Attachment #8910 for bug #18477

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	    -CURRENT mailing list are sometimes treated with
	    contempt.</para>

	  <para>Every day,  <ulink
	    URL="../releases/snapshots.html">snapshot</ulink> releases are
	    made based on the current state of the -CURRENT and
	    -STABLE branches. Nowadays, 
	    distributions of the occasional snapshot are now being made
	    available. The goals behind each snapshot release are:</para>

	  <itemizedlist>

	    </listitem>

	    <listitem>
	      <para>To give people who would like to run -CURRENT or
	      -STABLE but who
	        don't have the time and/or bandwidth to follow it on a
		day-to-day basis an easy way of bootstrapping it onto
		their systems.</para>

	    </listitem>
	  </itemizedlist>

	  <para>No claims are made that any -CURRENT snapshot can be considered
	    &ldquo;production quality&rdquo; for any purpose.  
	    If you want to run a stable and
	    fully tested system, you will have to stick to full
	    releases, or use the -STABLE snaphosts.</para>

	  <para>Snapshot releases are directly available from <ulink
	    URL="ftp://current.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/">

	    for 5.0-CURRENT and
	    <ulink url="ftp://releng4.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD">
	    releng4.FreeBSD.org</ulink> for 4-STABLE snapshots.
	    3-STABLE snapshots are not being produced at the time of
	    this writing (May 2000).</para> 
	   
	    <para>Snapshots are generated, on the average, once a day for
	    all actively developed branches.</para>
	</answer>
      </qandaentry>

	    beyond, the previous 2.2-STABLE branch having been retired
	    with the release of 2.2.8.  3.4-STABLE has now replaced it,
	    with 3.4-RELEASE being released in mid-December 1999.
	    4.0-RELEASE was released in March 2000. Although 4-STABLE
	    is the actively developed -STABLE branch, bugfixes are
	    still being committed to 3-STABLE. It is expected that the 
	    3.X branch will be officially obsoleted some time in
	    summer 2000.
	    5.0-CURRENT is now the "current
	    branch", with the no release date planed.</para>
	</answer>
      </qandaentry>

	  <para>Releases are made about every 4 months on average.</para>

	  <para>For people needing (or wanting) a little more excitement,
	    binary snapshots are made every day... see above.</para>
	 </answer>
	</answer>
      </qandaentry>

      <qandaentry>


	  <itemizedlist>
	    <listitem>
	      <para>For the current 2.2-STABLE release, 2.2.8R, see the
	      <ulink URL="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/2.2.8-RELEASE/">2.2.8-RELEASE</ulink>
	      directory.</para>
	    </listitem>

	    <listitem>
	      <para>For the current 3.X-STABLE release, 3.4-RELEASE, see
	        the <ulink
		URL="ftp://current.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/3.4-RELEASE/">3.4-RELEASE</ulink>

	    </listitem>
	    <listitem>
	      <para>The current 4.X-STABLE release, 4.0-RELEASE can be
	      found in the <ulink
	      url="ftp://current.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/4.0-RELEASE"> the 4.0-RELEASE</ulink> directory.</para>
	      </listitem>

	    <listitem>
	      <para><ulink
	      URL="ftp://releng3.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/">3.X Snapshot</ulink>
	      releases are also made once a day along the RELENG_3 branch
	      (post 3.0-RELEASE) as it continues on its way towards
	      3.5-RELEASE.</para>
	    </listitem>

	    <listitem>
	      <para><ulink
	      url="ftp://releng4.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/">4.X
	      snapshots</ulink> are usually made once a day.</para>
	    </listitem>

	    <listitem>
	      <para><ulink


	<answer>
	  <para>There is a FreeBSD Documentation Project which you may
	    contact (or even better, join) at the <emphasis
	    remap=tt>freebsd-doc</emphasis> mailing list:  <ulink
	    URL="mailto:freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org">&lt;freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org&gt;</ulink>.
	    This list is for discussion of the FreeBSD documentation.  For
	    actual questions about FreeBSD, there is the <emphasis
	    remap=tt>freebsd-questions</emphasis> mailing list: <ulink
	    URL="mailto:freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org">&lt;freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org&gt;</ulink>.</para>

	  <para>A FreeBSD ``handbook'' is available, and can be found as:
	    <ulink URL="../handbook/index.html">the FreeBSD
	    Handbook</ulink>.  Note that this is a work in progress;
	    some parts may be incomplete or out-of-date.</para>

	  <para>The definitive printed guide on FreeBSD is ``The Complete
	    FreeBSD'', written by Greg Lehey and published by Walnut Creek

	    URL="http://www.cheapbytes.com">CheapBytes</ulink>, or at your
	    favorite bookstore.  The ISBN is 1-57176-227-2.</para>

	  <para>Since FreeBSD is based upon Berkeley
	    4.4BSD-Lite2, most of the 4.4BSD manuals are applicable to
	    FreeBSD.  O'Reilly and Associates publishes the following
	    manuals:</para>

	  <itemizedlist>


	  <itemizedlist>
	    <listitem>
	      <para>Using <application>CVSup</application>:  
	      You can retrieve the formatted files
	        using <application>CVSup</application>, and connecting
		to a <application>CVSup</application> server.</para>
		<para>To retrieve the webpages, please look at the example
		supfile, which can be found in 
		<filename>/usr/share/examples/cvsup/www-supfile</filename>.
		</para>
	    </listitem>

	    <listitem>
	      <para>Using rsync:  See <ulink
	        URL="http://www.FreeBSD.org/internal/mirror.html">the
	        mirroring page</ulink> for information.</para>
	    </listitem>

	    <listitem>
	      <para>Using ftp mirror:  You can download the FTP server's
	        copy of the web site sources using your favorite ftp mirror
		tool.  Keep in mind that you have to build these sources before

	<answer>
	  <para>Well, we can't pay, but we might arrange a free CD or
	    T-shirt and a Contributor's Handbook entry if you submit a
	    translation of the documentation. Before you begin translating
	    please contact the
	    <emphasis>freebsd-doc</emphasis> mailing list at
	    <email>freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org</email>; you may find
	    somebody to help with the translation effort. You may also
	    find out there is already
	    a team translating the docs into your chosen language,
	    who surely wouldn't turn down your help. </para>
	</answer>
      </qandaentry>


<qandaentry><question>
<para>Can I install on a disk with bad blocks?</para></question><answer>

<para>Prior to 3.0, FreeBSD included a utility known as
<command>bad144</command>, which automatically remapped bad
blocks. Because modern IDE drives perform this function themselves,
<command>bad144</command> has been removed from the FreeBSD source
tree. If you wish to install FreeBSD 3.0 or later, we strongly suggest
you purchase a newer disk drive. If you do not wish to do this, you
must run FreeBSD 2.x.</para>
<para>If you are seeing bad block errors with a modern IDE drive,
chances are the drive is going to die very soon (the drive's internal
remapping functions are no longer sufficient to fix the bad blocks,
which means the disk is heavily corrupted); we suggest you by a
new hard drive.</para>

<para>If you have a SCSI drive with bad blocks, see <link linkend="awre">this answer</link>.</para>


</listitem>

<listitem>
<para>If you're using 
Windows95 or Win98 did you run <command>fdimage</command> or
<command>rawrite</command> in pure DOS mode? These OS's can
interfere with programs that write directly to hardware, which
the disk creation program does; even running it inside a DOS
shell in the GUI can cause this problem.</para>


</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry><question
id="bigram">
<para>        I have &gt;16MB of RAM. Will this cause any problems?
      </para></question><answer>

<para>Apart from performance issues, no.  FreeBSD 2.X comes with bounce
buffers which allow your bus mastering controller access to greater
than 16MB. (Note that this should only be required if you are using
ISA devices, although one or two broken EISA and VLB devices may
need it as well).</para>

<para>Also look at the section on <link linkend="reallybigram">&gt;64M machines</link> if you have that much memory,
or if you're using a Compaq or other BIOS that lies about
the available memory.</para>

</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry><question>
<para>Do I need to install the complete sources?</para></question><answer>



<para>To actually select a subset of the sources, use the Custom
menu item when you are in the Distributions menu of the
system installation tool.</para>  
will also install partial pieces of the source distribution,
depending on the arguments you pass it.</para>

</answer></qandaentry>


      </literallayout>
</para>

<para>In FreeBSD 3.X, the line should be:</para>

<para>
<literallayout>        device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c tty irq5
      </literallayout>
</para>

<para>And in FreeBSD 4.X and later, the line should read:</para>

<para>
<literallayout>        device mse0 at isa? port 0x23c irq5
</literallayout>
</para> 

<para>Bus mice usually comes with dedicated interface cards.
These cards may allow you to set the port address and the IRQ number other
than shown above.  Refer to the manual of your mouse and the
&man.mse.4; man page for more information.</para>


      </literallayout>
</para>

<para>In versions 2.2.2 to 3.0, set the following variables in
<filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename>.</para>

<para>

      </literallayout>
</para>

<para>In 3.1 and later, assuming you have a PS/2 mouse, all you need
to is add &ldquo;moused_enable=&quot;YES&quot; to
<filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename>.</para> 

<para>In addition, if you would like to be able to use the mouse
daemon on all virtual terminals instead of just console at boot-time,
add the following to <filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename>.</para>

</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry><question>
<para>What other devices does FreeBSD support?</para></question><answer>

<para>See the <ulink URL="../handbook/install.html#INSTALL-MISC">Handbook</ulink>
for the list of other devices supported.</para>

<para>Does FreeBSD support Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP)?
      </para></question><answer>

<para>SMP is supported in 3.0-STABLE and later releases only. SMP is
not enabled in the <emphasis>GENERIC</emphasis> kernel, so you will
have to recompile your kernel to enable SMP. Take a look at
<filename>/sys/i386/conf/LINT</filename> to figure out what options to put in
your kernel config file.</para>

</answer></qandaentry>


This is fine for operating systems like DOS that use BIOS code to
access the disk.  However, FreeBSD's disk driver does not go through
BIOS, therefore a mechanism, bad144, exists that replaces this
functionality.  bad144 only works with the wd driver (which means it
is not supported in FreeBSD 4.0),
it is NOT able to be used with SCSI.  bad144 works by entering all bad
sectors found into a special file.</para>


firmware for it, you will need to check the position of jumper W1
to B-C, the default is A-B.</para>

<para>The 742a EISA cards never had the ``&gt;16MB'' problem mentioned in
the section <link linkend="bigram">on &gt;16 MB machines</link>. This is a
problem that occurs with the Vesa-Local Buslogic SCSI cards.</para>

</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry><question>

</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry><question>
<para>        When I run a SCO/iBCS2 application, it bombs on
<emphasis remap=tt>socksys</emphasis> (FreeBSD 3.0 and older only).
      </para></question><answer>

<para>You first need to edit the <filename>/etc/sysconfig</filename>

so that all files could be copied with a <command><ulink URL="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?cp(1)">cp</ulink> /usr/src/etc/rc*
/etc</command> command.</para>

<para>And, in 3.1 and later, <filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename> has
been moved to <filename>/etc/defaults/rc.conf</filename>. <emphasis>Do not edit
this file!</emphasis> Instead, if there is any entry in
<filename>/etc/defaults/rc.conf</filename> that you want to change,
you should copy the line into <filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename> and
change it there.</para>
<para>For example, if you wish to start named, the DNS server included
with FreeBSD in FreeBSD 3.1 or later, all you need to do is:</para>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>echo named_enable="YES" &gt;&gt;
/etc/rc.conf</userinput></screen>

<para>To start up local services in FreeBSD 3.1 or later, place shell
scripts in the <filename>/usr/local/etc.rd</filename> directory. These
shell scripts should be set executable, and end with a .sh. In FreeBSD
3.0 and earlier releases, you should edit the
<filename>/etc/rc.local</filename> file.</para> 

<para>The <filename>/etc/rc.serial</filename> is for serial port initialization
(e.g. locking the port characteristics, and so on.).</para>

<para>The <filename>/etc/rc.i386</filename> is for Intel-specifics settings, such
as iBCS2 emulation or the PC system console configuration.</para>

<para>Starting with 2.1.0R, you can also have "local" startup files in a
directory specified in <filename>/etc/sysconfig</filename> (or
<filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename>):</para>

<para>
<literallayout>        # Location of local startup files.
        local_startup=/usr/local/etc/rc.local.d
      </literallayout>
</para>

<para>Each file ending in <filename>.sh</filename> will be executed in alphabetical order.</para>

<para>If you want to ensure a certain execution order without changing all
the file names, you can use a scheme similar to the following with
digits prepended to each file name to insure the ordering:</para>

<para>
<literallayout>        10news.sh
        15httpd.sh
        20ssh.sh
      </literallayout>
</para>

<para>It can be seen as ugly (or SysV :-)) but it provides a simple and
regular scheme for locally-added packages without resorting to
magical editing of <filename>/etc/rc.local</filename>.  Many of the ports/packages
assume that <filename>/usr/local/etc/rc.d</filename> is a local startup directory.</para>

</answer></qandaentry>

<qandaentry><question>

<para>Use the <ulink URL="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?adduser">adduser</ulink> command. For more complicated usage, the
<ulink URL="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?pw">pw</ulink> command.</para>

<para>To remove the user again, use the <ulink
URL="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?rmuser">rmuser</ulink>
command. Once again, <command>pw</command> will work as well.</para>

</answer></qandaentry>



<para>
<literallayout>        options    SYSVSHM
        options    SYSVSHM          # enable shared memory   
        options    SYSVSEM          # enable for semaphores
        options    SYSVMSG          # enable for messaging
      </literallayout>
</para>
<para><note><para>In FreeBSD 3.2 and later, these options are already part
of the <emphasis>GENERIC</emphasis> kernel, which means they should
already be compiled into your system.</para></note></para>

<para>Recompile and install your kernel.</para>
ridiculous number like 4096 (16M!) if you want to run
GIMP. 256Kb is plenty for X11R6 shared memory.</para>

</answer></qandaentry>


box to connect to the Internet and then be able to access the
Internet from the Windows95 box through the FreeBSD box. This
is really just a special case of the previous question.</para>
<para> ... and the answer is yes! In FreeBSD 3.x, user-mode ppp contains a
<option>-nat</option> option. If you run <command>ppp</command> with
the <option>-nat</option>, set <literal>gateway_enable</literal> to
<emphasis>YES</emphasis> in <filename>/etc/rc.conf</filename>, and
configure your Windows machine correctly, this should work
fine.</para>

<para>More detailed information about setting this up can be found in
the <ulink url="http://www.FreeBSD.org/tutorials/ppp/index.html">Pedantic PPP
Primer</ulink> by Steve Sims.</para> 
<para>If you are using kernel-mode ppp, or have an Ethernet connection
to the Internet, you will have to use <command>natd</command>. Please
look at the <link linkend="natd">natd</link> section of this FAQ.</para>
<para>See also the section on <link linkend="natd">natd</link>.</para>

</answer></qandaentry>


</answer></qandaentry></qandaset>
</chapter>













<chapter id="ppp">
<title>PPP</title>
<qandaset>

<para>        Why use (what are) a.out and ELF executable formats?
      </para></question><answer>

<para>To understand why FreeBSD uses the <filename>ELF</filename> format, you must
first know a little about the 3 currently "dominant" executable
formats for UNIX:</para>

<para><note><para>Prior to FreeBSD 3.x, FreeBSD used the a.out format.</para></note></para>

<para>
<itemizedlist>


      </para></question><answer>

<para>There are currently three active/semi-active branches in the FreeBSD
<ulink URL="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi">CVS
Repository</ulink> (the RELENG_2 branch is probably only changed twice
a year, which is why there are only three active branches of development):</para>

<para>
<itemizedlist>

</itemizedlist>
</para>

<para><acronym>HEAD</acronym> is not an actual branch tag, like the other two; it's
simply a symbolic constant for
<emphasis>"the current, non-branched development stream"</emphasis> which we simply
refer to as <option>-CURRENT</option>.</para>

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