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Date:      Mon, 18 Mar 2002 05:21:30 +0200
From:      Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>
To:        Steve Bertrand <steve@northnetworks.ca>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Newbie Question...
Message-ID:  <20020318032130.GA4147@hades.hell.gr>
In-Reply-To: <3C949497.1010309@northnetworks.ca>
References:  <3C949497.1010309@northnetworks.ca>

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On 2002-03-17 08:05, Steve Bertrand wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I have 2 Windows 2000 servers providing DNS, http, https, ftp hosting
> for numerous clients on the internet.  I recently installed Mandrake on
> my laptop which is my everyday workstation.  I have an older box (p166)
> that I would like to use as a test Unix based server, but it is very low
> on resources, such as hard disk space and memory (40MB, 2GB).  I am
> getting somewhat familiar working at the terminal on my linux machine,
> and would like to know if BSD will install on such hardware and how I go
> about installing it using minimal resources.

Sure.  I'm running FreeBSD ever since 3.x on a similar machine (well, you
didn't mention physical memory size, but I'll have to assume it's at least
16 MB, isn't it?).  Now it's been source upgraded to 5.0-CURRENT and still
goes on happily performing my every day work.

You can perform a very minimal install, in less than 100 MB.  I'm not sure
if a VERY stripped down installation can fit in those 40 MB, but I'd do
this in two steps:

	o   Backup any data that the 2 GB disk has.  CDROM or tape, will do
	    just fine.  You only need to make sure that if anything goes
	    wrong, you can restore the disk in it's previous state with
	    minimum hassle.  Remember: backing up data is not everything.
	    MAKING SURE THAT RESTORE WORKS AS EXPECTED, *IS* EVERYTHING :)

	o   Remove all other disks, and try to install FreeBSD on the 2 GB
	    disk.  At first, choose only those packages that you think will
	    be required, but make sure you install at least "bin", "man"
	    the documentation, and two absolutely necessary packages: lynx
	    (to be able to read the docs installed) and, if you decide that
	    you will rebuild everything from source one day, the cvsup
	    package (to be able to upgrade the sources).

The installation instructions of your release shoule cover the rest of the
details (if they don't, it's a bug, and you should probably report it to
the documentation team, but let's leave that for the moment).

> Also, how do I become a member of this mailing list?

You send a message to majordomo@freebsd.org with the proper subscription
commands.  Try sending a message to majordomo that has in it's body only
the word "HELP" (without quotes, of course) and see what the program
replies...

Giorgos Keramidas                       FreeBSD Documentation Project
keramida@{freebsd.org,ceid.upatras.gr}  http://www.FreeBSD.org/docproj/

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