From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Nov 10 7:32:42 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.cafes.net (mail.cafes.net [207.65.182.25]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9CA0F37B479 for ; Fri, 10 Nov 2000 07:32:39 -0800 (PST) Received: from mail.cafes.net (mail.cafes.net [207.65.182.25]) by mail.cafes.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA22744; Fri, 10 Nov 2000 09:31:50 -0600 Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 09:31:50 -0600 (CST) From: Mike Eldridge To: Potchanat Samermit Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Installation and Bootdisks In-Reply-To: <000801c04b29$532a3030$6907b318@c454454a> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, 10 Nov 2000, Potchanat Samermit wrote: > FreeBSD forerunners: > > I am new to Unix/BSD. I have an old 486 without a CD. I am trying to > find my way to install a FreeBSD version into this machine. However, > (unclearly) following the instructions on your site, the images for the > floppies are too big for the diskettes. The images should be just perfect. floppies/boot.flp includes both the kernel and the root filesystem and is only for use if you have a 2.88MB floppy drive. If you don't (which is probably the case), grab two disks, label one "kernel" and one "mfsroot." Then get both floppies/kern.flp and floppies/mfsroot.flp. These are floppy images, so you will need a way to copy them to your newly labeled disks. If you have a UNIX box handy, you can use your favorite friend 'dd' or, if you are using a DOS/Windows box, you can use rawrite, which can be found at ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/tools. Simply run rawrite, supply it with the neccessary information, and you'll have your boot and root disks. > My machine has only 160 MB harddrive and 4MB Ram. Don't know if I can > upgrade the RAM on this. Too old. I want to start with something minimal > first until I have more money to buy a good machine for it. > > I have another machine with more RAM (20M) may be that is a better > choice but will be the same HD. The installer requires 5MB of RAM, but you can run FreeBSD with only 4. I'm assuming these two boxes are using SIMMS, so just borrow some RAM from one box just to install FreeBSD. Afterwards you can run with 4, although I'd recommend you get at least 16. > Can someone help guide me through? I have been at this for quite some > times and think I have run to an end. Need help. One day I will be able > to help others too. Well, this should get you booted and into position to start installing FreeBSD. From this point, you should be able to follow the on-screen instructions. If in doubt, reference the text files that are in the root directory of the distribution (INSTALL.TXT, TROUBLE.TXT, etc). > Thank you very much. You are very welcome. Good luck. Mike ----------------------------------------------------- Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message