So, you would like to try out FreeBSD on your system? This section is a quick-start guide for what you need to do. FreeBSD can be installed from a variety of media including CD-ROM, floppy disk, magnetic tape, an MS-DOS partition and, if you have a network connection, via anonymous ftp or NFS.
Regardless of the installation media you choose, you can get started by creating the installation disks as described below. Booting your computer into the FreeBSD installer, even if you aren't planning on installing FreeBSD right away, will provide important information about compatibility between FreeBSD and your hardware which may, in turn, dictate which installation options are even possible. It can also provide early clues to any compatibility problems which could prevent FreeBSD running on your system at all.
If you plan on installing via anonymous FTP then the installation floppies are all that you need to download and create - the installation program itself will handle any further required downloading directly (using an ethernet connection, a modem and ppp dialup #, etc).
For more information on obtaining the latest FreeBSD distributions, please see Obtaining FreeBSD in the Appendix.
So, to get the show on the road, follow these steps:
Review the supported configurations section of this installation guide to be sure that your hardware is supported by FreeBSD. It may be helpful to make a list of any special cards you have installed, such as SCSI controllers, Ethernet adapters or sound cards. This list should include relevant configuration parameters such as interrupts (IRQ) and IO port addresses.
If you're installing FreeBSD from CDROM media then you have several different installation options:
If the CD has been mastered with El Torrito boot support and your system supports direct booting from CDROM (and many older systems do not), simply insert the CD into the drive and boot directly from it.
If you're running DOS and have the proper drivers to access your CD, run the install.bat script provided on the CD. This will attempt to boot into the FreeBSD installation straight from DOS (note: You must do this from actual DOS and not a Windows DOS box). If you also want to install FreeBSD from your DOS partition (perhaps because your CDROM drive is completely unsupported by FreeBSD) then run the setup program first to copy the appropriate files from the CD to your DOS partition, afterwards running install.
If either of the two proceeding methods work then you can
simply skip the rest of this section, otherwise your final option
is to create a set of boot floppies from the
floppies\kern.flp and floppies\mfsroot.flp
images - proceed to step 4 for instructions on how to do
this.
If you don't have a CDROM distribution then simply read the installation boot image information to find out what files you need to download first.
Make the installation boot disks from the image files:
If you are using MS-DOS then download
fdimage.exe or get it from tools\fdimage.exe
on the CDROM and then run it like so:
E:\> tools\fdimage floppies\kern.flp a:
If you are using a UNIX system to create the floppy images:
% dd if=kern.flp of=disk_device
/dev
entry for the floppy drive. On FreeBSD systems, this
is /dev/rfd0 for the A: drive and
/dev/rfd1 for the B: drive.
With the kern.flp disk in the A: drive, reboot your computer. The next request you should get is for the mfsroot.flp floppy, after which the installation will proceed normally.
If you do not type anything at the boot prompt which appears during this process, FreeBSD will automatically boot with its default configuration after a delay of about five seconds. As FreeBSD boots, it probes your computer to determine what hardware is installed. The results of this probing is displayed on the screen.
When the booting process is finished, The main FreeBSD installation menu will be displayed.
If something goes wrong...
Due to limitations of the PC architecture, it is impossible for probing to be 100 percent reliable. In the event that your hardware is incorrectly identified, or that the probing causes your computer to lock up, first check the supported configurations section of this installation guide to be sure that your hardware is indeed supported by FreeBSD.
If your hardware is supported, reset the computer and when the visual kernel configuration choice is presented, take it. This puts FreeBSD into a configuration mode where you can supply hints about your hardware. The FreeBSD kernel on the installation disk is configured assuming that most hardware devices are in their factory default configuration in terms of IRQs, IO addresses and DMA channels. If your hardware has been reconfigured, you will most likely need to use the configuration editor to tell FreeBSD where things are.
It is also possible that a probe for a device not present
will cause a later probe for another device that is present
to fail. In that case, the probes for the conflicting
driver(s) should be disabled.
Do not disable any device you will need during installation,
such as your screen (sc0). If the installation wedges
or fails mysteriously after leaving the configuration editor,
you've probably removed or changed something you shouldn't have.
Simply reboot and try again.
In the configuration mode, you can:
After adjusting the kernel to match how you have
your hardware configured, type Q to continue booting
with the new settings.
After FreeBSD has been installed, changes made in the configuration mode will be permanent so you do not have to reconfigure every time you boot. Even so, it is likely that you will want to build a custom kernel to optimize the performance of your system. See Kernel configuration for more information on creating custom kernels.