[ale] Back to the Future!

[David S. Jackson]

On Sat, Mar 30, 2002 at 11:02:43AM -0500 John Mills <jmmills at telocity.com> wrote:
> OK. When I exit, however, I don't seem to have left a bootable kernel or
> proper MBR in place.

Did you try to install booteasy on the MBR or do you have another
boot manager?

You can boot from CD-ROM or you can create boot/root floppies,
then mount the root filesystem.  Remember, the devices are named
differently under the BSDs, so don't go looking for /dev/hda  :-)

And partitions are called slices in BSD parlance; remember this
in your reading of BSD stuff.  Then you also have the disk label
layer on top of that.

Also, before you start the final kernel loading, you'll hopefully
get asked if you want to load the kernel.  (It's configurable.)
Hit <spacebar> and type 'boot -c <return>', then type 'visual
<return>' after you get the next prompt.  This will give you a
kernel parameter configuration utility.  Lets you change IRQ
assignments, check out conflicts, delete superfluous drivers and
so on.  Save this configuration, once you have it right, and it
should get remembered next time you boot up.  At least until you
configure your own custom kernel.

If you get in too deep, may I suggest the freebsd-questions or
freebsd-newbies mailing lists at www.freebsd.org.  Lotsa gurus
there.  

If none of this helps, tell us what the last thing you saw
onscreen was.

> Could someone drop a hint what step I probably skipped? Is there a
> beginner's guide to FreeBSD on line somewhere that would help me walk
> through this?

Lots of them.  The canonical one is www.freebsd.org/handbook.

> Another issue is that, even after a few 'custom' installs of RH-*.2, I was
> not sure I had made good choices of packages to install. Is there a handy
> note to package selection? 

Package selection is part of the installation process.  If you
want to add or subtract after installation, as root type
'/stand/sysinstall' and follow the software packages menus.

Your packages are listed in /var/db/pkg.  (hint: export
pkgdb=/var/db/pkg.  Do frequent ls $pkgdb|grep whatyerafter etc)

And check out man
{pkg_add,pkg_create,pkg_delete,pkg_info,pkg_version}.  The
executables are in /usr/sbin.

The ports system is probably a better way to add and remove
packages.  It's really spiffy.  (See the handbook on ports and
packages.)

Another handy reference is www.mostgraveconcern.com/freebsd/.
Some handy post-install cleanup notes.  freebsdportal.com has a
good collection of links.  Probably should check out
www.bsdtoday.com osonline.com/bsd/ for more links and info.
Plenty more where they came from.


> Nothing like a new installation to remove your excess confidence and
> bring your humility level back up where it belongs!

Yeah, I know what you mean.  But BSD is great stuff.  There's a
lot to love there.

-- 
David S. Jackson                        dsj at dsj.net
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
There's no easy quick way out, we're gonna have to
live through our whole lives, win, lose, or draw.
		-- Walt Kelly

---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.