UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi, everyone. Last night I tried to install FreeBSD Unix 4.5 to my compaq desktop. During the installation, it showed some message says some devices "collaped". Does it mean my computer not support unix, or I need to config those data?

my qestion is did you fdisk the disk and did you boot from cdrom ? i have bsd @ work and @ home
i use 4.5 and 4.7 you can get any bsd @ ftp.bendug.org/pub/ and ways and did you tell it basic kernal or what? i can help but you must feed me more info i can walk you though all install and add pkg's

hi,
even i tried to install freeBSD as a second operating system on my single harddisk. so i downloaded the installation files and the floppy images. and then i skimmed through the installation.
my harddisk is 40 gb. so i thought i could install freeBSD on one of the logical partitions. say "f:".

through the installation it did show "collapsed" entries, but i figured out that maybe it was that some of the devices on my computer were not configured properly, as in IRQ nos and stuff, so i basically checked my hdd, cd, and keyboard and continued on.
but when it came to the 'fdisk' type partition program, i found that it was showing a primary partition(c and the secondary partition (which contained my d:, e:, f. though it would not show f: individually, where i had actually planned to install and run freeBSD. so i couldn't go past that step.

later, i asked somebody about it and was told that freeBSD has to be installed on the first 6GB of the harddisk or something.

can anybody enlighten me on what i should probably do to install freeBSD?

thanks

I boot FreeBSD 4.5 from the cdrom. At the beginning, it shows a screen says 7 conflicts. From the Active-Drivers folder, it says: storage, network, communications, input, miscellaneous are collaped. From the Inactive session, it says: communications and miscellaneous are collaped. I press q to continue installation. The last part is when it asks me change to visual mode, I choose 'yes', and it becomes white blank and nothing shows up. This is my first time install Unix system, so I don't know what kind information you need. I'll try to explain the information I know.

FreeBSD MUST be installed in a primary partition - like your C partition. Secondary partitions are "extended" partitions.

FreeBSD will take that Primary Partition and use it for its needs. Yes - you can do something about your setup! A hard drive can have 3 primary partitions and 1 Secondary (there are variations, but you don't need to know them!)

You have two choices:
(1) Delete your secondary partition, install FreeBSD as a primary partition within a small space of the available hard disk, and then re-create your Secondary Slice afterwards!

(2)What you can do is shrink your Secondary partition, leaving enough space for another primary partition to be created on your hard disk - namely for FreeBSD.

PowerQuest's Partition Magic can perform both tasks above - there are some "GNU" equivelants, but I haven't tried them!

FreeBSD cannot be installed to an existing FAT (Win) partition - not to mention you2wouldn't want it to be either!

So, basically now I'll have to shrink my extended partition and then create a second primary partition for BSD. But then, 'fdisk' will still show only two partitions, namely the primary FAT and the extended FAT. So how do you think will I be able to 'extract' a small portion of the secondary partition for my BSD primary partition.
I'll try to do something with partition magic though. I don't want to take the easy way out and get myself a new harddisk for BSD.

Thank You.
.tr0jan

Almost - all you really have to do is shrink the "extended partition" and leave the "unused" part of the hard-disk as is! DON'T create another primary partition, instead, boot FreeBSD CD and FreeBSD's fdisk can then be told to use the free available hard-disk space which it will format as a primary partition!