1Having trouble using fetch through a firewall? Try setting the environment 2variable FTP_PASSIVE_MODE to yes, and see fetch(3) for more details. 3% 4By pressing "Scroll Lock" you can use the arrow keys to scroll backward 5through the console output. Press "Scroll Lock" again to turn it off. 6% 7Want colour in your directory listings? Use "ls -G". "ls -F" is also useful, 8and they can be combined as "ls -FG". 9% 10If you'd like to keep track of applications in the pkgsrc tree, take a look 11at pkgsrc.se; 12 13 http://www.pkgsrc.se/ 14% 15To search for files that match a particular name, use find(1); for example 16 17 find / -name "*GENERIC*" -ls 18 19will search '/', and all subdirectories, for files with 'GENERIC' in the name. 20 -- Stephen Hilton <nospam@hiltonbsd.com> 21% 22In tcsh, you can `set autolist' to have the shell automatically show 23all the possible matches when doing filename/directory expansion. 24% 25You can `set autologout = 30' to have tcsh log you off automatically 26if you leave the shell idle for more than 30 minutes. 27% 28If you `set filec' (file completion) in tcsh and write a part of the 29filename, pressing TAB will show you the available choices when there 30is more than one, or complete the filename if there's only one match. 31% 32You can press up-arrow or down-arrow to walk through a list of 33previous commands in tcsh. 34% 35You can disable tcsh's terminal beep if you `set nobeep'. 36% 37If you `set watch = (0 any any)' in tcsh, you will be notified when 38someone logs in or out of your system. 39% 40Nice tcsh prompt: set prompt = '%m %# ' 41% 42Nice tcsh prompt: set prompt = '%n@%m%# ' 43% 44Nice tcsh prompt: set prompt = '%n@%m:%~%# ' 45% 46Nice tcsh prompt: set prompt = '%n@%m:%/%# ' 47% 48Nice tcsh prompt: set prompt = '[%B%m%b] %B%~%b%# ' 49% 50Simple tcsh prompt: set prompt = '%# ' 51% 52Red tcsh prompt for root: 53 54 set prompt = "%{\033[1;31m%}%n@%m%{\033[0m%}:%~ # " 55 -- Antonio Huete Jimenez <tuxillo@quantumachine.net> 56% 57If you want df(1) and other commands to display disk sizes in 58kilobytes instead of 512-byte blocks, set BLOCKSIZE in your 59environment to 'K'. You can also use 'M' for Megabytes or 'G' for 60Gigabytes. If you want df(1) to automatically select the best size 61then use 'df -h'. 62% 63To change an environment variable in tcsh you use: setenv NAME "value" 64where NAME is the name of the variable and "value" its new value. 65% 66To change an environment variable in /bin/sh use: 67 68 $ VARIABLE="value" 69 $ export VARIABLE 70% 71You can use /etc/make.conf to control the options used to compile software 72on this system. Example entries are in 73/etc/defaults/make.conf. 74% 75To do a fast search for a file, try 76 77 locate filename 78 79locate uses a database that is updated every Saturday (assuming your computer 80is running DragonFly BSD at the time) to quickly find files based on name only. 81% 82In order to search for a string in some files, use 'grep' like this: 83 84 grep "string" filename1 [filename2 filename3 ...] 85 86This will print out the lines in the files that contain the string. grep can 87also do a lot more advanced searches - type 'man grep' for details. 88% 89You can use the 'fetch' command to retrieve files over ftp or http. 90 91 fetch http://www.dragonflybsd.org/ 92 93will download the front page of the DragonFly BSD web site. 94% 95In order to make fetch (the DragonFly BSD downloading tool) ask for 96username/password when it encounter a password-protected web page, you can set 97the environment variable HTTP_AUTH to 'basic:*'. 98% 99You can permanently set environment variables for your shell by putting them 100in a startup file for the shell. The name of the startup file varies 101depending on the shell - csh and tcsh uses .login, bash, sh, ksh and zsh use 102.profile. When using bash, sh, ksh or zsh, don't forget to export the 103variable. 104% 105If you are running xterm, the default TERM variable will be 'xterm'. If you 106set this environment variable to 'xterm-color' instead, a lot of programs will 107use colors. You can do this by 108 109 TERM=xterm-color; export TERM 110 111in Bourne-derived shells, and 112 113 setenv TERM xterm-color 114 115in csh-derived shells. 116% 117If you do not want to get beeps in X11 (X Windows), you can turn them off with 118 119 xset b off 120% 121You can look through a file in a nice text-based interface by typing 122 123 less filename 124% 125The default editor in DragonFly BSD is vi, which is efficient to use when you 126have learned it, but somewhat user-unfriendly. To use ee (an easier but less 127powerful editor) instead, set the environment variable EDITOR to /usr/bin/ee 128% 129If you accidently end up inside vi, you can quit it by pressing Escape, colon 130(:), q (q), bang (!) and pressing return. 131% 132You can use aliases to decrease the amount of typing you need to do to get 133commands you commonly use. Examples of fairly popular aliases include (in 134bourne shell style, as in /bin/sh, bash, ksh, and zsh): 135 136 alias lf="ls -FA" 137 alias ll="ls -lA" 138 alias su="su -m" 139 140In csh or tcsh, these would be 141 142 alias lf ls -FA 143 alias ll ls -lA 144 alias su su -m 145 146To remove an alias, you can usually use 'unalias aliasname'. To list all 147aliases, you can usually type just 'alias'. 148% 149In order to support national characters for european languages in tools like 150less without creating other nationalisation aspects, set the environment 151variable LC_ALL to 'en_US.ISO8859-1'. 152% 153You can search for documentation on a keyword by typing 154 155 apropos keyword 156% 157Man pages are divided into section depending on topic. There are 9 different 158sections numbered from 1 (General Commands) to 9 (Kernel Developer's Manual). 159You can get an introduction to each topic by typing 160 161 man <number> intro 162 163In other words, to get the intro to general commands, type 164 165 man 1 intro 166% 167DragonFly BSD is started up by the program 'init'. The first thing init does 168when starting multiuser mode (ie, starting the computer up for normal use) is 169to run the shell script /etc/rc. By reading /etc/rc, you can learn a lot about 170how the system is put together, which again will make you more confident about 171what happens when you do something with it. 172% 173If you want to play CDs with DragonFly BSD, a utility for this is already 174included. Type 'cdcontrol' then 'help' to learn more. (You may need to set 175the CDROM environment variable in order to make cdcontrol want to start.) 176% 177If you have a CD-ROM drive in your machine, you can make the CD-ROM that is 178presently inserted available by typing 'mount /cdrom' as root. The CD-ROM 179will be available under /cdrom/. Remember to do 'umount /cdrom' before 180removing the CD-ROM (it will usually not be possible to remove the CD-ROM 181without doing this.) 182 183Note: This tip may not work in all configurations. 184% 185You can install extra packages for DragonFly BSD by using the pkgsrc system. 186If you have installed it, you can download, compile, and install software by 187just typing 188 189 # cd /usr/pkgsrc/<category>/<package name> 190 # bmake install clean 191 192as root. The pkgsrc infrastructure will download the software, change it so 193it works on DragonFly BSD, compile it, install it, register the installation 194so it will be possible to automatically uninstall it, and clean out the 195temporary working space it used. You can remove an installed package you 196decide you do not want after all by typing 197 198 # cd /usr/pkgsrc/<category>/<package name> 199 # bmake deinstall 200 201as root. 202% 203Nice bash prompt: PS1='(\[$(tput md)\]\t <\w>\[$(tput me)\]) $(echo $?) \$ ' 204 -- Mathieu <mathieu@hal.interactionvirtuelle.com> 205% 206To see the output from when your computer started, run dmesg(8). If it has 207been replaced with other messages, look at /var/run/dmesg.boot. 208 -- Francisco Reyes <lists@natserv.com> 209% 210You can use "whereis" to locate standard binary, manual page and source 211directories for the specified programs. This can be particularly handy 212when you are trying to find where in the pkgsrc tree an application is. 213 214Try "whereis netscape" and "whereis whereis". 215 -- Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@duth.gr> 216% 217You can press Ctrl-D to quickly exit from a shell, or logout from a 218login shell. 219 -- Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@duth.gr> 220% 221You can use "pkg_info" to see a list of packages you have installed. 222 -- Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@duth.gr> 223% 224You can change the video mode on all consoles by adding something like 225the following to /etc/rc.conf: 226 227 allscreens="80x30" 228 229You can use "vidcontrol -i mode | grep T" for a list of supported text 230modes. 231 -- Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@duth.gr> 232% 233Any user that is a member of the wheel group can use "su -" to simulate 234a root login. You can add a user to the wheel group by editing /etc/group. 235 -- Konstantinos Konstantinidis <kkonstan@duth.gr> 236% 237Over quota? "du -s * | sort -n " will give you a sorted list of your 238directory sizes. 239 -- David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com> 240% 241Handy bash(1) prompt: PS1="\u@\h \w \!$ " 242 -- David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com> 243% 244Ever wonder what those numbers after command names were, as in cat(1)? It's 245the section of the manual the man page is in. "man man" will tell you more. 246 -- David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com> 247% 248"man hier" explains the layout of DragonFly BSD filesystems. 249% 250"man tuning" has tips on how to improve DragonFly BSD performance. 251% 252"man firewall" has basic instructions for creating a DragonFly BSD firewall. 253% 254You can often get answers to your questions about DragonFly BSD by searching 255in the DragonFly BSD mailing list archives at 256 257 http://lists.dragonflybsd.org/ 258% 259You can adjust the volume of various parts of the sound system in your 260computer by typing 'mixer <type> <volume>'. To get a list of what you can 261adjust, just type 'mixer'. 262% 263You can automatically download and install binary packages by doing 264 265 pkg_add <URL> 266 267where you replace <URL> with the URL to the package. This will also 268automatically install the packages the package you download is dependent on 269(ie, the packages it needs in order to work.) 270% 271You can make a log of your terminal session with script(1). 272% 273"man security" gives very good advice on how to tune the security of your 274DragonFly BSD system. 275% 276Want to see how much virtual memory you're using? Just type "swapinfo" to 277be shown information about the usage of your swap partitions. 278% 279pkgsrc/net/netcat package is useful not only for redirecting input/output 280to TCP or UDP connections, but also for proxying them. See inetd(8) for 281details. 282% 283If other operating systems have damaged your Master Boot Record, you can 284reinstall it with boot0cfg(8). See "man boot0cfg" for details. 285% 286Need to see the calendar for this month? Simply type "cal". To see the 287whole year, type "cal -y". 288 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 289% 290Need to quickly return to your home directory? Type "cd". 291 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 292% 293To see the last time that you logged in, use lastlogin(8). 294 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 295% 296To clear the screen, use "clear". To re-display your screen buffer, press 297the scroll lock key and use your page up button. When you're finished, 298press the scroll lock key again to get your prompt back. 299 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 300% 301To save disk space in your home directory, compress files you rarely 302use with "gzip filename". 303 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 304% 305To read a compressed file without having to first uncompress it, use 306"zcat" or "zmore" to view it. 307 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 308% 309To see how much disk space is left on your partitions, use 310 311 df -h 312 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 313% 314To see the 10 largest files on a directory or partition, use 315 316 du /partition_or_directory_name | sort -rn | head 317 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 318% 319To determine whether a file is a text file, executable, or some other type 320of file, use 321 322 file filename 323 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 324% 325Time to change your password? Type "passwd" and follow the prompts. 326 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 327% 328Want to know how many words, lines, or bytes are contained in a file? Type 329"wc filename". 330 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 331% 332Need to print a manpage? Use 333 334 man name_of_manpage | col -bx | lpr 335 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 336% 337Need to remove all those ^M characters from a DOS file? Try 338 339 col -bx < dosfile > newfile 340 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 341% 342Forget what directory you are in? Type "pwd". 343 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 344% 345If you are in the C shell and have just installed a new program, you won't 346be able to run it unless you first type "rehash". 347 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 348% 349Need to leave your terminal for a few minutes and don't want to logout? 350Use "lock -p". When you return, use your password as the key to unlock the 351terminal. 352 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 353% 354Need to find the location of a program? Use "locate program_name". 355 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 356% 357Forget how to spell a word or a variation of a word? Use 358 359 look portion_of_word_you_know 360 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 361% 362To see the last 10 lines of a long file, use "tail filename". To see the 363first 10 lines, use "head filename". 364 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 365% 366To see how long it takes a command to run, type the word "time" before the 367command name. 368 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 369% 370To quickly create an empty file, use "touch filename". 371 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 372% 373To find out the hostname associated with an IP address, use 374 375 drill -x IP_address 376 -- luxh 377% 378If you use the C shell, add the following line to the .cshrc file in your 379home directory to prevent core files from being written to disk: 380 381 limit coredumpsize 0 382 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 383% 384If you need a reminder to leave your terminal, type "leave +hhmm" where 385"hhmm" represents in how many hours and minutes you need to leave. 386 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 387% 388Need to do a search in a manpage or in a file you've sent to a pager? Use 389"/search_word". To repeat the same search, type "n" for next. 390 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 391% 392Forget when Easter is? Try "ncal -e". If you need the date for Orthodox 393Easter, use "ncal -o" instead. 394 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 395% 396Need to see your routing table? Type "netstat -rn". The entry with the G 397flag is your gateway. 398 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 399% 400Need to see which daemons are listening for connection requests? Use 401"sockstat -4l" for IPv4, and "sockstat -l" for IPv4 and IPv6. 402 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 403% 404Can't remember if you've installed a certain package or not? Try "pkg_info | 405grep package_name". 406 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 407% 408Got some time to kill? Try typing "hangman". 409 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 410% 411To erase a line you've written at the command prompt, use "Ctrl-U". 412 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 413% 414To repeat the last command in the C shell, type "!!". 415 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 416% 417Need to quickly empty a file? Use "echo > filename". 418 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 419% 420To see all directories on a DragonFly BSD system, type 421 422 ls -R / | more 423% 424To see the IP addresses currently set on your active interfaces, type 425"ifconfig -u". 426 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 427% 428To see the MAC addresses of the NICs on your system, type 429 430 ifconfig -a 431 -- Dru <genesis@istar.ca> 432% 433You can save your kernel startup configuration with kget(8). The 434configuration can be edited at boot time with 'boot -c' command in loader. 435See boot(8), loader(8) for details. 436% 437You can open up a new split-screen window in (n)vi with :N or :E and then 438use ^w to switch between the two. 439% 440sh (the default bourne shell in DragonFly BSD) supports command-line editing. 441Just ``set -o emacs'' or ``set -o vi'' to enable it. 442% 443When you've made modifications to a file in vi(1) and then find that 444you can't write it, type ``<ESC>!rm -f %'' then ``:w!'' to force the 445write 446 447This won't work if you don't have write permissions to the directory 448and probably won't be suitable if you're editing through a symbolic link. 449% 450If you want to quickly check for duplicate package/port installations, 451try the following pkg_info command. 452 453 pkg_info | sort | sed -e 's/-[0-9].*$//' | \ 454 uniq -c | grep -v '^[[:space:]]*1' 455% 456Want to use sed(1) to edit a file in place? Well, to replace every 'e' with 457an 'o', in a file named 'foo', you can do: 458 459 sed -i.bak s/e/o/g foo 460 461And you'll get a backup of the original in a file named 'foo.bak', but if you 462want no backup: 463 464 sed -i '' s/e/o/g foo 465% 466You can automatically install binary packages from a random DragonFly BSD 467mirror with the following command: 468 469 pkg_radd <package> 470 471This command also takes care about possible dependencies. See the man page 472for further information. 473% 474By default pkg_radd(1) downloads all packages from a random DragonFly BSD mirror. 475To use a particular mirror set the BINPKG_SITES environment variable 476accordingly. 477 478Example: 479 480 setenv BINPKG_SITES ftp://<mirror>/pub/DragonFly/packages 481 482or if you use a bourne compatible shell: 483 484 export BINPKG_SITES=ftp://<mirror>/pub/DragonFly/packages 485 486% 487If you want to search for a particular package, use pkg_search(1): 488 489 pkg_search <package> 490 491If you do not have a pkgsrc tree installed, pkg_search(1) will automatically 492fetch a list of available binary packages for you. 493% 494To get a detailed description of a particular pkgsrc package: 495 496 pkg_search -s <package> 497 498Note: You need a full installation of the pkgsrc tree to make this work. 499% 500Getting the latest pkgsrc tree in DragonFly BSD is fairly simple: 501 502 cd /usr 503 make pkgsrc-create 504 505If you want to update your pkgsrc installation issue: 506 507 cd /usr 508 make pkgsrc-update 509% 510To download the DragonFly BSD git repository into /usr/src, issue: 511 512 cd /usr 513 make src-create 514 515To update the DragonFly BSD git repository in /usr/src, issue: 516 517 cd /usr 518 make src-update 519% 520After enabling a service in rc.conf(5), you can use the rc* commands to 521start/stop/reload the service. If you e.g. enabled dntpd(8) in /etc/rc.conf 522you can start it with: 523 524 rcstart dntpd 525 526To stop it: 527 528 rcstop dntpd 529 530All available commands are listed in rcrun(8). 531% 532If you look for a small Mail Transfer Agent suited for home and office 533use, have a look at the DragonFly Mail Agent (dma): 534 535 man dma 536% 537dntpd(8) synchronizes your local system clock to one or more external NTP time 538sources. To enable dntpd add the following line to your /etc/rc.conf: 539 540 dntpd_enable="YES" 541 542To start the daemon type: 543 544 rcstart dntpd 545% 546DragonFly BSD supports variant symlinks. To get more information about this 547topic see varsym(1) and varsym(2). You will have to enable varsyms by 548executing "sysctl vfs.enable_varsym=1", to make it permanent put it in 549/etc/sysctl.conf. If you would like permanent varsyms, add varsym_enable=YES 550to /etc/rc.conf and put varsym assignments in /etc/varsym.conf. 551% 552"man build" gives very good advice on how to build the DragonFly BSD system. 553% 554Use wmake(1) to build any element within the DragonFly BSD source tree using 555a buildworld environment. The wmake utility will accept all options and 556arguments that make(1) accepts. 557% 558If you would like easy access to your files as they looked yesterday, or a 559month ago, try the HAMMER file system. See "man HAMMER" for more details. 560Historical file contents is typically accessed via snapshots, typically 561/var/hammer/root/snap-<date>-<time>, for your root file system. 562If you use HAMMER PFSs, then each one will have its own directory as 563/var/hammer/<PFS>/snap-<date>-<time>. 564% 565Using HAMMER PFSs you can define history retention policy per directory tree. 566For example, if /home/userA and /home/userB are two PFSs, you can configure that 567history is saved 90 days for /home/userA and 30 days for /home/userB. If at 568some point many big changes are made, and you would like to recover some of the 569space that the history occupies, you can delete history selectively on a per PFS 570basis. For example history can be deleted for /home/userA so it only covers 14 571days, or granularity can be changed to one week from default of one day. Both 572without changing amount of history saved for /home/userB. See "man HAMMER" for 573details. 574% 575For an example of setting up a HAMMER file system, see 576/usr/share/examples/rconfig/hammer.sh. See also "man HAMMER". 577% 578HAMMER file systems can be efficiently replicated to another system, replication 579includes history, so you can access snapshots on the replica. Just make a PFS 580for the directory, SRC, you would like to replicate, and use: 581 582 hammer mirror-copy SRC DEST 583 584DEST can be created on the fly, it must be a slave PFS, and will be read-only. 585See "man HAMMER" for details. 586% 587Moo 588