This file attempts to describe what you're seeing here. Here is a typical distribution tree: HARDWARE.TXT bin dict manpages tools INSTALL.TXT compat1x doc packages README.TXT compat20 floppies ports RELNOTES.TXT compat21 games proflibs XF8632 info src The *.TXT files are, obviously, documentation. The XF8632 directory contains the XFree86 project's 3.2 release and consists of a series of gzip'd tar files which contain each component of the XFree86 distribution. The compat1x, compat20 and compat21 directories contain compatibility distributions for older releases and are also distributed as single gzip'd tar files - they can be installed during release time or later by running their `install.sh' scripts. The bin, dict, doc, games, info, manpages, proflibs and src directories contain the primary distribution components of FreeBSD itself and are split into smaller files for ease of distribution on floppy (should such be necessary). A typical distribution (we'll use the info distribution as an example) looks like this: CHECKSUM.MD5 info.ab info.ad info.inf install.sh info.aa info.ac info.ae info.mtree The CHECKSUM.MD5 file contains MD5 signatures for each file, should data corruption be suspected, and is purely for reference - it is not used by the actual installation. The info.a* files are split, gzip'd tar files, the contents of which could be viewed by doing: cat info.a* | tar tvzf - They are automatically concatenated and extracted during the installation procedure, assuming that the info distribution was selected in the distributions menu. The info.inf file is also a necessary component and is read by the installation program in order to figure out how many pieces to look for when fetching and concatenating the distribution. When putting a distribution onto floppies, this file must occupy the first floppy of the set. The info.mtree file is another non-essential file which is provided purely for user reference. It contains the MD5 signatures of the *unpacked* distribution and can be used later as fodder for the mtree(1) program in verifying the permissions and checksums of the distribution against whatever is installed on your system. When used with the bin distribution, this can be an excellent way of detecting Trojan horse attacks on your system. Finally, the install.sh file is for use by those who'd like to install the distribution *after* installation time, e.g. some time after the system is already installed and working. To install the info distribution from CDROM after your system was installed, for example, you'd do: cd /cdrom/info sh install.sh And that's all there is to it! This also works for the other distributions, including the compat* ones. The floppies subdirectory contains the floppy installation images. The floppies/README.TXT file should be referred to for more information about them. The packages and ports directories contain the FreeBSD packages and ports collections, respectively. The packages may be installed using the package menu in /stand/sysinstall (the utility which runs when you first install FreeBSD) or individually with the pkg_add(1) command. The ports tree should be copied to your hard disk or linked to with the lndir command, which comes with the XFree86 distribution. More information on it can be obtained from http://www.freebsd.org/ports or locally from file:/usr/share/doc/handbook if you've installed the doc distribution. Last of all, the tools directory contains various DOS tools for discovering disk geometries, installing boot managers and the like. It is purely optional and provided merely for user convenience. Jordan