Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X The FreeBSD FAQ Team, FAQ@FreeBSD.ORG $Id: freebsd-faq.sgml,v 1.4.4.3 1995/11/15 07:58:12 jkh Exp $ 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 are under construction. 1. Preface Welcome to the FreeBSD 2.X FAQ ! This document tries to answer some of the most frequently asked questions about FreeBSD 2.X (or later, unless specifically indicated). If there's something you're having trouble with and you just don't see it here, then please send mail to: FreeBSD-questions Mailing list or to FreeBSD FAQ mailing list The latest released version is FreeBSD 2.0.5R. FreeBSD-current refers to the future FreeBSD 2.2. The 2.1 release will be issued from a special branch of the -current sources and is intended as an even more stable version of 2.0.5. There are regular snapshots extracted from 2.2-CURRENT. Check on ftp.FreeBSD.ORG in /pub/FreeBSD/*-SNAP*. The current snapshot is 2.1.0-951104-SNAP. Latest notes: expect 2.1-RELEASE to hit the streets in a few days for FTP. It will be burned on CD-ROM soon ! This version of the FAQ uses the linuxdoc-sgml utility written for Linux by Matt Welsh. The initial SGML translation was made by Ollivier Robert roberto@FreeBSD.ORG Some of the instructions here will also refer to auxiliary utilities in the /usr/share/FAQ/Text directory. If you do not have this directory, or if it does not contain the file that you want, you are probably using a version of FreeBSD prior to 2.0.5R. In this case, install the FreeBSD sources and look in /usr/src/share/FAQ/Text (instead of /usr/share/FAQ). CDROM purchasers and net folks who've grabbed the FreeBSD 2.X ``srcdist'' will have these files. If you don't have the source distribution, then you can either grab the whole thing from: FreeBSD-current base directory Or you can grab only those files you're interested in straight out of the FreeBSD-current distribution in: FreeBSD-current src directory 1.1. What is FreeBSD? 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, 386BSD. There have been many additions and bug fixes made throughout the entire system, some of the highlights of which are: o More robust and extensive PC device support o System V-style IPC, messaging and semaphores o Shared Libraries o Much improved virtual memory code o Better console driver support o Network booting (diskless) support o YP support o Full support of the PCI bus o Loadable kernel modules o Serial Console Support o Merged VM/Buffer Cache o On demand PPP o Sync PPP o Improved SCSI support 1.2. What do I need to run FreeBSD? You'll need a 386 or better PC, with 4 Mo 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 ``Hardware compatibility'' 1.3. Where can I get FreeBSD The distribution is available via anonymous ftp from: FreeBSD home directory For the current release, 2.0.5R, look in: FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE FreeBSD is also available via CDROM, from the following place(s): Walnut Creek CDROM 4041 Pike Lane, Suite D-386 Concord, CA 94520 USA Orders: (800)-786-9907 Questions: (510)-674-0783 FAX: (510)-674-0821 email: WC Orders address WWW: WC Home page 1.4. What are the FreeBSD mailing lists, and how can I get on them? The following mailing lists are provided for FreeBSD users and developers. For more information, send to and include a single line saying ``help'' in the body of your message. announce For announcements about or on FreeBSD. hackers Useful for persons wishing to work on the internals. questions General questions on FreeBSD. bugs Where bugs should be sent. SCSI Mailing list for SCSI developers. current This is the mailing list for communications between the developers and users of freebsd-current. It also carries announcements and discussions on current. security For issues dealing with system security. platforms Deals with ports to non-Intel platforms ports Discussion of /usr/ports/??? fs Discussion of FreeBSD Filesystems hardware Discussion on hardware requirements for FreeBSD. committers CVS commit messages for -current users users-groups This is the mailing list for the coordinators from each of the local area Users Groups to dicuss matters with each other and a designated individual from the Core Team. This mail list should be limited to meeting synopsis and coordination of projects that span User Groups The FreeBSD-commit list has been broken up into groups dealing with different areas of interest. Please see the FreeBSD mailing list FAQ in: /usr/src/share/FAQ/Text/mailing-list.FAQ Example: To subscribe to the questions list, you'll to send a message containing the following command in the body of the message, the subject is ignored: subscribe questions john.smith@foo.bar (John Smith) To unsubscribe, it is as easy. Just remember to send your request to The mail administrator not to the list itself. The last thing the subscribred users want to see is administrative requests... 1.5. What are the various FreeBSD news groups? There are two newsgroups currently dedicated to FreeBSD: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.announce For announcements comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc General discussion The following newsgroups may also be of interest to general BSD enthu- siasts: comp.unix.bsd General BSD topics To setup/run your own News server or just reading Usenet News, you may have a look at various packages already ported for FreeBSD 2.X in /usr/ports/news. You'll find Cnews, INN, Trn, TIN and others there. 1.6. Books on FreeBSD There currently aren't any books written specifically for FreeBSD, although some people are supposedly working on some. The FreeBSD Documentation Project exists, you may contact (or better join them) on the doc mailing list: . A FreeBSD ``handbook'' is being created, and can be found as: FreeBSD's 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 By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition June 1994, 804 pages ISBN: 1-56592-080-5 4.4BSD User's Reference Manual By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition June 1994, 905 pages ISBN: 1-56592-075-9 4.4BSD User's Supplementary Documents By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition July 1994, 712 pages ISBN: 1-56592-076-7 4.4BSD Programmer's Reference Manual By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition June 1994, 886 pages ISBN: 1-56592-078-3 4.4BSD Programmer's Supplementary Documents By Computer Systems Research Group, UC Berkeley 1st Edition July 1994, 596 pages ISBN: 1-56592-079-1 A description of these can be found via WWW as: 4.4BSD books description A good book on system administration is: Evi Nemeth, Garth Snyder, Scott Seebass & Trent R. Hein, ``Unix System Administration Handbook'', Prentice-Hall, 1995 ISBN: 0-13-151051-7 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$45-$55), but worth it. It also includes a CDROM with the sources for various tools; most of these, however, are also on the FreeBSD 2.0.5R CDROM (and the FreeBSD CDROM often has newer versions). 1.7. Other sources of information. One good source of additional information is the ``[comp.unix.bsd] 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: comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.announce comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.announce comp.answers news.answers If you have WWW access, the FreeBSD home page is at: Main FreeBSD page The FreeBSD handbook has a pretty complete bibliography, look at: Bibliography 2. FreeBSD goals 2.1. Copyrights 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. Our GNU code does make for some strings, which we dislike and endevour to replace whenver possible, but at least those strings are in the direction of greater, rather than lesser, "openness" in how the code is shared and distributed and so is a string we can reasonably live with. 3. Installation 3.1. How do I install FreeBSD? IMPORTANT NOTE if you are installing 2.0.5R from tape, see the question titled, ``Help! I can't install from tape!'' Installation instructions can be found as: INSTALL from 2.0.5R Release notes are also available as: RELNOTES from 2.0.5R On the CDROM, the following files are in the top-most directory: INSTALL -- Installation instructions README.TXT -- Basic README file RELNOTES -- Release notes 3.2. Help! I have no space! Do I need to delete everything first? If your machine is already running DOS and has little or no free space available for FreeBSD's installation, all is not lost! You may find the ``FIPS'' utility, provided in the tools/ subdirectory on the FreeBSD CDROM or on the various FreeBSD ftp sites, to be quite useful. FIPS allows you to split an existing DOS partition into two pieces, preserving the original partition and allowing you to install onto the second free piece. You first ``defrag'' your DOS partition, using the DOS 6.xx DEFRAG utility or the Norton Disk tools, then run FIPS. It will prompt you for the rest of the information it needs. Afterwards, you can reboot and install FreeBSD on the new free slice. See the Distributions menu for an estimation of how much free space you'll need for the kind of installation you want. 3.3. Can I use compressed DOS filesystems from FreeBSD? No. If you are using a utility such as Stacker(tm) or DoubleSpace(tm), FreeBSD will only be able to use whatever portion of the filesystem you leave uncompressed. The rest of the filesystem will show up as one large file (the stacked/dblspaced file!). DO NOT REMOVE THAT FILE! You will probably regret it greatly! It is probably better to create another uncompressed DOS primary partition and use this for communications between DOS and FreeBSD. 3.4. Can I mount my DOS extended partitions? This feature isn't in FreeBSD 2.0.5 but should be in 2.1. We've laid all the groundwork for making this happen, now we just need to do the last 1% of the work involved. 3.5. Can I run DOS binaries under FreeBSD? Not yet! We'd like to add support for this someday, but are still lacking anyone to actually do the work. Ongoing work with Linux's DOSEMU utility may bring this much closer to being a reality sometime soon. Send mail to The FreeBSD hackers list if you're interested in joining this effort! However, there is a neat utility called ``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). 3.6. Help! I can't install from tape! The install fails with a ``record too big'' error! If you are installing 2.0.5R 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 2.0.5R; with these tapes, you will get an error that complains about the record size being too big. 3.7. I want to install FreeBSD onto a SCSI disk that has more than 1024 cylinders. How do I do it? This depends. If you don't have DOS (or another operating system) on the system, you can just keep the drive in native mode and simply make sure that your root partition is below 1024 so the BIOS can boot the kernel from it. It you also have DOS/some other OS on the drive then your best bet is to find out what parameters that it thinks you have before installing FreeBSD. When FreeBSD's installation procedure prompts you for these values, you should then enter them rather than simply going with the defaults. There is a freely available utility distributed with FreeBSD called ``pfdisk'' (located in the tools/dos-tools subdirectory) which can be used for this purpose. 3.8. When I boot FreeBSD it says ``Missing Operating System''. See question above. This is classically a case of FreeBSD and DOS or some other OS conflicting over their ideas of disk geometry. You will have to reinstall FreeBSD, but obeying the instructions given above will almost always get you going. 3.9. When I install the boot manager and try to boot FreeBSD for the first time, it just comes back with the boot manager prompt again. 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 ``>1GB drive support''), try toggling its setting and reinstalling FreeBSD. 3.10. I'm having lots of trouble trying to disklabel a new SCSI drive. I have made an entry in /etc/disktab, but when I try to label the drive the following happens: mips# disklabel -w /dev/sd1 sea32550N disklabel: ioctl DIOCWDINFO: Operation not supported by device What am I doing wrong? Answer: Doing this using disklabel (and fdisk) is probably harder than using sysinstall. The following should work to put FreeBSD-2.0.5 on the whole of an empty disk assuming that the disktab entry is correct. disklabel -r -w /dev/rsd1 sea32550N ^^ ^ The first -r is essential for writing new labels and using the raw device instead of the block device is good technique. To be ``empty'' the disk should have 0's at critical points on the first two sectors. In particular, the 2 byte signature at the end of the first sector must not be 0xaa55 or the disk will be interpreted as having a slice (partition) table and it will be difficult to write to it where you want unless the slice table is initialized correctly. All bootable hard disks will have the 0xaa55 signature so they won't be empty. Empty disks may be created by copying zeros over the first 2 sectors: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rsd1 bs=1k count=1 Note that this will (appear to) destroy all data on the disk. The above is not the best method. Normally you will have a slice table or a label that you want to preserve or modify slightly. This can be done using fdisk -u /dev/rsd1 # install or change slice table disklabel -r -w sd1 sea32550N # install label ^no /dev/r fdisk is unintuitive and has poor error handling so it is difficult to change slice tables using it. However, to install a new slice table on an empty drive you just have to accept all the defaults except for ``n'' to write at the end. Note that the sd1 drive in the above is different from /dev/rsd1. disklabel modifies path names that don't start with a slash by prefixing /dev/r and suffixing the ``raw'' partition letter. sd1 thus means /dev/rsd1c, i.e., the ``c'' partition on the first BSD slice on drive sd1, i.e., the whole of the first BSD slice on drive sd1, while /dev/rsd1 is the whole of drive sd1. Thus ``disklabel ... sd1'' will fail if there is no FreeBSD slice, while ``disklabel /dev/rsd1'' will print the in-core label for the whole drive. Oops, this assumes that slices are enabled by the 0xaa55 signature. If slices aren't enabled, then /dev/rsd1c means the whole drive. In practice, slices have to be enabled to make the disk bootable. If there are no BSD slices, then /dev/rsd1c will be empty instead of unconfigured and attempts to label sd1 will fail with a bogus error message about /dev/rsd1c not existing. /dev/sd1 didn't exist in previous versions of FreeBSD or 386BSD so your ``disklabel -w /dev/sd1 ...'' would have printed a less confusing error message before failing. The disklabel I'm trying is sea32550N|Seagate 32550N:\ :ty=winchester:dt=SCSI:se#512:nc#3510:nt#11:ns#108:\ :rm#7200:\ :pa#2433024:oa#0:ta=4.2BSD:\ :pc#4169880:oc#0: Note that ns has to be < 64 in the slice table. I would use nt#22:ns#54. This only matters if you don't accept fdisk's default (bogus) slice table. You have to use a valid table if you want multi- ple slices, or the first slice starting at a nonzero offset. Starting a nonempty slice at offset 0 is invalid so sysinstall doesn't support creating such slices. 3.11. I have an IDE drive with lots of bad blocks on it and FreeBSD doesn't seem to install properly. FreeBSD's bad block (the ``bad144'' command) handling is still not 100% (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. IDE drives are 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. 3.12. I have 32MB of memory, should I expect any special problems? No. FreeBSD 2.X comes with bounce buffers which allows your bus mastering controller access to greater than 16MB. 3.13. My network card keeps getting errors like, ``ed1: timeout''. What's going on? 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. 3.14. Do I need to install the complete sources? In general, no. However, we would strongly recommend that you install, at a minimum, the ``base'' source kit, which includes several of the files mentioned here, and the ``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 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 /usr/src 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. 3.15. DES encryption software can not be exported from the United States. If I live outside the US, how can I encrypt passwords? If it is not absolutely imperative that you use DES style encryption, you can use FreeBSD's default encryption for even better security, and with no export restrictions. FreeBSD 2.0's password default scrambler is now MD5-based, and is more CPU-intensive to crack with an automated password cracker than DES. Since the DES encryption algorithm cannot legally be exported from the US, non-US users should not download this software (as part of the 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: South Africa skeleton.mikom.csir.co.za:/pub/FreeBSD storm.sea.uct.ac.za:/pub/FreeBSD The non-US securedist can be used as a direct replacement for the encumbered US securedist. This 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 braae.ru.ac.za. 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 ``help'' in the body of your message to . 4. Hardware compatibility 4.1. What kind of hard drives does FreeBSD run on? FreeBSD supports ST-506 (sometimes called ``MFM''), RLL, and ESDI drives, which are usually connected to WD-1002, WD-1003, or WD-1006 controllers (although clones should also work). FreeBSD also supports IDE and SCSI hard drives. 4.2. What SCSI controllers are supported? FreeBSD supports the following SCSI controllers: Adaptec AH-154x Series AH-174x Series AH-152x Series Sound Blaster SCSI (AH-152x compat) AH-2742/2842 Series AH-2820/2822/2825 Series AH-294x and aic7870 MB controllers Buslogic BT-445 Series (but see section ``on 32 MB machines'') BT-545 Series BT-742 Series BT-747 Series BT-946 Series BT-956 Series Future Domain TMC-950 Series PCI Generic NCR 53C810 based controllers NCR 53C82x based controllers ProAudioSpectrum Zilog 5380 based controllers Trantor 130 based controllers Seagate ST-01/02 Series UltraStor UH-14f Series UH-24f Series UH-34f Series Western Digital WD7000 4.3. What CD-ROM drives are supported by FreeBSD? Any SCSI drive connected to a supported controller. Mitsumi LU002 (8bit), LU005 (16bit) and FX001D (16bit 2x Speed). Sony CDU 31/33A Sound Blaster Non-SCSI CD-ROM Matsushita/Panasocnic CD-ROM ATAPI compatiable IDE CD-ROMs . All non-SCSI cards are known to be extremely slow compared to SCSI drives. 4.4. What multi-port serial cards are supported by FreeBSD? o AST/4 in shared IRQ mode, o ARNET 8 port in shared IRQ mode, o BOCA 4/8/16 port cards inshared IRQ mode, o Cyclades 8/16 port , o Cronyx/Sigfgma multiport sync/async, o RISCom/8 multiport card, o STB 4 port i shared IRQ mode, Some unnamed clone cards have also been known to work, especially those that claim to be AST compatible. A Dibiboard driver is currently in alpha stage. If you want to test it, take the file in the incoming directory Check the sio(4) man page to get more information on configuring such cards. 4.5. Does FreeBSD support the AHA-2xxx SCSI adapters from Adaptec? FreeBSD supports the AHA-2xxx line of disks. The GPL portions of the old drivers have been re-written and now it is fully under the Berkeley style copyright. 4.6. I have a Mumbleco bus mouse. Is it supported and if so, how do I set it up for XFree86? 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: device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c tty irq5 vector mseintr 4.7. I have a PS/2 mouse (``keyboard'' mouse) (Alternatively: I have a laptop with a track-ball mouse). How do I use it? You'll have to add the following lines to your kernel configuration file and recompile: 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) 4.8. What types of tape drives are supported under FreeBSD? FreeBSD supports SCSI, QIC-02 and QIC-40/80 (Floppy based) tape drives. This includes 8-mm (aka Exabyte) and DAT drives. 4.9. What sound cards are supported by FreeBSD? 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. NOTE This is only for sound! This driver does not support CD-ROMs, SCSI or joysticks on these cards. 4.10. What network cards does FreeBSD support? There is support for the following cards: ``de'' driver DEC DC21x40 and compatible PCI controllers (including 21140 100bT cards) ``ed'' driver NE2000 and 1000 WD/SMC 8003, 8013 and Elite Ultra (8216) 3Com 3c503 And clones of the above ``le'' driver DEC EtherWORKS II and EtherWORKS III controllers. ``ie'' driver AT&T EN100/StarLAN 10 3COM 3c507 NI5210 ``is'' driver Isolan AT 4141-0 Isolink 4110 ``el'' driver 3com 3c501 (does not support Multicast or DMA) ``eg'' driver 3com 3c505 ``ze'' driver IBM PCMCIA credit card adapter ``lnc'' drive Lance/PCnet cards (Isolan, Novell NE2100, NE32-VL)(*) ``ep'' driver 3com 3c509 ``ix'' driver Intel InterExpress ``cx'' driver Cronyx/Sigma multiport Sync/Async (Cisco and PPP framing) ``zp'' driver 3Com PCMCIA Etherlink III (aka 3c589) ``fea'' driver DEC DEFEA EISA FDDI controller ``fpa'' driver DEC DEFPA PCI FDDI controller ``fe'' driver Fujitsu MB86960A/MB86965A Ethernet cards NOTE Drivers marked with (*) are known to have problems. NOTE We also support TCP/IP over parallel lines. At this point we are incompatiable with other versions, but we hope to correct this in the near future. 4.11. I have a 386/486sx/486SLC machine without a math co-processor. Will this cause me any problems? Generally no, but there are circumstances where you will take a hit, either in performance or accuracy of the math emulation code (see the section ``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. 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. 4.12. What other devices does 2.X support? Here is a listing of drivers that do not fit into any of the above areas. b004.c Driver for B004 compatiable Transputer boards ``ctx'' driver Driver for CORTEX-I Frame grabber ``gp'' driver Driver for National Instruments AT-GPIB and AT-GPIB/TNT boards ``pca'' driver Driver for PC speakers to allow the playing of audio files ``spigot'' driver Driver for the Creative Labs Video Spigot ``gsc'' driver Driver for the Genuis GS-4500 Hand scanner ``joy'' driver Driver for a joystick ``labpc'' driver Driver for National Instrument's Lab-PC and Lab-PC+ ``uart'' driver Stand-alone 6850 UART for MIDI ``nic'' driver Dr Neuhaus NICCY 3008, 3009 & 5000 ISDN cards ``psm'' driver PS/2 ouse port tw.c Driver for the X-10 POWERHOUSE 4.13. I am about to buy a new machine to run FreeBSD on and want an idea of what other people are running. Is there list of other systems anywhere? Yes. Please look at the file Systems.FAQ. This file is a listing of hardware that people are running in their machines. Please note, this is a raw listing of equipment that other users have sent in, and does not constitute any kind of endorsement by the FreeBSD Project. 4.14. I have a lap-top with power management. Can FreeBSD take advan- tage of this? Yes it can on certain machines. Please look in the LINT kernel config file under APM. 5. Commercial Applications 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. 5.1. Where can I get Motif for FreeBSD? Contact the following company: Lasermoon Ltd 2a Beaconsfield Road Fareham, Hants England. PO16 0QB Phone: +44 (01) 329 834944 FAX: +44 (0) 329 825936 Email: Info Address 5.2. Are there any commercial X servers for some of the high-end graphics cards like the Matrox or #9 I-128, or offering 8/16/24 bit deep pallettes? Yes, X Inside Incorporated 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 $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 (``compat1xdist''). More info X inside WWW page or Products information or Info E-mail address or phone +1(303)384-9999 5.3. Are there any Database systems for FreeBSD? Yes! Conetic Software Systems has ported their C/base and C/books datebase systems to FreeBSD 2.0.5 and higher. For more information Conetic Software Systems or mail Information E-mail address 5.4. Any other applications I might be interested in? RenderMorphics, Ltd. sells a high-speed 3D rendering package for FreeBSD called ``Reality Lab'' (tm). Send email to 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 ``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. 6. User Applications 6.1. I want to run X, how do I go about it? First, get the XFree86(tm) distribution of X11R6 from XFree86.cdrom.com The version you want for FreeBSD 2.X and later is XFree86 3.1.1. Follow the instructions for installation carefully. You may then wish to read the documentation for the 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 ``on Xaccel'' for more details. 6.2. I've been trying to run ghostscript on a 386 (or 486sx) with no math co-processor and I keep getting errors. What's up? You will need to add the alternate math emulator to your kernel, you do this by adding the following to your kernel config file and it will be compiled in. options GPL_MATH_EMULATE NOTE You will need to remove the MATH_EMULATE option when you do this. 6.3. I want all this neat software, but I haven't got the space or CPU power to compile it all myself. Is there any way of getting bina- ries? 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 deinstalled again easily without having to know the gory details. CDROM people will have a packages/ directory on their CD, others can get the currently available packages from: 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 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. 7. Miscellaneous Questions 7.1. Hey! Chmod doesn't change the file permissions of symlinked files! What's going on? You have to use either ``-H'' or ``-L'' together with the ``-R'' option to make this work. See the chmod(1) and symlink(7) man pages for more info. WARNING the ``-R'' option does a RECURSIVE chmod. Be careful about specifying directories or symlinks to directories to chmod. If you want to change the permissions of a directory referenced by a symlink, use chmod(1) without any options and follow the symlink with a trailing slash (``/''). For example, if ``foo'' is a symlink to directory ``bar'', and you want to change the permissions of ``foo'' (actually ``bar''), you would do something like: chmod 555 foo/ With the trailing slash, chmod will follow the symlink, ``foo'', to change the permissions of the directory, ``bar''. 7.2. How do I mount a CDROM? I've tried using mount(8), but it keeps on giving me an error like, ``/dev/cd0a on /mnt: Incorrect super block.'' You have to tell mount(8) the type of the device that you want to mount. By default, mount(8) will assume the filesystem is of type ``ufs''. You want to mount a CDROM filesystem, and you do this by specifying the ``-t cd9660'' option to 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 also understands the Rock Ridge (long filename) extensions. As an example, if you want to mount the CDROM device, ``/dev/cd0c'', under /mnt, you would execute: mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0c /mnt Note that your device name (``/dev/cd0c'' in this example) could be different, depending on the CDROM interface. Note that the ``-t cd9660'' option just causes the ``mount_cd9660'' command to be executed, and so the above example could be shortened to: mount_cd9660 /dev/cd0c /mnt 7.3. When I try to mount a CDROM, I get a ``Device not configured'' error. What's going on? This generally means that there is no CDROM in the CDROM drive. Feed the drive something. 7.4. My programs occasionally die with ``Signal 11'' errors. What's going on? 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). 7.5. Help, some of my X Window menus and dialog boxes don't work right! I can't select them. 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 ``Keyboard'' section of the XF86config file. # Let the server do the NumLock processing. This should only be required # when using pre-R6 clients ServerNumLock 7.6. How do I access the virtual consoles? If the console is not currently displaying X Window, just press Alt-F1 to Alt-F12. NOTE the default FreeBSD installation has only three (3) virtual consoles enabled, and so only Alt-F1, Alt-F2, and Alt-F3 will work to switch between three virtual consoles. If you want to increase this number, see the next question. 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. 7.7. How do I increase the number of virtual consoles? Edit /etc/ttys and add entries for ``ttyv4'' to ``ttyvc'' after the comment on ``Virtual terminals'' (delete the leading whitespace in the following example): # 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 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 ``secure'' to ``insecure''. IMPORTANT NOTE if you want to run X Window, you 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 Windows 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: ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure to: ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure If your keyboard has only ten function keys, you would end up with: ttyv9 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure ttyva "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure ttyvb "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 off secure (You could also just delete these lines.) Once you have edited /etc/ttys, the next step is to make sure that you have enough virtual terminal devices. The easiest way to do this is: cd /dev ./MAKEDEV vty12 # For 12 devices 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 X Window and execute (as root): kill -HUP 1 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. 7.8. I've heard of something called FreeBSD-current. How do I run it, and where can I get more information? Read the file /usr/src/share/FAQ/Text/current-policy.FAQ, it will tell you all you need to know. 7.9. What is this thing called ``sup'', and how do I use it? 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 CTM, see the section ``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 sup.tgz package from: The SUP package Second, read the file /usr/src/share/FAQ/Text/sup.FAQ. This file describes how to setup sup on your machine. You may also want to look at /usr/src/share/FAQ/extras/*.supfile, or you may grab updated supfiles from: Updated SUP files which are a set of supfiles for supping from FreeBSD.ORG. 7.10. How do I create customized installation disks that I can give out to other people at my site? The entire process of creating installation disks and source and binary archives is automated by various targets in /usr/src/release/Makefile. The information there should be enough to get you started. 7.11. How do I re-build my system without clobbering the existing installed binaries? If you define the environment variable DESTDIR while running ``make world'' or ``make install'', the newly-created binaries will be deposited in a directory tree identical to the installed one, rooted at ${DESTDIR}. Some random combination of shared libraries modifications and program rebuilds can cause this to fail in ``make world'', however. 7.12. When my system booted, it told me that ``(bus speed defaulted)''. What does that mean? 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 ``TUNE_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. 7.13. I would like to track changes to current and do not have net access. Is there any way besides downloading the whole tree? Yes, you can use the CTM facility. Check out the ctm.FAQ file or README for CTM for more information. 7.14. How do I split up large binary files into smaller 240k files like the distribution does? Newer BSD based systems have a ``-b'' option to split that allows them to split files on arbitary byte bondaries. Here is an example from /usr/src/Makefile. bin-tarball: (cd ${DISTDIR}; \ tar cf - . \ gzip --no-name -9 -c | \ split -b 240640 - \ ${RELEASEDIR}/tarballs/bindist/bin_tgz.) 7.15. I've had a couple of system panics and would like to be able browse the system dumps. The normal kernel is stripped and I don't want to run a bloated kernel. What can I do? 7.16. I've got this neato kernel extension I just know everyone will will want. How do I get it included into the distribution? Please take a look at the FAQ for submiting code to FreeBSD at: Submitters' FAQ And thanks for the thought. 8. Kernel Configuration 8.1. Ok, so how DO I compile my own kernel, anyway? Before you can compile a kernel, you need either the complete srcdist or, at the minimum, the kerndist loaded on your system. This provides the necessary sources for building the kernel, as we have a policy of NOT shipping our kernels in linkable object form as most commercial UNIX vendors do. 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 actually happening. Anyway, to answer the question, once you have the kerndist or srcdist loaded, do this: 1. cd /usr/src/sys/i386/conf 2. cp GENERIC MYKERNEL 3. vi MYKERNEL 4. config MYKERNEL 5. cd ../../compile/MYKERNEL 6. make depend 7. make all 8. make install 9. reboot 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 LINT, which contains entries for all possible kernel options and documents them fairly well. The 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 GENERIC, you can also skip step 3, where you customize the kernel for your configuration. Step 7 should only be undertaken if step 6 succeeds. This will copy the new kernel image to /kernel and BACK UP YOUR OLD ONE IN /kernel.old! It's very important to remember this in case the new kernel fails to work for some reason - you can still select /kernel.old at the boot prompt to boot the old one. When you reboot, the new kernel will boot by default. If the compile in 6 falls over for some reason, then it's recommended that you start from step 4 but substitute GENERIC for MYKERNEL. If you can generate a 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 GENERIC kernel does 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 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. 8.2. 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 inter- rupt conflicts. How do I fix this? The problem here is that FreeBSD has code built-in to keep the kernel from getting trashed due t hardware or software conflicts. The way to fix this is to leave out the IRQ settings on other ports besides the first. Here is a example: # # 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 8.3. FreeBSD is supposed to come with support for QIC-40/80 drives but when I look, I can't find it. You need to uncomment the following line in the generic config file (or add it to your config file), add a ``flags 0x1'' on the fdc line and recompile. 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 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Next, you create a device called /dev/ft0 by going into /dev and run the following command: sh MAKEDEV ft0 for the first device. ft1 for a second one and so on. You will have a device called /dev/ft0, which you can write to through a special program to manage it called ``ft'' - see the man page on ft for further details. Versions previous to -current also had some trouble dealing wiht bad tape media; if you have trouble where ft seems to go back and forth over the same spot, try grabbing the latest version of ft from /usr/src/sbin/ft in -current and try that. 8.4. Does FreeBSD support IPC primitives like those in System V? 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. options SYSVSHM options "SHMMAXPGS=64" # 256Kb of sharable memory options SYSVSEM # enable for semaphores options SYSVMSG # enable for messaging Recompile and install. 8.5. Will FreeBSD ever support other architectures? 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 for more information on our strategy for porting. 8.6. I just wrote a device driver for a Foobar Systems, Inc. Inte- grated Adaptive Gronkulator card. How do I get the appropriate major numbers assigned? 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 files.i386, a sample configuration file entry, and the appropriate MAKEDEV code to create any special files your device uses. If you do not, or are unable to because of licensing restrictions, then character major number 32 and block major number 8 have been reserved specifically for this purpose; please use them. In any case, we'd appreciate hearing about your driver on . 9. System Administration 9.1. Hmm, where are my familiar BSD system files ? What's this /etc/sysconfig thing? As for 2.0.5R, the primary configuration file is /etc/sysconfig. All the options are to be specified in this one and the other one (/etc/rc and /etc/netstart) just include it. Look in the /etc/sysconfig file and change the value to match your system. This file is filled with comments to show what to put in there. The /etc/rc.local is here as always and is the place to put additional services like INN or a http server. The /etc/rc.serial is for serial port initialization (e.g. locking the port characterictics, and so on.). The /etc/rc.i386 is for Intel-specifics setting like the iBCS2 emulation. 9.2. How do I add a user easily? I read the man page and am more confused than ever! Use the adduser command. There is another package called ``new-account'' also written in Perl by Ollivier Robert. Ask about it. It is currently under further development. 9.3. I'm trying to use my printer and keep running into prob- lems. I tried looking at /etc/printcap, but it's close to useless. Any ideas? Still under construction. 9.4. My keyboard mappings are wrong for my system. How can I fix them? The kbdcontrol program has an option to load a keyboard map file. Under /usr/share/syscons/keymaps are a number of map files. Choose the one relevant to your system and load it. kbdcontrol -l uk.iso Both the /usr/share/syscons/keymaps and the .kbd extension are assumed by kbdcontrol(1). This can be configured in /etc/sysconfig. See the appropriate comments in tis file. In 2.0.5R, everything related to text fonts, keyboard mapping is in /usr/share/examples/syscons. The following mappings are currently supported: o Danish (both ISO and cp865), o French (ISO only), o German (both ISO and cp850), o Russian o Swedish (both ISO and cp850), o U.K. (both ISO and cp850), o Spain o U.S.A. (ISO only). 10. Networking 10.1. Where can I get information booting FreeBSD ``diskless'', that is booting and running a FreeBSD box from a server rather than having a local disk? Please read the diskless section in the Handbook. It is in /usr/share/doc/handbook or use the following WWW link: Handbook's section on diskless boot 10.2. I've heard that you can use a FreeBSD box as a dedicated net- work router - is there any easy support for this? Internet standards and good engineering practice prohibit us from providing packet forwarding by default in FreeBSD. You can enable this support by adding ``options GATEWAY'' to your kernel configuration file and recompiling. This kernel option will put the sysctl variable net.inet.ip.forwarding to 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 routed(8), or for more complex situations you may want to try GaTeD (available by FTP from gated.Cornell.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. 10.3. Does FreeBSD support SLIP and PPP? Yes. See the man pages for slattach(8) and/or 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 sliplogin(8). You may also want to take a look at the slip FAQ in: SLIP FAQ You can also have a look at the SLIP/PPP/Use PPP sections of the handbook in /usr/share/doc/handbook or use the following link: FreeBSD's Handbook 10.4. How do I get my network set up? I don't see how to make my /dev/ed0 device! In the Berkeley networking framework, network interfaces are only directly accessible by kernel code. Please see the /etc/netstart 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. 10.5. How do I get my 3C503 to use the other network port? If you want to use the other ports, you'll have to specify an additional parameter on the ifconfig(1) command line. The default port is ``link0''. To use the AUI port instead of the BNC one, use ``link2''. 10.6. I'm having problems with NFS to/from FreeBSD and my Wuffotron- ics Workstation / generic NFS appliance, where should I look first? Certain PC network cards are better than others (to put it mildly) and can sometimes cause problems with network intensive applications like NFS. See NFS FAQ for more information on this topic. 10.7. Why can't I NFS-mount from a Linux box? Some versions of the Linux NFS code only accept mount requests from a priviledged port; try mount -o -P linuxbox:/blah /mnt 10.8. Why can't I NFS-mount from a Sun box? Sun workstations running SunOS 4.X only accept mount requests from a priviledged port; try mount -o -P sunbox:/blah /mnt 10.9. I'm having problems with my NeXTStep machines and other FreeBSD ones accross PPP Try disabling the TCP extentions in /etc/sysconfig by changing the following variable to NO: tcp_extensions=NO 10.10. I want to enable IP multicast support on my FreeBSD box, how do I do it? (Alternatively: What the heck IS multicasting and what applications make use of it?) 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 ip_mroute_mod loadable kernel module and run mrouted. For more information: 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. 11. Serial Communications This section answers common questions about serial communications with FreeBSD. 11.1. How do I tell if FreeBSD found my serial ports or modem cards? 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 dmesg | grep sio after your system's up and running. Here's some example output from the above command: sio0 at 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 on isa sio0: type 16550A sio1 at 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa sio1: type 16550A This shows two serial ports. The first is on irq 4, is using port address 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 0x2f8. Internal modem cards are treated just like serial ports---except that they always have a modem ``attached'' to the port. The 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 ``about building a kernel'' for more details. 11.2. Hey, I just upgraded to 2.0.5 and my tty0X are missing! Don't worry, they have been merged with the ttydX devices. You'll have to change old configuration files. 11.3. How do I access the serial ports once FreeBSD is running? The third serial port, sio2 (known as COM3 in DOS), is on /dev/cuaa2 for dial-out devices, and on /dev/ttyd2 for dial-in devices. What's the difference between these two classes of devices? You use ttydX for dial-ins. When opening /dev/ttydX in blocking mode, a process will wait for the corresponding cuaaX device to become inactive, and then wait for the carrier detect line to go active. When you open the cuaaX device, it makes sure the serial port isn't already in use by the ttydX device. If the port's available, it ``steals'' it from the ttydX device. Also, the 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. 11.4. How do I configure the kernel for my multiport serial card? Again, the section on kernel configuration provides information about configuring your kernel. For a multiport serial card, place an 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 COM_MULTIPORT option. The following example is for an AST 4-port serial card on irq 7: 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 The flags indicate that the master port has minor number 7 (0x700), diagnostics enabled during probe (0x080), and all the ports share an irq (0x001). 11.5. I have two multiport serial cards that can share irqs. Can FreeBSD handle this? Not yet. You'll have to use a different irq for each card. 11.6. What's the difference between ttyd1, ttyid1, and ttyld1? Or, how can I set the default serial parameters for a port? The ttydX (or 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 stty -a -f /dev/ttyd1 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 CLOCAL mode, 8 bits, and XON/XOFF flow control by default for ttyd5, do: stty -f /dev/ttyid5 clocal cs8 ixon ixoff A good place to do this is in /etc/rc.serial. Now, an application will have these settings by default when it opens 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 ttyd5 to 57600 bps, do stty -f /dev/ttyld5 57600 Now, an application that opens 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 root. The MAKEDEV script does NOT do this when it creates the device entries. 11.7. How can I enable dialup logins on my modem? So you want to become an Internet service provider, eh? First, you'll need one or more modems that can autoanswer. 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 (DTR) line goes from on to off. It should probably use RTS/CTS 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: AT &C1 &D3 &K3 &Q6 S0=1 &W See the section ``on sending AT commands'' below for infor- mation on how to make these settings without resorting to an MS-DOS terminal program. Next, make an entry in /etc/ttys for the modem. This file lists all the ports on which the operating system will await logins. Add a line that looks something like this: ttyd1 "/usr/libexec/getty std.57600" dialup on insecure This line indicates that the second serial port (/dev/ttyd1) has a modem connected running at 57600 bps and no parity (std.57600, which comes from the file /etc/gettytab). The terminal type for this port is ``dialup.'' The port is ``on'' and is ``insecure''---meaning root logins on the port aren't allowed. For dialin ports like this one, use the 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 ``su'' to root. If you use ``secure'' then root can login in directly. After making modifications to /etc/ttys, you need to send a hangup or HUP signal to the init process: kill -1 1 This forces the init process to reread /etc/ttys. The init process will then start getty processes on all ``on'' ports. You can find out if logins are available for your port by typing ps -ax | grep '[t]tyd1' You should see something like: 747 ?? I 0:00.04 /usr/libexec/getty std.57600 ttyd1 11.8. How can I make my spare computer a dumb terminal connected to my FreeBSD box? 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 /etc/ttys, like above. For example, if you're hooking up a WYSE-50 terminal to the fifth serial port, use an entry like this: ttyd4 "/usr/libexec/getty std.38400" wyse50 on secure This example shows that the port on /dev/ttyd4 has a wyse50 terminal connected at 38400 bps with no parity (std.38400 from /etc/gettytab) and root logins are allowed (secure). 11.9. Why can't I run tip or cu? On your system, the programs tip and cu are probably executable only by uucp and group dialer. You can use the group 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 tip and cu by typing: chmod 4511 /usr/bin/tip You don't have to run this command for cu, since cu is just a hard link to tip. 11.10. My stock Hayes modem isn't supported---what should I do? Actually, the man page for tip is out of date. There is a generic Hayes dialer already built in. Just use ``at=hayes'' in your /etc/remote file. The Hayes driver isn't smart enough to recognize some of the advanced features of newer modems---messages like BUSY, NO DIALTONE, or CONNECT 115200 will just confuse it. You should turn those messages off when you use tip (using ATX0&W). Also, the dial timeout for tip is 60 seconds. Your modem should use something less, or else tip will think there's a communication problem. Try ATS7=45&W. Actually, as shipped tip doesn't yet support it fully. The solution is to edit the file tipconf.h in the directory /usr/src/usr.bin/tip/tip Obviously you need the source distribution to do this. Edit the line ``#define HAYES 0'' to ``#define HAYES 1''. Then ``make'' and ``make install''. Everything works nicely after that. 11.11. How am I expected to enter these AT commands without resorting to some DOS-based terminal program? Make what's called a ``direct'' entry in your /etc/remote file. For example, if your modem's hooked up to the first serial port, /dev/cuaa0, then put in the following line: cuaa0:dv=/dev/cuaa0:br#19200:pa=none Use the highest bps rate your modem supports in the br capability. Then, type ``tip cuaa0'' and you'll be connected to your modem. If there is no /dev/cuaa0 on your system, do this: cd /dev MAKEDEV cuaa0 Or use cu as root with the following command: cu -l``line'' -s``speed'' with line being the serial port (e.g./dev/cuaa0) and speed being the speed (e.g.57600). When you done entering the AT commands hit ~. to exit. 11.12. Why doesn't the @ sign for the phone number capability work? The @ sign in the pn capability tells tip to look in /etc/phones for a phone number. But the @ sign is also a special character in capability files like /etc/remote. Escape it with a backslash: pn=\@ 11.13. How can I dial a phone number on the command line? Put what's called a ``generic'' entry in your /etc/remote file. For example: 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: Then you can things like ``tip -115200 5551234''. If you prefer cu over tip, use a generic cu entry: cu115200|Use cu to dial any number at 115200bps:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa1:br#57600:at=hayes:pa=none:du: and type ``cu 5551234 -s 115200''. 11.14. Great---but how can I do that without having to specify the bps rate on the command line? Put in an entry for tip1200 or cu1200, but go ahead and use whatever bps rate is appropriate with the br capability. tip thinks a good default is 1200 bps which is why it looks for a ``tip1200'' entry. You don't have to use 1200 bps, though. 11.15. I want separate entries for various hosts I access through a terminal server, but I don't want to type ``CONNECT '' each time once I'm connected. Can tip do that for me? Yes. Use the cm capability. For example, these entries in /etc/remote: 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: will let you type ``tip pain'' or ``tip muffin'' to connect to the hosts pain or muffin; and ``tip deep13'' to get to the terminal server. 11.16. My university has 42 billion students but only 4 modem lines. Can tip automatically try each line? Sure. Make an entry for your university in /etc/remote and use @ for the pn capability: big-university:\ :pn=\@:tc=dialout dialout:\ :dv=/dev/cuaa3:br#9600:at=courier:du:pa=none: Then, list the phone numbers for the university in /etc/phones: big-university 5551111 big-university 5551112 big-university 5551113 big-university 5551114 tip will try each one in the listed order, then give up. If you want to keep retrying, run tip in a while loop. 11.17. How come I have to hit CTRL+P twice to send CTRL+P once? CTRL+P is the default ``force'' character, used to tell tip that the next character is literal data. You can set the force character to any other character with the ~s escape, which means ``set a variable.'' Type ``~sforce='' followed by a newline. is any single character. If you leave out , then the force character is the nul character, which you can get by typing CTRL+2 or CTRL+SPACE. A pretty good value for 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 $HOME/.tiprc file: force= 11.18. Suddenly everything I type is all UPPER CASE. What gives? You must've pressed CTRL+A, tip's ``raise character,'' specially designed for people with broken caps-lock keys. Use ~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: force=^^ raisechar=^^ The ^^ is SHIFT+CTRL+6. 11.19. How can I do file transfers with tip? If you're talking to another UNIX system, you can send and receive files with ~p (put) and ~t (take). These commands run ``cat'' and ``echo'' on the remote system to accept and send files. The syntax is: ~p [] ~t [] There's no error checking, so you probably should use another protocol, like zmodem. 11.20. Okay, how can I run zmodem with tip? To receive files, start the sending program on the remote end. Then, type ``~C rz'' to begin receiving them locally. To send files, start the receiving program on the remote end. Then, type ``~C sz '' to send them to the remote system. 12. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ______________________________________________________________________ If you see a problem with this FAQ, or wish to submit an entry, please mail us at . We appreciate your feedback, and cannot make this a better FAQ without your help! FreeBSD Core Team ______________________________________________________________________ Ollivier Robert FreeBSD FAQ maintenance man Gary Clark II FreeBSD Doc Team Jordan Hubbard Janitorial services (I don't do windows) Garrett Wollman Networking and formatting Jim Lowe Multicast information The FreeBSD Team Kvetching, moaning, submitting data And to any others we've forgotten, apologies and heartfelt thanks!