Beginning with FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE, FreeBSD provides an easy
to use, text-based installation
program named bsdinstall. This
chapter describes how to install FreeBSD using
bsdinstall. The use of
sysinstall, which is the installation
program used by FreeBSD 8.x, is covered in Chapter 3, Installing FreeBSD 8.X.
In general, the installation instructions in this chapter are written for the i386™ and AMD64 architectures. Where applicable, instructions specific to other platforms will be listed. There may be minor differences between the installer and what is shown here, so use this chapter as a general guide rather than as a set of literal instructions.
Users who prefer to install FreeBSD using a graphical installer may be interested in pc-sysinstall, the installer used by the PC-BSD Project. It can be used to install either a graphical desktop (PC-BSD) or a command line version of FreeBSD. Refer to the PC-BSD Users Handbook for details (http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/PC-BSD%C2%AE_Users_Handbook/10.1).
After reading this chapter, you will know:
The minimum hardware requirements and FreeBSD supported architectures.
How to create the FreeBSD installation media.
How to start bsdinstall.
The questions bsdinstall will ask, what they mean, and how to answer them.
How to troubleshoot a failed installation.
How to access a live version of FreeBSD before committing to an installation.
Before reading this chapter, you should:
Read the supported hardware list that shipped with the version of FreeBSD to be installed and verify that the system's hardware is supported.
All FreeBSD documents are available for download at http://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/
Questions that are not answered by the
documentation may be
sent to <[email protected]>.
Send questions about this document to <[email protected]>.