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Date:      Sun, 9 Feb 1997 19:52:25 +0200 (IST)
From:      Nadav Eiron <nadav@barcode.co.il>
To:        "John D. Morrison" <jdm1intx@airmail.net>
Cc:        "'freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG'" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Help on installing version 2.0 and ordering the FreeBSD book
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.91.970209193543.10464A-100000@gatekeeper.barcode.co.il>
In-Reply-To: <01BC1678.FD719FE0@fw2-25.ppp.iadfw.net>

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On Sun, 9 Feb 1997, John D. Morrison wrote:

> I'm reluctantly sending this message because I know I'm going to get a lot 
> of flack, but I'm at a dead end, so I have no choice.
> 
> I bought a FreeBSD 2.0 CD at a Pro Tech bookstore here in Irving, TX.  I 

Wow! There was a posting here asking for ancient CDs. I think soon you'll 
be able to sell it to museums :-)

> installed it on a 486dx-33 with a genuine intel cpu and 4 megs of ram.  The 
> hard drive is a 1.2 gig EIDE which is partitioned into 340 megs for DOS, 
> and the rest for FreeBSD.  The installation was tricky, but I got it done. 
>  I created a new user account for myself, added it to the wheel group, and 
> everything seemed to be just ducky.
> 
> Then I started trying to do other system admin type stuff, using vi to 
> create textfiles, etc.
> 
> The problem I'm running into is that it won't let me see any of the config 
> scripts that are in my home directory (home/john), unless I log in as root. 
>  I'm talking about .cshrc, .profile, etc.

Did you try
ls -a
By default ls for anyone but root will not show files that start with a 
dot. The -a (for "all") tells it to show them.

> 
    [snip]
> 
> Another problem is the obvious differences between 2.0 and later versions. 
>  The FAQs that came with my CD make no mention of how to change your system 
> startup configuration, specifically how to use a different terminal spec 
> than the default.  I can change the TERM environment variable temporarily 
> with env, but I can't figure out where to change it permanently.  The FAQ's 
> on your web site mention a system.config file that is supposed to be in 
> /etc, but I can't find it.  How and where do I change TERM and TERMCAP and 
> some of the other environment variables for startup?

You usually modify those in a user's .cshrc, .login and .profile files 
(depending on the shell you use and the variables you want to set). 
System level configuration is in /etc/csh.login and /etc/csh.cshrc for 
(t)csh and /etc/profile for (ba)sh. man your shell for details.

> 
> Lastly, I was going to order your book on FreeBSD, but when I clicked to 
> the order on-line screen, there was no place to select a book.  Just 6 
> different listboxes with a bunch of different CD's in them.  Where do I 
> order the actual book?

WC has a package deal for the CD and the book. Look at http://www.cdrom.com.

> 
> Now, I know what you're going to say.  I should order the latest version of 
> FreeBSD and upgrade and so on. And I'm sure I will once I get to the point 
> where I'm really ready to do something with it.  It's just that I spent so 
> much time on setting this system up, I really hate to take a chance on 
> screwing it up and having to start all over from scratch.  It was not easy 
> getting this puppy to run.  Besides, the latest version of FreeBSD won't 
> really run too well in 4 megs, I understand.

FreeBSD 2.1.6R runs in 4MB. I don't think anything runs *well* in 4 megs 
these days. Memory is *very* cheap. If you are thinking seriously about 
actually using FreeBSD, not just installing it - upgrade.

> 
> I'll stop rambling now.
> 
> John Morrison
> jdm1intx@airmail.net
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
Nadav



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