o About FreeBSD: What is FreeBSD? FreeBSD is an operating system based on 4.4 BSD Lite for Intel, AMD, Cyrix or NexGen "x86" based PC hardware. It works with a very wide variety of PC peripherals and configurations and can be used for everything from software development to Internet Service Provision. This release of FreeBSD contains everything you need to run such a system, including full source code for everything. With the source distribution installed you can literally recompile the entire system from scratch with one command, making it ideal for students, researchers or folks who simply want to see how it all works. A large collection of 3rd party ported software (the "ports collection") is also provided to make it easier for you to obtain and install all your favorite traditional UNIX utilities for FreeBSD. Over 3000 ports, from editors to programming languages to graphical applications, make FreeBSD a powerful and comprehensive operating environment that extends far beyond what's provided by many commercial versions of UNIX. For more documentation on this system it is recommended that you purchase The Complete FreeBSD, available from local bookstores and from the FreeBSD Mall (http://www.freebsdmall.com), as well as the 4.4BSD Document Set from O'Reilly Associates and the USENIX Association, ISBN 1-56592-082-1. We have no connection with O'Reilly, we're just satisfied customers! If you're new to FreeBSD then you should also read EVERYTHING listed in the Documentation menu on the boot floppy. It may seem like a lot to read, but you should at least acquaint yourself with the types of information available should you later get stuck. Once the system is installed, you can also revisit this menu and use a WEB browser to read the installed FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and Handbook HTML documentation sets for FreeBSD. You can also use the browser to visit other WEB sites on the net (such as http://www.freebsd.org) if you have an Internet connection. NOTE: If you read no other documentation before installing a given version of FreeBSD, you should at least by all means *READ THE ERRATA* for that release so that you don't stumble over problems which have already been found and fixed. The ERRATA.TXT file accompanying your release (it should be right next to this file) is obviously already out of date by definition, but other copies are kept updated on the net and should be consulted as the "current errata" for your release (this is also what your ERRATA.TXT file says, by the way). These other copies of the errata are located at: 1. http://www.freebsd.org/releases/ 2. ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases//ERRATA.TXT (and any sites which keep up-to-date mirrors of this location). DISCLAIMER: While FreeBSD does its best to safeguard against accidental loss of data, it's still more than possible to WIPE OUT YOUR ENTIRE DISK with this installation! Please do not proceed to the final FreeBSD installation menu unless you've adequately backed up any important data first! We really mean it! o E-mail addresses and tech support info: For general questions, please send email to : freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Please also have patience if your questions are not answered right away - this mailing list is staffed purely by volunteers and they also have real life schedules to contend with. Questions which are asked intelligently (e.g. not "My system doesn't work! What's wrong!?") also stand a far greater chance of being answered. If your question does not contain enough information to allow the responder to generate a meaningful answer, they generally won't. Bug reports submitted with the send-pr command are also logged and tracked in our bugs database, and you'll be kept informed of any changes in status during the life of the bug (or feature request). Technical comments on this release should be sent (in English!) to: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Bug reports should be sent using the `send-pr' command or the Web page at http://www.freebsd.org/send-pr.html. If you cannot use either of these two methods, you may also send mail to: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org PLEASE ALSO BE SURE TO INDICATE WHICH VERSION OF FREEBSD YOU'RE RUNNING IN ANY BUG REPORTS OR QUESTIONS! Sorry for the caps, but you'd be amazed at how many times people forget this and there are many different release versions of FreeBSD out there now. It's imperative that we know what you're running so that we tell if you're suffering from a bug which has already been fixed. o WWW Resources: Our WEB site, http://www.freebsd.org, is also a very good source for updated information and provides a number of advanced documentation searching facilities. If you wish to use Netscape as your browser, several versions may be found in the ports collection under /usr/ports/www if you've installed the ports collection on your machine (always a good idea). Several other non-commercial browsers are also available in /usr/ports/www and may be compiled and installed in the same fashion. Many are also available as pre-compiled packages - see the Packages entry in the Configuration menu for more details. The Handbook and FAQ are also available as on-line documents in /usr/share/doc and can be read using the ``file:/usr/share/doc'' syntax in any HTML capable browser. o Distributions: A typical FreeBSD distribution directory looks like this: ABOUT.TXT bin compat3x games proflibs HARDWARE.TXT compat1x info src tools INSTALL.TXT compat20 dict manpages packages README.TXT compat21 des doc RELNOTES.TXT compat22 floppies ports XF86336 If you want to do a CDROM, FTP or NFS installation from this distribution directory, all you need to do is make a pair of 1.44MB floppies from the floppies/kern.flp and floppies/mfsroot.flp image files (see floppies/README.TXT for instructions on how to do this), boot it and follow the instructions. If you're trying to do some other type of installation, or are just curious about how the distribution is organized in general, what follows is a more thorough description of each item in more detail: The *.TXT files obviously contain documentation (ABOUT.TXT being what you're reading now). The XF86336 directory contains the XFree86 project's 3.3.6 release and consists of a series of gzip'd tar files which contain each component of the XFree86 distribution. The bin, dict, des, doc, games, info, manpages, proflibs, and src directories contain the primary distribution components of FreeBSD itself and are split into smaller files for easy packing onto floppies (should that be necessary). The compat1x, compat20, compat21, compat22, and compat3x directories contain distributions for compatibility with older releases and are distributed as single gzip'd tar files - they can be installed during release time or later by running their `install.sh' scripts. 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 and does not need to be copied with the rest of the distribution files. The info.a* files are split, gzip'd tar files, the contents of which can be viewed by doing: cat info.a* | tar tvzf - During installation, they are automatically concatenated and extracted by the installation procedure. The info.inf file is also necessary since it 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 distributions onto floppies, the .inf file MUST occupy the first floppy of each distribution set! The info.mtree file is another non-essential file which is provided for user reference. It contains the MD5 signatures of the *unpacked* distribution files and can be later used with the mtree(1) program to verify the installation permissions and checksums against any possible modifications to the file. 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 want to install the distribution after installation time. To install the info distribution from CDROM after a system was installed, for example, you'd do: cd /cdrom/info sh install.sh And that's all there is to it! Each distribution contains its own install.sh file for this. The floppies subdirectory contains the floppy installation images and the floppies/README.TXT file should be read for further information on them. The packages and ports directories contain the FreeBSD packages and ports collections. Packages may be installed from the packages directory by running the /stand/sysinstall utility with the argument ``configPackages'' or by feeding the individual filenames to the pkg_add(1) command. The ports collection may be installed like any other distribution and requires about 50MB unpacked. More information on the ports collection may 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 only for user convenience.