3 What is FreeBSD? FreeBSD is an operating system based on 4.4 BSD Lite
4 for Intel, AMD, Cyrix or NexGen "x86" based PC hardware. It works
5 with a very wide variety of PC peripherals and configurations and can
6 be used for everything from software development to Internet Service
9 This release of FreeBSD contains everything you need to run such a
10 system, including full source code for everything. With the source
11 distribution installed you can literally recompile the entire system
12 from scratch with one command, making it ideal for students,
13 researchers or folks who simply want to see how it all works.
15 A large collection of 3rd party ported software (the "ports
16 collection") is also provided to make it easier for you to obtain and
17 install all your favorite traditional UNIX utilities for FreeBSD.
18 Over 1000 ports, from editors to programming languages to graphical
19 applications, make FreeBSD a powerful and comprehensive operating
20 environment that extends far beyond what's provided by many commercial
23 For more documentation on this system it is recommended that you
24 purchase the 4.4BSD Document Set from O'Reilly Associates and the
25 USENIX Association, ISBN 1-56592-082-1. We have no connection with
26 O'Reilly, we're just satisfied customers!
28 If you're new to FreeBSD then you should also read EVERYTHING listed
29 in the Documentation menu on the boot floppy. It may seem like a lot
30 to read, but you should at least acquaint yourself with the types of
31 information available should you later get stuck. Once the system is
32 installed, you can also revisit this menu and use a WEB browser to
33 read the installed FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) and Handbook HTML
34 documentation sets for FreeBSD. You can also use the browser to visit
35 other WEB sites on the net (such as http://www.freebsd.org) if you
36 have an Internet connection.
39 DISCLAIMER: While FreeBSD does its best to safeguard against
40 accidental loss of data, it's still more than possible to WIPE OUT
41 YOUR ENTIRE DISK with this installation! Please do not proceed to the
42 final FreeBSD installation menu unless you've adequately backed up any
43 important data first! We really mean it!
46 o E-mail addresses and tech support info:
48 For general questions, please send email to :
50 freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org
52 Please also have patience if your questions are not answered right
53 away - this mailing list is staffed purely by volunteers and they also
54 have real life schedules to contend with. Questions which are asked
55 intelligently (e.g. not "My system doesn't work! What's wrong!?")
56 also stand a far greater chance of being answered. If your question
57 does not contain enough information to allow the responder to generate
58 a meaningful answer, they generally won't.
60 Bug reports submitted with the send-pr command are also logged and
61 tracked in our bugs database, and you'll be kept informed of any
62 changes in status during the life of the bug (or feature request).
64 Technical comments on this release should be sent (in English!) to:
66 freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org
68 Bug reports should be sent using the `send-pr' command or the Web page
69 at http://www.freebsd.org/send-pr.html. If you cannot use either of
70 these two methods, you may also send mail to:
72 freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org
75 PLEASE ALSO BE SURE TO INDICATE WHICH VERSION OF FREEBSD YOU'RE
76 RUNNING IN ANY BUG REPORTS OR QUESTIONS!
78 Sorry for the caps, but you'd be amazed at how many times people
79 forget this and there are many different release versions of FreeBSD
80 out there now. It's imperative that we know what you're running so
81 that we tell if you're suffering from a bug which has already been
87 Our WEB site, http://www.freebsd.org, is also a very good source for
88 updated information and provides a number of advanced documentation
89 searching facilities. If you wish to use Netscape as your browser,
90 several versions may be found in the ports collection under
91 /usr/ports/www if you've installed the ports collection on your
92 machine (always a good idea).
94 Several other non-commercial browsers are also available in
95 /usr/ports/www and may be compiled and installed in the same fashion.
96 Many are also available as pre-compiled packages - see the Packages
97 entry in the Configuration menu for more details.
99 The Handbook and FAQ are also available as on-line documents in
100 /usr/share/doc and can be read using the ``file:/usr/share/doc''
101 syntax in any HTML capable browser.
106 A typical FreeBSD distribution directory looks like this:
108 ABOUT.TXT bin dict manpages tools
109 HARDWARE.TXT compat1x des doc packages
110 INSTALL.TXT compat20 floppies ports
111 README.TXT compat21 games proflibs
112 RELNOTES.TXT info src
115 If you want to do a CDROM, FTP or NFS installation from this
116 distribution directory, all you need to do is make a 1.44Mb floppy
117 from the floppies/boot.flp image file (see floppies/README.TXT for
118 instructions on how to do this), boot it and follow the instructions.
120 If you're trying to do some other type of installation, or are just
121 curious about how the distribution is organized in general, what
122 follows is a more thorough description of each item in more detail:
124 The *.TXT files obviously contain documentation (ABOUT.TXT being what
127 The XF86332 directory contains the XFree86 project's 3.3.2 release and
128 consists of a series of gzip'd tar files which contain each component
129 of the XFree86 distribution.
131 The bin, dict, des, doc, games, info, manpages, proflibs, and src
132 directories contain the primary distribution components of FreeBSD
133 itself and are split into smaller files for easy packing onto floppies
134 (should that be necessary).
136 The compat1x, compat20 and compat21 directories contain distributions
137 for compatibility with older releases and are distributed as single
138 gzip'd tar files - they can be installed during release time or later
139 by running their `install.sh' scripts.
141 A typical distribution (we'll use the info distribution as an example)
144 CHECKSUM.MD5 info.ab info.ad info.inf install.sh
145 info.aa info.ac info.ae info.mtree
147 The CHECKSUM.MD5 file contains MD5 signatures for each file, should
148 data corruption be suspected, and is purely for reference - it is not
149 used by the actual installation and does not need to be copied with
150 the rest of the distribution files. The info.a* files are split,
151 gzip'd tar files, the contents of which can be viewed by doing:
153 cat info.a* | tar tvzf -
155 During installation, they are automatically concatenated and extracted
156 by the installation procedure.
158 The info.inf file is also necessary since it is read by the installation
159 program in order to figure out how many pieces to look for when fetching and
160 concatenating the distribution. When putting distributions onto floppies,
161 the .inf file MUST occupy the first floppy of each distribution set!
163 The info.mtree file is another non-essential file which is provided
164 for user reference. It contains the MD5 signatures of the *unpacked*
165 distribution files and can be later used with the mtree(1) program
166 to verify the installation permissions and checksums against any possible
167 modifications to the file. When used with the bin distribution, this can
168 be an excellent way of detecting trojan horse attacks on your system.
170 Finally, the install.sh file is for use by those who want to install the
171 distribution after installation time. To install the info distribution from
172 CDROM after a system was installed, for example, you'd do:
177 And that's all there is to it! Each distribution contains its own
178 install.sh file for this.
181 The floppies subdirectory contains the floppy installation images and
182 the floppies/README.TXT file should be read for further information
185 The packages and ports directories contain the FreeBSD packages and
186 ports collections. Packages may be installed from the packages directory
187 by running the /stand/sysinstall utility with the argument ``configPackages''
188 or by feeding the individual filenames to the pkg_add(1) command.
190 The ports collection may be installed like any other distribution
191 and requires about 30MB unpacked. More information on the ports collection
192 may be obtained from http://www.freebsd.org/ports or locally from
193 file:/usr/share/doc/handbook if you've installed the doc distribution.
195 Last of all, the tools directory contains various DOS tools for
196 discovering disk geometries, installing boot managers and the like.
197 It is purely optional and provided only for user convenience.