The PC-BSD installer has made installing a Unix-like operating system as easy as installing Microsoft Windows. When installing PC-BSD you don’t need to use the command line or text-based installers, neither do you have to manually edit configuration files.
The installation of PC-BSD is a fast, easy and straight-forward process with a pretty looking Installer. An easy-to-use wizard will take you step-by-step through the whole process by asking a few simple questions and after a few minutes you will have your system up and running. Though the installation process has been made as short and as easy as possible, there are still some advanced options available for power users.
Before installing PC-BSD on your computer, please make sure you meet the minimum requirements [INSERT LINK].
There are two options for installing PC-BSD:
To start off, ensure you have backed up all your valuable data, especially if this is the first time you install PC-BSD and you have saved data on another partition.
Be aware that BSD operating systems, and hence PC-BSD, only recognise primary partitions and consider any logical partitions as a whole primary partition. Trying to install on a logical partition will convert your extended partition into a primary partition and erase all logical partitions of your system. PC-BSD can be installed on any primary partition; it doesn't necessarily have to be on the first one. Be careful and make sure you have a backup of your data.
PC-BSD installation CDs can be either downloaded or bought. If you have a slow download connection or if you want to support the PC-BSD project financially, you can buy the CDs and/or support from iXsystems, the parent company of PC-BSD. Alternatively, PC-BSD can be downloaded for free.
There are two PC-BSD installation CD’s. The first one is the system installation CD (required) and the second contains multi-language support and the essential PBI Pack (optional). If you want PC-BSD in a language other than English (if available), you will need to download CD #2 as well.
Now, let's start the installation.
Ensure that your CD/DVD drive is configured in BIOS as a boot device and power on your computer. As soon as you can, put the installation CD in the CD/DVD drive. After a while, a series of lines of code will scroll down the screen, meaning that PC-BSD is being loaded.
If your computer didn't boot PC-BSD but rather loaded as usual, press the F8 or F12 key until you see a screen to select the drive of your choice to boot. You may have to edit your BIOS or CMOS settings to change the boot order of all the bootable devices on your system. When you get a screen to select which drive to select your drive of choice to boot, select the CD-ROM drive, based on its hardware name, which should load PC-BSD immediately. Soon after, you should get a screen with the following options:
There are in total 9 options to choose from:
Option 1 ("Boot PC-BSD [default]") is recommended for most users; Simply hit "Enter" or "1" to start the installation.
The next screen is the actual system installer with the first options:
As you can see, the installer is divided into four logical areas:
While at the initial pane, you must select your language, keyboard layout, and time zone. You can synchronise your clock with the Internet if you want, or re-adjust your time manually for daylight savings, if needed in the future.
PC-BSD supports the BSDStats.org Project which collects different statistics and data (such as version, country and CPU) about the use of different BSD flavours and the hardware they run on. By default the "allow submitting anonymous usage statistics" box is checked. By leaving the checkbox ticked, PC-BSD will anonymously submit some data about your system to BSDstats.org. It's recommended to keep this setting "on" so the growth and size of the BSD community can be measured. However, if this setting is turned off at this stage and you change your mind later, you will have to manually install the bsdstats port (/usr/ports/sysutils/bsdstats).
When done, click the "Next" button to proceed to the license agreement:
This step requires you to accept the license agreement. PC-BSD is free and open-source software, based on the BSD license. You need to accept that there is no warranty whatsoever in case of loss of data. PC-BSD comes with proprietary software such as Nvidia video card drivers and Intel firmware. In order to use these you need to read the agreement and accept it in order to proceed with the installation. By ticking the “I agree” box, you agree to all licenses.
Now you have to make a choice between doing a "Fresh installation" or a "System Update / Repair".
Select the first option, "Fresh installation", in the following cases:
Select the second option, "System update / Repair", if PC-BSD is already installed on your PC, and
When you are done, click "Next" to go to the next step:
In this step, an Administrator account (or "root" account) has to be created, as well as at least one user account. Similar to other modern operating systems, PC-BSD has mainly two levels of administration:
It’s good to be aware that the administrator has all system privileges and has access to all parts of the operating system. Using a computer as an administrator can be dangerous because mistakes can have system-wide consequences, especially when using the command-line.
To install software, for instance PBIs, the root password, so when you're installing a PBI and you're prompted for a password, enter the root (administrator) password.
Using a computer as user is much more secure, and if damage is done, it will be limited to the user's directory. This is why at least one user account needs to be created, which you will use to log into PC-BSD. Note, that it is not possible to log into PC-BSD as administrator. When you have filled in the information for the new user, click the "Add" button, and the user account should appear in the "User Accounts" field underneath. You can click a user name at any time and modify the details; clicking "Apply" will save the changes.
You can leave the "Shell" field as it is. This option is used by power users who can choose which shell to use by default to interact with the heart of the system using the terminal. The shell is to PC-BSD what MS-DOS was to MS Windows.
If you're security conscious or if you share the PC with others and you don't want others to access your files, unmark the checkbox for auto-login.
Make sure you remember your user name (which is CaSe sensitive) as you won’t be able to choose from a list of user names when you log on!
Click "Next" when the administrator account has been created and at least one user account has been added, to go to the next step:
This step allows you to select which physical hard disk drive and which partition are going to be used for the installation. The "Detected Hard Drives" field lists the disks that PC-BSD has found during boot up, from which one needs to be selected. If you want PC-BSD to use the entire disk, for instance if you don't have any other operating systems on your PC, and no separate partition is used to store documents, you can check the "Use entire disk" option underneath to use all disk space of your hard disk drive.
PC-BSD doesn’t come with a built-in partition manager. If you’re planning to install PC-BSD on a partition, partitions have to be created before installing. There is a quite a number of partition managers available, of which two, free, Live CDs are particularly useful and user friendly: PartImage and PartedMagic. Before creating or editing any partitions, make sure you back up your valuable data first.
In FreeBSD, and hence PC-BSD, each partition has a code in front of them, such as /dev/ad0s1, which is the path to the device (dev) file. Naming convention is as follows:
FreeBSD, starts counting disk drives from "0", and starts counting partitions from "1". Here are a few examples:
You also need to select the partition on which you want to install PC-BSD. If you already have more than one partition, all of them will be listed under the "Partition Selection" box. Select the one you want to use.
If Microsoft Windows is already installed and if you wish to have PC-BSD on the same computer, check the "Install the PC-BSD bootloader" option. The next time your computer boots up, a welcome screen will allow you to select which operating system you want to use. If you wish to use only PC-BSD on your computer or if you already have a Unix-based operating system installed with a bootloader such as Grub, GAG or Lilo, uncheck this option to keep your existing bootloader. When Windows is installed after PC-BSD, the FreeBSD bootloader will be overwritten and PC-BSD will be unbootable, which can be easily fixed. More information on the boot process, the FreeBSD bootloader and troubleshooting can be found here.
If you want to make a custom partition layout mark the corresponding checkbox (recommended for advanced users only).
If you marked the checkbox for a custom partition layout, you may now edit the partition layout to your needs.
On the partition editing screen the BSD disk partitions can be customised. PC-BSD (and FreeBSD) have two levels of partitioning:
You can keep all your mount points under "/", or you can spread them across several partitions or disks, or even across raid arrays for maximum performance. At the very least, you need a "/" partition with enough room for your files (4GB+) and a SWAP partition for virtual memory. Typically, SWAP space is advised to be set twice as big as your amount of RAM. This is not always necessary, for instance if you have 1GB of RAM, 1 GB of SWAP is probably sufficient for ordinary users. More information and examples check the "Allocating Disk Space" from the FreeBSD Handbook.
For more security, you can check the "Use Encrypted Swap Space" option, which will not leave any passwords or credit card numbers visible in your swap space. Swap Space Encryption can also at a later stage be turned of or off with the Services Manager.
Click "Next" to go to the next step:
On the system components screen one or more software packages can be selected for installation. In the "Available Components" box the most common packages are listed, plus the FreeBSD ports directory and the FreeBSD source code. Selecting and installing packages at this point saves you from downloading and installing them after the installation PC-BSD.
The following packages are available as components:
To be able to install any of these packages, you will need installation CD #2 (Multi-language support & Essential PBI Pack).
At this point, you are about to copy all files from the CD-ROM to your hard disk drive.
Click "Next" to start the installation:
The system is now being installed. This process is quite fast. On a modern hard disk drive, it should take around 15 minutes.
If you selected one or more components (in step 2.1.9) you will be prompted to insert installation CD #2:
At this point, you're done; The setup is now complete and PC-BSD is installed successfully on your computer. You can safely eject the CD, and click "Finish" to reboot the computer. If you installed the PC-BSD bootloader, you will have to choose "FreeBSD" from the list, in order to load PC-BSD. Otherwise, your computer should load PC-BSD directly without your intervention.
PC-BSD shows a boot up menu with eight choices when starting up. Most of them are identical to the options shown during booting up the PC-BSD Installation CD (see above; 2.1.3 The Installation). However, instead of "Boot PC-BSD to emergency prompt", option 6 is now "Run installer in VESA mode". This is the option to choose should you get a black screen or in case you have problems with the screen resolution stopping you from using KDE.
After the installation, during the first startup, you have to select your desired screen resolution, color depth and the video driver. For your monitor's native (or optimum) resolution and the colour resolution check the screen's documentation or the manufacturer's website. The video card driver can be selected from the "video driver" dropdown list.
Optionally, the settings for the horizontal synchronisation and the vertical refresh can be set and adjusted on the "Advanced" tab. To add the horizontal and vertical frequency, mark the "Monitor Settings" tickbox, and enter the details (which, again, can be found in the monitor's documentation or the manufacturer's website).
When you have entered and selected the different settings, click "Apply" for them to be saved and tested. If anything goes wrong during testing, you will be taken back to this "Display Settings" screen, so you can amend the details. If you're happy with the resolution, click "Yes" in the next step. Click "No" to return to the "Display Settings" screen.
After having set up the screen settings and the video card you can log in with the user account details as set up in step 2.1.7. Optionally, you can adjust some session related settings at the bottom on the right.
If you marked the "Auto-login User" in step 2.1.7 then you won't see this login screen and PC-BSD will launch the KDE desktop environment without prompt.
Either way, whether you logon manually or automatically, next you see the KDE splash screen:
PC-BSD is now up and running. Welcome to the desktop.
