Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 13:29:19 -0500 (EST) From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: gsimoni@parliament.ge (George Simonishvili) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Dell Servers Message-ID: <200403221829.i2MITJH11698@clunix.cl.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <405F1952.3090305@parliament.ge> from "George Simonishvili" at Mar 22, 2004 08:50:26 PM
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> > To whom it may concern. > We need to install FreeBSD 4.9 on Dell server , and we need to find out > on which Dell server it supports. > Currently we have Dell Power Edge 1600C server it's a small business > level server and on that same small business server we need to install > FreeBSD but we don't know on which SmallBusiness server supports FreeBSD > 4.9 os. We have quite a variety of Dell machines and I haven't found one that did not support FreeBSD. Probably 4.9 is the best place to start too. If your present 1600 is free at the moment, just try installing FreeBSD on it and see. Your main ifs are two. If the modem is a winmodem which is useless get something else. There may be some confusion if it has IDE disk and CD controllers. You have to get them arranged right - primary, secondary, master, slave - for things to be recognized. If you have SCSI disk, hurray because it will all work just hunky dory. Note: Turn off Plug-n-Play at the BIOS level. If that machine is available to completely dedicate it to FreeBSD, well, then go ahead and try it with no qualms. It won't wreck it to experiment. Dells tend (though not always) to have pretty mainstream stuff that is generally supported. If it has plenty of disk, and it already has some MS junk on it that you need to keep, make it a dual boot machine. You will need a utility to squeeze the MS slice down so you can put in a FreeBSD slice. I have had good success with Partition Magic which is about $69 in places like Best Buy and Circuit City. There are some freebie ones, but none that I know of can handle NTFS type file systems from MS so I just went and spent the money. You will need to make the floppies it tells you about in the PM manual and just use those and don't bother installing it on the machine from the CD. (unless you have to to make the flppies - I can't remember that tidbit) Enough disk would be greater than 20GB or more depending on how much you are already using. Give MS lots of room to expand 2 or 3 times what you are already using and then at least 10GB for FreeBSD. If you have more, that is better - after all, you want your DB and records software to have lots of room. Read and try to understand the handbook first. It wouldn't hurt to also have another plain language book on FreeBSD management on hand as well. Something like The Complete FreeBSD (someone walked off with mine, Grrr) or FreeBSD Unleashed. Onlamp has a couple of good tutorials on such things as configuring XFree86 client and server and there are other good sources on the net too. ////jerry > > Kind Regards, George Simonishvili >
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