Books About FreeBSD

There are many books in which FreeBSD is covered or it is the one of the main objectives of such book. Today I will guide you through these books. I will try to focus on more up to date ones because it would be pointless (beyond historical purposes) to read them now.

The Hateful Eight

I will start with official FreeBSD documentation – as it offers 8 different books for you to get to know that UNIX operating system better. The two most known are FreeBSD Handbook and FreeBSD FAQ. The FreeBSD Handbook covers all/most general topics about FreeBSD operating system setup and administration while FreeBSD FAQ tries to answer most popular questions about it – and does it quite well. There are also other books that are more developer oriented. Below you will find the list of all available eight books from the FreeBSD project.

–	FreeBSD Handbook	–	https://freebsd.org/handbook
–	FreeBSD FAQ	–	https://freebsd.org/faq
–	FreeBSD Architecture Handbook	–	https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/arch-handbook/
–	FreeBSD Developers Handbook	–	https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/developers-handbook/
–	FreeBSD Porters Handbook	–	https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/porters-handbook/
–	Design and Implementation of 4.4BSD Operating System	–	https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/design-44bsd/
–	Project Model for FreeBSD	–	https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/dev-model/
–	FreeBSD Documentation Project Primer for New Contributor	–	https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/fdp-primer/

Example FreeBSD Handbook page from PDF file below.

… and while you can download and read PDF files (there are also EPUB/HTML/TXT formats available for download) you can also read it online – this is how the FreeBSD FAQ looks online.

I sometimes miss that FreeBSD project does not deliver dedicated book in the same PDF/EPUB/HTML/TXT manner for the FreeBSD man pages as for example Solaris or AIX does. At least you can read them online on the https://man.freebsd.org/command page where you will put the needed man page in the place of ‘command’ word – for example the manual page for gstat(8) command is available at https://man.freebsd.org/gstat URL.

If there are two man pages with the same name like crontab(1) and crontab(5) for example then add the man page section number after the slash (/) at the end of URL like that https://man.freebsd.org/crontab/5 – this will solve that problem.

Below you can see the Solaris 10 – Man Pages Section 1M – System Administration Commands book with all Solaris administrative (1M) commands. For FreeBSD the administrative commands are at (8) section.

The Usual Suspects

The most known books that cover FreeBSD operating system aspects are the ones that are authored by Michael W. Lucas (in more recent titles sometimes accompanied by Allan Jude).

The most famous (and useful) one is the Absolute FreeBSD – Complete Guide to FreeBSD in its most recent 3nd Edition. It is quite recent as its from 2019 year. You can get it both in digital (PDF/EPUB) and traditional printed way. If you already read the FreeBSD Handbook and FreeBSD FAQ are wondering what you should get next to continue your FreeBSD journey then this book is the answer. It fill all the gaps and bring a lot of additional information that you will find very useful in your day to day life with FreeBSD system.

Several books later (not only technical) Michael W. Lucas started the FreeBSD Mastery series with many interesting books about FreeBSD. For the two that cover the ZFS filesystem Allan Jude is also a coauthor.

Here they are:

• FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials (2014)
• FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems (2015)
• FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS (2015)
• FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS (2016)
• FreeBSD Mastery: Jails (2019)

If you are gonna read them – then also do it in that order sa they are listed above. You will need all that ‘introduction’ to get the most of FreeBSD Jails. Even Michael W. Lucas mentioned that you need to ‘do’ several other of his books to truly take advantage of all things written in the FreeBSD Mastery: Jails book. While the FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials and FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems are very close related to FreeBSD operating system the other two FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS and FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS have also a lot of general ZFS knowledge not only limited to FreeBSD operating system.

One additional word about the FreeBSD Mastery: Jails book as its quite ‘special’ in approach. For most parts of the FreeBSD operating system the FreeBSD Handbook covers some or most of the information and tasks needed to do convening particular topic. When it comes to FreeBSD Jails its not that simple anymore. There are two types of Jails. The ‘traditional’ Jails that use the host system network stack and the new ‘VNET’ Jails that bring their own – separate from the host – network stack. It gives you a lot more possibilities and features but it comes with only one downside. The official FreeBSD Handbook does not cover the ‘VNET’ Jails at all. Zero. Nada. Zip. None. You can get ‘some’ grasp about them from the FreeBSD man pages but that is definitely not enough. The ‘VNET’ Jails are of course production ready from many years but for some reason the missing chapter in the FreeBSD Handbook is still missing. That is the most important reason why you should get the FreeBSD Mastery: Jails book.

As we are in the FreeBSD Jails scope … I should also mention the FreeBSD Jails using VNETs book by Derik Ramirez from 2020.

Its not as ‘big’ as the FreeBSD Mastery: Jails but keep in mind that half of Michael W. Lucas content is about the iocage(8) framework … which is quite dead now unfortunately. The biggest upside of FreeBSD Jails using VNETs book is that it covers – as described in the book title – the VNET Jails. Also being released in 2020 its very up to date.

The Taste of Others

Written in 2018 by Manish Jain the book Beginning Modern Unix covers both FreeBSD and Linux operating systems at the same time.

It also beginner friendly and as author writes in Preparing for Part I – “The structure is intended to make things simple for Windows users planning to migrate to FreeBSD/Linux.” I also really liked the author explanation in the Preface about why he choose BSD/FreeBSD and GNU/Linux (like that syntax by the way). You can find part of it below.

To be honest I like that ‘dual’ approach with sections showing how to achieve the same on two different (yet somewhat similar) operating systems. It may be useful especially when writing playbooks for various configuration management software like Ansible or Salt. I know that most of these configuration management systems provide their own ‘general’ integrations like ‘install packages’ on a system and then it uses pkg(8) on FreeBSD and yum(8) on CentOS but sometimes not all integrations are available or they are also sometimes broken or buggy. I have heard several times this already that its safer to rely on your own scripts and ‘raw’ commands instead of the ‘integration modules’ in many cases. Of course your millage may vary.

The Beginning Modern Unix book covers many desktop related topics but it also covers POSIX shell scripting and basic C programming which is very nice.

Another interesting ‘dual’ book is UNIX The Textbook from 2017 by Syed Mansoor Sarwar and Robert M. Koretsky authors.

In its 3rd Edition it covers both Solaris and FreeBSD (in a form of PC-BSD tho) systems. As Solaris by default uses GNOME and PC-BSD (while it existed) used KDE the book also covers a lot about these two desktop environments.

It is illustrated with many useful diagrams of how things work on UNIX system. Below you can check the pipe explanation.

Another good part of the book is that it also covers a lot of POSIX shell scripting and C programming techniques. Even covering things like writing simple servers, inter process communication, threads and a lot more. The book is really huge with almost 1400 pages of useful content. The book leave you at the end of each chapter with QUESTIONS AND PROBLEMS. This approach reminds me of the legendary The C Programming Language written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie UNIX fathers where it was also present.

Next one is very well known UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook by Evi Nemeth and Garth Snyder and Trent R. Hein and Ben Whaley … but it depends which version you get 🙂

The 4th Edition is more conservative and covers Linux/Solaris/HP-UX/AIX systems. This is the description of which systems they have chosen in 2011 and why.

If you try to find FreeBSD there you will fail. They only mentioned it once and added that along with OpenBSD and NetBSD and that BSD systems “(…) enjoy somewhat less support from third-party software vendors.” See for yourself.

Lets now move 7 years forward to 2017 in which the 5th edition of the same UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook book was released. Authors also changed a little with Dan Mackin being added to current lineup of authors of this book.

Besides modified cover I would risk a stance that its quite entirely different book right now. Its because the 5th Edition covers only Linux and … FreeBSD. No AIX. No Solaris. No HP-UX. Authors also added quite long justification on why they have chosen these operating systems and not the other ones. The time of oldschool UNIX dinosaurs that ruled for decades seem to slowly vanish. Its probably not without reason.

The last HP-UX version 11.31 (also known as 11i v3 variant) was released in 2007. Still uses ‘manual’ packages like in 1995. I like its ‘ecosystem’ tho. What I mean by that is that you can install and setup several HP-UX machines. Setup HP Serviceguard HA cluster on these machines and then make HP Virtual Machines or HP SRP Containers highly available between these hosts as Serviceguard services. I was fortunate enough to be able to see such 6 node cluster in action and it worked really well.

The last AIX version 7.2 was released in 2015 but I do not recall any ground braking features. Also AIX still does not have any modern package management and the most that IBM AIX developers could do was to adopt RPM database to add RPM packages along with the native ones. In 2021 the newer AIX 7.3 release also saw the light of day … but also without any groundbreaking features. In other words the last two AIX system releases fell only like a maintenance releases. While the HP-UX ‘ecosystem’ is ‘connected’ between their products and features its not that easy and simple in the AIX ‘POWER World’. For example its not possible to create similar setup with LPARs or WPARs that their high availability would be controlled by PowerHA cluster software. Even if you would create LPARs with purely virtual devices and storage from the SAN network. The POWER ecosystem offers a feature called Remote Restart for LPARs on HMC but its far from being close to what HP-UX ecosystem offers here.

As for Solaris … I think that Oracle taking over SUN is probably one of the worst things that could happen to Solaris. Oracle could extend and continue the OpenSolaris road started by SUN. It could move and expand Solaris to 21st century. Instead it also went the ‘maintenance’ road along with maximizing the cash outcome of Solaris ‘asset’ with 11.3 in 2015 and 11.4 in 2018 releases. Besides adding PF firewall from OpenBSD and Live Migration feature for Kernel Zones I do not recall any groundbreaking features to be added. Maybe some ZFS development but looking at what OpenZFS is achieving with each release these Oracle developments do not look ‘big’ at all. From what is known Oracle also fired most of SPARC and Solaris developers leaving only small teams to make it running in ‘maintenance mode’ up to 2034 to which Oracle promised to keep Solaris alive instead of moving forward with Solaris 12.0 which was even in alpha or beta state. I agree with authors statement in which they say that “The popularity of UNIX has been waning for some time, and most of the stalwart UNIX distributions (e.g., Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX) are no longer in common use.”

Below is the authors description why they have chosen the FreeBSD and Linux systems for the 5th Edition of their well respected and acknowledged book.

Back to FreeBSD world … and the authors quote why FreeBSD was included in this most recent version of their book – “The open source descendants of BSD are exceptions to this trend and continue to enjoy a cult following, particularly among operating system experts, free software evangelists, and security-minded administrators. In other words, some of the world’s foremost operating system authorities rely on the various BSD distributions. Apple’s macOS has a BSD heritage.” This most recent version is also little shorter with ‘only’ about 1200 pages while earlier edition topped at little over 1300. Keep in mind that newer edition covers Linux and FreeBSD while the older one had to describe and document to systems more.

Last but not least I should also mention the Book of PF – No Nonsense Guide to OpenBSD Firewall book by Peter N.M. Hansteen from 2015 in its most recent 3rd Edition.

While originally targeted at OpenBSD users the FreeBSD users will also be able to get a lot of useful knowledge about PF firewall that FreeBSD uses. Keep in mind that there are some syntax differences between OpenBSD and FreeBSD PF firewalls.

Source Code

Here you will find the books that are little less useful for sysadmins and more useful for developers and programmers. We will start with updated Design and Implementation of FreeBSD 11 Operating System from 2015 in 2nd Edition form. Written by one of the original BSD UNIX and FreeBSD developers Marshall Kirk McKusick along with other two FreeBSD developers George V. Neville-Neil and Robert N.M. Watson.

Its generally more up to date version of the official FreeBSD documentation available as Design and Implementation of 4.4BSD Operating System title from the FreeBSD project documentation page – which one of the authors is also Marshall Kirk McKusick. Is it worth to get it then? Absolutely. A lot have changed and many new technologies have been imported into FreeBSD source tree such as ZFS or DTrace or for example the ULE scheduler.

The final book that I would like to mention here is the FreeBSD Device Drivers book from 2012 written by Joseph Kong.

The book tries to achieve what it title says – to help you first understand and then modify or write your own device drivers. While it covers little older FreeBSD 8 version it is not a problem because the FreeBSD API and ABI change very slow and only when no other way is possible.

Another great tool for programmers and developers in the process of making FreeBSD better is book about DTrace – the dynamic tracing framework. The DTrace – Dynamic Tracing in Oracle Solaris, Mac OS X, and FreeBSD book.

Written by Brendan Gregg and Jim Mauro in 2011 greatly helps to jump into that topic in simple and straightforward way. Besides covering FreeBSD it also does cover Mac OS X, Solaris and even OpenSolaris. That means that it should also be useful for Illumos developers. The book contains a lot of DTrace scripts and examples on how to use that fantastic tool.

Another book that you may find useful in your FreeBSD programmer career is the Designing BSD Rootkits: An Introduction to Kernel Hacking book by Joseph Kong.

Written in 2007 still contains lots of up to date information for the FreeBSD hackers. While the term ‘rootkit’ may be taken ‘negatively’ the author itself describes the book by himself the best way – “Though rootkits have a fairly negative image, they can be used for both good and evil. Designing BSD Rootkits arms you with the knowledge you need to write offensive rootkits, to defend against malicious ones, and to explore the FreeBSD kernel and operating system in the process.” I agree with the author here. To be well protected against something you first need to know how that thing works. The book contains many code examples that you may compile and use and also build upon with your own ideas. Would recommend.

Gone with the Wind

If you know other FreeBSD related books then please let me know.

For those few that did not noticed – the titles of the headers are really great movies 🙂

UPDATE 1 – Practical Internet Server Configuration

Thanks to suggestion of fraxamo user from FreeBSD Forums another book will be added to this article.

I overlooked the Practical Internet Server Configuration from 2021 which was written by Robert La Lau and with Kenneth “Ken” Hess mentioned as technical reviewer.

The book takes FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE, Debian 9 and CentOS 7 operating systems into account.

Author shows examples of server related tasks on each of these systems separately.

UPDATE 2 – Some Additions to Source Code Section

I forgot one of the most known classics here – the Advanced Programming in UNIX Environment (especially in its most recent 3rd Edition) from 2013 by W. Richard Stevens and Stephen A. Rago.

Nearly all examples have been tested on four modern platforms: Solaris 10, Mac OS X 10.6.8, FreeBSD 8.0 and Linux 3.2.

Another one worth mention is the Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think from 2007 by Andy Oram and Greg Wilson.

While not the whole book is about FreeBSD – it has dedicated entire chapter called Another Level of Indirection by Diomidis Spinellis.

Aim of the chapter is to show how the flexibility and maintainability of the FreeBSD kernel is promoted by abstracting operations done in common by many drivers and filesystem modules.

UPDATE 3 – Video Courses and List of All Books

After some time I thought that it would be good idea to have just a simple list at the top of that article of all the books mentioned here.

The other thing that I totally forgotten is not about books – but about a videos/courses.

One is named Introduction to the FreeBSD Open Source Operating System from 2015 by Marshall Kirk McKusick itself.

It is available in at least two places:

• archive.org
• oreilly.com

The other one is FreeBSD 13.x – Mastering Jails one.

… and is available here:

• udemy.com

There is also Essentials of UNIX Administration with FreeBSD 12.1 course available here:

• udemy.com

But I did not had a chance to check it as I did not bought it.

… and here is the list of all FreeBSD books in one place.

List of All FreeBSD Books

Official Books

• FreeBSD Handbook
• FreeBSD FAQ
• FreeBSD Architecture Handbook
• FreeBSD Developers Handbook
• FreeBSD Porters Handbook
• Design and Implementation of 4.4BSD Operating System
• Project Model for FreeBSD
• FreeBSD Documentation Project Primer for New Contributor

Third Party Books

• Absolute FreeBSD – Complete Guide to FreeBSD – 3nd Edition (2019)
• FreeBSD Mastery: Storage Essentials (2014)
• FreeBSD Mastery: Specialty Filesystems (2015)
• FreeBSD Mastery: ZFS (2015)
• FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS (2016)
• FreeBSD Mastery: Jails (2019)
• FreeBSD Jails using VNETs (2020)
• Beginning Modern Unix (2018)
• UNIX the Textbook (2017)
• UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook – 5th Edition (2017)
• Book of PF – No Nonsense Guide to OpenBSD Firewall – 3rd Edition (2015)
• Design and Implementation of FreeBSD 11 Operating System – 2nd Edition (2015)
• FreeBSD Device Drivers (2012)
• DTrace – Dynamic Tracing in Oracle Solaris/Mac OS X/FreeBSD (2011)
• Designing BSD Rootkits: Introduction to Kernel Hacking (2007)
• Practical Internet Server Configuration (2021)
• Advanced Programming in UNIX Environment – 3rd Edition (2013)
• Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think (2007)

Feel free to pick the one that suits You best.

EOF