Auditing the FAQ
Can't edit the wiki?
If you can't edit the wiki email Eitan Adler eadler@freebsd.org with your account name and what issues you found (or what questions are good).
What do we care about?
- Is it factually correct?
- Does it use deprecated functionality?
- Is it completely outdated to the point we should remove it?
- Does it need better examples?
- Is it clear and concise?
- Does it have typos or spelling mistakes?
New questions can go to NewFAQs
Want to help with the patches?
- Install the required tools
- edit documentation/content/en/books/faq/_index.adoc
- Create a patch per step 5 and either email it to to doc@freebsd.org or (better if you have an account) submit it in Bugzilla per step 6
It isn't hard - its just [https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/fdp-primer/asciidoctor-primer/ ASCII text with some markup].
The Big Giant Table
To do: convert URLs and remove CategoryStale when done.
| Question link | Who Reviewed? | Comments or concerns |
| what-is-FreeBSD | ChrisRees | Historical information. |
| FreeBSD-goals | Eitan Adler | discussed on doc@ |
| bsd-license-restrictions | Derek Wood | |
| replace-current-OS | Eitan Adler | fine |
| why-called-FreeBSD | Eitan Adler | fine |
| differences-to-other-bsds | Eitan Adler | fine |
| latest-version | ChrisRees | Dynamic information requires too much updating… better to link to releng page or similar after a brief description of stable/ and head/. Update for Subversion too. |
| current | gjb | fine |
| stable | Derek Wood | |
| release-freq | Eitan Adler | fine |
| responsible | Eitan Adler | fine |
| where-get | mjg | needs review about snapshots; incorrect link to FreeBSD 7.4; would use a link to a table with security support periods |
| access-pr | Eitan Adler | fine |
| books | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | fine |
| doc-formats | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | fine |
| mailing | Eitan Adler | fine |
| irc | Derek Wood | |
| forums | mjg | fine |
| training | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | fine |
| which-architecture | Eitan Adler | fine |
| floppy-download | nyan | fine |
| floppy-image-too-large | Joe Barbish | remove obsolete- floppy images nolonger provided, motherboard mfg unsupported |
| install-instructions-location | Eitan Adler | |
| need-to-run | dteske, Eitan Adler, Mark Saad | needs to talk about non-GENERIC (see the thread on hackers). In the section for “need-to-run” there should be a mention about setting kern.cam.ctl.disable=1 in /boot/loader.conf , for systems with less then 256M of ram . Also I wonder if there are more low memory tunings that need an mention here. |
| custom-boot-floppy | Eitan Adler | article linked is wrong |
| windows-coexist | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | fine |
| win95-damaged-boot-manager | scottl | mildly out of data and relevance due to it's references to floppies, ide, and windows. At one time, we could have done s/sysinstall/sade/ but that is no longer the only change that would need to be made considering recent SVN r244859 where sade is now bsdinstall (read: the keystroke instructions are all wrong now). We have time tho (time before MFC, time before Releng, etc. etc.). 9.1 still has sade based on sysinstall, so the quick-fix of s/sysinstall/sade/ will fix this portion of the documentation (for now, until SVN r244859 makes it into a releng release). |
| boot-floppy-strangeness | Eitan Adler, Joe Barbish | |
| no-install-cdrom | Marc UBM | should be rephrased |
| need-complete-sources | scottl | fine |
| need-kernel | scottl | fine |
| password-encryption | Eitan Adler, scottl | fine |
| memory-limits | scottl, nyan | out of date. by 10 years, pc98 can use up to 512MB memory only by hardware (chipset) limitation. |
| ffs-limits | scottl, Eitan Adler | relevant but very out of date; do those bugs still exist? |
| archsw-readin-failed-error | Lowell Gilbert | check present, error changed (docs/177036) |
| general-configuration-tool | Eitan Adler, scottl | fine |
| which-hardware-to-get | Joe Barbish | fine |
| memory-upper-limitation | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| memory-i386-over-4gb | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| architectures | Derek Wood | |
| supported-hard-drives | Mehmet Erol Sanliturk | Requires complete rewrite |
| supported-scsi-controllers | Mehmet Erol Sanliturk | SATA devices? DVD RW? Blue-Ray RW? burncd is not used any more . |
| tape-support | imp | &os; supports all standard SCSI tape interfaces. |
| tape-changer-support | dwhite | the second paragraph seems to point out a complication somewhat unnecessarily, but the devices noted are the correct devices and tools |
| supported-cdrom-drives | Mehmet Erol Sanliturk | SATA devices? DVD RW? Blue-Ray RW? burncd is not used any more. |
| supported-cdrw-drives | Mehmet Erol Sanliturk | SATA devices? DVD RW? Blue-Ray RW? burncd is not used any more. |
| moused | Joe Barbish | fine |
| text-mode-cut-paste | Joe Barbish | |
| mouse-wheel-buttons | Joe Barbish | fine |
| keyboard-delete-key | imp | fine |
| support-broadcom | Joe Barbish | fine |
| multiport-serial-support | imp | the device lines are bogus and need to be converted to hints. |
| serial-console-prompt | Joe BArbish | fine |
| es1370-silent-pcm | Jacub Lach | That's one thing, but most often silent device is caused by need for proper device.hints, as usual with e.g. snd_hda. This could use mention of it. |
| power-management-support | Jakub Lach | description is lacking, |
| pae | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| signal11 | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| trap-12-panic | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| proc-table-full | alfred | |
| mail-loopback | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| remote-fullscreen | imp | fine |
| connection-delay | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| file-table-full | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| computer-clock-skew | imp | likely is way obsolete., also, use ntpd |
| indefinite-wait-buffer | Bas Smeelen, imp | fine, grep for it in the kernel tree since the swapper has been rewritten a bunch. |
| lock-order-reversal | Eitan Adler | fine |
| called-with-non-sleepable-locks-held | trasz | |
| touch-not-found | Eitan Adler | fine |
| officesuite | Jakub Lach | |
| user-apps | Derek Wood | Needs to be updated for pkgng. |
| how-do-download-ports-tree | Eitan Adler | fine |
| java | Jacub Lach | fine |
| ports-4x | MiroslavLachman | fine |
| make-index | MiroslavLachman | fine |
| ports-update | MiroslavLachman | fine |
| ports-major-upgrade | MiroslavLachman | fine |
| ports-minor-upgrade | MiroslavLachman | fine |
| minimal-sh | Derek Wood | |
| midi-sound-files | Jacub Lach | I'm not usually creating wavs from midi (honestly, probably nobody is doing that for music listening any more, maybe it should be swapped to “how to rip CD to mp3 or ogg” with links to port tools, but maybe this is already old fashioned ;) ) but I have audio/timidity++ installed, and just checked, it still works as described. |
| convert-back-from-pkgng | Jakub Lach | fine |
| make-kernel | Jakub Lach | fine |
| why-kernel-big | Miroslav Lachman, Jakub Lach | GENERIC is 11M, 12M, 14M 8.2/8.3/9.0 Nowadays kernels are compiled in /debug mode by default/. Kernels built in debug mode contain many symbols that are used for debugging, thus greatly increasing the size of the kernel. Note that there will be little or no performance decrease from running a debug kernel, and it is useful in case of a system panic. docs/174244 |
| generic-kernel-build-failure | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| scheduler-in-use | Derek Wood | fine |
| scheduler-kern-quantum | | |
| adding-disks | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| new-huge-disk | Mehmet Erol Sanliturk | Requires some rewrite with respect do bsdinstall , because sysinstall is not used any more in new distributions. s/sysinstall(8), or fdisk(8) and disklabel(8)/bsdinstall(8), or gpart(8) and [optionally] geom(8). The note about boot0cfg should stand (we still use it heavily on all systems we deploy). |
| dangerously-dedicated | Mehmet Erol Sanliturk, dteske | Requires some rewrite with respect do bsdinstall , because sysinstall is not used any more in new distributions. We can switch out fdisk for gpart but we'll also have to note that the dangerous dedication is only when applying legacy partition (MBR style) opposed to GPT. But I suspect this isn't about fdisk, but instead sysinstall (so ignore that as fdisk is still very much alive). The “dangerously dedicated” section is completely obsolete. The section can probably just be deleted. An alternative would be something that talks about the relative merits of MBR, BSD (formerly “dangerously dedicated”), and GPT partitioning – MBR vs. GPT being the really important bit. |
| safe-softupdates | stable@ | reviewed on -stable and comments taken into account |
| mount-foreign-fs | name-goes-here | :idea: |
| mount-dos | cpet | fine |
| crypto-file-system | Robert Watson | fine |
| nt-bootloader | dteske | As far as I know bsdinstall doesn't offer this functionality (yet). We could switch the documentation over to talking about boot0cfg. |
| lilo-bootloader | name-goes-here | :idea: |
| grub-loader | nox | example is for grub legacy, maybe grub2 should be mentioned too and possibly also how to have grub2 boot directly w/o loader |
| booteasy-loader | name-goes-here | :idea: |
| changing-bootprompt | Joe Barbish | fine |
| removable-drives | Andrea Venturoli | Would it be worth mentioning no /dev/xxxs1 is created when the device is plugged in after boot? |
| mount-cd-superblock | Joe Barbish | fine |
| cdrom-not-configured | Joe Barbish | fine |
| cdrom-unicode-filenames | Joe Barbish | fine |
| burncd-isofs | Joe Barbish | fine |
| copy-cd | Joe Barbish | fine |
| mount-audio-CD | Joe Barbish | fine |
| multi-session-CD | Marc UBM | fine |
| user-floppymount | mjg | despite linkname it is about USB etc.; contains some typos, should mentions labels |
| du-vs-df | MiroslavLachman | original Q & A are OK, but can be extended about zfs list space usage (with compression, dedup, snapshots etc.) |
| add-swap-space | MiroslavLachman | fine |
| manufacturer-disk-size | MiroslavLachman | fine |
| disk-more-than-full | MiroslavLachman | fine |
| startup-config-files | Joe BArbish | fine |
| adding-users | Joe Barbish | fine |
| root-not-found-cron-errors | Joe Barbish | fine |
| su-wheel-group | cpet | fine |
| rcconf-readonly | crees | fine |
| printer-setup | Joe Barbish | fine |
| keyboard-mappings | Joe Barbish | fine |
| user-quotas | Joe Barbish | fine |
| sysv-ipc | scottl,Bas Smeelen | fine |
| sendmail-alternative | Joe Barbish. Eitan Adler | fine |
| forgot-root-pw | dteske | bsdinstall does offer the ability to launch a shell, so we could switch this over to talking about running the commands on a shell obtained via bsdinstall. |
| CAD-reboot | Derek Wood | |
| dos-to-unix-txt | cpet | fine |
| kill-by-name | Derek Wood | fine |
| reread-rc | Eitan Adler | fine |
| release-candidate | Jakub Lach | fine |
| kernel-chflag-failure | Joe barbish | fine |
| kernel-securelevel-time | Joe Barbish | fine |
| statd-mem-leak | Lowell Gilbert | fine, but no one may care |
| unsetting-schg | Joe Barbish | fine |
| ssh-shosts | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| vnlru | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| top-memory-states | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| free-memory-amount | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| var-empty | EitanAdler | fine |
| whatis-X | Joe Barbish | Answer shows outdated release number. |
| running-X | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | |
| running-X-securelevels | Lowell Gilbert | The running-X-securelevels question doesn't match what I actually see when I try it - diff proposed on -doc (jan) |
| x-and-moused | Marc UBM | fine |
| x-and-wheel | Marc UBM | fine |
| no-remote-x11 | nox | fine |
| virtual-console | Mehmet Erol Sanliturk | Application with KMS effects ? |
| vty-from-x | Mehmet Erol Sanliturk | Application with KMS effects ? |
| xdm-boot | name-goes-here | :idea: |
| xconsole-failure | Jakub Lach | Indeed xconsole throws such error, but not xterm -C. After _following_ recommendations (0600) in #xconsole-failure, there is xterm error as well as xconsole one still. |
| ps2-x | Eitan Adler, scottl, gavin | |
| mouse-button-reverse | name-goes-here | |
| install-splash | Joe Barbish | fine |
| windows-keys | Eitan Adler | still works but might want to mention you can use windows keys as compose etc too in xorg.conf |
| x-3d-acceleration | Jacub Lach | This should/could be updated a bit, especially that there is no mention of intel and newer cards, and those old ones (matrox etc.) are going to be dropped with newer xorg (kib@?) |
| diskless-booting | Joe BArbish | fine |
| router | Joe Barbish | fine |
| win95-connection | John Nielsen | This is a bit dated but fine. The natd Handbook page could maybe reference other ways of doing NAT besides natd–e.g. using pf or ipfw. The IPFW Handbook page could be updated and simplified to include e.g. “firewall_nat_enable” instead of using divert/natd. |
| slip-ppp-support | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | |
| natd | Joe Barbish | fine |
| ethernet-aliases | MiroslavLachman | Use more usual dotted decimal netmask (255.255.255.0) instead of hexadecimal; also linked Handbook page (or FAQ it-self) should contains all possible syntax variants with CIDR, address ranges in rc.conf and IPv6 examples |
| nfs-linux | John Nielsen | fine. Possibly less of an issue than it used to be but I do remember encountering that issue. |
| exports-errors | Lowell Gilbert | It's fine. These questions haven't come up much lately, so it's also safe to delete the question. |
| ip-multicast | Eitan Adler | has to be rewritten to conform with reality |
| fqdn-hosts | Miroslav Lachman | fine |
| network-permission-denied | Joe Barbish | fine |
| ipfw-fwd | Joe Barbish | fine |
| service-redirect | Bas Smeelen | fine |
| bandwidth-mgr-tool | Joe Barbish | fine |
| bpf-not-configured | John Nielsen | fine |
| mount-smb-share | MiroslavLachman | fine |
| icmp-response-bw-limit | John Nielsen | fine |
| unknown-hw-addr-format | name-goes-here | :idea: |
| arp-wrong-iface | MiroslavLachman | fine |
| sandbox | Eitan Adler | should discuss jails and capsicum; description of sandbox is misleading; needs to be more of a an answer - perhaps change to “what sandboxes does &os; offer? |
| securelevel | Joe Barbish | fine |
| extra-named-port | MiroslavLachman | fine |
| sendmail-port-587 | MiroslavLachman | Q & A are fine, but I don't see sendmail listening on port 587 by default |
| toor-account | cpet | fine |
| userppp | Daniel O'Connor | fine |
| ppp-hangs | Daniel O'Connor | fine |
| ppp-nodial-auto | name-goes-here | :idea: |
| no-route-to-host | Daniel O'Connor | fine |
| connection-threeminutedrop | Daniel O'Connor | fine |
| ppp-drop-heavy-load | Daniel O'Connor | |
| ppp-drop-random | name-goes-here | :idea: |
| ppp-hangs-random | name-goes-here | :idea: |
| ppp-remote-not-responding | Daniel O'Connor | |
| ppp-hung | Daniel O'Connor | |
| ppp-same-magic | Daniel O'Connor | fine |
| ppp-lcp-constant | Daniel O'Connor | fine |
| ppp-shell-test-lockup | Eitan Adler | fine |
| ppp-null-modem | Daniel O'Connor | fine |
| ppp-auto-noreasondial | Daniel O'Connor | fine |
| ccp-errors | Lowell Gilbert | This should be very unusual now, but it's still completely correct. |
| ppp-connectionspeed | name-goes-here | :idea: |
| ppp-ignores-backslash | name-goes-here | :idea: |
| ppp-segfault-nocore | Daniel O'Connor | |
| ppp-autodialprocess-noconnect | name-goes-here | :idea: |
| ppp-nat-games | Daniel O'Connor | basically be replaced with “use 'nat same_ports yes'”, or suggest the user use PF for NAT and run the miniupnpd port. Certainly these days games (and every other network app) are much more NAT savvy due to its prevalence. |
| fcs-errors | name-goes-here | :idea: |
| desperation | Eitan Adler | |
| found-serial | Andrea Venturoli, Eitan Adler | Shouldn't USB to serial converters be mentioned? |
| access-serial-ports | name-goes-here | discuss uart |
| enable-multiport-serial | Eitan Adler | needs to be updated for uart |
| default-serial-params | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | fine |
| enable-dialup | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | fine |
| dumb-terminal | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | fine |
| cannot-tip | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | fine |
| more-swap | Joe Barbish, Bas Smeelen | fine - but does Linux still use less swap? In the answer: FreeBSD only appears to use more swap than Linux. Should be fine. On a 2GB RAM i386 laptop with rootzfs, xfce, thunderbird, firefox, and multiple terminals opened no swap is used and still 1.2GB RAM is free |
| top-freemem | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | fine |
| chmod-symlinks | Eitan Adler | fine |
| dos-binaries | cpet | fine |
| translation | Eitan Adler | fine |
| freebsd-mail-bounces | dhw | |
| free-account | cpet | fine but small list should be added. |
| daemon-name | Eitan Adler | fine |
| use-beastie | Jakub Lach, Eitan Adler | fine |
| daemon-images | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | fine |
| glossary | Joe Barbish | fine |
| bikeshed-painting | Eitan Adler | |
| very-very-cool | Eitan Adler | |
| letmeoutofhere | Eitan Adler | |
| changing-lightbulbs | Eitan Adler | |
| dev-null | Eitan Adler | |
| learn-advanced | Eitan Adler | fine |
| how-to-contribute | cpet | fine |
| define-snap-release | Eitan Adler | defines releases, but not snapshots |
| ctm | cpet, Eitan Adler | fine |
| submitting-kernel-extensions | Joe Barbish, Eitan Adler | fine |
| kernel-panic-troubleshooting | mjg | no mention of textdumps, addr2line; should show some panic from amd64; should show how to test if dumps work |
| change-kernel-address-space | Bas Smeelen | fine |