Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 12:11:04 -0500 (EST) From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: jimwatts@quik.com (james) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: i have linux mandrake Message-ID: <200311241711.hAOHB5B02436@clunix.cl.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <3FC13595.6080807@quik.com> from "james" at Nov 23, 2003 07:32:53 PM
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> > I am trying to migrate to free bsd is there a way for me to put freebsd > on with it woth out loosing mandrake or the files in it ? The basic answer is yes. Then the follow up is that it depends on how much disk you have and what condition it is already in. First, comment is make a good backup of everything you want to preserve - probably the whole system. This is generally a pretty safe and reliable thing to do, but there are many places that you could make a typo and nuke your stuff before you could stop it. So, make backups, make backups, make backup, etc. Lets say you have a large enough disk to make you happy - holds all of your Linux stuff with plenty of working room plus has a few GBytes left over to use for FreeBSD. If that Linux stuff is all in one contiguous slice beginning at the low addresses of the disk, then it is quite easy. First you will need something to shrink the Linux slice split up the disk. Since my most recent encounters (for the last two years) has been splitting up machines with MS NTFS slices that needed shrinking, I have gotten used to using Partition Magic and don't remember offhand the freeby utility that does it, but there are some (although Partition Magic would also do it, you should be able to get by with one of the freeware utilities if you only have Linux on it now. The freeware utilities don't handle NTFS though) Decide how much to assign to each OS. If your machine and BIOS are pretty recent, you won't have to worry about the cylinder number limitation for boot records even though the utilities warn you about it. If it is older, your slice size choices may get more complicated. Use the utility to resize the Linux slice and make room for FreeBSD. Once that is done, you can just boot with the FreeBSD install CD and let it handle the rest of everything. Have it keep the slices as they are, but make both bootable and put the MBR on slice #1. Partition slice #2 (the FreeBSD slice) to suit you - probably something like a=root(/), b=swap, e=/tmp, f=/usr, g=/var and h=/home with sizes depending on your need and available disk. Then do the install, including the ports tree (note that the ports tree is just the installation skeleton for the ports, not their full source) and whatever else you want, probably X and it should work. Now, the next scenario. If you have a spare disk on the machine to fwap FreeBSD in to, then it is even easier. You don't need to bother shrinking the Linux slice. Just put FreeBSD on the extra disk by itself. It may be worth adding a disk to be able to do it this way. Then you just boot the FreeBSD install CD, tell it to make a single FreeBSD slice on the extra disk and to make it bootable. Also, tell it to put the MBR on on the Linux disk and mark its first (probably only) slice as bootable. Have it then partition the extra disk to suit you (a, b, e, f, g, h whatever) and install stuff. It should work just like that. Reminder - make sure you do a good backup before starting this. Very important. Make sure you make a good backup before starting! Good luck, ////jerry ps, don't forget to make a good backup before changing any disk.
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