Before installing FreeBSD it is recommended to inventory the components in the computer. The FreeBSD installation routines will show components such as hard disks, network cards, and CDROM drives with their model number and manufacturer. FreeBSD will also attempt to determine the correct configuration for these devices, including information about IRQ and I/O port usage. Due to the vagaries of computer hardware, this process is not always completely successful, and FreeBSD may need some manual configuration.
If another operating system is already installed, use the
facilities provided by that operating systems to view the
hardware configuration. If the settings of an expansion card
are not obvious, check if they are printed on the card itself.
Popular IRQ numbers are 3, 5, and 7, and I/O port addresses
are normally written as hexadecimal numbers, such as
0x330.
It is recommended to print or write down this information before installing FreeBSD. It may help to use a table, as seen in this example:
| Device Name | IRQ | I/O 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 the computer is complete, check if it matches the hardware requirements of the FreeBSD release to install.
If the computer contains valuable data, ensure it is backed up, and that the backup has been tested before installing FreeBSD. The FreeBSD installer will prompt before writing any data to disk, but once that process has started, it cannot be undone.
If FreeBSD is to be installed on the entire hard disk, skip this section.
However, if FreeBSD will co-exist with other operating systems, a rough understanding of how data is laid out on the disk is useful.
A PC disk can be divided into discrete chunks known as partitions. Since FreeBSD also has partitions, naming can quickly become confusing. Therefore, these disk chunks are referred to as slices in FreeBSD. For example, the FreeBSD version of fdisk(8) 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 will identify
partitions in a particular way. For example, Windows®,
assigns each primary and logical partition a
drive letter, starting with
C:.
FreeBSD must be installed into a primary partition. If there are multiple disks, a FreeBSD partition can be created on all, or some, of them. When FreeBSD is installed, at least one partition must be available. This might be a blank partition or it might be an existing partition whose data can be overwritten.
If all the partitions on all the disks are in use, free
one of them for FreeBSD using the tools provided by an existing
operating system, such as Windows®
fdisk.
If there is a spare partition, use that. If it is too small, shrink one or more existing partitions to create more available space.
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 files. A more realistic minimum is 250 MB without a graphical environment, and 350 MB or more for a graphical user interface. If other third-party software will be installed, even more space is needed.
You can use a tool such as GParted to resize your partitions and make space for FreeBSD. GParted is known to work on NTFS and is available on a number of Live CD Linux distributions, such as SystemRescueCD.
Incorrect use of a shrinking tool can delete the data on the disk. Always have a recent, working backup before using this type of tool.
Consider a computer with a single 4 GB disk that
already has a version of Windows® installed, where the
disk has been split into two drive letters,
C: and D:, each
of which is 2 GB in size. There is 1 GB of data
on C:, and 0.5 GB of data on
D:.
This disk has two partitions, one per drive letter.
Copy all existing data from D: to
C:, which will free up the second
partition, ready for FreeBSD.
Consider a computer with a single 4 GB disk that
already has a version of Windows® installed. When
Windows® was installed, it created one large partition,
a C: drive that is 4 GB in size.
Currently, 1.5 GB of space is used, and FreeBSD should
have 2 GB of space.
In order to install FreeBSD, either:
Backup the Windows® data and then reinstall Windows®, asking for a 2 GB partition at install time.
Use one of the tools described above to shrink your Windows® partition.
Before installing from an FTP site or an NFS server, make note of the network configuration. The installer will prompt for this information so that it can connect to the network to complete the installation.
If using an Ethernet network or an Internet connection using an Ethernet adapter via cable or DSL, the following information is needed:
IP address
IP address of the default gateway
Hostname
DNS server IP addresses
Subnet Mask
If this information is unknown, ask the system administrator or service provider. Make note if this information is assigned automatically using DHCP.
If using a dialup modem, FreeBSD can still be installed over the Internet, it will just take a very long time.
You will need to know:
The phone number to dial the Internet Service Provider (ISP)
The COM: port the modem is connected to
The username and password for the ISP account
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 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 website. Check the errata before installing to make sure that there are no late-breaking problems to be aware of.
Information about all releases, including the errata for each release, can be found on the release information section of the FreeBSD website.
The FreeBSD installer can install FreeBSD from files located in any of the following places:
A CDROM or DVD
A USB Memory Stick
A MS-DOS® partition on the same computer
Floppy disks (FreeBSD/pc98 only)
An FTP site through a firewall or using an HTTP proxy
An NFS server
A dedicated parallel or serial connection
If installing from a purchased FreeBSD CD/DVD, skip ahead to Section 3.3.7, “Prepare the Boot Media”.
To obtain the FreeBSD installation files, skip ahead to Section 3.13, “Preparing Custom Installation Media” which explains how to prepare the installation media. After reading that section, come back here and read on to Section 3.3.7, “Prepare the Boot Media”.
The FreeBSD installation process is started by booting the computer into the FreeBSD installer. It is not a program that can be run within another operating system. The computer normally boots using the operating system installed on the hard disk, but it can also be configured to boot from a CDROM or from a USB disk.
If installing from a CD/DVD to a computer whose BIOS supports booting from the CD/DVD, skip this section. The FreeBSD CD/DVD images are bootable and can be used to install FreeBSD without any other special preparation.
To create a bootable memory stick, follow these steps:
Acquire the Memory Stick Image
Memory stick images for
FreeBSD 8.X can be downloaded
from the ISO-IMAGES/ directory at
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/.
Replace arch/ISO-IMAGES/version/FreeBSD-version-RELEASE-arch-memstick.imgarch and
version with the architecture
and the version number to install. For example, the
memory stick images for
FreeBSD/i386 9.3-RELEASE are
available from ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/9.3/FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img.
A different directory path is used for
FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE and later versions. How to
download and install
FreeBSD 9.X
is covered in Chapter 2, Installing FreeBSD 9.X and
Later.
The memory stick image has a .img
extension. The ISO-IMAGES/ directory
contains a number of different images and the one to
use depends on the version of FreeBSD and the type of media
supported by the hardware being installed to.
Before proceeding, back up the data on the USB stick, as this procedure will erase it.
Write the Image File to the Memory Stick
The example below lists
/dev/da0 as the target device
where the image will be written. Be very careful that
you have the correct device as the output target, or
you may destroy your existing data.
Writing the Image with dd(1)
The .img file is
not a regular file that can just
be copied to the memory stick. It is an image of the
complete contents of the disk. This means that
dd(1) must be used to write the image directly to
the disk:
#dd if=FreeBSD-9.3-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img of=/dev/da0bs=64k
If an Operation not
permitted error is displayed, make
certain that the target device is not in use, mounted,
or being automounted by another program. Then try
again.
Make sure to use the correct drive letter as the output target, as this command will overwrite and destroy any existing data on the specified device.
Obtaining Image Writer for Windows
Image Writer for
Windows is a free application that can
correctly write an image file to a memory stick.
Download it from https://launchpad.net/win32-image-writer/
and extract it into a folder.
Writing the Image with Image Writer
Double-click the
Win32DiskImager icon to
start the program. Verify that the drive letter shown
under Device is the
drive with the memory stick. Click the folder icon
and select the image to be written to the memory
stick. Click to accept
the image file name. Verify that everything is
correct, and that no folders on the memory stick are
open in other windows. Finally, click
to write the image file
to the drive.
To create the boot floppy images for a FreeBSD/pc98 installation, follow these steps:
Acquire the Boot Floppy Images
The FreeBSD/pc98 boot disks can be downloaded from
the floppies directory,
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/pc98/.
Replace version-RELEASE/floppies/version with the
version number to install.
The floppy images have a .flp
extension. floppies/ contains a number
of different images. Download
boot.flp as well as the number of
files associated with the type of installation, such as
kern.small* or
kern*.
The FTP program must use binary mode to download these disk images. Some web browsers use text or ASCII mode, which will be apparent if the disks are not bootable.
Prepare the Floppy Disks
Prepare one floppy disk per downloaded image file. It is imperative that these disks are free from defects. The easiest way to test this is to reformat the disks. 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 to use brand new floppies.
If the installer crashes, freezes, or otherwise misbehaves, one of the first things to suspect is the floppies. Write 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 that can be copied
to the disk. They are images of the complete contents of
the disk. Specific tools must be used to write the
images directly to the disk.
FreeBSD provides a tool called rawrite
for creating the floppies on a computer running Windows®.
This tool can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/pc98/ on the
FreeBSD FTP site. Download this tool, insert a floppy, then
specify the filename to write to the floppy drive:
version-RELEASE/tools/
C:\>rawrite 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. Adjust the
command line as necessary, depending on where the
.flp files are located.
When writing the floppies on a UNIX®-like system, such as another FreeBSD system, use dd(1) to write the image files directly to disk. On FreeBSD, run:
#dd if=boot.flp of=/dev/fd0
On FreeBSD, /dev/fd0 refers to the
first floppy disk. Other UNIX® variants might have
different names for the floppy disk device, so check the
documentation for the system as necessary.
You are now ready to start installing FreeBSD.
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]>.