ccTLD Workshop Nairobi: FreeBSD Install

FreeBSD is designed to be a server operating system. This becomes apparent during the installation process. The FreeBSD installer is a console-based (not GUI) install process. In addition, installation of desktop features such as Gnome and KDE is only partially accomplished using the FreeBSD installer program.

For this workshop we are going to install a complete FreeBSD configuration. If you are interested in seeing an optional install that we have done in the past take a look at the Pre SANOG VI Workshop FreeBSD Install pages here.

The FreeBSD installer interface is not intuitive (your author's opinion), so pay close attention to the steps

Hint: Use the tab key to move between choices, but use the SPACE bar to select an item. Pay close attention to what is chosen before you press ENTER. This may save you from having to redo the installation process.

Chapter 2 of the FreeBSD Handbook covers the entire installation process for FreeBSD in much more detail than we'll do here. Chapter 5 covers configuring the X server, fonts, and your choice of Gnome or KDE desktop in excellent detail.

At this point you should have the FreeBSD Install Discs 1 and 2 with you.

Some Notes

Initial Boot from Install Disc 1 FreeBSD is installed!

At this point, technically speaking, FreeBSD is now installed on your machine. You could reboot your computer and FreeBSD would start. However, before doing this the Sysinstall utility gives you the opportunity to configure several important items. All of these items can be configured by hand, but the Syinstall utility has been designed to make this configuration much easier. So, the next bunch of steps are post-FreeBSD-installation items that we are going to take care of.

Post Installation

Say "yes" to doing post-installation configuration when prompted.

Remaining Steps

Now you'll receive numerous queries about items you can configure. The answers to these are:

After Initial Reboot

At this point you will be staring at your initial logon screen for FreeBSD 5.4, which should look something like this:

FreeBSD/i386 (pcN.ws.cctld.ke) (ttyv0)

login:
Password:

Please move on to the post-FreeBSD installation exercises that have been handed out and continue with these.
 


Last modified: Thu Sep 8 18:13:44 ART 2005