i am running free bsd in virtualbox and i don't know how to connect it to the internet, was it something i was suppossed to do during the first installation or can i try and do it again

In VirtualBox, under the Settings for the virtual machine, there is a Network page. Make sure the network is enabled, and change the attachment type from NAT to Bridged Adapter. This will make the virtual machine appear to be on your LAN (rather than just a NATed subnet off the hosting machine).

You will need the virtual machine to be shut down in order to change these settings.

okay what do i do after i change the network setting do i have to make anymore changes to the virtual machine and what do i have to do in the machine itself

It depends what options you selected during the install; you might not have to do anything except reboot.

To change network settings in FreeBSD, you would normally edit /etc/rc.conf (the FreeBSD handbook section 11.8.2 is helpful).

Alternatively, you might be able to use the installer to redo the network settings by running /stand/sysinstall as root, and going to the network interfaces section (skipping all the rest of the setup, because you don't want to do it all again).

well i just came to a menu screen that says network configuration that is asking for

host
domain
ipv4 gateway
name server

then the configuration for the network interface it found
ipv4 address
netmask (it was already set to 255.255.255.0)

what do i put in these spaces in order to connect to a network

Normally you would select 'try DHCP config' during the install, to set these up automatically.

When setting up manually:

The host is the name which the machine will go by, it is just to identify it, and can be just about anything (preferably not the same as other machines on the network).

The domain name is not required unless you are planning to use the virtual machine as a server of some kind.

The ipv4 gateway is the IP address of the network interface that provides access to the outside world (for example, 192.168.1.1). You can find out what it is from your host linux machine (which will use the same gateway) using netstat -rn.

The name server is the machine that looks up internet host names and provides the IP addresses. Typically (if your gateway is your modem) you can use the same interface as the gateway; the modem will refer the DNS requests on (and sometimes cache them). Alternatively you can use your ISP's nameservers directly, or even Google's DNS service (at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4).

The ipv4 address is the IP address on the local network for the machine. It must be different from other machines on the network (including the host); typically you would just change the last number (for example, 192.168.1.42). The first part of the address must match the rest of the network (how much to match depends on the netmask; a netmask of 255.255.255.0 means that the first three numbers must match).

i just kinda thought since whenever it scans for dhcp servers it takes a long time then it takes me to the network configuration screen, my orgiginal intentions didn't include setting up the network manually i want it to configure itself automatically but its not finding any dhcp servers and i did what you said about the virtualbox network setting s by turning it to a bridge adapter and nothing has changed

can i at least install the graphical desktop environment without the internet then configure the network later

My understanding is that xorg and desktop manager are on the DVD iso, but not on the CD iso, so it will depend on which one you are using for the installation.

okay now how do i install them, i was told over at the freebsd forums that the xorg and the desktop environments were on the cd but they won't tell me how to install them and the handbook is making things more confusing

the handbook said to get the packages from the cd through the directory /cdrom/packages/ALL
but when i try to navigate it says that the ALL directory is not a directory after all the documentation and manuekls they have been throwing at me says so i am really confused here

This worked for me. I switched from Nat to bridged inside the actual virtual box application. Then ran sysinstall as root, went to Configure -> Network and then started clicking around until I found what worked. I think the winner was clicking on Interfaces, and then on em0 which said my wifi chip and told it to look for DHCP and it found all the info and filled it in for me. Though I also clicked AMD, Gateway, and inetd just because those sounded *cool* I guess. When unclicking those and pinging google, then going back and selecting them again, my ping time went from ~50 to ~20, that is 20 with AMD Gateway & inetd selected. Though I think the entire inetd.conf or whatever it was named was commented out. Wonder which helped the speeds, or if it was a coincidence. Anyways, YAY.

This thread is almost 3 years old. I figured this out a long time ago and found out that VMWare is more reliable with network interfaces at the time and VirualBox has made a more stable virtual NIC system but thanks for the helpful advice.