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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.announce:560 comp.answers:8430 news.answers:32522 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!bruce.cs.monash.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msunews!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!newshost.marcam.com!insosf1.infonet.net!cynjut.infonet.net!cynjut.infonet.net!not-for-mail From: burgess@cynjut.infonet.net (Dave Burgess) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.announce,comp.answers,news.answers Subject: [comp.os.386bsd] BNR/2 derived BSD for PCs FAQ (Part 2 of 10) Supersedes: <386bsd-faq-2-787302009@cynjut.infonet.net> Followup-To: comp.os.386bsd.misc Date: 27 Dec 1994 01:00:18 -0600 Organization: Dave's House in Omaha Lines: 1237 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu,cgd@sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu Distribution: world Expires: 01/14/95 01:00:08 CDT Message-ID: <386bsd-faq-2-788511609@cynjut.infonet.net> References: <386bsd-faq-1-788511609@cynjut.infonet.net> Reply-To: burgess@cynjut.infonet.net (386bsd FAQ Maintainer) NNTP-Posting-Host: cynjut.infonet.net Keywords: FAQ 386bsd NetBSD FreeBSD !Linux X-Posting-Frequency: Posted on/about the 10th and the 24th of every month. Posted-By: auto-faq 3.1.1.2 Archive-name: 386bsd-faq/part2 Section 1. (General Network Information) General information This section of the FAQ is about the electronic support network that exists for 386bsd and its off-spring. 1.0 What is 386BSD? (Taken from the original INSTALL.NOTES by the Jolitz's, specifically Lynne) Welcome to 386BSD Release 0.1, the second edition of the 386BSD operating system created by William and Lynne Jolitz. Like its predecessor, 386BSD Release 0.0, Release 0.1 comprises an entire and complete UNIX-like operating system for the 80386/80486-based AT Personal Computer. 386BSD Release 0.1 is an enhanced version of the original release done by William F. Jolitz, the developer of 386BSD. 386BSD Release 0.0 was based on the Networking Software, Release 2 from the University of California at Berkeley EECS Department, and included much of the 386BSD work done earlier by Bill and contributed by us to the University. The latest release, 386BSD Release 0.1, contains new work by the developer and many new items which have been freely contributed by other software developers for incorporation into 386BSD (see the file CONTRIB.LIST). These contributions have increased the functionality and made it more robust. As a courtesy to the developer and the many people who have generously contributed these software enhancements, we request that users abide by and properly maintain all attributions, copyrights, and copylefts contained within this release. 386BSD is intended to foster new research and development in operating systems and networking technology by providing this base technology in a broadly accessible manner. As such, like its predecessor, 386BSD Release 0.1 is freely redistributable and modifiable. 1.0.1 What are these other Free BSD systems? For reasons best left to private E-Mail, there have been two different 'product lines' that have been established for development of BSD systems. They are NetBSD and FreeBSD. Both, individually, have virtually deprecated the original 386bsd. The "raison d'etre" for each is different and each has a different set of goals. The purpose for FreeBSD is to develop a stable working environment for [3-9]86 systems. The emphasis has been on upgrading utility programs and incorporating changes that make the system more stable. NetBSD, on the other hand, is a development effort whose main thrust is on mulitple platform support and staying more current with BSD 4.4. In other words, NetBSD is more 'horizontal' and FreeBSD is more 'vertical'. Both systems are excellent choices for the casual user or people who are interested in studying the internals of an operating system. While the products are nearly commercial quality, they are both maintained by volunteers. 1.0.2 I just downloaded all of 386bsd version 0.1 and I can't get [some feature] to work? Do you have any suggestions? Yes. Get either FreeBSD or NetBSD. The original 386BSD software was kind of buggy when it was put up for anonymous FTP in 1992. It has been modified significantly since then, and now exists in two different forms. There are people who will argue that the original 386BSD was completely unusable, but that is generally an overstatement. Over 100 patches were applied to the original system, with hundreds more waiting in the wings. It became just too much trouble to constantly have to patch the system to get it to work. This 'patched' version of 386bsd became FreeBSD. Around the same time, a second group split off from the original 386bsd tree and became NetBSD. For the primary differences, see above. Getting one of these two systems will provide you with a more complete system, with newer utilities, and many bugs already fixed. 1.1 Feature summary Among the many features of these systems: * Floppy disk based Installation * Hard drive partitioning for use with MS-DOS partitions * Compressed, multivolume CPIO dump format binary/source/other distribution sets on MS-DOS floppies. The cpio is based on the GNU cpio, and is completely free of encumbering USL software. * 387 support or emulation. * SCSI support. * (SCSI and most Mitsumi) CD-ROM support. * NFS, TCP/IP and full networking. * MS-DOS file system access (in newer *BSD systems). * PPP and SLIP protocol support. * System upgrades through Carnegie Mellon University's 'sup' utility. * Shared Library Support (in the newer version of both NetBSD and FreeBSD. * Both systems are based exclusively on Berkeley's BSD 4.4 Lite tape, instead of the encumbered 4.3 Net2 tape. Hence, both systems are free of USL code and are freely redistributable. 1.2 The future of 386BSD. { This section is included for historical purposes only. Most of the information in here is either wildly out of date or just plain wrong. For example, the FreeBSD statements in here imply that it is nothing more than 386bsd in a new coat of paint. Nothing could be further from the truth. I decided to include it mostly to show how far we have come... dbb } Forecasting the future is always a tricky business. There is work underway to implement version 0.2 of 386bsd. In addition, many people are involved in a project to put together a 386bsd version (FreeBSD) which will be a complete distribution set including all relevant patches and updates to new versions of many of the software packages that are currently available. It is available by anonymous FTP from FreeBSD.cdrom.com In addition, NetBSD (a direct descendent of 386bsd) is available for anonymous FTP from sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu. The purposes of these two apparent competitors appear to be at odds, but in fact are very similar. NetBSD has taken a 'stable, production quality, free OS' as one of its primary goals, where 386bsd pursues the high ideal of the ultimate OS research platform. There is considerable cross pollination of the two. The frequent debates on style and concept that appear in comp.os.386bsd.* are testimony to that point. NetBSD and FreeBSD are still both very viable operating system alternatives, with differing goals. To see the Future of 386bsd as seen by Bill and Lynne Jolitz, I suggest you read the INSTALL.NOTES that come with 386bsd. 1.3 386BSD software projects in progress The list of software projects in progress is just too volatile to go into a static document like the FAQ. Suffice it to say, if there is something you want to do using 386bsd; ask first to see what has been done. Folks that are interested in software projects for NetBSD should contact netbsd-comments@sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu and let that mailing list know the same information. Folks interested in software projects for FreeBSD should contact the freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com mailing list and talk to them. 1.3.1 Contacting software authors Whenever you are working on a port of a software package, it is always a good idea to contact the original author and offer whatever changes you needed to make in order to port the software. That way, subsequent releases of the package may include changes that allow all users of 386bsd the advantage of reusing your work over and over. Also, once you have ported a package to *BSD, you might want to contact the respective *BSD teams to let them know you've completed it and where it may be located. For FreeBSD, contact: <freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com> For NetBSD, contact: <netbsd-comments@sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu.> If the port was a simple recompile of the source and install, a note to one of the newsgroups telling the story could be considered appropriate as well. In keeping with that, if you find a 'bug' in 386bsd, or NetBSD, or FreeBSD, or find a problem that causes you some headaches and find a solution, you should contact the author of the particular driver/module/program and let them know. In addition, you could also post the problem and/or fix to "comp.os.386bsd.bugs". Both NetBSD and FreeBSD have implemented 'bugfiler', so if you are connected to the net, you can use that to send out your bug. See the documentation that comes with your system to find out more. 1.4 Minimum hardware configuration recommended There has been considerable debate about what the REAL minimum configuration for 386bsd is. Some would claim that it is the smallest computer that an installation will succeed on. Others claim that it is the smallest usable computer (based on RAM and speed constraints) and others would claim that it should be based on using 'X'-windows. For specific hardware, see Section 8 (still in development). The smallest installable platform is an 80386, using an MGA card, with at least 2Meg of RAM and a 20 Megabyte hard disk. While not all SCSI cards (especially EISA) are supported, a great many are either in the base distribution or through patches. Thanks to the new shared library code in FreeBSD and NetBSD, a 20Meg installation should be easier now (in spite of the more advanced functionality) than it ever was before. A comfortable installation which includes source and binary distributions, as well as other utilities will work in about 100Meg of hard drive. 'X' requires at least a Hercules MGA; for masochists only, from what I understand. See section 8 for more details. 1.5 Where to get the source and binaries 1.5.1 Forms available (floppy, FTP, CD-ROM) 386bsd is available in just about every format known to man, with the possible exception of stone tablets and papyrus. 1.5.1.1 Where can I get the distribution on floppy or tape? Many people will copy files onto diskettes or tapes if you coordinate it with them ahead of time. In addition, many companies offer 386bsd on various types of media for money. Austin Code Works and others (usually advertisers in PC magazines) offer the base 0.1 "official" distribution for a fee. Note that there are virtually no restrictions on distributing the 386bsd distributions. Basically, wherever you can find it, you can get it. This goes for FreeBSD and NetBSD as well. 1.5.1.2 Where can I get the distribution via FTP? If you are looking for the original 386bsd version 0.1, the files you should look for specifically when using FTP are directories called srcdist, bindist, and etcdist. These directories will hold the files for each of the distributions. Once you have received the files via FTP, you can either load them directly onto your system and then un archive them using 'extract' or one of the other methods suggested in Section 2 of the FAQ, in the section about installing with 'real partitioning'. The list of sites that have 386BSD is covered in section 1.8 below. This list is produced automatically by using a utility called 'archie' and is updated for every new version of the FAQ. If you try to access a site from this list and find that they either don't have FTP enabled, or don't have 386bsd loaded any more, a polite letter to the admin of the system asking them to update their 'archie' entries is good manners. 1.5.1.3 Where can I get the distribution on CD ROM? Infomagic sells a UNIX CD-ROM that has 386BSD. Their FAX number is 609-683-5502. Profit Press has 386BSD dated 7/21/92 on their "Mega Win OS/2" CD-ROM. This is in the format of BINDIST, ETCDIST, SRCDIST and BOOTABLE. Profit Press 2956 N. Campbell Ave Tucson, Arizona 85719 (602) 577-9696 Their order line is 1-800-843-7990 Look for their advertisements in the back pages of Computer Shopper. The Mega series is $29.00 each or $69.00 for all three plus a fourth "Demo Disk". In all likelihood, the version 386bsd that is available on CD-ROM will be the 0.1 version, without any patches. Keep this in mind when ordering, since the first thing most people want to do is bring the system up to the current patch level. If you do not want the original 0.1 version, be sure to ask where the distribution came from and which version of *BSD it is. For our European users, I have included these notes from Julian Stacey (stacey@guug.de) and Christian Seyb (cs@gold.muc.de) concerning locations and methods for getting 386bsd in Europe on both CD-ROM and floppies. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The following CDROM is available for DM 98,-- (app. $60) and contains the following software: - Linux SLS V1.03, Kernel 0.99.11 and utilities for Linux - 386BSD version 0.1 including patch-kit 0.2.4 - NetBSD version 0.8 - Utilities for 386BSD and NetBSD - The Berkely Second Networking Distribution - GNU software (gcc 2.4.5, emacs 19.17, gmake 3.68, etc) - X11R5 up to patch 25 and lots of Contributed Software - TeX version 3.14 - The Internet RFCs up to RFC1493 - News, mail and mailbox software and many utilities for Unix To: CDROM Versand Helga Seyb Fuchsweg 86 Tel: +49-8106-302210 85598 Baldham Fax: +49-8106-302310 Germany Bbs/Fax: +49-8106-34593 (Ed. Note: This appears to be an advertisement, but the price is right and appears to be reasonable. Christian and Helga may have the same last name by coincidence :-) If you want more ordering information, please feel free to give Helga a call.) -------------------------------------------------------------------------- In Munich Germany: Buy the monthly "c't magazin fuer computer technik" (Price 8.5 DM) (~1.7 = $1) & look in back pages, I saw: Mail Order: JF Lehmanns Buchhandlung, fuer EDV, Zuelpicher Str 182, D-50937 Koeln, Germany Free catalogue for X, Linux, 386bsd, 1. Confusing advert seems to offer X11R5 + GNU + 386BSD on CD Rom "InfoMagic Vol2 No2" for Price: 149 DM. Tel. 0130 4372 (always busy, claims to be free, so don't know if +49 130 4372 viable) Fax: +49 221 415995 Shops in Berlin, Koeln, Regensburg, Ulm. (Editorial Notes: DM149 is about $75-$90 US (or a little more) and 0130 numbers are Toll Free in Germany only.) Mail Order: Computer Solutions Software GmbH Postfach 1180, D-85561 Grafing (Muenchen), Germany Tel +49 8092 5018 Fax +49 8092 31727 23 * 3.5" 1.4M flops @ Price: DM199 Order No:/Best Nr: 5099 Shop: Columbus Datentechnik, Theresienstr 63, D-80333 Muenchen, Germany Tel +49 89 5232021 Lynne wrote a short follow-up, letting us know that these companies do not send them any money. This announcement in from Jordan Hubbard: On the morning of 30 December, 1993, and after many many delays, the first official release of FreeBSD 1.0 began shipping on CDROM. This CD is being sold through Walnut Creek CDROM, our ongoing sponsors in the FreeBSD project, and without whom we would have had a substantially more difficult (if not impossible) time producing it. While I will _always_ encourage obtaining FreeBSD through "free" channels (the Internet, friends, suspicious individuals in dark alleys), and given that none of us will make any money from CD sales, or ever have from FreeBSD in general given that WC's sponsorship is confined to the loan of centralized development hardware and network access, I still hope that some of you will find the CD distribution medium convenient enough to order a FreeBSD CD from Walnut Creek, thus indirectly supporting our future development work. If this marriage between commercial and free software interests proves to be mututally beneficial (which still remains to be seen, from Walnut Creek's point of view), it is my hope that it may serve as a model for similar future endeavors. It is an unfortunate fact that developing free software at this scale costs money, even with the developers donating their time and efforts, and financing some of it through the sale of convenient distribution media is one of the least venal ways I know of going about it. This CD contains a full FreeBSD 1.0.2 source & binary release, the sources and binaries for XFree86 2.0, and numerous sources from the FreeBSD "ports collection". Where space permitted, sources were provided in both "packed" and "unpacked" forms for easy access both as an on-line resource and as a source for compressed downloads in BBS or release-construction situations. The CD is fully ISO9660 compatable and has been mastered using RockRidge extensions for long filenames on systems that support it (like FreeBSD! :-). It is, of course, possible to install the system off the CD from scratch, given some basic willingness to read a little documentation and a few blank floppy disks. [ Ed Note. You would be surprised the number of people that do not see this paragraph...DBB] For the sake of convenience, I append the ordering information distilled from FreeBSD's /usr/src/RELNOTES.FreeBSD below. Ordering information: Walnut Creek CDROM 4041 Pike Lane, Suite D Concord CA 94520 1-800-786-9907, +1-510-674-0783, +1-510-674-0821 (fax) Or via the internet from orders@cdrom.com. A current catalog can be obtained via ftp from ftp.cdrom.com:/cdrom/catalog. Cost is $39.95. Shipping (per order, not per disc if ordering multiple disks) is $5 in the US, Canada, or Mexico and $10.00 overseas. They accept Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and ship COD within the United States. California residents please add 8.25% sales tax. In addition, John Cargille publishes a CD-ROM which caters primarily to the NetBSD crowd. It is called BSDisc and it is also available by mail. While that may seem like terrific news, it is unfortunately all the information I have right now. Once he sees his name in the FAQ, maybe he'll put together some real ordering instructions ;-) roman@public.btr.com (Roman Yanovsky roman@btr.com) sent in this note. I have editted it down some, but left in the bulk of the stuff in case you need more information: Subject: Linux Slackware and FreeBSD CD-ROM with X-windows etc. Trans-Ameritech presents "The best Linux plus FreeBSD CDROM ever" [ Linux stuff deleted ] * For hacker's reference an uncompressed FreeBSD source tree is provided. * On the BSD side there is a full source and binary distribution of the "final" FreeBSD 1.0 * If you have questions or problems Trans-Ameritech provides free support via e-mail within 24 hours. * We ship the same day as we get the order. The new CDROM is available for $30 plus shipping/handling. If you are a current customer, it is only $20. New releases will be available every 3 month. Subscription is available. Trans-Ameritech Enterprises, Inc. 2342A Walsh Ave. Santa Clara, CA 95051 Tel. 408/727-3883 FAX: 408/727-3882 This information is offered with no warranties, guarantees, franchise offers, or recommendations. 1.6 Electronic Information Groups for 386BSD 1.6.1 Usenet newsgroups General BSD questions can be posted to comp.1.bsd. Bear in mind, however; that your questions to this group should really be about BSD in general, not a specific implementation detail of *BSD. Listed below are the Usenet newsgroups that were developed to support 386bsd and its descendents. This means that you should ask your questions in one of these newsgroups or on one of the many mailing lists that are available for specific features of said systems. comp.os.386bsd.announce (Moderated) Announcements relating to the 386bsd operating system. Posts should be mailed to "386bsd-announce@agate.berkeley.edu". This is also the place that improtant news about the past and future of 386bsd, FreeBSD, and NetBSD will be placed. comp.os.386bsd.apps Applications which run under 386bsd. Not all sites will carry comp.os.386bsd.apps, since it kind of 'showed up'. comp.os.386bsd.bugs Bugs and fixes for the 386bsd OS and its clients. comp.os.386bsd.development Working on 386bsd internals. comp.os.386bsd.misc General aspects of 386bsd not covered by other groups. comp.os.386bsd.questions General questions about 386bsd. 1.6.2 Newsgroup archives. These sites maintain a historical record of the traffic in the Usenet Newsgroups indicated. There are others, but I haven't gotten their names yet. Host Name IP address Location Newsgroups archived -------------------- -------------- -------------- ---------------- minnie.cs.adfa.oz.au 131.236.20.70 Australia comp.1.bsd src.doc.ic.ac.uk 146.169.2.1 London, UK comp.os.386bsd.* 1.6.3 386bsd Derived mailing lists. There are at least two mailing lists for 386bsd. Both are for discussions of the patchkit and patches. Last I heard, neither of them is particularly active any more. They are: 386bsd_patchkit@cs.montana.edu: This list is primarily for discussion of the patchkit and other patch procedure discussions. patches@cs.montana.edu: This list is for patch submissions. NOTE: The patchkit is discussed in detail in Section 2 of the FAQ. Also, the patchkit has been effectively deprecated. Sending to these lists may or may not get you the kind of info you are looking for. In addition to the pure 386bsd lists mentioned above, there are mailing lists available for FreeBSD and NetBSD. Information about the NetBSD lists and how to use majordomo (the list handler) is available by mailing to majordomo@sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu. There are three mailing lists for FreeBSD and they are: FreeBSD-hackers: for hackers FreeBSD-questions: misc questions FreeBSD-bugs: bug reports Send to FreeBSD-hackers-request@freefall.cdrom.com to be added to the hackers list, and *-questions-request@freefall... to be added to the questions list. 1.6.4 Other electronic resources. There are many bulletin boards throughout the world that have 386bsd software and information available. Also, there are CompuServe and other on-line services that have 386bsd discussions. It is even rumored that Bill and Lynne have been active on Compuserve talking about 386BSD Version 1.0 (or 0.2, or whatever it is going to be). 1.6.5 System Updates. There are at least two different ways of getting the updates for the current source tree for both FreeBSD and NetBSD. The first is the traditional FTP method, and the other is using a utility called 'sup'. This program keeps a log of the source modules that have been updated and sends out only those files that have been changed. Included below are some sample instructions from John Brezak <brezak@apollo.hp.com> on how to run sup for NetBSD. The sup procedures for FreeBSD are similar and are available via ftp from freefall.cdrom.com in the ~/ftp/pub/sup directory. This directory contains the sup program, a man page, a sample sup-file and full instructions for maintaining your sources via 'sup. Instructions for installing NetBSD sources and releases using SUP ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1.3 1993/11/3 SUP is a network installation package written by CMU used to distribute software. For more details on SUP refer to the man pages. Sup works by reading a configuration file (supfile) and using this information to determine what "collections" of files will be loaded from the collection repository. Here is an example of a supfile to load the NetBSD current release. [ Notes: lines have been broken for readability; do NOT use '\' in supfiles and the information here is an EXAMPLE. This ain't a cooking school, folks. Also, the information in these lines has changed for each of the distributions. Read the documentation that comes with your software carefully for the lastest information. ] src release=current host=sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu hostbase=/b/anon_ftp base=/usr prefix=/usr backup ksrc release=current host=sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu hostbase=/b/anon_ftp base=/usr prefix=/usr backup security release=current host=sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu hostbase=/b/anon_ftp base=/usr prefix=/usr backup gamessrc release=current host=sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu hostbase=/b/anon_ftp base=/usr prefix=/usr backup regress release=current host=sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu hostbase=/b/anon_ftp base=/usr prefix=/usr backup #othersrc release=current host=sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu hostbase=/b/anon_ftp base=/usr prefix=/usr backup This supfile will load the "current" collections for "src", "ksrc", "security", "gamessrc", and "regress" in the /usr directory on the local machine. The "othersrc" collection will not be loaded because it is commented out. The supfile line is made up of keywords that describe the collection's location on the sup server and where and how it will be loaded on the local host. release - the release of the collection to load. host - the 'host' where the SUP repository resides. NetBSD uses sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu . hostbase- the pathname on the host to the base of the collection. The hostbase for NetBSD is "/b/anon_ftp". base - where you want to install it locally. prefix - used to locate the "sup" directory to write sup's info about updates. Usually the same as base. This supfile can also set some options. The "old" option tells sup to check all files for changes, not just those that are newer than the last sup update. Normally sup will overwrite local files with the changed file from the repository. If the sup collection specifies that an existing file should be renamed to a backup, the "backup" option in the supfile activates this. The "delete" option tells sup to delete any files locally that are no longer in the collection - be careful with this one. The "keep" option will cause sup to NOT update files that have been changes locally. The "compress" option will use gzip to compress the files before transfer and gunzip them on the receiving end. This option can be used to cut down on the number of transmitted bytes. You may want to set 'base' and 'prefix' to something other than /usr if you want to preserve your existing src tree. The sup repository on sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu currently offers these collections. src, ksrc, security The sources for NetBSD othersrc The current sources for contributed parts of NetBSD. This contains the sources for sup. regress The current sources for the NetBSD regression test suite. If you only want the kernel sources for a specific port there are some sub packages that you can use instead of the "ksrc" one. If you are using the sub packages, be sure to also sup the "ksrc-common" package. ksrc-common Kernel sources common to all ports. ksrc-1, ksrc-sparc, ksrc-hp300, ksrc-amiga, ksrc-mac, ksrc-pc532, ksrc-pmax, ksrc-sun3 Kernel sources for a particular port. The security package is not to be sup'ed by sites outside of the U. S., read the "README.export-control" file for details. Each collection can have multiple releases (as specified by the "release" keyword). IMPORTANT!! Be aware that the current release is simply a snapshot of the daily state of NetBSD development and is not guaranteed to build (or even work) - use at your own risk ! Stable releases of NetBSD are available via SUP. Instructions are included with the release announcement. Before running sup, be sure that your /etc/services contains these entries. supfilesrv 871/tcp # for SUP supfiledbg 1127/tcp To try sup without really updating anything use the '-f' flag. The '-v' flag means verbose and can be used to see what sup is doing. sup -fv supfile The sup binary, sup man page and sample supfiles can be ftp'ed from sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu:~ftp/pub/sup . Comments should be directed to "sup@sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu". A mailing list exists for users of the NetBSD "current" release. To join, mail to 'majordemo@sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu' with a mail body of "info". The reply will describe the mailing lists for NetBSD. The you will want to subscribe to the "current-users" mailing list. We will use this list to announce any special changes made to the "current" tree. 1.7 Documentation available This entire section pertains as much to NetBSD and FreeBSD as it does to 386BSD. Simply 'sed 's/386bsd/Your System/g' below. There are two types of documentation for 386bsd. First is the set that covers the operation and theory used in BSD-Unix. These sources are often excellent for background and understanding of the current implementation of 386bsd. Second is the set of manuals written specifically for 386bsd. Most of these are books and magazine articles written by Bill and Lynne Jolitz. 1.7.1 BSD manuals The full set of BSD documentation is available via anonymous FTP from ocf.berkeley.edu in /pub/Library/Computer/doc4.3. To print this documentation on 386bsd systems, replace the ditroff references in the Makefile with 'groff -e -t -msU {SRC} >out.ps' to generate PostScript format files. Use different options to make the output conform to other print styles. The etc distribution also comes with a documentation directory /usr/share/doc which has nearly 3Meg of documentation about *BSD. In addition, on-line manuals are available in the binary distribution set. It contains specific information on the use of UNIX utilities and commands. Type "man man" for information on the online manual. 1.7.2 BSD books There is an excellent set of works recommended by Bill and Lynne in the original 386bsd INSTALL.NOTES. In addition, several other books have been recommended by Andrew Moore and others. For learning how to work in the Unix environment, the standard text is "The Unix Programming Environment," by Kernighan and Pike. For Unix Administration, the best is "Unix System Administration Handbook," by Nemeth, Snyder and Seebass. For systems level programming (i.e., systems calls), I recommend "Advanced Unix Programming," by Marc Rochkind. Unfortunately it is out-dated and oriented towards System V. A new book "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment," by W. Richard Stevens is very up-to-date, and an excellent reference, especially for dealing with POSIX standards issues. For network programming, "Unix Network Programming," by W. Richard Stevens is highly regarded. The 4.3BSD Unix Manuals contain loads of invaluable tutorials and historical papers in addition to hard copies of on-line documentation. The six volume set is available from Usenix for $60.00 (email: office@usenix.org) The 4.4 BSD Unic Manuals are the authoritative source for information about the 4.4 BSD release, and by inference the NetBSD and FreeBSD systems. They are available from O'Reilly and Associates (the Nutshell series people). In addition the the six volume set, there is a CD included (at a price) of the entire 4.4 release. Combine this with the NetBSD 1.0 or FreeBSD 2.0 systems, and you should have a commercial quality operating system available in no time. I could go on, but let me mention just two more - if you have a full 386BSD installation, you may want to learn the bash shell (in /usr/othersrc/public). This is an extension of the Bourne shell (sh) with features from both the C shell (Csh) and the Korn shell (Ksh). The Korn shell is described in "The Kornshell," by Korn (of course). Second, I recommend you look at "The AWK Programming Language," by Aho, Weinberger and Kernighan. This is a very nice prototyping language - powerful and easy to use. Another excellent reference book for 386bsd is "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating system" by Samuel J. Leffler, Marshall Kirk McKusick, Michael J. Karels, John S. Quarterman, 1989, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-06196-1. While this book is out of date in many sections, it is purported to be an excellent source of historical information, if nothing else. Chris Demetriou recommends the sections on the treatment of file systems, caching and the networking layer. The sections in this books which do not apply to 386bsd include the VM section, bootstrapping, and autoconfig. Here is a list from Hellmuth Michaelis (duplicative as it may seem to have all of these lists) for more information on *BSD: UNIX AND UNIX DEVICE DRIVERS ---------------------------- Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc. "UNIX Programmer's Manual, Seventh Edition, Volume 2". Revised and Expanded Version. Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1983 George Pajari, "Writing Unix Device Drivers" Addison Wesley 1992 Janet I. Egan and Thomas J. Teixeira, "Writing a UNIX Device Driver" John Wiley & Sons 1988 Janet I. Egan and Thomas J. Teixeira, "Writing a UNIX Device Driver" Second Edition. John Wiley & Sons 1992 Leffler, McKusick, Karels, Quarterman, "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System" Addison Wesley 1988, corrected Reprint 1989 Leffler, McKusick, "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System, Answer Book" Addison Wesley 1991 Maurice J. Bach, "The Design of the UNIX Operating System" Prentice-Hall 1986 Sun Microsystems Inc., "Writing Device Drivers" Part No. 800-3851-10, Revision A of 27 March 1990 Hewlett-Packard Company, "HP-UX Driver Development Guide", Part No. 98577-90013, First Edition 07/91 W. Richard Stevens, "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment", Addison Wesley 1992 Phillip M. Adams, Clovis L. Tondo, "Writing Unix Device Drivers in C", Prentice Hall 1993 Peter Kettle, Steve Statler, "Writing Device Drivers for SCO UNIX, A Practical Approach", Addison Wesley 1993 In addition, there are many other books which, for one reason or another, have not made it into this brief list. Rest assured that this is not intended to be an exhaustive list by any means. 1.7.3 The Jolitz Book Bill and Lynne Jolitz are writing a book about 386bsd. It will be announced once it is ready. A tentative date of late 1992 was once offered, but since it is now 1994 and no book has been announced, we can assume that it will be later than the original estimate. 1.7.4 Dr. Dobbs' journal For users who wish to understand the internals of the BNR/2 BSD family of Operating Systems originally developed and/or ported by William F. Jolitz from 1989 to the present, the most immediate and available reference is the feature series entitled "Porting UNIX to the 386: A Practical Approach", appearing in Dr. Dobbs' Journal, USA (January 1991 to July 1992) and UNIX and iX Magazines, Germany (June 1991 to present). For inquiries on the article series (including reprints), contact the magazines for information. "Porting UNIX to the 386: A Practical Approach" (feature series) by Jolitz and Jolitz 1/91: DDJ "Designing a Software Specification" 2/91: DDJ "Three Initial PC Utilities" 3/91: DDJ "The Standalone System" 4/91: DDJ "Copyright, Copyleft, and Competitive Advantage" 4/91: DDJ "Language Tools Cross-Support" 5/91: DDJ "The Initial Root Filesystem" 6/91: DDJ "Research and the Commercial Sector: Where Does BSD Fit In?" 7/91: DDJ "A Stripped-Down Kernel" 8/91: DDJ "The Basic Kernel" 9/91: DDJ "Multiprogramming and Multiprocessing, Part I" 10/91: DDJ "Multiprogramming and Multiprocessing, Part II" 11/91: DDJ "Device Autoconfiguration" 2/92: DDJ "UNIX Device Drivers, Part I" 3/92: DDJ "UNIX Device Drivers, Part II" 4/92: DDJ "UNIX Device Drivers, Part III" 5/92: DDJ "Missing Pieces, Part I" 6/92: DDJ "Missing Pieces, Part II" 7/92: DDJ "The Final Step: Running Light with 386BSD" You can contact M&T Books (DDJ) for reprints if you can't get them from your technical library: 1-800-356-2002 (inside CA) 1-800-444-4881 (better In NA Backorder number) 1-415-358-9500 (international) 6/91: UNIX Magazin "Portierung von BSD-UNIX auf den 80386. Heimlich Liebe." 7/91: UNIX Magazin "Steighilfe." 8/91: UNIX Magazin "Systemverwaltung durch Tabellen" 9/91: UNIX Magazin "Sicher bewegen auf fremdem Terrain" 10/91: UNIX Magazin "Damit die Fehlersuche nicht zum Hurdenspringen wird" 11/91: UNIX Magazin "Alles in eine Schublade" 12/91: UNIX Magazin "Feuer und Wasser" 1/92: UNIX Magazin "Rekursives Speicher-Mapping" 2/92: UNIX Magazin "Tanz auf dem Eis" 3/92: UNIX Magazin "Aus Hanschen wird Hans" 4/92: UNIX Magazin "Das Geheimnis des Multiprogramming" 5/92: UNIX Magazin "Zeitmanagement scheibenweise" 6/92: UNIX Magazin "Magie des Kernels" 7/92: UNIX Magazin "Erkenne Dich Selbst" 9/92: UNIX Magazin "Niemand is eine Insel" 10/92: UNIX Magazin "Treiberlatein" 12/92: UNIX Magazin "Einlandung erforderlich" 1/93: iX Magazin "Wir unterbrechen das Programm" 2/93: iX Magazin "Liste gut, alles gut" 3/93: iX Magazin "Blick ins Allerheiligste" 4/93: iX Magazin "Von Bl"ocken, Ringen und Zeichen" NOTE: The series in UNIX Magazin was moved to IX Magazin in 1/93. The article in the April issue was the last one in the series. In addition, other major articles which discuss 386BSD in detail: 8/92: UNIX Magazin "Interview mit Bill Jolitz. Das passiert mit 386BSD" by Jurgen Fey 8/92: DDJ "Very High-Speed Networking" by W.F. Jolitz 12/92: DDJ "Inside the ISO-9660 Filesystem Format" by Jolitz and Jolitz Reprints of the first 19 parts on the UNIX Magazin series are available from: iX Redaktion Stichwort: 386BSD-Serie Verlag Heinz Heise GmbH & Co KG Helstorfer Str. 7 D-30625 Hannover, Germany Some of the parts are without code listings due to the unclear status of the BSD releases stemming from the Net/2 release. Dr. Dobbs is reported out of back issues of the articles listed above. You best bet may be to try your local public or school library. 1.7.5 Documentation that comes with most of the distributions. In the standard set for both NetBSD and FreeBSD there is a directory called '/usr/share/doc'. Here is a 'du' listing. 128 /usr/share/doc/ps1/06.sysman 98 /usr/share/doc/ps1/07.ipctut 116 /usr/share/doc/ps1/08.ipc 16 /usr/share/doc/ps1/13.rcs 37 /usr/share/doc/ps1/14.sccs 420 /usr/share/doc/ps1 123 /usr/share/doc/smm/02.config 14 /usr/share/doc/smm/04.quotas 78 /usr/share/doc/smm/05.fsck 42 /usr/share/doc/smm/06.lpd 92 /usr/share/doc/smm/07.sendmailop 14 /usr/share/doc/smm/08.timedop 99 /usr/share/doc/smm/10.newsop 83 /usr/share/doc/smm/11.named 77 /usr/share/doc/smm/14.fastfs 128 /usr/share/doc/smm/15.net 41 /usr/share/doc/smm/16.sendmail 21 /usr/share/doc/smm/20.termdesc 17 /usr/share/doc/smm/22.timed 851 /usr/share/doc/smm 144 /usr/share/doc/usd/04.csh 97 /usr/share/doc/usd/07.Mail 66 /usr/share/doc/usd/09.newsread 68 /usr/share/doc/usd/10.etiq 67 /usr/share/doc/usd/14.edit 107 /usr/share/doc/usd/15.vi 61 /usr/share/doc/usd/16.ex 13 /usr/share/doc/usd/21.msdiffs 45 /usr/share/doc/usd/22.memacros 43 /usr/share/doc/usd/23.meref 26 /usr/share/doc/usd/33.rogue 25 /usr/share/doc/usd/34.trek 798 /usr/share/doc/usd 2077 /usr/share/doc For those of you that don't read 'du -k' listings, this means that there is 'around' 2 MEGABYTES of documentation in the 'doc' directory. In addition, there are a few man pages. 2312 /usr/share/man/cat1 397 /usr/share/man/cat2 1 /usr/share/man/cat2a 855 /usr/share/man/cat3 1 /usr/share/man/cat3f 607 /usr/share/man/cat4 368 /usr/share/man/cat5 166 /usr/share/man/cat6 169 /usr/share/man/cat7 749 /usr/share/man/cat8 Something on the order of another 4 Megabytes of manual pages. That's what, about 6 MILLION CHARACTERS of documentation. I have received mail from several sources saying that my approximation of the amount of system documentation is way too low (by a factor of at least 50%). Given the fact that even by my meager estimation there is already more information here than most people can be bothered to read, whether there is 6 Meg or 60 Meg seems like overkill. Now, does anyone REALLY want to whine about there being no documentation included with the system? 1.7.6 Other FAQ's on the net that are relevant There is now a FAQ set up specifically for FreeBSD. In addition to answering the many specific questions that folks have about FreeBSD, it is also a good source for information on NetBSD and whatever the 386BSD {0.2,1.0,95} project is going to look like. In spite of all of the shouting and chest beating that you hear from time to time, the systems are still very close. There are many FAQs that can be used in conjunction with 386bsd. These include the FAQs for all of the GNU software, the different shells that are available, the programming languages that are available, and many more. In addition, many programs have their own FAQ which should be referenced whenever that package is being added. Good examples of the latter are the FAQs for elm, C-News, and innd. The observant reader will notice that there are very few 'X' questions in this FAQ. The XFree86 FAQ is posted regularly to comp.os.386bsd.*. There is no good reason to include any 'X' questions in this FAQ, with the exception of the most basic 'Where can I get the 'X' FAQ'. Most FAQs are available by anonymous FTP from rtfm.mit.edu and via Usenet News in news.answers and/or comp.answers. This FAQ is no exception (I hope). 1.8 FTP sites for 386BSD A standard tool on Internet connected hosts for finding files is 'archie'. Searching the archie archive for either "386BSD" or "386bsd" yields the following list. For UUCP sites, FTP-Mail is available from gatekeeper.dec.com. The list below was created with an 'archie -l' on 26 Nov 1994 searching for 386bsd. For those folks that have access to telnet, but not FTP, you can use archie by using telnet and connecting to 132.206.2.3. Log in as 'archie' and use the 'prog' command to find programs of interest. The list below is included primarily for those folks that have only uucp, and will need to get their software though UUCP and other channels. 1.8.1 FTP Site List This list is automatically generated every time the FAQ is produced. Please do not request that your host be added to this list. If your host is represented in an 'archie' list, it will be reflected here. Several other sites are included in Section 1.8.4 below. Host Directory The code may soon also to be available, or perhaps is already available, from both CompuServe and BIX. 1.8.2 Official distribution sites According to Lynne Jolitz, there is no such thing as an 'official' 386bsd site. The closest we had was 'agate.berkeley.edu' which is now closed. Because of the USL/UCB agreement, 386bsd is no longer freely redistributable, since it was based on Net/2 and Net/2 was encumbered. FreeBSD's 'home' is FreeBSD.cdrom.com (the home disk of Walnut Creek). The portions of FreeBSD (versions less than 2.0) that were encumbered are distributed with the tolerance of AT&T/USL/Novell/whoever owns the source for SysV this week. All FreeBSD versions (with version number >= 2.0) are based solely on the freely redistributable BSD 4.4 sources. NetBSD's 'home' is now ftp.NetBSD.Org. All versions of NetBSD since 0.9 have replaced the kernel code from the 4.3 distribution with the source from the 4.4 distribution. The only code still in NetBSD from the 4.3 distribution is some user program code that was uncontested in the USL/UCB agreement. 1.8.3 Reference sites For a brief period, ref.tfs.com was available for use as a reference system. This system was used as the test-bed for many programs that were ported to 386bsd by many authors. Unfortunately, ref.tfs.com has been disabled as a reference system. The site is now a update by mail (CTM) system and is providing a mail only service for developers who do not have access to anything more than electronic mail. For more information, contact phk@freefall.cdrom.com for the standard CTM package. There is a site in Germany that is acting as a reference site for FreeBSD. The name is "g386bsd.first.gmd.de", also known as "bsd386.first.gmd.de". Sorry, no anonymous ftp yet. But there is a "guest" login with the password "guest". But the most important reason why I had installed the machine on the network was for all these people who don't have enough space to compile their own kernel or their own packages. They can do it on this machine. ATS ( ats@first.gmd.de or ats@cs.tu-berlin.de ) 1.8.4 Unofficial archive sites that have neat stuff! There are many sites that have things which have either been ported to 386bsd or are available to the world. Use archie to find these sites, or read comp.os.386bsd.* for more information. Listed here because they don't have access to 'archie' yet... g386bsd.first.gmd.de -or- bsd386.first.gmd.de: Sources for 386bsd0.1 and the later patchkits. Source for NetBSD0.8 and the newer snapshots. Xfree is installed binary as version 1.3. Ported software are: tcsh6.03.00 emacs19-15 gcc-2.4.5 top3-1 perl4.0.36 elvis1.7 bison-1.21 rn and nn. In addition, ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de has a lot of neat software and Wolfram Schneider (wosch@cs.tu-berlin.de) has 'ported' the FAQ into LaTeX. It is available in pub/386BSD/FAQ/tex in both PostScript and DVI formats. 1.8.5 X for 386BSD 0.1 Ported Software List This is a list of non-core X window system application that have been ported to 386BSD 0.1. The ftp server and directory name are listed above and each file or directory name is followed by a short description. Feel free to send corrections, additions or suggestions to rich@rice.edu. nova.cc.purdue.edu:/pub/386bsd/submissions Xdtm-2.5.386bsd X desk top manager idraw-bin.tar.Z C++ GUI class library + WYSIWYG document & graphics editors. img1.3.386bsd.tar.Z see above mpeg_play.Z animated raster image viewer small_X11r5.tZ a minimal subset of the core distribution vogl.tar.Z a library that emulatates Silicon Graphics GL calls xview3 sun's GUI development tool kit sunvis.rtpnc.epa.gov:/pub/386bsd/incoming: Dirt.tar.Z GUI development tool kit XBSD8514-0.1.Z 8514 X server port XS3-0.3-exp.Z S3 X server port acm.tar.Z aerial combat mission/flight simulator chess-vort-movie.tar.Z ? epoch.Z enhanced emacs for X jpeg.tar.Z jpeg viewer libXaw3d.a.Z 3D widget library mpeg-1.2.tar.Z animated raster image viewer ups-2.45.bin.tar.Z C source level debugger with slick GUI vort-movie.tar.Z ? xantfarm.tar.Z screen saver with ants? xbench.tar.Z X server performance measurement tool xpipeman.tar.Z game: connect pipes to keep a liquid within xxgdb.tar.Z GUI for GNU source level debugger 1.8.6 Motif for the *BSD family. (Infomercial to follow) While I don't normally include commercials in the FAQ, I will this time. Motif is an interesting product that will help the development of the free Unices. It can also serve as a benchmark for other commercial organizations to consider supporting us by producing versions of their products that will work on these systems. Sequoia International, Inc. (305-783-4915/305-783-4935 (FAX)) sells a complete Motif 1.2.3 Runtime and Development package for FreeBSD, NetBSD, BSD/386, Linux, and Coherent. It is available for $149.95 and includes the following: * The Motif Window Manager (mwm) * Shared Library (libXm) [operating system dependent] * Static Libraries (libXm, libMrm, libUil) * Header and Include Files * Complete On-Line Manual Pages * Source code to OSF/Motif Demo programs * Complete OSF/Motif Users Guide Send mail to info@seq.com or contact them at the address below: Sequoia International, Inc. 600 West Hillsboro Blvd, Suite 300 Deerfield Beach, FL 33441 Phone: (305)783-4915 / FAX: (305)783-4935 / Email: info@seq.com -- TSgt Dave Burgess | Dave Burgess NCOIC, USSTRATCOM/J6844 | *BSD FAQ Maintainer Offutt AFB, NE | Burgess@cynjut.infonet.net or ...@s069.infonet...