*BSD News Article 75547


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.mira.net.au!vic.news.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!newsfeed.internetmci.com!info.ucla.edu!nnrp.info.ucla.edu!agate!news.Stanford.EDU!andrsn.stanford.edu!andrsn
From: andrsn@andrsn.stanford.edu (Annelise Anderson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Label editor is snake oil!
Date: 6 Aug 1996 19:12:37 GMT
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 95
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <4u85f5$fut@nntp.Stanford.EDU>
References: <4tunu6$bu4@usenetp1.news.prodigy.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: andrsn.stanford.edu
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]

Jan Neal (UFCK28A@prodigy.com) wrote:
: Ok, I was gliding through the installation of 2.1.5, and the label edit 
: stopped me cold.  I am installing on a seperate primary partition along 
: with Win95, unfortunatly I'm unsure how to proceed, because I can't 
: figure out how to use the label editor (for mounting the slices, etc.)
: I'm using a pentium with 16meg ram, the partition is set to a minimum but 
: it's suffcient because I only need emacs.
: I request your assistance.

: -Brian Neal

Here's an explanation I wrote for someone working on a 150 megabyte
slice/partition that may be useful--no warranty!  It starts before
you get to the disk label editor.
Basically what I do is just read the screen carefully.

Choose Novice and work through it step by step.

There are some message screens where you press Enter to move to the next
screen.

Then there's a screen that asks which disk you want to work on.  Since
my systems have a couple of disks each I always get this message.  You
highlight the one you want and press Spacebar, which puts an X in the
box next to the disk you want.  Then press Enter to go to next screen.

Now you get a list of existing partitions on the disk.  You should keep
in mind how big your dos partition (okay, slice, who cares) is so you
don't inadvertently delete it.  On this screen you put the highlight--
the reverse video--on the partition where you want to put FreeBSD.  
Presumably your 150 megabytes.

	Press D to delete the partition
	Press C to create the partition

Yes, do both of those in the above order.  When you press C I think
it asks how big you want it to be, with the entire size of the partition
listed in 512 K blocks.  If you want to devote the entire amount of this
partition to FreeBSD, press enter.  (I think this is what you want.)
If you want to use only 140 megabytes, type 140M in the box and then
(you might have to press TAB to get the cursor on the EXIT message)
press enter.  Then with the highlight on this slice you have created, 
which should now have a C is the right-hand column, press S.  This will 
put an A next to the C.  (So intuitive!!!!)  Press Q to exit this screen and 
move on.

Now you get another message about creating partitions.  Press Enter.

Now this screen looks like the last one but it's different.  At the
top it says FreeBSD Disklabel Editor or something like that.  In reverse
video you should see the available partition, the one you just created,
of the size you created, say 150 M.  

Down below you will see a list of the other stuff on the same disk that
FreeBSD seems to know about.  You might want to write down what it says
so that as partitions are added you will know which ones are the new
ones.

Now, with the highlight on the bar naming the partition you have created
for FreeBSD, press C.  This opens a box asking how big you want to make
this partition.  This is a dividing up of the "slice" you created, a
dividing up of the 150 M.  So, you should have decided already what you
want to do here--say, 24 for /, 26 for swap, 100 for /usr? 

Anyway, you're in the little dialog box, having pressed C.  Now put
24M in the box and press enter (tab to the exit message if necessary).
Next it will ask you if this is a file system or swap.  Put the highlight
on file system and press enter (or press spacebar first to put an x
next to filesystem if necessary, I don't remember these things very well
because I just find out what to do when the screen is there).  Then it
says:  Where do you want to mount this?  Put / in the box and exit from
the box.  Now there will be another item in the list in the middle of
the screen, a partition label, a mount point (/) and a size of 24 M.

Now the highlight should be back on the slice thing at the top of the 
screen.  Press C again, put 26M in the box, choose swap instead of file system, exit.

Again, press C, put 100M in the box, tell it you want a file system,
tell it to mount it on /usr, exit, and I think you're done.

Press Q to quit this whole screen.  (Piece o'cake, right?)

Now you'll get the message about selecting distributions.  Choose X-User
probably as one that fits in the size of the partition you will have.

At some point it will ask you where you want to install from, i.e., the
install medium.  There are probably more screens 
that I've forgotten but I think this will get you through the hard part.

Annelise