QUICK INSTALLATION GUIDE FOR FREEBSD 2.1 This manual documents the process of installing FreeBSD on your machine. Please also see the Hardware Guide for hardware-specific installation instructions (how to configure your hardware, what sorts of things to watch out for, etc) before starting a new installation. Table of Contents: ================== 1.0 DOS User's Q&A section. 1.1 How do I make space for FreeBSD? 1.2 Can I use compressed DOS filesystems from FreeBSD? 1.3 Can I use DOS extended partitions? 1.4 Can I run DOS executables under FreeBSD? 2.0 Preparing for the installation. 2.1 Before installing from CDROM 2.2 Before installing from Floppy 2.3 Before installing from a DOS partition 2.4 Before installing from QIC/SCSI tape 2.5 Before installing over a network 2.5.1 Preparing for NFS Installation 2.5.2 Preparing for FTP Installation 3.0 Installing FreeBSD. 3.1 Repairing an existing FreeBSD installation. 3.2 Upgrading from FreeBSD 2.0.5 1.0 DOS user's Question and Answer section === ====================================== 1.1 Help! I have no space! Do I need to delete everything first? If your machine is already running 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/ subdirectory on the FreeBSD CDROM or on the various FreeBSD ftp sites, to be quite useful. FIPS allows you to split an existing DOS partition into two pieces, preserving the original partition and allowing you to install onto the second free piece. You first "defrag" your 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 partition. Also note that FIPS will create the second partition as a "clone" of the first, so you'll actually see that you now have two DOS Primary partitions where you formerly had one. Don't be alarmed! You can simply delete the extra DOS Primary parititon (making sure it's the right one by examining its size! :) See the Distributions menu for an estimation of how much free space you'll need for the kind of installation you want. 1.2 Can I use compressed 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 as you will probably regret it greatly! It is probably better to create another uncompressed DOS primary partition and use this for communications between DOS and FreeBSD if such is your desire. 1.3 Can I mount my DOS extended partitions? Unfortunately, this remains unsupported. All the framework is in place for doing so, but it didn't get done in time for the 2.1 installation. 1.4 Can I run 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 DOSEMU 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! There is, however, a neat utility called "pcemu" in the ports collection which emulates an 8088 and enough BIOS services to run DOS text mode applications. It requires the X Window System (provided as XFree86 3.1.2) to operate. 2.0 Preparing for the installation === ============================== 2.1 Before installing from CDROM: If your CDROM is of an unsupported type, then please skip to section 2.3 which describes how to install from a DOS partition. 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, though we cannot say for certain as we have no hand or say in how they're created). You can either boot into the CD installation directly from DOS using Walnut Creek's supplied ``install.bat'' batch file or you can make a boot floppy with the ``makeflp.bat'' command [NOTE: If you're using an IDE CDROM, use the inst_ide.bat or atapiflp.bat batch files instead]. For the easiest interface of all (from DOS), type "view". This will bring up a DOS menu utility that leads you through all the available options. 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 DOS or floppy, you should then 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 can mount the cdrom at any time by typing: ``mount /cdrom'' Before removing the CD again, also note that it's necessary to first type ``umount /cdrom''. Don't just remove it from the drive! SPECIAL NOTE: Before invoking the installation, be sure that the CDROM is in the drive so that the "probe" can find it! This is also true if you wish the CDROM to be added to the default system configuration automatically during the install (whether or not you actually use it as the installation media). Finally, if you would like people to be able to FTP install FreeBSD directly from the CDROM in your machine, you'll find it quite easy. After the machine is fully installed, you simply need to add the following line to the password file (using the vipw command): ftp:*:99:99::0:0:FTP:/cdrom:/nonexistent Anyone else at your site will now be able to chose a Media type of FTP and type in: ftp:// after picking "Other" in the ftp sites menu to install from the CD in your machine! 2.2 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 in addition to the boot.flp image is ``floppies/root.flp'', which is somewhat special in that it's not a DOS filesystem floppy at all, but rather a floppy "image" (it's actually a gzip'd cpio file). You can create this floppy in the same way that you created the boot floppy (see notes in section 2.1). Once this floppy is made, you can go on to make the distribution set floppies using ordinary DOS or UFS (if you're preparing the floppies on another FreeBSD machine) formatted diskettes. You will need, at minimum, as many 1.44MB or 1.2MB floppies as it takes to hold all files in the bin (binary distribution) directory. If you're preparing these floppies under DOS, then THESE floppies *must* be formatted using the MS-DOS FORMAT command. If you're using Windows, use the Windows File Manager format command. Don't trust Factory Preformatted floppies! Format them again yourself, just to make sure! Many problems reported by our users in the past have resulted from the use of improperly formatted media, which is why I'm taking such special care to mention it here! If you're creating the floppies from another FreeBSD machine, a format is still not a bad idea though you don't need to put a DOS filesystem on each floppy. You can use the `disklabel' and `newfs' commands to put a UFS filesystem on them instead, like so: disklabel -w -r fd0 floppy3 (use floppy5 for 1.2MB disks) newfs /dev/rfd0 Then you can mount and write to them like any other file system. After you've formatted the floppies for DOS or UFS, 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. Each distribution should go into its own subdirectory on the floppy, e.g.: a:\bin\bin.aa, a:\bin\bin.ab, ... Once you come to the Media screen of the install, select "Floppy" and you'll be prompted for the rest. 2.3 Before installing from a 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\BIN C> XCOPY /S E:\FLOPPIES C:\FREEBSD\FLOPPIES 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 DOS installation. For as many `DISTS' as you wish to install from DOS (and you have free space for), install each one in a directory under `C:\FREEBSD' - the BIN dist is only the minimal requirement. 2.4 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. The installation program expects the files to be simply tar'ed onto the tape, so after getting all of the files for the distributions you're interested in, simply tar them onto the tape with a command like: cd /where/you/have/your/dists tar cvf /dev/rwt0 (or /dev/rst0) floppies dist1 .. dist2 It's important to make sure that the `floppies/' directory is specified along with the dists because 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. SPECIAL NOTE: When going to do the installation, the tape must be in the drive *before* booting from the boot floppy. The installation "probe" may otherwise fail to find it. 2.5 Before installing over a network: You can do network installations over 3 types of connections: Serial port: SLIP / PPP Parallel port: PLIP (using ``laplink'' style cable) Ethernet: A standard ethernet controller (includes some PCMCIA). SLIP support is rather primitive, and is limited primarily to hard-wired links, such as a serial cable running between two computers. The link must be hard-wired because the SLIP installation doesn't currently offer a dialing capability. If you need to dial out with a modem or otherwise dialog with the link before connecting to it, then I recommend that the PPP utility be used instead. If you're using PPP, make sure that you have your Internet Service Provider's IP address and DNS information handy as you'll need to know it fairly early in the installation process. You may also need to know your own IP address, though PPP supports dynamic address negotiation and may be able to pick up this information directly from your ISP if they support it. You will also need to know how to use the various "AT commands" for dialing out with your particular brand of 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" style parallel port cable. The data rate over the parallel port is much higher than what is 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) being provided as part of the FreeBSD Hardware Guide (see the Documentation menu on the boot floppy or the top level directory of the CDROM). 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 are appropriate to 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 these questions then you should really probably talk to your system administrator _first_ before trying this type of installation! Using a randomly chosen IP address or netmask on a live network will almost certainly get you shot. Once you have a network connection of some sort working, the installation can continue over NFS or FTP. 2.5.1 Preparing for NFS installation: NFS installation is fairly straight-forward: Simply copy the FreeBSD distribution files you want 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 and Linux 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 also support "subdir mounts", e.g. if your FreeBSD 2.1 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 properly enabled! 2.5.2 Preparing for FTP Installation FTP installation may be done from any mirror site containing a reasonably up-to-date version of FreeBSD 2.1. A full menu of reasonable choices for almost any location in the world is provided in 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 contain a hostname or an IP address, so the following would work in the absence of a name server: ftp://192.216.191.11/pub/FreeBSD/2.1.0-RELEASE There are two FTP installation modes you can use: o FTP: For all FTP transfers, use the standard "Active" mode for transfers. This will not work through most firewalls but will often work best with older ftp servers that do not support passive mode. If your connection hangs with passive mode, try this one! o FTP Passive: For all FTP transfers, use "Passive" mode. This allows the user to pass through firewalls that do not allow incoming connections on random port addresses. NOTE: ACTIVE AND PASSIVE MODES ARE NOT THE SAME AS A `PROXY' CONNECTIONS, WHERE A PROXY FTP SERVER IS LISTENING ON A DIFFERENT PORT! In such instances, you should specify the URL as something like: ftp://foo.bar.com:1234/pub/FreeBSD Where "1234" is the port number of the proxy ftp server. 3.0 Installing FreeBSD --- ------------------ Once you've taken note of the appropriate preinstallation steps, you should be able to install FreeBSD without any further trouble. Should the installation fail at some stage, 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, then read the Hardware Guide again 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 so that I can fix it in future releases! 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. You may also find the following "typical installation sequence" to be useful reading: o Boot the boot floppy. After a boot sequence which can take anywhere from from 30 seconds to 3 minutes, depending on the speed of 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 some possible causes. o Press F1. You should see some basic usage instructions on the menu system and general navigation within it. If you haven't used this installation system before then PLEASE read this thoroughly! o Select the Novice installation and follow the instructions. Even if you're moderately familiar with UNIX, chose the Novice install! "Novice" in this context means new to the FreeBSD installer, not computers in general! The other installation types (Custom and Express) assume that you've installed FreeBSD using *this* version of the installation utility and know *exactly* what you are doing! Novice users and 25 year veterans of UNIX alike can benefit from the tips provided by the Novice install, so don't be proud - be a novice! :) Installation type overview: o Custom installation: You can do anything you like in this menu without altering your system _except_ for "Commit", which will perform any pending actions you may have selected. Some of the menu options will also have direct `Write' commands available for commiting an operation immediately, but they should only be used if you're *absolutely sure* it's necessary. It's generally safer to stack up your changes and then commit them all at once so that you're left with the option of changing your mind up to the very last moment. In particular, the (W)rite options in the fdisk and label screens WILL NOT WORK for a new installation! They're meant for tweaking *existing* installations, not doing new ones. Use the final commit option as there is no advantage whatsoever to be gained in writing the information out stage by stage in a new installation. If you're confused at any point, the F1 key will pull up what is hopefully some helpful information for the screen you're in. o Express installation: This installation will invoke all the appropriate steps in order as if you'd selected them one by one from the custom installation menu. It assumes that you *know what you are doing* and have run the installation at least once before. If this is not the case, the Novice installation method is recommended. o Novice installation: As previously mentioned, the Novice installation leads you through the required stages in the proper order and presents you with various helpful prompts in between. Once the system is installed, it will also present you with the opportunity to perform a variety of "post install" actions. A quick synopsis of the stages involved in a novice installation follows: o The first step is the `Partition Editor', which allows you to chose how your drives will be used for FreeBSD. If you're dedicating an entire drive to FreeBSD, the `A' command is probably all you need to type here, otherwise move to a partition marked `Unused' (or delete an existing one) and use the `C' command to create a FreeBSD partition in its place. o Next, with the `Label Editor', you can specify how the space in any FreeBSD partitions should be used by FreeBSD. You can also mount any non-FreeBSD partitions (such as DOS) in this screen. If you want the standard layout, simply type `A' for the defaults. o Next, the `Distributions' menu allows you to specify how much of FreeBSD you'd like to load. A good choice is the "User" distribution for a small system or the "Developer" distribution for someone wanting a more programmer-oriented configuration. If none of the existing collections seem applicable, select Custom to choose the component distributions yourself. o Next, the `Media' menu allows you to specify what kind of media you wish to install from. If a given media type requires extra information, such as networking information for an FTP or NFS install, it will also be asked for at this point. o Finally, you'll be prompted to commit all of these 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. o After the system is fully installed, you'll then have the option to configure the system in various ways, install a WEB server, etc. At this point, you're generally done with the sysinstall utility and can reboot the system. If you elected to install the boot manager, you should now see a small boot menu with an `F?' prompt. Press the function key corresponding to the BSD partition 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! The most likely problem is a mis-matched disk geometry, which will have to be corrected with a second pass through the install, using the (G) command in the fdisk menu to properly set the geometry the next time. Should you wish to re-enter this installation later, you will find it under /stand/sysinstall on the installed system. Good luck! If you really get stuck, you may send mail to our support mailing list - questions@FreeBSD.org. We'll do our best to help you! 3.1 Repairing an existing FreeBSD installation. --- ------------------------------------------- FreeBSD 2.1 now features a "Fixit" option in the top menu of the boot floppy. To use it, you will also need a fixit.flp image floppy, generated in the same fashion as the boot floppy. To invoke fixit, simply boot the boot floppy, chose the "Fixit" item and insert the fixit floppy when asked. You will then be placed into a shell with a wide variety of commands available (in the /stand and /mnt2/stand directories) for checking, repairing and examining file systems and their contents. Some UNIX administration experience *is* required to use the fixit option! 3.2 Upgrading from FreeBSD 2.0.5 --- ---------------------------- It must first be said that this upgrade DOES NOT take a particularly sophisticated approach to the upgrade problem, it being more a question of providing what seemed "good enough" at the time. A truly polished upgrade that deals properly with the broad spectrum of installed 2.0.5 systems would be nice to have, but until that gets written what you get is this - the brute-force approach! What this upgrade will attempt to do is best summarized thusly: 1. fsck and mount all file systems chosen in the label editor. 2. Ask for a location to preserve your /etc directory into and do so. 3. Extract all selected distributions on top of your existing system. 4. Copy certain obvious files back from the preserved /etc, leaving the rest of the /etc file merge up to the user. 5. Drop user in a shell so that they may perform that merge before rebooting into the new system. And that's it! This "upgrade" is not going to hold your hand in all major respects, it's simply provided to make one PART of the upgrade easier. IMPORTANT NOTE: What this upgrade procedure may also do, in fact, is completely destroy your system (though much more quickly than you would have been able to destroy it yourself). It is simply impossible to guarantee that this procedure's crude form of upgrade automation will work in all cases and if you do this upgrade without proper BACKUPS for any important data then you really must like living life close to the edge, that's all we can say! NOTE to 2.0 users: We're sorry, but the "slice" changes that were added in FreeBSD 2.0.5 made automated upgrades pretty difficult due to the fact that a complete reinstall is pretty much called for. Things may still *work* after a 2.1 upgrade, but you will also no doubt receive many warnings at boot time about non-aligned slices and such; we really do recommend a fresh installation for 2.0 systems! (But back up your user data first :-). Jordan ---- End of Installation Guide ---