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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!worldnet.att.net!arclight.uoregon.edu!news.uoregon.edu!Symiserver2.symantec.com!news From: tedm@agora.rdrop.com Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Book: The Complete FreeBSD Date: 14 Dec 1996 18:18:08 GMT Organization: Symantec Corp. Lines: 38 Message-ID: <58ur10$7q3@Symiserver2.symantec.com> References: <58i900$g9t@uuneo.neosoft.com> <Pine.HPP.3.95.961210091425.14654A-100000@ydale.si.sintef.no> <32B01E0E.167EB0E7@FreeBSD.org> Reply-To: tedm@agora.rdrop.com NNTP-Posting-Host: shiva2.central.com X-Newsreader: IBM NewsReader/2 v1.2.5 Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:32601 In <32B01E0E.167EB0E7@FreeBSD.org>, "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org> writes: >talking for some time about getting more tutorials written and then >publishing a "complete FreeBSD" which actually contains a lot more >tutorial information - how to set up a ppp dialin server, dialout >server, a news server, a web server, an X desktop environment, and so >on. I would like to write such a book myself, but after doing last year's series of e-mail server columns I have concluded that if I started today to write such a book, by the time that I got the manuscript done the first half of it would be obsolete. It makes me wonder if an effort such as "the Complete FreeBSD" is unattainable. > >Perhaps not the main one, but an important one. We just need more raw >material. On the bright side, the FreeBSD Documentation Project has >just been re-formed with a new staff. We'll see how they do! >-- This much I'll say about it, in the form of an example: Yesterday I went to install FreeBSD on a HP eisa-bussed Vectra with an Adaptec 2740 and 1GB SCSI drive in it. I booted from the installation disk and the thing paniced. I then got up on the web site and within 20 minutes had found that I needed to disable the UltraStor driver. Upon doing this, the machine booted and I completed the installation. This illustrates what I feel is a most important use of good documentation for the operating system. Someone could have sat down and spent a year writing a book on installing FreeBSD, and if that one tiny tidbit of information had not been included it would have been worthless to me except as a door stop. I fervently hope that with an operating system as complex as this that effort spent on "A beginners guide to FreeBSD" is equally matched by effort spent on cataloging and organizing a troubleshooting database.