Sabi ni Carlo noong Thu 27th July:
> To all FreeBSD users: I've only started thoroughly using FreeBSD a few days
> ago and I have a few questions...
First, a disclaimer. Had to give up on FreeBSD about a week ago because I was
trying to install 4.0, and I was getting a kernel panic on the boot diskettes.
Have moved on to OpenBSD since then. But I can try to remember what I'd been
doing, and besides, my one-week experience with OpenBSD tells me that it's similar
enough to FreeBSD.
> 1. Is there a local FreeBSD group which I can contact and send my questions?
Nope (that was easy ;-), at least none that I know of. Want to start one up?
> 2. Where is the equivalent of Linux's /etc/inittab? Where can I modify init
> settings? Is /etc/rc.conf a boot autoconfiguration tool? Can someone brief
> me on how FreeBSD bootup scripts work.
Far as I remember, there are several .conf files, /etc/rc.conf being the main one.
I seem to remember an /etc/rc.conf.local (or something like that).
> 3. I installed GNU bash and fileutils so I can (hopefully) make use of
> colors using dircolors. It seems that the FreeBSD term cons25 is not listed
> among the 'colorable' terms of /etc/DIR_COLORS. Is there a way for me to use
> ls with colors?
If it makes you feel any better, never did get this going either ;-)
> 4. How does /etc/passwd and /etc/master.passwd work? Is master.passwd the
> equivalent of Linux's /etc/shadow? FreeBSD does not recognize the shell
I think so.
> changes I have made in these two files, instead I had to use the pw command
> for it to use my desired shell, why?
IMHO, it's a bad idea anyway to directly modify the password files. FWIW.
> 5. Can someone give me an overview of the following:
> * PPP-is this the same as Linux pppd?
Not sure, not having much experience with Linux pppd. What I can tell you though
is that you control ppp with the /etc/ppp.conf text file. IIRC, you can start with
/etc/ppp.conf.sample, cp that to /etc/ppp.conf, and work on that copy. One neat
feature is the ppp password keyword (forget exactly what, I think it's
server 6670 {password}
or something like that -- you should see it in the .conf). You run ppp as root,
possibly shunt it to the background , and then the server keyword lets non-root
users run pppctl by simply supplying the password and the port. The dial-on-demand
is pretty simple too, just a matter of adding the -auto parameter to ppp:
ppp -auto {connection-name}
> * Firewall-the equiv of ipfwadm/ipchains/important FreeBSD-only net tools
Not sure about this, take a look at the /usr/ports/security directory.
> * Kernel-How do I configure the kernel? How do I recompile it?
/usr/src/sys/i386/config -- or somewhere off the /usr/src/sys tree, pretty sure up
to the sys branch. There's a GENERIC kernel configuration file that you can cp to
your own, e.g., CARLOSOGONO. The file is heavily commented, and you can view the
LINT file for all possible occurrences of keywords. Once you're happy with your
changes:
./config CARLOSOGONO
cd ../../config (or it could be ../../compile)
make
make install
No need to be concerned if anything goes wrong and your custom kernel doesn't
boot, you can always boot to kernel.old, then go over your customization again.
BTW, one neat feature I found is that you can embed the kernel configuration file
in the kernel itself, so you can view it from the command line (forget the exact
command, think it's in LINT).
> * FreeBSD config scripts (if any)
None that I remember. I had to modify scads of text files.
> 6. Are there HOWTO docs for FreeBSD?
/usr/local/share/doc/HTML/index.html. Some of the best online documentation I've
seen, even better than the Windows help system. Ohwell, maybe it has to be <weg>
It's what I miss most in OpenBSD. Take note especially of the section on compiling
your own kernel, because my memory is fuzzy in regard to the exact directories and
the procedure.
Good luck, and mabuhay.
-
Philippine Linux Users Group. Web site and archives at http://plug.linux.org.ph
To leave: send "unsubscribe" in the body to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
