Appendix A. Obtaining FreeBSD | FreeBSD Documentation Portal

Appendix A. Obtaining FreeBSD | FreeBSD Documentation Portal
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Appendix A. Obtaining FreeBSD
Table of Contents
A.1. Mirrors
The official mirrors of the FreeBSD project are made up of many machines operated by the project cluster administrators and behind GeoDNS to direct users to the closest available mirror.
Current locations are Australia, Brazil, Japan (two sites), Malaysia, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan, United States of America (California - two sites, Illinois - two sites, New Jersey, and Washington).
Official mirrors service:
Service Name
Protocols
More information
cgit.FreeBSD.org
https
Web interface for the FreeBSD Git repositories.
docs.FreeBSD.org
https
FreeBSD Documentation Portal.
download.FreeBSD.org
https
ftp
Same content as
ftp.FreeBSD.org
ftp
is a legacy name;
download.FreeBSD.org
is recommended.
git.FreeBSD.org
git over
https
and
ssh
More details on
using git
section.
pkg.FreeBSD.org
pkg(8)
over
http
and
https
Official FreeBSD package repositories used by the
pkg(8)
program.
vuxml.FreeBSD.org
www.VuXML.org
https
FreeBSD Project VuXML web page.
pkg audit
fetches the list of vulnerabilities from this service.
www.FreeBSD.org
https
FreeBSD Website.
All official mirrors support IPv4 and IPv6.
is not in the GeoDNS Infrastructure, hosted in only one location (US).
The project is looking for new locations; those willing to sponsor, please reach out to the Cluster Administrators team for more information.
Fastly
CDN is used to serve
download.FreeBSD.org
and
pkg.FreeBSD.org
, providing acceleration, caching, and global bandwidth distribution for FreeBSD images and packages.
Mirror list maintained by the community and other companies:
Country
Hostname
Protocols
Australia
ftp.au.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
ftp3.au.FreeBSD.org
http
ftp
rsync
Brazil
ftp2.br.FreeBSD.org
http
rsync
rsync_v6
ftp3.br.FreeBSD.org
http
ftp
rsync
Bulgaria
ftp.bg.FreeBSD.org
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
Czech Republic
ftp.cz.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
Denmark
ftp.dk.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
Finland
ftp.fi.FreeBSD.org
ftp
France
ftp.fr.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
ftp3.fr.FreeBSD.org
ftp
ftp6.fr.FreeBSD.org
http
ftp
rsync
Germany
ftp.de.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
https
https_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
ftp1.de.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
ftp2.de.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
ftp5.de.FreeBSD.org
ftp
ftp_v6
ftp7.de.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
Greece
ftp.gr.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
ftp2.gr.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
Japan
ftp.jp.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
ftp2.jp.FreeBSD.org
ftp
rsync
rsync_v6
ftp3.jp.FreeBSD.org
http
rsync
ftp4.jp.FreeBSD.org
ftp
ftp6.jp.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
Kazakhstan
mirror.ps.kz
http
ftp
mirror.neolabs.kz
http
ftp
Korea
ftp.kr.FreeBSD.org
http
https
ftp
rsync
ftp2.kr.FreeBSD.org
rsync
Latvia
ftp.lv.FreeBSD.org
http
ftp
Netherlands
ftp.nl.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
ftp2.nl.FreeBSD.org
http
ftp
rsync
mirror.nl.altushost.com
https
New Zealand
ftp.nz.FreeBSD.org
http
ftp
Norway
ftp.no.FreeBSD.org
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
Poland
ftp.pl.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
rsync
rsync_v6
Russia
ftp.ru.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
ftp2.ru.FreeBSD.org
https
ftp
rsync
Slovenia
ftp.si.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
South Africa
ftp2.za.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp_v6
ftp4.za.FreeBSD.org
http
ftp
rsync
Sweden
ftp.se.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
mirror.se.altushost.com
https
Taiwan
ftp4.tw.FreeBSD.org
https
ftp
rsync
ftp5.tw.FreeBSD.org
http
ftp
Ukraine
ftp.ua.FreeBSD.org
http
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
United Kingdom
ftp.uk.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
ftp2.uk.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
https
https_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
United States of America
ftp11.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
rsync
rsync_v6
ftp14.FreeBSD.org
ftp
rsync
(Former official tier 1)
ftp5.FreeBSD.org
http
http_v6
ftp
ftp_v6
The current list of protocols supported by the community mirrors was last updated on 2022-01-31, and it’s not guaranteed.
A.2. Using Git
A.2.1. Introduction
As of December 2020, FreeBSD uses git as the primary version control system for storing all of FreeBSD’s base source code and documentation.
As of April 2021, FreeBSD uses git as the only version control system for storing all of FreeBSD’s Ports Collection.
Git is generally a developer tool.
Users may prefer to use
freebsd-update
“FreeBSD Update”
) to update the FreeBSD base system.
This section demonstrates how to install Git on a FreeBSD system and use it to create a local copy of a FreeBSD source code repository.
A.2.2. Installation
Git can be installed from the Ports Collection, or as a package:
# pkg install git
A.2.3. Running Git
To fetch a clean copy of the sources into a local directory, use
git clone
This directory of files is called the
working tree
Git uses URLs to designate a repository.
There are three different repositories,
src
for the FreeBSD system source code,
doc
for documentation, and
ports
for the FreeBSD Ports Collection.
All three are reachable over two different protocols: HTTPS and SSH.
For example, the URL
specifies the main branch of the
src
repository, using the
https
protocol.
Table 1. FreeBSD Git Repository URL Table
Item
Git URL
Read-only src repo via HTTPS
Read-only src repo via anon-ssh
ssh://anongit@git.FreeBSD.org/src.git
Read-only doc repo via HTTPS
Read-only doc repo via anon-ssh
ssh://anongit@git.FreeBSD.org/doc.git
Read-only ports repo via HTTPS
Read-only ports repo via anon-ssh
ssh://anongit@git.FreeBSD.org/ports.git
External mirrors maintained by project members are also available; please refer
to the
External mirrors
section.
To clone a copy of the FreeBSD system source code repository:
# git clone -o freebsd https://git.FreeBSD.org/src.git /usr/src
The
-o freebsd
option specifies the origin; by convention in the FreeBSD documentation, the origin is assumed to be
freebsd
Because the initial checkout must download the full branch of the remote repository, it can take a while.
Please be patient.
Initially, the working tree contains source code for the
main
branch, which corresponds to CURRENT.
To switch to 13-STABLE instead:
# cd /usr/src
# git checkout stable/13
The working tree can be updated with
git pull
To update
/usr/src
created in the example above, use:
# cd /usr/src
# git pull --rebase
The update is much quicker than a checkout, only transferring files that have changed.
A.2.4. Web-based repository browser
The FreeBSD project uses cgit as the web-based repository browser:
A.2.5. For Developers
For information about write access to repositories see the
Committer’s Guide
A.2.6. External mirrors
Those mirrors are not hosted in FreeBSD.org but still maintained by the project members.
Users and developers are welcome to pull or browse repositories on those mirrors.
Pull requests for the
doc
and
src
GitHub repositories are being accepted; otherwise, the project workflow with those mirrors is still under discussion.
Codeberg
doc:
ports:
src:
GitHub
doc:
ports:
src:
GitLab
doc:
ports:
src:
A.2.7. Mailing lists
The main mailing list for general usage and questions about git in the FreeBSD project is
freebsd-git
For more details, including commit messages lists, see the
Mailing Lists
chapter.
A.2.8. SSH host keys
gitrepo.FreeBSD.org host key fingerprints:
ECDSA key fingerprint is
SHA256:seWO5D27ySURcx4bknTNKlC1mgai0whP443PAKEvvZA
ED25519 key fingerprint is
SHA256:lNR6i4BEOaaUhmDHBA1WJsO7H3KtvjE2r5q4sOxtIWo
RSA key fingerprint is
SHA256:f453CUEFXEJAXlKeEHV+ajJfeEfx9MdKQUD7lIscnQI
git.FreeBSD.org host key fingerprints:
ECDSA key fingerprint is
SHA256:/UlirUAsGiitupxmtsn7f9b7zCWd0vCs4Yo/tpVWP9w
ED25519 key fingerprint is
SHA256:y1ljKrKMD3lDObRUG3xJ9gXwEIuqnh306tSyFd1tuZE
RSA key fingerprint is
SHA256:jBe6FQGoH4HjvrIVM23dcnLZk9kmpdezR/CvQzm7rJM
These are also published as SSHFP records in DNS.
A.3. Disc Copies
FreeBSD disc copies are available from several online retailers:
Getlinux
Website:
Dr. Hinner EDV
Schäftlarnstr. 10 // 4. Stock
D-81371 München
Germany
Phone: +49 171 417 544 6
Email:
infow@hinner.de
Website:
Last modified on
: March 22, 2026 by
Danilo G. Baio
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