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Before installing MicroBSD you should attempt to inventory the components in your computer. The MicroBSD installation routines will show you the components (hard disks, network cards, CDROM drives, PCMCIA and USB devices and so forth) with their model number and manufacturer. MicroBSD will also attempt to determine the correct configuration for these devices, which includes information about IRQ and IO port usage.
If you already have another operating system installed, such as Windows or Linux, it is a good idea to use the facilities provided by those operating systems to see how your hardware is already configured. If you are really not sure what settings an expansion card is using, you may find it printed on the card itself. Popular IRQ numbers are 3, 5, 7 and 10.We recommend you print or write down this information before installing MicroBSD.
If the computer you will be installing MicroBSD on contains valuable data then ensure you have it backed up, and that you have tested the backups before installing MicroBSD. The MicroBSD installation routine will prompt you several times before writing any data to your disk, but once that process has started it cannot be undone.
If you want MicroBSD to use all your disk, then there is nothing more to concern yourself with at this point -- you can skip to the next section.
However, if you need MicroBSD to co-exist with other operating systems then you need to have a rough understanding of how data is laid out on the disk, and how this affects you.
A PC disk can be divided into discrete chunks. These chunks are called partitions. By design, the PC only supports four primary partitions per disk. To work around this limitation and allow more than four partitions, a new partition type was created, the extended partition. A disk may contain only one extended partition. Special partitions, called logical partitions, can be created inside this extended partition.
Each partition has a partition hex code, which is a number used to identify the type of data on the partition. MicroBSD partitions have the partition hex code a6 which is the same as OpenBSD partition type.
If you have already other OS on your computer like Linux,Windows you have to use lilo or similar boot manager.
If you have a spare partition then you can use that. However, you may need to shrink one or more of your existing partitions first.You can use a commercial tool such as Partition Magic, parted, fips to resize your partitions to make space for MicroBSD.
If you intend to connect to a network as part of your MicroBSD installation (for example, if you will be installing from an FTP site, or an NFS server), then you need to know your network configuration. You will be prompted for this information during the installation so that MicroBSD can connect to the network to complete the install.
If you connect to an Ethernet network, or you have an Internet connection via cable or DSL, then you will need the following information:
IP address.
IP address of the default gateway.
DNS server IP addresses.
Hostname.
If you do not know this information, then ask your system administrator or service provider. They may say that this information is assigned automatically, using DHCP. If so, make a note of this.
The MicroBSD installation process can install MicroBSD from files located in the any of the following places:
Local media
A CDROM
Floppy disks
Network
An FTP site, going through a firewall, or using an HTTP proxy, as necessary
An NFS server
A dedicated parallel or serial connection
The MicroBSD installation process is started by booting your computer into the MicroBSD installer--it is not a program you run within another operating system. Your computer normally boots using the operating system installed on your hard disk, but it can also be configured to use a ``bootable'' floppy disk. It may also be able to boot from a disk in the CDROM drive.
To create boot floppy images, follow these steps:
Acquire the Boot Floppy Images
The boot discs are available on your installation media in the /$VER/$ARCH/ ( where $VER - MicroBSD version 0.5 or greater; $ARCH - MicroBSD architecture build i386 and so on. ) directory.
The floppy images have a .fs extension. The /$VER/$ARCH/ directory contains a number of different images, and the ones you will need to use depends on the hardware you are installing to. In most cases you will need one image floppyXX.fs (XX is the MicroBSD version like 05) which supports the standart i386 boot and installation floppy , but check INSTALL.i386 in the same directory for more information. There are image files floppyBXX.fs and floppyCXX.fs.The first one is for i386 + drivers for SCSI, RAID, gigabit ethernet, and the other one is for i386 + CARDBUS and PCMCIA drivers. The cdromXX.fs is for bootable cdrom.
Prepare the Floppy Disks
You must prepare one floppy disk for the image file. It is imperative that the disk is free from defects. The easiest way to test this is to format the disks for yourself. Do not trust pre-formatted floppies.
Write the Image Files to the Floppy Disks
The .fs files are not regular files you copy to the disk. Instead, they are images of the complete contents of the disk. This means that you cannot use commands like DOS' copy to write the files. Instead, you must use specific tools to write the images directly to the disk.
If you are creating the floppies on a computer running DOS/Windows, then you have to use rawrite.exe or ntrw.exe tool to make the bootable floppy.
If you are writing the floppies on a Unix system (such as another MicroBSD or Solaris system) you can use the dd command to write the image files directly to disk. On MicroBSD, you would run:
# dd if=floppyXXX.fs of=/dev/rfd0c bs=36b
And under Solaris:
# dd if=floppyXXX.fs of=/dev/rdiskette0 bs=36b
On MicroBSD, /dev/rfd0c refers to the first floppy disk, /dev/rfd1c would be the second drive, and so on. Other Unix variants might have different names for the floppy disk devices, and you will need to check the documentation for the system as necessary.
You are now ready to start installing MicroBSD.
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This, and other documents, can be downloaded from MicroBSD.
For questions about MicroBSD, read the documentation before contacting
<MicroBSD Support>.
Copyright © 1995-2003 by The FreeBSD Documentation Project, OpenBSD FAQ Copyright © 1998-2003 OpenBSD, Modified for MicroBSD