2.3.3.1 Disk Layouts for FreeBSD/i386

A PC disk can be divided into discrete chunks. These chunks are called partitions. Since FreeBSD internally also has partitions, the naming can become confusing very quickly, therefore these disk chunks are referred to as disk slices or simply slices in FreeBSD itself. For example, the FreeBSD utility fdisk which operates on the PC disk partitions, refers to slices instead of partitions. By design, the PC only supports four partitions per disk. These partitions are called primary partitions. To work around this limitation and allow more than four partitions, a new partition type was created, the extended partition. A disk may contain only one extended partition. Special partitions, called logical partitions, can be created inside this extended partition.

Each partition has a partition ID, which is a number used to identify the type of data on the partition. FreeBSD partitions have the partition ID of 165.

In general, each operating system that you use will identify partitions in a particular way. For example, DOS, and its descendants, like Windows, assign each primary and logical partition a drive letter, starting with C:.

FreeBSD must be installed into a primary partition. FreeBSD can keep all its data, including any files that you create, on this one partition. However, if you have multiple disks, then you can create a FreeBSD partition on all, or some, of them. When you install FreeBSD, you must have one partition available. This might be a blank partition that you have prepared, or it might be an existing partition that contains data that you no longer care about.

If you are already using all the partitions on all your disks, then you will have to free one of them for FreeBSD using the tools provided by the other operating systems you use (e.g., fdisk on DOS or Windows).

If you have a spare partition then you can use that. However, you may need to shrink one or more of your existing partitions first.

A minimal installation of FreeBSD takes as little as 100 MB of disk space. However, that is a very minimal install, leaving almost no space for your own files. A more realistic minimum is 250 MB without a graphical environment, and 350 MB or more if you want a graphical user interface. If you intend to install a lot of third-party software as well, then you will need more space.

You can use a commercial tool such as PartitionMagic�, or a free tool such as GParted, to resize your partitions and make space for FreeBSD. The tools directory on the CDROM contains two free software tools which can carry out this task, namely FIPS and PResizer. Documentation for both of these is available in the same directory. FIPS, PResizer, and PartitionMagic can resize FAT16 and FAT32 partitions -- used in MS-DOS� through Windows ME. Both PartitionMagic and GParted are known to work on NTFS. GParted is available on a number of Live CD Linux distributions, such as SystemRescueCD.

Problems have been reported resizing Microsoft� Vista partitions. Having a Vista installation CDROM handy when attempting such an operation is recommended. As with all such disk maintenance tasks, a current set of backups is also strongly advised.

2.3.3.2 Disk Layouts for the Alpha

You will need a dedicated disk for FreeBSD on the Alpha. It is not possible to share a disk with another operating system at this time. Depending on the specific Alpha machine you have, this disk can either be a SCSI disk or an IDE disk, as long as your machine is capable of booting from it.

Following the conventions of the Digital / Compaq manuals all SRM input is shown in uppercase. SRM is case insensitive.

To find the names and types of disks in your machine, use the SHOW DEVICE command from the SRM console prompt:

>>>SHOW DEVICE
dka0.0.0.4.0               DKA0           TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-57  3476
dkc0.0.0.1009.0            DKC0                       RZ1BB-BS  0658
dkc100.1.0.1009.0          DKC100             SEAGATE ST34501W  0015
dva0.0.0.0.1               DVA0
ewa0.0.0.3.0               EWA0              00-00-F8-75-6D-01
pkc0.7.0.1009.0            PKC0                  SCSI Bus ID 7  5.27
pqa0.0.0.4.0               PQA0                       PCI EIDE
pqb0.0.1.4.0               PQB0                       PCI EIDE

This example is from a Digital Personal Workstation 433au and shows three disks attached to the machine. The first is a CDROM drive called DKA0 and the other two are disks and are called DKC0 and DKC100 respectively.

Disks with names of the form DKx are SCSI disks. For example DKA100 refers to a SCSI disk with SCSI target ID 1 on the first SCSI bus (A), whereas DKC300 refers to a SCSI disk with SCSI ID 3 on the third SCSI bus (C). Devicename PKx refers to the SCSI host bus adapter. As seen in the SHOW DEVICE output SCSI CDROM drives are treated as any other SCSI hard disk drive.

IDE disks have names similar to DQx, while PQx is the associated IDE controller.

2.3.4.1 Connecting to an Ethernet Network or Cable/DSL Modem

If you connect to an Ethernet network, or you have an Internet connection using an Ethernet adapter via cable or DSL, then you will need the following information:

1. IP address
2. IP address of the default gateway
3. Hostname
4. DNS server IP addresses
5. Subnet Mask

If you do not know this information, then ask your system administrator or service provider. They may say that this information is assigned automatically, using DHCP. If so, make a note of this.

2.3.4.2 Connecting Using a Modem

If you dial up to an ISP using a regular modem then you can still install FreeBSD over the Internet, it will just take a very long time.

You will need to know:

1. The phone number to dial for your ISP
2. The COM: port your modem is connected to
3. The username and password for your ISP account