GNet Solutions » FreeBSD Administration

This is a guide on how I manually setup FreeBSD with a UFS root, without the help of a GUI or bsdinstall. This guide is intended to install FreeBSD using the installation DVD and will work offline.

• When the FreeBSD Installer Welcome message appears, choose Shell.

• Create the slices:
  

  gpart create -s gpt ada0
  gpart add -b 40 -s 512K -l gpboot -t freebsd-boot ada0
  gpart add -s 4G -t freebsd-swap -a 1M -l swap0 ada0 
  gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 1M -l disk0 ada0 
  

• Create a new file system on the new UFS partition:
  

  newfs -U /dev/ada0p3
  

• Mount the UFS partition to the temporary mount directory:
  

  mkdir /tmp/mnt
  mount /dev/ada0p3 /tmp/mnt
  

• Extract the base.txz and kernel.txz to the ufs root to install the base system:
  

  cat /usr/freebsd-dist/base.txz | tar --unlink -xpJf - -C /tmp/mnt
  cat /usr/freebsd-dist/kernel.txz | tar --unlink -xpJf - -C /tmp/mnt
  

• Add the initial system configuration:
  

  echo 'if_em_load="YES"' >> /tmp/mnt/boot/loader.conf  
  echo 'sshd_enable="YES"' >> /tmp/mnt/etc/rc.conf 
  echo 'ifconfig_em0="inet 192.168.10.70 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 198.100.10.255"' >> /tmp/mnt/etc/rc.conf 
  echo 'defaultrouter="192.168.10.1"' >> /tmp/mnt/etc/rc.conf 
  echo 'hostname="freebsd.example.com"' >> /tmp/mnt/etc/rc.conf
  echo 'nameserver 192.168.10.1' >> /tmp/mnt/etc/resolv.conf
  

• Install the bootcode:
  

  gpart bootcode -b /tmp/mnt/boot/pmbr -p /tmp/mnt/boot/gptboot -i 1 ada0
  

• Create an /etc/fstab file:
  

  vi /tmp/mnt/etc/fstab
  

  • And add the following:
    

    /dev/ada0p2    none    swap    sw    0    0
    /dev/ada0p3    /    ufs    rw    2    2
    

• Reboot the system and eject the FreeBSD install disc:
  

  reboot
  

Resources¶

• https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/42773/
• http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html