Before installing FreeBSD you should attempt to inventory the components in your
computer. The FreeBSD installation routines will show you the components (hard disks,
network cards, CDROM drives, and so forth) with their model number and manufacturer.
FreeBSD will also attempt to determine the correct configuration for these devices, which
includes information about IRQ and IO port usage. Due to the vagaries of PC hardware this
process is not always completely successful, and you may need to correct FreeBSD's
determination of your configuration.
If you already have another operating system installed, such as Windows® or Linux, it is a good idea to use the facilities
provided by those operating systems to see how your hardware is already configured. If
you are not sure what settings an expansion card is using, you may find it printed on the
card itself. Popular IRQ numbers are 3, 5, and 7, and IO port addresses are normally
written as hexadecimal numbers, such as 0x330.
We recommend you print or write down this information before installing FreeBSD. It
may help to use a table, like this:
Table 2-1. Sample Device Inventory
Device Name
IRQ
IO port(s)
Notes
First hard disk
N/A
N/A
40 GB, made by Seagate, first IDE master
CDROM
N/A
N/A
First IDE slave
Second hard disk
N/A
N/A
20 GB, made by IBM, second IDE master
First IDE controller
14
0x1f0
Network card
N/A
N/A
Intel® 10/100
Modem
N/A
N/A
3Com® 56K faxmodem, on COM1
...
Once the inventory of the components in your computer is done, you have to check if
they match the hardware requirements of the FreeBSD release you want to install.
If the computer you will be installing FreeBSD on contains valuable data, then ensure
you have it backed up, and that you have tested the backups before installing FreeBSD.
The FreeBSD installation routine will prompt you before writing any data to your disk,
but once that process has started it cannot be undone.
If you want FreeBSD to use your entire hard disk, then there is nothing more to
concern yourself with at this point -- you can skip this section.
However, if you need FreeBSD to co-exist with other operating systems then you need to
have a rough understanding of how data is laid out on the disk, and how this affects
you.
A PC disk can be divided into discrete chunks. These chunks are called partitions. Since FreeBSD internally also has partitions, the
naming can become confusing very quickly, therefore these disk chunks are referred to as
disk slices or simply slices in FreeBSD itself. For example, the FreeBSD utility fdisk which operates on the PC disk partitions, refers to slices
instead of partitions. By design, the PC only supports four partitions per disk. These
partitions are called primary partitions. To work around this
limitation and allow more than four partitions, a new partition type was created, the extended partition. A disk may contain only one extended partition.
Special partitions, called logical partitions, can be created
inside this extended partition.
Each partition has a partition ID, which is a number used to
identify the type of data on the partition. FreeBSD partitions have the partition ID of
165.
In general, each operating system that you use will identify partitions in a
particular way. For example, DOS, and its descendants, like Windows, assign each primary and logical partition a drive letter, starting with C:.
FreeBSD must be installed into a primary partition. FreeBSD can keep all its data,
including any files that you create, on this one partition. However, if you have multiple
disks, then you can create a FreeBSD partition on all, or some, of them. When you install
FreeBSD, you must have one partition available. This might be a blank partition that you
have prepared, or it might be an existing partition that contains data that you no longer
care about.
If you are already using all the partitions on all your disks, then you will have to
free one of them for FreeBSD using the tools provided by the other operating systems you
use (e.g., fdisk on DOS or Windows).
If you have a spare partition then you can use that. However, you may need to shrink
one or more of your existing partitions first.
A minimal installation of FreeBSD takes as little as 100 MB of disk space.
However, that is a very minimal
install, leaving almost no space for your own files. A more realistic minimum is
250 MB without a graphical environment, and 350 MB or more if you want a
graphical user interface. If you intend to install a lot of third-party software as well,
then you will need more space.
You can use a commercial tool such as PartitionMagic®, or a free tool such as GParted, to resize your partitions and make space for FreeBSD.
The tools directory on the CDROM contains two free software
tools which can carry out this task, namely FIPS and PResizer. Documentation for both of these is available in the
same directory. FIPS, PResizer, and
PartitionMagic can resize
FAT16 and FAT32
partitions -- used in MS-DOS® through Windows ME. Both PartitionMagic and GParted are
known to work on NTFS. GParted is available on a number of Live CD Linux distributions,
such as SystemRescueCD.
Problems have been reported resizing Microsoft®
Vista partitions. Having a Vista installation CDROM handy when attempting such an
operation is recommended. As with all such disk maintenance tasks, a current set of
backups is also strongly advised.
Warning: Incorrect use of these tools can delete the data on your disk. Be sure
that you have recent, working backups before using them.
Example 2-1. Using an Existing Partition Unchanged
Suppose that you have a computer with a single 4 GB disk that already has a
version of Windows installed, and you have split the disk
into two drive letters, C: and D:, each of which is 2 GB in size. You have 1 GB of
data on C:, and 0.5 GB of data on D:.
This means that your disk has two partitions on it, one per drive letter. You can copy
all your existing data from D: to C:, which will free up the second partition, ready for
FreeBSD.
Example 2-2. Shrinking an Existing Partition
Suppose that you have a computer with a single 4 GB disk that already has a
version of Windows installed. When you installed Windows you created one large partition, giving you a C: drive that is 4 GB in size. You are currently using
1.5 GB of space, and want FreeBSD to have 2 GB of space.
In order to install FreeBSD you will need to either:
Backup your Windows data, and then reinstall Windows, asking for a 2 GB partition at install time.
Use one of the tools such as PartitionMagic, described above, to shrink your Windows partition.
You will need a dedicated disk for FreeBSD on the Alpha. It is not possible to share a
disk with another operating system at this time. Depending on the specific Alpha machine
you have, this disk can either be a SCSI disk or an IDE disk, as long as your machine is
capable of booting from it.
Following the conventions of the Digital / Compaq manuals all SRM input is shown in
uppercase. SRM is case insensitive.
To find the names and types of disks in your machine, use the SHOW
DEVICE command from the SRM console prompt:
This example is from a Digital Personal Workstation 433au and shows three disks
attached to the machine. The first is a CDROM drive called DKA0 and the other two are disks and are called DKC0 and DKC100 respectively.
Disks with names of the form DKx are SCSI disks. For
example DKA100 refers to a SCSI disk with SCSI target ID 1 on
the first SCSI bus (A), whereas DKC300 refers to a SCSI disk
with SCSI ID 3 on the third SCSI bus (C). Devicename PKx
refers to the SCSI host bus adapter. As seen in the SHOW DEVICE
output SCSI CDROM drives are treated as any other SCSI hard disk drive.
IDE disks have names similar to DQx, while PQx is the associated IDE controller.
If you intend to connect to a network as part of your FreeBSD installation (for
example, if you will be installing from an FTP site or an NFS server), then you need to
know your network configuration. You will be prompted for this information during the
installation so that FreeBSD can connect to the network to complete the install.
If you connect to an Ethernet network, or you have an Internet connection using an
Ethernet adapter via cable or DSL, then you will need the following information:
IP address
IP address of the default gateway
Hostname
DNS server IP addresses
Subnet Mask
If you do not know this information, then ask your system administrator or service
provider. They may say that this information is assigned automatically, using DHCP. If so, make a note of this.
Although the FreeBSD project strives to ensure that each release of FreeBSD is as
stable as possible, bugs do occasionally creep into the process. On very rare occasions
those bugs affect the installation process. As these problems are discovered and fixed,
they are noted in the FreeBSD Errata, which is found on the FreeBSD web site. You should
check the errata before installing to make sure that there are no late-breaking problems
which you should be aware of.
Information about all the releases, including the errata for each release, can be
found on the release
information section of the FreeBSD web
site.
The FreeBSD installation process can install FreeBSD from files located in any of the
following places:
Local Media
A CDROM or DVD
A DOS partition on the same computer
A SCSI or QIC tape
Floppy disks
Network
An FTP site, going through a firewall, or using an HTTP proxy, as necessary
An NFS server
A dedicated parallel or serial connection
If you have purchased FreeBSD on CD or DVD then you already have everything you need,
and should proceed to the next section (Section 2.3.7).
If you have not obtained the FreeBSD installation files you should skip ahead to Section 2.13 which explains how to prepare to install
FreeBSD from any of the above. After reading that section, you should come back here, and
read on to Section 2.3.7.
The FreeBSD installation process is started by booting your computer into the FreeBSD
installer--it is not a program you run within another operating system. Your computer
normally boots using the operating system installed on your hard disk, but it can also be
configured to use a “bootable” floppy disk. Most modern computers can also
boot from a CDROM in the CDROM drive.
Tip: If you have FreeBSD on CDROM or DVD (either one you purchased or you
prepared yourself), and your computer allows you to boot from the CDROM or DVD (typically
a BIOS option called “Boot Order” or similar), then you can skip this
section. The FreeBSD CDROM and DVD images are bootable and can be used to install FreeBSD
without any other special preparation.
To create boot floppy images, follow these steps:
Acquire the Boot Floppy Images
The boot disks are available on your installation media in the floppies/ directory, and can also be downloaded from the floppies
directory, ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/<arch>/<version>-RELEASE/floppies/. Replace <arch> and <version> with the architecture and the version
number which you want to install, respectively. For example, the boot floppy images for
FreeBSD/i386 7.0-RELEASE are available from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/7.0-RELEASE/floppies/.
The floppy images have a .flp extension. The floppies/ directory contains a number of different images, and the
ones you will need to use depends on the version of FreeBSD you are installing, and in
some cases, the hardware you are installing to. In most cases you will need four
floppies, boot.flp, kern1.flp, kern2.flp, and kern3.flp. Check README.TXT in the same directory for the most up to date
information about these floppy images.
Important: Your FTP program must use binary mode to download these disk images. Some web browsers
have been known to use text (or
ASCII) mode, which will be apparent
if you cannot boot from the disks.
Prepare the Floppy Disks
You must prepare one floppy disk per image file you had to download. It is imperative
that these disks are free from defects. The easiest way to test this is to format the
disks for yourself. Do not trust pre-formatted floppies. The format utility in Windows will not tell about the presence of bad blocks, it
simply marks them as “bad” and ignores them. It is advised that you use brand
new floppies if choosing this installation route.
Important: If you try to install FreeBSD and the installation program crashes,
freezes, or otherwise misbehaves, one of the first things to suspect is the floppies. Try
writing the floppy image files to new disks and try again.
Write the Image Files to the Floppy Disks
The .flp files are not regular files you copy to the disk. They are images of
the complete contents of the disk. This means that you cannot simply copy files from one disk to another. Instead,
you must use specific tools to write the images directly to the disk.
If you are creating the floppies on a computer running MS-DOS/Windows, then we provide a
tool to do this called fdimage.
If you are using the floppies from the CDROM, and your CDROM is the E: drive, then you would run this:
E:\>tools\fdimage floppies\boot.flp A:
Repeat this command for each .flp file, replacing the floppy
disk each time, being sure to label the disks with the name of the file that you copied
to them. Adjust the command line as necessary, depending on where you have placed the .flp files. If you do not have the CDROM, then fdimage can be downloaded from the tools directory on the FreeBSD FTP site.
If you are writing the floppies on a UNIX® system
(such as another FreeBSD system) you can use the dd(1) command to write
the image files directly to disk. On FreeBSD, you would run:
#dd if=boot.flp of=/dev/fd0
On FreeBSD, /dev/fd0 refers to the first floppy disk (the
A: drive). /dev/fd1 would be the
B: drive, and so on. Other UNIX variants might have different names for the floppy disk
devices, and you will need to check the documentation for the system as necessary.
