Dell Servers

[Jerry McAllister]

> 
> 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
>