Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 00:00:14 -0700 (PDT) From: Annelise Anderson <andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Revised Guide for Users New to FreeBSD and Unix Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.970818235709.8457C-100000@andrsn.stanford.edu>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
For People New to Both FreeBSD and Unix
Annelise Anderson
andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu
August 15, 1997
Congratulations on installing FreeBSD! This introduction is for people
new to both FreeBSD and Un*x--so it starts with basics. It assumes
you're using version 2.0.5 or later of FreeBSD as distributed by
Walnut Creek or FreeBSD.ORG, your system (for now) has a single user
(you)--and you're probably pretty good with DOS/Windows or OS/2.
Contents
1. Logging in and Getting Out
2. Adding A User with Root Privileges
3. Looking Around
4. Getting Help and Information
5. Editing Text
6. Printing Files from DOS
7. Other Useful Commands
8. Next Steps
9. Your Working Environment
10. Other
11. Comments Welcome
1. Logging in and Getting Out
Log in (when you see login:) as a user you created during installation
or as root. (Your FreeBSD installation will already have an account
for root; root can go anywhere and do anything, including deleting
essential files, so be careful!) The symbols % and # in the following
stand for the prompt (yours may be different), with % indicating an
ordinary user and # indicating root.
To log out (and get a new login: prompt) type
# exit
as often as necessary. Yes, press enter after commands, and remember
that Unix is case-sensitive--exit, not EXIT.
To shut down the machine type:
# /sbin/shutdown -h now
Or to reboot type
# /sbin/shutdown -r now
or
# /sbin/reboot
You can also reboot with Ctrl-Alt-Delete. Give it a little time to do
its work. This is equivalent to /sbin/reboot in recent releases of
FreeBSD, and is much, much better than hitting the reset button. You
don't want to have to reinstall this thing, do you?
2. Adding A User with Root Privileges
If you didn't create any users when you installed the system and are
thus logged in as root, you should probably create a user now with
# adduser
The first time you use adduser, it might ask for some defaults to
save. You might want to make the default shell csh instead of sh, if
it suggests sh as the default. Otherwise just press enter to accept
each default. These defaults are saved in /etc/adduser.conf, an
editable file.
Suppose you create a user jack with full name Jack Benimble. Give jack
a password if security (even kids around who might pound on the
keyboard) is an issue. When it asks you if you want to invite jack
into other groups, type wheel
Login group is ``jack''. Invite jack into other groups: wheel
This will make it possible to log in as jack and use the su command to
become root. Then you won't get scolded any more for logging in as
root.
You can quit adduser any time by typing Ctrl-C, and at the end you'll
have a chance to approve your new user or simply type n for no. You
might want to create a second new user (jill?) so that when you edit
jack's login files, you'll have a hot spare in case something goes
wrong.
Once you've done this, use exit to get back to a login prompt and log
in as jack. In general, it's a good idea to do as much work as
possible as an ordinary user who doesn't have the power--and risk--of
root.
If you already created a user and you want the user to be able to su
to root, you can log in as root and edit the file /etc/group, adding
jack to the first line (the group wheel). But first you need to
practice vi, the text editor--or use the simpler text editor, ee,
installed on recent version of FreeBSD.
To delete a user, use the rmuser command.
3. Looking Around
Logged in as an ordinary user, look around and try out some commands
that will access the sources of help and information within FreeBSD.
Here are some commands and what they do:
id
Tells you who you are!
pwd
Shows you where you are--the current working directory.
ls
Lists the files in the current directory.
ls -F
Lists the files in the current directory with a * after
executables, a / after directories, and an @ after symbolic
links.
ls -l
Lists the files in long format--size, date, permissions.
ls -a
Lists hidden ``dot'' files with the others. If you're root,
the``dot'' files show up without the -a switch.
cd
Changes directories. cd .. backs up one level; note the space
after cd. cd /usr/local goes there. cd ~ goes to the home
directory of the person logged in--e.g., /usr/home/jack. Try cd
/cdrom, and then ls, to find out if your CDROM is mounted and
working.
view filename
Lets you look at a file (named filename without changing it.
Try view /etc/fstab. :q to quit.
cat filename
Displays filename on screen. If it's too long and you can see
only the end of it, press ScrollLock and use the up-arrow to
move backward; you can use ScrollLock with man pages too. Press
ScrollLock again to quit scrolling. You might want to try cat
on some of the dot files in your home directory--cat .cshrc,
cat .login, cat .profile.
You'll notice aliases in .cshrc for some of the ls commands (they're
very convenient). You can create other aliases by editing .cshrc. You
can make these aliases available to all users on the system by putting
them in the system-wide csh configuration file, /etc/csh.cshrc.
4. Getting Help and Information
Here are some useful sources of help. Text stands for something of
your choice that you type in--usually a command or filename.
apropos text
Everything containing string text in the whatis database.
man text
The man page for text. The major source of documentation for
Un*x systems. man ls will tell you all the ways to use the ls
command. Press Enter to move through text, Ctrl-b to go back a
page, Ctrl-f to go forward, q or Ctrl-c to quit.
which text
Tells you where in the user's path the command text is found.
locate text
All the paths where the string text is found.
whatis text
Tells you what the command text does and its man page. Typing
whatis * will tell you about all the binaries in the current
directory.
whereis text
Finds the file text, giving its full path.
You might want to try using whatis on some common useful commands like
cat, more, grep, mv, find, tar, chmod, chown, date, and script. more
lets you read a page at a time as it does in DOS, e.g., ls -l | more
or more filename. The * works as a wildcard--e.g., ls w* will show you
files beginning with w.
Are some of these not working very well? Both locate and whatis depend
on a database that's rebuilt weekly. If your machine isn't going to be
left on over the weekend (and running FreeBSD), you might want to run
the commands for daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance now and then.
Run them as root and give each one time to finish before you start the
next one, for now.
# /etc/daily
output omitted
# /etc/weekly
output omitted
# /etc/monthly
output omitted
If you get tired waiting, press Alt-F2 to get another virtual console,
and log in again. After all, it's a multi-user, multi-tasking system.
Nevertheless these commands will probably flash messages on your
screen while they're running; you can type clear at the prompt to
clear the screen. Once they've run, you might want to look at
/var/mail/root and /var/log/messages.
Basically running such commands is part of system administration--and
as a single user of a Unix system, you're your own system
administrator. Virtually everything you need to be root to do is
system administration. Such responsibilities aren't covered very well
even in those big fat books on Unix, which seem to devote a lot of
space to pulling down menus in windows managers. You might want to get
one of the two leading books on systems administration, either Evi
Nemeth et.al.'s UNIX System Administration Handbook (Prentice-Hall,
1995, ISBN 0-13-15051-7)--the second edition with the red cover; or
Æleen Frisch's Essential System Administration (O'Reilly & Associates,
1993, ISBN 0-937175-80-3). I used Nemeth.
5. Editing Text
To configure your system, you need to edit text files. Most of them
will be in the /etc directory; and you'll need to su to root to be
able to change them. You can use the easy ee, but in the long run the
text editor vi is worth learning. There's an excellent tutorial on vi
in /usr/src/contrib/nvi/docs/tutorial if you have that installed;
otherwise you can get it by ftp to ftp.cdrom.com in the directory
FreeBSD/FreeBSD-current/src/contrib/nvi/docs/tutorial.
Before you edit a file, you should probably back it up. Suppose you
want to edit /etc/rc.conf. You could just use cd /etc to get to the
/etc directory and do:
# cp rc.conf rc.conf.orig
This would copy rc.conf to rc.conf.orig, and you could later copy
rc.conf.orig to rc.conf to recover the original. But even better would
be moving (renaming) and then copying back:
# mv rc.conf rc.conf.orig
# cp rc.conf.orig rc.conf
because the mv command preserves the original date and owner of the
file. You can now edit rc.conf. If you want the original back, you'd
then mv rc.conf rc.conf.myedit (assuming you want to preserve your
edited version) and then
# mv rc.conf.orig rc.conf
to put things back the way they were.
To edit a file, type
# vi filename
Move through the text with the arrow keys. Esc (the escape key) puts
vi in command mode. Here are some commands:
x
delete letter the cursor is on
dd
delete the entire line (even if it wraps on the screen)
i
insert text at the cursor
a
insert text after the cursor
Once you type i or a, you can enter text. Esc puts you back in command
mode where you can type
:w
to write your changes to disk and continue editing
:wq
to write and quit
:q!
to quit without saving changes
/text
to move the cursor to text; /Enter (the enter key) to find the
next instance of text.
G
to go to the end of the file
nG
to go to line n in the file, where n is a number
Ctrl-L
to redraw the screen
Ctrl-b and Ctrl-f
go back and forward a screen, as they do with more and view.
Practice with vi in your home directory by creating a new file with vi
filename and adding and deleting text, saving the file, and calling it
up again. vi delivers some surprises because it's really quite
complex, and sometimes you'll inadvertently issue a command that will
do something you don't expect. (Some people actually like vi--it's
more powerful than DOS EDIT--find out about the :r command.) Use Esc
one or more times to be sure you're in command mode and proceed from
there when it gives you trouble, save often with :w, and use :q! to
get out and start over (from your last :w) when you need to.
Now you can cd to /etc, su to root, use vi to edit the file
/etc/group, and add a user to wheel so the user has root privileges.
Just add a comma and the user's login name to the end of the first
line in the file, press Esc, and use :wq to write the file to disk and
quit. Instantly effective. (You didn't put a space after the comma,
did you?)
6. Printing Files from DOS
At this point you probably don't have the printer working, so here's a
way to create a file from a man page, move it to a floppy, and then
print it from DOS. Suppose you want to read carefully about changing
permissions on files (pretty important). You can use the command man
chmod to read about it. The command
% man chmod | col -b > chmod.txt
will remove formatting codes and send the man page to the chmod.txt
file instead of showing it on your screen. Now put a dos-formatted
diskette in your floppy drive a, su to root, and type
# /sbin/mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt
to mount the floppy drive on /mnt.
Now (you no longer need to be root, and you can type exit to get back
to being user jack) you can go to the directory where you created
chmod.txt and copy the file to the floppy with:
% cp chmod.txt /mnt
and use ls /mnt to get a directory listing of /mnt, which should show
the file chmod.txt.
You might especially want to make a file from /sbin/dmesg by typing
% /sbin/dmesg > dmesg.txt
and copying dmesg.txt to the floppy. /sbin/dmesg is the boot log
record, and it's useful to understand it because it shows what FreeBSD
found when it booted up. If you ask questions on
freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG or on a USENET group--like ``FreeBSD
isn't finding my tape drive, what do I do?''--people will want to know
what dmesg has to say.
You can now dismount the floppy drive (as root) to get the disk out
with
# /sbin/umount /mnt
and reboot to go to DOS. Copy these files to a DOS directory, call
them up with DOS EDIT, Windows Notepad or Wordpad, or a word
processor, make a minor change so the file has to be saved, and print
as you normally would from DOS or Windows. Hope it works! Manual pages
come out best if printed with the dos print command. (Copying files
from FreeBSD to a mounted dos partition is in some cases still a
little risky.)
Getting the printer printing from FreeBSD involves creating an
appropriate entry in /etc/printcap and creating a matching spool
directory in /var/spool/output. If your printer is on lpt0 (what dos
calls LPT1), you may only need to go to /var/spool/output and (as
root) create the directory lpd by typing: mkdir lpd, if it doesn't
already exist. Then the printer should respond if it's turned on when
the system is booted, and lp or lpr should send a file to the printer.
Whether or not the file actually prints depends on configuring it,
which is covered in the FreeBSD handbook.
7. Other Useful Commands
df
shows file space and mounted systems.
ps aux
shows processes running. ps ax is a narrower form.
rm filename
remove filename.
rm -R dir
removes a directory dir and all subdirectories--careful!
ls -R
lists files in the current directory and all subdirectories; I
used a variant, ls -AFR > where.txt, to get a list of all the
files in / and (separately) /usr before I found better ways to
find files.
passwd
to change user's password (or root's password)
man hier
man page on the Unix file system
Use find to locate filename in /usr or any of its subdirectories with
% find /usr -name "filename"
You can use * as a wildcard in "filename" (which should be in quotes).
If you tell find to search in / instead of /usr it will look for the
file(s) on all mounted file systems, including the CDROM and the dos
partition.
An excellent book that explains Unix commands and utilities is
Abrahams & Larson, Unix for the Impatient (2nd ed., Addison-Wesley,
1996). There's also a lot of Unix information on the Internet. Try the
Unix Reference Desk.
8. Next Steps
You should now have the tools you need to get around and edit files,
so you can get everything up and running. There is a great deal of
information in the FreeBSD handbook (which is probably on your hard
drive) and FreeBSD's web site. A wide variety of packages and ports
are on the Walnut Creek CDROM as well as the web site. The handbook
tells you more about how to use them (get the package if it exists,
with pkg_add /cdrom/packages/All/packagename, where packagename is the
filename of the package). The cdrom has lists of the packages and
ports with brief descriptions in cdrom/packages/index,
cdrom/packages/index.txt, and cdrom/ports/index, with fuller
descriptions in /cdrom/ports/*/*/pkg/DESCR, where the *s represent
subdirectories of kinds of programs and program names respectively.
If you find the handbook too sophisticated (what with lndir and all)
on installing ports from the cdrom, here's what usually works:
Find the port you want, say kermit. There will be a directory for it
on the cdrom. Copy the subdirectory to /usr/local (a good place for
software you add that should be available to all users) with:
# cp -R /cdrom/ports/comm/kermit /usr/local
This should result in a /usr/local/kermit subdirectory that has all
the files that the kermit subdirectory on the CDROM has.
Next, create the directory /usr/ports/distfiles if it doesn't already
exist using mkdir. Now check check /cdrom/ports/distfiles for a file
with a name that indicates it's the port you want. Copy that file to
/usr/ports/distfiles; in recent versions you can skip this step, as
FreeBSD will do it for you. In the case of kermit, there is no
distfile.
Then cd to the subdirectory of /usr/local/kermit that has the file
Makefile. Type
# make all install
During this process the port will ftp to get any compressed files it
needs that it didn't find on the cdrom or in /usr/ports/distfiles. If
you don't have your network running yet and there was no file for the
port in /cdrom/ports/distfiles, you will have to get the distfile
using another machine and copy it to /usr/ports/distfiles from a
floppy or your dos partition. Read Makefile (with cat or more or view)
to find out where to go (the master distribution site) to get the file
and what its name is. Its name will be truncated when downloaded to
DOS, and after you get it into /usr/ports/distfiles you'll have to
rename it (with the mv command) to its original name so it can be
found. (Use binary file transfers!) Then go back to /usr/local/kermit,
find the directory with Makefile, and type make all install.
The other thing that happens when installing ports or packages is that
some other program is needed. If the installation stops with a message
can't find unzip or whatever, you might need to install the package or
port for unzip before you continue.
Once it's installed type rehash to make FreeBSD reread the files in
the path so it knows what's there. (If you get a lot of path not found
messages when you use whereis or which, you might want to make
additions to the list of directories in the path statement in .cshrc
in your home directory. The path statement in Unix does the same kind
of work it does in DOS, except the current directory is not (by
default) in the path for security reasons; if the command you want is
in the directory you're in, you need to type ./ before the command to
make it work; no space after the slash.)
You might want to get the most recent version of Netscape from their
ftp site. (Netscape requires the X Window System.) There's now a
FreeBSD version, so look around carefully. Just use gunzip filename
and tar xvf filename on it, move the binary to /usr/local/bin or some
other place binaries are kept, rehash, and then put the following
lines in .cshrc in each user's home directory or (easier) in
/etc/csh.cshrc, the system-wide csh start-up file:
setenv XKEYSYMDB /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/XKeysymDB
setenv XNLSPATH /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/nls
This assumes that the file XKeysymDB and the directory nls are in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11; if they're not, find them and put them there.
If you originally got Netscape as a port using the CDROM (or ftp),
don't replace /usr/local/bin/netscape with the new netscape binary;
this is just a shell script that sets up the environmental variables
for you. Instead rename the new binary to netscape.bin and replace the
old binary, which is /usr/local/lib/netscape/netscape.bin.
9. Your Working Environment
Your shell is the most important part of your working environment. In
DOS, the usual shell is command.com. The shell is what interprets the
commands you type on the command line, and thus communicates with the
rest of the operating system. You can also write shell scripts, which
are like DOS batch files: a series of commands to be run without your
intervention.
Two shells come installed with FreeBSD: csh and sh. csh is good for
command-line work, but scripts should be written with sh (or bash).
You can find out what shell you have by typing echo $SHELL.
The csh shell is okay, but tcsh does everything csh does and more. It
It allows you to recall commands with the arrow keys and edit them. It
has tab-key completion of filenames (csh uses the escape key), and it
lets you switch to the directory you were last in with cd -. It's also
much easier to alter your prompt with tcsh. It makes life a lot
easier.
Here are the three steps for installing a new shell:
1. Install the shell as a port or a package, just as you would any
other port or package. Use rehash and which tcsh (assuming you're
installing tcsh) to make sure it got installed.
2. As root, edit /etc/shells, adding a line in the file for the new
shell, in this case /usr/local/bin/tcsh, and save the file. (Some
ports may do this for you.)
3. Use the chsh command to change your shell to tcsh permanently, or
type tcsh at the prompt to change your shell without logging in again.
Note: It can be dangerous to change root's shell to something other
than sh or csh on early versions of FreeBSD and many other versions of
Unix; you may not have a working shell when the system puts you into
single user mode. The solution is to use su -m to become root, which
will give you the tcsh shell as root, because the shell is part of the
environment. You can make this permanent by adding it to your .tcshrc
file as an alias with
alias su su -m
When tcsh starts up, it will read the /etc/csh.cshrc and
/etc/csh.login files, as does csh. It will also read the .login file
in your home directory and the .cshrc file as well, unless you provide
a .tcshrc file. This you can do by simply copying .cshrc to .tcshrc.
Now that you've installed tcsh, you can adjust your prompt. You can
find the details in the manual page for tcsh, but here is a line to
put in your .tcshrc that will tell you how many commands you have
typed, what time it is, and what directory you are in. It also
produces a > if you're an ordinary user and a # if you're root, but
tsch will do that in any case:
set prompt = "%h %t %~ %# "
This should go in the same place as the existing set prompt line if
there is one, or under
if($?prompt) then
if not. Comment out the old line; you can always switch back to it if
you prefer it. Don't forget the spaces and quotes. You can get the
.tcshrc reread by typing source .tcshrc.
You can get a listing of other environmental variables that have been
set by typing env at the prompt. The result will show you your default
editor, pager, and terminal type, among possibly many others. A useful
command if you log in from a remote location and can't run a program
because the terminal isn't capable is setenv TERM vt100.
10. Other
As root, you can dismount the CDROM with /sbin/umount /cdrom, take it
out of the drive, insert another one, and mount it with
/sbin/mount_cd9660 /dev/cd0a /cdrom assuming cd0a is the device name
for your CDROM drive. The most recent versions of FreeBSD let you
mount the cdrom with just /sbin/mount /cdrom.
Using the live file system--the second of FreeBSD's CDROM disks--is
useful if you've got limited space. What is on the live file system
varies from release to release. You might try playing games from the
cdrom. This involves using lndir, which gets installed with the X
Window System, to tell the program(s) where to find the necessary
files, because they're in the /cdrom file system instead of in /usr
and its subdirectories, which is where they're expected to be. Read
man lndir.
11. Comments Welcome
If you use this guide I'd be interested in knowing where it was
unclear and what was left out that you think should be included, and
if it was helpful. My thanks to Eugene W. Stark, professor of computer
science at SUNY-Stony Brook, and John Fieber for helpful comments.
Annelise Anderson, andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.3.96.970818235709.8457C-100000>