This chapter explains the ins and outs of non-standard FreeBSD installations. If you are installing FreeBSD on a system with another operating system previously installed, or if you aren’t using a CD or DVD to install FreeBSD, you’ll want to read this chapter before performing the installation.
Advanced Installation Tasks in FreeBSD 6
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
This chapter is from the book ‘FreeBSD 6 Unleashed’, which was released this June.
I am currently working my way through the book, and I would certainly recommend it as an ideal first book for those wanting to learn FreeBSD. It will take you from the beginner level up to a solid intermediate. You can download ‘The Complete FreeBSD’ for free later on, when you are more advanced.
The only gripe I have so far is that you have to register your purchase on the Sam’s website to get the last few chapters (and the appendixes). This is not only annoying, but also inconvenient since when I buy a book in the ‘dead tree’ format, one of the reasons I do so is to physically have a copy in my hands whenever I need it. Still, this is the fault of Sams, not the author.
Incidentally, there’s an interview with one of the authors here:
http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/bsdtalk/bsdtalk019.mp3
The only gripe I have so far is that you have to register your purchase on the Sam’s website to get the last few chapters (and the appendixes).
I bought this book because there are relatively few printed books on FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Personally though, I didn’t think it was that great. The entire first 1/2 half of the book is Unix 101. Nothing that applies specifically to FreeBSD. (Except chapter 2 – installing FreeBSD.)
Chapter 4 – Booting and Shutting Down FreeBSD (very short chapter) applies to at least OpenBSD, Solaris, and Operating Systems based on the Linux kernel.
Chapter 5 – Working with the X Window System … applies (for the most part) to any OS capable of running X.
Chapter 6 – Workng with Applications … what does “how to use ee/vi/openoffice/gimp/xmms/pine/mutt” have to do with FreeBSD specifically?
Chapter 7 – Advanced X11 Configuration (See Chapter 5)
Chapter 8 – Working with the Shell … again, nothing to do with FreeBSD specifically. Other than the (repeated) mention that Linux uses bash by default and FreeBSD doesn’t.
Chapter 9 – Customizing the Shell … (you get the idea)
Chapter 10 – Shell Programming … (again, what does this have to do with FreeBSD specifically?)
Chapter 11 – Introduction to Perl Programming … (more non-FreeBSD stuff)
Chapter 12 – The FreeBSD Filesystem … (a nice 101 primer on UNIX-like filesystems. Not much about FreeBSD though.)
Chapter 13 – Users, Groups, and Permissions … (can you guess? More Unix 101 stuff)
Chapter 14 – System Configuration and Startup Scripts … (finally … after 393 pages, we finally get to something in the “FreeBSD Unleashed” book that has something to do with FreeBSD specifically.)
Chapter 15 – Performance Monitoring, Process Control, and Job Automation … (Sorry … back to Unix 101 … Unless you really don’t know about commands like “top”, “ps”, “kill”, “nice”, and cron jobs.)
Chapter 16 – Installing Additional Software … (This chapter is FreeBSD centric. But nothing you can’t gather from the freely available FreeBSD Handbook at http://www.freebsd.org)
blah blah blah, you get the idea.
So people who run FreeBSD should only do things that can’t be done in any other operating system?
Interesting point of view..
So people who run FreeBSD should only do things that can’t be done in any other operating system?
Uhh… no. The point was (obvious) … Many people can use a good beginner book. I have no problem with that. But according to the back cover of this book, the target audience is “Intermediate – Advanced”
Yup. The “unleashed” series always strikes me as nothing but a bunch of generic material recycled and rehased, with the bare minimum added specific to whatever the topic claims to be.
The FBSD online handbook is a far better source on BSD than the unleashed book.
I’ve yet to figure out why a supposedly technical site like OSAlert keeps linking to crap articles from Informit. At least they make up for it by linking to stuff from the IBM sites.
Well I agree that the book should say “Beginner – Intermediate” rather than “Intermediate – Advanced”. But again this is the fault of the publisher; it doesn’t mean that there aren’t a lot of people out there that can learn from the book (I did).
But the main point is that there is a lot of overlap between FreeBSD, other BSDs, Linux, Solaris, etc. So if I get a book to teach me about FreeBSD at this level, there is inevitably going to be a lot of stuff that’s the same in any Unix-like OS.
How is this bad? I like that I can transfer a lot of the skills and knowledge I learn to other environments.
I don’t think it matters that there are many other books written for users of other systems with similar content – I’m not going to read those books anyway.
“How is this bad?”
If that’s the kind of book you want, then it’s not a bad thing. It wasn’t the kind of book I wanted/expected.
I’m not a Unix or UNIX-like expert, but I’ve moved well beyond “how to copy files” and “what the different file permissions mean”
I don’t know if you’re interested in Debian Linux or not, but if you are, I highly recommend “The Debian System: Concepts and Techniques” by Martin F. Krafft (No Starch Press)
The whole book is all about *Debian* … it’s not a generalized look at Unix and UNIX-like operating systems, and it’s not even about general Linux distributions. It’s about *Debian* … you won’t spend hundreds of pages reading stuff you already know. (Unless of course, you are already a Debian super guru. But if that were the case, you should know better than to buy the book.)
Another good book is “Absolute OpenBSD: Unix for the Practical Paranoid” by Michael W. Lucas … also published by No Starch Press. Another fine example of a book that stays entirely focussed on the main topic of the book.
I guess for me, the point is ultimately that there is A LOT to be learned with just FreeBSD specifically. I was hoping for a book that was going to stay entirely focussed on the main topic and reveal to me all kinds of new material that I was either only passingly familiar with, or totally unaware of. Unfortunately, the majority of the book felt more like “Generic Unix for dummies (with a dash of FreeBSD on the side)”
FIPS is just lame- who the hell is using FAT file systems anymore? Use Gparted instead- then you can resize almost any filesystem in the world- except BSD ones….damn.
Is it true you can’t have more than 3 primary partitions, or is that just with FIPS? Otherwise I finally understand why PCBSD doesn’t boot on my system.
No, You can’t have more than FOUR primary partitions per drive, but your PCBSD installation need only one and all other partitions are resides in this so called slice.
Exactly. What linux calls a ‘partition’, BSD calls a ‘slice’. What linux calls a ‘subpartition’, BSD calls a ‘partition’. Simple, huh?
Of course, the four primary partition limit is a limitation of PC hardware, not BSD, although I think it’s just greedy to want more than 4 OS’s per drive anyway!
No, You can’t have more than FOUR primary partitions per drive, but your PCBSD installation need only one and all other partitions are resides in this so called slice.
Actually I misread in part 2 one of the limitations of FIPS: “You cannot currently have more than three partitions on your disk.” as being FIPS can’t be used on discs with more than 3 partitions, thinking: ‘Maybe the PCBSD hung because I have more’. But it’s only a prerequisite for running the program. Pretty inflexible though.
But further on the page it’s mentioned “FreeBSD doesn’t use extended partitions; instead, it has the concept of slices and BSD partitions”.
That probably means FreeBSD/PCBSD/DesktopBSD can’t be installed on a logical partition, correct?
But I assume this doesn’t crash any installer..
more badly written misinformative informit text.
Why, in an a discussion of an open source operating system, bother with poor closed source tools, rather than describing how to use the higher quality open source tools that are part of the OS you’re discussing?
And this thread clearly demonstrates, by the confusion within it, just how misinformative these informit bits are.
I’m a Linux pro and I tried to install FreeBSD 6.1. The installation just loops, finally I had to give up!!! If I’m as a Linux pro cannot install FreeBSD, what to talk about normal end users.
Me too. Did the dicing and slicing stuff, and got no further – it seemed to be having problems with the partition table and finding the CDrom etc, which I thought I sorted out – then it just looped. I didn’t persist for too long, just thought “oh well, I’ve got Linux, I like Linux, life’s too short”
If either of the last two posters had problems installing FreeBSD, then you aren’t “Linux Pro’s” – whatever that means.
I think what they meant to say is that they are GUI pros. As in, if an installer has a next button, they can click it as good as anyone else.
Edited 2006-08-14 14:20
Strange that this chapter made no mention of the notorious geometry bug, that shows up whenever you try to install FreeBSD on a hard drive along with another OS. Or has that bug finally been eradicated? Seems like it’s been around for at least a decade.
Well, from what I noticed it didn’t come up while installing FreeBSD 6 or 6.1.