Introduction
User groups
But how about meeting FreeBSD users face to face? There are a number of user groups around the world. If you live in a big city, chances are that there's one near you. Check http://www.FreeBSD.org/support.html#user for a list. If you don't find one, consider taking the initiative and starting one.
In addition, USENIX holds an annual conference, the BSDCon, which deals with technical aspects of the BSD operating systems. It's also a great opportunity to get to know other users from around the world. If you're in Europe, there is also a BSDCon Europe, which at the time of writing was not run by USENIX. See http://www.eurobsdcon.org for more details.
Reporting bugs
If you find something wrong with FreeBSD, we want to know about it, so that we can fix it. To report a bug, use the send-pr program to send it as a mail message.
There used to be a web form at http://www.FreeBSD.org/send-pr.html, but it has been closed down due to abuse.
The Berkeley daemon
The little daemon at the right symbolizes BSD. It is included with kind permission of Marshall Kirk McKusick, one of the leading members of the former Computer Sciences Research Group at the University of California at Berkeley, and owner of the daemon's copyright. Kirk also wrote the foreword to this course .
The daemon has occasionally given rise to a certain amount of confusion. In fact, it's a joking reference to processes that run in the background—see Chapter 8, Taking control, page 150, for a description. The outside world occasionally sees things differently, as the following story indicates:
Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet Subject: [comp.org.usenix] A Great Daemon Story From: Rob Kolstad <kolstad@bsdi.com> Newsgroups: comp.org.usenix Subject: A Great Daemon Story
Linda Branagan is an expert on daemons. She has a T-shirt that sports the daemon in tennis shoes that appears on the cover of the 4.3BSD manuals and The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System by S. Leffler, M. McKusick, M. Karels, J. Quarterman, Addison Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, MA 1989.
She tells the following story about wearing the 4.3BSD daemon T-shirt:
Last week I walked into a local "home style cookin' restaurant/watering hole" in Texas to pick up a take-out order. I spoke briefly to the waitress behind the counter, who told me my order would be done in a few minutes.
So, while I was busy gazing at the farm implements hanging on the walls, I was approached by two "natives." These guys might just be the original Texas rednecks.
"Pardon us, ma'am. Mind if we ask you a question?"
Well, people keep telling me that Texans are real friendly, so I nodded.
"Are you a Satanist?"
Well, at least they didn't ask me if I liked to party.
"Uh, no, I can't say that I am."
"Gee, ma'am. Are you sure about that?" they asked.
I put on my biggest, brightest Dallas Cowboys cheerleader smile and said, "No, I'm positive. The closest I've ever come to Satanism is watching Geraldo."
"Hmmm. Interesting. See, we was just wondering why It is you have the lord of darkness on your chest there."
I was this close to slapping one of them and causing a scene—then I stopped and noticed the shirt I happened to be wearing that day. Sure enough, it had a picture of a small, devilish-looking creature that has for some time now been associated with a certain operating system. In this particular representation, the creature was wearing sneakers.
They continued: "See, ma'am, we don'texactly appreciate it when people showoff pictures of the devil. Especially when he'slookin' so friendly."
These idiots sounded terrifyingly serious.
Me: "Oh, well, see, this isn't really the devil, it's just, well, it's sort of a mascot.
Native: "And what kind of football team has the devil as a mascot?"
Me: "Oh, it's not a team. It's an operating—uh, a kind of computer."
I figured that an ATM machine was about as much technology as these guys could handle, and I knew that if I so much as uttered the word "UNIX" I would only make things worse.
Native: "Where does this satanical computer come from?"
Me: "California. And there's nothing satanical about it really."
Somewhere along the line here, the waitress noticed my predicament—but these guys probably outweighed her by 600 pounds, so all she did was look at me sympathetically and run off into the kitchen.
Native: "Ma'am, I think you're lying. And we'd appreciate it if you'd leave the premises now."
Fortunately, the waitress returned that very instant with my order, and they agreed that it would be okay for me to actually pay for my food before I left. While I was at the cash register, they am used themselves by talking to each other.
Native #1: "Do you think the police know about these devil computers?"
Native #2: "If they come from California, then the FBI oughta know about 'em."
Theye scorted me to the door. I tried one last time: "You're really blowing this all out of proportion. Alot of people use this 'kind of computers.' Universities, researchers, businesses. They're actually very useful."
Big, big, big mistake. I should have guessed at what came next.
Native:"Does the government use these devil computers?"
Me: "Yes."
Another big boo-boo.
Native:"And does the government pay for 'em? With our tax dollars?"
Idecided that it was time to jump ship.
Me: "No. Nope. Not at all. Your tax dollars never entered the picture at all. I promise. No sir, not a penny. Our good Christian congressmen would never let something like that happen. Nope. Never. Bye."
Texas. What acountry.
The daemon tradition goes back quite a way. Asrecently as 1996, after the publication of the first edition of this book, the following message went through the FreeBSD-chat mailing list:
To: "Jonathan M. Bresler" <jmb@freefall.freebsd.org>
Cc: obrien@antares.aero.org (Mike O'Brien),
joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de,
chat@FreeBSD.org, juphoff@tarsier.cv.nrao.edu
Date: Tue, 07 May 1996 16:27:20 -0700
Sender: owner-chat@FreeBSD.org
>details and gifs PLEASE!
If you insist. :-)
Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for around 1976 or so (see Peter Salus' A
Quarter Century of UNIX for details), when the first really national UNIX
meeting was held in Urbana, Illinois. This would be after the "forty people
in a Brooklyn classroom" meeting held by Mel Ferentz (yeah I was at that too)
and the more-or-less simultaneous West Coast meeting(s) hosted by SRI, but before
the UNIX Users Group was really incorporated as a going concern.
I knew Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie would be there. I was living in Chicago
at the time, and so was comic artist Phil Foglio, whose star was just beginning
to rise. At that time I was a bonded locksmith. Phil's roommate had unexpectedly
split town, and he was the only one who knew the combination to the wall safe in
their apartment. This is the only apartment I've ever seen that had a wall safe,
but it sure did have one, and Phil had some stuff locked in there. I didn't hold
out much hope, since safes are far beyond where I was (and am) in my locks mithing
sphere of competence, but I figured "no guts no glory" and told him I'd
give it a whack. In return, I told him, he could do some T-shirt art for me. He readily agreed.
Wonder of wonders, this safe was vulnerable to the same algorithm that Master
locks used to be susceptible to. I opened it in about 15 minutes of manipulation.
It was my greatest moment as a locksmith and Phil was overjoyed. I went down to my
lab and shot some Polaroid snaps of the PDP-11 system I was running UNIX on at the
time, and gave it to Phil with some descriptions of the visual puns I wanted: pipes,
demons with forks running along the pipes, a "bit bucket" named /dev/null, all that.
What Phil came up with is the artwork that graced the first decade's worth of
"UNIX T-shirts," which were made by a Ma and Paoperation in a Chicago
suburb. They turned out transfer art using a 3M color copier in their basement.
Hence, the PDP-11 is reversed (the tape drives are backwards) but since Phil left off
the front panel, this was hard to tell. His trademark signature was photo-reversed,
but was recopied by the T-shirt people and "re-forwardized," which is why
it looks a little funny compared to his real signature.
Dozens and dozens of these shirts were produced. Bell Labs alone accounted for
an order of something like 200 for a big picnic. However, only four (4) REAL
originals were produced: these have a distinctive red collar and sleeve cuff.
One went to Ken, one to Dennis, one to me, and one to my then-wife. I now possess
the latter two shirts. Ken and Dennis were presented with their shirts at the Urbana conference.
People ordered these shirts direct from the Chicago couple. Many years later,
when I was living in LA, I got a call from Armando Stettner, then at DEC,
asking about that now-famous artwork. I told him I hadn't talked to the Illinois
T-shirt makers in years. At his request I called them up. They'd folded the operation
years ago and were within days of discarding all the old artwork. I requested its return,
and duly received It back in the mail. It looked strange, seeing it again in its
original form, a mirror image of the shirts with which I and everyone else were now familiar.
I sent the artwork to Armando, who wanted to give it to the Ultrix marketing people.
They came out with the Ultrix poster that showed a nice shiny Ultrix machine
contrasted with the chewing-gum-and-string PDP-11 UNIX people were familiar with.
They still have the artwork, so far as I know.
I no longer recall the exact contents of the letter I sent along with the artwork.
I did say that as far as I knew, Phil had no residual rights to the art,
since it was a 'work made for hire', though nothing was in writing
(and note this was decades before the new copyright law). I do not now recall
if I explicitly assigned all rights to DEC. What is certain is that John Lassiter's daemon,
whether knowingly borrowed from the original, or created by parallel evolution,
postdates the first horde of UNIX daemons by at least a decade and probably more.
And if Lassiter's daemon looks a lot like a Phil Foglio creation, there's are a son.
I have never scanned in Phil's artwork; I've hardly ever scanned in anything,
so I have no GIFs to show. But I have some very very old UNIX T-shirts in
startlingly good condition. Better condition than I am at any rate:
I no longer fit into either of them.
Mike O'Brien
Creaky antique
Note the date of this message: it appeared since the first edition of this book. Since then, the daemon image has been scanned in, and you can find a version at http://www. mckusick.com/beastie/shirts/usenix.html