From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jul 16 20:57:37 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id UAA12660 for questions-outgoing; Tue, 16 Jul 1996 20:57:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov (gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov [137.75.131.181]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id UAA12649 for ; Tue, 16 Jul 1996 20:57:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from emu.fsl.noaa.gov (kelly@emu.fsl.noaa.gov [137.75.60.32]) by gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id DAA00898; Wed, 17 Jul 1996 03:57:34 GMT Message-Id: <199607170357.DAA00898@gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov> Received: by emu.fsl.noaa.gov (1.40.112.4/16.2) id AA131155886; Tue, 16 Jul 1996 21:58:06 -0600 Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 21:58:06 -0600 From: Sean Kelly To: durang@u.washington.edu Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: (message from Ken Marsh on Tue, 16 Jul 1996 19:09:10 -0700 (PDT)) Subject: Re: Are there any Freebsd books? Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk >>>>> "Ken" == Ken Marsh writes: Ken> I am aware of the Freebsd Documentation project, and although Ken> it has been quite helpful, Yay!!! :-) Ken> it is not nearly complete. Waaaa!!! :-( Ken> Is there any book that covers elements of BSD such as what rc Ken> files are, how tar knows where to put the extracted files, Ken> and what exactly MAKEDEV does, and what devices can it make? I'm not sure if such a text even exists. I'm not sure what books to recommend as substitutes either. Maybe _The Unix Programming Environment_ by Kernigan and Pike (although it's a bit dated), and _Unix System Administration_ by Nemeth et al (quite good). _Unix Power Tools_ by Peek, O'Reilly, and Loukides also also a lot of information on tar and what not. I learned most of this stuff through experience and by reading the man pages. And by asking around. After eight years hanging around Unix, these things just become second nature. Just ask! rc files: if you mean /etc/rc and it brethren, these are just shell scripts that are executed by a Bourne shell for system initialization. The _Unix Programming Environment_ has a lot on Bourne shell programming, also see sh(1). If you mean .cshrc, .mailrc, then just see their appropriate man pages: csh(1), mail(1), etc. How tar knows where to put extracted files: tar extracts files relative to the current directory. If the tar archive contains a, a/b, a/c, a/d/e, f, and g, then tar will make a a/b a/c a/d/e f g right in the current directory. Tar archives can also contain full pathnames, like /a/b/c, so no matter what directory you're in it'll always extact /a/b/c. tar also supports the -C option, which specifies what the current directory should be for extractions. So, tar -C is sort of like: cd tar What MAKEDEV does: it's basically a wrapper around mknod. What mknod does: it makes special entries in the filesystem that represent entry points into the kernel's device drivers. Each node made with mknod has a major number, which represents the device driver. For example, number 4 is the SCSI disk driver, 28 is the terminal driver. There's also a minor number, which usually represents which device is handled by the driver. For example, 0 is the first SCSI disk, 8 is the second SCSI disk. 1..7 are other partitions in the first SCSI disk. Ken> I have so many questions that I am left to hypothesize Ken> about. Far too many to send to questions@Freebsd.org. Just ask 'em. -- Sean Kelly NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory kelly@fsl.noaa.gov Boulder Colorado USA http://www-sdd.fsl.noaa.gov/~kelly/