
to 1024 and bsize to 8192 (8 fragments/block), which are reasonable
values for a filesystem, the correct entry for 'e' would be:-
<verb>
e: 2459520 0 4.2BSD 1024 8192
</verb>
<p>
Now, the (slightly) harder case, where we want 2 partitions for 2
filesystems. Following the <ref id="fsname" name="BSD naming
conventions">, the partitions will be <tt /wd0s2e/ &amp;
<tt /wd0s2f/. Suppose we split up the 1200 MB into 300 MB for
'e' and the remaining 900 MB for 'f'. The partition entries would
be:-
<verb>
8 partitions:
# size offset fstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
c: 2459520 0 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 - 609)
e: 614400 0 4.2BSD 1024 8192
f: 1843200 614400 4.2BSD 1024 8192
</verb>
<p>
<bf /Note:/ You can directly edit the disklabel with
''<tt>disklabel -e wd0s2</tt>''. See <tt /disklabel(8)/.
<p>
You're done! Time to initialise the filesystems with something
like:-
<verb>
newfs -d0 /dev/rwd0s2e
newfs -d0 /dev/rwd0s2f
</verb>
Depending on the disk name and slice number, it might be
required that you run the script <tt>/dev/MAKEDEV</tt>
before in order to create the desired device nodes.
And mount your new filesystems (See <tt /mount(8)/):-
<verb>
mount /dev/wd0s2e /mnt/foo
mount /dev/wd0s2f /mnt/bar
</verb>
You may wish to edit <tt>/etc/fstab</tt> to automatically mount
the filesystems at boot time.
<p>
<bf /Glossary:/
<descrip>
<tag><label id="fsize"><bf>Fragment Size (fsize)</bf></tag>
The basic unit of storage for <tt /ffs/. See
M. McKusick, W. Joy, S. Leffler, and R. Fabry,
"A Fast File System for UNIX",
ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 2, 3, pp 181-197, August
1984, (reprinted in the BSD System Manager's Manual, SMM:5) or
<url url="file:/usr/share/doc/smm/05.fastfs/paper.ascii.gz"
name="/usr/share/doc/smm/05.fastfs/paper.ascii.gz">
on your system.
<tag><label id="bsize"><bf>Block Size (bsize)</bf></tag>
A block comprises one or more fragments. See the
reference above and
<url url="file:/usr/include/sys/disklabel.h"
name="&lt;sys/disklabel.h&gt;">
<tag><label id="ESDI">
<bf>Disklabel Characteristics for Older Disks (ESDI)</bf></tag>
You may need to provide more information to <tt /disklabel/
if you happen to own a ``true disk'', i.e. one with a
uniform geometry, real heads, sectors, and cylinders,
such as an old ESDI drive. All of this should be easily
obtainable from the drive case, owner's manual, fellow
sufferers, etc. :-)
<tag><label id="fsname">
<bf>BSD Filesystem Naming Conventions</bf></tag>
Partition 'a' is by convention reserved for a bootable
partition, and partition 'b' for swap space. Regular
partition names should start with 'd'. ('d' used to be
magic in 386BSD 0.1 through FreeBSD 2.0, thus partition
'e' is often used for the first non-bootable partition
containing a filesystem.)
</descrip>
<sect1>
<heading>I have bad blocks on my hard drive!</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...
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>
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>
For other drive types, you are dependent on support from the
operating system. Unfortunately, the ``bad144'' command that
FreeBSD supplies for this purpose needs a considerable amount
of work done on it...
IDE drives are <em/supposed/ to come with built-in bad-block
remapping; if you have documentation for your drive, you may want
to see if this feature has been disabled on your drive. However,
ESDI, RLL, and ST-506 drives normally do not do this.
<sect1>
<heading>I have &gt;16MB of RAM. Will this cause any problems?<label id="bigram"></heading>
<p>
No. FreeBSD 2.X comes with bounce buffers which allows 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).
<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.
<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 <tt/config(8)/. 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.)
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.
<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.
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.
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>
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.
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.
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>.
There is a 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>
</sect>
<sect>
<heading>Hardware compatibility <label id="hardware"></heading>
<p>
<sect1>
<heading>What kind of hard drives does FreeBSD run on?</heading>
<p>
IDE and SCSI hard drives are supported. FreeBSD also
supports ST-506 (sometimes called ``MFM''), RLL, and ESDI
drives, which are usually connected to WD-1002, WD-1003, or
WD-1006/7 controllers (although clones should also work).
<sect1>
<heading>What SCSI controllers are supported?</heading>
<p>
FreeBSD supports the following SCSI controllers:
<descrip>
<tag/Adaptec/
AH-152x Series &lt;ISA&gt; <newline>
AH-154x Series &lt;ISA&gt; <newline>
AH-174x Series &lt;EISA&gt; <newline>
Sound Blaster SCSI (AH-152x compat) &lt;ISA&gt; <newline>
AH-2742/2842 Series &lt;ISA/EISA&gt; <newline>
AH-2820/2822/2825 Series (Narrow/Twin/Wide) &lt;VLB&gt; <newline>
AH-294x and aic7870 MB controllers (Narrow/Twin/Wide) &lt;PCI&gt;<newline>
AH-394x (Narrow/Twin/Wide)
<tag/Buslogic/
BT-445 Series &lt;VLB&gt; (but see section <ref id="bigram"
name="on &gt;16 MB machines">) <newline>
BT-545 Series &lt;ISA&gt; <newline>
BT-742 Series &lt;EISA&gt;<newline>
BT-747 Series &lt;EISA&gt;<newline>
BT-946 Series &lt;PCI&gt; <newline>
BT-956 Series &lt;PCI&gt; <newline>
<tag/Future Domain/
TMC-950 Series &lt;ISA&gt; <newline>
<tag/PCI Generic/
NCR 53C81x based controllers &lt;PCI&gt; <newline>
NCR 53C82x based controllers &lt;PCI&gt; <newline>
NCR 53C860/75 based controllers &lt;PCI&gt; <newline>
<tag/ProAudioSpectrum/
Zilog 5380 based controllers &lt;ISA&gt; <newline>
Trantor 130 based controllers &lt;ISA&gt; <newline>
<tag/DTC/
DTC 3290 EISA SCSI in AHA-154x emulation.<newline>
<tag/Seagate/
ST-01/02 Series &lt;ISA&gt;<newline>
<tag/UltraStor/
UH-14f Series &lt;ISA&gt;<newline>
UH-24f Series &lt;EISA&gt; <newline>
UH-34f Series &lt;VLB&gt;<newline>
<tag/Western Digital/
WD7000 &lt;ISA&gt; &lt;No scatter/gather&gt;
</descrip>
<sect1>
<heading>What CD-ROM drives are supported by FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
Any SCSI drive connected to a supported controller.
<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 (should be considered
<bf/experimental/)
</itemize>
All non-SCSI cards are known to be extremely slow compared to
SCSI drives.
<sect1>
<heading>What multi-port serial cards are supported by FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
<itemize>
<item>AST/4 in shared IRQ mode,
<item>ARNET 8 port in shared IRQ mode,
<item>BOCA 4/8/16 port cards in shared IRQ mode,
<item>Cyclades 8/16 port &lt;Alpha&gt;,
<item>Cronyx/Sigfgma multiport sync/async,
<item>RISCom/8 multiport card,
<item>SCCSI Usenet II in shared IRQ mode,
<item>STB 4 port i shared IRQ mode,
</itemize>
Some unnamed clone cards have also been known to work, especially
those that claim to be AST compatible.
A Digiboard driver is currently in alpha stage. If you want to
test it, take the file in
<url url="ftp://freefall.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/incoming"
name="the incoming directory">
Check the <tt/sio(4)/ man page to get more information on
configuring such cards.
<sect1>
<heading>Does FreeBSD support Adaptec's AHA-2xxx SCSI adapters?</heading>
<p>
FreeBSD supports the AHA-2xxx line of adapters. The GPL portions
of the old drivers have been re-written and they are now fully
under the Berkeley style copyright. However, the 2920 is <bf /not/
currently supported.
<sect1>
<heading>I have a Mumbleco bus mouse. How do I set it up?</heading>
<p>
FreeBSD supports the Logitech and ATI Inport bus mice. You need
to add the following line to the kernel config file and recompile
for the Logitech and ATI mice:
<verb>
device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c tty irq5 vector mseintr
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>I have a PS/2 mouse (``keyboard'' mouse) How do I use it?<label id="ps2mouse"></heading>
<p>
You'll have to add the following lines to your kernel
configuration file and recompile:
<verb>
device psm0 at isa? port "IO_KBD" conflicts tty irq 12 vector psmintr
# Options for psm:
options PSM_NO_RESET #don't reset mouse hardware (some laptops)
</verb>
<p>
See the <url url="../handbook/kernelconfig.html"
name="Handbook entry on configuring the kernel">
if you've no experience with building kernels.
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>
When logged in as root.
<p>
Note: Some PS/2 mouse controllers have a problem
where the presence of the psm0 driver will cause the keyboard to
lock up (which is why this driver is not present by default in the
GENERIC kernel). This can sometimes be fixed by bouncing the
NumLock key during the boot process. Also suggest going into CMOS
setup and toggling any value for Numlock On/Off at boot time. The
real fix is, of course, to merge the PS/2 mouse driver with syscons.
Any volunteers? :)
<sect1>
<heading>I have a laptop with a track-ball mouse.</heading>
<p>
Please refer to the answer to the previous question.
<sect1>
<heading>What types of tape drives are supported under FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
FreeBSD supports SCSI, QIC-02 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.
Some of the early 8-mm drives are not quite compatible with
SCSI-2, and may not work well with FreeBSD.
<sect1>
<heading>What 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. The SoundBlaster 16 ASP cards are not yet
supported. The Microsoft Sound System is also supported.
<bf/NOTE/ This is only for sound! This driver does not support
CD-ROMs, SCSI or joysticks on these cards.
<sect1>
<heading>What network cards does FreeBSD support?</heading>
<p>
There is support for the following cards:
<descrip>
<tag/``de'' driver/
DEC DC21x40 and compatible PCI controllers<newline>
(including 21140 100bT cards) <newline>
<tag/``ed'' driver/
NE2000 and 1000<newline>
WD/SMC 8003, 8013 and Elite Ultra (8216)<newline>
3Com 3c503 <newline>
HP 27247B and 27252A <newline>
And clones of the above <newline>
<tag/``le'' driver/
DEC EtherWORKS II and EtherWORKS III controllers. <newline>
<tag/``ie'' driver/
AT&amp;T EN100/StarLAN 10 <newline>
3COM 3c507 Etherlink 16/TP<newline>
NI5210 <newline>
<tag/``is'' driver/
Isolan AT 4141-0 <newline>
Isolink 4110 <newline>
<tag/``el'' driver/
3com 3c501 (does not support Multicast or DMA)
<tag/``eg'' driver/
3com 3c505 Etherlink/+
<tag/``ze'' driver/
IBM PCMCIA credit card adapter
<tag/``lnc'' drive/
Lance/PCnet cards (Isolan, Novell NE2100, NE32-VL)(*)
<tag/``ep'' driver/
3com 3c509 (Must disable PNP support on card)
<tag/``ix'' driver/
Intel InterExpress
<tag/``cx'' driver/
Cronyx/Sigma multiport Sync/Async (Cisco and PPP framing)
<tag/``zp'' driver/
3Com PCMCIA Etherlink III (aka 3c589)
<tag/``fea'' driver/
DEC DEFEA EISA FDDI controller
<tag/``fpa'' driver/
DEC DEFPA PCI FDDI controller
<tag/``fe'' driver/
Fujitsu MB86960A/MB86965A Ethernet cards
</descrip>
<bf/NOTE/ PCMCIA Ethernet cards from IBM and National
Semiconductor.
<bf/NOTE/ Drivers marked with (*) are known to have problems.
<bf/NOTE/ We also support TCP/IP over parallel lines. At this point
we are incompatible with other versions, but we hope to correct
this in the near future.
<bf/NOTE/ Some of these cards require a DOS partition on your hard
drive to run the configuration software. Software configured cards
may also need to be hard-reset after running another operating
system that uses manufacturer-supplied drivers.
<sect1>
<heading>I don't have a math co-processor.</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.
<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>
Here is a listing of drivers that do not fit into any of the
above areas.
<descrip>
<tag><tt/b004.c/</tag>
Driver for B004 compatible Transputer boards <newline>
<tag>``ctx'' driver</tag>
Driver for CORTEX-I Frame grabber <newline>
<tag>``gp'' driver</tag>
Driver for National Instruments AT-GPIB and<newline>
AT-GPIB/TNT boards
<tag>``pca'' driver</tag>
Driver for PC speakers to allow the playing of audio files
<tag>``spigot'' driver</tag>
Driver for the Creative Labs Video Spigot
<tag>``gsc'' driver</tag>
Driver for the Genuis GS-4500 Hand scanner
<tag>``joy'' driver</tag>
Driver for a joystick
<tag/``labpc'' driver/
Driver for National Instrument's Lab-PC and Lab-PC+
<tag/``uart'' driver/
Stand-alone 6850 UART for MIDI
<tag/``nic'' driver/
Dr Neuhaus NICCY 3008, 3009 &amp; 5000 ISDN cards
<tag/``psm'' driver/
PS/2 mouse port
<tag><tt/tw.c/</tag>
Driver for the X-10 POWERHOUSE <newline>
</descrip>
<!--
<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.
-->
<sect1>
<heading>I have a lap-top with power management.</heading>
<p>
FreeBSD supports APM on certain machines. Please look in the
<tt/LINT/ kernel config file under <tt/APM/.
<sect1>
<heading>FreeBSD does not recognise my Bustek 742a EISA SCSI.</heading>
<p>
This info is specific to the 742a but may also cover other
Buslogic cards. (Bustek = Buslogic)
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.
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''
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.
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.
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.
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>FreeBSD does not recognise my on-board AIC-7xxx EISA SCSI in an HP Netserver</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.
So now, the best you can do is to pretend there were no address
range clash :), go right ahead and edit the file
<tt>/sys/i386/eisa/eisaconf.h</tt>. Look for a line defining the
macro <tt/EISA_SLOTS/, and bump the number it's defining to 12.
Configure and compile a kernel, as described in the
<url url="../handbook/kernelconfig.html"
name="Handbook entry on configuring the kernel">.
Of course, this does present you 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>
at the prompt, and install your system as usual. Don't forget
to install the kernel source distribution, since you need to
build a custom kernel, or otherwise you would have to repeat the
described procedure at each boot! <tt/dset(8)/ doesn't save this
change for you.
Hopefully, future version will have a proper fix for this problem.
<sect>
<heading>Commercial Applications</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.
<sect1>
<heading>Where can I get Motif for FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>Contact <url url="http://www.xinside.com" name="X Inside, Inc.">
for a Motif v2.0 distribution for FreeBSD 2.1 (tested also with
2.2-current as of May 10, 1996).
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.
<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>X Inside.</em></p>
<sect1>
<heading>Are there any commercial high-performance X servers?<label id="xinside"></heading>
<p>
Yes, <url url="http://www.xinside.com" name="X Inside, Inc.">
sells their Accelerated-X product for FreeBSD and other Intel
based systems.
This high performance X Server offers easy configuration, support
for multiple concurrent video boards and is distributed in binary
form only.
Price is &dollar;99.50 (promotional price for Linux/FreeBSD
version) for the 1.1 version, which is available now.
This product is for FreeBSD 1.1 and runs under 2.0 with the
FreeBSD 1.1 compatibility libs (``<tt/compat1xdist/'').
<descrip>
<tag/More info/
<url url="http://www.xinside.com/" name="X inside WWW page">
<tag/or/
<url url="ftp://ftp.xinside.com/accelx/1.1/prodinfo.txt"
name="Products information">
<tag/or/
<url url="mailto:info@xinside.com" name="Info E-mail address">
<tag/or/
phone +1 (303) 298-7478.
</descrip>
<sect1>
<heading>Are there any Database systems for FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
Yes! Conetic Software Systems has ported their C/base and C/books
database systems to FreeBSD 2.0.5 and higher.
<descrip>
<tag/For more information/
<url url="http://www.conetic.com/" name="Conetic Software Systems">
<tag/or mail/
<url url="mailto:info@conetic.com" name="Information E-mail address">
</descrip>
<sect1>
<heading>Any other applications I might be interested in?</heading>
<p>
RenderMorphics, Ltd. sells a high-speed 3D rendering package for
FreeBSD called ``Reality Lab'' (tm).
Send email to <url url="mailto:info@render.com"
name="info@render.com">
or call: +44(0)71-251-4411 / FAX: +44(0)71-251-0939
This package is also for FreeBSD 1.1.5 but has been tested and
shown to run under FreeBSD 2.0 with the ``<tt/compat1xdist/''
installed.
Thanks must be extended to all of these companies for showing
enough faith in FreeBSD to port their products to it. While we
get no direct benefit from the sales of these products, the
indirect benefits of FreeBSD proving itself to be a successful
platform for such commercial interests will be immense! We wish
these companies every measure of success, and can only hope that
others are encouraged to follow suit.
</sect1>
<sect>
<heading>User Applications</heading>
<sect1>
<heading>I want to run X, how do I go about it?</heading>
<p>
First, get the XFree86(tm) distribution of X11R6 from
<tt/XFree86.cdrom.com/ The version you want for FreeBSD 2.X and
later is <tt/XFree86 3.1.1/. Follow the instructions for
installation carefully. You may then wish to read the
documentation for the <tt/ConfigXF86/ tool, which assists you in
configuring XFree86(tm) for your particular graphics
card/mouse/etc.
You may also wish to investigate the Xaccel server, which is
available at a very reasonable price. See section
<ref id="xinside" name="on Xaccel"> for more details.
<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>
<bf/NOTE/ You will need to remove the <tt/MATH&lowbar;EMULATE/
option when you do this.
<sect1>
<heading>Is there an easy way to get hold of applications?</heading>
<p>
Yes. We support the concept of a ``package'', which is
essentially a gzipped binary distribution with a little extra
intelligence embedded in it for doing any custom installation
work required. Packages can also be installed or uninstalled
again easily without having to know the gory details. CDROM
people will have a <tt>packages/</tt> directory on their CD,
others can get the currently available packages from:
<url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/FreeBSD/packages"
name="FreeBSD's packages">
Note that all ports may not be available as packages, and that
new packages are constantly being added. It is always a good
idea to check periodically to see which packages are available.
A <tt/README/ file in the packages directory provides more
details on the care and feeding of the package software, so no
explicit details will be given here.
<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> in the last
section to change the following variable to <tt/YES/:
<code>
# Set to YES if you want ibcs2 (SCO) emulation loaded at startup
ibcs2=NO
</code>
It will load the <tt/ibcs2/ kernel module at startup.
You'll then need to set up /compat/ibcs2/dev to look like:
<code>
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
</code>
You just need socksys to go to <tt>/dev/null</tt> 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>
<heading>How do I configure INN (Internet News) for my machine?</heading>
<p>After installing the inn package or port, the
<url url="http://www.math.psu.edu/barr/INN.html" name="Dave Barr's INN Page"> where you'll find the INN FAQ may be an excellent place to start.
<sect>
<heading>Miscellaneous Questions</heading>
<p>
<sect1>
<heading>Why does FreeBSD consume far more swap space than Linux?</heading>
<p>
It doesn't. You might mean ``why does my swap seem full?''. If
that is what you really meant, it's because putting stuff in swap
rather than discarding it makes it faster to recover than if the
pager had to go through the file system to pull in clean
(unmodified) blocks from an executable.
The actual amount of dirty pages that you can have in core at
once is not reduced; the clean pages are displaced as necessary.
<sect1>
<heading>How can I add more swap space?</heading>
<p>The best way is to increase the size of your swap partition, or
take advantage of this convenient excuse to add another disk, but
<bf/Werner Griessl/ has provided these instructions for setting FreeBSD
up for swapping to a file:
<p>Here is an example for 64Mb vn-swap (<tt>/usr/swap0</tt>)
<p>
<enum>
<item>
create a vn-device
<verb>
cd /dev; sh ./MAKEDEV vn0
</verb>
<item>
create a swapfile (<tt>/usr/swap0</tt>)
<verb>
dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/swap0 bs=1024k count=64
</verb>
<item>
put into /etc/rc.local the line
<verb>
vnconfig -ce /dev/vn0c /usr/swap0 swap
</verb>
<item>
reboot the machine
</enum>
<p>
You must also have a kernel with the line
<verb>
pseudo-device vn #Vnode driver (turns a file into a device)
</verb>
in your config-file.
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>Why doesn'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 <tt/chmod(1)/
and <tt/symlink(7)/ man pages for more info.
<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
<tt/chmod(1)/ 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>
With the trailing slash, <tt/chmod/ will follow the symlink,
``<tt/foo/'', to change the permissions of the directory,
``<tt/bar/''.
<sect1>
<heading>When I mount a CDROM, I get ``Incorrect super block''.</heading>
<p>
You have to tell <tt/mount(8)/ the type of the device that you
want to mount. By default, <tt/mount(8)/ 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 <tt/mount(8)/. 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.
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>
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.
Sometimes a SCSI CD-ROM may be missed because it hadn't enough time
to answer the bus reset. In 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>How can I use the NT loader to boot FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
The general idea is that you copy the first sector of your
native root Linux or FreeBSD partition into a file in the DOS/NT
partition. Assuming you name that file something like
<tt>c:&bsol;bootsect.lnx</tt> or <tt>c:&bsol;bootsect.bsd</tt>
(inspired by <tt>c:&bsol;bootsect.dos</tt>) you can then edit the
<tt>c:&bsol;boot.ini</tt> file to come up with something like
this:
<verb>
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows NT"
C:\BOOTSECT.LNX="Linux"
C:\BOOTSECT.BSD="FreeBSD"
C:\="DOS"
</verb>
This procedure assumes that DOS, NT, Linux, FreeBSD, or whatever
have been installed into their respective fdisk partitions on the
<bf/same/ disk. In my case DOS &amp; NT are in the first fdisk
partition, Linux in the second, and FreeBSD in the third. I also
installed Linux and FreeBSD to boot from their native partitions,
not the disk MBR, and without delay.
Mount a DOS-formatted floppy (if you've converted to NTFS) or the
FAT partition, under, say, <tt>/mnt</tt>.
In Linux:
<verb>
dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/mnt/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
</verb>
In FreeBSD:
<verb>
dd if=/dev/rsd0a of=/mnt/bootsect.bsd bs=512 count=1
</verb>
Reboot into DOS or NT. NTFS users copy the <tt/bootsect.lnx/
and/or the <tt/bootsect.bsd/ file from the floppy to
<tt/C:&bsol;/. Modify the attributes (permissions) on
<tt/boot.ini/ with:
<verb>
attrib -s -r c:\boot.ini
</verb>
Edit to add the appropriate entries from the example
<tt/boot.ini/ above, and restore the attributes:
<verb>
attrib -r -s c:\boot.ini
</verb>
If Linux or FreeBSD are booting from the MBR, restore it with the
DOS ``<tt>fdisk /mbr</tt>'' command after you reconfigure them to
boot from their native partitions.
<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>
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 keyboard locks up after switching between vtys.</heading>
<p>
Try adding the following option in your kernel configuration file
and recompile it.
<verb>
options ASYNCH
</verb>
See the section on <ref id="make-kernel" name="building a
kernel"> if you've no experience with building kernels.
<sect1>My bus mouse locks up spontaneously.</heading>
<p>
Please refer to the answer to the previous question.
<sect1>
<heading>Can I run DOS binaries under FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
Not yet, though BSDI has just donated their <tt/rundos/ DOS emulation
subsystem which we're now working on integrating and enhancing.
Send mail to
<url url="mailto:emulation@freebsd.org"
name="The FreeBSD emulation discussion list">
if you're interested in joining this effort!
For now, there is a neat utility called ``<tt/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 3.1.2).
<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 busmastering DMA from a SCSI controller like the
Adaptec 1542).
Often the guilty party is 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.
You may have to run with no on-board cache. This isn't a disaster,
but it's certainly less than ideal.
<sect1>
<heading>Help! X Window menus and dialog boxes don't work right!</heading>
<p>
Try turning off the Num Lock key.
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>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
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.
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>
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.
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:
<tt>AccelCards, BetaReport, Cards, Devices, FILES, README.ati,
README.FreeBSD, README.Mach64, RELNOTES, VGADriver.Doc,
X312BMa64.tgz</tt>
Replace the older files with the new versions and make sure you
run <tt/xf86config/ again.
<sect1>
<heading>What is a virtual console?</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.
<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 use only the Alt- function key to switch to another
virtual terminal or back to X Window. You do not also press the
Ctrl key; the Ctrl-Alt-function key combination is used only when
switching from X Window to a virtual terminal. If you insist on
using the control key to switch back to X 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 increase the number of virtual consoles?</heading>
<p>
Edit <tt>/etc/ttys</tt> and add entries for ``<tt/ttyv4/'' to
``<tt/ttyvc/'' after the comment on ``Virtual terminals'' (delete
the leading whitespace in the following example):
<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>
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/''.
<bf/IMPORTANT NOTE/ if you want to run X Window, you <bf/MUST/
leave a virtual terminal unused (or turned off). For example, if
you want to attach a virtual terminal to all of your twelve
Alt-function keys, you can only attach virtual terminals to
eleven of them. The last must be left unused, because
X Window System
will use it, and you will use the last Alt-function key to switch
back to X Window (after you have switched from X Window to a
virtual console via a Ctrl-Alt-function key). The easiest way to
do this is to disable a console by turning it off. For example,
if you have a keyboard with twelve function keys, you would
change settings for virtual terminal 12 from:
<verb>
ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
</verb>
to:
<verb>
ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure
</verb>
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>
(You could also just delete these lines.)
Once you have edited <tt>/etc/ttys</tt>, 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>
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>
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 start XDM from the <tt>/etc/ttys</tt> file ?</heading>
<p>
Starting xdm via /etc/ttys is a Bad Thing. I don't know why this
crept into some README file.
Start it from your <tt/rc.local/, and be explicit about how it
has to start. If this is your last action in <tt/rc.local/, put
a ``<tt/sleep 1/'' behind, to allow <tt/xdm/ to properly
daemonize before the <tt/rc/ shell exits.
<tt/xdm/ should be started without any arguments (i.e., as a
daemon).
<bf/NOTE:/ A previos version of this FAQ told you 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>What is this thing called ``<tt/sup/'', and how do I use it?</heading>
<p>
You should really be using CVSup, not sup, according to the latest
skinny. I'm going to bug the hackers for a section describing that.
In the meantime:
SUP stands for Software Update Protocol, and was developed by CMU
for keeping their development trees in sync. We use it to keep
remote sites in sync with our central development sources.
Unless you have direct Internet connectivity, and don't care too
much about the cost/duration of the sessions, you shouldn't use
sup. For those ``low/expensive-bandwidth'' applications, we have
developed <tt/CTM/, see the section <ref id="ctm" name="on CTM">
for more about that.
To use it, you need to have direct Internet connectivity (not
just mail or news). First, pick up the <tt/sup.tgz/ package
from:
<url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/FreeBSD/packages/sup.tgz"
name="The SUP package">
Second, read the <url
url="http://www.freebsd.org/How/handbook/sup.html"
name="Handbook entry on SUP">
This file describes how to setup sup on your machine. You may
also want to look at
<tt>/usr/src/share/examples/sup/*-supfile</tt>, or you may grab
updated supfiles from:
<url url="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.ORG/pub/FreeBSD/FAQ/extras"
name="Updated SUP files">
which are a set of supfiles for supping from <tt/FreeBSD.ORG/.
<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!
Seriously, Linux uses the ``<tt/HALT/'' instruction when the
system is idle thus lowering its energy consumption and therefore
the heat it generates.
<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.
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>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="http://www.freebsd.org/How/handbook/handbook/ctm.html"
name="CTM facility.">
<sect1>
<heading>How did you split the distribution up 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.
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>&lt;XXX&gt; I'd like to browse the system dumps after a panic.</heading>
<sect1>
<heading>I've written a kernel extension, who do I send it to?</heading>
<p>
Please take a look at:
<url url="http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/How/handbook/submitters.html"
name="The Handbook entry on how to submit code.">
And thanks for the thought!
<sect1>
<heading>When I run xconsole, I get ``Couldn't open console''.</heading>
<p>
If you start X with 'startx', the permissions on /dev/console will
<tt /not/ get changed, resulting in things like ``xterm -C'' and
``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 <tt/fbtab(5)/ file exists
to solve such problems.
In a nutshell, make sure an uncommented line of the form
<verb>
/dev/ttyv0 0600 /dev/console
</verb>
is in <tt>/etc/fbtab</tt> and it will ensure that whomever logs
in on <tt>/dev/ttyv0</tt> will own the console.
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>How are Plug N Play ISA cards detected and initialised?</heading>
<p>
By: Frank Durda IV <tt>&lt;uhclem@nemesis.lonestar.org&gt;</tt>
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.
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.
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.
The 32 bit groups can never be all zero. This allows the
wired-OR to show non-zero bits during the initial binary search.
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.
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 geniune 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.
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.
There is a lot of oversimplification above, but you should get
the general idea.
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/.
<sect>
<heading>Kernel Configuration</heading>
<p>
<sect1>
<heading>I'd like to customize my kernel. Is it difficult?<label id="make-kernel"></heading>
<p>
Not at all! First, you need either the complete
<tt/srcdist/ or, at the minimum, the <tt/kerndist/ loaded on your
system. This provides the necessary sources for building the
kernel, as, unlike most commercial UNIX vendors, we have a policy
of <bf/NOT/ shipping our kernel code in binary object form.
Shipping the source takes a bit more space, but it also means
that you can refer to the actual kernel sources in case of
difficulty or to further your understanding of what's
<bf/really/ happening.
Once you have the <tt/kerndist/ or <tt/srcdist/ loaded, do this:
<enum>
<item> <tt>cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf</tt>
<item> <tt/cp GENERIC MYKERNEL/
<item> <tt/vi MYKERNEL/
<item> <tt/config MYKERNEL/
<item> <tt>cd ../../compile/MYKERNEL</tt>
<item> <tt/make depend/
<item> <tt/make all/
<item> <tt/make install/
<item> <tt/reboot/
</enum>
Step 2 may not be necessary if you already have a kernel
configuration file from a previous release of FreeBSD 2.X. -
simply bring your old one over and check it carefully for any
drivers that may have changed boot syntax or been rendered
obsolete.
A good kernel config file to look into is <tt/LINT/, which
contains entries for <bf/all/ possible kernel options and
documents them fairly well. The <tt/GENERIC/ kernel config file
is used to build the initial release you probably loaded (unless
you upgraded in-place) and contains entries for the most common
configurations. It's a pretty good place to start from.
If you don't need to make any changes to <tt/GENERIC/, you can
also skip step 3, where you customize the kernel for your
configuration. Step 8 should only be undertaken if steps 6 and 7
succeed. This will copy the new kernel image to
<tt>/kernel</tt> and <bf/BACK UP YOUR OLD ONE IN/
<tt>/kernel.old</tt>! It's very important to remember this in
case the new kernel fails to work for some reason - you can still
select <tt>/kernel.old</tt> at the boot prompt to boot the old
one. When you reboot, the new kernel will boot by default.
If the compile in step 7 falls over for some reason, then it's
recommended that you start from step 4 but substitute
<tt/GENERIC/ for <tt/MYKERNEL/. If you can generate a
<tt/GENERIC/ kernel, then it's likely something in your special
configuration file that's bad (or you've uncovered a bug!). If
the build of the <tt/GENERIC/ kernel does <bf/NOT/ succeed, then
it's very likely that your sources are somehow corrupted.
Finally, if you need to see your original boot messages again to
compile a new kernel that's better tailored to your hardware, try
the <tt/dmesg(8)/ command. It should print out all the boot-time
messages printed by your old kernel, some of which may be quite
helpful in configuring the new one.
<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 <tt/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>
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>
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 <tt/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>
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>
for the first device. <tt/ft1/ for a second one and so on.
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 <tt/ft/ for further details.
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.
<sect1>
<heading>Does FreeBSD support System V IPC primitives?</heading>
<p>
Yes, FreeBSD supports System V-style IPC. This includes shared
memory, messages and semaphores. You need to add the following
lines to your kernel config to enable them.
<verb>
options SYSVSHM
options "SHMMAXPGS=64" # 256Kb of sharable memory
options SYSVSEM # enable for semaphores
options SYSVMSG # enable for messaging
</verb>
Recompile and install.
<bf/NOTE:/ You may need to increase SHMMAXPGS to some
ridiculous number like 4096 (16M!) if you want to run
GIMP. 256Kb is plenty for X11R6 shared memory.
<sect1>
<heading>I have 128 MB of RAM but the system only uses 64 MB.</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). If you have more than 64MB, FreeBSD will only see
the first 64MB. 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.
<code>
options "MAXMEM=<n>"
</code>
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:
<code>
options "NMBCLUSTERS=<n>"
</code>
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
<tt/netstat -m/.
<sect1>
<heading>Will FreeBSD ever support other architectures?</heading>
<p>
Several different groups have expressed interest in working on
multi-architecture support for FreeBSD. If you are interested in
doing so, please contact the developers at
<tt>&lt;platforms@FreeBSD.ORG&gt;</tt> for more information on our
strategy for porting.
<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 <tt>MAKEDEV</tt> 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;hackers@FreeBSD.ORG&gt;</tt>.
</sect1>
<sect>
<heading>System Administration</heading>
<sect1>
<heading>Where are the system start-up configuration files?</heading>
<p>
As of 2.0.5R, the primary configuration file is
<tt>/etc/sysconfig</tt>. All the options are to be specified in
this one and the other one (<tt>/etc/rc</tt> and
<tt>/etc/netstart</tt>) just include it.
Look in the <tt>/etc/sysconfig</tt> file and change the value to
match your system. This file is filled with comments to show what
to put in there.
The <tt>/etc/rc.local</tt> is here as always and is the place to
put additional services like <tt/INN/ or a <tt/http/ server.
The <tt>/etc/rc.serial</tt> is for serial port initialization
(e.g. locking the port characteristics, and so on.).
The <tt>/etc/rc.i386</tt> is for Intel-specifics setting like the
iBCS2 emulation.
Starting with 2.1.0R, you can have "local" startup files in a
directory specified in <tt>/etc/sysconfig</tt>:
<verb>
# Location of local startup files.
local_startup=/usr/local/etc/rc.local.d
</verb>
Each file ending in <tt/.sh/ will be executed in alphabetic
order.
If you want to have a proper order without changing all the file
names, you can use a scheme similar to the following with digits
prepended to each file name to insure order:
<verb>
10news.sh
15httpd.sh
20ssh.sh
</verb>
It can be seen as ugly (or SysV :-)) but it provides a simple and
regular scheme for locally-added packages without resorting to
magical editing of <tt>/etc/rc.local</tt>.
<sect1>
<heading>How do I add a user easily?</heading>
<p>
Use the <tt/adduser/ command.
There is another package called ``<tt/new-account/'' also written
in Perl by Ollivier Robert. Ask
<tt>&lt;roberto@FreeBSD.ORG&gt;</tt> about it. It is currently
under further development.
<sect1>
<heading>I'm having problems setting up my printer.</heading>
<p>
Please have a look at the Handbook entry on printing. It
should cover most of your problem. See the
<url
url="http://www.freebsd.org/How/handbook/printing.html"
name="Handbook entry on printing.">
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>The keyboard mappings are wrong for my system.</heading>
<p>
The kbdcontrol program has an option to load a keyboard map file.
Under <tt>/usr/share/syscons/keymaps</tt> are a number of map
files. Choose the one relevant to your system and load it.
<verb>
kbdcontrol -l uk.iso
</verb>
Both the <tt>/usr/share/syscons/keymaps</tt> and the <tt/.kbd/
extension are assumed by <tt/kbdcontrol(1)/.
This can be configured in <tt>/etc/sysconfig</tt>. See the
appropriate comments in this file.
In 2.0.5R and later, everything related to text fonts, keyboard
mapping is in <tt>/usr/share/examples/syscons</tt>.
The following mappings are currently supported:
<itemize>
<!-- automatically created by `kbdmap -p' -->
<item>Brazilian 275 keyboard Codepage 850
<item>Brazilian 275 keyboard ISO-8859-1
<item>Danish Codepage 865
<item>Danish ISO-8859-1
<item>French ISO-8859-1
<item>German Codepage 850
<item>German ISO-8859-1
<item>Italian ISO-8859-1
<item>Japanese 106
<item>Japanese 106x
<item>Norwegian ISO-8859-1
<item>Russian Codepage 866 (alternative)
<item>Russian koi8-r (shift)
<item>Russian koi8-r
<item>Spanish ISO-8859-1
<item>Swedish Codepage 850
<item>Swedish ISO-8859-1
<item>United Kingdom Codepage 850
<item>United Kingdom ISO-8859-1
<item>United States of America ISO-8859-1
<item>United States of America dvorak
<item>United States of America dvorakx
</itemize>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>``CMAP busy panic'' when rebooting with a new kernel.</heading>
<p>
The logic that attempts to detect an out of data
<tt>/var/db/kvm_*.db</tt> files sometimes fails and using a
mismatched file can sometimes lead to panics.
If this happens, reboot single-user and do:
<verb>
rm /var/db/kvm_*.db
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>I can't get user quotas to work properly.</heading>
<p>
<enum>
<item>Don't turn on quotas on '/',
<item>Put the quota file on the file system that the quotas are
to be enforced on. ie:
<verb>
FS QUOTA FILE
/usr /usr/admin/quotas
/home /home/admin/quotas
...
</verb>
</enum>
<sect1>
<heading>What's inappropriate about my ccd?</heading>
<p>
The symptom of this is:
<verb>
host# ccdconfig -C
ccdconfig: ioctl (CCDIOCSET): /dev/ccd0c: Inappropriate file type or format
host#
</verb>
<p>
This usually happens when you are trying to concatenate the
`c' partitions, which default to type `unused'. The ccd
driver requires the underlying partition type to be
FS_BSDFFS. Edit the disklabel of the disks you are trying
to concatenate and change the types of partitions to
`4.2BSD'.
<sect1>
<heading>Why can't I edit the disklabel on my ccd?</heading>
<p>
The symptom of this is:
<verb>
host# disklabel ccd0
(it prints something sensible here, so let's try to edit it)
host# disklabel -e ccd0
(edit, save, quit)
disklabel: ioctl DIOCWDINFO: No disk label on disk;
use "disklabel -r" to install initial label
host#
</verb>
<p>
This is because the disklabel returned by ccd is actually a
`fake' one that is not really on the disk. You can solve
this problem by writing it back explicitly, as in:
<verb>
host# disklabel ccd0 > /tmp/disklabel.tmp
host# disklabel -Rr ccd0 /tmp/disklabel.tmp
host# disklabel -e ccd0
(this will work now)
</verb>
<sect>
<heading>Networking</heading>
<sect1>
<heading>Where can I get information on ``diskless booting''?</heading>
<p>
``Diskless booting'' means that the FreeBSD box is booted over a
network, and reads the necessary files from a server instead of
its hard disk. For full details, please read
<url url="http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/How/handbook/diskless.html"
name="the Handbook entry on diskless booting">
<sect1>
<heading>Can a FreeBSD box be used as a dedicated network router?</heading>
<p>
Internet standards and good engineering practice prohibit us from
providing packet forwarding by default in FreeBSD. You can
however enable this feature by changing the following variable to
<tt/YES/ in <tt>/etc/sysconfig</tt>:
<verb>
# If you want this host to be a gateway, set to YES.
gateway=YES
</verb>
This option will put the <tt/sysctl/ variable
<tt/net.inet.ip.forwarding/ to <tt/1/.
In most cases, you will also need to run a routing process to
tell other systems on your network about your router; FreeBSD
comes with the standard BSD routing daemon <tt/routed(8)/, or for
more complex situations you may want to try <em/GaTeD/ (available
by FTP from <tt/ftp.gated.Merit.EDU/) which supports FreeBSD as
of 3_5Alpha7.
It is our duty to warn you that, even when FreeBSD is configured
in this way, it does not completely comply with the Internet
standard requirements for routers; however, it comes close enough
for ordinary usage.
<sect1>
<heading>I want to recompile the latest BIND from ISC. It blows up during the compilation on some types conflicts. What can I do ? </heading>
<p>
There is a conflict between the ``<tt/cdefs.h/'' file in the
distribution and the one shipped with FreeBSD. Just remove
<tt>compat/include/sys/cdefs.h</tt>.
<sect1>
<heading>Can I connect my Win95 box to the Internet via FreeBSD?</heading>
<p>
Typically, people who ask this question have two PC's at home, one
with FreeBSD and one with Win95; the idea is to use the FreeBSD
box to connect to the Internet and then be able to access the
Internet from the Windows95 box through the FreeBSD box. This
is really just a special case of the previous question.
There's a useful document available which explains how to set
FreeBSD up as a <url url="http://www.ssimicro.com/~jeremyc/ppp.html"
name="PPP Dialup Router">
<bf/NOTE:/ This requires having at least two fixed IP addresses
available, and possibly three or more, depending on how much
work you want to go through to set up the Windows box. As an
alternative, if you don't have a fixed IP, you can use one of
the private IP subnets and install <bf/proxies/ such as
<url url="http://squid.nlanr.net/Squid/" name="SQUID"> and
<url url="http://www.tis.com/" name="the TIS firewall toolkit">
on your FreeBSD box.
<sect1>
<heading>Does FreeBSD support SLIP and PPP?</heading>
<p>
Yes. See the man pages for <tt/slattach(8)/ and/or <tt/pppd(8)/
if you're using FreeBSD to connect to another site. If you're
using FreeBSD as a server for other machines, look at the man
page for <tt/sliplogin(8)/.
You can also have a look at the SLIP/PPP/Use PPP sections of the
handbook in <tt>/usr/share/doc/handbook</tt> or use the following
links:
<url url="http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/How/handbook/slips.html"
name="Handbook entry on SLIP (server side)">
<url url="http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/How/handbook/slipc.html"
name="Handbook entry on SLIP (client side)">
<url url="http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/How/handbook/ppp.html"
name="Handbook entry on PPP (kernel version)">
<url url="http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/How/handbook/userppp.html"
name="Handbook entry on PPP (user-mode version)">
<sect1>
<heading>I can connect with IJPPP but it doesn't work right!</heading>
<p>
A possible cause for this is IJPPPs' use of predictor1
compression. One way of determining if you have this problem
is to look at your log and if you have protocol errors then this is
most likely it.
These can be shut off with:
<verb>
deny pred1
disable pred1
</verb>
Use these two before you dial out and it should work.
<sect1>
<heading>I can't create a <tt>/dev/ed0</tt> device!</heading>
<p>
In the Berkeley networking framework, network interfaces are only
directly accessible by kernel code. Please see the
<tt>/etc/netstart</tt> file and the manual pages for the various
network programs mentioned there for more information. If this
leaves you totally confused, then you should pick up a book
describing network administration on another BSD-related
operating system; with few significant exceptions, administering
networking on FreeBSD is basically the same as on SunOS 4.0 or
Ultrix.
<sect1>
<heading>How can I setup Ethernet aliases?</heading>
<p>
Add ``<tt/netmask 0xffffffff/'' to your <tt/ifconfig/
command-line like the following:
<verb>
ifconfig ed0 alias 204.141.95.2 netmask 0xffffffff
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>How do I get my 3C503 to use the other network port?</heading>
<p>
If you want to use the other ports, you'll have to specify an
additional parameter on the <tt/ifconfig(1)/ command line. The
default port is ``<tt/link0/''. To use the AUI port instead of
the BNC one, use ``<tt/link2/''.
<sect1>
<heading>I'm having problems with NFS to/from FreeBSD.</heading>
<p>
Certain PC network cards are better than others (to put it
mildly) and can sometimes cause problems with network intensive
applications like NFS.
See
<url
url="http://www.freebsd.org/How/handbook/nfs.html"
name="the Handbook entry on NFS">
for more information on
this topic.
<sect1>
<heading>Why can't I NFS-mount from a Linux box?</heading>
<p>
Some versions of the Linux NFS code only accept mount requests
from a privileged port; try
<verb>
mount -o -P linuxbox:/blah /mnt
</verb>
<sect1>
<heading>Why can't I NFS-mount from a Sun box?</heading>
<p>
Sun workstations running SunOS 4.X only accept mount requests
from a privileged port; try
<verb>
mount -o -P sunbox:/blah /mnt
</verb>
<sect1><heading>I'm having problems talking PPP to NeXTStep machines.</heading>
<p>
Try disabling the TCP extensions in <tt>/etc/sysconfig</tt> by
changing the following variable to NO:
<verb>
tcp_extensions=NO
</verb>
Xylogic's Annex boxes are also broken in this regard and you must
use the above change to connect thru them.
<sect1>
<heading>How do I enable IP multicast support?</heading>
<p>
Multicast host operations are fully supported in FreeBSD 2.0 by
default. If you want your box to run as a multicast router, you
will need to load the <tt/ip_mroute_mod/ loadable kernel module
and run <tt/mrouted/.
For more information:
<verb>
Product Description Where
--------------- ----------------------- ---------------------------------------
faq.txt Mbone FAQ ftp.isi.edu:/mbone/faq.txt
imm/immserv IMage Multicast ftp.hawaii.edu:/paccom/imm.src.tar.Z
for jpg/gif images.
nv Network Video. ftp.parc.xerox.com:
/pub/net-reseach/exp/nv3.3alpha.tar.Z
vat LBL Visual Audio Tool. ftp.ee.lbl.gov:
/conferencing/vat/i386-vat.tar.Z
wb LBL White Board. ftp.ee.lbl.gov:
/conferencing/wb/i386-wb.tar.Z
mmcc MultiMedia Conference ftp.isi.edu:
Control program /confctrl/mmcc/mmcc-intel.tar.Z
rtpqual Tools for testing the ftp.psc.edu:/pub/net_tools/rtpqual.c
quality of RTP packets.
vat_nv_record Recording tools for vat ftp.sics.se:archive/vat_nv_record.tar.Z
and nv.
</verb>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>Which network cards are based on the DEC PCI chipset?</heading>
<p>
Here is a list compiled by Glen Foster
<tt/&lt;gfoster@driver.nsta.org&gt;/:
<code>
Vendor Model
- --------------------------------------------------------
ASUS PCI-L101-TB
Accton ENI1203
Cogent EM960PCI
Compex ENET32-PCI
D-Link DE-530
DEC DE435
Danpex EN-9400P3
JCIS Condor JC1260
Linksys EtherPCI
Mylex LNP101
SMC EtherPower 10/100 (Model 9332)
SMC EtherPower (Model 8432)
TopWare TE-3500P
Zynx ZX342
</code>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>Why do I have to use the FQDN for hosts on my site?</heading>
<p>
You will probably find that the host is actually in a different
domain; for example, if you are in foo.bar.edu and you wish to reach
a host called ``mumble'' in the bar.edu domain, you will have to
refer to it by the fully-qualified domain name, ``mumble.bar.edu'',
instead of just ``mumble''.
<p>
Traditionally, this was allowed by BSD BIND resolvers. However
the current version of <em>BIND</em> that ships with FreeBSD
no longer provides default abbreviations for non-fully
qualified domain names other than the domain you are in.
So an unqualified host <tt>mumble</tt> must either be found
as <tt>mumble.foo.bar.edu</tt>, or it will be searched for
in the root domain.
<p>
This is different from the previous behaviour, where the
search continued across <tt>mumble.bar.edu</tt>, and
<tt>mumble.edu</tt>. Have a look at RFC 1535 for why this
was considered bad practice, or even a security hole.
<p>
As a good workaround, you can place the line
<p><tt>
search foo.bar.edu bar.edu
</tt><p>
instead of the previous
<p><tt>
domain foo.bar.edu
</tt><p>
into your <tt>/etc/resolv.conf</tt>. However, make sure
that the search order does not go beyond the ``boundary
between local and public administration'', as RFC 1535
calls it.
</sect1>
<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 sendmail FAQ is in <tt>/usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail</tt>
and is recommended reading if you want to do any
``tweaking'' of your mail setup.
<sect1>
<heading>How do I use sendmail for mail delivery with UUCP?</heading>
<p>
The sendmail configuration that ships with FreeBSD is
suited for sites that connect directly to the Internet.
Sites that wish to exchange their mail via UUCP must install
another sendmail configuration file.
<p>
Tweaking <tt>/etc/sendmail.cf</tt> manually is considered
something for purists. Sendmail version 8 comes with a
new approach of generating config files via some <tt>m4</tt>
preprocessing, where the actual hand-crafted configuration
is on a higher abstraction level. You should use the
configuration files under
<verb>
/usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf
</verb>
If you didn't install your system with full sources,
the sendmail config stuff has been
broken out into a separate source distribution tarball just
for you. Assuming you've got your CD-ROM mounted, do:
<verb>
cd /usr/src
tar -xvzf /cdrom/dists/src/ssmailcf.aa
</verb>
Don't panic, this is only a few hundred kilobytes in size.
The file <tt>README</tt> in the <tt>cf</tt> directory can
serve as a basic introduction to m4 configuration.
<p>
For UUCP delivery, you are best advised to use the
<em>mailertable</em> feature. This constitutes a database
that sendmail can use to base its routing decision upon.
<p>
First, you have to create your <tt>.mc</tt> file. The
directory <tt>/usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf</tt> is the
home of these files. Look around, there are already a few
examples. Assuming you have named your file <tt>foo.mc</tt>,
all you need to do in order to convert it into a valid
<tt>sendmail.cf</tt> is:
<verb>
cd /usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail/cf/cf
make foo.cf
cp foo.cf /etc/sendmail.cf
</verb>
A typical <tt>.mc</tt> file might look like:
<verb>
include(`../m4/cf.m4')
VERSIONID(`Your version number')
OSTYPE(bsd4.4)
FEATURE(nodns)
FEATURE(nocanonify)
FEATURE(mailertable)
define(`UUCP_RELAY', your.uucp.relay)
define(`UUCP_MAX_SIZE', 200000)
MAILER(local)
MAILER(smtp)
MAILER(uucp)
Cw your.alias.host.name
Cw youruucpnodename.UUCP
</verb>
The <em>nodns</em> and <em>nocanonify</em> features will
prevent any usage of the DNS during mail delivery. The
<em>UUCP_RELAY</em> clause is needed for bizarre reasons,
don't ask. Simply put an Internet hostname there that
is able to handle .UUCP pseudo-domain addresses; most likely,
you will enter the mail relay of your ISP there.
<p>
Once you've got this, you need this file called
<tt>/etc/mailertable</tt>. A typical example of this
gender again:
<verb>
#
# makemap hash /etc/mailertable.db < /etc/mailertable
#
horus.interface-business.de uucp-dom:horus
.interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus
interface-business.de uucp-dom:if-bus
.heep.sax.de smtp8:%1
horus.UUCP uucp-dom:horus
if-bus.UUCP uucp-dom:if-bus
. uucp-dom:sax
</verb>
As you can see, this is part of a real-life file. The first
three lines handle special cases where domain-addressed mail
should not be sent out to the default route, but instead to
some UUCP neighbour in order to ``shortcut'' the delivery
path. The next line handles mail to the local Ethernet
domain that can be delivered using SMTP. Finally, the UUCP
neighbours are mentioned in the .UUCP pseudo-domain notation,
to allow for a ``uucp-neighbour!recipient'' override of the
default rules. The last line is always a single dot, matching
everything else, with UUCP delivery to a UUCP neighbour that
serves as your universal mail gateway to the world. All of
the node names behind the <tt>uucp-dom:</tt> keyword must
be valid UUCP neighbours, as you can verify using the
command <tt>uuname</tt>.
<p>
As a reminder that this file needs to be converted into a
DBM database file before being usable, the command line to
accomplish this is best placed as a comment at the top of
the mailertable. You always have to execute this command
each time you change your mailertable.
<p>
Final hint: if you are uncertain whether some particular
mail routing would work, remember the <tt>-bt</tt> option to
sendmail. It starts sendmail in <em>address test mode</em>;
simply enter ``0 '', followed by the address you wish to
test for the mail routing. The last line tells you the used
internal mail agent, the destination host this agent will be
called with, and the (possibly translated) address. Leave
this mode by typing Control-D.
<verb>
j@uriah 191% sendmail -bt
ADDRESS TEST MODE (ruleset 3 NOT automatically invoked)
Enter <ruleset> <address>
> 0 foo@interface-business.de
rewrite: ruleset 0 input: foo @ interface-business . de
...
rewrite: ruleset 0 returns: $# uucp-dom $@ if-bus $: foo \
< @ interface-business . de >
> ^D
j@uriah 192%
</verb>
</sect1>
<sect1>
<heading>``Permission denied'' for all networking operations.</heading>
<p>
If you have compiled your kernel with the <tt/IPFIREWALL/
option, you need to be aware that the default policy as of
2.1.5R (this actually changed during 2.1-STABLE development)
is to deny all packets that are not explicitly allowed.
<p>
If you had unintentionally misconfigured your system for
firewalling, you can restore network operability by typing
the following while logged in as root:
<verb>
ipfw add 65534 allow all from any to any
</verb>
For further information on configuring a FreeBSD firewall,
see the <url url="../handbook/handbook.html" name="FreeBSD Handbook.">
</sect1>
<sect>
<heading>Serial Communications</heading>
<p>
This section answers common questions about serial communications
with FreeBSD.
<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>
after your system's up and running.
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>
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.
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>
Please 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, <tt/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?
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 <tt/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.
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>
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>How 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>
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>
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.
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>
Now, an application that opens <tt/ttyd5/ and tries to change the
speed of the port will be stuck with 57600 bps.
Naturally, you should make the initial state and lock state
devices writable only by <tt/root/. The <tt/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.
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>
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.
Next, make an entry in <tt>/etc/ttys</tt> 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>
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
<tt>/etc/gettytab</tt>). 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.
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 ``<tt/su/'' to
<tt/root/. If you use ``secure'' then <tt/root/ can login in
directly.
After making modifications to <tt>/etc/ttys</tt>, you need to
send a hangup or <tt/HUP/ signal to the <tt/init/ process:
<verb>
kill -1 1
</verb>
This forces the init process to reread <tt>/etc/ttys</tt>. 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>
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.
Then, modify <tt>/etc/ttys</tt>, 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>
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 <tt>/etc/gettytab</tt>) 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 <tt/tip/ and <tt/cu/ are probably
executable only by <tt/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.
Alternatively, you can let everyone on your system run <tt/tip/
and <tt/cu/ by typing:
<verb>
chmod 4511 /usr/bin/tip
</verb>
You don't have to run this command for <tt/cu/, since <tt/cu/ is
just a hard link to <tt/tip/.
<sect1>
<heading>My stock Hayes modem isn't supported---what can I do?</heading>
<p>
Actually, the man page for <tt/tip/ is out of date. There is a
generic Hayes dialer already built in. Just use
``<tt/at=hayes/'' in your <tt>/etc/remote</tt> file.
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 <tt/tip/ (using
<tt/ATX0&amp;W/).
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/.
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.
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
<tt>/etc/remote</tt> 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>
Use the highest bps rate your modem supports in the br
capability. Then, type ``<tt/tip cuaa0/'' and you'll be
connected to your modem.
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>
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
<tt>/etc/phones</tt> for a phone number. But the <tt/@/ sign is
also a special character in capability files like
<tt>/etc/remote</tt>. 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
<tt>/etc/remote</tt> 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>
Then you can things like ``<tt/tip -115200 5551234/''. If you
prefer <tt/cu/ over <tt/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>
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. <tt/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
<tt>/etc/remote</tt>:
<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>
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 <tt>/etc/remote</tt>
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>
Then, list the phone numbers for the university in
<tt>/etc/phones</tt>:
<verb>
big-university 5551111
big-university 5551112
big-university 5551113
big-university 5551114
</verb>
<tt/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 <tt/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.''
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.
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, <tt/tip/'s ``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.
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>
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 ``<tt/cat/'' and ``<tt/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>
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>
To receive files, start the sending program on the remote end.
Then, type ``<tt/~C rz/'' to begin receiving them locally.
To send files, start the receiving program on the remote end.
Then, type ``<tt/~C sz &lt;files&gt;/'' to send them to the
remote system.
</sect>
<sect>
<heading>ACKNOWLEDGMENTS</heading>
<p>
<code>
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
</code>
<descrip>
<tag/James Raynard/
Acting FAQ caretaker
<tag/Ollivier Robert/
FreeBSD FAQ maintenance man
<tag/Gary Clark II/
FreeBSD Doc Team
<tag/Jordan Hubbard/
Janitorial services (I don't do windows)
<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/The FreeBSD Team/
Kvetching, moaning, submitting data
</descrip>
And to any others we've forgotten, apologies and heartfelt thanks!
</article>
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