Installing FreeBSD

Applicable to: FreeBSD 6.x (i386)

This Sheet describes the procedure for installing FreeBSD. Before performing this procedure, you should review the FreeBSD Handbook article Installing FreeBSD.

1. Inventory your computer hardware and ensure that it is compatibile with FreeBSD. The current compatibility list can be found in the FreeBSD/i386 Hardware Notes.

Click here to view Luna's hardware configuration
Click here to view Pandora's hardware configuration
Click here to view Sentinel's hardware configuration

2. Insert FreeBSD CD #1 in the CD drive and turn on the computer.

You may need to go into the computer's system configuration and enable the CD drive as a boot device, or change the boot order so that the computer boots to the CD first. If your computer cannot boot from the CD drive, follow the instructions listed in the FreeBSD Installation Instructions for creating boot floppies.

3. If you are using a USB keyboard, choose the 'Boot FreeBSD with USB keyboard' option at the boot menu. (If you don't, your system will be non-responsive. Trust me...)

Note: If you are installing FreeBSD 5.x with a USB keyboard, choose the 'Escape to loader prompt' option at the boot menu, then enter the following commands:

OK set hint.atkbd.0.flags="0x1"
OK boot

4. If you wish to set up two hard drives as a RAID-1 mirroring drive system, perform the following:
1. From the main menu, choose 'Fixit' to get a shell prompt.
2. Determine which devices are your hard drives:

# atacontrol list

You should see something similar to:

...
ATA channel 2:
   Master:  ad4  Serial ATA v1.0
...
ATA channel 4:
   Master:  ad8  Serial ATA v1.0
...

In this example, the two drives which will be mirrored are ad4 and ad8.

3. Create the mirror array:

# atacontrol create RAID1 ad4 ad8

4. After the array has been created, you can check the status using atacontrol:

# atacontrol status ar0

The response should be:

ar0: ATA RAID1 subdisks: ad4 ad8 status: READY

5. To return to the Main Menu, enter:

# exit

At the main menu, choose 'Exit Install' to reboot the computer. After the computer reboots, the array device ar0 will be available for installing FreeBSD.

5. From the main menu, choose the 'Standard' installation.
6. In the FDISK Partition Editor, choose 'A' to use the entire disk. Choose 'S' to make this partition the boot partition. Press 'Q' to continue.
7. At the "Install Boot Manager" prompt, choose the appropriate boot manager. This procedure assumes that FreeBSD is the only operating system, so choose the 'Standard' master boot record.
8. In the Disklabel Editor, create the following partitions:

   ar0s1a   /      512MB as UFS2
   ar0s1b   swap   2048MB as swap  (4x system RAM)
   ar0s1d   /var   4096MB as UFS2 + Softupdates
   ar0s1e   /usr   remaining as UFS2 + Softupdates
   

Choose 'Q' to continue.

9. Choose Distributions:
   • Developer
   • Ports
   • Custom Distributions: Games

   Choose 'OK' to go to next menu.

10. Choose installation media. In this case CD/DVD.
11. At the 'Last Chance' warning, choose "YES."

(At this point the System will install...)

11. You will be prompted for several miscellaneous configuration options:
    1. Ethernet device 'bge0':
       • IPv6 Config: No
       • DHCP: No
       • Host: machine_name.your_domain.tld
       • Domain: your_domain.tld
       • IP Address: 10.70.153.1

    Warning: If your network card is not included in the generic kernel, do not bring up the interface!

    2. Gateway: No
    3. inetd: Yes
    4. ssh: Yes (there is some follow-up in Post-Install Cleanup)
    5. Anonymous FTP: No
    6. NFS Server: No
    7. NFS Client: No
    8. Customize console: Fast repeat rate
    9. Time Zone: Local, not GMT. (set to your time zone)
    10. Linux Binary support: No
    11. Mouse Configuration: No (or set to your mouse, if you're using one)
    12. Packages: No
    13. Additional users: No (Add users after Post-Install Cleanup)
    14. Set 'root' password: ******
12. Exit install.

(System reboots...)