Help on free BSD installation

Status
Not open for further replies.

cranky

Broken In
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

Security freak
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...

*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!
 
Last edited:

rakeshishere

HELP AND SUPPORT
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

Security freak
^^^ 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!
 
OP
C

cranky

Broken In
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

Security freak
praka123 said:
...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.

cranky said:
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!
 
Last edited:

mehulved

18 Till I Die............
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

Security freak
^^^ 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

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

rocket357

Security freak
mehulved said:
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

HELP AND SUPPORT
praka123 said:
...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;)

rocket357 said:
^^^ 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:)
 
Last edited:

infra_red_dude

Wire muncher!
rakeshishere said:
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

HELP AND SUPPORT
infra_red_dude said:
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:)
 
OP
C

cranky

Broken In
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

left this forum longback
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

HELP AND SUPPORT
praka123 said:
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

left this forum longback
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

HELP AND SUPPORT
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

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
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:)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom