Keep in mind that these options are set at boot time. They are not changed automatically when you save the file. In order for your change to take affect you would have to reboot your FreeBSD machine.

And yes, you can change your default gateway without rebooting, but that comes later.

Example 2 => Activating a firewall

Suppose you wanted to turn a firewall on to play with or secure your network. You would add the following options to /etc/rc.conf:

	firewall_enable="YES"
	firewall_type="OPEN"

As you can see, its pretty easy to turn basic system services on and off by working with /etc/rc.conf. We will visit /etc/rc.conf through the rest of this Tutorial.

FreeBSD Ports

I went over how to turn on and off system services (ie, Programs that come with the system) above. FreeBSD has another collection of addon programs which you can choose from and install onto your system. These 3rd-party programs are known as the Ports Collection. There are currently 6000+ programs you can install on your system. If you chose to install the "Ports Collection" when you installed FreeBSD, you should have the ports collection on your system. If you did not choose to install the ports during the install process...don't worry...you can still get them. First let's explain what the ports are.

All the ports collection is is a categorized skeleton structure of how to retrieve, compile, and install a program on your system. This skeleton is installed in /usr/ports. Within /usr/ports lies the ports Categories. Lets have a look:

	> cd /usr/ports
	> ls
	INDEX        audio         editors       mail        sysutils
	LEGAL        benchmarks    emulators     math        textproc
	Makefile     biology       ftp           mbone       vietnamese
	Mk           cad           games         misc        www
	README       chinese       german        net         x11
	README.html  comms         graphics      news        x11-clocks
	Templates    converters    irc           palm        x11-fm
	Tools        databases     japanese      print       x11-fonts
	YEAR2000     deskutils     java          russian     x11-servers
	archivers    devel         korean        security    x11-toolkits
	astro        distfiles     lang          shells      x11-wm

These are the Categories. Actually they are directories. For example, the "games" directory contains all the ports that deal with games, the "databases" directory contains all the ports that deal with databases. You get the idea. How do you know which ports are what? You can find out a several of ways. The easiest way is to look inside the port directory for a file called pkg-descr or DESCR. WIthin this file will be a brief description of what the port is. Let's looks at one.

	Let's look in Math Categories:

	# cd /usr/ports/math
	# ls
	Makefile      femlab        libranlib      pspp          umfpack
	PDL           fftpack       linalg         py-gnuplot    vtk
	R-a4          fftw          linpack        py-scientific wingz
	R-letter      freefem       metis          pygist        wmcalc
	README.html   fudgit        netcdf         rcalc         xgfe
	Scilab        geg           ngraph         rng           xgraph
	abs           glove         ntl            sc            xldlas
	add           gnumeric      numpy          siag          xlispstat
	apc           gnuplot       octave         simpack       xmgr
	blas          gnuplot+      oleo           slsc          xplot
	calc          grace         p5-MatrixReal  snns          xspread
	calctool      grpn          p5-Set-IntSpan spin		     xwpl
	concorde      gsl           pari           ss
	dcdflib       hexcalc       parmetis       superlu
	eispack       lapack        pkg            topaz
	eval          libneural     plplot         umatrix

	Hmm, what is 'spin'?  Let's find out:

	# cd spin
	# cat pkg-descr
	Spin is an efficient on-the-fly verification system
	(a `model checker') for asynchronous concurrent systems,
	such as data communication protocols, distributed operating
	systems, database systems, etc.
	It can be used to prove both safety and liveness properties,
	including all correctness requirements expressible in linear
	time temporal logic.
	Spin uses a high level language to specify systems descriptions,
	called PROMELA (PROcess MEta LAnguage).
	#

Now let's actually install spin !

	Let's make sure we're in the right place to install 'spin':
	# pwd
	/usr/ports/math/spin

	Good, Let's install it now:

	# make install

	1) Download the source tarball (The actual source code for spin) from the internet
	2) Place the tarball in /usr/ports/distfiles
	3) Extract the tarball in the 'work' directory in the current directory (ie, /usr/ports/math/spin/work)
	4) apply any source code patches that are needed for your system to run this program
	5) if you need other ports to compile or run this port (dependancies), repeat steps 1-6
	6) compile dependancies and this port
	7) Install dependancies and this port

Uninstalling ports is just as easy. Let's uninstall the 'spin' port we just installed above.

	Let's make sure we're in the right place to uninstall 'spin':
	# pwd
	/usr/ports/math/spin

	Good, Let's uninstall it now:

	# make deinstall

So that's the famous Ports collection. Very powerful and easy to use. There are other ways of installing 3rd party programs. You can get precompiled binaries (aka FreeBSD packages) as well. This is usually another way to get the program you want without actually compiling it. You can also manually download the source code compile and install it yourself without ever using the ports or packages.

	# /stand/sysinstall

	A window will pop up.  Select:

		"Do post-install configuration of FreeBSD"

	then select:

		"Install additional distribution sets"

	then hit the space bar to put an "X" in the line at says:

		"The FreeBSD Ports Collection"

	hit [ENTER] button. Now choose where you want to install it from.

You might have recognized sysinstall...you used it when you installed FreeBSD for the first time! I would recommend running through the menus as I will not be going into great detail simply because it's a GUI.