FreeBSD/alpha 4.6-RELEASE Installation Instructions
The FreeBSD Project
Copyright (c) 2000, 2001, 2002 by The FreeBSD Documentation Project
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This article gives some brief instructions on installing FreeBSD/alpha
4.6-RELEASE, with particular emphasis given to obtaining a FreeBSD
distribution. Some notes on troubleshooting and frequently-asked
questions are also given.
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1 Installing FreeBSD
This section documents the process of installing a new distribution of
FreeBSD. These instructions pay particular emphasis to the process of
obtaining the FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE distribution and to beginning the
installation procedure. The ``Installing FreeBSD'' chapter of the FreeBSD
Handbook provides more in-depth information about the installation program
itself, including a guided walkthrough with screenshots.
If you are upgrading from a previous release of FreeBSD, please see
Section 3 for instructions on upgrading.
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1.1 Getting Started
Probably the most important pre-installation step that can be taken is
that of reading the various instruction documents provided with FreeBSD. A
roadmap of documents pertaining to this release of FreeBSD can be found in
README.TXT, which can usually be found in the same location as this file;
most of these documents, such as the release notes and the hardware
compatability list, are also accessible in the Documentation menu of the
installer.
Note that on-line versions of the FreeBSD FAQ and Handbook are also
available from the FreeBSD Project Web site, if you have an Internet
connection.
This collection of documents may seem daunting, but the time spent reading
them will likely be saved many times over. Being familiar with what
resources are available can also be helpful in the event of problems
during installation.
The best laid plans sometimes go awry, so if you run into trouble take a
look at Section 4, which contains valuable troubleshooting information.
You should also read an updated copy of ERRATA.TXT before installing,
since this will alert you to any problems which have reported in the
interim for your particular release.
Important: While FreeBSD does its best to safeguard against accidental
loss of data, it's still more than possible to wipe out your entire disk
with this installation if you make a mistake. Please do not proceed to
the final FreeBSD installation menu unless you've adequately backed up
any important data first.
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1.2 Hardware Requirements
FreeBSD for the Alpha/AXP supports the platforms described in
HARDWARE.TXT.
You will need a dedicated disk for FreeBSD/alpha. It is not possible to
share a disk with another operating system at this time. This disk will
need to be attached to a SCSI controller which is supported by the SRM
firmware or an IDE disk assuming the SRM in your machine supports booting
from IDE disks.
Your root filesystem MUST be the first partition (partition a) on the disk
to be bootable.
You will need the SRM console firmware for your platform. In some cases,
it is possible to switch between AlphaBIOS (or ARC) firmware and SRM. In
others it will be necessary to download new firmware from the vendor's Web
site.
If you are not familiar with configuring hardware for FreeBSD, you should
be sure to read the HARDWARE.TXT file; it contains important information
on what hardware is supported by FreeBSD.
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1.3 Floppy Disk Image Instructions
Depending on how you choose to install FreeBSD, you may need to create a
set of floppy disks (usually two) to begin the installation process. This
section briefly describes how to create these disks, either from a CDROM
installation or from the Internet. Note that in the common case of
installing FreeBSD from CDROM, on a machine that supports bootable CDROMs,
the steps outlined in this section will not be needed and can be skipped.
For a normal CDROM or network installation, all you need to copy onto
actual floppies from the floppies/ directory are the kern.flp and
mfsroot.flp images (for 1.44MB floppies).
Getting these images over the network is easy. Simply fetch the
release/floppies/kern.flp and release/floppies/mfsroot.flp files from
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases or one of the many mirrors
listed at FTP Sites section of the Handbook, or on the
http://www.freebsdmirrors.org/ Web pages.
Get two blank, freshly formatted floppies and image copy kern.flp onto one
and mfsroot.flp onto the other. These images are not DOS files. You cannot
simply copy them to a DOS or UFS floppy as regular files, you need to
``image'' copy them to the floppy with fdimage.exe under DOS (see the
tools directory on your CDROM or FreeBSD FTP mirror) or the dd(1) command
in UNIX.
For example, to create the kernel floppy image from DOS, you'd do
something like this:
C> fdimage kern.flp a:
Assuming that you'd copied fdimage.exe and kern.flp into a directory
somewhere. You would do the same for mfsroot.flp, of course.
If you're creating the boot floppy from a UNIX machine, you may find that:
# dd if=floppies/kern.flp of=/dev/rfd0
or
# dd if=floppies/kern.flp of=/dev/floppy
work well, depending on your hardware and operating system environment
(different versions of UNIX have different names for the floppy drive).
If you're on an alpha machine that can network-boot its floppy images or
you have a 2.88MB or LS-120 floppy capable of taking a 2.88MB image on an
x86 machine, you may wish to use the single (but twice as large) boot.flp
image. It contains the contents of kern.flp and mfsroot.flp on a single
floppy. This file should also be used as the boot file for those mastering
``El Torito'' bootable CD images. See the mkisofs(8) command for more
information.
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1.4 Installing FreeBSD from CDROM or the Internet
The easiest type of installation is from CDROM. If you have a supported
CDROM drive and a FreeBSD installation CDROM, you can boot FreeBSD
directly from the CDROM. Insert the CDROM into the drive and type the
following command to start the installation (substituting the name of the
appropriate CDROM drive if necessary):
>>>boot dka0
Alternatively you can boot the installation from floppy disk. You should
start the installation by building a set of FreeBSD boot floppies from the
files floppies/kern.flp and floppies/mfsroot.flp using the instructions
found in Section 1.3. From the SRM console prompt (>>>), just insert the
kern.flp floppy and type the following command to start the installation:
>>>boot dva0
Insert the mfsroot.flp floppy when prompted and you will end up at the
first screen of the install program.
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1.5 Detail on various installation types
Once you've gotten yourself to the initial installation screen somehow,
you should be able to follow the various menu prompts and go from there.
If you've never used the FreeBSD installation before, you are also
encouraged to read some of the documentation in the Documentation submenu
as well as the general ``Usage'' instructions on the first menu.
Note: If you get stuck at a screen, press the F1 key for online
documentation relevant to that specific section.
If you've never installed FreeBSD before, or even if you have, the
``Standard'' installation mode is the most recommended since it makes sure
that you'll visit all the various important checklist items along the way.
If you're much more comfortable with the FreeBSD installation process and
know exactly what you want to do, use the ``Express'' or ``Custom''
installation options. If you're upgrading an existing system, use the
``Upgrade'' option.
The FreeBSD installer supports the direct use of floppy, DOS, tape, CDROM,
FTP, NFS and UFS partitions as installation media; further tips on
installing from each type of media are listed below.
Once the install procedure has finished, you will be able to start
FreeBSD/alpha by typing something like this to the SRM prompt:
>>>boot dkc0
This instructs the firmware to boot the specified disk. To find the SRM
names of disks in your machine, use the show device command:
>>>show device
dka0.0.0.4.0 DKA0 TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-57 3476
dkc0.0.0.1009.0 DKC0 RZ1BB-BS 0658
dkc100.1.0.1009.0 DKC100 SEAGATE ST34501W 0015
dva0.0.0.0.1 DVA0
ewa0.0.0.3.0 EWA0 00-00-F8-75-6D-01
pkc0.7.0.1009.0 PKC0 SCSI Bus ID 7 5.27
pqa0.0.0.4.0 PQA0 PCI EIDE
pqb0.0.1.4.0 PQB0 PCI EIDE
This example is from a Digital Personal Workstation 433au and shows three
disks attached to the machine. The first is a CDROM called dka0 and the
other two are disks and are called dkc0 and dkc100 repectively.
You can specify which kernel file to load and what boot options to use
with the -file and -flags options, for example:
>>> boot -file kernel.old -flags s
To make FreeBSD/alpha boot automatically, use these commands:
>>> set boot_osflags a
>>> set bootdef_dev dkc0
>>> set auto_action BOOT
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1.5.1 Installing from a Network CDROM
If you simply wish to install from a local CDROM drive then see Section
1.4. If you don't have a CDROM drive on your system and wish to use a
FreeBSD distribution CD in the CDROM drive of another system to which you
have network connectivity, there are also several ways of going about it:
* If you would be able to FTP install FreeBSD directly from the CDROM
drive in some FreeBSD machine, it's quite easy: You simply add the
following line to the password file (using the vipw(8) command):
ftp:*:99:99::0:0:FTP:/cdrom:/sbin/nologin
On the machine on which you are running the install, go to the Options
menu and set Release Name to any. You may then choose a Media type of
FTP and type in ftp://machine after picking ``URL'' in the ftp sites
menu.
Warning: This may allow anyone on the local network (or Internet) to
make ``anonymous FTP'' connections to this machine, which may not be
desirable.
* If you would rather use NFS to export the CDROM directly to the
machine(s) you'll be installing from, you need to first add an entry
to the /etc/exports file (on the machine with the CDROM drive). The
example below allows the machine ziggy.foo.com to mount the CDROM
directly via NFS during installation:
/cdrom -ro ziggy.foo.com
The machine with the CDROM must also be configured as an NFS server,
of course, and if you're not sure how to do that then an NFS
installation is probably not the best choice for you unless you're
willing to read up on rc.conf(5) and configure things appropriately.
Assuming that this part goes smoothly, you should be able to enter:
cdrom-host:/cdrom as the path for an NFS installation when the target
machine is installed, e.g. wiggy:/cdrom.
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1.5.2 Installing from Floppies
If you must install from floppy disks, either due to unsupported hardware
or just because you enjoy doing things the hard way, you must first
prepare some floppies for the install.
First, make your boot floppies as described in Section 1.3.
Second, peruse Section 2 and pay special attention to the ``Distribution
Format'' section since it describes which files you're going to need to
put onto floppy and which you can safely skip.
Next you will need, at minimum, as many 1.44MB floppies as it takes to
hold all files in the bin (binary distribution) directory. If you're
preparing these floppies under DOS, then these floppies must be formatted
using the MS-DOS FORMAT command. If you're using Windows, use the Windows
File Manager format command.
Important: Frequently, floppy disks come ``factory preformatted''. While
convenient, many problems reported by users in the past have resulted
from the use of improperly formatted media. Re-format them yourself,
just to make sure.
If you're creating the floppies from another FreeBSD machine, a format is
still not a bad idea though you don't need to put a DOS filesystem on each
floppy. You can use the disklabel(8) and newfs(8) commands to put a UFS
filesystem on a floppy, as the following sequence of commands illustrates:
# fdformat -f 1440 fd0.1440
# disklabel -w -r fd0.1440 floppy3
# newfs -t 2 -u 18 -l 1 -i 65536 /dev/fd0
After you've formatted the floppies for DOS or UFS, you'll need to copy
the files onto them. The distribution files are split into chunks
conveniently sized so that 5 of them will fit on a conventional 1.44MB
floppy. Go through all your floppies, packing as many files as will fit on
each one, until you've got all the distributions you want packed up in
this fashion. Each distribution should go into its own subdirectory on the
floppy, e.g.: a:\bin\bin.inf, a:\bin\bin.aa, a:\bin\bin.ab, ...
Important: The bin.inf file also needs to go on the first floppy of the
bin set since it is read by the installation program in order to figure
out how many additional pieces to look for when fetching and
concatenating the distribution. When putting distributions onto
floppies, the distname.inf file must occupy the first floppy of each
distribution set. This is also covered in README.TXT.
Once you come to the Media screen of the install, select ``Floppy'' and
you'll be prompted for the rest.
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1.5.4 Installing from QIC/SCSI Tape
When installing from tape, the installation program expects the files to
be simply tar'ed onto it, so after fetching all of the files for the
distributions you're interested in, simply use tar(1) to get them onto the
tape with a command something like this:
# cd /where/you/have/your/dists
# tar cvf /dev/rsa0 dist1 .. dist2
When you go to do the installation, you should also make sure that you
leave enough room in some temporary directory (which you'll be allowed to
choose) to accommodate the full contents of the tape you've created. Due
to the non-random access nature of tapes, this method of installation
requires quite a bit of temporary storage. You should expect to require as
much temporary storage as you have stuff written on tape.
Note: When going to do the installation, the tape must be in the drive
before booting from the boot floppies. The installation ``probe'' may
otherwise fail to find it.
Now create a boot floppy as described in Section 1.3 and proceed with the
installation.
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1.5.5 Installing over a Network using FTP or NFS
After making the boot floppies as described in the first section, you can
load the rest of the installation over a network using one of 3 types of
connections: serial port, parallel port, or Ethernet.
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1.5.5.1 Serial Port
SLIP support is rather primitive, and is limited primarily to hard-wired
links, such as a serial cable running between two computers. The link must
be hard-wired because the SLIP installation doesn't currently offer a
dialing capability. If you need to dial out with a modem or otherwise
dialog with the link before connecting to it, then I recommend that the
PPP utility be used instead.
If you're using PPP, make sure that you have your Internet Service
Provider's IP address and DNS information handy as you'll need to know it
fairly early in the installation process. You may also need to know your
own IP address, though PPP supports dynamic address negotiation and may be
able to pick up this information directly from your ISP if they support
it.
You will also need to know how to use the various ``AT commands'' for
dialing out with your particular brand of modem as the PPP dialer provides
only a very simple terminal emulator.
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1.5.5.2 Parallel Port
If a hard-wired connection to another FreeBSD or Linux machine is
available, you might also consider installing over a ``laplink'' style
parallel port cable. The data rate over the parallel port is much higher
than what is typically possible over a serial line (up to 50k/sec), thus
resulting in a quicker installation. It's not typically necessary to use
``real'' IP addresses when using a point-to-point parallel cable in this
way and you can generally just use RFC 1918 style addresses for the ends
of the link (e.g. 10.0.0.1, 10.0.0.2, etc).
Important: If you use a Linux machine rather than a FreeBSD machine as
your PLIP peer, you will also have to specify link0 in the TCP/IP setup
screen's ``extra options for ifconfig'' field in order to be compatible
with Linux's slightly different PLIP protocol.
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1.5.5.3 Ethernet
FreeBSD supports many common Ethernet cards; a table of supported cards is
provided as part of the FreeBSD Hardware Notes (see HARDWARE.TXT in the
Documentation menu on the boot floppy or the top level directory of the
CDROM). If you are using one of the supported PCMCIA Ethernet cards, also
be sure that it's plugged in before the laptop is powered on. FreeBSD does
not, unfortunately, currently support ``hot insertion'' of PCMCIA cards
during installation.
You will also need to know your IP address on the network, the netmask
value for your subnet and the name of your machine. Your system
administrator can tell you which values are appropriate to your particular
network setup. If you will be referring to other hosts by name rather than
IP address, you'll also need a name server and possibly the address of a
gateway (if you're using PPP, it's your provider's IP address) to use in
talking to it. If you want to install by FTP via an HTTP proxy (see
below), you will also need the proxy's address.
If you do not know the answers to these questions then you should really
probably talk to your system administrator first before trying this type
of installation. Using a randomly chosen IP address or netmask on a live
network is almost guaranteed not to work, and will probably result in a
lecture from said system administrator.
Once you have a network connection of some sort working, the installation
can continue over NFS or FTP.
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1.5.5.4 NFS installation tips
NFS installation is fairly straight-forward: Simply copy the FreeBSD
distribution files you want onto a server somewhere and then point the NFS
media selection at it.
If this server supports only ``privileged port'' access (this is generally
the default for Sun and Linux workstations), you will need to set this
option in the Options menu before installation can proceed.
If you have a poor quality Ethernet card which suffers from very slow
transfer rates, you may also wish to toggle the appropriate Options flag.
In order for NFS installation to work, the server must also support
``subdir mounts'', e.g. if your FreeBSD distribution directory lives on
wiggy:/usr/archive/stuff/FreeBSD, then wiggy will have to allow the direct
mounting of /usr/archive/stuff/FreeBSD, not just /usr or
/usr/archive/stuff.
In FreeBSD's /etc/exports file this is controlled by the -alldirs option.
Other NFS servers may have different conventions. If you are getting
Permission Denied messages from the server then it's likely that you don't
have this properly enabled.
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1.5.5.5 FTP Installation tips
FTP installation may be done from any mirror site containing a reasonably
up-to-date version of FreeBSD. A full menu of reasonable choices for
almost any location in the world is provided in the FTP site menu during
installation.
If you are installing from some other FTP site not listed in this menu, or
you are having troubles getting your name server configured properly, you
can also specify your own URL by selecting the ``URL'' choice in that
menu. A URL can contain a hostname or an IP address, so something like the
following would work in the absence of a name server:
ftp://216.66.64.162/pub/FreeBSD/releases/alpha/4.2-RELEASE
There are three FTP installation modes you can use:
* FTP: This method uses the standard ``Active'' mode for transfers, in
which the server initiates a connection to the client. This will not
work through most firewalls but will often work best with older FTP
servers that do not support passive mode. If your connection hangs
with passive mode, try this one.
* FTP Passive: This sets the FTP "Passive" mode which prevents the
server from opening connections to the client. This option is best for
users to pass through firewalls that do not allow incoming connections
on random port addresses.
* FTP via an HTTP proxy: This option instructs FreeBSD to use HTTP to
connect to a proxy for all FTP operations. The proxy will translate
the requests and send them to the FTP server. This allows the user to
pass through firewalls that do not allow FTP at all, but offer an HTTP
proxy. You must specify the hostname of the proxy in addition to the
FTP server.
In the rare case that you have an FTP proxy that does not go through
HTTP, you can specify the URL as something like:
ftp://foo.bar.com:port/pub/FreeBSD
In the URL above, port is the port number of the proxy FTP server.
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1.5.6 Tips for Serial Console Users
If you'd like to install FreeBSD on a machine using just a serial port
(e.g. you don't have or wish to use a VGA card), please follow these
steps:
1. Connect some sort of ANSI (vt100) compatible terminal or terminal
emulation program to the COM1 port of the PC you are installing
FreeBSD onto.
2. Unplug the keyboard (yes, that's correct!) and then try to boot from
floppy or the installation CDROM, depending on the type of
installation media you have, with the keyboard unplugged.
3. If you don't get any output on your serial console, plug the keyboard
in again and wait for some beeps. If you are booting from the CDROM,
proceed to step 5 as soon as you hear the beep.
4. For a floppy boot, the first beep means to remove the kern.flp floppy
and insert the mfsroot.flp floppy, after which you should press Enter
and wait for another beep.
5. Hit the space bar, then enter
boot -h
and you should now definitely be seeing everything on the serial port.
If that still doesn't work, check your serial cabling as well as the
settings on your terminal emulation program or actual terminal device.
It should be set for 9600 baud, 8 bits, no parity.
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1.6 Question and Answer Section for Alpha/AXP Architecture Users
1.6.1. Can I boot from the ARC or Alpha BIOS Console?
1.6.2. Help! I have no space! Do I need to delete everything first?
1.6.3. Can I mount my Compaq Tru64 or VMS extended partitions?
1.6.4. What about support for Compaq Tru64 (OSF/1) binaries?
1.6.5. What about support for Linux binaries?
1.6.6. What about support for NT Alpha binaries?
1.6.1. Can I boot from the ARC or Alpha BIOS Console?
No. FreeBSD, like Compaq Tru64 and VMS, will only boot from the SRM
console.
1.6.2. Help! I have no space! Do I need to delete everything first?
Unfortunately, yes.
1.6.3. Can I mount my Compaq Tru64 or VMS extended partitions?
No, not at this time.
1.6.4. What about support for Compaq Tru64 (OSF/1) binaries?
FreeBSD can run Tru64 applications very well using the emulators/osf1_base
port/package.
1.6.5. What about support for Linux binaries?
FreeBSD can run AlphaLinux binaries with the assistance of the
emulators/linux_base port/package.
1.6.6. What about support for NT Alpha binaries?
FreeBSD is not able to run NT applications natively, although it has the
ability to mount NT partitions.
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2 Distribution Format
A typical FreeBSD distribution directory looks something like this:
ERRATA.HTM README.TXT compat1x dict manpages
ERRATA.TXT RELNOTES.HTM compat20 doc packages
HARDWARE.HTM RELNOTES.TXT compat21 docbook.css ports
HARDWARE.TXT XF86336 compat22 floppies proflibs
INSTALL.HTM bin compat3x games src
INSTALL.TXT catpages compat4x info tools
README.HTM cdrom.inf crypto kernel
If you want to do a CDROM, FTP or NFS installation from this distribution
directory, all you need to do is make the 1.44MB boot floppies from the
floppies directory (see Section 1.3 for instructions on how to do this),
boot them and follow the instructions. The rest of the data needed during
the installation will be obtained automatically based on your selections.
If you've never installed FreeBSD before, you also want to read the
entirety of this document (the installation instructions) file.
If you're trying to do some other type of installation or are merely
curious about how a distribution is organized, what follows is a more
thorough description of each item in more detail:
1. The *.TXT and *.HTM files contain documentation (for example, this
document is contained in both INSTALL.TXT and INSTALL.HTM) and should
be read before starting an installation. The *.TXT files are plain
text, while the *.HTM files are HTML files that can be read by almost
any Web browser. Some distributions may contain documentation in other
formats as well, such as PDF or PostScript.
2. docbook.css is a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file used by some Web
browsers for formatting the HTML documentation.
3. The XF86336 directory contains the XFree86 project's 3.3.6 release and
consists of a series of gzip'd tar files which contain each component
of the XFree86 distribution.
4. The bin, catpages, crypto, dict, doc, games, info, manpages, proflibs,
and src directories contain the primary distribution components of
FreeBSD itself and are split into smaller files for easy packing onto
floppies (should that be necessary).
5. The compat1x, compat20, compat21, compat22, compat3x, and compat4x
directories contain distributions for compatibility with older
releases and are distributed as single gzip'd tar files - they can be
installed during release time or later by running their install.sh
scripts.
6. The floppies/ subdirectory contains the floppy installation images;
further information on using them can be found in Section 1.3.
7. The packages and ports directories contain the FreeBSD Packages and
Ports Collections. Packages may be installed from the packages
directory by running the command:
#/stand/sysinstall configPackages
Packages can also be installed by feeding individual filenames in
packages/ to the pkg_add(1) command.
The Ports Collection may be installed like any other distribution and
requires about 100MB unpacked. More information on the ports
collection may be obtained from http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/ or
locally from /usr/share/doc/handbook if you've installed the doc
distribution.
8. Last of all, the tools directory contains various DOS tools for
discovering disk geometries, installing boot managers and the like. It
is purely optional and provided only for user convenience.
A typical distribution directory (for example, the info distribution)
looks like this internally:
CHECKSUM.MD5 info.ab info.ad info.inf install.sh
info.aa info.ac info.ae info.mtree
The CHECKSUM.MD5 file contains MD5 signatures for each file, should data
corruption be suspected, and is purely for reference. It is not used by
the actual installation and does not need to be copied with the rest of
the distribution files. The info.a* files are split, gzip'd tar files, the
contents of which can be viewed by doing:
# cat info.a* | tar tvzf -
During installation, they are automatically concatenated and extracted by
the installation procedure.
The info.inf file is also necessary since it is read by the installation
program in order to figure out how many pieces to look for when fetching
and concatenating the distribution. When putting distributions onto
floppies, the .inf file must occupy the first floppy of each distribution
set!
The info.mtree file is another non-essential file which is provided for
user reference. It contains the MD5 signatures of the unpacked
distribution files and can be later used with the mtree(8) program to
verify the installation permissions and checksums against any possible
modifications to the file. When used with the bin distribution, this can
be an excellent way of detecting trojan horse attacks on your system.
Finally, the install.sh file is for use by those who want to install the
distribution after installation time. To install the info distribution
from CDROM after a system was installed, for example, you'd do:
# cd /cdrom/info
# sh install.sh
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3 Upgrading FreeBSD
These instructions describe a procedure for doing a binary upgrade from an
older version of FreeBSD.
Warning: While the FreeBSD upgrade procedure does its best to safeguard
against accidental loss of data, it is still more than possible to wipe
out your entire disk with this installation! Please do not accept the
final confirmation request unless you have adequately backed up any
important data files.
Important: These notes assume that you are using the version of
sysinstall(8) supplied with the version of FreeBSD to which you intend
to upgrade. Using a mismatched version of sysinstall(8) is almost
guaranteed to cause problems and has been known to leave systems in an
unusable state. The most commonly made mistake in this regard is the use
of an old copy of sysinstall(8) from an existing installation to upgrade
to a newer version of FreeBSD. This is not recommended.
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3.1 Introduction
The upgrade procedure replaces distributions selected by the user with
those corresponding to the new FreeBSD release. It preserves standard
system configuration data, as well as user data, installed packages and
other software.
Administrators contemplating an upgrade are encouraged to study this
section in its entirety before commencing an upgrade. Failure to do so may
result in a failed upgrade or loss of data.
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3.1.1 Upgrade Overview
Upgrading of a distribution is performed by extracting the new version of
the component over the top of the previous version. Files belonging to the
old distribution are not deleted.
System configuration is preserved by retaining and restoring the previous
version of the following files:
Xaccel.ini, XF86Config, adduser.conf, aliases, aliases.db, amd.map,
crontab, csh.cshrc, csh.login, csh.logout, cvsupfile, dhclient.conf,
disktab, dm.conf, dumpdates, exports, fbtab, fstab, ftpusers, gettytab,
gnats, group, hosts, host.conf, hosts.allow, hosts.equiv, hosts.lpd,
inetd.conf, kerberosIV, localtime, login.access, login.conf, mail,
mail.rc, make.conf, manpath.config, master.passwd, modems, motd, namedb,
networks, newsyslog.conf, nsmb.conf, pam.conf, passwd, periodic, ppp,
printcap, profile, pwd.db, rc.conf, rc.conf.local, rc.firewall, rc.local,
remote, resolv.conf, rmt, sendmail.cf, sendmail.cw, services, shells,
skeykeys, spwd.db, ssh, syslog.conf, ttys, uucp
The versions of these files which correspond to the new version are moved
to /etc/upgrade/. The system administrator may peruse these new versions
and merge components as desired. Note that many of these files are
interdependent, and the best merge procedure is to copy all site-specific
data from the current files into the new.
During the upgrade procedure, the administrator is prompted for a location
into which all files from /etc/ are saved. In the event that local
modifications have been made to other files, they may be subsequently
retrieved from this location.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.2 Procedure
This section details the upgrade procedure. Particular attention is given
to items which substantially differ from a normal installation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.2.1 Backup
User data and system configuration should be backed up before upgrading.
While the upgrade procedure does its best to prevent accidental mistakes,
it is possible to partially or completely destroy data and configuration
information.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.2.2 Mount Filesystems
The disklabel editor is entered with the nominated disk's filesystem
devices listed. Prior to commencing the upgrade, the administrator should
make a note of the device names and corresponding mountpoints. These
mountpoints should be entered here. Do notset the ``newfs flag'' for any
filesystems, as this will cause data loss.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.2.3 Select Distributions
When selecting distributions, there are no constraints on which must be
selected. As a general rule, the bin distribution should be selected for
an update, and the man distribution if manpages are already installed.
Other distributions may be selected beyond those originally installed if
the administrator wishes to add additional functionality.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.2.4 After Installation
Once the installation procedure has completed, the administrator is
prompted to examine the new configuration files. At this point, checks
should be made to ensure that the system configuration is valid. In
particular, the /etc/rc.conf and /etc/fstab files should be checked.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
3.3 Upgrading from Source Code
Those interested in an upgrade method that allows more flexibility and
sophistication should take a look at The Cutting Edge in the FreeBSD
Handbook. This procedure involves rebuilding all of FreeBSD from source
code. It requires reliable network connectivity, extra disk space, and
time, but has advantages for networks and other more complex
installations. This is roughly the same procedure as is used for track the
-STABLE or -CURRENT development branches.
/usr/src/UPDATING contains important information on updating a FreeBSD
system from source code. It lists various issues resulting from changes in
FreeBSD that may affect an upgrade.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
4 Troubleshooting
4.1 Repairing an Existing FreeBSD Installation
FreeBSD features a ``Fixit'' option in the top menu of the boot floppy. To
use it, you will also need either a fixit.flp image floppy, generated in
the same fashion as the boot floppy, or the ``live filesystem'' CDROM;
typically the second CDROM in a multi-disc FreeBSD distribution.
To invoke fixit, simply boot the kern.flp floppy, choose the ``Fixit''
item and insert the fixit floppy or CDROM when asked. You will then be
placed into a shell with a wide variety of commands available (in the
/stand and /mnt2/stand directories) for checking, repairing and examining
file systems and their contents. Some UNIX administration experience is
required to use the fixit option.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.2 Common Installation Problems, Q&A
4.2.1. I go to boot from the hard disk for the first time after installing
FreeBSD, the kernel loads and probes my hardware, but stops with messages
like:
4.2.2. I go to boot from the hard disk for the first time after installing
FreeBSD, but the Boot Manager prompt just prints F? at the boot menu each
time but the boot won't go any further.
4.2.1. I go to boot from the hard disk for the first time after installing
FreeBSD, the kernel loads and probes my hardware, but stops with messages
like:
changing root device to wd1s1a panic: cannot mount root
What is wrong? What can I do?
What is this bios_drive:interface(unit,partition)kernel_name thing that is
displayed with the boot help?
There is a longstanding problem in the case where the boot disk is not the
first disk in the system. The BIOS uses a different numbering scheme to
FreeBSD, and working out which numbers correspond to which is difficult to
get right.
In the case where the boot disk is not the first disk in the system,
FreeBSD can need some help finding it. There are two common situations
here, and in both of these cases, you need to tell FreeBSD where the root
filesystem is. You do this by specifying the BIOS disk number, the disk
type and the FreeBSD disk number for that type.
The first situation is where you have two IDE disks, each configured as
the master on their respective IDE busses, and wish to boot FreeBSD from
the second disk. The BIOS sees these as disk 0 and disk 1, while FreeBSD
sees them as wd0 and wd2.
FreeBSD is on BIOS disk 1, of type wd and the FreeBSD disk number is 2, so
you would say:
1:wd(2,a)kernel
Note that if you have a slave on the primary bus, the above is not
necessary (and is effectively wrong).
The second situation involves booting from a SCSI disk when you have one
or more IDE disks in the system. In this case, the FreeBSD disk number is
lower than the BIOS disk number. If you have two IDE disks as well as the
SCSI disk, the SCSI disk is BIOS disk 2, type da and FreeBSD disk number
0, so you would say:
2:da(0,a)kernel
To tell FreeBSD that you want to boot from BIOS disk 2, which is the first
SCSI disk in the system. If you only had one IDE disk, you would use '1:'
instead.
Once you have determined the correct values to use, you can put the
command exactly as you would have typed it in the /boot.config file using
a standard text editor. Unless instructed otherwise, FreeBSD will use the
contents of this file as the default response to the boot: prompt.
4.2.2. I go to boot from the hard disk for the first time after installing
FreeBSD, but the Boot Manager prompt just prints F? at the boot menu each
time but the boot won't go any further.
The hard disk geometry was set incorrectly in the Partition editor when
you installed FreeBSD. Go back into the partition editor and specify the
actual geometry of your hard disk. You must reinstall FreeBSD again from
the beginning with the correct geometry.
If you are failing entirely in figuring out the correct geometry for your
machine, here's a tip: Install a small DOS partition at the beginning of
the disk and install FreeBSD after that. The install program will see the
DOS partition and try to infer the correct geometry from it, which usually
works.
The following tip is no longer recommended, but is left here for
reference:
If you are setting up a truly dedicated FreeBSD server or workstation
where you don't care for (future) compatibility with DOS, Linux or
another operating system, you've also got the option to use the entire
disk (`A' in the partition editor), selecting the non-standard option
where FreeBSD occupies the entire disk from the very first to the very
last sector. This will leave all geometry considerations aside, but is
somewhat limiting unless you're never going to run anything other than
FreeBSD on a disk.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
4.3 Known Hardware Problems, Q&A
Note: Please send hardware tips for this section to Jordan K. Hubbard
<jkh@FreeBSD.org>.
4.3.1. The mcd(4) driver keeps thinking that it has found a device and
this stops my Intel EtherExpress card from working.
4.3.2. FreeBSD claims to support the 3Com PCMCIA card, but my card isn't
recognized when it's plugged into my laptop.
4.3.3. FreeBSD finds my PCMCIA network card, but no packets appear to be
sent even though it claims to be working.
4.3.4. The system finds my ed(4) network card, but I keep getting device
timeout errors.
4.3.5. I have a Matsushita/Panasonic drive but it isn't recognized by the
system.
4.3.6. I booted the install floppy on my IBM ThinkPad (tm) laptop, and the
keyboard is all messed up.
4.3.7. When I try to boot the install floppy, I see the following message
and nothing seems to be happening. I cannot enter anything from the
keyboard either.
4.3.8. I have a Matsushita/Panasonic CR-522, a Matsushita/Panasonic CR-523
or a TEAC CD55a drive, but it is not recognized even when the correct I/O
port is set.
4.3.9. I'm trying to install from a tape drive but all I get is something
like this on the screen:
4.3.10. I've installed FreeBSD onto my system, but it hangs when booting
from the hard drive with the message:
4.3.11. My system can not find my Intel EtherExpress 16 card.
4.3.12. When installing on an EISA HP Netserver, my on-board AIC-7xxx SCSI
controller isn't detected.
4.3.13. I have a Panasonic AL-N1 or Rios Chandler Pentium machine and I
find that the system hangs before ever getting into the installation now.
4.3.14. I have this CMD640 IDE controller that is said to be broken.
4.3.15. On a Compaq Aero notebook, I get the message ``No floppy devices
found! Please check ...'' when trying to install from floppy.
4.3.16. When I go to boot my Intel AL440LX (``Atlanta'') -based system
from the hard disk the first time, it stops with a Read Error message.
4.3.17. When installing on an Dell Poweredge XE, Dell proprietary RAID
controller DSA (Dell SCSI Array) isn't recognized.
4.3.18. My Ethernet adapter is detected as an AMD PCnet-FAST (or similar)
but it doesn't work. (Eg. onboard Ethernet on IBM Netfinity 5xxx or 7xxx)
4.3.19. I have an IBM EtherJet PCI card, it is detected by the fxp(4)
driver correctly, but the lights on the card don't come on and it doesn't
connect to the network.
4.3.20. When I configure the network during installation on an IBM
Netfinity 3500, the system freezes.
4.3.21. When I install onto a drive managed by a Mylex PCI RAID
controller, the system fails to boot (eg. with a read error message).
4.3.1. The mcd(4) driver keeps thinking that it has found a device and
this stops my Intel EtherExpress card from working.
Use the UserConfig utility (see HARDWARE.TXT) and disable the probing of
the mcd0 and mcd1 devices. Generally speaking, you should only leave the
devices that you will be using enabled in your kernel.
4.3.2. FreeBSD claims to support the 3Com PCMCIA card, but my card isn't
recognized when it's plugged into my laptop.
There are a couple of possible problems. First of all, FreeBSD does not
support multi-function cards, so if you have a combo Ethernet/modem card
(such as the 3C562), it won't work. The default driver for the 3C589 card
was written just like all of the other drivers in FreeBSD, and depend on
the card's own configuration data stored in NVRAM to work. You must
correctly configure FreeBSD's driver to match the IRQ, port, and IOMEM
stored in NVRAM.
Unfortunately, the only program capable of reading them is the 3COM
supplied DOS program. This program must be run on a absolutely clean
system (no other drivers must be running), and the program will whine
about CARD-Services not being found, but it will continue. This is
necessary to read the NVRAM values. You want to know the IRQ, port, and
IOMEM values (the latter is called the CIS tuple by 3COM). The first two
can be set in the program, the third is un-settable, and can only be read.
Once you have these values, set them in UserConfig and your card will be
recognized.
4.3.3. FreeBSD finds my PCMCIA network card, but no packets appear to be
sent even though it claims to be working.
Many PCMCIA cards have the ability to use either the 10-Base2 (BNC) or
10-BaseT connectors for connecting to the network. The driver is unable to
``auto-select'' the correct connector, so you must tell it which connector
to use. In order to switch between the two connectors, the link flags must
be set. Depending on the model of the card, -link0 link1 or -link0 -link1
will choose the correct network connector. You can set these in
sysinstall(8) by using the Extra options to ifconfig: field in the network
setup screen.
4.3.4. The system finds my ed(4) network card, but I keep getting device
timeout errors.
Your card is probably on a different IRQ from what is specified in the
kernel configuration. The ed driver does not use the `soft' configuration
by default (values entered using EZSETUP in DOS), but it will use the
software configuration if you specify ? in the IRQ field of your kernel
config file.
Either move the jumper on the card to a hard configuration setting
(altering the kernel settings if necessary), or specify the IRQ as -1 in
UserConfig or ? in your kernel config file. This will tell the kernel to
use the soft configuration.
Another possibility is that your card is at IRQ 9, which is shared by IRQ
2 and frequently a cause of problems (especially when you have a VGA card
using IRQ 2!). You should not use IRQ 2 or 9 if at all possible.
4.3.5. I have a Matsushita/Panasonic drive but it isn't recognized by the
system.
Make certain that the I/O port that the matcd(4) driver is set to is
correct for the host interface card you have. (Some SoundBlaster DOS
drivers report a hardware I/O port address for the CD-ROM interface that
is 0x10 lower than it really is.)
If you are unable to determine the settings for the card by examining the
board or documentation, you can use UserConfig to change the 'port'
address (I/O port) to -1 and start the system. This setting causes the
driver to look at a number of I/O ports that various manufacturers use for
their Matsushita/Panasonic/Creative CD-ROM interfaces. Once the driver
locates the address, you should run UserConfig again and specify the
correct address. Leaving the 'port' parameter set to -1 increases the
amount of time that it takes the system to boot, and this could interfere
with other devices.
The double-speed Matsushita CR-562 and CR-563 are the only drives that are
supported.
4.3.6. I booted the install floppy on my IBM ThinkPad (tm) laptop, and the
keyboard is all messed up.
Older IBM laptops use a non-standard keyboard controller, so you must tell
the keyboard driver (atkbd0) to go into a special mode which works on the
ThinkPads. Change the atkbd0 'Flags' to 0x4 in UserConfig and it should
work fine. (Look in the Input Menu for 'Keyboard'.)
4.3.7. When I try to boot the install floppy, I see the following message
and nothing seems to be happening. I cannot enter anything from the
keyboard either.
Keyboard: no
Due to lack of space, full support for old XT/AT (84-key) keyboards is no
longer available in the bootblocks. Some notebook computers may also have
this type of keyboard. If you are still using this kind of hardware, you
will see the above message appears when you boot from the CD-ROM or an
install floppy.
As soon as you see this message, hit the space bar, and you will see the
prompt:
>> FreeBSD/i386 BOOT
Default: x:xx(x,x)/boot/loader
boot:
Then enter -Dh, and things should proceed normally.
4.3.8. I have a Matsushita/Panasonic CR-522, a Matsushita/Panasonic CR-523
or a TEAC CD55a drive, but it is not recognized even when the correct I/O
port is set.
These CD-ROM drives are currently not supported by FreeBSD. The command
sets for these drives are not compatible with the double-speed CR-562 and
CR-563 drives.
The single-speed CR-522 and CR-523 drives can be identified by their use
of a CD-caddy.
4.3.9. I'm trying to install from a tape drive but all I get is something
like this on the screen:
sa0(aha0:1:0) NOT READY csi 40,0,0,0
There's a limitation in the current sysinstall(8) that the tape must be in
the drive while sysinstall(8) is started or it won't be detected. Try
again with the tape in the drive the whole time.
4.3.10. I've installed FreeBSD onto my system, but it hangs when booting
from the hard drive with the message:
Changing root to /dev/da0a
his problem may occur in a system with a 3com 3c509 Ethernet adapter. The
ep(4) device driver appears to be sensitive to probes for other devices
that also use address 0x300. Boot your FreeBSD system by power cycling the
machine (turn off and on). At the Boot: prompt specify the -c. This will
invoke UserConfig (see Section 4.1 above). Use the disable command to
disable the device probes for all devices at address 0x300 except the ep0
driver. On exit, your machine should successfully boot FreeBSD.
4.3.11. My system can not find my Intel EtherExpress 16 card.
You must set your Intel EtherExpress 16 card to be memory mapped at
address 0xD0000, and set the amount of mapped memory to 32K using the
Intel supplied softset.exe program.
4.3.12. When installing on an EISA HP Netserver, my on-board AIC-7xxx SCSI
controller isn't detected.
This is a known problem, and will hopefully be fixed in the future. In
order to get your system installed at all, boot with the -c option into
UserConfig, but don't use the pretty visual mode but the plain old CLI
mode. Type:
eisa 12
quit
at the prompt. (Instead of `quit', you might also type `visual', and
continue the rest of the configuration session in visual mode.) While it's
recommended to compile a custom kernel, dset now also understands to save
this value.
Refer to the FAQ topic 3.16 for an explanation of the problem, and for how
to continue. Remember that you can find the FAQ on your local system in
/usr/share/doc/FAQ, provided you have installed the `doc' distribution.
4.3.13. I have a Panasonic AL-N1 or Rios Chandler Pentium machine and I
find that the system hangs before ever getting into the installation now.
Your machine doesn't like the new i586_copyout and i586_copyin code for
some reason. To disable this, boot the installation boot floppy and when
it comes to the very first menu (the choice to drop into kernel UserConfig
mode or not) choose the command-line interface (``expert mode'') version
and type the following at it:
flags npx0 1
Then proceed normally to boot. This will be saved into your kernel, so you
only need to do it once.
4.3.14. I have this CMD640 IDE controller that is said to be broken.
Yes, it is. FreeBSD does not support this controller except through the
legacy wdc driver.
4.3.15. On a Compaq Aero notebook, I get the message ``No floppy devices
found! Please check ...'' when trying to install from floppy.
With Compaq being always a little different from other systems, they do
not announce their floppy drive in the CMOS RAM of an Aero notebook.
Therefore, the floppy disk driver assumes there is no drive configured. Go
to the UserConfig screen, and set the Flags value of the fdc0 device to
0x1. This pretends the existence of the first floppy drive (as a 1.44 MB
drive) to the driver without asking the CMOS at all.
4.3.16. When I go to boot my Intel AL440LX (``Atlanta'') -based system
from the hard disk the first time, it stops with a Read Error message.
There appears to be a bug in the BIOS on at least some of these boards,
this bug results in the FreeBSD bootloader thinking that it is booting
from a floppy disk. This is only a problem if you are not using the
BootEasy boot manager. Slice the disk in ``compatible''mode and install
BootEasy during the FreeBSD installation to avoid the bug, or upgrade the
BIOS (see Intel's website for details).
4.3.17. When installing on an Dell Poweredge XE, Dell proprietary RAID
controller DSA (Dell SCSI Array) isn't recognized.
Configure the DSA to use AHA-1540 emulation using EISA configuration
utility. After that FreeBSD detects the DSA as an Adaptec AHA-1540 SCSI
controller, with irq 11 and port 340. Under emulation mode system will use
DSA RAID disks, but you cannot use DSA-specific features such as watching
RAID health.
4.3.18. My Ethernet adapter is detected as an AMD PCnet-FAST (or similar)
but it doesn't work. (Eg. onboard Ethernet on IBM Netfinity 5xxx or 7xxx)
The lnc(4) driver is currently faulty, and will often not work correctly
with the PCnet-FAST and PCnet-FAST+. You need to install a different
Ethernet adapter.
4.3.19. I have an IBM EtherJet PCI card, it is detected by the fxp(4)
driver correctly, but the lights on the card don't come on and it doesn't
connect to the network.
We don't understand why this happens. Neither do IBM (we asked them). The
card is a standard Intel EtherExpress Pro/100 with an IBM label on it, and
these cards normally work just fine. You may see these symptoms only in
some IBM Netfinity servers. The only solution is to install a different
Ethernet adapter.
4.3.20. When I configure the network during installation on an IBM
Netfinity 3500, the system freezes.
There is a problem with the onboard Ethernet in the Netfinity 3500 which
we have not been able to identify at this time. It may be related to the
SMP features of the system being misconfigured. You will have to install
another Ethernet adapter and avoid attempting to configure the onboard
adapter at any time.
4.3.21. When I install onto a drive managed by a Mylex PCI RAID
controller, the system fails to boot (eg. with a read error message).
There is a bug in the Mylex driver which results in it ignoring the
``8GB'' geometry mode setting in the BIOS. Use the 2GB mode instead.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This file, and other release-related documents, can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases.
For questions about FreeBSD, read the documentation before contacting
<questions@FreeBSD.org>.
For questions about this documentation, e-mail <doc@FreeBSD.org>.