The FreeBSD newcomer will find that the first section of this book guides the user
through the FreeBSD installation process and gently introduces the concepts and
conventions that underpin UNIX®. Working through this
section requires little more than the desire to explore, and the ability to take on board
new concepts as they are introduced.
Once you have traveled this far, the second, far larger, section of the Handbook is a
comprehensive reference to all manner of topics of interest to FreeBSD system
administrators. Some of these chapters may recommend that you do some prior reading, and
this is noted in the synopsis at the beginning of each chapter.
For a list of additional sources of information, please see Appendix B.
Changes from the Second Edition
This third edition is the culmination of over two years of work by the dedicated
members of the FreeBSD Documentation Project. The following are the major changes in this
new edition:
Chapter 11, Configuration and Tuning, has been
expanded with new information about the ACPI power and resource management, the cron system utility, and more kernel tuning options.
Chapter 14, Security, has been expanded with new
information about virtual private networks (VPNs), file system access control lists
(ACLs), and security advisories.
Chapter 16, Mandatory Access Control (MAC), is a new chapter
with this edition. It explains what MAC is and how this mechanism can be used to secure a
FreeBSD system.
Chapter 18, Storage, has been expanded with new information
about USB storage devices, file system snapshots, file system quotas, file and network
backed filesystems, and encrypted disk partitions.
Chapter 20, Vinum, is a new chapter with this edition.
It describes how to use Vinum, a logical volume manager which provides device-independent
logical disks, and software RAID-0, RAID-1 and RAID-5.
A troubleshooting section has been added to Chapter
25, PPP and SLIP.
Chapter 26, Electronic Mail, has been expanded with new
information about using alternative transport agents, SMTP authentication, UUCP, fetchmail, procmail, and other
advanced topics.
Chapter 27, Network Servers, is all new with this
edition. This chapter includes information about setting up the Apache HTTP Server, ftpd, and setting
up a server for Microsoft® Windows® clients with Samba. Some
sections from Chapter 29, Advanced Networking,
were moved here to improve the presentation.
Chapter 29, Advanced Networking, has been
expanded with new information about using Bluetooth®
devices with FreeBSD, setting up wireless networks, and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM)
networking.
A glossary has been added to provide a central location for the definitions of
technical terms used throughout the book.
A number of aesthetic improvements have been made to the tables and figures throughout
the book.
Changes from
the First Edition
The second edition was the culmination of over two years of work by the dedicated
members of the FreeBSD Documentation Project. The following were the major changes in
this edition:
A complete Index has been added.
All ASCII figures have been replaced by graphical diagrams.
A standard synopsis has been added to each chapter to give a quick summary of what
information the chapter contains, and what the reader is expected to know.
The content has been logically reorganized into three parts: “Getting
Started”, “System Administration”, and “Appendices”.
Chapter 2 (“Installing FreeBSD”) was completely
rewritten with many screenshots to make it much easier for new users to grasp the
text.
Chapter 3 (“UNIX
Basics”) has been expanded to contain additional information about processes,
daemons, and signals.
Chapter 4 (“Installing Applications”) has been
expanded to contain additional information about binary package management.
Chapter 5 (“The X Window System”) has been
completely rewritten with an emphasis on using modern desktop technologies such as KDE and GNOME on XFree86™ 4.X.
Chapter 12 (“The FreeBSD Booting Process”) has
been expanded.
Chapter 18 (“Storage”) has been written from what
used to be two separate chapters on “Disks” and “Backups”. We
feel that the topics are easier to comprehend when presented as a single chapter. A
section on RAID (both hardware and software) has also been added.
Chapter 24 (“Serial Communications”) has
been completely reorganized and updated for FreeBSD 4.X/5.X.
Chapter 25 (“PPP and SLIP”) has been
substantially updated.
Many new sections have been added to Chapter 29
(“Advanced Networking”).
Chapter 26 (“Electronic Mail”) has been expanded
to include more information about configuring sendmail.
Chapter 10 (“Linux® Compatibility”) has been expanded to include
information about installing Oracle® and SAP® R/3®.
The following new topics are covered in this second edition:
This book is split into five logically distinct sections. The first section, Getting Started, covers the installation
and basic usage of FreeBSD. It is expected that the reader will follow these chapters in
sequence, possibly skipping chapters covering familiar topics. The second section, Common Tasks, covers some frequently used
features of FreeBSD. This section, and all subsequent sections, can be read out of order.
Each chapter begins with a succinct synopsis that describes what the chapter covers and
what the reader is expected to already know. This is meant to allow the casual reader to
skip around to find chapters of interest. The third section, System Administration, covers administration topics. The
fourth section, Network
Communication, covers networking and server topics. The fifth section contains
appendices of reference information.
Walks a user through the entire installation process. Some advanced installation
topics, such as installing through a serial console, are also covered.
Covers the basic commands and functionality of the FreeBSD operating system. If you
are familiar with Linux or another flavor of UNIX then you can probably skip this chapter.
Describes the Linux compatibility features of FreeBSD.
Also provides detailed installation instructions for many popular Linux applications such as Oracle, SAPR/3, and Mathematica®.
Describes the parameters available for system administrators to tune a FreeBSD system
for optimum performance. Also describes the various configuration files used in FreeBSD
and where to find them.
Describes the creation and manipulation of user accounts. Also discusses resource
limitations that can be set on users and other account management tasks.
Describes how to manage storage media and filesystems with FreeBSD. This includes
physical disks, RAID arrays, optical and tape media, memory-backed disks, and network
filesystems.
Explains the differences between FreeBSD-STABLE, FreeBSD-CURRENT, and FreeBSD
releases. Describes which users would benefit from tracking a development system and
outlines that process.
Provides detailed instructions and example configuration files to set up your FreeBSD
machine as a network filesystem server, domain name server, network information system
server, or time synchronization server.
Explains the philosophy behind software-based firewalls and provides detailed
information about the configuration of the different firewalls available for FreeBSD.
Describes many networking topics, including sharing an Internet connection with other
computers on your LAN, advanced routing topics, wireless networking, Bluetooth, ATM, IPv6, and much more.
Lists different sources for obtaining FreeBSD media on CDROM or DVD as well as
different sites on the Internet that allow you to download and install FreeBSD.
This book touches on many different subjects that may leave you hungry for a more
detailed explanation. The bibliography lists many excellent books that are referenced in
the text.
Lists the PGP fingerprints of several FreeBSD Developers.
Conventions used in
this book
To provide a consistent and easy to read text, several conventions are followed
throughout the book.
Typographic Conventions
Italic
An italic font is used for
filenames, URLs, emphasized text, and the first usage of technical terms.
Monospace
A monospaced font is used for error messages, commands,
environment variables, names of ports, hostnames, user names, group names, device names,
variables, and code fragments.
Bold
A bold font is used for applications, commands, and
keys.
User Input
Keys are shown in bold to stand out from other text. Key
combinations that are meant to be typed simultaneously are shown with `+' between the keys, such as:
Ctrl+Alt+Del
Meaning the user should type the Ctrl, Alt, and Del keys at the same time.
Keys that are meant to be typed in sequence will be separated with commas, for
example:
Ctrl+X, Ctrl+S
Would mean that the user is expected to type the Ctrl and X keys simultaneously and then to type the Ctrl
and S keys simultaneously.
Examples
Examples starting with E:\> indicate a MS-DOS® command. Unless otherwise noted, these commands may
be executed from a “Command Prompt” window in a modern MicrosoftWindows
environment.
E:\>tools\fdimage floppies\kern.flp A:
Examples starting with # indicate a command that must be
invoked as the superuser in FreeBSD. You can login as root to
type the command, or login as your normal account and use su(1) to gain
superuser privileges.
#dd if=kern.flp of=/dev/fd0
Examples starting with % indicate a command that should be
invoked from a normal user account. Unless otherwise noted, C-shell syntax is used for
setting environment variables and other shell commands.
%top
Acknowledgments
The book you are holding represents the efforts of many hundreds of people around the
world. Whether they sent in fixes for typos, or submitted complete chapters, all the
contributions have been useful.
Several companies have supported the development of this document by paying authors to
work on it full-time, paying for publication, etc. In particular, BSDi (subsequently
acquired by Wind River Systems) paid
members of the FreeBSD Documentation Project to work on improving this book full time
leading up to the publication of the first printed edition in March 2000 (ISBN
1-57176-241-8). Wind River Systems then paid several additional authors to make a number
of improvements to the print-output infrastructure and to add additional chapters to the
text. This work culminated in the publication of the second printed edition in November
2001 (ISBN 1-57176-303-1). In 2003-2004, FreeBSD Mall, Inc, paid several contributors to improve the Handbook in
preparation for the third printed edition.