Phillip Musumeci: My FreeBSD Notes

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Recent Presentations; For new users; System Configuration and Bug Work-arounds; Main Sites; Useful Notes for FreeBSD and OS-X; Industry; Projects; Documentation; News; Publishers; Advanced Networking Topics; MBONE multimedia conferencing; Security; FreeBSD Boot Notes; FreeBSD Books; Admin Notes; Miscellaneous; Other BSDs;

FreeBSD

Recent Presentations:
- Introducing FreeBSD 7.0 (Kris Kennaway, FreeBSD Project, 20 October 2007) (original).
For new users:
- The wikipedia description - good general introduction with helpful references including:
  - IBM developerWorks: Why FreeBSD - A quick tour of FreeBSD;
  - The Complete FreeBSD by Greg Lehey (O'Reilly, April 2003. ISBN 0596005164, and now released under the Creative Commons Licence);
- Contributions by Annelise Anderson: for new users, see also freely available text list;
- FreeBSD Handbook: Installing FreeBSD;
- The PC-BSD project builds a "distribution" of FreeBSD featuring ease-of-use and ease-of-installation;
- Armitage and Harrop (2005) from SUT CAIA: Teaching IP networking fundamentals in resource constrained educational environments describes some nice use by Swinburne Uni (acknowledges Clancy Malcolm who was a project student of mine);
- Local install workshops cover install introduction, summary and report, package and server install notes.
System Configuration and Bug Work-arounds:
- Breakage of POLA: upgrade of GEOM 6.x to 7.x.
- Kris Kennaway presentation titled Help! My system is slow (good description of how instrumentation can help identify actual problems).
- FreeBSD wiki including ZFS quick start, Commonly reported issues, trouble shooting ATA/SATA. Alternative ATA work-in-progress from previous maintainer S0ren Schmidt: www.deepcore.dk/pub/ATA.
- FreeBSD Tuning http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tuning&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD-current&format=html.
- The FreeBSD web resources page maintains links for BSD forums, The FreeBSD Diary, etc.
- The FreeBSD wiki covers many aspects such as Configuring FreeBSD;
- Others: FreeBSD-5 Access Grid setups, worksheets from http://web.irtnog.org/doc/ (e.g. install notes) and Scott Robbins;
Main Sites:
- Official web site and wiki, with HANDBOOK, FAQ, other books, and forums;
- Release engineering and Ports build cluster (ports build status reports);
- Architecture Handbook;
- FreeBSD Foundation (JAVA);
- Source code: real-time views are provided by FreshBSD.org for all *BSD commit logs, FreeBSD cvs/svn mailing list is displayed by Gmane; the FreeBSD Subversion site holds source code from stable-2, with a PR query;
- KDE on FreeBSD;
- FreeBSD people.
Useful Notes for FreeBSD and OS-X:
- Automatic USB device management for FreeBSD
  Script /usr/local/etc/rc.d/usb_manage.sh (plain text) manages USB flash memory (umass) devices. It is triggered by a devd.conf action and sets up KDE desktop entries that allow the console user to mount and unmount a USB device using file /etc/fstab entries that are added as necessary. See the script for additional information on use and installation. This script requires user mounting of file systems at user owned mount points so vfs.usermount=1 (for safety, it checks that main system filesystem mounts are owned by root before assigning vfs.usermount=1).
- Script sh.make_boot_FlashMemoryFS automates the transfer of boot files onto a flash memory device that boots a RAID-based FreeBSD system without PC BIOS boot support (plain text file). It assumes that the boot slice has been manually set with a command like
  boot0cfg -s 1 -v -B -o noupdate da0 # specify slice 1 (example for da0)
  and is also handy when building solid-state disk systems.
- Wireless Networking:
  - Netgear WG511T 108Mbps g+ networking on FreeBSD
    The netgear 108Mbps network interface (WG511T PCMCIA card) can be automatically configured at insertion with this /etc/devd.conf action (plain text to append to /etc/devd.conf). You can select WPA security with this sample /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf (plain text). Ensure necessary drivers are loaded at boot time with this fragment from /boot/loader.conf.
  - D-Link AirPlus Xtreme-G DWL-520 on FreeBSD
    The D-Link AirPlus Xtreme-G requires a /boot/loader.conf entry of wlan_xauth_load="YES" , and then an appropriate wpa_supplicant.conf for use (see above).
- Missing KDE 3.5 kcontrol menus after a FreeBSD KDE rebuild via the ports system? These instructions reactivated menus so that non-root users could configure their KDE environment here.
- Some Sun sponsored applications with OS-X ports: VirtualBox, OpenOffice.
- Some Sun derived technology with a FreeBSD port: ZFS file system has a wiki entry (ZFS tuning), DTrace,
  Netbeans 5.5 - installation script netbeans (plain text) can be used to run netbeans 5.5 in FreeBSD-6.2 and similar systems. See file README for installation instructions.
- X-windows and Unix on OS-X:
  - From Unix to Mac OS X, by Tom Loredo at Cornell, is an excellent introduction to OS-X for FreeBSD users.
  - File xroot_emu.c (plain text) allows an existing application's window to emulate a piece of X-windows root window. This is useful when running X-windows in "rootless" mode and you still need some normal root window for window management. It is based on xroot.c by Greg Parker. Example of use: sample .xinitrc file for Mac OS-X (plain text).
  - File .xinitrc launches a traditional xterm and window manager for OS-X/leopard and Xorg (.tar.gz archive).
  - Updates for X11 in OS-X/leopard can be obtained from http://xquartz.macosforge.org/.
  - FreeBSD on Apple Macbook.
  - This Darwin Ports work allows the latest FreeBSD ports system to work on Mac OS-X.
  - OS-X backup to a network file system:
    - OSX Timemachine and Samba/Windows share;
    - Time Machine backup to network disks (doesn't cover [hostname]_[hostMAC].sparsebundle file).
- intel Mac Book OS-X can't boot due to missing disk? Check first for intermittent connection - remove and re-insert disk as per ifixit instructions.
- FreeBSD USB booting using a flash memory disk:
  - Motivation: you have a system that is unable to boot from its main disk storage (for reasons such as ineffective BIOS, unsupported add-on card, etc.) or you might want to setup a system that has fewer moving parts (for improved reliability or stand-alone embedded use) and faster booting;
  - These basic FreeBSD USB Boot notes describe how to install the /boot files and loader onto the flash memory storage device. Note the use of boot0cfg.
  - Script sh.make_boot_FlashMemoryFS (raw text) does essentially the same to setup the flash memory contents (no boot0cfg) but also edits /boot/loader.conf to specify a GEOM mirror gm0s1 as the root device.
- ASUS EEE PC notes for FreeBSD by Luigi Rizzo (much interesting FreeBSD work comes from this contributor e.g. bandwidth limiting, linux kernel API, etc.);
Industry:
- FreeBSD commercial uses and support list: http://www.freebsd.org/commercial/
- Other systems and support: iXsystems (FreeBSD and PC-BSD), Wasabi Systems (NetBSD and generic *BSD).
- Apple's OS-X is the most common BSD sold at present: server systems, original BSD announcement.
- Real Time or Embedded:
  - Soekris Engineering manufacture small embedded systems that run FreeBSD.
  - VIA manufacture a large number of embedded boards (such as the VIA EPIA EX) which support FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc. with one known Australian supplier: ESIS.
  - FreeBSD and NetBSD can operate as applications servers in the real-time RTCoreBSD environment from FSMLabs.
Projects:
- Poul-Henning Kamp is an important contributor to FreeBSD, and has done interesting projects that solve problems such as electrical energy sensing, gas use sensing, and time receiver (s/w). He maintains web page FreeBSD on Soekris hardware (Soekris Engineering manufacture good embedded systems platforms).
- Luigi Rizzo is another important contributor to FreeBSD, with contributions such as audio drivers, flexible network bandwidth control and filtering, linux kernel API emulation, etc.
- Daniel O'Connor has completed projects such as PF Firewalls, building OpenWRT firmware, setup of bluetooth links, Atmel 1-wire interfacing, network tunnels, etc.
Documentation:
- The FreeBSD Docs;
- Top Directory for FreeBSD articles (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/) including
  - Design Elements of the FreeBSD VM System by Matt Dillon (www.freebsd.org/doc copy),
  - Filtering Bridges by Alex Dupre (www.freebsd.org/doc copy),
  - FreeBSD on Laptops (www.freebsd.org/doc copy);
- FreeBSD GNU Info http://docs.freebsd.org/info/;
- FreeBSD Man Page Server: http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi.
News:
- O'Reilly BSD DEVCENTER: What is new in FreeBSD-7
- FreeBSD in the Press (http://www.freebsd.org/news/press.html);
- Daemon News (http://mall.daemonnews.org;
- Google Summer of Code: FreeBSD.
Publishers:
- http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/ct/15: O'Reilly FreeBSD Basics (quite good)
- http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/ct/14: O'Reilly OpenBSD Explained
- http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/ct/13: O'Reilly BSD Daemons
- http://www.osdisc.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi/products/bsd: OS disc (CDs)
Advanced Networking Topics:
- Many topics, from gateways and routes to wireless to diskless systems to IPv6 and other topics, is covered in the FreeBSD Handbook;
- Network bridging is covered in the handbook at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-bridging.html.
MBONE multimedia conferencing:
- MBONE Router, Multimedia Sound, Multimedia Video Capture, Video Display cards for XFree86, and MBONE conferencing tools for FreeBSD are described by Mark Tinguely at http://www.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu/~tinguely/mbone-freebsd/.
Security:
- taosecurity FreeBSD http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/;
- NAI/US-DARPA FreeBSD security initiatives (FreeBSD, TrustedBSD, others) http://opensource.nailabs.com/;
- PF primary docs source http://www.openbsd.org/faq/pf/index.html;
- PF section of the FreeBSD Handbook http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/firewalls-pf.html;
- PF newbie guide http://www.thedeepsky.com/howto/newbie_pf_guide.php;
- IPF resources http://www.obfuscation.org/ipf.
FreeBSD Boot Notes:
- Solid-state disk booting;
- CD booting (see mkisofs section);
- Broken ATAPI code work-around for UltraDMA: force PIO4 mode by pressing the space bar when the install CD boots, before the system detects hardware, and enter
```
set hw.ata.ata_dma="0"
set hw.ata.atapi_dma="0"
boot
```
FreeBSD Books:
- The Best of FreeBSD Basics by Dru Lavigne (579 pp., Reed Media Services, December 2007, ISBN-10: 0979034221 and ISBN-13: 978-0979034220), with this review by Peter Hummers, OS News. "This book is a collection of hands-on tutorials at the basic user level, in both senses. A complete computer newbie should be able to use this information, and, of course, the % prompt is the basic user interface."
- FreeBSD - An Open-Source Operating System For Your Personal Computer by Annelise Anderson, The Bit Tree Press, 2001. Paperback, 419 pages, book and CD. ISBN: 0-9812045-0-0. This book is available from http://mall.daemonnews.org and from http://www.amazon.com.
  - A local on-line copy from Annelise Anderson's stanford ftp site is freely available.
- The Complete FreeBSD by Greg Lehey, O'Reilly, Fourth Edition, April 2003. ISBN 10: 0-596-00516-4 and ISBN 13: 9780596005160.
  - A local on-line copy from Greg's CFBSD web site is freely available.
- "The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide", Ted Mittelstaedt, Addison-Wesley, 2000. Paperback, 432 pages, book and CD. ISBN: 0201704811. See the book's home page http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com for additional information (support material, reviews, etc.) and amazon also have details;
- "Absolute BSD" The Ultimate Guide to FreeBSD by Michael Lucas, No Starch Press, July 2002, 612 pp. ISBN 1-886411-74-3. See the nostarch.com web site and/or the author's web site;
- "FreeBSD Unleashed" by Michael Urban and Brian Tiemann, SAMS, October 2001. Paperback, 1024 pages, book and CD. ISBN: 0672322064. See the www.samspublishing.com link and also sites such as amazon.
Admin Notes:
- Script clone-system can be used to save a snap shot of your system's configuration at regular intervals (onto an independent store) in order to help with system rebuilds;
- A most important administration survival hint: get into the habit of using su to become root for admin work, and then get out of root mode asap so you are more often protected from careless error!
Miscellaneous:
- Ivan Voras' FreeBSD pages track new features (he has worked on GEOM components);
- CVSup sample config (cvsup_setup.tar.gz) (you may use this later to maintain a current system);
- HUT VRRP load balancer;
- The Matrix[FreeBSD] matrix.html;
- FIPS is a free PC disk partition editor: (JCU IT copy).
Other BSDs:
- DragonFly BSD is an offshoot of FreeBSD-4 with an interesting message based approach to SMP;
- NetBSD specialises in supporting multiple platforms (alpha, sparc, i386, HP, 68K, etc.) and a variety of embedded system platforms;
- The PC-BSD project builds distributions of off-the-shelf personal workstation FreeBSD distributions - see http://www.pcbsd.org/ for details.

Jun 27 2009