Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 17:04:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Greg Lehey <grog> To: FreeBSD-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: "The Complete FreeBSD", second edition: errata and addenda Message-ID: <199805230004.RAA21719@hub.freebsd.org>
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Errata and addenda for the Complete FreeBSD, second edition
Last revision: 12 May 1998
The trouble with books is that you can't update them the way you can a web page
or any other online documentation. The result is that most leading edge com-
puter books are out of date almost before they are printed. Unfortunately,
``The Complete FreeBSD'', published by Walnut Creek, is no exception. The sec-
ond edition has only just been published, but already a number of bugs and
changes have surfaced.
The following is a list of modifications which go beyond simple typos. They
relate to the second edition, formatted on 16 December 1997. If you have this
book, please check this list. If you have the first edition of 19 July 1996,
please check ftp://ftp.lemis.com/pub/cfbsd/errata-1. This same file is also
available via the web link http://www.lemis.com/.
This list is available in four forms:
o A PostScript version, suitable for printing out, at
ftp://ftp.lemis.com/pub/cfbsd/errata-2.ps. See page 222 of the book to find
out how to print out PostScript. If at all possible, please take this docu-
ment: it's closest to the original text.
Be careful selecting this file with a web browser: it is often impossible to
reload the document, and you may see a previously cached version.
o An enhanced ASCII version at ftp://ftp.lemis.com/pub/cfbsd/errata-2.txt. When
viewed with more or less, this version will show some highlighting and under-
lining. It's not suitable for direct viewing.
o An ASCII-only version at ftp://ftp.lemis.com/pub/cfbsd/errata-2.ascii. This
version is posted every week to the FreeBSD-questions mailing list. Only
take this version if you have real problems with PostScript: I can't be sure
that the lack of different fonts won't confuse the meaning.
o A web version at http://www.lemis.com/errata-2.html.
All these modifications have been applied to the ongoing source text of the
book, so if you buy a later edition, they will be in it as well. If you find a
bug or a suspected bug in the book, please contact me at <grog@FreeBSD.org.>
General changes
_______________
o In a number of places, I suggest the use of the following command to find
process information:
$ ps aux | grep foo
Unfortunately, ps is sensitive to the column width of the terminal emulator
upon which it is working. This command usually works fine on a relatively
wide xterm, but if you're running on an 80-column terminal, it may truncate
exactly the information you're looking for, so you end up with no output.
You can fix that with the w option:
$ ps waux | grep foo
Thanks to Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> for this information
Location of the sample files
____________________________
The 2.2.5 CD-ROM came out before the book, and it contains the files on the
third (repository) CD-ROM as a single gzipped tar file
/xperimnt/cfbsd/cfbsd.tar.gz. It contains the following files:
drwxr-xr-x jkh/jkh 0 Oct 17 13:01 1997 cfbsd/
drwxr-xr-x jkh/jkh 0 Oct 17 13:01 1997 cfbsd/mutt/
-rw-r--r-- jkh/jkh 352 Oct 15 15:21 1997 cfbsd/mutt/.mail_aliases
-rw-r--r-- jkh/jkh 9394 Oct 15 15:22 1997 cfbsd/mutt/.muttrc
drwxr-xr-x jkh/jkh 0 Oct 17 14:02 1997 cfbsd/scripts/
-rw-r--r-- jkh/jkh 18281 Oct 16 16:52 1997 cfbsd/scripts/.fvwm2rc
-rwxr-xr-x jkh/jkh 1392 Oct 17 12:54 1997 cfbsd/scripts/install-desktop
-rw-r--r-- jkh/jkh 296 Oct 17 12:35 1997 cfbsd/scripts/.xinitrc
-rwxr-xr-x jkh/jkh 622 Oct 17 13:51 1997 cfbsd/scripts/install-rcfiles
-rw-r--r-- jkh/jkh 1133 Oct 17 13:00 1997 cfbsd/scripts/Uutry
-rw-r--r-- jkh/jkh 1028 Oct 17 14:02 1997 cfbsd/scripts/README
drwxr-xr-x jkh/jkh 0 Oct 18 19:32 1997 cfbsd/docs/
-rw-r--r-- jkh/jkh 199111 Oct 16 14:29 1997 cfbsd/docs/packages.txt
-rw-r--r-- jkh/jkh 189333 Oct 16 14:28 1997 cfbsd/docs/packages-by-category.txt
-rw-r--r-- jkh/jkh 188108 Oct 16 14:29 1997 cfbsd/docs/packages.ps
-rw-r--r-- jkh/jkh 226439 Oct 16 14:27 1997 cfbsd/docs/packages-by-category.ps
-rw-r--r-- jkh/jkh 788 Oct 16 15:01 1997 cfbsd/README
-rw-r--r-- jkh/jkh 248 Oct 17 11:52 1997 cfbsd/errata
To extract one of these files, say cfbsd/docs/packages.txt, and assuming you
have the CD-ROM mounted as /cdrom, enter:
# cd /usr/share/doc
# tar xvzf /cdrom/xperimnt/cfbsd/cfbsd.tar.gz cfbsd/docs/packages.txt
See page 209 for more information on using tar.
These files are an early version of what is described in the book. I'll put up
some updated versions on ftp://ftp.lemis.com/ in the near future.
Thanks to Frank McCormick <gfm@readybox.com> for drawing this to my attention.
Page xxxiv
__________
Before the discussion of the shell prompts in the middle of the page, add:
In this book, I recommend the use of the Bourne shell or one of its descendents
(sh, bash, pdksh, ksh or zsh). With the exception of sh, they are all in the
Ports Collection. I personally use the bash shell.
This is a personal preference, and a recommendation, but it's not the standard
shell. The standard BSD shell is the C shell (csh), which has a fuller-fea-
tured descendent tcsh. In particular, the standard installation sets the root
user up with a csh. See page 152 (in this errata) for details of how to change
the shell.
Page 12: Printing the handbook
______________________________
The instructions for formatting the handbook are obsolete. Replace the section
starting Alternatively, you can print out the handbook with the following text:
Alternatively, you can print out the handbook. You need to have the documenta-
tion sources (/usr/doc) installed on your system. You can find them on the
second CD-ROM in the directory of the same name. To install them, first mount
your CD-ROM (see page 175). Then enter:
$ cd /cdrom/usr/doc/handbook
$ mkdir -p /usr/doc/handbook you may need to be root for this operation
$ cp -pr * /usr/doc/handbook
You have a choice of formats for the output:
o ascii will give you plain 7-bit ASCII output, suitable for reading on a char-
acter-mode terminal.
o html will give you HTML output, suitable for browsing with a web browser.
o latex will give you LATEX format, suitable for further processing with TEX
and LATEX.
o ps will give you PostScript output, probably the best choice for printing.
o roff will give you output in troff source. You can process this output with
nroff or troff, but it's currently not very polished. LATEX output is a bet-
ter choice if you want to process it further.
Once you have decided your format, use make to create the document. For exam-
ple, if you decide on PostScript format, you would enter:
$ make FORMATS=ps
This creates a file handbook.ps which you can then print to a PostScript print-
er or with the aid of ghostscript (see page 222).
Thanks to Bob Beer <r-beer@onu.edu> for drawing this to my attention.
Page 45: Preparing floppies for installation
_____________________________________________
Replace the paragraph below the list of file names (in the middle of the page)
with:
The floppy set should contain the file bin.inf and the ones whose names start
with bin. followed by two letters. These other files are all 240640 bytes
long, except for the final one which is usually shorter. Use the MS-DOS COPY
program to copy as many files as will fit onto each disk (5 or 6) until you've
got all the distributions you want packed up in this fashion. Copy each dis-
tribution into subdirectory corresponding to the base name--for example, copy
the bin distribution to the files A:\BIN\BIN.INF, A:\BIN\BIN.AA and so on.
Page 80 and 81
______________
In a couple of examples, the FreeBSD partition is shown as type 164. It should
be 165. Thanks to an unknown contributer for this correction (sorry, I lost
your name).
Page 88: setting up for dumping
_______________________________
The example mentions a variable savecore in /etc/rc.conf. This variable is no
longer used--it's enough to set the variable dumpdev.
Page 92
_______
At the end of the section How to install a package add the text:
Alternatively, you can install packages from the /stand/sysinstall Final Con-
figuration Menu. We saw this menu on page in figure 4-14 on page 71. When you
start sysinstall from the command line, you get to this menu by selecting In-
dex, and then selecting Configure.
Page 93
_______
Before the heading Install ports from the first CD-ROM add:
Install ports when installing the system
________________________________________
The file ports/ports.tgz on the first CD-ROM is a tar archive containing all
the ports. You can install it with the base system if you select the Custom
distribution and include the ports collection. If you didn't install them at
the time, use the following method to install them all (about 40 MB). Make
sure your CD-ROM is mounted (in this example on /cdrom), and enter:
Page 96
_______
After the example at the top of the page, add:
If you're using csh or tcsh, enter:
# cd /cdrom/ports/distfiles
# mkdir -p /usr/ports/distfiles make sure you have a distfiles directory
# foreach i (*)
? ln -s $i /usr/ports/distfiles/$i
? end
Thanks to Christopher Raven <gurab@lineone.net> for drawing this to my atten-
tion.
Page 128
________
Replace the complete text below the example with the following:
These values are defaults, and many are either incorrect for FreeBSD (for exam-
ple the device name /dev/com1) or do not apply at all (for example Xqueue). If
you are configuring manually, select one Protocol and one Device entry from the
following selection. If you must use a two-button mouse, uncomment the keyword
Emulate3Buttons--in this mode, pressing both mouse buttons simultaneously with-
in Emulate3Timeout milliseconds causes the server to report a middle button
press.
Section "Pointer"
Protocol "Microsoft" for Microsoft protocol mice
Protocol "MouseMan" for Logitech mice
Protocol "PS/2" for a PS/2 mouse
Protocol "Busmouse" for a bus mouse
Device "/dev/ttyd0" for a mouse on the first serial port
Device "/dev/ttyd1" for a mouse on the second serial port
Device "/dev/ttyd2" for a mouse on the third serial port
Device "/dev/ttyd3" for a mouse on the fourth serial port
Device "/dev/psm0" for a PS/2 mouse
Device "/dev/mse0" for a bus mouse
Emulate3Buttons only for a two-button mouse
EndSection
You'll notice that the protocol name does not always match the manufacturer's
name. In particular, the Logitech protocol only applies to older Logitech
mice. The newer ones use either the MouseMan or Microsoft protocols. Nearly
all modern serial mice run one of these two protocols, and most run both.
If you are using a bus mouse or a PS/2 mouse, make sure that the device driver
is included in the kernel. The GENERIC kernel contains drivers for both mice,
but the PS/2 driver is disabled. Use UserConfig (see page 50) to enable it.
Page 140
________
Just before the paragraph The super user add the following paragraph:
If you do manage to lose the root password, all may not be lost. Reboot the
machine to single user mode (see page 157), and enter:
# mount -u / mount root file system read/write
# passwd root change the password for root
Enter new password:
Enter password again:
# ^D enter ctrl-D to continue with startup
Note that you should explicitly state the name root: in single user mode, the
system doesn't have the concept of user IDs.
Page 148
________
Replace the text at the top of the page with:
Modern shells supply command line editing which resembles the editors vi or
Emacs. In bash, sh, ksh, and zsh you can make the choice by entering
Page 152
________
After figure 10-8, add the following text:
It would be tedious for every user to put settings in their private initializa-
tion files, so the shells also read a system-wide default file. For the Bourne
shell family, it is /etc/profile, while the C shell family has three files:
/etc/csh.login to be executed on login, /etc/csh.cshrc to be executed when a
new shell is started after you log in, and /etc/csh.logout to be executed when
you stop a shell. The start files are executed before the corresponding indi-
vidual files.
In addition, login classes (page 141) offer another method of setting environ-
ment variables at a global level.
Changing your shell
___________________
The FreeBSD installation gives root a C shell, csh. This is the traditional
Berkeley shell, but it has a number of disadvantages: command line editing is
very primitive, and the script language is significantly different from that of
the Bourne shell, which is the de facto standard for shell scripts: if you stay
with the C shell, you may still need to understand the Bourne shell. The lat-
est version of the Bourne shell sh also includes some command line editing.
See page 148 for details of how to enable it.
You can get better command line editing with tcsh, in the Ports Collection.
You can get both better command line editing and Bourne shell syntax with bash,
also in the Ports Collection.
If you have root access, you can use vipw to change your shell, but there's a
more general way: use chsh (Change Shell). Simply run the program. It starts
your favourite editor (as defined by the EDITOR environment variable). Here's
an example before:
#Changing user database information for velte.
Shell: /bin/csh
Full Name: Jack Velte
Location:
Office Phone:
Home Phone:
You can change anything after the colons. For example, you might change this
to:
#Changing user database information for velte.
Shell: /usr/local/bin/bash
Full Name: Jack Velte
Location: On the road
Office Phone: +1-408-555-1999
Home Phone:
chsh checks and updates the password files when you save the modifications and
exit the editor. The next time you log in, you get the new shell. chsh tries
to ensure you don't make any mistakes--for example, it won't let you enter the
name of a shell which isn't mentioned in the file /etc/shells--but it's a very
good idea to check the shell before logging out. You can try this with su,
which you normally use to become super user:
bumble# su velte
Password:
su-2.00$ note the new prompt
There are a couple of problems in using tcsh or bash as a root shell:
o The shell for root must be on the root file system, otherwise it will not
work in single user mode. Unfortunately, most ports of shells put the shell
in the directory /usr/local/bin, which is almost never on the root file sys-
tem.
o Most shells are dynamically linked: they rely on library routines in files
such as /usr/lib/libc.a. These files are not available in single user mode,
so the shells won't work. You can solve this problem by creating statically
linked versions of the shell, but this requires programming experience beyond
the scope of this book.
If you can get hold of a statically linked version, perform the following steps
to install it:
o Copy the shell to /bin, for example:
# cp /usr/local/bin/bash /bin
o Add the name of the shell to /etc/shells, in this example the line in bold
print:
# List of acceptable shells for chpass(1).
# Ftpd will not allow users to connect who are not using
# one of these shells.
/bin/sh
/bin/csh
/bin/bash
You can then change the shell for root as described above.
Thanks to Lars Koller <Lars.Koeller@Uni-Bielefeld.DE> for drawing this to my
attention.
Page 160
________
Replace the text at the fourth bullet with the augmented text:
The second-level boot locates the kernel, by default the file /kernel on the
root file system, and loads it into memory. It prints the Boot: prompt at this
point so that you can influence this choice--see the man page on page 579 for
more details of what you can enter at this prompt.
Page 176
________
Add the following paragraph
Unmounting file systems
When you mount a file system, the system assumes it is going to stay there, and
in the interests of efficiency it delays writing data back to the file system.
This is the same effect we discussed on page 158. As a result, if you want to
stop using a file system, you need to tell the system about it. You do this
with the umount command. Note the spelling--there's no n in the command name.
You need to do this even with read-only media such as CD-ROMs: the system as-
sumes it can access the data from a mounted file system, and it gets quite un-
happy if it can't. Where possible, it locks removable media so that you can't
remove them from the device until you unmount them.
Using umount is straightforward: just tell it what to unmount, either the de-
vice name or the directory name. For example, to unmount the CD-ROM we mounted
in the example above, you could enter one of these commands:
# umount /dev/cd1a
# umount /cd1
Before unmounting a file system, umount checks that nobody is using it. If
somebody is using it, it will refuse to unmount it with a message like umount:
/cd1: Device busy. This message often occurs because you have changed your di-
rectory to a directory on the file system you want to remove. For example
(which also shows the usefulness of having directory names in the prompt):
=== root@freebie (/dev/ttyp2) /cd1 16 -> umount /cd1
umount: /cd1: Device busy
=== root@freebie (/dev/ttyp2) /cd1 17 -> cd
=== root@freebie (/dev/ttyp2) ~ 18 -> umount /cd1
=== root@freebie (/dev/ttyp2) ~ 19 ->
Thanks to Ken Deboy <glockr@locked_and_loaded.reno.nv.us> for pointing out this
omission.
Page 197, first line
____________________
The text of the first full sentence reads:
The first name, up the the symbol, is the label.
In fact, it should read:
The first name, up to the | symbol, is the label.
Page 208, middle of page
________________________
The example shows the file name /dev/rst0 when using the Bourne shell, and
/dev/nrst0 when using C shell and friends. This is inconsistent; use
/dev/nrst0 with any shell if you want a non-rewinding tape, or /dev/rst0 if you
want a rewinding tape.
Thanks to Norman C Rice <nrice@emu.sourcee.com> for pointing out this one.
Page 219
________
Before the section Testing the spooler add the following section:
Starting the spooler
____________________
As we saw above, the line printer daemon lpd is responsible for printing
spooled jobs. If you're root, you can start it by name:
# lpd
Normally, however, you will want it to be started automatically when the system
starts up. You do this by setting the variable lpd_enable in /etc/rc.conf:
lpd_enable="YES" # Run the line printer daemon
See page 1609 for more details of /etc/rc.conf.
Thanks to Tommy G. James <tgj@worldnet.att.net> for bringing this to my atten-
tion.
Page 242
________
The instructions for extracting the source files from CD-ROM in the middle of
page 242 are incorrect. You'll find the kernel sources on the first CD-ROM in
the directory /src. Replace the example with:
# mkdir -p /usr/src/sys
# ln -s /usr/src/sys /sys
# cd /
# cat /cdrom/src/sys.* | tar xzvf -
Thanks to Raymond Noel <raynoel@videotron.ca> and Suttipan Limanond
<b0l6604@unix.tamu.edu> for finding this one.
Page 283, ``Creating the source tree''
______________________________________
Add a third point to what you need to know:
3. Possibly, the date of the last update that you want to be included in the
checkout. If you specify this date, cvs ignores any more recent updates.
This option is often useful when somebody discovers a recently introduced
bug in -CURRENT: you check out the modules as they were before the bug was
introduced. You specify the date with the -D option, for example -D "10
December 1997".
Page 285, after the second example.
___________________________________
Add the text:
If you need to check out an older version, for example if there are problems
with the most recent version of -CURRENT, you could enter:
# cvs co -D "10 December 1997" src/sys
This command checks out the kernel sources as of 10 December 1997.
Page 364, middle of page
________________________
Change the text from:
The names MYADDR and HISADDR are keywords which represent the addresses at each
end of the link. They must be written as shown, though they may be in lower
case.
to
The names MYADDR and HISADDR are keywords which represent the addresses at each
end of the link. They must be written as shown, though newer versions of ppp
allow you to write them in lower case.
Thanks to Mark S. Reichman <mark@fang.cs.sunyit.edu> for this correction.
Page 368
________
Replace the paragraph after the second example with:
In FreeBSD version 3.0 and later, specify the options PPP_BSDCOMP and PPP_DE-
FLATE to enable two kinds of compression. You'll also need to specify the cor-
responding option in Kernel PPP's configuration file. These options are not
available in FreeBSD version 2.
Thanks to Brian Somers <brian@Awfulhak.org> for this information.
Page 397
________
In the section ``Nicknames'', the example should read:
www IN CNAME freebie
ftp IN CNAME presto
In other words, there should be a space between CNAME and the system name.
Page 466, before the ps example
_______________________________
Add another bullet:
o Finally, you may find it convenient to let some other system handle all your
mail delivery for you: you just send anything you can't deliver locally to
this other host, which sendmail calls a smart host. This is particularly
convenient if you send your mail with UUCP.
To tell sendmail to use a smart host (in our case, mail.example.net), find
the following line in sendmail.cf:
# "Smart" relay host (may be null)
DS
Change it to:
# "Smart" relay host (may be null)
DSmail.example.net
Page 478, ``Running Apache''
____________________________
The text describes the location of the server as /usr/local/www/server/httpd.
This appears to depend on where you get the port from. Some people report the
file being at the more likely location /usr/local/sbin/httpd (though note the
directory sbin, not bin). Check both locations if you run into trouble.
Thanks to Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> for this information.
Page 492
________
Replace references to nmdb with nmbd.
Page 493
________
Replace the last paragraph on the page with:
socket options is hardly mentioned in the documentation, but it's very impor-
tant: many Microsoft implementations of TCP/IP are inefficient and establish a
new TCP more often than necessary. Select the socket options TCP_NODELAY and
IPTOS_LOWDELAY, which can speed up the response time of such applications by
over 95%.
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