# man pbf(8)



## zader (Oct 25, 2021)

could anyone recommend some good resource/books that specifically pertain FreeBSD?

ideally I would like one of those 1,000 pagers that melt your brain.. but provide everything you need to get crackin..

thanks!


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## Alain De Vos (Oct 25, 2021)

Amazon.com: Absolute FreeBSD, 3rd Edition: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD: 9781593278922: Lucas, Michael W.: Books
					

Amazon.com: Absolute FreeBSD, 3rd Edition: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD: 9781593278922: Lucas, Michael W.: Books



					www.amazon.com


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## zader (Oct 25, 2021)

Hey thanks, great book for general freebsd.. but I was I was referring specifically to BPF programming and kernel related material.


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## SirDice (Oct 25, 2021)

If you want to know what makes FreeBSD tick then there's nothing like "Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD OS." Second edition, first edition is good too but only covers up to FreeBSD 5, so it's a bit old now.

And you probably also want to get "TCP/IP Illustrated". All three volumes. Not specific to FreeBSD but contains a wealth of information about TCP/IP, you're going to need to know a lot about how it works. And volume two deals with BSD socket programming.

Those will certainly "melt" your brain


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## zader (Oct 25, 2021)

thanks, the amazon man is onw.. that looks like exactly what I needed!.!

cheers


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## mark_j (Oct 26, 2021)

Hey, wait, just to destroy your brain further, I suggest you also read all the relevant RFCs, starting with rfc793
 

But seriously,I don't know of any BPF-specific book, but if you're not too skilled then the Unix Network Programming volumes series used to be the go-to books, but I don't know how easy they are to obtain in paper form as they're probably 20+ years old (a guess?)

They give you a good basis for programming the network because FreeBSD (and other BSDs) is the closest thing to Unix[tm] these days.


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## zader (Oct 26, 2021)

https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0136554822/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

this was the only one I could find with decent reviews, after watching some of his other stuff he seems like a good resource .. my only thought was .. how much of this would translate to bsd.. as its aimed directly at a linux kernel.


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## mark_j (Oct 26, 2021)

Ouch that's a steep price to pay for something that might be too linux-centric. I don't know what Linux kernels do, but don't they implement bpf with lots of extensions and call it ebpf? How close to bpf is ebpf , I guess, is the $90 question.


There was some talk of ebpf making it into FreeBSD: https://www.bsdcan.org/2018/schedule/track/Hacking/963.en.html, but I don't see any results (but I didn't look too hard )

There's a small section in Unix Network Programming (Volume 1) about bpf but it's less informative that bpf(4).

There's always tcpdump to look at and gather some information on how they use bpf. Otherwise, I think it's a very poorly documented interface in a user-programming sense.


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