Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X

Maintainer: Peter da Silva <pds@FreeBSD.ORG>

1. Preface

1.1. What is the purpose of this FAQ?

1.2. What is FreeBSD?

1.3. What are the goals of FreeBSD?

1.4. Why is it called FreeBSD?

1.5. What is the latest version of FreeBSD?

1.6. What is FreeBSD-current?

1.7. What are ``snapshots''?

1.8. What about FreeBSD-stable?

1.9. Why is the -stable branch ending with 2.1.7?

1.10. When are FreeBSD releases made?

1.11. How do I make my own custom release?

1.12. Is FreeBSD only available for PCs?

1.13. Who is responsible for FreeBSD?

1.14. Where can I get FreeBSD?

1.15. Where do I find info on the mailing lists?

1.16. What FreeBSD news groups are available?

1.17. Is there anything about FreeBSD on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) ?

1.18. Books on FreeBSD

1.19. I have heard about the Problem Report database.

1.20. Other sources of information.

2. Installation

2.1. Which file do I download to get FreeBSD?

2.2. Where are the instructions for installing FreeBSD?

2.3. What do I need in order to run FreeBSD?

2.4. I have only 4 MB of RAM. Can I install FreeBSD?

2.5. I've got some other special requirements, can I make my own

2.6. Can Windows 95 co-exist with FreeBSD?

2.7. Help, Windows 95 killed my boot manager! How do I get

2.8. How can I have more than one operating system on my PC?

2.9. Can I install on an IDE disk with bad blocks?

2.10. Strange things happen when I boot the install floppy!

2.11. Help! I can't install from tape!

2.12. Can I install on my laptop over PLIP (Parallel Line IP)?

2.13. Which geometry should I use for a disk drive?

2.14. Any restrictions on how I divide the disk up?

2.15. What about disk managers? My BIOS doesn't support large drives!

2.16. When I boot FreeBSD I get ``Missing Operating System''.

2.17. I can't get past the boot manager's `F?' prompt.

2.18. How can I add my new hard disk to my FreeBSD system?

2.19. I have bad blocks on my hard drive!

2.20. I have >16MB of RAM. Will this cause any problems?

2.21. I keep seeing messages like ``ed1: timeout''.

2.22. Do I need to install the complete sources?

2.23. I live outside the US. Can I use DES encryption?

3. Hardware compatibility

3.1. What kind of hard drives does FreeBSD run on?

3.2. What SCSI controllers are supported?

3.3. What CD-ROM drives are supported by FreeBSD?

3.4. How about ZIP drives?

3.5. And how about JAZ, EZ, and other removable drives?

3.6. I have a new drive, how do I use it?

3.7. What multi-port serial cards are supported by FreeBSD?

3.8. Does FreeBSD support Adaptec's AHA-2xxx SCSI adapters?

3.9. I have a Mumbleco bus mouse. How do I set it up?

3.10. I have a PS/2 mouse (``keyboard'' mouse) How do I use it?

3.11. I have a laptop with a track-ball mouse.

3.12. What types of tape drives are supported under FreeBSD?

3.13. How about tape changers?

3.14. What sound cards are supported by FreeBSD?

3.15. What network cards does FreeBSD support?

3.16. I don't have a math co-processor.

3.17. What other devices does 2.X support?

3.18. I have a lap-top with power management.

3.19. FreeBSD does not recognise my Bustek 742a EISA SCSI.

3.20. FreeBSD does not recognise my on-board AIC-7xxx EISA SCSI in an HP Netserver

3.21. What's up with this CMD640 IDE controller?

4. Commercial Applications

4.1. Where can I get Motif for FreeBSD?

4.2. Where can I get CDE for FreeBSD?

4.3. Are there any commercial high-performance X servers?

4.4. Are there any Database systems for FreeBSD?

4.5. Any other applications I might be interested in?

5. User Applications

5.1. I want to run X, how do I go about it?

5.2. Why doesn't my mouse work with X

5.3. ghostscript gives lots of errors with my 386/486SX.

5.4. Is there an easy way to get hold of applications?

5.5. Where do I find libc.so.3.0?

5.6. When I run a SCO/iBCS2 application, it bombs on socksys.

5.7. How do I configure INN (Internet News) for my machine?

6. Miscellaneous Questions

6.1. Why does FreeBSD consume far more swap space than Linux?

6.2. How can I add more swap space?

6.3. What is FreeBSD's a.out executable format, and why not ELF?

6.4. Why doesn't chmod change the permissions on symlinks?

6.5. Why are login names still resticted to 8 characters

6.6. When I mount a CDROM, I get ``Incorrect super block''.

6.7. When I mount a CDROM, I get ``Device not configured''.

6.8. How do I mount a secondary DOS partition?

6.9. Can I mount other foreign filesystems under FreeBSD?

6.10. How can I use the NT loader to boot FreeBSD?

6.11. My printer is ridiculously slow. What can I do ?

6.12. Can I run DOS binaries under FreeBSD?

6.13. My programs occasionally die with ``Signal 11'' errors.

6.14. Help! X Window menus and dialog boxes don't work right!

6.15. When I boot, the screen goes black and loses sync!

6.16. What is a virtual console?

6.17. How do I access the virtual consoles from X?

6.18. How do I increase the number of virtual consoles?

6.19. How do I start XDM from the /etc/ttys file ?

6.20. What is this thing called ``sup'', and how do I use it?

6.21. How cool is FreeBSD?

6.22. Who's scratching in my memory banks??

6.23. How do I create customized installation disks?

6.24. ``make world'' clobbers my existing installed binaries.

6.25. When my system boots, it says ``(bus speed defaulted)''.

6.26. Can I follow current with limited Internet access?

6.27. How did you split the distribution up into 240k files?

6.28. I've written a kernel extension, who do I send it to?

6.29. When I run xconsole, I get ``Couldn't open console''.

6.30. How are Plug N Play ISA cards detected and initialised?

6.31. My PS/2 mouse doesn't behave properly under X Window.

7. Kernel Configuration

7.1. I'd like to customize my kernel. Is it difficult?

7.2. My kernel compiles fail because _hw_float is missing.

7.3. Interrupt conflicts with multi-port serial code.

7.4. How do I enable support for QIC-40/80 drives?

7.5. Does FreeBSD support System V IPC primitives?

7.6. I have 128 MB of RAM but the system only uses 64 MB.

7.7. FreeBSD 2.0 panics with ``kmem_map too small!''

7.8. Will FreeBSD ever support other architectures?

7.9. I need a major number for a device driver I've written.

8. System Administration

8.1. What's with all these SNAPshot, RELENG and RELEASE releases?

8.2. Where are the system start-up configuration files?

8.3. How do I add a user easily?

8.4. I'm having problems setting up my printer.

8.5. The keyboard mappings are wrong for my system.

8.6. ``CMAP busy panic'' when rebooting with a new kernel.

8.7. I can't get user quotas to work properly.

8.8. What's inappropriate about my ccd?

8.9. Why can't I edit the disklabel on my ccd?

9. Networking

9.1. Where can I get information on ``diskless booting''?

9.2. Can a FreeBSD box be used as a dedicated network router?

9.3. I want to recompile the latest BIND from ISC. It blows up during the compilation on some types conflicts. What can I do ?

9.4. Can I connect my Win95 box to the Internet via FreeBSD?

9.5. Does FreeBSD support SLIP and PPP?

9.6. I can connect with IJPPP but it doesn't work right!

9.7. I can't create a /dev/ed0 device!

9.8. How can I setup Ethernet aliases?

9.9. How do I get my 3C503 to use the other network port?

9.10. I'm having problems with NFS to/from FreeBSD.

9.11. Why can't I NFS-mount from a Linux box?

9.12. Why can't I NFS-mount from a Sun box?

9.13. I'm having problems talking PPP to NeXTStep machines.

9.14. How do I enable IP multicast support?

9.15. Which network cards are based on the DEC PCI chipset?

9.16. Why do I have to use the FQDN for hosts on my site?

9.17. Sendmail says ``mail loops back to myself''

9.18. How do I use sendmail for mail delivery with UUCP?

9.19. ``Permission denied'' for all networking operations.

10. Serial Communications

10.1. How do I tell if FreeBSD found my serial ports?

10.2. How do I tell if FreeBSD found my modem cards?

10.3. I just upgraded to 2.0.5 and my tty0X are missing!

10.4. How do I access the serial ports on FreeBSD?

10.5. How do I enable support for a multiport serial card?

10.6. Can FreeBSD handle multiport serial cards sharing irqs?

10.7. How can I set the default serial parameters for a port?

10.8. How can I enable dialup logins on my modem?

10.9. How can I connect a dumb terminal to my FreeBSD box?

10.10. Why can't I run tip or cu?

10.11. My stock Hayes modem isn't supported---what can I do?

10.12. How am I expected to enter these AT commands?

10.13. The @ sign for the pn capability doesn't work!

10.14. How can I dial a phone number on the command line?

10.15. Do I have to type in the bps rate every time I do that?

10.16. I access a number of hosts through a terminal server.

10.17. Can tip try more than one line for each site?

10.18. Why do I have to hit CTRL+P twice to send CTRL+P once?

10.19. Suddenly everything I type is in UPPER CASE??

10.20. How can I do file transfers with tip?

10.21. How can I run zmodem with tip?

11. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS