This is an archive of past FreeBSD releases; it's part of the FreeBSD Documentation Archive.

FreeBSD Handbook

FreeBSD Handbook

The FreeBSD Documentation Project

July 1996

Welcome to FreeBSD! This handbook covers the installation and day to day use of FreeBSD Release 2.1.5. This manual is a work in progress and is the work of many individuals. Many sections do not yet exist and some of those that do exist need to be updated. If you are interested in helping with this project, send email to the FreeBSD documentation project mailing list <freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG>The latest version of this document is always available from the FreeBSD World Wide Web server . It may also be downloaded in ascii, LaTeX, postscript or HTML from the FreeBSD FTP server or one of the numerous mirror sites .

Part 1:
Basics

1. Introduction

1.1. FreeBSD in a nutshell

1.2. A brief history of FreeBSD

1.3. FreeBSD Project goals

1.4. About the current release

2. Installing FreeBSD

2.1. Supported Configurations

2.2. Preparing for the installation

2.3. Installing FreeBSD

2.4. MS-DOS user's Questions and Answers

3. Unix Basics

3.1. The online manual

3.2. GNU Info files

4. Installing applications

4.1. * Installing packages

4.2. The Ports collection

Part 2:
System Administration

5. Configuring the FreeBSD Kernel

5.1. Why build a custom kernel?

5.2. Building and Installing a Custom Kernel

5.3. The Configuration File

5.4. Making Device Nodes

5.5. If Something Goes Wrong

6. Users, groups and security

6.1. DES, MD5, and Crypt

6.2. S/Key

7. Printing

7.1. What the Spooler Does

7.2. Why You Should Use the Spooler

7.3. Setting Up the Spooling System

7.4. Simple Printer Setup

7.5. Using Printers

7.6. Advanced Printer Setup

7.7. Alternatives to the Standard Spooler

7.8. Acknowledgments

8. Disk quotas

8.1. Configuring your system to enable disk quotas

8.2. Setting quota limits

8.3. Checking quota limits and disk usage

8.4. * Quotas over NFS

9. The X-Window System

10. PC Hardware compatibility

10.1. Sample Configurations

10.2. Core/Processing

10.3. Input/Output Devices

10.4. Storage Devices

Part 3:
Network Communications

11. Basic Networking

11.1. * Ethernet basics

11.2. * Serial basics

11.3. * Hardwired Terminals

11.4. Dialup access

12. PPP and SLIP

12.1. Setting up user PPP

12.2. Setting up kernel PPP

12.3. Setting up a SLIP client

12.4. Setting up a SLIP server

13. Advanced networking

13.1. Gateways and routes

13.2. NFS

13.3. Diskless operation

13.4. * Yellow Pages/NIS

13.5. ISDN

14. * Mail

Part 4:
Advanced topics

15. Staying current with FreeBSD

15.1. What is FreeBSD-current?

15.2. Who needs FreeBSD-current?

15.3. What is FreeBSD-current NOT?

15.4. Using FreeBSD-current

16. Staying stable with FreeBSD

16.1. What is FreeBSD-stable?

16.2. Who needs FreeBSD-stable?

16.3. Using FreeBSD-stable

17. Synchronizing source trees over the Internet

17.1. SUP

17.2. CTM

18. Contributing to FreeBSD

18.1. What is needed

18.2. How to contribute

18.3. Donors Gallery

19. Troubleshooting

19.1. Hardware conflict or misconfiguration

19.2. When I boot for the first time, it still looks for

20. Kernel Debugging

20.1. Debugging a kernel crash dump with kgdb

20.2. Post-mortem analysis of a dump

20.3. On-line kernel debugging using DDB

20.4. Debugging a console driver

21. Linux Emulation

21.1. How to install the Linux emulator

21.2. How to Install Mathematica on FreeBSD

22. FreeBSD internals

22.1. The FreeBSD Booting Process

22.2. PC memory utilization

22.3. DMA: What it is and how it works

Part 5:
Appendices

23. Obtaining FreeBSD

24. Bibliography

24.1. Users' guides

24.2. Administrators' guides

24.3. Programmers' guides

24.4. Hardware reference

24.5. Magazines and journals

25. Resources on the Internet

25.1. Mailing lists

25.2. Usenet newsgroups

25.3. World Wide Web servers

26. FreeBSD contributor list

26.1. Derived software contributors

26.2. Hardware contributors

26.3. The FreeBSD core team

26.4. The FreeBSD Developers

26.5. Who is responsible for what

26.6. Additional FreeBSD contributors

26.7. 386BSD Patch kit patch contributors

27. Source Tree Guidelines and Policies

27.1. MAINTAINER on Makefiles

27.2. Contributed software

28. PGP keys

28.2. Core team members