The installer insists on a 10.000 MB disk. I have a 10 GB which comes down to 9.776 MBs (or some such) taking into account all those conversions of GiBiBytes to GigaBytes .

What's more PC-BSD 8.0 wants 8.000 MB for /var (or was it /usr?) while assigning much to high values for the other sub-partitions thus adding up a much larger sum than the requested 10.000 MB.

Anybody knows of a "cheat-code" to make PC-BSD 8.0install in spite of its nagging?

Have you tried something like
sda1 /
sda2 extended
sda5 /var
sda6 /usr
sda7 /tmp
sda8 /opt

etc etdc.

Umm. I assumed that PC-BSD uses the BSD file system (fdisk type "a5"), i.e. that it would create a slice with the Free-BSD partitions therein. I was not aware that slices have extended partitions at all. So could you point me in the direction where to find information about all that.

And please keep in mind, that this still doesn't circumvent the requirement for 10.000 MB -- or else no installation.

You're probably right. If you're running on a pc, basic rules apply to all systems - no more than 4 primary partitions, one bootable, etc. Once these partitions are made, the type of filesystem is a variable(in your case a5), but it's still on a partition. You could have the next one with some other file type.
It's been a long time since hard disks were 10.00MB. It's trying to install a lot more than 10.00MB. There must be a way around it. Does your install system allow you to partition? Is that the only flavour of bsd out there? I installed bsd once on a 4 Gig disk for a look, and had no disk problems.

Well, the disk is ~10 years old. I wanted to use it for testing PC-BSD, putting all of its 9.776 MB in one partition / slice. And the .iso is less that an entire DVD (about 4GB).

The PC-BSD installer won't let me partition the disk my way, demanding first 10 GB for its defaults and then during individual setup 8.000 MB for /usr (Way too much).

And of course it is not the only BSD. I have the FreeBSD 8.0 RELEASE installed, which denies me access to the net. Thus I wanted to have a look how PC-BSD fares and duplicate any success by learning from it, but as it stands...

What do you mean that FreeBSD "denies access to the net"? PC-BSD is FreeBSD with some extras of course. But if you cannot configure the net under FreeBSD...are there errors?

You can find an account of my sufferings here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-8-0-a-790816/

PC-BSD is rumoured to include many working defaults (possibly including access to the net). That's why I tried to try it .

Wow, you are correct in your choice of words - "sufferings". I do not know enough about ppp to begin to assist you though.

Have you tried running it live just to see how it works? I did that with my laptop just to see how it would perform. I can't think of a workaround on the disk size.

Don't use PCBSD, use FreeBSD.
Your layout should be:
ad0s1a / 3G No separate /tmp or /var
ad0s1b swap 256M
ad0s1c /home 1G
ad0s1d /usr remainder of disk.

Use a simple desktop, a browser such as midori or kazehakase.

I have a disk of 11.35G with Free, Open, and Net BSD on it.

For the moment it is just the matter of available time (my time). I have to create a suitable wvdial.conf from the bones of the ppp.conf and other sources. I'll try then, I just don't have enought leisure for it right now.

Good idea, I'll have a look into that.

Pity . I don't think that this is a user friendly policy on PC-BSD's behalf. An indication that 10 GB or more are expected and the decision taken by the user to use less might cause problems ... a well, who am I to complain about free software .

I already do. I wanted to install PC-BSD to learn from it about FreeBSD. FreeBSD has about 10 GB space.

I believe that sysinstall should be available to you.

Umm. How would I invoke sysinstall from the PC-BSD startup menu?

or

http://rhyous.com/2010/02/17/my-expe...rc2-installer/