Help needed please - Thinkpad A31p & FreeBSD 4.8 Installation (LONG)

[Joshua Oreman]

On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 07:23:56PM +1000 or thereabouts, Pisut Tempatarachoke wrote:
> Hi,

Yay -- another installation question :-) Good luck with BSD!

> 
> I've just got my TP A31p and now look forward to installing FreeBSD
> 4.8 (4-CDROM set) on it.  I'm very new to FreeBSD and really hope
> someone could give me some advices.  Thanks a lot in advance.
> 
> The laptop has no floppy drive and came with a 60 GB hard drive which
> consisted of two FAT32 partitions (slices):
> - 55 GB Windows XP Pro and
> - 5 GB IBM recovery partition.
> I used BootIT NG to shrink the XP partition down to 23 GB.  This left
> me with a free space of 32 GB.  Then, I created a 9 GB FAT32 partition
> within the free space hoping to use it as a data partition which can
> be read and written from both XP and FreeBSD.  So, now I have
> - 23 GB Windows XP Pro
> - 9 GB FAT32 for sharing data between OS's
> - 21 GB free space (unformatted) for FreeBSD (I havn't installed it
> yet) and
> - 5 GB IBM recovery partition
> 
> ???My first questions - Is this a sound method of slicing my disk?
> Does the 9 GB FAT32 partition really need to be there?  Am I wrong in
> thinking that FAT32 is accessible from both XP and FreeBSD?

Maybe 9GB is a little big, but I would say definitely have *some* fat32
partition there. Both FBSD and XP can access it. However, considering that
as of now you have no data on either your FAT32 partition or your unformatted
FBSD partition, I would suggest shrinking that FAT32 down to oh, 3gigs or so.
Remember, you'll only need it for data you need to share between FreeBSD and XP.

> 
> I've read posts somewhere that I MUST NOT install FreeBSD boot manager
> during the installation because it will overwrite the master boot
> record (MBR), and as a result XP will be unbootable.

Quite correct.

> I then must
> leave the MBR untouched until I finish with the FreeBSD installation
> and copy /boot/boo1 to another computer on a network (A31p doesn't
> have a floppy drive).  Then, I have to boot from a FreeBSD CD to enter
> FDisk and make sure the XP partition is set bootable.  Reboot it and
> once I'm in XP, I can copy /boot/boot1 from the networked computer to
> C:\BOOTSECT.BSD and include a line
> 
> C:\BOOTSECT.BSD="FreeBSD"
> 
> in my BOOT.INI file.  This will give me a boot-from-FreeBSD-slice
> option the next time I boot my laptop.
> 
> ???My second questions - Is this approach workable?  How do I copy
> /boot/boot1 to another computer on a network?  Can I copy it onto my 9
> GB FAT32 slice instead, as I'm not sure if I will be smart enough to
> set up the LAN connection correctly?  Could I write it onto a blank
> CD?  What are the commands involved?

I would recommend putting it on your fat32 partition. Here's how to do
that (after the installation):

Boot from the FreeBSD CD1, in "Fixit" mode. Use the Emergency Holographic
Shell if you don't have CD2; use Fixit CD if you do have CD2. Press ALT+F2
(or whatever it says to press) to switch to the Fixit prompt. Then do this:
# mkdir -p /mnt/system
# mount /dev/ad0s3a /mnt/my-system
# mkdir -p /mnt/transfer
# mount /dev/ad0s2 /mnt/transfer
# cp /mnt/my-system/boot/boot1 /mnt/transfer/BOOTSECT.BSD
# umount /mnt/transfer
# umount /mnt/system
# exit
Then reboot into XP. You'll find BOOTSECT.BSD on the shared partition.

> 
> ???My third questions - Could someone please suggest how I should
> partition my FreeBSD slice?  As I have 768 MB RAM, here is what I have
> in mind:-
> /  512 MB
> swap  2048 MB
> /var  512 MB
> /tmp  1024 MB
> /usr  Rest of disk
> I have no idea how much disk space I should allocate to /, /var, and
> /tmp.  Can I change them at a later stage?  What are UFS and UFS+S and
> how are they different?

This is a good partitioning layout; here's mine:
Filesystem   Size   Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/ad2a    3.9G   847M   2.7G    23%    /
/dev/ad2e     63G    22G    36G    38%    /usr
/dev/ad2d    3.9G   2.8G   799M    78%    /var

I put /tmp as a symlink to /var/tmp; I suggest you merge /tmp and /var/tmp.

Also notice that I use "dangerously dedicated" partitioning - DON'T DO THAT!
You'll have partition names like /dev/ad0s3X where X is a letter a-h.

To answer your question, you cannot resize the BSD partitions without
backing up all your BSD data, erasing it, and repartitioning it. However,
that would not affect your Windows data.

UFS is the Unix File System -- what BSD uses (XP uses NTFS).
UFS+S is UFS with Softupdates -- it's sort of like journalling, but you
still have to fsck (think ScanDisk).

> 
> ???Forth question - Is it a good idea to just install everything
> during the first installation?  Any recommendations on what I should
> or should not install please?

I recommend installing all the "base" distributions (bin, crypto, games,
man, info, things like that). Which of the "packages" you install is up
to you.

> 
> ???Last questions - During the monitor configuration stage, I have to
> supply the infomation on a) the horizontal sync range, b) the vertical
> sync range, and c) the LCD make.  How do I find out this information?
> Does anyone with an A31p know please?

Look at the manual for it. What? You don't have the manual? Then look it
up on the manufacturer's Web site. If it's not there, maybe check what
Windows says. I'm currently typing this on an HP Pavillion 8766C, so I
can't help you with the sync rates. Note that incorrect horizontal sync
can damage your monitor if it's old (I'm not sure if this applies to LCD
though).

> 
> Thank you all very very much & any other tips are also welcome.

Have fun with FreeBSD!

-- Josh

> 
> Best regards
> 
> Tempo
> 
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