Help! I have no space! Do I need to delete everything first? If your machine is already running MS-DOS and has little or no free space available for FreeBSD's installation, all is not lost! You may find the FIPS utility, provided in the tools directory on the FreeBSD CDROM or on the various FreeBSD ftp sites, to be quite useful. FIPS allows you to split an existing MS-DOS partition into two pieces, preserving the original partition and allowing you to install onto the second free piece. You first defragment your MS-DOS partition, using the DOS 6.xx DEFRAG utility or the Norton Disk tools, then run FIPS. It will prompt you for the rest of the information it needs. Afterwards, you can reboot and install FreeBSD on the new free slice. See the Distributions menu for an estimation of how much free space you'll need for the kind of installation you want. Can I use compressed MS-DOS filesystems from FreeBSD? No. If you are using a utility such as Stacker(tm) or DoubleSpace(tm), FreeBSD will only be able to use whatever portion of the filesystem you leave uncompressed. The rest of the filesystem will show up as one large file (the stacked/dblspaced file!). Do not remove that file! You will probably regret it greatly! It is probably better to create another uncompressed MS-DOS primary partition and use this for communications between MS-DOS and FreeBSD. Can I mount my MS-DOS extended partitions? This feature isn't in FreeBSD 2.0.5 but should be in 2.1. We've laid all the groundwork for making this happen, now we just need to do the last 1 percent of the work involved. Can I run MS-DOS binaries under FreeBSD? Not yet! We'd like to add support for this someday, but are still lacking anyone to actually do the work. Ongoing work with Linux's PCEMU utility may bring this much closer to being a reality sometime soon. Send mail to hackers@freebsd.org if you're interested in joining this effort! Supported Configurations

FreeBSD currently runs on a wide variety of ISA, VLB, EISA and PCI bus based PC's, ranging from 386sx to Pentium class machines (though the 386sx is not recommended). Support for generic IDE or ESDI drive configurations, various SCSI controller, network and serial cards is also provided. Following is a list of all disk controllers and ethernet cards currently known to work with FreeBSD. Other configurations may very well work, and we have simply not received any indication of this. Disk Controllers

WD1003 (any generic MFM/RLL) WD1007 (any generic IDE/ESDI) WD7000 IDE ATA Adaptec 152x series ISA SCSI controllers Adaptec 154x series ISA SCSI controllers Adaptec 174x series EISA SCSI controller in standard and enhanced mode. Adaptec 274X/284X/2940 (Narrow/Wide/Twin) series ISA/EISA/PCI SCSI controllers Adaptec AIC-6260 and AIC-6360 based boards, which includes the AHA-152x and SoundBlaster SCSI cards. Note: You cannot boot from the SoundBlaster cards as they have no on-board BIOS, which is necessary for mapping the boot device into the system BIOS I/O vectors. They are perfectly usable for external tapes, CDROMs, etc, however. The same goes for any other AIC-6x60 based card without a boot ROM. Some systems DO have a boot ROM, which is generally indicated by some sort of message when the system is first powered up or reset. Check your system/board documentation for more details. Buslogic 545S & 545c Note: that Buslogic was formerly known as "Bustec". Buslogic 445S/445c VLB SCSI controller Buslogic 742A, 747S, 747c EISA SCSI controller. Buslogic 946c PCI SCSI controller Buslogic 956c PCI SCSI controller NCR 53C810 and 53C825 PCI SCSI controller. NCR5380/NCR53400 ("ProAudio Spectrum") SCSI controller. DTC 3290 EISA SCSI controller in 1542 emulation mode. UltraStor 14F, 24F and 34F SCSI controllers. Seagate ST01/02 SCSI controllers. Future Domain 8xx/950 series SCSI controllers. With all supported SCSI controllers, full support is provided for SCSI-I & SCSI-II peripherals, including Disks, tape drives (including DAT) and CD ROM drives. The following CD-ROM type systems are supported at this time: SCSI (also includes ProAudio Spectrum and SoundBlaster SCSI) (cd) Mitsumi proprietary interface (mcd) Matsushita/Panasonic (Creative) proprietary interface (matcd) Sony proprietary interface (scd) Note: CD-Drives with IDE interfaces are not supported at this time. Some controllers have limitations with the way they deal with >16MB of memory, due to the fact that the ISA bus only has a DMA address space of 24 bits. If you do your arithmetic, you'll see that this makes it impossible to do direct DMA to any address >16MB. This limitation is even true of some EISA controllers (which are normally 32 bit) when they're configured to emulate an ISA card, which they then do in *all* respects. This problem is avoided entirely by IDE controllers (which do not use DMA), true EISA controllers (like the UltraStor, Adaptec 1742A or Adaptec 2742) and most VLB (local bus) controllers. In the cases where it's necessary, the system will use "bounce buffers" to talk to the controller so that you can still use more than 16Mb of memory without difficulty. Ethernet cards

SMC Elite 16 WD8013 ethernet interface, and most other WD8003E, WD8003EBT, WD8003W, WD8013W, WD8003S, WD8003SBT and WD8013EBT based clones. SMC Elite Ultra is also supported. DEC EtherWORKS III NICs (DE203, DE204, and DE205) DEC EtherWORKS II NICs (DE200, DE201, DE202, and DE422) DEC DC21140 based NICs (SMC???? DE???) DEC FDDI (DEFPA/DEFEA) NICs Fujitsu MB86960A family of NICs Intel EtherExpress Isolan AT 4141-0 (16 bit) Isolink 4110 (8 bit) Novell NE1000, NE2000, and NE2100 ethernet interface. 3Com 3C501 cards 3Com 3C503 Etherlink II 3Com 3c505 Etherlink/+ 3Com 3C507 Etherlink 16/TP 3Com 3C509, 3C579, 3C589 (PCMCIA) Etherlink III Toshiba ethernet cards PCMCIA ethernet cards from IBM and National Semiconductor are also supported. Misc

AST 4 port serial card using shared IRQ. ARNET 8 port serial card using shared IRQ. BOCA ATIO66 6 port serial card using shared IRQ. Cyclades Cyclom-y Serial Board. STB 4 port card using shared IRQ. Mitsumi (all models) CDROM interface and drive. SDL Communications Riscom/8 Serial Board. Soundblaster SCSI and ProAudio Spectrum SCSI CDROM interface and drive. Matsushita/Panasonic (Creative SoundBlaster) CDROM interface and drive. Adlib, SoundBlaster, SoundBlaster Pro, ProAudioSpectrum, Gravis UltraSound and Roland MPU-401 sound cards. FreeBSD currently does NOT support IBM's microchannel (MCA) bus, but support is apparently close to materializing. Details will be posted as the situation develops. Preparing for the installation

There are a number of different methods by which FreeBSD can be installed. The following describes what preparation needs to be done for each type. Before installing from CDROM

If your CDROM is of an unsupported type, such as an IDE CDROM, then please skip to section 2.3: MS-DOS Preparation. There is not a lot of preparatory work that needs to be done to successfully install from one of Walnut Creek's FreeBSD CDROMs (other CDROM distributions may work as well, but I can't say for sure as I have no hand or say in their creation). You can either boot into the CD installation directly from MS-DOS using Walnut Creek's supplied "install" batch file or you can make a boot floppy by writing the supplied image (floppies/boot.flp) onto a floppy with the "go" command, which invokes the rawrite.exe command found in the tools/ subdirectory. If you're creating the boot floppy from a UNIX machine, you may find that ``dd if=floppies/boot.flp of=/dev/rfd0'' or ``dd if=floppies/boot.flp of=/dev/floppy'' works well, depending on your hardware and operating system environment. Once you've booted from MS-DOS or floppy, you should be able to select CDROM as the media type in the Media menu and load the entire distribution from CDROM. No other types of installation media should be required. After your system is fully installed and you have rebooted from the hard disk, you should find the CD mounted on the directory /cdrom. A utility called `lndir' comes with the XFree86 distribution which you may also find useful: It allows you to create "link tree" directories to things on Read-Only media like CDROM. One example might be something like this: mkdir /usr/portslndir /cdrom/ports /usr/ports Which would allow you to then "cd /usr/ports; make" and get all the sources from the CD, but yet create all the intermediate files in /usr/ports, which is presumably on a more writable media! Before installing from Floppy

If you must install from floppy disks, either due to unsupported hardware or just because you enjoy doing things the hard way, you must first prepare some floppies for the install. The first floppy you'll need is ``floppies/root.flp'', which is somewhat special in that it's not a MS-DOS filesystem floppy at all, but rather an "image" floppy (it's actually a gzip'd cpio file). You can use the rawrite.exe program to do this under DOS, or ``dd'' to do it on a UNIX Workstation (see notes in section 2.1 concerning the ``floppies/boot.flp'' image). Once this floppy is made, put it aside. You'll be asked for it later. You will also need, at minimum, as many 1.44MB or 1.2MB floppies as it takes to hold all files in the bin (binary distribution) directory. THESE floppies *must* be formatted using MS-DOS, using with the FORMAT command in MS-DOS or the File Manager format command in Microsoft Windows(tm). Factory preformatted floppies will also work well, provided that they haven't been previously used for something else. Many problems reported by our users in the past have resulted from the use of improperly formatted media, so we simply take special care to mention it here! After you've MS-DOS formatted the floppies, you'll need to copy the files onto them. The distribution files are split into chunks conveniently sized so that 5 of them will fit on a conventional 1.44MB floppy. Go through all your floppies, packing as many files as will fit on each one, until you've got all the distributions you want packed up in this fashion. Select ``Floppy'' from the Media menu at installation time and you will be prompted for everything after that. Before installing from a MS-DOS partition

To prepare for installation from an MS-DOS partition, you should simply copy the files from the distribution into a directory called "FREEBSD". For example, to do a minimal installation of FreeBSD from DOS using files copied from the CDROM, you might do something like this: C> MD C:\FREEBSD C> XCOPY /S E:\DISTS\BIN C:\FREEBSD C> XCOPY /S E:\FLOPPIES C:\FREEBSD Asssuming that `C:' was where you had free space and `E:' was where your CD was mounted. Note that you need the FLOPPIES directory because the `root.flp' image is automatically looked for there when you're doing a MS-DOS installation. For as many `DISTS' you wish to install from MS-DOS (and you have free space for), install each one under `C:\FREEBSD' - the BIN dist is only the minimal requirement. Before installing from QIC/SCSI Tape

Installing from tape is probably the easiest method, short of an on-line install using FTP or a CDROM instal. The installation program expects the files to be simply tar'ed onto the tape, so after getting all of the files for distribution you're interested in, simply tar them onto the tape with a command like: cd /freebsd/distdir tar cvf /dev/rwt0 (or /dev/rst0) dist1 .. dist2 Make sure that the `floppies/' directory is one of the "dists" given above, since the installation will look for `floppies/root.flp' on the tape. When you go to do the installation, you should also make sure that you leave enough room in some temporary directory (which you'll be allowed to choose) to accommodate the FULL contents of the tape you've created. Due to the non-random access nature of tapes, this method of installation requires quite a bit of temporary storage! You should expect to require as much temporary storage as you have stuff written on tape. Before installing over a network

You can do network installations over 3 types of communications links: Serial port SLIP or PPP Parallel port PLIP (laplink cable) Ethernet A standard ethernet controller (includes some PCMCIA). SLIP support is rather primitive, and limited primarily to hard-wired links, such as a serial cable running between a laptop computer and another computer. The link should be hard-wired as the SLIP installation doesn't currently offer a dialing capability; that facility is provided with the PPP utility, which should be used in preference to SLIP whenever possible. If you're using a modem, then PPP is almost certainly your only choice. Make sure that you have your service provider's information handy as you'll need to know it fairly soon in the installation process. You will need to know, at the minimum, your service provider's IP address and possibly your own (though you can also leave it blank and allow PPP to negotiate it with your ISP). You also need to know how to use the various "AT commands" to dial the ISP with your particular modem as the PPP dialer provides only a very simple terminal emulator. If a hard-wired connection to another FreeBSD (2.0R or later) machine is available, you might also consider installing over a "laplink" parallel port cable. The data rate over the parallel port is much higher than is what's typically possible over a serial line (up to 50k/sec), thus resulting in a quicker installation. Finally, for the fastest possible network installation, an ethernet adaptor is always a good choice! FreeBSD supports most common PC ethernet cards, a table of supported cards (and their required settings) provided as part of the FreeBSD Hardware Guide - see the Documentation menu on the boot floppy. If you are using one of the supported PCMCIA ethernet cards, also be sure that it's plugged in _before_ the laptop is powered on! FreeBSD does not, unfortunately, currently support "hot insertion" of PCMCIA cards. You will also need to know your IP address on the network, the "netmask" value for your address class and the name of your machine. Your system administrator can tell you which values to use for your particular network setup. If you will be referring to other hosts by name rather than IP address, you'll also need a name server and possibly the address of a gateway (if you're using PPP, it's your provider's IP address) to use in talking to it. If you do not know the answers to all or most of these questions, then you should really probably talk to your system administrator _first_ before trying this type of installation! Once you have a network link of some sort working, the installation can continue over NFS or FTP. Preparing for NFS installation

NFS installation is fairly straight-forward: Simply copy the FreeBSD distribution files you're interested onto a server somewhere and then point the NFS media selection at it. If this server supports only "privileged port" access (as is generally the default for Sun workstations), you will need to set this option in the Options menu before installation can proceed. If you have a poor quality ethernet card which suffers from very slow transfer rates, you may also wish to toggle the appropriate Options flag. In order for NFS installation to work, the server must support "subdir mounts", e.g. if your FreeBSD 2.0.5 distribution directory lives on: ziggy:/usr/archive/stuff/FreeBSD Then ziggy will have to allow the direct mounting of /usr/archive/stuff/FreeBSD, not just /usr or /usr/archive/stuff. In FreeBSD's /etc/exports file, this is controlled by the ``-alldirs'' option. Other NFS servers may have different conventions. If you are getting `Permission Denied' messages from the server then it's likely that you don't have this enabled properly! Preparing for FTP Installation

FTP installation may be done from any mirror site containing a reasonably up-to-date version of FreeBSD 2.0.5, a full menu of reasonable choices from almost anywhere in the world being provided by the FTP site menu. If you are installing from some other FTP site not listed in this menu, or you are having troubles getting your name server configured properly, you can also specify your own URL by selecting the ``Other'' choice in that menu. A URL can also be a direct IP address, so the following would work in the absence of a name server: ftp://192.216.222.4/pub/FreeBSD/2.0.5-RELEASE NOTE: Substitute "ALPHA" for "RELEASE" during the ALPHA test period! If you are installing through a firewall then you should probably select ``Passive mode'' ftp, which is the default. If you are talking to a server which does not support passive mode for some reason, see the Options menu to select Active mode transfers. Installing FreeBSD

Once you've taken note of the appropriate preinstallation steps, you should be able to install FreeBSD without any further trouble. Should this not be true, then you may wish to go back and re-read the relevant preparation section (section 2.x) for the installation media type you're trying to use - perhaps there's a helpful hint there that you missed the first time? If you're having hardware trouble, or FreeBSD refuses to boot at all, read the Hardware Guide provided on the boot floppy for a list of possible solutions. The FreeBSD boot floppy contains all the on-line documentation you should need to be able to navigate through an installation and if it doesn't then I'd like to know what you found most confusing! It is the objective of the FreeBSD installation program (sysinstall) to be self-documenting enough that painful "step-by-step" guides are no longer necessary. It may take us a little while to reach that objective, but that's the objective! Meanwhile, you may also find the following "typical installation sequence" to be helpful: Boot the boot floppy. After a boot sequence which can take anywhere from from 30 seconds to 3 minutes, depending on your hardware, you should be presented with a menu of initial choices. If the floppy doesn't boot at all, or the boot hangs at some stage, go read the Q&A section of the Hardware Guide for possible causes. Press F1. You should see some basic usage instructions on the menu system and general navigation. If you haven't used this menu system before then PLEASE read this thoroughly! If English is not your native language, you may wish to proceed directly to the Language option and set your preferred language. This will bring up some of the documentation in that language instead of english. Select the Options item and set any special preferences you may have. Select Proceed, bringing you to the Installation Menu. The installation menu

You can do anything you like in this menu without altering your system except for "Commit", which will perform any requests to alter your system you may have made. If you're confused at any point, the F1 key usually pulls up the right information for the screen you're in. The first step is generally `Partition', which allows you to chose how your drives will be used for FreeBSD. Next, with the `Label' editor, you can specify how the space in any allocated FreeBSD partitions should be used by FreeBSD, or where to mount a non-FreeBSD partition (such as DOS). Next, the `Distributions' menu allows you to specify which parts of FreeBSD you wish to load. A good choice is "User" for a small system or "Developer" for someone wanting a bit more out of FreeBSD. If none of the existing collections sound applicable, select Custom. Next, the `Media' menu allows you to specify what kind of media you wish to install from. If a desired media choice is found and configured automatically then this menu will simply return, otherwise you'll be asked for additional details on the media device type. Finally, the Commit command will actually perform all the actions at once (nothing has been written to your disk so far, nor will it until you give the final confirmation). All new or changed partition information will be written out, file systems will be created and/or non-destructively labelled (depending on how you set their newfs flags in the Label editor) and all selected distributions will be extracted. The Configure menu choice allows you to furthur configure your FreeBSD installation by giving you menu-driven access to various system defaults. Some items, like networking, may be especially important if you did a CDROM/Tape/Floppy installation and have not yet configured your network interfaces (assuming you have some). Properly configuring your network here will allow FreeBSD to come up on the network when you first reboot from the hard disk. Exit returns you to the top menu. At this point, you're generally done with the sysinstall utility and can select the final `Quit'. If you're running it as an installer (e.g. before the system is all the way up) then the system will now reboot. If you selected the boot manager option, you will see a small boot menu with an `F?' prompt. Press the function key for BSD (it will be shown) and you should boot up into FreeBSD off the hard disk. If this fails to happen for some reason, see the Q&A section of the Hardware Guide for possible clues!