When I go to install FreeBSD, it partitions and everything, but when it goes to format, it tells me that it can't find the device /dev/X, in the folder /dev. I may be doing something wrong, and I'm downloading the handbook now, but when I go to partition it, the partition I set up is called "X". I come from a linux background and I'm pretty familiar with partitioning disks, but I have not idea what's going on. Can someone explain to me what's going on? I'll be without internet for a couple of days, so I may solve it before I get a chance to reply here. Thanks in advance.

Well your problem looks to be too many partitions per slice. It shouldnt be looking for dev/X or anything resembling that, it should be looking for something more along the lines of /dev/ad1s2a...not neccisarily that but something similar depending on how your system is set up. In that example ad1 is the drive, s2 is slice 2(partition in most other OS's), and "a" is the BSD partition "number". You are only allowed 7 BSD partitions per slice if I remember correctly, after that it makes it "X" which means you have gone too far. How are you setting up the partitions? Maybe if you list the drives and partitions you are trying to use someone can point out a better way for you. I am fairly new with BSD and come from linux as well...google is your friend, trust me... Stick with it though, BSD is damn awsome...linux has advantages in some areas, BSD has advantages in others...my old pII 266 laptop screems with bsd compared to linux. I am glad I decided to give it a try.


Mike

It was just the one partition, that was going to be the / partition. The FDISK on the BSD installer didn't list which partitions were primary, and which were logical. Is it possible to install BSD on a logical partition? I'v got all the 3 primary partitions, and 1 logical swap partition. The 3 primary are my Windows install, a 20GB FAT32 music storage partition, and then my linux install. After reading the partitioning part of the handbook, it seems as though FreeBSD can't be installed on a logical partition? Can I change the partition type of one of my other partitions, w/out losing data? Like make the Windows partition logical, and allow for the FreeBSD to be primary?

Well you are allowed 4 primary partitions on a pc drive. So you should load up fdisk and delete that logical partition. Next boot the BSD installation cd, when it gets to the drive part of the installation point it to the drive device you want to install on. When it loads up the partitioning program you should see the other partitions on that disk and also the unused space that you are going to install to. Tell it to create a new BSD partition on the unused space. Exit the partition program and go to the next step which sets up the BSD partition. Best bet is to hit the "A" key and let it automatically set up the structure and then exit. That should work fine for you. When it comes time for you to set up the boot manager....well you should do a little research on what will work for you as I dont want to give you advice that could possibly cause your other OS's not to boot lol. I installed on a different drive from my other OS's so I installed to the MBR and just use my bios's built in boot selector menu to choose that drive when I want to boot FreeBSD.

Hope I helped you out...let me know if you need anything else.


Mike

Can BSD and Linux share a swap space? That's all I've got on the logical partition currently. You can still make a logical partition if you've got 4 primary partitions right?

Is there any reason BSD wouldn't play nicely with GRUB? That's what I use on my MBR, and it's not too bad to reinstall it, but I'd rather not. Other than that, the BSD install seems pretty straightforward, at least the parts I've gotten through. Thanks.

suggestions?