DragonFly BSD

index

I. Getting Started

This part of the DragonFly Handbook is for users and administrators who are new to DragonFly. These chapters:

We have tried to keep the number of forward references in the text to a minimum so that you can read this section of the Handbook from front to back with the minimum page flipping required.

Intended Audience

The DragonFly newcomer will find that the first section of this book guides the user through the DragonFly installation process and gently introduces the concepts and conventions that underpin UNIX®. Working through this section requires little more than the desire to explore, and the ability to take on broad new concepts as they are introduced.

Once you have travelled this far, the second, far larger, section of the Handbook is a comprehensive reference to all manner of topics of interest to DragonFly system administrators. Some of these chapters may recommend that you do some prior reading, and this is noted in the synopsis at the beginning of each chapter.

For a list of additional sources of information, please see Appendix B.

Conventions used in this book

To provide a consistent and easy to read text, several conventions are followed throughout the book.

Typographic Conventions

Italic

:: An italic font is used for filenames, URLs, emphasized text, and the first usage of technical terms.

Monospace

:: A monospaced font is used for error messages, commands, environment variables, names of ports, hostnames, user names, group names, device names, variables, and code fragments.

Bold

:: A bold font is used for applications, commands, and keys.

User Input

Keys are shown in bold to stand out from other text. Key combinations that are meant to be typed simultaneously are shown with + between the keys, such as:

Ctrl + Alt + Del

Meaning the user should type the Ctrl , Alt ,and Del keys at the same time.

Keys that are meant to be typed in sequence will be separated with commas, for example:

Ctrl + X , Ctrl + S

Would mean that the user is expected to type the Ctrl and X keys simultaneously and then to type the Ctrl and S keys simultaneously.

Examples

Examples starting with # indicate a command that must be invoked as the superuser in DragonFly. You can login as root to type the command, or login as your normal account and use su(1) to gain superuser privileges.

# dd if=kern.flp of=/dev/fd0

Examples starting with % indicate a command that should be invoked from a normal user account. Unless otherwise noted, C-shell syntax is used for setting environment variables and other shell commands.

% top

Examples starting with E:\> indicate a MS-DOS® command. Unless otherwise noted, these commands may be executed from a Command Prompt window in a modern Microsoft® Windows® environment.

E:\> tools\fdimage floppies\kern.flp A:

Acknowledgments

The book you are holding represents the efforts of many hundreds of people around the world. Whether they sent in fixes for typos, or submitted complete chapters, all the contributions have been useful.

The DragonFly Handbook was originally built from an edition of the FreeBSD Handbook. The FreeBSD Handbook was created by the collective hard work of hundreds of people, and the DragonFly Documentation Team appreciates all their labor.