The rapid pace of FreeBSD progress makes print media
impractical as a means for following the latest
developments. Electronic resources are the best, if not often the
only way stay informed of the latest advances. Since
FreeBSD is a volunteer effort, the user community itself also generally
serves as a `technical support department' of sorts, with electronic mail
and Usenet news being the most effective way of reaching that community.
The most important points of contact with the FreeBSD
user community are outlined below. If you are aware of other
resources not mentioned here, please send them to the &a.doc
so that they may also be included.
Mailing lists
Though many of the FreeBSD development members read USENET, we cannot
always guarantee that we will get to your questions in a timely fashion
(or at all) if you post them only to one of the comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.*
groups. By addressing your questions to the appropriate mailing list
you will reach both us and a concentrated FreeBSD audience, invariably
assuring a better (or at least faster) response.
The charters for the various lists are given at the bottom of this
document. Please read the charter before joining a list since we must
strive to keep the signal to noise ratio of the lists high, especially
in the technical ones.
Archives are kept for all of the mailing lists and can be searched
using the . The keyword searchable archive
offers an excellent way of finding answers to frequently asked
questions and should be consulted before posting a question.
List summary
General lists: The following are general lists which
anyone is free to join:
List Purpose
----------------------------------------------------------------------
freebsd-announce Important events and project milestones
freebsd-bugs Bug reports
freebsd-chat Non-technical items related to the FreeBSD community
freebsd-current Discussion concerning the use of FreeBSD-current
freebsd-stable Discussion concerning the use of FreeBSD-stable
freebsd-isp Issues for Internet Service Providers using FreeBSD
freebsd-questions User questions
Technical lists: The following lists are for technical discussion.
You should read the charter carefully before joining one, keeping any
messages sent to a list within the scope of the guidelines.
List Purpose
----------------------------------------------------------------------
freebsd-doc The FreeBSD Documentation project
freebsd-emulation Emulation of other systems such as Linux/DOS/Windows
freebsd-fs Filesystems
freebsd-hackers General technical discussion
freebsd-hardware General discussion of hardware for running FreeBSD
freebsd-mobile Discussions about mobile computing
freebsd-multimedia Multimedia discussion
freebsd-platforms Concerning ports to non-Intel architecture platforms
freebsd-ports Discussion of the ports collection
freebsd-security Security issues
freebsd-security-notifications
Security notifications (moderated mailing list)
freebsd-scsi The SCSI subsystem
freebsd-smp Design discussions for [A]Symmetric MultiProcessing
Limited lists: The following lists require approval to join,
though anyone is free to send suggestions and comments to them. It is a
good idea establish a presence in the technical lists before asking
to join one of these limited lists.
List Purpose
----------------------------------------------------------------------
freebsd-admin Administrative issues
freebsd-arch Architecture and design discussions
freebsd-core FreeBSD core team
freebsd-hubs People running mirror sites (infrastructural support)
freebsd-install Installation development
freebsd-user-groups User group coordination
CVS lists: The following lists are for people interested in
seeing the log messages for changes to various areas of the source tree.
List name Source area Area Description (source for)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
cvs-CVSROOT /usr/src/[A-Z]* Top level /usr/src file changes
cvs-all /usr/src All changes to the tree (superset)
cvs-bin /usr/src/bin System binaries
cvs-etc /usr/src/etc System files
cvs-games /usr/src/games Games
cvs-gnu /usr/src/gnu GPL'd utilities
cvs-include /usr/src/include Include files
cvs-kerberosIV /usr/src/kerberosIV Kerberos encryption code
cvs-lib /usr/src/lib System libraries
cvs-libexec /usr/src/libexec System binaries
cvs-ports /usr/ports Ported software
cvs-sbin /usr/src/sbin System binaries
cvs-share /usr/src/share System shared files
cvs-sys /usr/src/sys Kernel
cvs-usrbin /usr/src/usr.bin Use binaries
cvs-usrsbin /usr/src/usr.sbin System binaries
How to subscribe
All mailing lists live on FreeBSD.ORG, so to post to a
given list you simply mail to listname@FreeBSD.ORG. It
will then be redistributed to mailing list members world-wide.
To subscribe to a list, send mail to &a.majordomo and include
subscribe []
In the body of your message. For example, to subscribe yourself to
freebsd-announce, you'd do:
% mail majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG
subscribe freebsd-announce
^D
If you want to subscribe yourself under a different name, or submit a
subscription request for a local mailing list (note: this is more efficient
if you have several interested parties at one site, and highly appreciated by
us!), you would do something like:
% mail majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG
subscribe freebsd-announce local-announce@somesite.com
^D
Finally, it is also possible to unsubscribe yourself from a list, get a
list of other list members or see the list of mailing lists again by
sending other types of control messages to majordomo. For a complete
list of available commands, do this:
% mail majordomo@FreeBSD.ORG
help
^D
Again, we would like to request that you keep discussion in the technical mailing
lists on a technical track. If you are only interested in the "high points"
then it is suggested that you join freebsd-announce, which is intended only
for infrequent traffic.
List charters
Administrative issuesImportant events / milestones
This is the mailing list for people interested only in occasional
announcements of significant freebsd events. This includes
announcements about snapshots and other releases. It contains
announcements of new FreeBSD capabilities. It may contain calls
for volunteers etc. This is a low volume list.
Architecture and design discussions
This is the mailing list for people discussing FreeBSD architectural
issues. It is a closed list, and not for general subscription.
Bug reports
This is the mailing list for reporting bugs in FreeBSD
Whenever possible, bugs should be
submitted using "send-pr".
Non technical items related to the
community
This list contains the overflow from the other lists about
non-technical, social information. It includes discussion about
whether Jordan looks like a toon ferret or not, whether or not to
type in capitals, who is drinking too much coffee, where the best
beer is brewed, who is brewing beer in their basement, and so on.
Occasional announcements of important events (such as upcoming
parties, weddings, births, new jobs, etc) can be made to the
technical lists, but the follow ups should be directed to this
-chat list.
FreeBSD core team
This is an internal mailing list for use by the core members.
Discussions about the use of
FreeBSD-current This is the mailing list for users
of freebsd-current. It includes warnings about new features
coming out in -current that will affect the users, and
instructions on steps that must be taken to remain -current.
Anyone running "current" must subscribe to this list.
Discussions about the use of
FreeBSD-current This is the digest version of the
freebsd-current mailing list. The digest consists of all
messages sent to freebsd-current bundled together and mailed out
as a single message. The average digest size is about 40kB.
Discussions about the use of
FreeBSD-stable This is the mailing list for users
of freebsd-stable. It includes warnings about new features
coming out in -stable that will affect the users, and
instructions on steps that must be taken to remain -stable.
Anyone running ``stable'' should subscribe to this list.
Documentation project
This mailing list belongs to the FreeBSD Doc Project and is for
the discussion of documentation related issues and projects.
Filesystems
Discussions concerning FreeBSD filesystems.
Technical discussions
This is a forum for technical discussions related to FreeBSD. This
is the primary technical mailing list. It
is for individuals actively working on FreeBSD, to bring up problems
or discuss alternative solutions. Individuals interested in
following the technical discussion are also welcome.
Technical
discussions This is the digest version of the
freebsd-hackers mailing list. The digest consists of all
messages sent to freebsd-hackers bundled together and mailed out
as a single message. The average digest size is about 40kB.
General discussion of FreeBSD
hardware General discussion about the types of
hardware that FreeBSD runs on, various problems and suggestions
concerning what to buy or avoid.
Installation discussion
This mailing list is for discussing FreeBSD installation
development for the future releases.
Issues for Internet Service Providers
This mailing list is for discussing topics relevant to Internet
Service Providers (ISPs) using FreeBSD.
Multimedia discussions
This is a forum about multimedia applications using FreeBSD.
Discussion center around multimedia applications, their installation, their
development and their support within FreeBSD
Porting to Non-Intel
platforms Cross-platform freebsd issues, general
discussion and proposals for non-Intel FreeBSD ports.
Discussion of "ports"
Discussions concerning FreeBSD's "ports collection" (/usr/ports), proposed
ports, modifications to ports collection infrastructure and general
coordination efforts.
User questions
This is the mailing list for questions about FreeBSD. You should not
send "how to" questions to the technical lists unless you consider the
question to be pretty technical.
User questions
This is the digest version of the freebsd-questions mailing list.
The digest consists of all messages sent to freebsd-questions
bundled together and mailed out as a single message. The average
digest size is about 40kB.
SCSI subsystem
This is the mailing list for people working on the scsi subsystem
for FreeBSD.
Security issues
FreeBSD computer security issues (DES, Kerberos, known security holes and
fixes, etc).
Security Notifications
Notifications of FreeBSD security problems and fixes. This is not
a discussion list. The discussion list is FreeBSD-security.
User Group Coordination List
This is the mailing list for the coordinators from each of the
local area Users Groups to discuss matters with each other and a
designated individual from the Core Team. This mail list should
be limited to meeting synopsis and coordination of projects that span
User Groups.
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. are available for
some of these newsgroups from courtesy of Warren Toomey
<wkt@cs.adfa.oz.au>.
BSD specific newsgroups