Re: Question about FreeBSD installation procedure
In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 278, Issue 4, Message 2 On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:36:00 +0800 (WST) Bret Busby b...@busby.net wrote: On Sat, 26 Sep 2009, Manolis Kiagias wrote: Bret Busby wrote: Hello. I have been interested in installing FreeBSD on my laptop (HP/Compaq NX5000, 2MB RAM), in a free 20MB partition. [..] See http://busby.net/bret/Screenshot--dev-sda-GParted.png Presumably from your screenshot, what Linux Gparted calls /dev/sda8 However, with the response above, and, with all of the responses thus far, to the query, it appears that I cannot install FreeBSD on the computer, without a full system rebuild, involving removal of all of the installed operating systems and software from the computer, then repartitioning, or, slicing up, the hard drive, and then creating new logical, extended partitions, and then reinstalling each of the operating systems, and all of the software for each of the operating systems, trying to ensure that I then have at least all of the software that is currently installed on each operating system on the computer, and, the data that is currently present on the computer. Bret, none of that much drama will be necessary :) Manolis nailed it, but I'll add a little reinforcement if it helps reassure you that what you want to do is a) entirely possible and b) not terribly difficult. And, with being required to do all of that, I do not know what would happen, regarding issues such as the interrupt conflict that I encountered when trying to initially install Debian 3.1 on the computer, the interrupt conflict being between the WiFi card and the ethernet card, which reuired Ubuntu to resolve the conflict, then (at the time, as I was then a strictly Debian user) uninstalling Ubuntu to reinstall Debian 3.1, with the solution to the interrupt conflict, having used Mandriva Linux to do the partitioning, so as to retain the initial installation of MS Win XP, which I would probably lose, and have to install from scratch, as part of installing BSD on the system. I can't comment on your wifi or interrupt issues, but there's no reason you need to lose any of your existing systems to install FreeBSD here. First, make SURE you have good backups, whatever else you do. Sooner or later the HD is going to fail anyway, so be prepared and be comfortable. More or less as Manolis later said, using gparted since you have it: a) delete the 20GB logical partition /dev/sda8 for the space you need. b) move the free space in the extended partition to the end, after the present sda9 and sda10. these may then become sda8 and sda9, and you may later need to edit references to these to account for renumbering. c) shrink the extended partition sda2 to the end of (now) sda9, which will provide 20GB of unallocated free space on the disk. d) create a new slice (primary partition in DOS terms) using all of the 20GB free space. gparted will call it /dev/sda3, and it'll be the third partition in the MBR. FreeBSD will see this as slice /dev/ad0s3, and there you can install FreeBSD, probably in several FreeBSD partitions. So, getting the system set up, initially, to get Debian 3.1 running (it has been superseded on the system, first by Debian 4, and, now, by Debian 5), took a fair bit of time and effort, and problem solving, using various operating systems, to get the one extra operating system installed. Sure, and you learned quite a lot in the process :) Due to the time and effort involved, and the apparent complexity, it all seems too difficult, to install BSD. Nope. Just a bit more learning, shifting a bit further from 'DOS-think' If FreeBSD would be able to be installed in a logical partition, within an extended partition, as can be done with Linux, it would probably be able to be done by me - in the meantime, it is simply too difficult. It's only too difficult until you know how to do it. Manolis and I have both shown you a fairly straightforward way of doing it, and others have provided good background info on how FreeBSD uses diskspace. Go for it! As a bonus, you should be able to access all of the other filesystems on your disk from FreeBSD, at least read-only. FAT32 (mount_msdosfs), NTFS (I don't, but many people here have done), ext3 - not sure about write capability, but certainly ext2. Way back on FreeBSD 3.3 I salvaged many OS/2 HPFS filesystems from various extended partitions, readonly, and last time I looked (FreeBSD 7.0) the HPFS code was still in the tree. You'll find that FreeBSD knows the (covering) extended partition as /dev/ad0s5 and the logical partitions within as /dev/ad0s6, s7 etc. FAT32 is reliable read-write, and most useful for shipping files between different OS, especially if you enclose them in a tar(1) or zip(1) file if you need to maintain file ownerships and permissions. cheers, Ian
Re: Question about FreeBSD installation procedure
Bret Busby wrote: On Sat, 26 Sep 2009, Manolis Kiagias wrote: Bret Busby wrote: Hello. I have been interested in installing FreeBSD on my laptop (HP/Compaq NX5000, 2MB RAM), in a free 20MB partition. I really hope you meant Gb here ;) I noticed that the Linux Format magazine to which I subscribe, in Issue 124, comes with FreeBSD 7.2 on the DVD. From what I understand, FreeBSD (and possibly all BSD) uses hard disc slices rather than partitions, and therefore cannot easily be installed in a free partition, but needs for hard disc slices to be used. 'Slice' is FreeBSD jargon for what Windows / DOS would call a 'primary partition'. In short, FreeBSD can only be installed in your machine only if you have free space *and* the possibility to create a primary partition in it . Due to BIOS limitations, PC hardware only supports 4 primary partitions on any disk. If you already have 4 primary partitions and you are not willing to delete one, you can't install FreeBSD as it won't install on what Windows calls an Extended partition. But let's say you have a typical laptop with two partitions for OS and data, and some free space at the end. FreeBSD will happily install there. Is it yet possible to install FreeBSD into a hard disc partition, rather than needing to install into hard disc slices? I have attached a copy of the screenshot showing the partition table; I wanted to install FreeBSD into sda8. Can this be done. Thank you in anticipation. The screenshot won't come through in the mailing list, if at all possible upload it somewhere and send us a link. See http://busby.net/bret/Screenshot--dev-sda-GParted.png However, with the response above, and, with all of the responses thus far, to the query, it appears that I cannot install FreeBSD on the computer, without a full system rebuild, involving removal of all of the installed operating systems and software from the computer, then repartitioning, or, slicing up, the hard drive, and then creating new logical, extended partitions, and then reinstalling each of the operating systems, and all of the software for each of the operating systems, trying to ensure that I then have at least all of the software that is currently installed on each operating system on the computer, and, the data that is currently present on the computer. Judging from the screen shot, you should still be able to do it using gparted to shuffle the partitions a bit. (I recommend using the gparted or the parted magic live cd for this) One possible way would be to delete sda8 and move the free space to the end of the extended partition. Then resize the extended partition so the free space is out of it. Create a primary partition out of the free space (or let FreeBSD do it during install). You still have primary partitions available, your current disk setup includes one primary and one extended partition with many 'logical partitions'. Granted, this will take some time but it will work. And, with being required to do all of that, I do not know what would happen, regarding issues such as the interrupt conflict that I encountered when trying to initially install Debian 3.1 on the computer, the interrupt conflict being between the WiFi card and the ethernet card, which reuired Ubuntu to resolve the conflict, then (at the time, as I was then a strictly Debian user) uninstalling Ubuntu to reinstall Debian 3.1, with the solution to the interrupt conflict, having used Mandriva Linux to do the partitioning, so as to retain the initial installation of MS Win XP, which I would probably lose, and have to install from scratch, as part of installing BSD on the system. You could try simply booting the FreeBSD DVD or livefs CD and see what devices get recognized and any potential problems, without committing to installing anything. So, getting the system set up, initially, to get Debian 3.1 running (it has been superseded on the system, first by Debian 4, and, now, by Debian 5), took a fair bit of time and effort, and problem solving, using various operating systems, to get the one extra operating system installed. Due to the time and effort involved, and the apparent complexity, it all seems too difficult, to install BSD. I would agree all this would be too difficult for someone doing a first time install of FreeBSD, having to address multiple issues at the same time. If at all possible I'd recommend trying on a second spare system. FreeBSD runs very well on older systems too, maybe it's time to get this old PC out of the closet :) If FreeBSD would be able to be installed in a logical partition, within an extended partition, as can be done with Linux, it would probably be able to be done by me - in the meantime, it is simply too difficult. I have no idea whether there are plans for these. Personally I avoid multi-boot systems at all if possible. I always tend to use one of the OSes anyway , the other just wastes disk
Re: Question about FreeBSD installation procedure
On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:36:00 +0800 (WST), Bret Busby b...@busby.net wrote: See http://busby.net/bret/Screenshot--dev-sda-GParted.png I think I do understand. You have: 1. a primary DOS partition which contains a NTFS file system 2. an extended DOS partition containing subpartitions with an ext3 partition a linux swap partition a FAT32 logical volume three further ext3 partitions So you should have two slots of primary DOS partitions. It is, of course, assumed that the unallocated part is NOT subpart of sda2, but of the whole disk sda. However, with the response above, and, with all of the responses thus far, to the query, it appears that I cannot install FreeBSD on the computer, without a full system rebuild, involving removal of all of the installed operating systems and software from the computer, then repartitioning, or, slicing up, the hard drive, and then creating new logical, extended partitions, and then reinstalling each of the operating systems, and all of the software for each of the operating systems, trying to ensure that I then have at least all of the software that is currently installed on each operating system on the computer, and, the data that is currently present on the computer. I think you're wrong. The installation should work. In order to test, fire up the FreeBSD installer from the CD and enter the slice editor. See if you can create a new slice - no slice will actually be created. However, keep a working (!) and tested (!) backup of your data at hand. Just in case. You won't need it, but HAVE it. :-) Due to the time and effort involved, and the apparent complexity, it all seems too difficult, to install BSD. I always thought it was complicated to install operating systems that require extended DOS partitions and logical volumes for their OS partitioning... :-) If FreeBSD would be able to be installed in a logical partition, within an extended partition, as can be done with Linux, it would probably be able to be done by me - in the meantime, it is simply too difficult. At the moment, it can't. And due to the limitations that have artifically been brought into the PC world by DOS, I think it's sufficient for FreeBSD to require a primary DOS partition, i. e. its own slice, to be installed into. Honestly, I've never seen the need for extended DOS partitions. Let's say you intendedly want to run a multi-OS system, then you can install four systems, each one in its own slice, and within the slice, the partitiions, if needed and supported. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Question about FreeBSD installation procedure
On 9/29/09, Polytropon free...@edvax.de wrote: snip Honestly, I've never seen the need for extended DOS partitions. Let's say you intendedly want to run a multi-OS system, then you can install four systems, each one in its own slice, and within the slice, the partitiions, if needed and supported. By using BSD jargon, I will describe some other limitations, some of which you may not yet have gone through: The OS installer is given the opportunity to partition for you. If you tell Linux to install it can create multiple slices, eating up your 4 slices. If you setup 2 windows OSs, the 2nd OS gets added as an extended DOS slice. The limitation of not installing BSD into an extended DOS partition is a good decision. It makes it difficult for the MBR code to dissect the extended DOS partition to find the boot sector. I am 100% for the requirement of a slice. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Question about FreeBSD installation procedure
On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 10:01:18PM +0800, Bret Busby wrote: Hello. I have been interested in installing FreeBSD on my laptop (HP/Compaq NX5000, 2MB RAM), in a free 20MB partition. I noticed that the Linux Format magazine to which I subscribe, in Issue 124, comes with FreeBSD 7.2 on the DVD. From what I understand, FreeBSD (and possibly all BSD) uses hard disc slices rather than partitions, and therefore cannot easily be installed in a free partition, but needs for hard disc slices to be used. Is it yet possible to install FreeBSD into a hard disc partition, rather than needing to install into hard disc slices? I think other responders have handled most of what you need to know. But, to try and be clear for a newbie; you are running in to a terminology issue here.MS and FreeBSD use the word partition to mean different (but related) things. Generally, in MS, the terms partition and primary-partition often get used interchangeably. But, they normally mean primary-partition. MS does also have and 'extended-partition' which somewhat corresponds to the division that FreeBSD calls a partition, but it is implemented much differently and is not compatible with FreeBSD - although there are now some FreeBSD utilities that can read a MS extended-partition. FreeBSD, Linux and MS have primary-partitions, but they call them different things. FreeBSD calls them slices.Too bad MS didn't follow that pattern. Things would be more clear. Anyway a primary-partition/slice is determined by the BIOS, not actually the operating system, A standard BIOS allows for 4 main divisions of a disk hard-drive. They are numbered from 1..4 even though in computers it is common to number things from 0..n. Each of those are primary-partitions in MS language and slices in FreeBSD language. If I remember right, Linux refers to these as partitions and primary-partitions somewhat interchangeably, but I am not so familiar with Linux. Each primary-partition in either MS, FreeBSD or Linux can be subdivided into chunks. In MS, they are called extended-partitions, in FreeBSD they are called partitions and I forgot what Linux calls them. /FreeBSD has a broader outlook on things and if you are going to use /a hard-drive only for FreeBSD you can even skip creating a primary /partition and any subdivisions. You just have newfs build a filesystem /right on the disk. That is called creating a 'dangerously- dedicated' disk. /It is not really dangerous. It is just not compatible with other systems. Each primary-partition (or the dangerously-dedicated disk) can be made bootable. Each has an initial sector(512 byte block) in the initial track on the disk that is called the boot sector. If that contains bootup code the system consideres it to be bootable. In addition, there is a sector-0 on each disk that controls everything. In general, this sector is normally called the MBR. It is just enough code to look for boot sectors and let you select one and then read in that sector and transfer control to it. Actually, some fancy MBRs take advantage of the fact that a whole track is being wasted for the sake of that one sector and put much more sophisticated code there that allows more complex choices. But the original standard was just one sector. So, what happens is that the BIOS has a list of devices to look on for MBRs. It grabs the first one in the list that it recognizes and starts to execute it. That MBR will find boot sectors from those primary- partitions that it recognizes as bootable and give you a choice of which you want to boot from. Most have a default if you do not make a selection before a timeout. FreeBSD MBR defaults to booting the most recently booted one. That boot sector is read in and starts executing. It starts pulling the rest of the boot code and that begins to put your kernel in along with its extra modules and starts that running which starts init to run and so on. You can make any of the primary-partitions/slices be FreeBSD, MS or Linux and all on the same disk.Often when you get a machine loaded with MS, such as XP, only two primaries (slices) are used, but they are sized to take up the whole disk.Usually one of those slices is a hardware vendor diagnostic/maintenance system and the other is whatever MS you have. The diagnostic slice is very small and the MS slice takes up everything else with lots of empty space. When what you have to do is get a stand-alone utility that manages disk partitions and shrink that MS primary-partition and make room for another. Most of them are somewhat MS-centric and complain about making more than one primary-partition, but they will do it.Just make the newly freed-up space an unspecified primary partition and then install FreeBSD in to it. I have used Partition Magic, but the new version (8) is poor. Use version 7 if you can get it. But neither of these work properly with USB drives. I had to
Re: Question about FreeBSD installation procedure
On Sat, 26 Sep 2009, Manolis Kiagias wrote: Bret Busby wrote: Hello. I have been interested in installing FreeBSD on my laptop (HP/Compaq NX5000, 2MB RAM), in a free 20MB partition. I really hope you meant Gb here ;) I noticed that the Linux Format magazine to which I subscribe, in Issue 124, comes with FreeBSD 7.2 on the DVD. From what I understand, FreeBSD (and possibly all BSD) uses hard disc slices rather than partitions, and therefore cannot easily be installed in a free partition, but needs for hard disc slices to be used. 'Slice' is FreeBSD jargon for what Windows / DOS would call a 'primary partition'. In short, FreeBSD can only be installed in your machine only if you have free space *and* the possibility to create a primary partition in it . Due to BIOS limitations, PC hardware only supports 4 primary partitions on any disk. If you already have 4 primary partitions and you are not willing to delete one, you can't install FreeBSD as it won't install on what Windows calls an Extended partition. But let's say you have a typical laptop with two partitions for OS and data, and some free space at the end. FreeBSD will happily install there. Is it yet possible to install FreeBSD into a hard disc partition, rather than needing to install into hard disc slices? I have attached a copy of the screenshot showing the partition table; I wanted to install FreeBSD into sda8. Can this be done. Thank you in anticipation. The screenshot won't come through in the mailing list, if at all possible upload it somewhere and send us a link. See http://busby.net/bret/Screenshot--dev-sda-GParted.png However, with the response above, and, with all of the responses thus far, to the query, it appears that I cannot install FreeBSD on the computer, without a full system rebuild, involving removal of all of the installed operating systems and software from the computer, then repartitioning, or, slicing up, the hard drive, and then creating new logical, extended partitions, and then reinstalling each of the operating systems, and all of the software for each of the operating systems, trying to ensure that I then have at least all of the software that is currently installed on each operating system on the computer, and, the data that is currently present on the computer. And, with being required to do all of that, I do not know what would happen, regarding issues such as the interrupt conflict that I encountered when trying to initially install Debian 3.1 on the computer, the interrupt conflict being between the WiFi card and the ethernet card, which reuired Ubuntu to resolve the conflict, then (at the time, as I was then a strictly Debian user) uninstalling Ubuntu to reinstall Debian 3.1, with the solution to the interrupt conflict, having used Mandriva Linux to do the partitioning, so as to retain the initial installation of MS Win XP, which I would probably lose, and have to install from scratch, as part of installing BSD on the system. So, getting the system set up, initially, to get Debian 3.1 running (it has been superseded on the system, first by Debian 4, and, now, by Debian 5), took a fair bit of time and effort, and problem solving, using various operating systems, to get the one extra operating system installed. Due to the time and effort involved, and the apparent complexity, it all seems too difficult, to install BSD. If FreeBSD would be able to be installed in a logical partition, within an extended partition, as can be done with Linux, it would probably be able to be done by me - in the meantime, it is simply too difficult. Thanks anyway, for your help, to those who responded. -- Bret Busby Armadale West Australia .. So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means. - Deep Thought, Chapter 28 of Book 1 of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy In Four Parts, written by Douglas Adams, published by Pan Books, 1992 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Question about FreeBSD installation procedure
Bret Busby wrote: Hello. I have been interested in installing FreeBSD on my laptop (HP/Compaq NX5000, 2MB RAM), in a free 20MB partition. I really hope you meant Gb here ;) I noticed that the Linux Format magazine to which I subscribe, in Issue 124, comes with FreeBSD 7.2 on the DVD. From what I understand, FreeBSD (and possibly all BSD) uses hard disc slices rather than partitions, and therefore cannot easily be installed in a free partition, but needs for hard disc slices to be used. 'Slice' is FreeBSD jargon for what Windows / DOS would call a 'primary partition'. In short, FreeBSD can only be installed in your machine only if you have free space *and* the possibility to create a primary partition in it . Due to BIOS limitations, PC hardware only supports 4 primary partitions on any disk. If you already have 4 primary partitions and you are not willing to delete one, you can't install FreeBSD as it won't install on what Windows calls an Extended partition. But let's say you have a typical laptop with two partitions for OS and data, and some free space at the end. FreeBSD will happily install there. Is it yet possible to install FreeBSD into a hard disc partition, rather than needing to install into hard disc slices? I have attached a copy of the screenshot showing the partition table; I wanted to install FreeBSD into sda8. Can this be done. Thank you in anticipation. The screenshot won't come through in the mailing list, if at all possible upload it somewhere and send us a link. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Question about FreeBSD installation procedure
On Sat, 26 Sep 2009 22:01:18 +0800 (WST) Bret Busby b...@busby.net wrote: Hello. I have been interested in installing FreeBSD on my laptop (HP/Compaq NX5000, 2MB RAM), in a free 20MB partition. I noticed that the Linux Format magazine to which I subscribe, in Issue 124, comes with FreeBSD 7.2 on the DVD. From what I understand, FreeBSD (and possibly all BSD) uses hard disc slices rather than partitions, and therefore cannot easily be installed in a free partition, but needs for hard disc slices to be used. A slice is a primary partition in IBM PC terminology. A disk can have four primary partitions or three primary partitions and an extended partition. The extended partition can contain logical partitions Is it yet possible to install FreeBSD into a hard disc partition, rather than needing to install into hard disc slices? I have attached a copy of the screenshot showing the partition table; Attachments are stripped. I wanted to install FreeBSD into sda8. Assuming that's a logical partition, then no. If you have less than three primary partitions, you might be able to delete the logical partition, shrink the extended partition and convert the free space into a primary partition. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Question about FreeBSD installation procedure
On Sat, 26 Sep 2009 22:01:18 +0800 (WST), Bret Busby b...@busby.net wrote: From what I understand, FreeBSD (and possibly all BSD) uses hard disc slices rather than partitions, and therefore cannot easily be installed in a free partition, but needs for hard disc slices to be used. I see a terminology problem first. FreeBSD's slices are DOS primary partitions, and FreeBSD needs one of them to be installed into. FreeBSD's partitions are... they are like... erm... they are partitions. :-) You can imagine them as a subdivision to hold a file system. Slices are divided into at least one partition, or more than one, e. g. for the file system root, the swap partition, the home partition. Please note that (hard) disk != (optical) disc. Is it yet possible to install FreeBSD into a hard disc partition, rather than needing to install into hard disc slices? Both words are refering to the same thing. Everything you need is a free DOS primary partition, which is called a slice. I have attached a copy of the screenshot showing the partition table; I wanted to install FreeBSD into sda8. I cannot see it. Furthermore, I'm not familiar with the naming convention of Linux. As far as I remember, sd refers to disks, and sda is the first disk. sda8 would be... the 8th partition on it? Is this even possible? From FreeBSD's naming convention, ad refers to ATA disks. The first disk is ad0. You would possibly already have other operating systems on that disks, e. g. occupying slices (DOS primary partitions) s1 and s2, so ad0s1 and ad0s2 cannot be used. If there's unpartitioned space, you start the installation of FreeBSD with creating a new slice, ad0s3. Into this slice the installation goes, and the partitions are ad0s3b for the swap and ad0s3a for /; if you do partitioning with filesystems on their own partitions, you can of course do that. Refer to the handbook's chapter about installing FreeBSD for a much more detailed explaination. Can this be done. See above, and note that FreeBSD needs a DOS primary partition which is different from a logical volume inside an extended partition. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
