A typical &os; distribution directory looks something like this: ERRATA.HTM README.TXT compat1x dict kernel ERRATA.TXT RELNOTES.HTM compat20 doc manpages HARDWARE.HTM RELNOTES.TXT compat21 docbook.css packages HARDWARE.TXT bin compat22 filename.txt ports INSTALL.HTM boot compat3x floppies proflibs INSTALL.TXT catpages compat4x games src README.HTM cdrom.inf crypto info tools If you want to do a CDROM, FTP or NFS installation from this distribution directory, all you need to do is make the 1.44MB boot floppies from the floppies directory (see for instructions on how to do this), boot them and follow the instructions. The rest of the data needed during the installation will be obtained automatically based on your selections. If you've never installed &os; before, you also want to read the entirety of this document (the installation instructions) file. If you're trying to do some other type of installation or are merely curious about how a distribution is organized, what follows is a more thorough description of some of these items in more detail: The *.TXT and *.HTM files contain documentation (for example, this document is contained in both INSTALL.TXT and INSTALL.HTM) and should be read before starting an installation. The *.TXT files are plain text, while the *.HTM files are HTML files that can be read by almost any Web browser. Some distributions may contain documentation in other formats as well, such as PDF or PostScript. docbook.css is a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file used by some Web browsers for formatting the HTML documentation. The bin, catpages, crypto, dict, doc, games, info, manpages, proflibs, and src directories contain the primary distribution components of &os; itself and are split into smaller files for easy packing onto floppies (should that be necessary). The compat1x, compat20, compat21, compat22, compat3x, and compat4x directories contain distributions for compatibility with older releases and are distributed as single gzip'd tar files - they can be installed during release time or later by running their install.sh scripts. The floppies/ subdirectory contains the floppy installation images; further information on using them can be found in . The packages and ports directories contain the &os; Packages and Ports Collections. Packages may be installed from the packages directory by running the command: &prompt.root;/stand/sysinstall configPackages Packages can also be installed by feeding individual filenames in packages/ to the &man.pkg.add.1; command. The Ports Collection may be installed like any other distribution and requires about 100MB unpacked. More information on the ports collection may be obtained from http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/ or locally from /usr/share/doc/handbook if you've installed the doc distribution. Last of all, the tools directory contains various DOS tools for discovering disk geometries, installing boot managers and the like. It is purely optional and provided only for user convenience. A typical distribution directory (for example, the info distribution) looks like this internally: CHECKSUM.MD5 info.ab info.ad info.inf install.sh info.aa info.ac info.ae info.mtree The CHECKSUM.MD5 file contains MD5 signatures for each file, should data corruption be suspected, and is purely for reference. It is not used by the actual installation and does not need to be copied with the rest of the distribution files. The info.a* files are split, gzip'd tar files, the contents of which can be viewed by doing: &prompt.root; cat info.a* | tar tvzf - During installation, they are automatically concatenated and extracted by the installation procedure. The info.inf file is also necessary since it is read by the installation program in order to figure out how many pieces to look for when fetching and concatenating the distribution. When putting distributions onto floppies, the .inf file must occupy the first floppy of each distribution set! The info.mtree file is another non-essential file which is provided for user reference. It contains the MD5 signatures of the unpacked distribution files and can be later used with the &man.mtree.8; program to verify the installation permissions and checksums against any possible modifications to the file. When used with the bin distribution, this can be an excellent way of detecting trojan horse attacks on your system. Finally, the install.sh file is for use by those who want to install the distribution after installation time. To install the info distribution from CDROM after a system was installed, for example, you'd do: &prompt.root; cd /cdrom/info &prompt.root; sh install.sh