Roland's FreeBSD installation page

Introduction

Installation of the full operating system is a rare event in my experience with FreeBSD. You probably only need to do it once for every new machine. After that FreeBSD it is usually updated rather than installed anew. It is therefore wise to think about your installation before actually performing it.

The installation process itself is quite well documented in chapter 2 of the FreeBSD Handbook. In this space I just want to make some observations

Preparations

Do your homework

There is a wealth of documentation for FreeBSD available online, starting with the FreeBSD Handbook. Use it.

If you are going to buy new hardware, have a care to buy stuff that works well with FreeBSD. This means going over the specs of the hardware you are contemplating of buying, and looking up the chips in the manual pages, especially section 4. My advice would be to try and avoid stuff that needs proprietary binary-only drivers; if they break, only the supplier can fix them.

The very best way to check out compatibility when you are looking for a new computer is to take a FreeBSD live CD to the store, and ask if you can try and boot from it. If it boots OK, and the hardware is recognized you’ll know for sure. If the shop won’t let you try and boot FreeBSD, they don’t want your business. Go somewhere else.

Subscribe to the freebsd-questions mailing list, and browse through the archives. But do try to find an answer yourself before asking on the list!

Practice makes perfect

If you have never done a FreeBSD install before, practice on a virtual machine before starting on the real thing. This will help you understand the process, and it you make a mistake, it’s no big deal. Depending on the OS you are using, there are free virtualization programs like qemu and virtualbox that can help you test FreeBSD.

—– Copyright © 2010, Roland Smith rsmith@xs4all.nl

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