Installing into an existing partition.

DaveCoventry

DaveCoventry

I have a HD set up with:

Code: 
ada0          465 GB    MBR
  ada0s1      476 MB    linux-data  <- previously /boot/
  ada0s2      465 GB    EBR
    ada0s5    93  GB    linux-data  <- previously / root partition with Arch Linux installed
    ada0s6    316 GB    linux-data  <- previously /home/
    ada0s7    55  GB    linux-swap

Previously I had Arch Linux installed on the machine.

I would like to retain the ada0s6 partition as this contains the /home/ partition from the Arch Linux installation. ada0s1 and ada0s5 can be reformatted.

When the FreeBSD installer shows the Partition Editor, these partitions are shown and a menu is presented at the bottom of the screen: <Create> <Delete> <Modify> <Revert> <Auto> and <Finish>

Selecting Create, Delete or Modify gives an error:
Code: 
Operation canceled. pre-check failed

Is there a way to install FreeBSD so that I preserve my /home/ partition?

I'm an old Linux hand from way back dipping my toe in FreeBSD for the first time.
 
Hello and welcome.

The entire FreeBSD system, including FreeBSD's own /home directory/partition, will be installed in a single FreeBSD slice/BIOS partition (e.g. ada0s1). Other slices such as ada0s2 will not be touched at all.

You'll have to install FreeBSD on ada0s1 as FreeBSD doesn't support being booted off an extended partition, AFAIK. And you'll have to destroy the existing ada0s1 slice and recreate it so that the FreeBSD partition ID can be written properly in the MBR.

Depending on the file system being used under Arch Linux, you may not be able to access the Arch Linux /home from FreeBSD.
You can always make a backup of all your files under /home using tar, and un-tar() them under FreeBSD. A backup is highly recommended, no matter what.
 
Thanks very much for the response.

Okay, that sort of rules it out, then.

Ultimately I want to get FreeBSD running on my laptop which is the machine I do a lot of work on and which is currently labouring under the strain of Ubuntu.

But that has quite a complex Windows 7 installation, with the first five partitions taken up with various FAT or NTFS sections including something for a Compaq Diagnostics partition.

TBH, I could trash all five of them, but it is occasionally useful to have a machine that boots Windows, so I probably won't.

I was hoping to move across to Arch Linux, but found that some of the software I rely on was not in the official repositories and support in the AUR patchy to say the least.

I understand that FreeBSD will most likely have similar drawbacks, but (on the recommendation of someone on a mailing list) I decided to look at it.
 
ArchLinux uses LVM2 and ext4 partitions; you can mount your home partition in freebsd FreeBSD using a module and Fuse:

Code: 
kldload /boot/kernel/geom_linux_lvm.ko
cd /usr/ports/sysutils/fusefs-ext4fuse/
make install clean
mkdir -p /mnt/arch
mkdir -p /home/username/stuff
ext4fuse /dev/linux_lvm/volumegroup-logicalvolume /mnt/arch
tar -cf - -C /mnt/blah/home . | tar xpf - -C /home/username/stuff
chown -R username /home/username/stuff
 
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