5.4 preinstall question
 

First off, I have made several posts on linuxquestions.org but havent yet said my experience level, so briefly, here goes. I have always used windows. I heard of linux somewhere along the line but never gave it much thought until I built a computer of my own. So I started reading and came across BSD and am now giving this a try. I am basically an average user. I know my way around windows and can do most basic things. Nothing fancy like programming or administrative work. I tried a few linux distros but mostly just the newbie friendly distros like Fedora and Ubuntu. Thats basically it, just thought I would give a little backround incase you guys thought some of the questions I might ask coming up are pretty basic or stupid.

So anyway, I was reading this preinstall guide and it said I should know the following before installing:

1. IP address
2. IP address of the default gateway
3. Hostname
4. DNS server IP addresses
5. Subnet Mask

The linux distros have never asked about this, I guess they just do this stuff on there own because on most of them I have been able to get on the internet without providing this information. I have a cable modem that is connected to a D-Link wireless router with a cable attaching a windows box and what hopefully will be the FreeBSD box to the router. I havent really began to try to figure out how to get the wireless stuff to work yet in anything but windows.

How do I figure out what all of these are before installing?

Thanks,
LivinLarge

If you are using DHCP don't worry, just select this option during install and FreeBSD will detect your internet connection settings. Read through the manual and installaton should be fairly straightforward.

yup, it asks during the install if you want to use DHCP then you just specify a hostname of your choice and you are off and running.

you can also type "ipconfig -all" on the windows C prompt and it will give you this information.

If you dont go the dhcp route becuase you need a static ip for some reason, you can put in any ip address you like in the constraints of your router settings, for a dlink I belive its a 192.168.1.whatever stuff like the netmask should be filled in for you, the host can be whatever name you like you just have to change it to that in the motd file in /etc. and then the other 2 fields are just the address of your router which would be the 192.168.1.1 if thats what you had to put in to configure the router at the webpage configuration when you got the router. If not then change that accordingly

/etc/motd doesn't set the system's hostname

its one of those files in the etc directory then, I am not sitting in front of my bsd box to check, but when you open it it will have lines in there that say localhost.something change that

Sounds like you're thinking of /etc/hosts, but that doesn't set the hostname on FBSD either (though it's equally important to have the hostname mapped to an IP in there).

The system's hostname is set by rc at bootup via hostname="your.hostname.com" in /etc/rc.conf with everything else (or by hostname from the shell).

ummm might be that file it has the same hostname="your.hostname.com" line in the file

Nope :)

# grep "hostname=" /etc/*
/etc/rc.conf:hostname="orwell.mydomain.org"