Here are some tips about getting started with FreeBSD...
BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER
Making Room for FreeBSD
Making the FreeBSD Boot Diskette and Booting
You'll Need To Know...
FreeBSD Documentation
Installation Files
Further information on FreeBSD
If you don't already have a tape drive for backing up your hard disk, STOP NOW and GO GET ONE! Then, make a backup (or two) of your DOS hard disk BEFORE you attempt to install FreeBSD for dual-boot. Parallel port tape drives are fine for DOS and Windows, but FreeBSD does not support them. The same holds true for "floppy" tapes and IDE tape drives. About the only tape drive UN*X seems to handle well is a SCSI tape.
If you don't care about losing EVERYthing on your hard disk, then proceed with the installation per the information that comes with FreeBSD. You'll find the INSTALL.TXT file on the FreeBSD FTP site and on the CD-ROM.
Also, if you don't have a U.P.S. (uninterruptible power supply) for your computer, then don't leave FreeBSD running unattended - a power outage can TRASH your FreeBSD partition(s)!
The remainder of this discussion assumes that you are already running DOS, or MS-DOS V7 (Windows/95 without the GUI).
If you're like most of us, you've already got a DOS partition that takes up your entire hard disk. Here's how you can (maybe) make room to add FreeBSD:
First, download (from the FreeBSD FTP site) the FIPS program. You'll need it in a later step.
Second, run the DEFRAG program to consolidate all of the freespace near the "beginning" of the disk. DEFRAG is found in MS-DOS V6 and later. You can also use the COMPRESS program in the PC-TOOLS collection, the corresponding program among the Norton Utilities, or whatever your favorite disk defragmenter happens to be.
If your Windows swapfile is near the "end" of the disk, use the Windows Control panel to change from a permanent swapfile to temporary - this will delete the swapfile when you exit Windows. You may need to make this change, exit Windows, start it up again and exit one more time. Then, you can run the defragmenting program again to reclaim the space.
Now, use the DIR command to determine how much of your disk is in use and what's left for FreeBSD. Divide the number of bytes free by 1,048,576 (1024^2) to get megabytes. If you have at least 60 MB or so, you should have enough for a very basic FreeBSD installation. 120 MB or better is suggested. If you're using and older DOS, use CHKDSK to display the total size of your disk and how much is left free.
Next, run the FIPS program to "shrink" the existing DOS partition. FIPS will prompt you for the information it needs. Be sure to have a pad and pencil handy! You may need to juggle some numbers!
Note for users of "large" hard disks...
If you have a "large" hard disk (more than 525 MB), note that there are some special considerations. Please refer to the FreeBSD INSTALL.TXT for further guidance. Your DOS and FreeBSD bootable partitions must both begin before the 1024th cylinder of the disk as viewed by the BIOS (BIOS limitation).
You'll find a further discussion of this in the FreeBSD INSTALL.TXT.
Making the FreeBSD Boot Diskette and Booting
You'll need two files from the FreeBSD FTP site: either FDIMAGE.EXE or RAWRITE.EXE (DOS programs), and the BOOT.FLP files.
Start with a freshly-formatted DOS diskette. Factory formatted diskettes are only about 80% reliable - format the diskette yourself and you'll save yourself a headache or two. Run the FDIMAGE (or RAWRITE) program. It will prompt you for the target diskette drive and the file to write. Most likely, this will be your A: drive; the file, of course, is BOOT.FLP.
To boot the boot diskette, first shutdown DOS - normally, you would just cycle the machine's power (or press CTRL+ALT+DELETE). However, if you use SMARTDRV or some other disk caching software, you should MANUALLY flush the cache to disk before you reboot. For SMARTDRV, the command is:
C:\> SMARTDRV/C
Insert the FreeBSD boot diskette in your A: drive and restart the machine. From here, you should refer to the FreeBSD INSTALL.TXT for further guidance.
Some items you'll need to know include the configuration of your machine: your hard disk adapter type (SCSI, IDE, etc.), what network card (if any) you may have, what CD-ROM and adapter you may have, etc. When the install kernel is first booted, you are asked for this information. It is NOT saved once it is entered; so, if you run the installation more than once, you'll need to go through this step each time.
Then, you'll be presented with a menu of installation options. Here is where you will select the installation media (CD-ROM, DOS partition, diskettes, NFS, etc.) and other install-time parameters.
When you actually begin the installation, you'll be asked how you want to arrange the filesystems (FreeBSD "sub-"partitions) in terms of sizes. The default values are usually good, unless you have a "small" hard disk (120 MB or less).
There comes a point when you can bail out of the install, before ANYthing is actually written to your hard disk. If you're unhappy with any choices you have made, THAT's the time to bail out! From there, the install is fairly automatic, unless you need to change diskettes because you're installing from diskettes.
PLEASE - PLEASE - PLEASE - printout the INSTALL.TXT and read it THOROUGHLY BEFORE you attempt to install FreeBSD!
There is also a "handbook" available for FreeBSD. You'll find it as a series of pages on the FreeBSD web site, a set of HTML files, a text file and also a PostScript file. There's nothing like having the documentation handy when a question arises, even if just to determine whether or not there's anything in the doc. to answer the question.
If you have a PostScript printer, we recommend downloading and printing the PostScript version of the handbook. (Users of HP LaserJet printers with a duplexer should set the printer to print two-sided by default.) There are about 365 pages to the handbook (maybe more since this book is a work-in-progress) and, when printed two-sided, it fits well in a 1-1/2 inch binder.
The text version is just as good and can be printed on ANY printer, although one with a duplex (two-sided) option is recommended. 300+ pages is a lot to handle single-sided!
The Files You'll Need To Install FreeBSD page contains hints about which FreeBSD files to download from the FTP site or copy from the CD-ROM (if you're installing from a DOS partition).
Introduction to FreeBSD
Installation Tips for FreeBSD
Getting Started with FreeBSD
Files You'll Need To Install FreeBSD
The REAL Story about "tarballs"
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This page Copyright ©1997 by David J. Dachtera, All Rights Reserved.