Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box
Jerry: Thanks for your long response. I have downloaded bootitng v1.32 from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ and it works great. It has nice menu. The only thing to watch is that I should create a dedicated partition for bootitng before trying to install it. I also changed the timeout from 0 to 5. The machine originally has: MBR entry 031MB Dell Utility MBR entry 1 all the rest of the disk space HPFS/NTFS Now it has: MBR entry 031MBDell Utility MBR entry 1 7499MBHPFS/NTFS boot 126MBFAT-32-- BootItNG FreeBSD 68661MBxBSD Who said four primary partitions is enough? -Zhihui On Thu, 24 Oct 2002, Jerry McAllister wrote: I have a machine preinstalled with Windows XP and I do not want to remove it or reinstall it. Is there a way to install FreeBSD on the free space? I do not have Partition Magic. Any free software out there that can repartition without reinstallation? Thanks. There is a freeware utility that can do this with Microsloth file systems up through fat-32 but since it is XP and, probably, an NTFS partition, invest in a partition managing utility. I have used Partition Magic successfully and have seen BootItNG recommended. I haven't used BootItNG. Partition Magic is generally available in stores like Best Buy, etc. I would guess that BootItNG is also, but it can be had from: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com as well. Generally you want to squeeze the XP partition down to the front of the disk enough to give you what space you want for FreeBSD and have it make you an empty parition (called slice in FreeBSD PARLANCE) out of the rest of the space above it. Then you install FreeBSD in that empty slice. You will divide that FreeBSD slice up in to the FreeBSD partitions you will use for mountable filesystems and swap space. Note the difference in use of the term 'partition' between BreeBSD and MS. Choose to install the full boot manager when you do the FreeBSD install or get one of the other popular ones and install it. The FreeBSD boot manager will allow you to boot either OS just fine, but it does not know what to call XP on an NTFS system so it just labels it ?? in the selection menu. Some of the others are prettier and let you play with stuff a little more. Things to watch: Some older BIOSes will not boot stuff if the address is too high - around 8GB in most disks. It has to do with a cylinder counter not being large enough to count beyond 1024. Partition Magic warns you of where that point is on the disk when you partition it. Microsloth seems to like to have an extra partition or some kind of space at a high address on the disk that I don't know much about - seems to be some sort of scratch space. Make sure you don't wipe that out on a fully running system if it is there. Some vendors, such as Dell make their own sort of hidden space on the disk for their own maintenance utilities. I think that must be treated as a partition (slice) and protected from tinkering. Someone else can probably answer better on this. If you use Partition Magic and the MS stuff is an NTFS partition, you must first install Partition Magic, then make the two rescue disk floppies it tells you about (format two floppies ahead of time) and finally boot to the floppies and do the partition resizing from there. It doesn't seem to like to do it from the installed version on a running system - probably due to the scratch space thing I mention above, but it won't boot the rescue disk without the thing being installed, I guess as some sort of copy protection. I am guessing that BootItNG has to take care of similar housekeeping issues as the NTFS scratch space as well, but don't know how it goes about handling them. Now, of course, you can just have a complete separate disk for the FreeBSD installation if you like and you have the disk available. Then, forget all the Partition Magic or BootItNG stuff. Just make the second disk one big FreeBSD slice, divide it up in to appropriate FreeBSD partitions and then install FreeBSD in that. Still install the boot manager (which will still go in to the sector 0 MBR area of the first disk) so you can choose to boot either OS. jerry -Zhihui To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box
-Original Message- From: Zhihui Zhang [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 14:22:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box Jerry: Thanks for your long response. I have downloaded bootitng v1.32 from http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ and it works great. It has nice menu. The only thing to watch is that I should create a dedicated partition for bootitng before trying to install it. I also changed the timeout from 0 to 5. The machine originally has: MBR entry 031MB Dell Utility MBR entry 1 all the rest of the disk space HPFS/NTFS Now it has: MBR entry 031MBDell Utility MBR entry 1 7499MBHPFS/NTFS boot 126MBFAT-32-- BootItNG FreeBSD 68661MBxBSD Who said four primary partitions is enough? -Zhihui [snip] * * Hi, Zhihui. If you care to make the BootItNG partition smaller (though it looks as if you have plenty of space), you can uninstall it, resize your partition(s) to cover the newly opened space, and reinstall BootItNG. You don't have to create a dedicated partition for it. It will create its own 8mb FAT partition if installed to a drive without one. I had actually mentioned this in a previous reply that unfortunately (likely due to mailer error) never made it to you and the list. Jud To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box
-Original Message- From: Zhihui Zhang [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 14:22:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box Jerry: Hi, Zhihui. If you care to make the BootItNG partition smaller (though it looks as if you have plenty of space), you can uninstall it, resize your partition(s) to cover the newly opened space, and reinstall BootItNG. You don't have to create a dedicated partition for it. It will create its own 8mb FAT partition if installed to a drive without one. I tried to let it create its own partition, but failed. I can probably make the partition smaller if I use FAT16 instead of FAT32, which requires some minimum space per partition. -Zhihui To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box
Zhihui Zhang [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Who said four primary partitions is enough? I suppose that it was the people who came up with the Extended Partition scheme who probably can't understand why so much software still doesn't support the scheme since it's so simple. Linux sorta supports it; at least you can install into secondary partitions. It would be better to also allow installation of slices into secondary partitions, producing tertiary partitions. To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box
On Fri, 25 Oct 2002 16:47:52 -0400 (EDT), Zhihui Zhang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -Original Message- From: Zhihui Zhang [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 14:22:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box Jerry: Hi, Zhihui. If you care to make the BootItNG partition smaller (though it looks as if you have plenty of space), you can uninstall it, resize your partition(s) to cover the newly opened space, and reinstall BootItNG. You don't have to create a dedicated partition for it. It will create its own 8mb FAT partition if installed to a drive without one. I tried to let it create its own partition, but failed. I can probably make the partition smaller if I use FAT16 instead of FAT32, which requires some minimum space per partition. -Zhihui Now that I think about it a bit more, perhaps I'm wrong about that. I think I had a FAT32 disk and asked BING to install itself on an NTFS/FBSD RAID volume using two other disks. It took up only 8mb on the RAID volume, but that was likely just the boot stuff - the rest of the files went to the FAT disk, probably. One other thing from the message that vanished into the aether, and the reason I'm not using BING as my bootloader any more - adding Linux to the boot menu is not automagic, it involves a fair amount (15-30 minutes) of fiddling. Why FBSD is 2 seconds and automatic, while Linux is not, you'll have to ask BING's author. (You can, there's a mailing list.) -- Jud To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 14:21:08 -0400 Subject: Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box At 02:09 PM 10/24/2002 -0400, you wrote: I have a machine preinstalled with Windows XP and I do not want to remove it or reinstall it. Is there a way to install FreeBSD on the free space? I do not have Partition Magic. Any free software out there that can repartition without reinstallation? Thanks. I don't recall just what it can do, but take a look at www.ranish.com It's a partition manager I ran across some time ago and seemed to be free. HTH, :)) PJ *** *** Problem with Ranish Partition Manager is that documentation is lacking, IMO. You do *not* want to be fiddling with partitions if you are not completely sure of what you are doing. I owe a full reinstall of W2K to my inability to properly understand Ranish. (Oh well, it wiped out a bunch of accumulated cruft, I guess.:) Jud To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
Re: Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box
I had the same problem. My new machine arrived with Windows 2000 Professional. I had installed Partition Magic and change size of partition, move data in the new partition sized and the free space left will be available for FreeBSD. It's good and the cost is about $ 70 usd. Be aware that there is a hidden partition with a fresh copy of the operating system just in case that you want to restore everything (windows). Partition Manager from Ranish.com is only for creation of partition, nothing to do with resize partition and move data in that partitions. --- Jud [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 24 Oct 2002 14:21:08 -0400 Subject: Re: Install FreeBSD on a Windows XP box At 02:09 PM 10/24/2002 -0400, you wrote: I have a machine preinstalled with Windows XP and I do not want to remove it or reinstall it. Is there a way to install FreeBSD on the free space? I do not have Partition Magic. Any free software out there that can repartition without reinstallation? Thanks. I don't recall just what it can do, but take a look at www.ranish.com It's a partition manager I ran across some time ago and seemed to be free. HTH, :)) PJ *** *** Problem with Ranish Partition Manager is that documentation is lacking, IMO. You do *not* want to be fiddling with partitions if you are not completely sure of what you are doing. I owe a full reinstall of W2K to my inability to properly understand Ranish. (Oh well, it wiped out a bunch of accumulated cruft, I guess.:) Jud To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message __ Do you Yahoo!? Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe freebsd-questions in the body of the message
