If you’re running a web server on your BeOS machine, you can maintain your site from any other machine in the world via telnet. While this may seem old hat to Linux users, it’s a pleasant surprise for those coming from the Windows or MacOS worlds. Enable the telnet daemon in the Network preferences panel and restart networking. You can now log in to your machine from anywhere and operate it completely from the command line.
Note: Be very careful about choosing a complex telnet password, don’t give it to anyone, and change it frequently. Remember that the BeOS file permissions scheme as of R4.5 is not fully multi-user, making it particularly vulnerable should your password be obtained by hooligans.
Once that’s set up, you can stop and start the http daemon from the command line. If necessary, you can even restart networking with John Wiggins‘ net_restart utility. You can add or delete web pages, or even restart your machine (with shutdown -r).
If you want to edit existing web pages, you can use the built-in editor vi, or download and install any of the other command-line editors, such as joe, jove, or emacs. If you install Pine, the text-based email client, you’ll also get Pico — a simple to use text editor. Since you’re editing files right on your hard drive, there’s no need to FTP files into place (though that’s also an option if you enable the telnet server).

Some sound cards allow the audio output to be used as an input so you can record from it directly. However, I don’t know if this is the case with all cards, so I’ve come up with a solution for cards that don’t support this. This is useful if you want to save, say, a MOD or MIDI file to disk as music. It also works for CD players which don’t support reading audio data over the IDE bus. You could, for example, record a track to disk as audio, then encode it as an MP3 for use with a portable MP3 player.
Note that you’ll need a full-dupex card to do this — your card must allow simultaneous recording and playback. Alternately, it should be possible with two sound cards, though I don’t know if BeOS presently supports more than one sound card. Here’s how:
Connect the line-out jack to the line-in jack with a patch cable. Go into Media prefs / Audio Output and mute the line-in. This doesn’t stop the input, but it will prevent it from feeding through to the output and causing a feedback loop.
Start recording, then play what you want to record.
If you’re using BamBam for recording and the file won’t record into RAM, note that BamBam has a Record to File function which records direct to disc. Be warned though, as audio data can eat disk space very quickly — stereo CD quality requires approximately 10MB per minute.
If your card has SPDIF input and output you can patch these ports together. This removes most if not all analogue signal paths, thus reducing the possibility of noise.

Update: It turns out that this method does not work if you are booting BeOS 5 Personal Edition from within Windows or from a floppy. It will work if you install PE to a real partition. This is unfortunate, and hopefully Be will find a way to re-enable this option for PE users. The tip still applies for everyone running BeOS from a real partition (this includes BeOS 5 Pro users).
Update 2: An exception to the exception. Even if your card doesn’t do VESA 2, it may be possible to run BeOS in color. See Eric Ball’s addition at the end of this tip.
Update 3: Make things easy on yourself and download David Sowsy’s VESA Accepted from BeBits — it takes care of a lot of this stuff automatically.
If you’re using R4.5 or later and your video card isn’t supported, there’s still a pretty good chance it’ll be supported in VESA mode. However, VESA support is not enabled by default. To enable it, you’ll need to do the following (you may also want to read the tip Make Boot Options Permanent):
First, you want to test whether your card will work in VESA mode at all (it probably will). As your machine starts to boot BeOS, hit the Spacebar (as soon as the BeOS splash screen appears). This will bring up a menu of boot options. Scroll down to „Fail-Safe Video“ and you’ll see a menu of possible resolutions. Select one from the list, navigate back to the main menu, and select „Continue Booting.“ BeOS should come up in the selected resolution. If it works, you’ll want to make this a permanent setting so you don’t have to do this every time.
Rename the file ~/config/settings/kernel/drivers/sample/vesa.sample to ~/config/settings/kernel/drivers/vesa.
Now edit the file and uncomment the mode line. Subsititute the desired width, height, and colour depth for the placeholders. eg:

mode 800 600 16 

Reboot, and with any luck you’ll be in business! If it doesn’t work with the settings you’ve chosen, try different combinations of screen size and colour depth and you might have better luck. It’s also very important not to allow any extra white space in this line, no extra spaces on the end, and no extra lines. Do be sure to add a hard return after the single line above.
Note that VESA 2.0 support is required to use VESA with the BeOS. I find the Microsoft System Diagnostics (c:windowsmsd.exe or c:dosmsd.exe) program which comes with Windows 95 (but not 98) and older versions of DOS very handy for determining whether or not your video card supports VESA 2.0. Note also that screen savers do not work in VESA mode.

Eric Ball (ekball@arvotek.net) points out that it’s possible to get color mode even if your card doesn’t support VESA 2! Here’s how:
If BeOS 5 PE doesn’t support your graphics card you may be able to use the VESA option. First check to see whether your graphics card has native VESA support by using the Spacebar at boot option as described above. But if when you press spacebar you don’t get the option to change video, don’t give up hope.

1. Download SciTech Display Doctor for DOS from http://www.scitechsoft.com. (And while you are there, join the SciTech Products for BeOS mailing list at http://www.scitechsoft.com/sdd_be .html.)
2. Run the self extracting file (sdd653.exe), then the install.exe.
3. Create a DOS boot disk (format a: /q /u /s).
4. From the SciTech Display Doctor subdirectory copy univbe.exe and uconfig.exe to the floppy.
5. From the BeOS subdirectory copy loadbeos.com and zbeos to the floppy.
6. Reboot using the floppy.
7. Run univbe to detect your graphics chip and set up the VESA mode.
8. Run loadbeos and press spacebar when the logo appears.
9. Select your favorite graphics mode and enjoy BeOS in color.

Please note that SciTech Display Doctor is a commercial program. You will be able to use it for a trial period, but you should purchase it if you plan to keep on using it.

James Perih (jamesperih@hotmail.com) adds the following information:
In addition to the commercial SciTech product, your older video card may have come with a free VESA-enabler tsr, in the case of my ATI Mach64 CT.
Thus, much like the SciTech method of booting BeOS with color support, you would instead run your card’s own tsr, then loadbeos. Often times, using the VESA-enabler tsr that came with your video card is perferrable over using the more generic and commercial SciTech Display Doctor.
You can check your companies web site, or other driver sites for the TSR you need, often falling under the category of DOS Drivers, VESA drivers, or others to that effect.

If for some reason you’re not able to rip tracks directly from audio CDs, there’s always the analog alternative. You can use Be’s bundled SoundRecorder utility to record audio from your CD-ROM, directly through your soundcard.
[Editor’s note: The quality of the extracted audio will not be as good with this method as with normal ripping techniques, since the audio will have to pass through an analog stage.]
Launch the Media preferences panel, select Audio Input on the left, and change the Source to CD. Now, fire up CDPlayer and SoundRecorder. Start playing your audio CD, and hit the Record button in Sound Recorder to start recording.
When done recording, press Stop in Sound Recorder. From there you can edit to your heart’s desire, and/or save the recorded audio to disk by clicking on the equalizer and draging the file into a folder or onto the Desktop.

Update: The bulk of this tip is preserved for posterity, but in the editor’s humble opinion, is unnecessarily complex. If all you want to do is burn audio CDs, BeOS includes the „CDBurner“ application, which makes the process incredibly easy. CdManager is also excellent. If you want to burn data CDs, I recommend downloading WriteCD or Melt — both programs take the pain out of the process described below. Remember also that Be’s CDBurner can be used to actually burn the data track once you’ve created and loaded up an image file — just pull down Disc | Add Data Track.
The original tip is below.

Jean de Pompignan has written a complete tutorial (in French), which has been translated into English by Mark J.P. Vergee. The authors have graciously given permission for us to mirror the English translation here at the Tip Server.

HOWTO burn a cd with the BeOs

French Original by Jean de Pompignan jean@cybercable.fr, 
English translation by Mark J.P. Vergeer mvergeer@hotmail.com

Version 0.5, 14 july 1999

This document covers the process of burning a cd with under BeOs.

Contents

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Installating the software
• 2.1 Things you need to install
• 2.2 Installing bash
• 2.3 Installing cdrecord
• 2.4 Installing mkhybrid
• 3 Creating a disk image
• 3.1 Creating a BeFs disk image
• 3.2 Creating an ISO 9660 disk image
• 4 Burning the image onto the CD
• 4.1 Collecting information about cdwriter
• 4.2 Starting the burning process
• 4.3 Easier/quicker way of doing it? 
• 5 Documentation
• 6 Recapitulation for people who do not want to read a lot

1. Introduction

Contents
This first version recapitulates the operations which Jean carried out to burn a CD by using the BeOS. He tried to make a compilation of the various experiments and documents he found in the news, the howto Linux in French, the Be site and the BeOs Tip server,

• If you do not want to use the terminal you’d better stop here because there is not a single application that makes the creation of a disk image and the burning of a cd-rom possible by just clicking an icon.
• It is assumed that your CD-writer is functioning properly under other operating systems, because this document will not help you solving SCSI, IDE problems resulting in not working devices.
• Jean test platform was the BeOS R4.5 on intel, the PPC users are hereby encouraged to let us know the results of their experiments. Jean used an IDE 4/4/12 Yahama cd-writer, but it should work well with other cd-writers that are supported by cdrecord. (see the list of supported cd-writers in the doc. file of the cdrecord program)
• Jean is currently testing the creation of bootable cd-roms, some updates docs will follow soon.
• Jean didn’t try to make an audio cd-rom yet, but updates on that subject will follow soon.
• Please let me know of if I made any spelling mistakes, omissions or other errors. Jean will appreciate any suggestions to improve this HOWTO.
• Doesn’t it work for you ? Just read the documentation again, the solution is probably there. I can’t help you on this, it worked for Jean the first time he did it.

The steps that need to be taken :

1. Installing and configuring the software. (that’s the hardest part)
2. Make a disk image for the cd to be created. (some lines have to be typed on the terminal)
3. Burning the cd. (a line has to be typed)
4. Read the docs to go on…

2. Installing the software

Contents

2.1 Things you need to install :

1. Bash (if this is not installed the compilation of cdrecord will not work properly, you can try to skip this step)

ftp.ninemoons.com/pub/geekgadgets/be/i586/snapshots/990626/bin/ba sh-2.03-bin.tgz

2. Cdrecord (version 1.8) :

http://www.fokus.gmd.de/research/cc/glone/employees/joerg.schi lling/private/cdrecord.html

3. Mkhybrid (version 0.48a) :

http://www.xs4all.nl/~marcone/be.h tml (to get the binary and the documentation)

Jean created a folder named Download in his Home folder in which he put the two compressed files of cdrecord and mkhybrid.

2.2 Installing Bash and GeekGadgets

• read Install GeekGadget“ on the BeOs Tip server.
• Create a folder named GeekGadgets in /boot/apps.
• Create a folder etc in the previous folder (/boot/apps/GeekGadgets).
• Put the code listed below in a file named gg-startup.sh and save that in the etc folder you’ve just created. (/boot/apps/GeekGadgets/etc).

#! /bin/sh 
export GG=/boot/apps/GeekGadgets 
export PATH=$GG/bin:$GG/X11R6.3/bin:$PATH 
export LIBRARY_PATH=$GG/X11R6.3/lib:$LIBRARY_PATH 
export C_INCLUDE_PATH=$GG/include 
export SHELL=$GG/bin/bash 
export CONFIG_SHELL=$GG/bin/bash 
export BELIBRARIES=$BELIBRARIES:$GG/lib

• Open or create when it’s not there yet a file named .profile (do not forget the point) in your home folder and add the following line :

source /boot/apps/GeekGadgets/etc/gg-startup.sh

• It helps to install the man utility it will supply you with all the docs on cdrecord and a lot of other utilities

2.3 Installing cdrecord :

• Open a terminal and type :

cd /boot/download/
zip -d cdrecord-1.8a22.tar.gz
tar -xvf cdrecord-1..8a22.tar
cd cdrecord-1.8
make

• The computer will grind on that for about 2-3 minutes so you might as well have yourself a cup of coffee.
• Open the folder named cdrecord and if all went well you’ll be able to find an executable named cdrecord. Copy this file to the folder named  /boot/home/config/bin.
• It’s totally optional to install the man pages on cdrecord but it’s strongly recommended!
• Open a terminal and type :

cdrecord

You’ll see a list of available options appearing. To get the version ofcdrecord you can type

cdrecord -version

• that’s all for cdrecord !

2.4 Installing of Mkhybrid :

Mkhybrid is a version of mkisofs (based on mkisofs v1.11) that enables the creation of hybrid CD’s with ISO9660/HFS/JOLIET file systems. HFS (Hierarchial File System) is a file system used by Macintosh computers. Joliet is an extension of the ISO9660 standard used by Windows95-98 and NT that enables the use of long file names.

 
• Open a terminal and type :

cd /boot/download
gzip -d mkhybrid-0.48a.tar.gz
tar -xvf mkhybrid-0.48a.tar 
cd mkhybrid-0.48a
configure
make

3. Creating a disk image

Contents

3.1 Creating a BeFs disk image

Create a file named image.img on your harddisk, if you follow the procedures below it will be seen as an additional harddisk by BeOS then you are able to copy your files onto this harddisk image with Tracker or with some file management tool. The size of the image.img file should not exceed 650Mb. Before you create a cd from this image.img file it must be prepared by Tracker so that it’ll have all the attributes of a BeFs partition in ReadOnly mode. Cd’s created this way will not be readable by other operating systems because they still lack the ability to read the BeFs.

 
• read  „Preparing disk images“ by Marco Nelissen, on the BeOs Tip server

or even more simple just type something like :

dd if=/dev/zero of=/boot/home/image.img bs=1024k count=640 mkbfs 2048 image.img sync

to create an empty file image and type:

mkdir /mnt mount -t bfs image.img /mnt

to mount it on the desktop.
Attention!! Creating a large image file can take a long time….
An icon untitled will appear on the desktop and the file named image.img will seem to have disappeared from the home folder. But if you use the terminal you will be able to verify that it is still there.
You can give the ’new‘ harddisk a volume name, hummingbird for example and copy onto it all you like. When you finished copying your files, unmount the the volume (right mouse click on the icon and unmount). Go to stage 4 to burn your cd.

3.2 Creating an ISO9660 disk image

1. Create a folder named cdromiso in your home folder.
2. Copy into this folder all the files you want to be burned onto the cd.
3. To create an image image.img with the volume name ‚Hummingbird“, open a terminal and type  :

mkhybrid -a -r -J -V Hummingbird -o imageiso.img /boot/home/cdromiso/

4. The file imageiso.img is the file that will be used to burn the cd with cdrecord.

4. Burning the image onto a CD

Contents
Type cdrecord in a terminal to see all the options that are available (I’ll explain below what is used in this howto document if you do not care to read the documents).

4.1 Collecting information about cdwriter

You need to know the addresses of your cdwriter (SCSI or IDE), open a terminal and type

cdrecord -scanbus

You’ll get an feedback that will inform you about the position of your cd-writer on the cable (IDE or SCSI), for example

$ cdrecord - scanbus
Cdrecord release 1.8a22 Copyright (C) 1995-1999 Jörg Schilling
scsibus8:
             &n
bsp;  800) *
             &n
bsp;  801) 'TOSHIBA ' 'DVD-ROM SD-M1202' '1018' Removable CD-ROM
             &n
bsp;  802) *
             &n
bsp;  803) *
             &n
bsp;  804) *
             &n
bsp;  805) *
             &n
bsp;  806) *
             &n
bsp;  807) *
scsibus9:
             &n
bsp;  900) 'YAMAHA  '
 'CRW4416E        ' '1.0f' Removable
 CD-ROM
             &n
bsp;  901) 'IOMEGA  ' 'ZIP
 100         ' '23.D' Removable Disk
             &n
bsp;  902) *
             &n
bsp;  903) *
             &n
bsp;  904) *
             &n
bsp;  905) *
             &n
bsp;  906) *
             &n
bsp;  907) *

900 is the address of the cdwriter, so in this case it will be neccessary
to include the following in the command line of cdrecord:

dev=9,0,0

4.2 Starting the burning process :

You can test the burning process by typing the following (all operations
go exactly as in a real cd-burning process, except for the laser not being
turned on):

cdrecord -v -dummy dev=9,0,0 speed=4 -data /boot/home/image.img

To actually burn/write/record the cd type the following :

cdrecord -v dev=9,0,0 speed=4 -data /boot/home/image.img

(if your write is configured as a master on the secundairy IDE)
Once your cd has been burned you are free to delete the image.img file.

4.3 Easier/Quicker way of doing it?

Copy the following lines to your .profile file (change dev=9,0,0 to the actual address of your cdwriter) :

# Burning CD's
function testcd {
cdrecord -v -dummy dev=9,0,0 speed=4 -data /boot/home/image.img
}
function burncd {
cdrecord -v dev=9,0,0 speed=4 -data /boot/home/image.img
}
function createimage {
dd if=/dev/zero of=/boot/home/image.img bs=1024k count=640
mkbfs 2048 /boot/home/image.img
sync
}
function createiso {
mkhybrid -a -r -J -V colibri -o /boot/home/imageiso.img /boot/home/cdromiso/
}
function testcdiso {
cdrecord -v -dummy dev=9,0,0 speed=4 -data /boot/home/imageiso.img
}
function burncdiso {
cdrecord -v dev=9,0,0 speed=4 -data /boot/home/imageiso.img
}
function mountimage {
mkdir /mnt
mount -t bfs image.img /mnt
}

Open a new terminal, as long as you don’t throw away your initial image
you can type   :

createimage

to create an image with the BeFs and

moountimage

to mount the disk image. As soon as you finished copying files to the image
you dismount it and you can type :

testcd

to test the burning process, and

burncd

to start burning your cd.
To create an ISO 9660 CD, make a folder cdromiso in your home folder
and copy the files you want on your cd in this cdromiso folder. To create
the image type :

createiso

to test  type

testcdiso

burncdiso

to start burning the iso image.
Who said burning a cd was complicated?

5. Documentation

Contents

• The Be Newsletter 43: Mastering your own BeOS Demo CD

ht tp://www-classic.be.com/aboutbe/benewsletter/volume_II/Issue43.html

• The French and English howto burn cd with Linux is there, or almost…

http://www .freenix.org/unix/linux/HOWTO/CD-Writing-HOWTO.html

• Everything about writing CD’s (Yes everything!)

http://perso.wanadoo .fr/marc.kergomard/gravure.html

• The same in English

http://www.fadden.com/cdrfaq/

• For cdrecord, read the following files in the cdrecord archive :

COPYING, README, README.ATAPI, README.audio, README.cdplus, README.cdrw, README.compile, README.copy, README.mkisofs, README.multi, README.verify and the man files on cdrecord named cdrecord.man.

• For mkhybrid,  read the following files that are in the mkhybrid archive

README, README.eltorito, README.mkhybrid, README.session, TODO, README.compile and the man file on mkhybrid.8.

6. Recapitulation for the easily distracted

Contents

# to create a file with the size of the cd that is to be created dd if=/dev/zero of=/boot/home/image.img bs=1024k count=640
mkbfs 2048 image..img
sync
mkdir /mnt
mount -t bfs image.img /mnt
cdrecord -scanbus
 on the 2nd IDE bus)
cdrecord -checkdrive dev=9,0,0
 2nd IDE bus)
cdrecord -v -dummy dev=9,0,0 speed=4 -data /boot/home/image.img
 on the 2nd IDE bus)
cdrecord -v dev=9,0,0 speed=4 -data /boot/home/image.img 
mkhybrid -a -r -J -V colibri -o image.img /boot/home/cdrom/

If you’re serving your site with the Robin Hood web server, you’ll discover that it’s default configuration is to let users view the contents of directories on your site when an index.html file is not present.
If this is not the behavior you want, you can either put a blank or redirecting index.html file in each directory you want to be off-limits, or you can remove the DirectoryHandler module altogether. If you do this, however, you’ll notice that further accesses on that directory name cause the server to loop, because the requests are passed on to the FileHandler, which tries to append a ‚/‘ to the end of the URL, and so on.
If you don’t want to display your directories to the world (and give them a 404 message instead), comment out the following line in your virtual resources file and restart the rhdaemon:

VRes: pattern="*index.html" pattern="index" type="application/x-vnd.Be-directory" real=false;

The purpose of this line is to make the DirectoryHandler display the contents of a directory when index.html file is absent and provide the means to display the contents of the root directory when index.html file is present.

Joe Kloss, RobinHood’s author, adds the following information:
If you don’t want to let other people see a directory listing, clear the ‚x‘ bit for others on the directory. For example:

chmod o-x myPrivateDirectory

If you try to access such a directory listing, you will be prompted for the username/password for the Realm in which the directory lives.
Note: The older version of RobinHood (1.0) used the ‚r‘ bit instead of the ‚x‘ bit.

David Muszynski (david@technospider.com) offers additional information:
To properly implement the RHDirectoryHandler you need to pay special attention to the permissions you assign to each directory that lives in your webroot folder. If you want people to be able to see a listing of the files in a particular directory, for example ‚foo‘ first make sure you don’t have an index.html file in it, then set the executable bit for others to on (a nice graphical way to do this is to use SetPerms). That means that http://www.test.com/foo will show the contents of ‚foo‘.
If you don’t want people to see the contents set the executable bit to off and they will be greeted with a dialog asking for a username and password. You must also keep in mind that when working with RobinHood http://www.test.com/foo is requesting something totally different than http://www.test.com/foo/ The first URL is asking for the contents of the directory ‚foo‘, while the second is actually mapping that trailing ‚/‘ to index.html. So if you have full sites that live in sub-directories of your webroot folder be sure that all your links to them have the trailing ‚/‘ hard coded in them.

Finally, Joe Kloss chimes in with the definitive word:
If the RHDirectoryHandler is removed, the directory request will then be passed to the file handler. The file handler will then send a redirect as the reply pointing to the original URL with a ‚/‘ appended. If the browser follows the redirect and issues a new request, the URL pre-processor will append „index.html“ to the request and attempt to handle the new request. This is the standard behavior seen by most web- servers and it’s the reason your browser appears to automatically append the ‚/‘ when you omit it from a directory name.
You could do this selectively using RobinHood if you don’t want to remove the Directory Handler. You could add an entry to the Virtual Hosts file for any directories the user is likely to manually type where a directory listing is not appropriate or desired.
If you had directories named „alice“ and „bob/carol“, the following line will force these directories to be handled by the File Handler instead of the Directory Handler. The File Handler will do the automatic directory redirection for these requests, while all other directory request would be handled by the Directory Handler.

 VRes: pattern="alice" pattern="bob/carol" type="application/x-vnd.RHV.File" real=true; 

This behavior could be reversed if the priority of the File Handler and Directory Handler were exchanged. In this case, the File Handler would handle ( and redirect ) directories by default and you have to have explicit entries for the directories you wish to allow listings for. This would require a recompile of the modules.
The server does not actually need to be restarted when you add or remove a RobinHood module. The Module Roster node-monitors the modules directory and will automatically load or unload modules on-the-fly without being restarted. Removing the Directory Handler from the modules directory will disable it without needing to restart the server.
This is not true of the VH file, but it’s something I have been wanting to do. I could node-monitor the VH file for changes and reparse it when it does. With this feature there would never be a need to restart the server, with the exception of replacing the actual server with a newer version.

R4.5 includes the way-cool three-dimensional multi-track audio mixer 3dmiX. After you’ve had time to blow your mind suitably with that, take out some time to play with 3dmiX’s About box. Turn your speakers up loud and watch… but don’t just sit there — interact with it. Its behavior is difficult to describe; you just have to mess around.
A couple of undocumented secrets: The Spacebar has an immediate effect on tracer longevity, while the Tab key affects the base pitch of the background sound.

You’ve probably discovered the new Zip-o-Matic Tracker add-on already. But did you know you can launch Zip-o-Matic as a free-standing application, rather than as a Tracker add-on? (you’ll find it in /boot/beos/system/add-ons/Tracker/). Do so and it will sit there patiently, waiting for you to drag any collection of files and folders into its interface.

BeOS does not come bundled with the Unix-style man utility, though it does come with a small collection of man pages in HTML format (look in /boot/beos/documentation/Shell Tools/). If you’d like to get your hands on the real man utility, download Sebastien Bouchex’s port of man.
To get man running properly, you’ll need to have a minimal GeekGadets installation set up. The only GG component you absolutely must have is groff. Decompress groff in the GeekGadgets directory — its binary should end up in GeekGadgets/bin.
Once that’s taken care of, run the man install script and everything should „just work.“
The only thing you’re missing now is a collection of man files and a place to put them. man files are often included with command-line Unix/Linux utilities, and are included in almost all of the GeekGadgets packages. Drop man files into subdirectories of /boot/apps/GeekGadgets/man and everything will work just like man on Unix systems.

Note that the GeekGadgets collection also includes its own manutils port. However, that’s slightly trickier to set up than Bouchex’s port. The old instructions for installing GG’s manutils are preserved below.
Download the manutils binary from ftp.ninemoons.com/pub/GeekGadgets. Install man per the instructions in the tip Installing GeekGadgets.
In order for man to work, it requires that nroff is installed. Since nroff is part of the groff toolset, install groff as well. Unless you have the entire GeekGadgets collection installed, you’ll find that man looks for its own version of zcat, ignoring the one on your system. To get around this without installing all of GG, make a symlink from /bin/gzip to /boot/apps/GeekGadgets/bin/zcat.
Finally, you’ll need some man pages to view. At this writing, you’ll probably find it easiest to download man pages from the Amiga archive, also on GeekGadgets. Many shell utilities also come with their own man pages, and you’ll need to make sure man can find them. To modify man’s path, take a look in /boot/apps/GeekGadgets/etc/man.conf and edit its paths to suit. You should now have fully functional man capabilities on your BeOS system.
Also, according to Tom Spindler:
If you don’t want to bother with man itself but still need to view the occassional man file, just install groff from GeekGadgets. You’ll then be able to type:

groff -man -Tascii foo.man | less

Alternatively, you can use groff -mandoc. This provides a slightly different output format which some people prefer. If you omit -Tascii from the command above, output will be dumped to postscript format.
If you’d like to view man pages in HTML format, download and install Kristan Slack’s excellent NetMan utility after following the instructions above. You’ll then be able to launch man docs in NetPositive by typing simply netman commandname.

To get a Ricochet modem working with the BeOS:

1. Launch the Dial-Up Networking preferences panel.
2. Create a new connection by clicking on the drop-down menu next to „Connect To.“ Name it „Ricochet“ for ease of identification. Enter 777*PPP for the phone number and your user account name.
3. Click the Settings button and enter the Primary (168.253.48.19) and Secondary (198.6.1.1) Ricochet addresses. Leave Server Type set to Standard PPP. Click Done.
4. On Modem type, select Generic AT Commands, AT&F&C1&D2.
5. BeOS should have detected which port your modem is connected to. Unless you cannot access the modem at all, leave the default selection as is.
6. Set the modem speed to 57600.
7. Click Done. Leave the Dial-Up Networking window open.
8. Navigate to /boot/home/config/etc folder and find a file named ppp-script.sample. Make a copy of this file as ppp-script. Turn off the read-only status of this file by opening a Terminal and typing:

   chmod a+w /boot/home/config/etc/ppp-script

9. Open this file and delete everything except the #!/bin/sh at the beginning of the file.
10. On the next line, type „-vj“ without the quotes. BeOS executes this file every time you make a connection. Your file should look like this when done:

    -vj 

    What the -vj switch does is disable Van Jacobsen compression which is a transmission compression protocol that Ricochet does not support. Restore the read-only settings on the file with:

    chmod a-w /boot/home/config/etc/ppp-script

11. Returning to the Dial-Up Networking window, click the Connect button.
12. You should now be connected to the Ricochet network using PPP. At the bottom of the Dial-Up Networking box you should see in the „Connection“ section a counting timer indicating elapsed time online and your Local IP address (you can also access this information by right-clicking on the Deskbar DUN replicant and selecting Dial-Up Statistics from the context menu).
13. Enjoy