Sunday 1 November 2015

FreeBSD Setup

How to install FreeBSD on your Mac OS (Yosemite) ? 


  Today I am writing this blog post about how to install FreeBSD OS on your Mac machine. Let me first introduce about FreeBSD organization.

  FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for modern server, desktop, and embedded computer platforms. FreeBSD provides advanced networking, impressive security features, and world class performance and is used by some of the world's busiest web sites and most pervasive embedded networking and storage devices.

So Ready To install it ??

  Here is the page about how to set up your developer environment.

  If you wanted to install it on remote machine (AWS) and then wanted to use it then go with the second option mentioned in the above url.  This environment however requires you to be online each time you want to do something.

Let me talk about how did I install FreeBSD os on my local machine :
  I used Virtualbox to run FreeBSD along with the Mac OS. First of all I created separate virtual machine with BSD 64-bit os, certain amount of RAM and virtual hard disk. After that I selected .iso as the "content" of my virtual CDROM drive and made it bootable. So now Virtualbox able to boot the FreeBSD os from the CDROM drive and I am able to use it :).
  A FreeBSD installation will require a minimum 64 MB of RAM and 1.5 GB of free hard drive space for the most minimal installation. However, that is a minimal install, leaving almost no free space. RAM requirements depend on usage. Specialized FreeBSD systems can run in as little as 128MB RAM while desktop systems should have at least 4 GB of RAM.


Install VirtualBox

  Virtualbox gives ability to install and run multiple Operating Systems on your desktop or laptop computer in virtual environment without disturbing the host OS. You can have Windows XP, Linux OS and even Windows 95 on your latest Windows 7 laptop. In this case, your laptop will be the ‘host’ and virtual machines will be the ‘Guest’s. You can download it from here - https://www.virtualbox.org/

Choose Image

 The FreeBSD installer can be downloaded in a number of different formats including CD (disc1), DVD (dvd1), and Network Install (bootonly) sized ISO Disc Images, as well as regular and mini USB memory stick images. Later versions of FreeBSD are also offered as prebuilt expandable Virtual Machine images, and as SD Cards for embedded platforms.
  There are already FreeBSD images available to run it on virtual environment. You just need to choose an image according to your machine architecture and run it using virtual environment. Computers with more than 3 GB of memory should use amd64 image. If the computer is an older, 32-bit only model, use i386 image. My machine has 4 GB memory and 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 64-bit system. So amd64 would be the best image for me.

Install Image

  To boot os from the CDROM I need the installer image. I am using FreeBSD 10.2 release bootonly i so image (amd64) for the bootable CDROM drive. It boots a small image from the CD/DVD that then gets the rest of the installation from an online repository.
Link to amd64 installer images - ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/10.2/


Image showing selected iso file.

  Now whenever I run this machine it will automatically boot my virtual PC from the CDROM and I am able to install the system. It uses Copy-On-Write disks by default, so it won't waste too much space on my disk.




Image of running FreeBSD os

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