Resources on the Internet

Contributed by &a.jkh;.

The rapid pace of FreeBSD progress makes print media impractical as a means for following the latest developments. Electronic resources are the best, if not often the only way stay informed of the latest advances. Since FreeBSD is a volunteer effort, the user community itself also generally serves as a `technical support department' of sorts, with electronic mail and Usenet news being the most effective way of reaching that community. The most important points of contact with the FreeBSD user community are outlined below. If you are aware of other resources not mentioned here, please send them to the &a.doc so that they may also be included. Mailing lists

Though many of the FreeBSD development members read USENET, we cannot always guarantee that we will get to your questions in a timely fashion (or at all) if you post them only to one of the comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.* groups. By addressing your questions to the appropriate mailing list you will reach both us and a concentrated FreeBSD audience, invariably assuring a better (or at least faster) response.

The charters for the various lists are given at the bottom of this document. Please read the charter before joining a list since we must strive to keep the signal to noise ratio of the lists high, especially in the technical ones. Archives are kept for all of the mailing lists and can be searched using the the . The keyword searchable archive offers an excellent way of finding answers to frequently asked questions and should be consulted before posting a question. List summary

General lists: The following are general lists which anyone is free to join: List Purpose ---------------------------------------------------------------------- freebsd-announce Important events and project milestones freebsd-bugs Bug reports freebsd-chat Non-technical items related to the FreeBSD community freebsd-current Discussion concerning the use of FreeBSD-current freebsd-stable Discussion concerning the use of FreeBSD-stable freebsd-isp Issues for Internet Service Providers using FreeBSD freebsd-questions User questions Technical lists: The following lists are for technical discussion. You should read the charter carefully before joining one, keeping any messages sent to a list within the scope of the guidelines. List Purpose ---------------------------------------------------------------------- freebsd-doc The FreeBSD Documentation project freebsd-emulation Emulation of other systems such as Linux/DOS/Windows freebsd-fs Filesystems freebsd-hackers General technical discussion freebsd-hardware General discussion of hardware for running FreeBSD freebsd-mobile Discussions about mobile computing freebsd-multimedia Multimedia discussion freebsd-platforms Concerning ports to non-Intel architecture platforms freebsd-ports Discussion of the ports collection freebsd-security Security issues freebsd-scsi The SCSI subsystem freebsd-smp Design discussions for [A]Symmetric MultiProcessing Limited lists: The following lists require approval to join, though anyone is free to send suggestions and comments to them. It is a good idea establish a presence in the technical lists before asking to join one of these limited lists. List Purpose ---------------------------------------------------------------------- freebsd-admin Administrative issues freebsd-arch Architecture and design discussions freebsd-core FreeBSD core team freebsd-hubs People running mirror sites (infrastructural support) freebsd-install Installation development freebsd-user-groups User group coordination CVS lists: The following lists are for people interested in seeing the log messages for changes to various areas of the source tree. List name Source area Area Description (source for) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cvs-CVSROOT /usr/src/[A-Z]* Top level /usr/src file changes cvs-all /usr/src All changes to the tree (superset) cvs-bin /usr/src/bin System binaries cvs-etc /usr/src/etc System files cvs-games /usr/src/games Games cvs-gnu /usr/src/gnu GPL'd utilities cvs-include /usr/src/include Include files cvs-kerberosIV /usr/src/kerberosIV Kerberos encryption code cvs-lib /usr/src/lib System libraries cvs-libexec /usr/src/libexec System binaries cvs-ports /usr/ports Ported software cvs-sbin /usr/src/sbin System binaries cvs-share /usr/src/share System shared files cvs-sys /usr/src/sys Kernel cvs-usrbin /usr/src/usr.bin Use binaries cvs-usrsbin /usr/src/usr.sbin System binaries How to subscribe

All mailing lists live on FreeBSD.ORG, so to post to a given list you simply mail to listname@FreeBSD.ORG. It will then be redistributed to mailing list members world-wide. To subscribe to a list, send mail to &a.majordomo and include subscribe [] In the body of your message. For example, to subscribe yourself to freebsd-announce, you'd do: % mail majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG subscribe freebsd-announce ^D If you want to subscribe yourself under a different name, or submit a subscription request for a local mailing list (note: this is more efficient if you have several interested parties at one site, and highly appreciated by us!), you would do something like: % mail majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG subscribe freebsd-announce local-announce@somesite.com ^D Finally, it is also possible to unsubscribe yourself from a list, get a list of other list members or see the list of mailing lists again by sending other types of control messages to majordomo. For a complete list of available commands, do this: % mail majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG help ^D Again, we would like to request that you keep discussion in the technical mailing lists on a technical track. If you are only interested in the "high points" then it is suggested that you join freebsd-announce, which is intended only for infrequent traffic. List charters

Administrative issues Important events / milestones This is the mailing list for people interested only in occasional announcements of significant freebsd events. This includes announcements about snapshots and other releases. It contains announcements of new FreeBSD capabilities. It may contain calls for volunteers etc. This is a low volume list. Architecture and design discussions This is the mailing list for people discussing FreeBSD architectural issues. It is a closed list, and not for general subscription. Bug reports This is the mailing list for reporting bugs in FreeBSD Whenever possible, bugs should be submitted using "send-pr". Non technical items related to the community This list contains the overflow from the other lists about non-technical, social information. It includes discussion about whether Jordan looks like a toon ferret or not, whether or not to type in capitals, who is drinking too much coffee, where the best beer is brewed, who is brewing beer in their basement, and so on. Occasional announcements of important events (such as upcoming parties, weddings, births, new jobs, etc) can be made to the technical lists, but the follow ups should be directed to this -chat list. FreeBSD core team This is an internal mailing list for use by the core members. Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current This is the mailing list for users of freebsd-current. It includes warnings about new features coming out in -current that will affect the users, and instructions on steps that must be taken to remain -current. Anyone running "current" must subscribe to this list. Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current This is the digest version of the freebsd-current mailing list. The digest consists of all messages sent to freebsd-current bundled together and mailed out as a single message. The average digest size is about 40kB. Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-stable This is the mailing list for users of freebsd-stable. It includes warnings about new features coming out in -stable that will affect the users, and instructions on steps that must be taken to remain -stable. Anyone running ``stable'' should subscribe to this list. Documentation project This mailing list belongs to the FreeBSD Doc Project and is for the discussion of documentation related issues and projects. Filesystems Discussions concerning FreeBSD filesystems. Technical discussions This is a forum for technical discussions related to FreeBSD. This is the primary technical mailing list. It is for individuals actively working on FreeBSD, to bring up problems or discuss alternative solutions. Individuals interested in following the technical discussion are also welcome. Technical discussions This is the digest version of the freebsd-hackers mailing list. The digest consists of all messages sent to freebsd-hackers bundled together and mailed out as a single message. The average digest size is about 40kB. General discussion of FreeBSD hardware General discussion about the types of hardware that FreeBSD runs on, various problems and suggestions concerning what to buy or avoid. Installation discussion This mailing list is for discussing FreeBSD installation development for the future releases. Issues for Internet Service Providers This mailing list is for discussing topics relevant to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) using FreeBSD. Multimedia discussions This is a forum about multimedia applications using FreeBSD. Discussion center around multimedia applications, their installation, their development and their support within FreeBSD Porting to Non-Intel platforms Cross-platform freebsd issues, general discussion and proposals for non-Intel FreeBSD ports. Discussion of "ports" Discussions concerning FreeBSD's "ports collection" (/usr/ports), proposed ports, modifications to ports collection infrastructure and general coordination efforts. User questions This is the mailing list for questions about FreeBSD. You should not send "how to" questions to the technical lists unless you consider the question to be pretty technical. User questions This is the digest version of the freebsd-questions mailing list. The digest consists of all messages sent to freebsd-questions bundled together and mailed out as a single message. The average digest size is about 40kB. SCSI subsystem This is the mailing list for people working on the scsi subsystem for FreeBSD. Security issues FreeBSD computer security issues (DES, Kerberos, known security holes and fixes, etc). User Group Coordination List This is the mailing list for the coordinators from each of the local area Users Groups to discuss matters with each other and a designated individual from the Core Team. This mail list should be limited to meeting synopsis and coordination of projects that span User Groups. Usenet newsgroups

In addition to two FreeBSD specific newsgroups, there are many others in which FreeBSD is discussed or are otherwise relevant to FreeBSD users. are available for some of these newsgroups from courtesy of Warren Toomey <wkt@cs.adfa.oz.au>. BSD specific newsgroups

Other Unix newsgroups of interest

X-Window system

World Wide Web servers

- Central Server. - Australia. - Brazil. - Canada. - Czech Republic. - Denmark. - Estonia. - Finland. - Germany. - Ireland. - Japan. - Korea. - Netherlands. - Portugal. - Sweden. - Taiwan.