FreeBSD Questions

If you're a Linux user who is trying out FreeBSD (or simply a new FreeBSD user), you may find yourself a bit at sea when answering some basic questions. Here are some of the basics that should you'll stumble into sooner or later during your first year.

More information. Your local docs are usually installed in /usr/share/doc/, /usr/local/share/, and /usr/local/share/doc/. And your FreeBSD bookmarks should at least include the following:

The FreeBSD homepage.

(www.freebsd.org) This should be your starting point. It contains up-to-date basic documentation as well as info about support and release information.

The FreeBSDzine.

(www.freebsdzine.org) This website contains a number of HOWTO and answers to questions, as well as current articles and news.

Daemonnews.

(www.daemonnews.org) This is my personal favorite BSD news-related site. There are terrific articles by experienced BSD professionals. This site is for all BSD implementations.

Daily Daemonnews.

(daily.daemonnews.org) A daily collection of stories relevant to the BSD community.

The FreeBSD Diary.

(www.freebsddiary.org) This is a technical diary full of practical examples of doing various tasks. Tasks like upgrading bind or setting up a printer.

The FreeBSD Mall.

(www.freebsdmall.com) This is your FreeBSD superstore. If it's FreeBSD-related, you can buy it here.

The FreeBSD Handbook.

(www.freebsd.org/handbook/) You should become quite well acquainted with this document.

FreeBSD Mailing List Archives.

(www.freebsd.org/search.html#mailinglists) This is a great place to search for answers to your questions; learn from others' experience.

BSD OSonline.

(osonline.org/bsd/) This osonline website provides lots of resources for various operating systems, but the BSD section is quite helpful with various articles with concrete examples of day-to-day tasks.

O'Reilly's BSD Site.

(www.oriellynet.com/freebsd/) Contains information for BSD developers, a digest of news articles, and software release information.

Fresh Ports.

(www.freshports.org) This site keeps everyone current on the latest ports being added to the ports tree.

BSD Apps.

(www.bsdapps.org) A searchable database of applications that run on FreeBSD and other BSD variants.

BSD Drivers Database.

(www.posi.net/freebsd/drivers/) A database of drivers, both in development and completed, for hardware devices on BSD platforms.

Where are my startup files? One of the primary differences between SysV and BSD UNIX is their startup files. Linux resembles SysV more than BSD, so its files are located in a directory under /etc somewhere, like /etc/rc.d or /etc/rc.d/init.d or /etc/sysconfig or something similar. In plain old BSD, there are simply several startup scripts in /etc itself. These scripts usually include:

• rc. The basic system startup script run by init on autoboot or after single-user has been started. User-configurable behavior used to be added to this script but has been moved to /etc/rc.conf in recent distributions of FreeBSD.

• rc.conf. This file now contains just the changes to /etc/defaults/rc.conf. This is where you now put your custom information, or where /stand/sysinstall will put them.

• /etc/defaults/rc.conf. These are the system variables that control the startup behavior of your system. Changes should be put into the appropriate ``rc'' file in /etc.

• rc.network. Contains basic routing configuration, NAT, filtering, interface configuration, and server configuration. This used to be called /etc/netstart.

• /etc/netstart. You can still use this script to start the network if you're sitting in single-user mode.

• rc.local. It's not required, but it may be used to start up additional servers.

• rc.i386. This starts processor-specific servers, like IBCS and APM and Linux binary emulation. It also starts syscons, the console driver, the screensaver, and the mouse daemon.

• rc.serial. Sets defaults for serial devices.

• /usr/local/etc/rc.d/ This is the location for various startup scripts set up by various ports and packages. Placing startup scripts in this directory (with a .sh suffix) is another way of customizing startup defaults; you can prefix scripts with numbers to set the sequence in which they are run, such as 10first.sh, 20second.sh, 30third.sh. However, this may be ugly and a little too SysV-ish for some.

• rc.atm, rc.devfs, rc.firewall, rc.isdn, rc.pccard, rc.shutdown. These scripts set up the automounter, tty, firewall, ISDN, PC card and shutdown defaults.

Future articles will include discussion of PPP, device names, network configuration, and XFree under FreeBSD.