It seemed a nice idea to create a little site with tips about various things using the .tips top-level domain. Here it is! A collection of tips from the Grumpy Old Techie.

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May 8, 2016

FreeBSD - Master Boot Record

If other operating systems have damaged your Master Boot Record, you can reinstall it with boot0cfg(8). See man boot0cfg for details.

May 8, 2016

FreeBSD - fetch

Having trouble using fetch through a firewall? Try setting the environment variable FTP_PASSIVE_MODE to yes, and see fetch(3) for more details.

May 8, 2016

Bash Prompt

You can adjust your bash prompt to virtually anything you like. Handy bash(1) prompt: PS1="\u@\h \w \!$" You can find more here: Bash Prompts

May 8, 2016

FreeBSD - Startup

FreeBSD is started up by the program ‘init’. The first thing init does when starting multiuser mode (ie, starting the computer up for normal use) is to run the shell script /etc/rc. By reading /etc/rc and the /etc/rc.d/ scripts, you can learn a lot about how the system is put together, which again will make you more confident about what happens when you do something with it. Read more

May 8, 2016

FreeBSD - Calendar

Forget when Easter is? Try ncal -e. If you need the date for Orthodox Easter, use ncal -o instead.

May 8, 2016

FreeBSD - man pages

Ever wonder what those numbers after command names were, as in cat(1)? It’s the section of the manual the man page is in. man man will tell you more.

May 8, 2016

FreeBSD - console

By pressing “Scroll Lock” you can use the arrow keys to scroll backward through the console output. Press “Scroll Lock” again to turn it off.

© Arnold Greyling 2025