FreeBSD Install Without Sysinstall

[corey_james]

I was bored and thought i'd do a freebsd installation without the "aid" of sysinstall. Here's some instructions if anyone else wishes to do it

Here's how to do it:

Required materials :
FreeBSD install ISO
A hard drive
A current install of FreeBSD ( or a live cd )

1. Boot you freebsd installation
2. mount the ISO image

# mkdir /mnt/iso
# mdconfig -a -t vnode -f /path/to/iso -u 0
# mount -r /dev/md0 /mnt/iso

3. Create a slice on your drive ( assume /dev/da0 is the new freebsd drive ).

# sudo fdisk -i /dev/da0

Ensure your slice is marked as active
4. Create the partitions with bsdlabel. It's easier to use your current partition table and just edit. Here is the bsdlabel file i made

# size offset fstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
# / - offset of the root partition MUST be zero else the system wont boot
a: 1g 0 4.2BSD
# swap
b: 1g * swap
c: * * unused
#/usr
d: 20g * 4.2BSD
# /tmp
e: 2g * 4.2BSD
# /var
f: 2g * 4.2BSD
# ZFS /home ( does not need a partition type but make it anyway )
g: * * 4.2BSD

5. newfs all your partitions

# newfs /dev/da0s1a
....

6. mount all your partitions

# mkdir /mnt/install
# mount /dev/da0s1a /mnt/install
# cd /mnt/install
# mkdir usr var tmp
# mount /dev/da0s1d /usr
# mount /dev/da0s1e /tmp
# mount /dev/da0s1f /var

7. untar all the files onto the drive. The freebsd installation is simple, all it does is boots up a mini OS and runs a few shell scripts that do the untarring. All you'll have to do here is run them manually

# cd /mnt/iso 
# ls
7.0-RELEASE     HARDWARE.HTM    README.TXT      boot            docbook.css
ERRATA.HTM      HARDWARE.TXT    RELNOTES.HTM    boot.catalog    floppies
ERRATA.TXT      README.HTM      RELNOTES.TXT    cdrom.inf       packages
# cd  7.0-RELEASE
# ls
base            doc             kernels         ports
catpages        games           lib32           proflibs
dict            info            manpages        src

Now, you need to export your installation directory so that the install.sh scripts will know where to untar the files.

# export DESTDIR=/mnt/install

Now run the 'install.sh' scripts in each of the directories. You will need to specify arguments for 'kernels/install.sh' and 'src/install.sh'. These arguments are quite self explanatory and explained when you run the script.
If you are really lazy you can do the following:

# for i in `ls | grep -v kernel | grep -v src`; do cd $i; ./install.sh; cd ..; done

Then run kernels/install.sh and src/install.sh with appropriate args.
7. That's it !

[TerryP]

It's really come a long way since 4.4BSD eh?

[ephemera]

just goes to show how simple things can be in unix if you know the stuff.

[Carpetsmoker]

You don't even need the CD, you can get the files from:
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/re...6/7.0-RELEASE/

You'll need at least the kernels/ and base/ directories, the others are optional.

Or you can make your own stuff by running ``make release'' in /usr/src/release/, useful if you want to make a CD for STABLE or CURRENT.

[Beastie]

Putting FreeBSD's simplicity and minimalism in practice. Well done!

I have 3 comments if that's okay with you.

The generic kernel will be extracted somewhere like /mnt/install/boot/GENERIC/ (IIRC) so you have to # mv /mnt/install/boot/GENERIC/* /mnt/install/boot/kernel/ and remove the GENERIC directory.

Creating a valid /etc/fstab file or copying one from a similar setup may avoid an unpleasant system startup.

Optional: /cdrom.../cdromN directories are created by sysinstall(8) and should therefore be created manually if needed.

[Oliver_H]

There is even a very small live cd for such installations: mfsbsd

http://mfsbsd.vx.sk/

[Beastie]

A manual ZFS setup is a tedious process without proper support in sysinstall, so I can see how mfsBSD can be useful (zfsinstall script).
But for simple UFS setups I prefer a manual livefs way. It's more fun.