FreeBSD 10.1 Virtual Machine Image

A

AndrewGuo

This is my first time using FreeBSD.

After I downloaded the i386 Virtual Machine Image, I installed it in VMware Player and it can boot to the system successfully.

But what to do next at this stage usually?

1. I can't install VMware tools according to the instruction as the command mount /cdrom shows "unknown special file or file system"

2. FTP to the FreeBSD site failed when I want to install documentation, may need to configure the network interface.

Please help! Should I install the system using ISO image instead of the Virtual Machine Image?
 
The online FreeBSD Handbook is a great place to start.

1. Using data CDs is covered in 18.5.4 here in the Handbook. The correct command to mount a CD is mount -t cd9660 /dev/cd0 /mnt.
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/creating-cds.html

2. Networking is also covered in the Handbook. Do take a look but presumably you want to use DHCP on your network, correct? If so, assuming em0 is your NIC that shows up in ifconfig, run echo 'ifconfig_em0="DHCP"' >> /etc/rc.conf to make DHCP work on a reboot and dhclient em0 to tell your NIC to get an address now. Change em0 to whatever NIC shows up as UP in ifconfig.

If you want to do something more complex, the Handbook has more details and the rc.conf(5) man page describes all the ifconfig_<interface> options you can do.
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/config-network-setup.html
 
Thanks, I successfully configured the network and installed the VMware Tools according to your instructions (although need more steps to install the perl package to run it, because the Virtual Machine Image is a barebone system).

I learn a lot from the Handbook. It will be great if the Handbook include some instructions about how to install Virtual Machine Image and links to setup the new system.

Thanks again, great community support!
 
pkg install perl5 would get you what you need to get started with installing VMWare tools. Yes, FreeBSD is very bare bones. It's great when you have a good idea on what you want to do but can be a bit daunting at first. That's where the Handbook is great to have to get you going in the right directions. For the DHCP, there was some discussion on the mailing list on making using DHCP the default on VM images since that seems like the most likely use. I'm not sure what came of that but that may be in a future release.
 
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