Errata and addenda for the Complete FreeBSD, third edition

Last revision: 2 August 1999

The trouble with books is that you can't update them the way you can a web page or any other online documentation. The result is that most leading edge computer books are out of date almost before they are printed. Unfortunately, ``The Complete FreeBSD'', published by Walnut Creek, is no exception. Inevitably, a number of bugs and changes have surfaced.

The following is a list of modifications which go beyond simple typos. They relate to the third edition, formatted on 17 May 1999. You'll find this information on page iv (the page before the beginning of the Table of Contents). See the end of this document for instructions on how to find the errata for an older version.

You can get the current document in four forms:

A PostScript version, suitable for printing out, at ftp://ftp.lemis.com/pub/cfbsd/errata-3.ps. See page 302 of the third edition to find out how to print out PostScript. If at all possible, please take this document: it's closest to the original text.
Be careful selecting this file with a web browser: it is often impossible to reload the document, and you may see a previously cached version.
An enhanced ASCII version at ftp://ftp.lemis.com/pub/cfbsd/errata-3.txt. When viewed with more or less, this version will show some highlighting and underlining. It's not suitable for direct viewing.
An ASCII-only version at ftp://ftp.lemis.com/pub/cfbsd/errata-3.ascii. This version is posted every week to the FreeBSD-questions mailing list. Only take this version if you have real problems with PostScript: I can't be sure that the lack of different fonts won't confuse the meaning.
A web version at http://www.lemis.com/errata-3.html.

All these modifications have been applied to the ongoing source text of the book, so if you buy a later edition, they will be in it as well. If you find a bug or a suspected bug in the book, please contact me at grog@FreeBSD.org.

Page ii

The instructions on page ii (opposite the title page) tell you to look at ftp://ftp.lemis.com/pub/cfbsd/errata-2 for the errata list. That's wrong. Look at this list.

Pages 190 and 191

The description is not very clear about which text appears when booting from floppy for initial install, and which appears when booting normally. The procedure is very similar, but there are some differences. Add the following text after the heading Boot messages:

You'll boot your system in at least two different ways: initially you'll boot from floppy or CD-ROM in order to install the system. Later, after the system is installed, you'll boot from hard disk. The procedure is almost identical, so we'll look at both versions in the following examples.

Replace the text from the middle of page 191 with:

If you're booting from 1.44 MB floppies, you will then see:

Please insert MFS root floppy and press enter:

When you insert the MFS root floppy and press Enter, you see more twirling batons, then the UserConfig screen appears.

UserConfig: Modifying the boot configuration

After the kernel has been loaded, the following screen will appear if you are installing the system, or if you have requested it with the -c option to the boot loader:

Page 206

The bottom two lines on this page should be in bold constant font, indicating that this is input for your /etc/rc.config file.

nfs_client_enable="YES"      # This host is an NFS client (or NO).
nfs_server_enable="YES"     # This host is an NFS server (or NO).

Page 265

The example on the second half of the page refers to the old SCSI driver. The scsi program is no longer available in FreeBSD 3.x. Instead, use the camcontrol program. Replace the text with:

Modern disks make provisions for recovering from such errors by allocating an alternate sector for the data. IDE drives do this automatically, but with SCSI drives you have the option of enabling or disabling reallocation. Usually it is turned on when you buy them, but occasionally it is not. When installing a new disk, you should check that the parameters ARRE (Auto Read Reallocation Enable) and AWRE (Auto Write Reallocation Enable) are turned on. For example, to check and set the values for disk da1, you would enter:

# camcontrol modepage da1 -m 1 -e -P 3
# scsi -f /dev/rda1c -m 1 -e -P 3

This command will start up your favourite editor (either the one specified in the EDITOR environment variable, or vi by default) with the following data:

AWRE (Auto Write Reallocation Enbld):  0
ARRE (Auto Read Reallocation Enbld):  1 
TB (Transfer Block):  0 
RC (Read Continuous):  0 
EER (Enable Early Recovery):  0 
PER (Post Error):  0 
DTE (Disable Transfer on Error):  0 
DCR (Disable Correction):  0 
Read Retry Count:  16 
Correction Span:  41 
Head Offset Count:  0 
Data Strobe Offset Count:  0 
Write Retry Count:  16 
Recovery Time Limit:  0

The values for AWRE and ARRE should both be 1. If they aren't, as in this case, where AWRE is 0, change the data with the editor, save it, and exit. The camcontrol program will write the data back to the disk and enable the option.

Page 331

The description of the config refers to the SCSI drive sd0. This is the old name; in FreeBSD version 3, SCSI drives are called da, so this reference should be da0.

Thanks to Francisco Reyes for pointing out this problem.

Page 362

Replace the text at the top of the page with:

Next, change to the build directory and build the kernel:

# cd ../../compile/FREEBIE
# make depend
# make

The make depend is needed even if the directory has just been created: apart from creating dependency information, it also creates some files needed for the build.

Thanks to Mark Ovens for drawing this to my attention, and to Francisco Reyes and Bill Fumerola for pointing out that it still wasn't fixed in the third edition.

Page 409

The information on setting the default routers specified the wrong end of the PPP links in some places. It should always be the ``far'' end of the link. Replace the second example on page 409, and the text following it, with this text:

defaultrouter="139.130.136.129"     # Set to default gateway (or NO).
static_routes=""            # Set to static route list (or leave empty).
gateway_enable="YES"            # Set to YES if this host will be a gateway.

This is the normal way to set the default route on a point-to-point interface. In fact, for PPP you don't need to specify the default address: the PPP packages will set it for you when the link comes up. This makes it possible to set default routes when you're forced to use dynamic IP addresses, where you don't know the address at this point. We'll see how PPP does this on page 446.

In the first example on page 410, the sixth example on page 412 and the second example on page 413, replace the defaultrouter definition with:

defaultrouter="139.130.237.65"      # Set to default gateway (or NO).

Thanks to Andreas Longwitz for pointing out this error.

Getting errata for older editions of the book

There have been a total of five different versions of ``The Complete FreeBSD''. The most accurate way to distinguish them is by the format date, which you'll find at the bottom of page iv (the page before the beginning of the Table of Contents) in all versions of the book up to the third edition, and at the end of the preface in the fourth edition.

The first was titled ``Installing and running FreeBSD'', and was formatted on 24 February 1996. No errata list exists for this book.
For the first edition (19 July 1996), get http://www.lemis.com/errata-1.
The list for the second edition (16 December 1997) is available at http://www.lemis.com/errata-2.html.
The revised second edition was formatted on 11 February 1999. As the name suggests, it's not a complete new edition: in fact, only three chapters are different:
- The chapter ``Setting up X11'' has been brought up to date.
- Appendix D (``Contents of the Ports Collection'') has been replaced by two appendixes, ``Errata and Addenda'' (the errata list up to date at the time) and ``FreeBSD 3.0'', which describes the differences between FreeBSD 2.x and FreeBSD 3.x.
There is no separate errata list for this book. Refer to the second edition errata list.
The Third Edition, formatted on 17 May 1999. You are looking at the correct list for this edition.
The errata for the the fourth edition are here.

Greg's home page

$Id: errata-3.html,v 1.2 2003/06/30 07:23:50 grog Exp $