10.1 Install from Drive?

daBee

daBee

Hi folks.

I am brand new to FreeBSD. I installed it on a PC that was kicking around, and I was so impressed I now have a server arriving soon that I want to install.

I had issues with two DVDs so I'd like to get the installation DVD onto an external USB drive and install from that instead.

I can't seem to find any way of doing so. I live on a Mac, but I also have that PC with FreeBSD on it. Is there any way I can put the install onto this USB drive and boot/install from that?

Cheers
 
I'm not sure you can copy the installation DVD to a USB hard drive and boot from it. It's probably possible somehow but not really an advisable method.

Your best bet would be to find a USB stick and just write the memory stick image to it using dd - the FreeBSD download that ends in memstick.img. The system will then just boot off the USB stick. There's an example command on the FreeBSD release announcement page, https://www.freebsd.org/releases/10.1R/announce.html. (In fact, If there's nothing you need on your USB hard drive, you could probably even write the memstick image to that)
 
Just download one of the memstick images from ftp://ftp.de.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/10.1/
They should work fine with an external hard drive.

You can follow the instructions for writing image files to memory sticks for FreeBSD in the handbook. They should work on Mac OS X too.
You need to substitute /dev/da0 with the correct device file for your external USB drive. Be careful that you choose the right device or you might loose data!

Edit: You can probably figure out the correct device file in Disk Utility.
 
usdmatt said:
I'm not sure you can copy the installation DVD to a USB hard drive and boot from it. It's probably possible somehow but not really an advisable method.
Click to expand...
There are converters available which can convert Windows discs and/or Linux discs. But they rely on knowledge of the filesystem on the DVD and generally don't understand FreeBSD filesystems, so you either get an error message or it builds something that it claims will work, but doesn't.

It is definitely possible to create one of these utilities that will work with FreeBSD, but I don't know of any at the present time. It might also be possible for the FreeBSD developers to create a universal image that would work on either media. However, I expect there is little incentive to do so, as most users have reasonably fast Internet connections (so downloading a second image isn't unreasonable).

If your hardware is new enough, a USB CD-ROM / DVD drive is also a possible solution. I see brand new Dell ones (DVD-ROM, not burners) on eBay for US $14 or less with free shipping. Search for GRHR5 there.
 
Not much help other than to say I've installed FreeBSD my last two times onto blank SSD drives using a USB flash drive with no issue whatsoever but, if I had to do it right now, I wouldn't remember what to do.
 
Just to cover the bases, make sure the right install image for the hardware is being used as well. It's a simple mistake some new users make. UEFI images will not boot on a BIOS based PC and BIOS images will not boot on all UEFI based PCs.
 
tobik said:
Just download one of the memstick images from ftp://ftp.de.freebsd.org/FreeBSD/releases/ISO-IMAGES/10.1/
They should work fine with an external hard drive.

You can follow the instructions for writing image files to memory sticks for FreeBSD in the handbook. They should work on Mac OS X too.
You need to substitute /dev/da0 with the correct device file for your external USB drive. Be careful that you choose the right device or you might loose data!

Edit: You can probably figure out the correct device file in Disk Utility.
Click to expand...

Hi folks. Sorry for the delayed reply. This week was crazy.

Well it turns out the install is so freakin small (I'm not used to this stuff) that by the time I get through the menus, the OS is installed. So there's not much benefit from going down that route. I dd'd a thumb drive and couldn't get it to work. Thanks to protocelt for that clarification, but I used the right image. Pretty straight forward, outside of the "not working" bit. Heh. I will try it again as I'm receiving my second (RAID) SSD on Monday.
 
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