Essential System Administration, 3rd Edition

FreeBSD and Tru64

Tru64 and FreeBSD use an almost identical process for building a customized kernel. They rely on a configuration file for specifying which capabilities to include within the kernel and setting the values of various system parameters. The configuration file is located in /usr/sys/conf on Tru64 systems and in /usr/src/sys/arch/conf under FreeBSD, where arch is an architecture-specific subdirectory (we’ll use i386 as an example).

Configuration filenames are conventionally all uppercase, and the directory typically contains several different configuration files. The one used to build the current kernel is usually indicated in the /etc/motd file. For example, the GENERIC file was used to build the kernel on this FreeBSD system:

FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE (GENERIC) #0: Sat Apr 21 10:54:49 GMT 2001

Default Tru64 configuration files are often named GENERIC or sometimes ALPHA.

On FreeBSD systems, you will first need to install the kernel sources if you have not already done so:

            FreeBSD
# cd /
# mkdir -p /usr/src/sys       
            If not already present.
# mount /cdrom
# cat /cdrom/src/ssys.[a-d]* | tar xzvf -

To add a device to a Tru64 system, you must boot the generic kernel, /genvmunix, to force the system to recognize and create configuration information for the new device:

            Tru64
# shutdown -r now
...
>>> boot -fi /genvmunix
...
# bcheckrc 
            or
             lsmbstartup
# sizer -n NEWDEVS

On both systems, the first step in configuring and building a kernel is to save a copy of the old configuration file and ...