freebsd-tips revision 78283
1This fortune brought to you by: 2$FreeBSD: head/games/fortune/datfiles/freebsd-tips 78283 2001-06-15 18:23:44Z eivind $ 3% 4Having trouble using FTP through a firewall? Try setting the environment 5variable FTP_PASSIVE_MODE to yes, and see ftp(1) for more details. 6% 7By pressing "Scroll Lock" you can use the arrow keys to scroll backward 8through the console output. Press "Scroll Lock" again to turn it off. 9% 10Want colour in your directory listings? Use "ls -G". "ls -F" is also useful, 11and they can be combined as "ls -FG". 12% 13If you need to ask a question on the FreeBSD-questions mailing list then 14 15 http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/\ 16 freebsd-questions/index.html 17 18contains lots of useful advice to help you get the best results. 19% 20If you'd like to keep track of applications in the FreeBSD ports tree, take a 21look at FreshPorts; 22 23 http://www.freshports.org/ 24% 25To search for files that match a particular name, use find(1); for example 26 27 find / -name "*GENERIC*" -ls 28 29will search '/', and all subdirectories, for files with 'GENERIC' in the name. 30 -- Stephen Hilton <nospam@hiltonbsd.com> 31% 32In tcsh, you can `set autolist' to have the shell automatically show 33all the possible matches when doing filename/directory expansion. 34 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 35% 36You can `set autologout = 30' to have tcsh log you off automatically 37if you leave the shell idle for more than 30 seconds. 38 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 39% 40If you `set filec' (file completion) in tcsh and write a part of the 41filename, pressing TAB will show you the available choices when there 42is more than one, or complete the filename if there's only one match. 43 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 44% 45You can press up-arrow or down-arrow to walk through a list of 46previous commands in tcsh. 47 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 48% 49You can disable tcsh's terminal beep if you `set nobeep'. 50 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 51% 52If you `set watch (0 any any)' in tcsh, you will be notified when 53someone logs in or out of your system. 54 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 55% 56Nice tcsh prompt: set prompt = '%m %# ' 57 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 58% 59Nice tcsh prompt: set prompt = '%n@%m%# ' 60 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 61% 62Nice tcsh prompt: set prompt = '%n@%m:%~%# ' 63 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 64% 65Nice tcsh prompt: set prompt = '%n@%m:%/%# ' 66 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 67% 68Nice tcsh prompt: set prompt = '[%B%m%b] %B%~%b%# ' 69% 70Simple tcsh prompt: set prompt = '%# ' 71 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 72% 73If you want df(1) and other commands to display disk sizes in 74kilobytes instead of 512-byte blocks, set BLOCKSIZE in your 75environment to 'K'. 76 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 77% 78To change an environment variable in tcsh you use: setenv NAME "value" 79where NAME is the name of the variable and "value" its new value. 80 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 81% 82To change an environment variable in /bin/sh use: 83 84 $ VARIABLE="value" 85 $ export VARIABLE 86 -- Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> 87% 88/etc/make.conf contains overrides to /etc/defaults/make.conf, which 89controls the options used to compile software on this system. 90% 91To do a fast search for a file, try 92 93 locate filename 94 95locate uses a database that is updated every saturday (assuming your computer 96is running FreeBSD at the time) to quickly find files based on name only. 97% 98In order to search for a string in some files, use 'grep' like this: 99 100 grep "string" filename1 [filename2 filename3 ...] 101 102This will print out the lines in the files that contain the string. grep can 103also do a lot more advanced searches - type 'man grep' for details. 104% 105You can use the 'fetch' command to retrieve files over ftp or http. 106 107 fetch http://www.freebsd.org/index.html 108 109will download the front page of the FreeBSD web site. 110% 111In order to make fetch (the FreeBSD downloading tool) ask for 112username/password when it encounter a password-protected web page, you can set 113the environment variable HTTP_AUTH to 'basic:*'. 114% 115You can permanently set environment variables for your shell by putting them 116in a startup file for the shell. The name of the startup file varies 117depending on the shell - csh and tcsh uses .cshrc, bash uses .bashrc, zsh uses 118.zshrc, ksh uses .kshrc, and the Bourne shell (/bin/sh) uses .profile (and 119through a little bit of trickery in .profile also .shrc) 120Other shells will often also read .profile 121% 122If you are running xterm, the default TERM variable will be 'xterm'. If you 123set this environment variable to 'xterm-color' instead, a lot of programs will 124use colors. You can do this by 125 126 TERM=xterm-color; export TERM 127 128in Bourne-derived shells, and 129 130 setenv TERM xterm-color 131 132in csh-derived shells. 133% 134If you accidently drop into /bin/sh (e.g, due to a computer failure where you 135end up in single user mode), you can make the cursor keys work by typing 136 137 set -E 138 139The E represents the initial E in Emacs (for emacs keys). 140% 141If you do not want to get beeps in X11 (X Windows), you can turn them off with 142 143 xset b off 144% 145You can look through a file in a nice text-based interface by typing 146 147 less filename 148% 149The default editor in FreeBSD is vi, which is efficient to use when you have 150learned it, but somewhat user-unfriendly. To use ee (an easier but less 151powerful editor) instead, set the environment variable EDITOR to /usr/bin/ee 152% 153If you accidently end up inside vi, you can quit it by pressing Escape, colon 154(:), q (q), bang (!) and pressing return. 155% 156You can use aliases to decrease the amount of typing you need to do to get 157commands you commonly use. Examples of fairly popular aliases include (in 158bourne shell style, as in /bin/sh, bash, ksh, and zsh): 159 160 alias lf="ls -FA" 161 alias ll="ls -lA" 162 alias su="su -m" 163 164In csh or tcsh, these would be 165 166 alias lf ls -FA 167 alias ll ls -lA 168 alias su su -m 169 170To remove an alias, you can usually use 'unalias aliasname'. To list all 171aliases, you can usually type just 'alias'. 172% 173In order to support national characters for european languages in tools like 174less without creating other nationalisation aspects, set the environment 175variable LC_ALL to 'en_US.ISO8859-1'. 176% 177You can search for documentation on a keyword by typing 178 179 apropos keyword 180% 181Man pages are divided into section depending on topic. There are 9 different 182sections numbered from 1 (General Commands) to 9 (Kernel Developer's Manual). 183You can get an introduction to each topic by typing 184 185 man <number> intro 186 187In other words, to get the intro to general commands, type 188 189 man 1 intro 190% 191FreeBSD is started up by the program 'init'. The first thing init does when 192starting multiuser mode (ie, starting the computer up for normal use) is to 193run the shell script /etc/rc. By reading /etc/rc, you can learn a lot about 194how the system is put together, which again will make you more confident about 195what happens when you do something with it. 196% 197If you want to play CDs with FreeBSD, a utility for this is already included. 198Type 'cdcontrol' then 'help' to learn more. (You may need to set the CDROM 199environment variable in order to make cdcontrol want to start.) 200% 201If you have a CD-ROM drive in your machine, you can make the CD-ROM that is 202presently inserted available by typing 'mount /cdrom' as root. The CD-ROM 203will be available under /cdrom/. Remember to do 'unmount /cdrom' before 204removing the CD-ROM (it will usually not be possible to remove the CD-ROM 205without doing this.) 206 207Note: This tip may not work in all configurations. 208% 209You can install extra packages for FreeBSD by using the ports system. 210If you have installed it, you can download, compile, and install software by 211just typing 212 213 # cd /usr/ports/<category>/<portname> 214 # make install && make clean 215 216as root. The ports infrastructure will download the software, change it so 217it works on FreeBSD, compile it, install it, register the installation so it 218will be possible to automatically uninstall it, and clean out the temporary 219working space it used. You can remove an installed port you decide you do not 220want after all by typing 221 222 # cd /usr/ports/<category>/<portname> 223 # make deinstall 224 225as root. 226% 227Nice bash prompt: PS1='(\[$(tput md)\]\t <\w>\[$(tput me)\]) $(echo $?) \$ ' 228 -- Mathieu <mathieu@hal.interactionvirtuelle.com> 229% 230To see the output from when your computer started, run dmesg(8). If it has 231been replaced with other messages, look at /var/run/dmesg.boot. 232 -- Francisco Reyes <lists@natserv.com> 233% 234You can use "whereis" to locate standard binary, manual page and source 235directories for the specified programs. This can be particularly handy 236when you are trying to find where in the ports tree an application is. 237 238Try "whereis netscape" and "whereis whereis". 239 -- Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@duth.gr> 240% 241You can press Ctrl-D to quickly exit from a shell, or logout from a 242login shell. 243 -- Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@duth.gr> 244% 245You can use "pkg_info" to see a list of packages you have installed. 246 -- Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@duth.gr> 247% 248You can change the video mode on all consoles by adding something like 249the following to /etc/rc.conf: 250 251 allscreens="80x30" 252 253You can use "vidcontrol -i mode | grep T" for a list of supported text 254modes. 255 -- Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@duth.gr> 256% 257Any user that is a member of the wheel group can use "su -" to simulate 258a root login. You can add a user to the wheel group by editing /etc/group. 259 -- -- Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@duth.gr> 260% 261Over quota? "du -s * | sort -n " will give you a sorted list of your 262directory sizes. 263 -- David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com> 264% 265Handy bash(1) prompt: PS1="\u@\h \w \!$ " 266 -- David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com> 267% 268man -k "something" will give you a list of manpages that have "something" 269in their description. 270 -- David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com> 271% 272Ever wonder what those numbers after command names were, as in cat(1)? It's 273the section of the manual the man page is in. "man man" will tell you more. 274 -- David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com> 275% 276"man hier" will explain the way FreeBSD filesystems are normally laid out. 277 -- David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com> 278% 279"man tuning" gives some tips how to tune performance of your FreeBSD system. 280 -- David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com> 281% 282"man firewall" will give advice for building a FreeBSD firewall 283 -- David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com> 284% 285You can often get answers to your questions about FreeBSD by searching in the 286FreeBSD mailing list archives at 287 288 http://www.freebsd.org/search.html 289% 290You can adjust the volume of various parts of the sound system in your 291computer by typing 'mixer <type> <volume>'. To get a list of what you can 292adjust, just type 'mixer'. 293% 294You can automatically download and install binary packages by doing 295 296 pkg_add -r <URL> 297 298where you replace <URL> with the URL to the package. This will also 299automatically install the packages the package you download is dependent on 300(ie, the packages it needs in order to work.) 301% 302You can get a good standard workstation install by using the 303instant-workstation port/package. If you have ports installed, you can 304install it by doing 305 306 # cd /usr/ports/misc/instant-workstation 307 # make install && make clean 308 309as root. This will install a collection of packages that is convenient to 310have on a workstation. 311% 312You can get a good generic server install by using the 313instant-server port/package. If you have ports installed, you can 314install it by doing 315 316 # cd /usr/ports/misc/instant-server 317 # make install && make clean 318 319as root. This will install a collection of packages that is appropriate for 320running a "generic" server. 321