---
title: "FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE README"
sidenav: download
---

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<h3 class="corpauthor">The FreeBSD Project</h3>

<p class="copyright">Copyright &copy; 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007,
2008 The FreeBSD Documentation Project</p>

<p class="pubdate">$FreeBSD: releng/8.4/release/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/readme/article.xml
241718 2012-10-19 03:01:25Z gjb $<br />
</p>

<div class="legalnotice"><a id="trademarks" name="trademarks"></a>
<p>FreeBSD is a registered trademark of the FreeBSD Foundation.</p>

<p>Intel, Celeron, EtherExpress, i386, i486, Itanium, Pentium, and Xeon are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and
other countries.</p>

<p>Motif, OSF/1, and UNIX are registered trademarks and IT DialTone and The Open Group
are trademarks of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.</p>

<p>SPARC, SPARC64, SPARCengine, and UltraSPARC are trademarks of SPARC International, Inc
in the United States and other countries. SPARC International, Inc owns all of the SPARC
trademarks and under licensing agreements allows the proper use of these trademarks by
its members.</p>

<p>Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their
products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this document, and
the FreeBSD Project was aware of the trademark claim, the designations have been followed
by the &#8220;&#8482;&#8221; or the &#8220;&reg;&#8221; symbol.</p>
</div>

<hr />
</div>

<blockquote class="ABSTRACT">
<div class="abstract"><a id="AEN25" name="AEN25"></a>
<p>This document gives a brief introduction to FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE. It includes some
information on how to obtain FreeBSD, a listing of various ways to contact the FreeBSD
Project, and pointers to some other sources of information.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>

<div class="sect1">
<hr />
<h2 class="sect1"><a id="intro" name="intro">1 Introduction</a></h2>

<p>This distribution is a release of FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE, the latest point along the
8.4-STABLE branch.</p>

<div class="sect2">
<hr />
<h3 class="sect2"><a id="AEN30" name="AEN30">1.1 About FreeBSD</a></h3>

<p>FreeBSD is an operating system based on 4.4 BSD Lite for &#09;AMD64 and Intel EM64T
based PC hardware (amd64), &#09;Intel, AMD, Cyrix or NexGen &#8220;x86&#8221; based PC
hardware (i386), &#09;Intel Itanium Processor based computers (ia64), &#09;NEC
PC-9801/9821 series PCs and compatibles (pc98), &#09;and <span
class="trademark">UltraSPARC</span>&reg; machines (sparc64). Versions &#09;for the <span
class="trademark">ARM</span>&reg; (arm), <span class="trademark">MIPS</span>&reg; (mips),
and &#09;<span class="trademark">PowerPC</span>&reg; (powerpc) architectures are
currently under &#09;development as well. FreeBSD works with a wide variety of
&#09;peripherals and configurations and can be used for everything &#09;from software
development to games to Internet Service &#09;Provision.</p>

<p>This release of FreeBSD contains everything you need to run &#09;such a system,
including full source code for the kernel and &#09;all utilities in the base
distribution. With the source &#09;distribution installed, you can literally recompile
the entire &#09;system from scratch with one command, making it ideal for &#09;students,
researchers, or users who simply want to see how it &#09;all works.</p>

<p>A large collection of third-party ported software (the &#09;&#8220;Ports
Collection&#8221;) is also provided to make it &#09;easy to obtain and install all your
favorite traditional <span class="trademark">UNIX</span>&reg; &#09;utilities for FreeBSD.
Each &#8220;port&#8221; consists of a &#09;set of scripts to retrieve, configure, build,
and install a &#09;piece of software, with a single command. Over 24,000 &#09;ports, from
editors to programming languages to graphical &#09;applications, make FreeBSD a powerful
and comprehensive operating &#09;environment that extends far beyond what's provided by
many &#09;commercial versions of <span class="trademark">UNIX</span>. Most ports are also
available as &#09;pre-compiled &#8220;packages&#8221;, which can be quickly
&#09;installed from the installation program.</p>
</div>

<div class="sect2">
<hr />
<h3 class="sect2"><a id="AEN45" name="AEN45">1.2 Target Audience</a></h3>

<p>This release of FreeBSD is suitable for all users. It &#09;has undergone a period of
testing and quality assurance &#09;checking to ensure the highest reliability and
&#09;dependability.</p>
</div>
</div>

<div class="sect1">
<hr />
<h2 class="sect1"><a id="obtain" name="obtain">2 Obtaining FreeBSD</a></h2>

<p>FreeBSD may be obtained in a variety of ways. This section focuses on those ways that
are primarily useful for obtaining a complete FreeBSD distribution, rather than updating
an existing installation.</p>

<div class="sect2">
<hr />
<h3 class="sect2"><a id="AEN51" name="AEN51">2.1 CDROM and DVD</a></h3>

<p>FreeBSD -RELEASE distributions may be ordered on CDROM or DVD &#09;from several
publishers. This is frequently the most &#09;convenient way to obtain FreeBSD for new
installations, as it &#09;provides a convenient way to quickly reinstall the system if
&#09;necessary. Some distributions include some of the optional, &#09;precompiled
&#8220;packages&#8221; from the FreeBSD Ports &#09;Collection, or other extra
material.</p>

<p>A list of the CDROM and DVD publishers known to the &#09;project are listed in the <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors.html"
target="_top">&#8220;Obtaining &#09;FreeBSD&#8221;</a> appendix to the Handbook.</p>
</div>

<div class="sect2">
<hr />
<h3 class="sect2"><a id="AEN58" name="AEN58">2.2 FTP</a></h3>

<p>You can use FTP to retrieve FreeBSD and any or all of its &#09;optional packages from
<a href="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/" target="_top">ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/</a>, which is the
official &#09;FreeBSD release site, or any of its &#09;&#8220;mirrors&#8221;.</p>

<p>Lists of locations that mirror FreeBSD can be found in the &#09;<a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html"
target="_top">FTP &#09;Sites</a> section of the Handbook, or on the <a
href="http://mirrorlist.FreeBSD.org/" target="_top">http://mirrorlist.FreeBSD.org/</a>
Web pages. &#09;Finding a close (in networking terms) mirror from which to &#09;download
the distribution is highly recommended.</p>

<p>Additional mirror sites are always welcome. Contact &#09;<code class="email">&#60;<a
href="mailto:freebsd-admin@FreeBSD.org">freebsd-admin@FreeBSD.org</a>&#62;</code> for
more details on &#09;becoming an official mirror site. You can also find useful
information for mirror sites at the <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/hubs/" target="_top">Mirroring
FreeBSD</a> article.</p>

<p>Mirrors generally contain the ISO images generally used to &#09;create a CDROM of a
FreeBSD release. They usually also contain &#09;floppy disk images (for applicable
platforms), as well as the &#09;files necessary to do an installation over the network.
&#09;Finally mirrors sites usually contain a set of packages for &#09;the most current
release.</p>
</div>
</div>

<div class="sect1">
<hr />
<h2 class="sect1"><a id="contacting" name="contacting">3 Contacting the FreeBSD
Project</a></h2>

<div class="sect2">
<h3 class="sect2"><a id="AEN72" name="AEN72">3.1 Email and Mailing Lists</a></h3>

<p>For any questions or general technical support issues, &#09;please send mail to the <a
href="http://lists.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions" target="_top">FreeBSD
general questions mailing list</a>.</p>

<p>If you're tracking the 8.4-STABLE development efforts, you &#09;<span
class="emphasis"><i class="emphasis">must</i></span> join the <a
href="http://lists.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current"
target="_top">FreeBSD-CURRENT mailing list</a>, in order to &#09;keep abreast of recent
developments and changes that may &#09;affect the way you use and maintain the
system.</p>

<p>Being a largely-volunteer effort, the FreeBSD &#09;Project is always happy to have
extra hands willing to help&#8212;there are already far more desired enhancements than
&#09;there is time to implement them. To contact the developers on &#09;technical
matters, or with offers of help, please send mail to &#09;the <a
href="http://lists.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers" target="_top">FreeBSD
technical discussions mailing list</a>.</p>

<p>Please note that these mailing lists can experience &#09;<span class="emphasis"><i
class="emphasis">significant</i></span> amounts of traffic. If you &#09;have slow or
expensive mail access, or are only interested in &#09;keeping up with major FreeBSD
events, you may find it &#09;preferable to subscribe instead to the <a
href="http://lists.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-announce" target="_top">FreeBSD
announcements mailing list</a>.</p>

<p>All of the mailing lists can be freely joined by anyone &#09;wishing to do so. Visit
the <a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo" target="_top">&#13;&#09;FreeBSD
Mailman Info Page</a>. This will give you more &#09;information on joining the various
lists, accessing archives, &#09;etc. There are a number of mailing lists targeted at
special &#09;interest groups not mentioned here; more information can be &#09;obtained
either from the Mailman pages or the <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/support.html#mailing-list" target="_top">mailing &#09;lists
section</a> of the FreeBSD Web site.</p>

<div class="important">
<blockquote class="important">
<p><b>Important:</b> Do <span class="emphasis"><i class="emphasis">not</i></span> send
email to the lists &#09; asking to be subscribed. Use the Mailman interface &#09;
instead.</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>

<div class="sect2">
<hr />
<h3 class="sect2"><a id="AEN90" name="AEN90">3.2 Submitting Problem Reports</a></h3>

<p>Suggestions, bug reports and contributions of code are &#09;always valued&#8212;please
do not hesitate to report any &#09;problems you may find. Bug reports with attached fixes
are of &#09;course even more welcome.</p>

<p>The preferred method to submit bug reports from a machine &#09;with Internet mail
connectivity is to use the <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=send-pr&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+8.4-RELEASE">
<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">send-pr</span>(1)</span></a>
&#09;command. &#09;&#8220;Problem Reports&#8221; (PRs) submitted in this way &#09;will be
filed and their progress tracked; the FreeBSD developers &#09;will do their best to
respond to all reported bugs as soon as &#09;possible. <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/query-pr-summary.cgi" target="_top">A list &#09;of all
active PRs</a> is available on the FreeBSD Web site; &#09;this list is useful to see what
potential problems other users &#09;have encountered.</p>

<p>Note that <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=send-pr&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+8.4-RELEASE">
<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">send-pr</span>(1)</span></a>
itself is a shell script that &#09;should be easy to move even onto a non-FreeBSD system.
Using &#09;this interface is highly preferred. If, for some reason, you &#09;are unable
to use <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=send-pr&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+8.4-RELEASE">
<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">send-pr</span>(1)</span></a> to
submit a bug report, you &#09;can try to send it to the <a
href="http://lists.FreeBSD.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-bugs" target="_top">FreeBSD
problem reports mailing list</a>.</p>

<p>For more information, <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/problem-reports/"
target="_top">&#8220;Writing &#09;FreeBSD Problem Reports&#8221;</a>, available on the
FreeBSD Web &#09;site, has a number of helpful hints on writing and submitting
&#09;effective problem reports.</p>
</div>
</div>

<div class="sect1">
<hr />
<h2 class="sect1"><a id="seealso" name="seealso">4 Further Reading</a></h2>

<p>There are many sources of information about FreeBSD; some are included with this
distribution, while others are available on-line or in print versions.</p>

<div class="sect2">
<hr />
<h3 class="sect2"><a id="release-docs" name="release-docs">4.1 Release
Documentation</a></h3>

<p>A number of other files provide more specific information &#09;about this release
distribution. These files are &#09;provided in various formats. Most distributions will
include &#09;both ASCII text (<tt class="filename">.TXT</tt>) and HTML &#09;(<tt
class="filename">.HTM</tt>) renditions. Some distributions &#09;may also include other
formats such as Portable Document Format &#09;(<tt class="filename">.PDF</tt>). &#09;</p>

<ul>
<li>
<p><tt class="filename">README.TXT</tt>: This file, which &#09; gives some general
information about FreeBSD as well as &#09; some cursory notes about obtaining a &#09;
distribution.</p>
</li>

<li>
<p><tt class="filename">RELNOTES.TXT</tt>: The release &#09; notes, showing what's new
and different in FreeBSD &#09; 8.4-RELEASE compared to the previous release (FreeBSD
&#09; 8.3-RELEASE).</p>
</li>

<li>
<p><tt class="filename">HARDWARE.TXT</tt>: The hardware &#09; compatibility list, showing
devices with which FreeBSD has &#09; been tested and is known to work.</p>
</li>

<li>
<p><tt class="filename">ERRATA.TXT</tt>: Release errata. &#09; Late-breaking,
post-release information can be found in &#09; this file, which is principally applicable
to releases &#09; (as opposed to snapshots). It is important to consult &#09; this file
before installing a release of FreeBSD, as it &#09; contains the latest information on
problems which have &#09; been found and fixed since the release was &#09; created.</p>
</li>
</ul>

<br />
<br />
<p>On platforms that support <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sysinstall&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+8.4-RELEASE">
<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">sysinstall</span>(8)</span></a>
(currently &#09;amd64, i386, ia64, pc98, and sparc64), these documents are generally
available via the &#09;Documentation menu during installation. Once the system is
&#09;installed, you can revisit this menu by re-running the &#09;<a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=sysinstall&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+8.4-RELEASE">
<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">sysinstall</span>(8)</span></a>
utility.</p>

<div class="note">
<blockquote class="note">
<p><b>Note:</b> It is extremely important to read the errata for any &#09; given release
before installing it, to learn about any &#09; &#8220;late-breaking news&#8221; or
post-release problems. &#09; The errata file accompanying each release (most likely right
&#09; next to this file) is already out of date by definition, but &#09; other copies are
kept updated on the Internet and should be &#09; consulted as the &#8220;current
errata&#8221; for this &#09; release. These other copies of the errata are located at
&#09; <a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/"
target="_top">http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/</a> (as &#09; well as any sites which keep
up-to-date mirrors of this &#09; location).</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>

<div class="sect2">
<hr />
<h3 class="sect2"><a id="AEN144" name="AEN144">4.2 Manual Pages</a></h3>

<p>As with almost all <span class="trademark">UNIX</span> like operating systems, FreeBSD
comes &#09;with a set of on-line manual pages, accessed through the &#09;<a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=man&sektion=1&manpath=FreeBSD+8.4-RELEASE">
<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">man</span>(1)</span></a> command
or through the <a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi" target="_top">hypertext
manual &#09;pages gateway</a> on the FreeBSD Web site. In general, the &#09;manual pages
provide information on the different commands and &#09;APIs available to the FreeBSD
user.</p>

<p>In some cases, manual pages are written to give &#09;information on particular topics.
Notable examples of such &#09;manual pages are <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=tuning&sektion=7&manpath=FreeBSD+8.4-RELEASE">
<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">tuning</span>(7)</span></a> (a
guide to performance tuning), &#09;<a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=security&sektion=7&manpath=FreeBSD+8.4-RELEASE">
<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">security</span>(7)</span></a> (an
introduction to FreeBSD security), and &#09;<a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=style&sektion=9&manpath=FreeBSD+8.4-RELEASE">
<span class="citerefentry"><span class="refentrytitle">style</span>(9)</span></a> (a
style guide to kernel coding).</p>
</div>

<div class="sect2">
<hr />
<h3 class="sect2"><a id="AEN162" name="AEN162">4.3 Books and Articles</a></h3>

<p>Two highly-useful collections of FreeBSD-related information, &#09;maintained by the
FreeBSD Project, &#09;are the FreeBSD Handbook and FreeBSD FAQ (Frequently Asked
&#09;Questions document). On-line versions of the <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/"
target="_top">Handbook</a> &#09;and <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/" target="_top">FAQ</a>
&#09;are always available from the <a href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/docs.html"
target="_top">FreeBSD Documentation &#09;page</a> or its mirrors. If you install the
&#09;<tt class="filename">doc</tt> distribution set, you can use a Web &#09;browser to
read the Handbook and FAQ locally. In particular, &#09;note that the Handbook contains a
step-by-step guide to &#09;installing FreeBSD.</p>

<p>A number of on-line books and articles, also maintained by the FreeBSD Project, cover
more-specialized, FreeBSD-related topics. This material spans a wide range of topics,
from effective use of the mailing lists, to dual-booting FreeBSD with other operating
systems, to guidelines for new committers. Like the Handbook and FAQ, these documents are
available from the FreeBSD Documentation Page or in the <tt class="filename">doc</tt>
distribution set.</p>

<p>A listing of other books and documents about FreeBSD can be found in the <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bibliography.html"
target="_top">bibliography</a> of the FreeBSD Handbook. Because of FreeBSD's strong <span
class="trademark">UNIX</span> heritage, many other articles and books written for <span
class="trademark">UNIX</span> systems are applicable as well, some of which are also
listed in the bibliography.</p>
</div>
</div>

<div class="sect1">
<hr />
<h2 class="sect1"><a id="acknowledgements" name="acknowledgements">5
Acknowledgments</a></h2>

<p>FreeBSD represents the cumulative work of many hundreds, if not thousands, of
individuals from around the world who have worked countless hours to bring about this
release. For a complete list of FreeBSD developers and contributors, please see <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributors/"
target="_top">&#8220;Contributors to FreeBSD&#8221;</a> on the FreeBSD Web site or any of
its mirrors.</p>

<p>Special thanks also go to the many thousands of FreeBSD users and testers all over the
world, without whom this release simply would not have been possible.</p>
</div>
</div>

<hr />
<p align="center"><small>This file, and other release-related documents, can be
downloaded from <a href="ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/">ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/</a>.</small></p>

<p align="center"><small>For questions about FreeBSD, read the <a
href="http://www.FreeBSD.org/docs.html">documentation</a> before contacting &#60;<a
href="mailto:questions@FreeBSD.org">questions@FreeBSD.org</a>&#62;.</small></p>

<p align="center"><small>For questions about this documentation, e-mail &#60;<a
href="mailto:doc@FreeBSD.org">doc@FreeBSD.org</a>&#62;.</small></p>
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