Preface
Written by users of the TrueOS® operating system.
Version |version|
Copyright © 2005 - 2016 The TrueOS® Project.
Welcome to TrueOS®! This Handbook covers the installation and use of TrueOS® |version|. This Handbook is a work in progress and relies on th e contributions of many individuals. If you are interested in assisting with the Handbook, refer to the documentation README. If you use IRC Freenode, you are welcome to join the #pcbsd channel where you will find other TrueOS® users.
Previous versions of the Handbook in various formats and languages are available from here.
The TrueOS® Users Handbook is freely available for sharing and redistribution under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This means that you have permission to copy, distribute, translate, and adapt the work as long as you attribute the TrueOS® Project as the original source of the Handbook.
TrueOS® and the TrueOS® logo are registered trademarks of iXsystems. If you wish to use the TrueOS® logo in your own works, ask for permission first from [email protected].
AMD is a trademark of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Apache is a trademark of The Apache Software Foundation.
AppCafe® is a registered trademark of iXsystems.
Asus® and Eee PC® are registered trademarks of ASUSTeK® Computer Inc.
Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.
Flash® is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.
FreeBSD® is a registered trademark of the FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeNAS® is a registered trademark of iXsystems.
Intel, the Intel logo, Pentium Inside, and Pentium are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Java™ is a trademark of Oracle America and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries.
LinkedIn® is a registered trademark of LinkedIn Corporation.
Linux® is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
Mac and Mac OS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
NVIDIA® is a trademark and/or registered trademark of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.
ThinkPad® is a registered trademark of Lenovo.
Twitter is a trademark of Twitter, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
UNIX® is a registered trademark of The Open Group.
VirtualBox® is a registered trademark of Oracle.
VMWare® is a registered trademark of VMWare, Inc.
Windows® is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries.
Typographic Conventions
- Names of graphical elements such as buttons, icons, fields, columns, and boxes are enclosed within quotes. For example: click the "Browse Categories" button.
- Menu selections are italicized and separated by arrows. For example: :menuselection:`Control Panel --> About`.
- Commands that are mentioned within text are highlighted in :command:`bold text`. Command examples and command output are contained within code blocks.
- File names are enclosed in a blue box :file:`/like/this`.
- Keystrokes are formatted in a blue box. For example: press Enter.
- bold text is used to emphasize an important point.
- italic text is used to represent device names or text that is input into a GUI field.
Welcome to TrueOS®!
TrueOS® (formerly known as PC-BSD) began in 2005 when Kris Moore presented the first beta version of a FreeBSD operating system pre-configured for desktop use. Since then, TrueOS® has matured into a polished, feature-rich, free-of-charge, open source operating system that meets the desktop or server needs of the beginner to the advanced user alike.
TrueOS® is essentially a customized installation of FreeBSD, not a forked derivative. Since the underlying FreeBSD system has been kept intact, you have a fully functional FreeBSD system under the hood. TrueOS® provides an easy-to-use installer which can be used to install a desktop or a server version of FreeBSD. Other differences from FreeBSD include:
- TrueOS® pre-configures the BSD-licensed, :ref:`Lumina Desktop` environment during a desktop installation. Additional desktop environments can be installed and will appear in the login menu, allowing the user to select which environment to log into.
- The TrueOS® installer supports configuring ZFS and encryption during installation.
- TrueOS® provides both a graphical and command line software management system.
- TrueOS® provides many graphical utilities for configuring and managing the system. These utilities have both a command line equivalent and a REST and WebSocket API so that they can also be used to manage multiple systems.
- TrueOS® comes pre-configured with a number of automatic scripts to perform tasks such as connecting digital cameras or USB memory sticks.
- The TrueOS® boot menu supports boot environments, or snapshots of the operating system, and the TrueOS® Update Manager automatically adds a new boot environment to the boot menu before updating the operating system or software. This means that if an update fails, you can reboot into the previous version of the operating system, before the update occurred.
While it began as an independent project, since October 2006 TrueOS® is financially backed and supported by the enterprise-class hardware solutions provider iXsystems.
.. index:: features
TrueOS® provides the following features:
- Easy installation: to install either a graphical desktop or command-line server, simply insert the installation media, reboot the system to start the installer, and answer a few questions in the installation menus.
- Automatically configured hardware: video, sound, network, and other devices are configured automatically during installation.
- Intuitive desktop interface: TrueOS® installs the :ref:`Lumina Desktop` and additional desktop environments can be installed to support your day-to-day computing needs.
- Easy software management: with :ref:`AppCafe®`, installing, upgrading, and uninstalling software is safe and easy.
- Lots of software available: :ref:`AppCafe®` can be used to install software that has been ported to FreeBSD (currently over 26,100 applications).
- Easy to update: TrueOS® provides a built-in :ref:`Update Manager` that provides notifications of available updates. This utility makes it easy to apply operating system security fixes, bug fixes, and system enhancements as well as upgrade to newer versions of the operating system or installed software.
- Virus-free: TrueOS® is not affected by viruses, spyware, or other malware.
- No defragmentation: TrueOS® hard drives do not need to be defragmented and are formatted with OpenZFS which is a self-healing filesystem.
- Laptop support: provides power saving, swap space encryption, and automatic switching between wired and wifi network connections.
- Secure environment: TrueOS® provides a pre-configured firewall and a built-in host-based Intrusion Detection System.
- Easy system administration: TrueOS® provides many graphical tools for performing system administration tasks.
- Localization: TrueOS® supports a number of native languages and locales.
- Vibrant community: TrueOS® has a friendly and helpful community.
.. index:: What's New
What's New in |version|
The following features or enhancements were introduced for TrueOS® |version|:
- Based on FreeBSD 11.0 which adds these features.
- The GRUB bootloader has been replaced by the FreeBSD bootloader which now provides both GELI and boot environment support. The "Use GRUB bootloader" checkbox has been added to the "Customize" Disk Selection screens for users of dual-boot systems who prefer to use the GRUB boot loader.
- A TrueOS® installation installs the :ref:`Lumina Desktop`. Additional window managers can be installed using :ref:`AppCafe®`.
- The :ref:`SysAdm™ Client` and server have been added and most of the :ref:`Control Panel` utilities have been rewritten to use the SysAdm™ middleware. Under the hood, SysAdm™ provides REST and WebSocket APIs for securely managing local and remote FreeBSD and TrueOS® systems.
- :command:`freebsd-update` has been retired in favor of using :command:`pkg` for system updates.
- The option to use the SCFB display driver has been added to the installer. This driver is suitable for newer UEFI laptops as it automatically detects native resolution and is a good solution for newer Intel drivers that have not been ported yet to FreeBSD. Before selecting this driver, check the BIOS and make sure the CSM module is disabled. This driver does not support a dual-head configuration, such as an external port for presentations, or suspend and resume.
- The "Customize" button has been removed from the :ref:`System Selection Screen` in order to reduce the size of the installation media. Additional software can be installedg post-installation using :ref:`AppCafe®`.
- The "Boot to console (Disable X)" option has been added to the graphical boot menu.
- The following utilities have been removed from :ref:`Control Panel` as they have been converted to the SysAdm™ API and are available in the :ref:`SysAdm™ client`: :ref:`AppCafe®`, :ref:`Update Manager`, :ref:`Boot Environment Manager`, and :ref:`Life Preserver`.
- These new utilites are available in the :ref:`SysAdm™ Client`: :ref:`Manage SSL Keys` and :ref:`Task Manager`.
- The graphical and command line versions of PBI Manager and Warden have been removed.
- The "Report a Bug" utility has been removed from :ref:`Control Panel`.
.. index:: Linux
TrueOS® is based on FreeBSD, meaning that it is not a Linux distribution. If you have used Linux before, you will find that some features that you are used to have different names on a BSD system and that some commands are different. This section covers some of these differences.
.. index:: filesystems
BSD and Linux use different filesystems during installation. Many Linux distros use EXT2, EXT3, EXT4, or ReiserFS, while TrueOS® uses OpenZFS. This means that if you wish to dual-boot with Linux or access data on an external drive that has been formatted with another filesystem, you will want to do a bit of research first to see if the data will be accessible to both operating systems.
Table 1.3a summarizes the various filesystems commonly used by desktop systems. TrueOS® should automatically mount the following filesystems: FAT16, FAT32, EXT2, EXT3 (without journaling), EXT4 (read-only), NTFS5, NTFS6, and XFS. See the section on :ref:`Files and File Sharing` for a comparison of some graphical file manager utilities.
Table 1.3a: Filesystem Support on TrueOS®
| Filesystem | Native to | Type of non-native support | Usage notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Btrfs | Linux | none | |
| exFAT | Windows | none | requires a license from Microsoft |
| EXT2 | Linux | r/w support loaded by default | |
| EXT3 | Linux | r/w support loaded by default | since EXT3 journaling is not supported, you will not be able to mount a filesystem requiring a journal replay unless you :command:`fsck` it using an external utility such as e2fsprogs |
| EXT4 | Linux | r/o support loaded by default | EXT3 journaling, extended attributes, and inodes greater than 128 bytes are not supported; EXT3 filesystems converted to EXT4 may have better performance |
| FAT16 | Windows | r/w support loaded by default | |
| FAT32 | Windows | r/w support loaded by default | |
| HFS+ | Mac OS X | none | older Mac versions might work with hfsexplorer |
| JFS | Linux | none | |
| NTFS5 | Windows | full r/w support loaded by default | |
| NTFS6 | Windows | r/w support loaded by default | |
| ReiserFS | Linux | r/o support is loaded by default | |
| UFS2 | FreeBSD | check if your Linux distro provides ufsutils; r/w support on Mac; UFS Explorer can be used on Windows | changed to r/o support in Mac Lion |
| ZFS | TrueOS, FreeBSD |
.. index:: devices
Linux and BSD use different naming conventions for devices. For example:
- in Linux, Ethernet interfaces begin with :file:`eth`; in BSD, interface names indicate the name of the driver. For example, an Ethernet interface may be listed as :file:`re0`, indicating that it uses the Realtek :file:`re` driver. The advantage of this convention is that you can read the man 4 page for the driver (e.g. type :command:`man 4 re`) to see which models and features are provided by that driver.
- BSD disk names differ from Linux. IDE drives begin with :file:`ad` and SCSI and USB drives begin with :file:`da`.
Some of the features used by BSD have similar counterparts to Linux, but the name of the feature is different. Table 1.3b provides some common examples:
Table 1.3b: Names for BSD and Linux Features
| TrueOS | Linux | Description |
|---|---|---|
| IPFW | iptables | default firewall |
| :file:`/etc/rc.d/` for operating system and :file:`/usr/local/etc/rc.d/` for applications | :file:`rc0.d/`, :file:`rc1.d/`, etc. | in TrueOS the directories containing the startup scripts do not link to runlevels as there are no runlevels; system startup scripts are separated from third-party application scripts |
| :file:`/etc/ttys` and :file:`/etc/rc.conf` | :command:`telinit`, :file:`init.d/` | terminals are configured in ttys and rc.conf indicates which services will start at boot time |
If you are comfortable with the command line, you may find that some of the commands that you are used to have different names on BSD. Table 1.3c lists some common commands and what they are used for.
Table 1.3c: Common BSD and Linux Commands
| Command | Used to: |
|---|---|
| :command:`dmesg` | discover what hardware was detected by the kernel |
| :command:`sysctl dev` | display configured devices |
| :command:`pciconf -l -cv` | show PCI devices |
| :command:`dmesg | grep usb` | show USB devices |
| :command:`kldstat` | list all modules loaded in the kernel |
| :command:`kldload <module>` | load a kernel module for the current session |
| :command:`pkg install <pkgname>` | install software from the command line |
| :command:`sysctl hw.realmem` | display hardware memory |
| :command:`sysctl hw.model` | display CPU model |
| :command:`sysctl hw.machine_arch` | display CPU Architecture |
| :command:`sysctl hw.ncpu` | display number of CPUs |
| :command:`uname -vm` | get release version information |
| :command:`gpart show` | show device partition information |
| :command:`fuser` | list IDs of all processes that have one or more files open |
The following articles and videos provide additional information about some of the differences between BSD and Linux: