Appendix C. Resources on the Internet

Table of Contents
C.1 Mailing Lists
C.2 Usenet Newsgroups
C.3 World Wide Web Servers
C.4 Email Addresses
C.5 Shell Accounts

The rapid pace of FreeBSD progress makes print media impractical as a means of 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 FreeBSD documentation project mailing list so that they may also be included.

C.1 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 or sending mail to any list. Most of our list subscribers now receive many hundreds of FreeBSD related messages every day, and by setting down charters and rules for proper use we are striving to keep the signal-to-noise ratio of the lists high. To do less would see the mailing lists ultimately fail as an effective communications medium for the project.

Archives are kept for all of the mailing lists and can be searched using the FreeBSD World Wide Web server. The keyword searchable archive offers an excellent way of finding answers to frequently asked questions and should be consulted before posting a question.

C.1.1 List Summary

General lists: The following are general lists which anyone is free (and encouraged) to join:

List Purpose
cvs-all Changes made to the FreeBSD source tree
freebsd-advocacy FreeBSD Evangelism
freebsd-announce Important events and project milestones
freebsd-arch Architecture and design discussions
freebsd-bugbusters Discussions pertaining to the maintenance of the FreeBSD problem report database and related tools
freebsd-bugs Bug reports
freebsd-chat Non-technical items related to the FreeBSD community
freebsd-config Development of FreeBSD installation and configuration tools
freebsd-current Discussion concerning the use of FreeBSD-CURRENT
freebsd-isp Issues for Internet Service Providers using FreeBSD
freebsd-jobs FreeBSD employment and consulting opportunities
freebsd-newbies New FreeBSD users activities and discussions
freebsd-policy FreeBSD Core team policy decisions. Low volume, and read-only
freebsd-questions User questions and technical support
freebsd-security-notifications Security notifications
freebsd-stable Discussion concerning the use of FreeBSD-STABLE
freebsd-test Where to send your test messages instead of one of the actual lists

Technical lists: The following lists are for technical discussion. You should read the charter for each list carefully before joining or sending mail to one as there are firm guidelines for their use and content.

List Purpose
freebsd-afs Porting AFS to FreeBSD
freebsd-aic7xxx Developing drivers for the Adaptec AIC 7xxx
freebsd-alpha Porting FreeBSD to the Alpha
freebsd-arm Porting FreeBSD to ARM processors
freebsd-atm Using ATM networking with FreeBSD
freebsd-audit Source code audit project
freebsd-binup Design and development of the binary update system
freebsd-cluster Using FreeBSD in a clustered environment
freebsd-cvsweb CVSWeb maintenance
freebsd-database Discussing database use and development under FreeBSD
freebsd-doc Creating FreeBSD related documents
freebsd-emulation Emulation of other systems such as Linux/DOS/Windows
freebsd-firewire FreeBSD Firewire (iLink, IEEE 1394) technical discussion
freebsd-fs File systems
freebsd-gnome Porting GNOME and GNOME applications
freebsd-hackers General technical discussion
freebsd-hardware General discussion of hardware for running FreeBSD
freebsd-i18n FreeBSD Internationalization
freebsd-ia32 FreeBSD on the IA-32 (Intel x86) platform
freebsd-ia64 Porting FreeBSD to Intel's upcoming IA64 systems
freebsd-ipfw Technical discussion concerning the redesign of the IP firewall code
freebsd-isdn ISDN developers
freebsd-java Java developers and people porting JDKs to FreeBSD
freebsd-lfs Porting LFS to FreeBSD
freebsd-libh The second generation installation and package system
freebsd-mips Porting FreeBSD to MIPS
freebsd-mobile Discussions about mobile computing
freebsd-mozilla Porting Mozilla to FreeBSD
freebsd-multimedia Multimedia applications
freebsd-new-bus Technical discussions about bus architecture
freebsd-net Networking discussion and TCP/IP source code
freebsd-openoffice Porting OpenOffice.org and StarOffice to FreeBSD
freebsd-platforms Concerning ports to non-Intel architecture platforms
freebsd-ports Discussion of the ports collection
freebsd-ppc Porting FreeBSD to the PowerPC
freebsd-qa Discussion of Quality Assurance, usually pending a release
freebsd-realtime Development of realtime extensions to FreeBSD
freebsd-scsi The SCSI subsystem
freebsd-security Security issues affecting FreeBSD
freebsd-small Using FreeBSD in embedded applications
freebsd-smp Design discussions for [A]Symmetric MultiProcessing
freebsd-sparc Porting FreeBSD to SPARC based systems
freebsd-standards FreeBSD's conformance to the C99 and the POSIX standards
freebsd-testing FreeBSD Performance and Stability Tests
freebsd-tokenring Support Token Ring in FreeBSD

Limited lists: The following lists are for more specialized (and demanding) audiences and are probably not of interest to the general public. It is also a good idea to establish a presence in the technical lists before joining one of these limited lists so that you will understand the communications etiquette involved.

List Purpose
freebsd-core FreeBSD core team
freebsd-hubs People running mirror sites (infrastructural support)
freebsd-install Installation development
freebsd-user-groups User group coordination
freebsd-vendors Vendors pre-release coordination
freebsd-www Maintainers of www.FreeBSD.org

Digest lists: Many of the above lists are also available as digests. New messages posted to the list are collected and sent out as a single email when the sizes goes over 100 KB. The lists available in digest form are:

List
cvs-all-digest
freebsd-afs-digest
freebsd-alpha-digest
freebsd-arm-digest
freebsd-chat-digest
freebsd-current-digest
freebsd-database-digest
freebsd-hackers-digest
freebsd-ia32-digest
freebsd-ia64-digest
freebsd-isdn-digest
freebsd-java-digest
freebsd-questions-digest
freebsd-security-digest
freebsd-sparc-digest
freebsd-stable-digest
freebsd-test-digest

CVS lists: The following lists are for people interested in seeing the log messages for changes to various areas of the source tree. They are Read-Only lists and should not have mail sent to them.

List Source area Area Description (source for)
cvs-all /usr/src All changes to the tree (superset)

C.1.2 How to Subscribe

To subscribe to a list, send mail to and include

    subscribe <listname> [<optional address>]
in the body of your message. For example, to subscribe yourself to freebsd-announce, you would do:

    % mail majordomo@FreeBSD.org
    subscribe freebsd-announce
    ^D

To actually post to a given list you simply send mail to <listname@FreeBSD.org>. It will then be redistributed to mailing list members world-wide. Please note that subscription requests go to , not the lists themselves.

If you want to subscribe yourself under a different name, or submit a subscription request for a local mailing list (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@example.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 important announcements then it is suggested that you join freebsd-announce, which is intended only for infrequent traffic.

C.1.3 List Charters

All FreeBSD mailing lists have certain basic rules which must be adhered to by anyone using them. Failure to comply with these guidelines will result in two (2) written warnings from the FreeBSD Postmaster , after which, on a third offense, the poster will removed from all FreeBSD mailing lists and filtered from further posting to them. We regret that such rules and measures are necessary at all, but today's Internet is a pretty harsh environment, it would seem, and many fail to appreciate just how fragile some of its mechanisms are.

Rules of the road:

  • The topic of any posting should adhere to the basic charter of the list it is posted to, e.g. if the list is about technical issues then your posting should contain technical discussion. Ongoing irrelevant chatter or flaming only detracts from the value of the mailing list for everyone on it and will not be tolerated. For free-form discussion on no particular topic, the FreeBSD chat mailing list is freely available and should be used instead.

  • No posting should be made to more than 2 mailing lists, and only to 2 when a clear and obvious need to post to both lists exists. For most lists, there is already a great deal of subscriber overlap and except for the most esoteric mixes (say ``-stable & -scsi''), there really is no reason to post to more than one list at a time. If a message is sent to you in such a way that multiple mailing lists appear on the Cc line then the Cc line should also be trimmed before sending it out again. You are still responsible for your own cross-postings, no matter who the originator might have been.

  • Personal attacks and profanity (in the context of an argument) are not allowed, and that includes users and developers alike. Gross breaches of netiquette, like excerpting or reposting private mail when permission to do so was not and would not be forthcoming, are frowned upon but not specifically enforced. However, there are also very few cases where such content would fit within the charter of a list and it would therefore probably rate a warning (or ban) on that basis alone.

  • Advertising of non-FreeBSD related products or services is strictly prohibited and will result in an immediate ban if it is clear that the offender is advertising by spam.

Individual list charters:

FREEBSD-AFS

Andrew File System

This list is for discussion on porting and using AFS from CMU/Transarc

FREEBSD-ANNOUNCE

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, strictly moderated mailing list.

FREEBSD-ARCH

Architecture and design discussions

This list is for discussion of the FreeBSD architecture. Messages will mostly be kept strictly technical in nature. Examples of suitable topics are:

  • How to re-vamp the build system to have several customized builds running at the same time.

  • What needs to be fixed with VFS to make Heidemann layers work.

  • How do we change the device driver interface to be able to use the same drivers cleanly on many buses and architectures.

  • How to write a network driver.

FREEBSD-AUDIT

Source code audit project

This is the mailing list for the FreeBSD source code audit project. Although this was originally intended for security-related changes, its charter has been expanded to review any code changes.

This list is very heavy on patches, and is probably of no interest to the average FreeBSD user. Security discussions not related to a particular code change are held on freebsd-security. Conversely, all developers are encouraged to send their patches here for review, especially if they touch a part of the system where a bug may adversely affect the integrity of the system.

FREEBSD-BINUP

FreeBSD Binary Update Project

This list exists to provide discussion for the binary update system, or binup. Design issues, implementation details, patches, bug reports, status reports, feature requests, commit logs, and all other things related to binup are fair game.

FREEBSD-BUGBUSTERS

Coordination of the Problem Report handling effort

The purpose of this list is to serve as a coordination and discussion forum for the Bugmeister, his Bugbusters, and any other parties who have a genuine interest in the PR database. This list is not for discussions about specific bugs, patches or PRs.

FREEBSD-BUGS

Bug reports

This is the mailing list for reporting bugs in FreeBSD. Whenever possible, bugs should be submitted using the send-pr(1) command or the WEB interface to it.

FREEBSD-CHAT

Non technical items related to the FreeBSD 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

FreeBSD core team

This is an internal mailing list for use by the core members. Messages can be sent to it when a serious FreeBSD-related matter requires arbitration or high-level scrutiny.

FREEBSD-CURRENT

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. This is a technical mailing list for which strictly technical content is expected.

FREEBSD-CURRENT-DIGEST

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. This list is Read-Only and should not be posted to.

FREEBSD-CVSWEB

FreeBSD CVSweb Project

Technical discussions about use, development and maintenance of FreeBSD-CVSweb.

FREEBSD-DOC

Documentation project

This mailing list is for the discussion of issues and projects related to the creation of documentation for FreeBSD. The members of this mailing list are collectively referred to as ``The FreeBSD Documentation Project''. It is an open list; feel free to join and contribute!

FREEBSD-FIREWIRE

Firewire (iLink, IEEE 1394)

This is a mailing list for discussion of the design and implementation of a Firewire (aka IEEE 1394 aka iLink) subsystem for FreeBSD. Relevant topics specifically include the standards, bus devices and their protocols, adapter boards/cards/chips sets, and the architecture and implementation of code for their proper support.

FREEBSD-FS

File systems

Discussions concerning FreeBSD file systems. This is a technical mailing list for which strictly technical content is expected.

FREEBSD-GNOME

GNOME

Discussions concerning The GNOME Desktop Environment for FreeBSD systems. This is a technical mailing list for which strictly technical content is expected.

FREEBSD-IPFW

IP Firewall

This is the forum for technical discussions concerning the redesign of the IP firewall code in FreeBSD. This is a technical mailing list for which strictly technical content is expected.

FREEBSD-IA64

Porting FreeBSD to IA64

This is a technical mailing list for individuals actively working on porting FreeBSD to the IA-64 platform from Intel, to bring up problems or discuss alternative solutions. Individuals interested in following the technical discussion are also welcome.

FREEBSD-ISDN

ISDN Communications

This is the mailing list for people discussing the development of ISDN support for FreeBSD.

FREEBSD-JAVA

Java Development

This is the mailing list for people discussing the development of significant Java applications for FreeBSD and the porting and maintenance of JDKs.

FREEBSD-HACKERS

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. This is a technical mailing list for which strictly technical content is expected.

FREEBSD-HACKERS-DIGEST

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. This list is Read-Only and should not be posted to.

FREEBSD-HARDWARE

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.

FREEBSD-HUBS

Mirror sites

Announcements and discussion for people who run FreeBSD mirror sites.

FREEBSD-INSTALL

Installation discussion

This mailing list is for discussing FreeBSD installation development for the future releases.

FREEBSD-ISP

Issues for Internet Service Providers

This mailing list is for discussing topics relevant to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) using FreeBSD. This is a technical mailing list for which strictly technical content is expected.

FREEBSD-NEWBIES

Newbies activities discussion

We cover any of the activities of newbies that are not already dealt with elsewhere, including: independent learning and problem solving techniques, finding and using resources and asking for help elsewhere, how to use mailing lists and which lists to use, general chat, making mistakes, boasting, sharing ideas, stories, moral (but not technical) support, and taking an active part in the FreeBSD community. We take our problems and support questions to freebsd-questions, and use freebsd-newbies to meet others who are doing the same things that we do as newbies.

FREEBSD-OPENOFFICE

OpenOffice.org

Discussions concerning the porting and maintenance of OpenOffice.org and StarOffice.

FREEBSD-PLATFORMS

Porting to Non-Intel platforms

Cross-platform FreeBSD issues, general discussion and proposals for non-Intel FreeBSD ports. This is a technical mailing list for which strictly technical content is expected.

FREEBSD-POLICY

Core team policy decisions

This is a low volume, read-only mailing list for FreeBSD Core Team Policy decisions.

FREEBSD-PORTS

Discussion of ``ports''

Discussions concerning FreeBSD's ``ports collection'' (/usr/ports), proposed ports, modifications to ports collection infrastructure and general coordination efforts. This is a technical mailing list for which strictly technical content is expected.

FREEBSD-QUESTIONS

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.

FREEBSD-QUESTIONS-DIGEST

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.

FREEBSD-SCSI

SCSI subsystem

This is the mailing list for people working on the SCSI subsystem for FreeBSD. This is a technical mailing list for which strictly technical content is expected.

FREEBSD-SECURITY

Security issues

FreeBSD computer security issues (DES, Kerberos, known security holes and fixes, etc). This is a technical mailing list for which strictly technical discussion is expected. Note that this is not a question-and-answer list, but that contributions (BOTH question AND answer) to the FAQ are welcome.

FREEBSD-SECURITY-NOTIFICATIONS

Security Notifications

Notifications of FreeBSD security problems and fixes. This is not a discussion list. The discussion list is FreeBSD-security.

FREEBSD-SMALL

Using FreeBSD in embedded applications

This list discusses topics related to unusually small and embedded FreeBSD installations. This is a technical mailing list for which strictly technical content is expected.

FREEBSD-STABLE

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. This is a technical mailing list for which strictly technical content is expected.

FREEBSD-STANDARDS

C99 & POSIX Conformance

This is a forum for technical discussions related to FreeBSD Conformance to the C99 and the POSIX standards.

FREEBSD-USER-GROUPS

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.

FREEBSD-VENDORS

Vendors

Coordination discussions between The FreeBSD Project and Vendors of software and hardware for FreeBSD.

This, and other documents, can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/.

For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting <questions@FreeBSD.org>.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.