hi. I am newbie in Unix. I wanted to install Free BSD 5.2.1 to my computer which winXp was already installed. But i couldn't.
I chose Standard. Then it said you are going to use dos style fdisk partitioning. Then a window displayed begining like this.
WARNING: A geometry of 155127/16/63 for ad0 is incorrect...
I have one hard disk(80GB) with 3 partition(20,15,45). First for windows second for Unix which is empty and third for data. I want to install FreeBSD to second partition but i don't know how to do it. Below shown some info from that screen.
....Size(ST).........Name............PType.......................DESC
...........63..............-................12........................unused
..41945652.........ad0s1.............. 4...............NTFS/HPFS/QNX
114398865.........ad0s2...............4.............Extended Dos/LBA
.......23436.............- ................12...................... unused
If I choose all disk space to install FreeBSD i will loose my data. I can't see second and third partition of my hard disk instead ad0s2 which is combination of second and third partition of my hard disk. If i choose ad0s2 will I loose my 3 rd partition?Please help me. I want to install Free BSD to second partition without loosing my data.
| shamil wrote: |
hi. I am newbie in Unix. I wanted to install Free BSD 5.2.1 to my computer which winXp was already installed. But i couldn't.
I chose Standard. Then it said you are going to use dos style fdisk partitioning. Then a window displayed begining like this.
WARNING: A geometry of 155127/16/63 for ad0 is incorrect...
I have one hard disk(80GB) with 3 partition(20,15,45). First for windows second for Unix which is empty and third for data. I want to install FreeBSD to second partition but i don't know how to do it. Below shown some info from that screen.
....Size(ST).........Name............PType.......................DESC
...........63..............-................12........................unused
..41945652.........ad0s1.............. 4...............NTFS/HPFS/QNX
114398865.........ad0s2...............4.............Extended Dos/LBA
.......23436.............- ................12...................... unused
If I choose all disk space to install FreeBSD i will loose my data. I can't see second and third partition of my hard disk instead ad0s2 which is combination of second and third partition of my hard disk. If i choose ad0s2 will I loose my 3 rd partition?Please help me. I want to install Free BSD to second partition without loosing my data. |
Well firstly I'll recommend you try some variant of Linux, especially with a graphical installer before you try FreeBSD, because fdisk is quite difficult for even moderately experienced people. A graphical installer will give you a better idea of the paritions on your hard disk.
If you do decide to go ahead and take the plunge, please keep this in mind, these instructions were typed out while I was on a Linux machine, so your mileage may vary and no warraties implied or not.. Worst case, you can format your harddisk, and lose all data.
When fdisk opens up, ask it to create a new partition. It'll automatically detect the unused space and ask to create a new partition in the empty space. Depending upon your requirements, you can choose to have a swap partition or not. If you decide to use swap partitions you'll need to create 2 partitions, the smaller one (around 500 MB should be sufficient) to be used as swap. When the installer asks where to install to, select the larger partition, which will be formatted as UFS IIRC.
Hope that helps.I believe BSD has to have a primary partition to install to.
I don't think MS fdisk lets you make more than one primary partiton, in case you partitioned with that.
My guess, then, is that FreeBSD is just seeing everything after the first partition as an extended partition.
As the poster above mentioned, the FreeBSD fdisk and disk label utility can be daunting. The chances that you will hose your entire disk are fairly high. I really wouldn't play with it on my main system
If you have an older machine to practice on I would recommend that.
longjack
| longjack wrote: |
I believe BSD has to have a primary partition to install to.
I don't think MS fdisk lets you make more than one primary partiton, in case you partitioned with that.
My guess, then, is that FreeBSD is just seeing everything after the first partition as an extended partition.
As the poster above mentioned, the FreeBSD fdisk and disk label utility can be daunting. The chances that you will hose your entire disk are fairly high. I really wouldn't play with it on my main system
If you have an older machine to practice on I would recommend that.
longjack |
If BSD wants primary partition to be installed. Then I think it is impossible to install BSD (despite I have allocated free partition) unless I use FreeBSD fdisk utility. And you say it is daunty! I don't dare do that. So problem seems to be remain unsolved. But you made me understand the reason. Thanks.. | longjack wrote: |
I believe BSD has to have a primary partition to install to.
I don't think MS fdisk lets you make more than one primary partiton, in case you partitioned with that.
longjack |
Nah, MS fdisk lets you have 4 primary partitions or 3 primary, one extended, and upto 63 secondary partitions inside the extended partition | modak wrote: |
| longjack wrote: | I believe BSD has to have a primary partition to install to.
I don't think MS fdisk lets you make more than one primary partiton, in case you partitioned with that.
longjack |
Nah, MS fdisk lets you have 4 primary partitions or 3 primary, one extended, and upto 63 secondary partitions inside the extended partition |
Right. Only one can be set to active (bootable).
His drive has the Ad0s1 slice active. The boot sector and and the 15 GB partition are both marked as unused.
What I think is that windows has to be installed first, meaning that the windows OS partiton is set to active in fdisk.
In this install he would use the second slice marked unused to create a FreeBSD partition with BSD fdisk, then use BSD Disklabel to create the directories inside the partition, then install the boot manger in the first slice marked unused, which is the boot sector.
Maybe another partion editor other than DOS fdisk would show the second unused partition with a more descriptive name to make the choices less confusing during the install.
I just think it would be better to practice on a machine that isn't a production machine for him.
longjackFirst, FreeBSD 6.0 is out and I already tried it.
Well, it sux.
Try Debian/Linux! It's faster, more stable(yes it is), and has a DAMN GREAT PACKAGE MANAGER.
I can't really tell if FreeBSD is the best OS for starting with Unix... it's not that easy to use. But it has some good parts. For your case, I'd advice to try install it on a single (second) disk, so you'd safe your other partitions.
If you really want a BSD with a graphical install, so try looking at this ;
http://www.pcbsd.org/ | garvalf4 wrote: |
I can't really tell if FreeBSD is the best OS for starting with Unix... it's not that easy to use. But it has some good parts. For your case, I'd advice to try install it on a single (second) disk, so you'd safe your other partitions.
If you really want a BSD with a graphical install, so try looking at this ;
http://www.pcbsd.org/ |
That's a great tip.
Thanks,
longjack | garvalf4 wrote: |
| http://www.pcbsd.org/ |
Hey never knew about PC-BSD before !! It looks good, and will hopefully have more converts to BSD. But I still think the Linux partition naming scheme is easier for n00bs to understand, and so they should try using Linux first.
By the way, PC-BSD looks to be based exclusively on KDE. What about poor GNOME ?
PS. no desktop environment wars please
PPS: me ? I generally use XFCE.FreeBsd with xfce and easy to try ....
-> http://www.freesbie.org
Thats a live cd based on FreeBSD 5.3,
you can choose between fluxbox or xfce
if you like it, you can even install it on your HDD
FreeBSD is far more simple than linux to me
(but require a little bit of unix knowledge).
Thanks for the link man. Now that I've got Xen up and running on my machine, I think I'll start making virtual machines to run stuff like BSD, etc.
| mjerom wrote: |
FreeBSD is far more simple than linux to me
(but require a little bit of unix knowledge). |
Well the Unix way of doing things isn't immediately apparent to most people, especially people coming from a Microsoft Windows environment.
Still no news of GNOME on BSD it seems. Poor GNOME !! 
Well it seems that the Debian distribution is working towards porting the GNU tools to work on a FreeBSD[1] kernel.It already has a port for the Gnu Hurd[2] kernel, and some people were working privately to get Debian to run on OpenSolaris kernel [3]. So it seems that Debian will finally fulfil its promise of being a Universal Operating System.
Someday, we'll be able to decide to decide which kernel to install, instead of being only able to decide which Linux kernel to install, from within the Debian installer itself.
1: http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/
2. http://www.debian.org/ports/hurd/
3. http://www.gnusolaris.org/gswiki @modak: Gnome is available for FreeBSD, but not as popular. KDE runs very quickly on the *BSDs, though. I don't know the future of the Gnome project, as it seems to be removing useful features while excellent GTK based desktop environments, like XFCE4, are giving more features while remaining fairly light. If there's not a reversal in direction, we may see Gnome become a marginal desktop 
And, although the Gnome community prides itself on its diversity, some common design elements would make it a lot easier for distro maintainers to include it (remeber Patrick's decision with Slackware?)
As for FreeBSD on that disk? You can't install it bacause it needs to be installed on a primary partition and your disk has two already. If you could somehow back up your data and delete the extended partition, then you could create two primaries in its place (or three), and the last could be the extended one. Then, you could install FreeBSD on one of the resulting primary partitions. Othewise, you'll have to find another way (another drive?) | corey wrote: |
| @modak: Gnome is available for FreeBSD, but not as popular. KDE runs very quickly on the *BSDs, though. I don't know the future of the Gnome project, as it seems to be removing useful features while excellent GTK based desktop environments, like XFCE4, are giving more features while remaining fairly light. If there's not a reversal in direction, we may see Gnome become a marginal desktop And, although the Gnome community prides itself on its diversity, some common design elements would make it a lot easier for distro maintainers to include it (remeber Patrick's decision with Slackware?) |
Dunno about the features, but somehow I like the interface. Especially the one that ships with Ubuntu. I feel it is less cluttered than KDE at least. And yes, I do use XFCE myself.
I am not very conversant of GNOME internals but I believe there are efforts to improve the user interface. Like this :
http://www.gnome.org/~seth/blog/sabayon | Quote: |
shamilWed Dec 14, 2005 11:18 am
hi. I am newbie in Unix. I wanted to install Free BSD 5.2.1 to my computer which winXp was already installed. But i couldn't.
I chose Standard. Then it said you are going to use dos style fdisk partitioning. Then a window displayed begining like this.
WARNING: A geometry of 155127/16/63 for ad0 is incorrect...
I have one hard disk(80GB) with 3 partition(20,15,45). First for windows second for Unix which is empty and third for data. I want to install FreeBSD to second partition but i don't know how to do it. Below shown some info from that screen.
....Size(ST).........Name............PType.......................DESC
...........63..............-................12........................unused
..41945652.........ad0s1.............. 4...............NTFS/HPFS/QNX
114398865.........ad0s2...............4.............Extended Dos/LBA
.......23436.............- ................12...................... unused
If I choose all disk space to install FreeBSD i will loose my data. I can't see second and third partition of my hard disk instead ad0s2 which is combination of second and third partition of my hard disk. If i choose ad0s2 will I loose my 3 rd partition?Please help me. I want to install Free BSD to second partition without loosing my data. |
Thanks for invitation, though from my story about FreeBSD at http://www.frihost.com/forums/vt-29456.html you might have guessed that I'm a newby too.
Anyway, If I were you, I'd definitely experiment on something else but my productivity computer. If there is no computer to experiment on, I'd use at least another hard drive, thus keeping my 80GB safely sitting somewhere by. Get a second hand HDD (Not a big deal these days, quite possible it lies somewhere around, or you might borrow it from a friend for free), reproduce partitions of your product HDD with MS fdisk, and then start with FreeBSD installation.
Good luck | aciminsk wrote: |
Thanks for invitation, though from my story about FreeBSD at http://www.frihost.com/forums/vt-29456.html you might have guessed that I'm a newby too.
Anyway, If I were you, I'd definitely experiment on something else but my productivity computer. If there is no computer to experiment on, I'd use at least another hard drive, thus keeping my 80GB safely sitting somewhere by. Get a second hand HDD (Not a big deal these days, quite possible it lies somewhere around, or you might borrow it from a friend for free), reproduce partitions of your product HDD with MS fdisk, and then start with FreeBSD installation.
Good luck |
Instead of buying new harddisks, you can try making Virtual Machines on you computer. Of course, this is only if you have ample RAM on your machine. (I'd recommend a minimum of 512 MB)
Well, I installed Xen3 on my box, and it works beautifully. However it is quite tricky to install. If you don't want to spend time tinkering around with your Linux Kernel, you can try the free VMWare Server Beta.
http://www.vmware.com/download/server/
It is easy to setup. There is a Perl installer program. You'll however need the header files of the kernel you are running as well as GCC, as VMWare might have to compile some kernel modules. It usually ships with prebuilt modules for the most common kernels shipped with enterprise Linux distros.
