FreeSBIE - Live Bootable FreeBSD - Root Message File

Posted July 16th, 2004 in Linux/Unix/BSD (Updated March 25th, 2005)

After booting up FreeSBIE a message is displayed on the screen. It has more lines than the screen allows so you need to use less /root/.message to display it all. In Linux you can use shift+PageUp to scroll back through the last few screens of output but I haven't yet learned if there's a similar keyboard shortcut in FreeBSD.

For more information about FreeBSIE and some screenshots, please go to the FreeSBIE article.

Buy FreesBIE from the Linux CD Mall.

The contents of the /root/.message file are as follows:

Welcome to FreeSBIE


Tips and Tricks



If you have a network adapter and your network has not a DHCP server,
you have to:

1. Retrieve your network adapter identifier with
these commands:

# ifconfig -a | grep mtu | awk -F: '{if ($1 != "lo0") print $1;}'

Suppose that the previous command returned the string 'rl0'.



2. Stop DHCP client:
    # killall dhclient



3. Manually configure your network adapter (man ifconfig for
details):

# ifconfig rl0 inet 192.168.0.250 netmask 255.255.255.0



4. Add an entry in /etc/resolv.conf with the ip address of a DNS
server:

# echo "nameserver 151.1.1.1" >> /etc/resolv.conf

where 151.1.1.1 is the DNS server ip address.



5. Setup the default router or gateway (if any) in your network:
 
# route add default 192.168.0.1 

where 192.168.0.1 is the router ip address.



6. To (try to) mount foreign partitions (like NTFS, EXT2FS or MSDOS ones), use /scripts/mount_disks.sh script.



7. To backup(restore) your personal data to an usb device (pen or
cardflash) you could use /scripts/backup(restore).sh scripts.



8. To start XFree86 graphic interface, use the xinit command.



9. To change XFree86 resolution, just open a terminal and type:
  
 # xrandr -s XxY
	where X x Y is your preferred resolution.



10. To read this file again, type:

# less /root/.message



Enjoy
The FreeSBIE team