Afnog 2007 Workshop: FreeBSD Install: Abuja, Nigeria

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.

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 the KDE desktop in 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 "no” to configuring ethernet devices or SLIP devices.

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



During Initial Reboot

You will be asked to type in some random text to generate keys for the SSH server. The more text you type, the more random your keys will be.



After Initial Reboot

At this point you will be staring at your initial logon screen for FreeBSD 6.2, which should look something like this:

FreeBSD/i386 (Amnesiac) (ttyv0)

login:
Password: