FC4 and FreeBSD same Hard Drive

RedHatCore · 08-16-2005, 11:55 AM

Okay, I've seen other topics about this---where the level of knowledge is already at a certain point... so much I can't understand.

1) I don't know how to resize a partition
2) I don't know how to tell BSD not to format my old stuff
3) I don't know how to tell BSD to use a certain partition without messing up linux
4) I don't know how to configure the boot loader or whatever to let me switch between the two
5) I'm guessing I'll need to resize my current one and make a new partition to put BSD in. How do I do that?

What I want it to end up like: I boot my computer and it says something like:

Fedora Core 4
FreeBSD (not these exact names though, I don't care as long as I can choose)

And when I do that, it boots and doesn't mess with anything other then what it's running on(BSD doesn't mess with linux and linux doesn't mess with BSD).

Here is my 'table':

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 20.0 GB, 20020396032 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38792 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 208 104391 83 Linux
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hda2 208 38792 19446682+ 8e Linux LVM
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
[root@localhost ~]#

primo · 08-16-2005, 01:19 PM

How much GB do you want to assign to FreeBSD?

The first thing you must do before install is to backup your important stuff, just in case something goes wrong.
Then, save the MBR (the first 512 bytes of a drive which keeps LILO and the partition table) and save it to a floppy or CD-R[W]

Code:

dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr bs=512 count=1
md5sum mbr > mbr.md5
cp mbr* /mnt/floppy
md5sum -c /mnt/floppy/mbr.md5

If something goes wrong, it's easier to restore the MBR with:

Code:

dd if=/mnt/floppy/mbr of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1

Keep a rescue CD with you. It may be knoppix... I believe that FC4 provides one, though.

Write down the C/H/S info from fdisk:
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38792 cylinders

I believe you're using the BIOS numbering because of the high number of cylinders. It's 80% likely that FreeBSD will use these...

To resize your partition, see the manpage of resize2fs. If possible, download the last non-beta version of e2fsprogs and read the documentation.

Resizing and reassigning partitions could be done in a right way if you're careful. It's very much like surgery...
When you resize, data (if any) at the last portions of a filesystem is moved and the filesystem superblock is changed to reflect the new size. When you touch the partition table, only the MBR changes. So you must do it in a right way to ensure that a filesystem is always within the boundaries established on the partition table.

A common "error message" you may get with fdisk(8) after writing the partition tables is:

Quote:

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 16: Device or resource busy.
The kernel still uses the old table.
The new table will be used at the next reboot.

It's no big deal. Just reboot.

Another question: where's your swap partition?

RedHatCore · 08-16-2005, 04:31 PM

I don't know.

reddazz · 08-16-2005, 05:05 PM

Before you even attempt to install FreeBSD take a look at the handbook nd make sure you understand whats going during the installation process. Also the naming of disks and partitioning are different to that of Linux, so make sure you get to grips with this. You can boot freebsd using grub e.g.

Code:

title FreeBSD
        root (hd1,2,a)
        kernel /boot/loader

As for resizing paritions, take a look at fips.

primo · 08-17-2005, 07:49 PM

Hey man, if you seriously want to try FreeBSD, dedicate some 5-6 gb to it. I've had success with 4gb but I had to deinstall the GNU info pages and the FreeBSD documentation in other languages. The installer never tells you how much disk you're using by selecting packages, but there's a virtual shell at Alt-F4 and you may run df(1) from it. /bin/sh isn't bash. Be sure to read the handbook from chapter 1 (intro stuff) to 8 (at least) and write down any tips and info, such as adding a user to the wheel group to let it su to root, and install bash and run chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash

I'm impressed with FreeBSD 5.4. KDE 3.4 is really beautiful and the filesystem organization is really tight. Its documentation is very up to date. You'll even love the BSD copyright and reading anything with strings such as "4.4BSD" or "4.3BSD Reno" or "Net/2" in it.

In many ways, there are things that may be improved, but many other things beats the linux way (ie, the ports system, mail in your root account about vulnerabilites, etc)