Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 03:17:14 -0500 (EST) From: James Gill <gill@topsecret.net> To: Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro <leandro@capnasty.org>, David Fuchs <beastie@beastie.net> Cc: freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Looking for suggestions. Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10001200302420.805-100000@pacific.int.topsecret.net> In-Reply-To: <007101bf631b$1d4214c0$0201a8c0@uniserve.com>
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Leandro, I *highly* recommend the website www.freebsddiary.org/FreeBSD . It will help you in plain english with the kind of troubles you will run into and give you a good overview of any tricks you will consider trying. In addendum to what David has said here, I would like to note that while the lists are full of fantastic advice from great folks willing to help, one should learn how to answer questions alone and only when you can document what you are doing that does not work turn to the lists for support. A post from a couple of days ago to the freebsd-questions list outlined some of the proper usage for freebsd-questions that i've pasted onto the bottom of this message. Don't be afraid to ask questions, but remember that in the long run learning how to find and finding the answer yourself will be far better than simply being told what to do. If you've already got some O'Reilly books you're on the right track! And just because it can't be said too many times, and just because it will answer probably 97% of the questions on the newbies list, SEARCH THE ARCHIVES OF THE MAILING LISTS for answers to your questions BEFORE asking them on the list. Besides, the response time is far greater ;) Welcome to the family, --gill On Wed, 19 Jan 2000, David Fuchs wrote: ->:) Looking for stuff that newbies should be aware of? Well, other than ->those O'Rielly books... hehehe. :) -> ->To be honest, there aren't many things someone can say to you about FreeBSD ->that you won't learn when the time comes. I think the most important thing ->you should know is that everyone who uses FreeBSD will be more than happy to ->help you. I can't express my thanks enough to the people on these mailing ->lists who've answered my questions no matter how stupid they were... and ->trust me... when I was new to FreeBSD I asked some pretty dumb ones. Always ->ask questions, people will usually give you a decent response plus some good ->insight if they know what they're talking about. Other than that, there's ->not much I can say, good luck in your first steps with FreeBSD! -> ->-David Fuchs -> ->----- Original Message ----- ->From: Leandro Asnaghi-Nicastro <leandro@capnasty.org> ->To: <freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org> -> ->> I'm new to the FreeBSD world, as I am attempting to escape the ... ->> Enough ranting: can someone give me a brief suggestion that a ->> new user should be aware of? Anything will be helpful. I just ->> started reading the posts on this list and I must say, they have ->> been really good for someone like me that is starting from scratch. ->> ->> And I am also slowly going through the FreeBSD website, ->> checking their documentation and stuff. Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 12:18:59 +0100 From: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl> To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Usage guidelines for freebsd-questions [This is a list I compiled which hopefully will get freebsd-questions to a better signal to noise ratio, opinions herein are entirely mine, but I guess most people would do good to read it andthink about it for a sec. Comments are, as always, appreciated.] - Have you bothered to check the Handbook and FAQ or the archives to see if we didn't answer your question already? And if this never made the FAQ or Handbook, why haven't you mailed freebsd-doc@freebsd.org about this with what should be added? - Have you tried ``man <subject>'' or ``apropos <subject>'' and see if there is a manpage about what you seek? - Use proper netiquette, this means snipping/removing irrelevant parts of the mail you are replying to, not only will the text be more correlated, but it will also save annoyance and bandwidth. - Use dots, commas, capitals and parapgraphs in your mail, not only does it look better and more readable, people might actually read and reply to your mail. - Please use english only on this list, for people unsure about their english, feel free to try your best at english, I am sure we get to what you want to know sooner or later, or check http://www.freebsd.org/support.html#mailing-list to see if your favorite language has its own mailinglist. - People struggling with english will not be flamed for their trying to use english. You weren't that great at first too when you learned <insert language X here> for the first time. - Take flaming to private mail. - Politely explain majordomo to people who send their majordomo messages to the list and don't include the list on reply. - When reporting problems, have you considered that: - /var/log/messages exist for first help in troubleshooting? - uname -a a valuable tool is for people trying to help. - people are not psychic, hence dmesg, pnpinfo, pciconf, tcpdump or other diagnostic tools output are necessary. - including the actual error message might help people diagnose your problem? - specifying the version of the programs involved also helps troubleshooting? - the steps you used to come across the problem are necessary to reproduce the error. - mailing the list with your results will benefit other people struggling with the same problem and might help our documentation team to appropriately update the handbook and FAQ. - ``me too's'' are accepted when they get substantiated with your local information and results. - Try to trim cc: lists. - Do not crosspost unless you're sure. - FreeBSD doesn't evolve around you, it evolves around the community. - When asking comparisons between FreeBSD and OS X, Y or Z, please search the mailinglist archives at http://www.freebsd.org/search/search.html#mailinglists for them. Advocacy and Questions will yield too many hits for you to even consider asking this question again on the mailinglist(s). To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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