Help on free BSD installation

[cranky]

Thought of trying BSD and didn't take much time to know that it needed a super geek to install.... I needed help on partitoning:

I'm having a 40 GB HDD, with triple boot, windows XP on my primary partition and Slackware & ubuntu on one of the logical partitons.
Now, I want to replace ubuntu with BSD.

Is it possible to install Free BSD (release 6.2) on one of my logical partiton? since the fdisk is not showing partiton where linux is installed, im also really confused because it shows the size in starting and ending blocks.... any simpler way to go about partitoning?

I have 10GB as my primary partiton(windows) & remaining 30 gigs on extended partiton.

[rocket357]

Super geek, eh? heh

Typically the BSD's do things differently than Linux (no surprise there)...in particular you'll need to set up a SINGLE partition for FreeBSD...then split the partition up into "slices". That's the good news.

Now the bad news...

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-pre.html (check out section 2.3.3.1, first sentence of the fourth paragraph)

You've set up Windows as the first primary partition, then created an extended partition to contain logical partitions from there. FreeBSD won't install to extended/logical partitions! The only thing left to do is repartition/reinstall, or get another hard drive...if you get another hard drive, you can install FreeBSD to it (Bootloader and all...just make sure you put the bootloader on the new drive!), and boot FreeBSD from GRUB using rootnoverify and chainloader.

Edit - you *could* easily destroy the extended partition, create a primary partition for FreeBSD, then create another extended partition for Linux, but that (obviously) would destroy your Slackware install as well as the Ubuntu install...it's your call on that!

[rakeshishere]

In case XP is already installed on a primary partition,then BSD can be installed on logical partition by converting it to primary using Partition Magic..After that install Acronis Disk Director Suite(v10) and then install Acronis OS selector through it to use BSD on primary partition;)

[rocket357]

^^^ Very good info, rakeshishere...I haven't used Partition Magic in years and I didn't realize it had that functionality...thanks for posting it!

Edit - and Cranky, as always, BACK UP YOUR DATA BEFORE MOVING/RESIZING/CHANGING PARTITIONS!

[praka123]

...and afaik only 4 primary partitions that can be made :-| still 4 is possible on x86 ;)

[cranky]

Partition magic... ah!! :eek: what I would have done without it. Thanx for all the replies guys, BSD is up & running! without touching slack & windoze! LILO is the boot manager

Just have to do some fine tuning now.... mounting logical partitions (hope atleast this is possible), sound problems (there's no alsa for BSD :(), more questions to come......

[rocket357]

...and afaik only 4 primary partitions that can be made :-| still 4 is possible on x86 ;)

This is true...I'm sure that alpha/sparc/etc... all handle this differently, but for x86 it's max of 4 primary partitions.

Partition magic... ah!! :eek: what I would have done without it. Thanx for all the replies guys, BSD is up & running! without touching slack & windoze! LILO is the boot manager

Just have to do some fine tuning now.... mounting logical partitions (hope atleast this is possible), sound problems (there's no alsa for BSD :(), more questions to come......

I didn't have much trouble getting sound working for FreeBSD. What I had trouble with was getting my M$ optical mouse's scroll wheel working properly! Are you reading through the handbook for answers, or are you "winging it"? Just curious.

At any rate, please ask any questions you have!

[mehulved]

I've had mouse troubles too. FreeBSD fails to work with my USB mouse. FreeBSD is a whole new ball game and I feel kind of lost in there without X to start with.

[rocket357]

^^^ my mouse worked, but I didn't have the mouse daemon working properly, I guess. The scroll wheel, no matter what I did, just refused to work with the particular mouse I have. It's a pain, too, because I'd drop Linux in favor of FreeBSD in a heartbeat (Especially with FreeBSD ELF branding =), but small issues like the mouse wheel issue were just annoying enough to prevent a full switch...

Well, to be honest I'll probably NEVER switch from using Gentoo Linux as my primary OS, though FreeBSD makes a very nice desktop system...

[mehulved]

I don't know how good it is, but I am sure dying to try it. And VirtualBox also doesn't support FreeBSD :(

[rocket357]

I don't know how good it is, but I am sure dying to try it. And VirtualBox also doesn't support FreeBSD :(

I've never seemed to have much luck getting *BSD to run in virtualization (I've tried bochs, VMWare (Server, Workstation, Player), and Qemu), though I haven't tried PC-BSD, DragonflyBSD, NetBSD, or a few others (mostly just OpenBSD and FreeBSD). Apparently VirtualBox supports OpenBSD, though...I'll have to check that out.

[rakeshishere]

...and afaik only 4 primary partitions that can be made :-| still 4 is possible on x86 ;)

Ya..But it aint possible to make more than 1 primary partition through windows disk management feature of Windows and install an OS;)

^^^ Very good info, rakeshishere...I haven't used Partition Magic in years and I didn't realize it had that functionality...thanks for posting it!

Edit - and Cranky, as always, BACK UP YOUR DATA BEFORE MOVING/RESIZING/CHANGING PARTITIONS!

When i meant Partition Magic,I am talkin abt the one from Powerquest and not the one from Norton:)

[infra_red_dude]

Ya..But it aint possible to make more than 1 primary partition through windows disk management feature of Windows and install an OS;)
afaik the partitioner in vista supports that....

[rakeshishere]

afaik the partitioner in vista supports that....
Damn..Sorry Sorry Sorry, i 4got to add the word -XP :D instead i mentioned the word-"Windows" :))..Yup,Vista is of course an improvement over XP:)

[cranky]

rocket357: Are you reading through the handbook for answers, or are you "winging it"? Just curious.

I had gone through the handbook for the installation part, It said "FreeBSD must be installed into a primary partition" ..... but didn't say it can't be installed on a logical partition :D (thought there could be a work around).

But thanx for reminding me again, i had forgotten to refer the handbook after that, it solved my sound problem & mounting fat32 partitions.

[praka123]

as with BSD folks,Logical partitions are nasty hacks made for intel x86 systems ..:?.they believes primary and extended are the two partition type exists.So no way till date.

[rakeshishere]

as with BSD folks,Logical partitions are nasty hacks made for intel x86 systems ..:?.they believes primary and extended are the two partition type exists.So no way till date.

Isnt Extended Partition- the Total amount of size of Logical Partitions?:confused:

[praka123]

yeah.i meant bsd can probe upto extended>then logical partns cant be seen in bsd installer.though u can mount logical partns in bsd.

[rakeshishere]

ORIGINAL POST :
I'm having a 40 GB HDD, with triple boot, windows XP on my primary partition and Slackware & ubuntu on one of the logical partitons.
Now, I want to replace ubuntu with BSD.

@infra_red_dude (http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/member.php?u=96)

Wasnt the author talkin about XP? Why did ya talk about Vista and why did i ask an excuse for no reason..:rolleyes:..See the above post,he doesnt mention about Vista?

And I feel there is no need of using Partition Magic in here as i said in my previous posts.:p Even Acronis Disk Director Suite has basic features of Partition functionality-creation,conversion etc .but Its a bit heavy in size to download when compared with Partition Magic -which has way more features.

The only Good Part is Acronis OS selector which acts like an Extended OS loader for diff OS.There is no involvement of Grub,LILO,Vista Boot Manager or NTLDR etc.

@praka123 (http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/member.php?u=8149)
I havent installed or used BSD yet:D ...but I feel the best way to test/use would be to have it in Vmware which does support FreeBSD:)

[praka123]

^freebsd is not supported in virtual machines afaik :?

[rakeshishere]

^freebsd is not supported in virtual machines afaik :?

WTH..!:mad: I was shocked when u said that and i went to official website to check that out..Even Vmware workstation 5.0 supports FreeBSD as Guest OS.

The latest version is 6.0 (Build 45731)
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws5/doc/intro_supguest_ws.html

[praka123]

^Let me know if FreeBSD works in vmware :)

[Zeeshan Quireshi]

^Let me know if FreeBSD works in vmware :)
why wouldn't it . i'm gonna try that though .

Heck , even Mac OS X worked in VMware then FreeBSD should be a breeze .

[rakeshishere]

why wouldn't it . i'm gonna try that though .

Heck , even Mac OS X worked in VMware then FreeBSD should be a breeze .

Ya..I have tried Mac OS X and It did install fine..Dunno abt Free BSD coz i dont have a copy of it :(

@praka123
When u said FreeBSD doesnt work on Vmware,I was suprised:o for a while on my level of knowledge of Virtualization

[rocket357]

Just last night I was messing with VirtualBox, and according to their website OpenBSD should load fine. Surprise, surprise, OpenBSD bombed on VirtualBox during hard drive setup.

My experience has been similar with FreeBSD in Virtualization. I didn't bother checking FreeBSD in VirtualBox because the site specifically states that FreeBSD 6.2 has known issues and doesn't really work, but I've yet to get FreeBSD/OpenBSD working in virtualization (haven't tried a static sized image for OpenBSD in VirtualBox, though...I'll try that tonight after work).

I've tried Bochs, Qemu, and VMWare for virtualization (and VirtualBox now as of last night), and I've had them all fail (Qemu is really fast and relatively stable) at one point or another.

[rakeshishere]

Some interesting Read over HERE



Notes on FreeBSD as a Guest Operating System
Various flavors of FreeBSD have been tested with the current VMware Workstation distribution. The latest 2.x and 3.x distributions -- specifically 2.2.8 and 3.1 -- of FreeBSD are fully functional. Floppy, CD-ROM, and network devices autoconfigure and work. There is at least one known problem with 2.2.7. If you are thinking of dual-booting a machine with FreeBSD 2.2.7 and accessing the raw partition from within VMware Workstation, you are advised to upgrade to at least FreeBSD 2.2.8.

One caveat with all versions of FreeBSD is that there is a problem probing for the CD-ROM device wdc1. FreeBSD sends an illegal ATAPI command to the IDE controller and ignores the error status reply. This results in approximately a one-minute delay each time the system boots.
VMware has not tested sound support in FreeBSD.


The Linux emulation support in FreeBSD 3.1 is insufficient to run the X server provided by VMware for use on Linux systems running in a virtual machine. The VGA server distributed with FreeBSD works as expected.
The generic FreeBSD kernel works fine. Users who want to configure a kernel specifically for use in a virtual machine can use a configuration file like the one below. Note that this file was created for FreeBSD 3.1.
#
# VMWARE -- VMware Workstation virtual machine
#
# For more information read the handbook part System Administration ->
# Configuring the FreeBSD Kernel -> The Configuration File.
# The handbook is available in /usr/share/doc/handbook or online as
# latest version from the FreeBSD World Wide Web server
# <URL:http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ (http://www.freebsd.org/) >
#
# An exhaustive list of options and more detailed explanations of the
# device lines is present in the ./LINT configuration file. If you are
# in doubt as to the purpose or necessity of a line, check first in LINT.
#

machine "i386"
cpu "I686_CPU"
ident VMWARE
maxusers 32

options INET #InterNETworking
options FFS #Berkeley Fast Filesystem
options FFS_ROOT #FFS usable as root device [keep this!]
options MFS #Memory Filesystem
options MFS_ROOT #MFS usable as root device, "MFS" req'ed
options NFS #Network Filesystem
options NFS_ROOT #NFS usable as root device, "NFS" req'ed
options MSDOSFS #MSDOS Filesystem
options "CD9660" #ISO 9660 Filesystem
options "CD9660_ROOT" #CD-ROM usable as root. "CD9660"req'ed
options PROCFS #Process filesystem
options "COMPAT_43" #Compatible with BSD 4.3 [KEEP THIS!]
options UCONSOLE #Allow users to grab the console
options FAILSAFE #Be conservative
options USERCONFIG #boot -c editor
options VISUAL_USERCONFIG #visual boot -c editor

config kernel root on wd0

# To make an SMP kernel, the next two are needed
#options SMP # Symmetric MultiProcessor Kernel
#options APIC_IO # Symmetric (APIC) I/O
# O


SOURCE (http://www.vmware.com/support/reference/common/guest_freebsd.html)

[mehulved]

(haven't tried a static sized image for OpenBSD in VirtualBox, though...I'll try that tonight after work).
I tried that, didn't work for me.

[rocket357]

Some interesting Read over HERE



Notes on FreeBSD as a Guest Operating System


SOURCE (http://www.vmware.com/support/reference/common/guest_freebsd.html)
Hrmmm... FreeBSD 3.1? That's fine, I guess, but I wouldn't ask any of these other guys to run Windows 95 on their emulator if they really wanted to run Vista, you know?

Thanks for the info, though, rakeshishere.

[infra_red_dude]

@infra_red_dude (http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/member.php?u=96)

Wasnt the author talkin about XP? Why did ya talk about Vista and why did i ask an excuse for no reason..:rolleyes:..See the above post,he doesnt mention about Vista?
yeah rakesh.. but praka mentioned abt the limitation of 4 primary partitions in x86 systems in general and u said windows can create only 1 primary partition. so i jus mentioned that vista is capable, thats it :)

regarding freebsd running in virtualisation.... even i've tried it. lotsa issues. it was almost an year back. was hoping that things wud've changed... but there i see things are no different today!

[rakeshishere]

yeah rakesh.. but praka mentioned abt the limitation of 4 primary partitions in x86 systems in general and u said windows can create only 1 primary partition. so i jus mentioned that vista is capable, thats it :)

http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showpost.php?p=553214&postcount=14

regarding freebsd running in virtualisation.... even i've tried it. lotsa issues. it was almost an year back. was hoping that things wud've changed... but there i see things are no different today!

I'll wait for the reply of people who test it on Vmware and personally,I dnt have time to test it myself:(
S/w,web keep updating each and every day and you are talkin about stuff which goes way back to 1 yr:???:

[rocket357]

http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showpost.php?p=553214&postcount=14



I'll wait for the reply of people who test it on Vmware and personally,I dnt have time to test it myself:(
S/w,web keep updating each and every day and you are talkin about stuff which goes way back to 1 yr:???:

A good friend of mine and I discussed FreeBSD in virtualization today. He mentioned having gotten FreeBSD working well, but mentioned that he had to modify some of the boot parameters and hard drive stuff...he was a bit vague about it, but if I can get it working I'll post here on what I did.

[cranky]

U guys might be able to help me with this as well:
http://www.thinkdigit.com/forum/showthread.php?p=556148#post556148 :D

[Vivek788]

oh boy..if I knew FreeBSD had so many issues....I would have downloaded a month ago itself..lemme play with it... :D