Appendix C. Resources on the Internet

Table of Contents

Development of FreeBSD is too rapid for print media to be practical for keeping people informed. For awareness of developments: electronic alternatives to print are best.

The FreeBSD user community provides much technical support — with forums, chat and email amongst the most popular and effective means of communication.

The most important points of contact are outlined below. The Community wiki area may be more up-to-date.

Please make the FreeBSD documentation project mailing list aware of any resource that is either redundant, or not yet listed below.

C.1. Websites

  • The FreeBSD Forums provide a web based discussion forum for FreeBSD questions and technical discussion.

  • The FreeBSD Wiki provides various bits of information that hadn’t yet made it into the Handbook.

  • The Documentation Portal offers much more than the FreeBSD Handbook alone; there are more than forty books and articles.

  • The FreeBSD Journal is a free, professionally-edited, bi-monthly technical magazine released by The FreeBSD Foundation.

  • The BSDConferences YouTube Channel provides a collection of high quality videos from BSD conferences around the world. This is a great way to watch key developers give presentations about new work in FreeBSD.

  • FreeBSD Status Reports are released every three months and track progress of FreeBSD development.

  • There’s a FreeBSD-focused Reddit group at r/freebsd.

  • Super User and Server Fault, the Stack Exchange services for system administrators.

  • FreeBSD Discord server, a communications and community-building service, where FreeBSD community members can socialise, obtain support or support others, learn, contribute, collaborate, and stay up to date with all things FreeBSD-related.

  • IRC channels, a widely implemented, technically mature, open standard text chat.

C.2. Mailing Lists

The mailing lists are the most direct way of addressing questions or opening a technical discussion to a concentrated FreeBSD audience. There are a wide variety of lists on a number of different FreeBSD topics. Sending questions to the most appropriate mailing list will invariably assure a faster and more accurate response.

Technical list threads should remain technical.

All users and developers of FreeBSD should subscribe to the FreeBSD announcements mailing list.

To test FreeBSD mailing list capabilities, aim for the FreeBSD test mailing list. Please do not send test messages to any other list.

When in doubt about what list to post a question to, see How to get best results from the FreeBSD-questions mailing list.

Before posting to any list, please:

  • learn about how to best use the mailing lists, such as how to help avoid frequently-repeated discussions, by reading the Mailing List Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document

  • search the archives, to tell whether someone else has already posted what you intend to post.

Archive search interfaces include:

Note that this also means that messages sent to FreeBSD mailing lists are archived in perpetuity. When protecting privacy is a concern, consider using a disposable secondary email address and posting only public information.

FreeBSD-provided archives:

  • do not present links as links

  • do not present inline images

  • do not present HTML content of HTML messages.

The FreeBSD public mailing lists can be consulted here.

C.2.1. How to Subscribe or Unsubscribe

At https://lists.freebsd.org, click the name of a list to reveal its options.

To post, after subscribing, send mail to listname@FreeBSD.org. The message will be redistributed to list members.

C.2.2. Lists Basic Rules

All FreeBSD mailing lists have certain basic rules which must be adhered to by anyone using them. Failure to comply with these guidelines will result in two (2) written warnings from the FreeBSD Postmaster postmaster@FreeBSD.org, after which, on a third offense, the poster will removed from all FreeBSD mailing lists and filtered from further posting to them. We regret that such rules and measures are necessary at all, but today’s Internet is a pretty harsh environment, it would seem, and many fail to appreciate just how fragile some of its mechanisms are.

Rules of the road:

  • The topic of any posting should adhere to the basic description of the list it is posted to. If the list is about technical issues, the posting should contain technical discussion. Ongoing irrelevant chatter or flaming only detracts from the value of the mailing list for everyone on it and will not be tolerated. For free-form discussion on no particular topic, the FreeBSD chat mailing list is freely available and should be used instead.

  • No posting should be made to more than 2 mailing lists, and only to 2 when a clear and obvious need to post to both lists exists. For most lists, there is already a great deal of subscriber overlap and except for the most esoteric mixes (say "-stable & -scsi"), there really is no reason to post to more than one list at a time. If a message is received with multiple mailing lists on the Cc line, trim the Cc line before replying. The person who replies is still responsible for cross-posting, no matter who the originator might have been.

  • Personal attacks and profanity (in the context of an argument) are not allowed, and that includes users and developers alike. Gross breaches of netiquette, like excerpting or reposting private mail when permission to do so was not and would not be forthcoming, are frowned upon but not specifically enforced.

  • Advertising of non-FreeBSD related products or services is strictly prohibited and will result in an immediate ban if it is clear that the offender is advertising by spam.

C.2.3. Filtering on the Mailing Lists

The FreeBSD mailing lists are filtered in multiple ways to avoid the distribution of spam, viruses, and other unwanted emails. The filtering actions described in this section do not include all those used to protect the mailing lists.

Only certain types of attachments are allowed on the mailing lists. All attachments with a MIME content type not found in the list below will be stripped before an email is distributed on the mailing lists.

  • application/octet-stream

  • application/pdf

  • application/pgp-signature

  • application/x-pkcs7-signature

  • message/rfc822

  • multipart/alternative

  • multipart/related

  • multipart/signed

  • text/html

  • text/plain

  • text/x-diff

  • text/x-patch

Some of the mailing lists might allow attachments of other MIME content types, but the above list should be applicable for most of the mailing lists.

If a multi-part message includes text/plain and text/html parts:

  • addressees will receive both parts

  • lists.freebsd.org will present text/plain with an option to view original text (source, with raw HTML amongst the parts).

If text/plain does not accompany text/html:

  • there will be conversion from HTML to plain text.

C.3. Usenet Newsgroups

In addition to two FreeBSD specific newsgroups, there are many others in which FreeBSD is discussed or are otherwise relevant to FreeBSD users.

C.3.1. BSD Specific Newsgroups

C.3.2. Other UNIX® Newsgroups of Interest

C.3.3. X Window System

Last modified on: March 9, 2024 by Danilo G. Baio

Home