UKUUG

Cover CD

FreeBSD is a free UNIX-like operating system for i386 machines (minimum requirement is a 386 with 5 MB of memory and 60MB of disc) derived from the 4.4-lite Berkeley Software Distribution, with many additions. It has an estimated one million users worldwide, including some well known names. See http://www.freebsd.org/ for (much) more information.

Walnut Creek CDROM are purveyors of CD software distributions (see http://www.cdrom.com/) and run a large (2,000 plus simultaneous user) public ftp server under FreeBSD. One of their products is a 4-CD FreeBSD set, containing the entire system sources and binaries, documentation, binary versions of approximately a 1,000 additional applications and utilities, and source versions of most.

Walnut Creek have kindly allowed us to use the first CD of the current FreeBSD 2.2.7 distribution as the cover CD for this edition of the Newsletter.

Helpful Hints

The single most useful hint is: Read The Fine Manuals and other documentation. There is a vast amount of documentation on the CD, much of it accessible from DOS. Many of your questions are likely to be answered in the documentation.

Installation

DO read the documentation - all of the *.TXT files on the CD. Note that the book directory contains a complete 1,700 page text version of Greg Lehey's "The Complete FreeBSD", as it stood in March 1998. You are likely to find this useful.
DO take a backup of your system before installing FreeBSD.
DO disable all devices you know are not present on your machine when configuring the kernel.
DO NOT disable sc0. It is the console driver. Without it FreeBSD won't be able to talk to you.
DO use the novice installation - even if you are a UNIX expert.
DO NOT go overboard installing packages - you can always install them later.
DO NOT misconfigure your monitor when setting up X. You may ruin it by driving it at scan rates it is not designed to handle. Even if it is not visibly or audibly complaining, you may be damaging it.
DO set up a user for yourself.
DO NOT thereafter do everything as root. You'll regret it one day.

Problems

If you have problems with FreeBSD:

Read the Handbook and FAQ at http://www.freebsd.org/ or http://www.uk.freebsd.org/.
Read the man pages e.g. man sh to read the documentation on the standard command shell, apropos shell to find man pages which might be about shells.
Look at the documentation in /usr/share/doc.
Search the mail archives at http://www.freebsd.org/.
Look at the book in the books directory on the first CD.
Search the mail archives at http://www.freebsd.org/.

BEFORE sending mail to questions@freebsd.org or posting to the comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc newsgroup. If you do have to send an enquiry to either, read QUESTIONS.TXT on the update disc first.

Local Resources

This section documents some UK-specific FreeBSD resources, mainly the ones I use or know about. Apologies to anybody I've missed.

Electronic

Like much of the "open source" world, FreeBSD support and development is highly dependant upon the internet, or at least, electronic mail. Without this, you'll find good support hard or expensive to get.

UK User Group

Yes, we have one! It is free, fairly new and small, but does have an active web site and mailing list, and has held meetings and talks.

Web site

http://ukug.uk.freebsd.org/.

Mailing list

To join, send an e-mail to join@freebsd-uk.eu.org with the body of the message containing

join Yourname Youremailaddress

CVS repository

Thanks to Joe at Pavilion Internet, we have a UK CVS repository, which makes staying up to date with -stable (or -current if you are brave), much quicker. The server is at cvsup.uk.freebsd.org.

See the handbook on how to use cvsup.

WWW sites

Again thanks to Joe, we have a UK mirror of the main FreeBSD web pages at http://www.uk.freebsd.org/.

Of particular interest to newcomers are the tutorial pages at http://www.uk.freebsd.org/tutorials/.

Have I mentioned the FreeBSD UK Users' Group at http://ukug.uk.freebsd.org/ yet?

The current developer of pppd (user point to point protocol) has the latest version available at http://www.awfulhak.org/. If you use ppp, consider upgrading.

ftp sites

There are 4 UK Mirrors of FreeBSD

ftp.uk.freebsd.org hosted at Imperial College.
ftp2.uk.freebsd.org hosted at HENSA Academic.
ftp3.uk.freebsd.org hosted at Demon Internet.
ftp4.uk.freebsd.org hosted at PLiG Mirror site.

Academic users will usually, but not necessarily always, be best off using the Imperial College archive. Try them all, and see which works best for you.

FreeBSD is found at the same place in all 4 sites, at /pub/FreeBSD.

Other

If you are really stuck, and no other route is open to you, write to:

FreeBSD Advocacy
c/o Stade Computers Limited
14 Fourlands Avenue
Sutton Coldfield
West Midlands\tB72 1YY

Bear in mind the advice you get will only be worth marginally more than you are paying for it (nothing).

I'd appreciate your enclosing a stamped addressed envelope with any enquiry.

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the members of freebsd-users@freebsd-uk.eu.org mailing list for their significant contributions to this document.

Errata

This is a slightly reformatted copy of the ERRATA.TXT file for FreeBSD 2.2.7 as it stood in early October 1998.

This file contains post-release ERRATA for 2.2.7 and should always be considered the definitive place to look first before reporting a problem with this release. This file will also be periodically updated as new issues are reported so even if you've checked this file recently, check it again before filing a bug report. Any changes to this file are also automatically emailed to: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org.

For 2.2.7 security advisories, see: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/CERT/ for the latest information.

Security Advisories

Current active security advisories for 2.2.7: None

System Update Information

XFree86

The XF86Setup utility sometimes fails with an XIO error (visible on the 2nd VTY) rather than starting properly if you run it during system installation time. This is not a new bug and has been seen in previous releases of FreeBSD, but it seems to happen far more reliably with 2.2.7 now (for some as yet unknown reason).

Fix: Should this happen to you, run /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86Setup by hand after the system comes up off the hard disk for the first time. For some reason, when not run off the boot floppy or CD, it works perfectly (making this one somewhat more difficult to debug).

ThunderLAN PCI NIC

Release notes state that Texas Instruments ThunderLAN PCI NICs are supported in 2.2.7.

Fix: This was an embarassing mis-merge from the 3.0 release notes and, indeed, those cards are only supported in 3.0-current. Please ignore this section of the release notes and any other docs which claim that the ThunderLAN NICs are supported in 2.2.7.

rshd broken

rshd was broken during -Wall cleanup, as noted in PR#7500

Fix: This was fixed in the 2.2-stable branch as of 1998/07/24 04:32:21 in revision 1.9.2.9 of /usr/src/libexec/rshd/rshd.c. Obtain the fixed version via CVSup (see instructions in handbook or simply pkg_add ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/CVSup/cvsupit.tgz and follow the instructions) or get it from FTP at: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-stable/src/libexec/rshd/rshd.c.

Table of Contents Next

Tel: 01763 273 475
Fax: 01763 273 255
Web: Webmaster
Queries: Ask Here

Join UKUUG Today!

UKUUG Secretariat
PO BOX 37
Buntingford
Herts
SG9 9UQ