Installing FreeBSD 2.0 On Virtualbox

!THIS PAGE IS NOT YET COMPLETE. DO NOT RELY ON IT UNTIL I REMOVE THIS NOTICE!

Notes:

I am not a professional, and this is likely to be the wrong way to do this. But it will get the job done.

NOTES: 1)because FreeBSD 2.0 doesn't understand the SCSI driver Virtualbox provides, this will require some sort of DOS.

2)This will involve multiple reboots and copying files from the CD to the DOS partition, which is extremely wasteful.

3)You will need to add a floppy controller to the VM, if you don't see it look for "i82078(floppy)" in the "add controller" drop-down.

4)You will need some sort of dos boot disk with some sort ATAPI driver configured so that you can read the CD-ROM.

5)Obviously you'll need a copy of FreeBSD 2.0. You can find that here: 2.0 or a copy of 2.0.5

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Preparing to install

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Step 1: create a VM, make sure the type is set to "FreeBSD (32-bit)". I recommend the following specs: 16mb to 32mb of ram 1.8gb hard disk (to be sure it can be read by DOS and BSD) Disable audio, Disable USB

Step 2: Boot into DOS and create two partitions, a master partition to store BSD installation packages on and then an extended partition. If you're using FreeDOS, their fdisk will ask you if you want to use "large disk" support, that's incompatible so choose "no". Make the first partition large enough to fit packages and install files from the CD, but less than 504mb. 420mb is a safe number and usually the one I pick.

Step 3: Reboot and format the DOS drive. You will be booting from DOS any time you need it so there is no need to specify "/s", just "format c:" will suffice.

Step 4: Assuming your CD-ROM drive is "D" (and that you have your FreeBSD iso attached) copy d:\tools\dos_tools\rawrite.exe to either your floppy drive or to your hard-drive. If you copy it to your hard drive you might want to change your PATH to "PATH=c:\;a:\" or similar.

Step 5: Eject your DOS floppy and create two floppy images using Virtualbox. The first one should be named "FreeBSD-2.0-boot.img" and the second "FreeBSD-2.0-cpio.img". Use rawrite to copy them to the virtual floppy disk ("rawrite FILENAME a:") (TODO: upload and share my boot images).

Step 6: copy the distribution folders to drive c, ideally using xcopy. eg: "xcopy /s /e bindist c:\bindist" Do that for the following folders: BINDIST COMPAT1x DICT GAMES MANPAGES PROFLIBS SRCDIST. (command.com has a for loop but I don't know or trust it so I do them manually). Leave out XFREE86_ because it is unsupported in Virtualbox.

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Installation:

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Step 1: Attach the FreeBSD 2.0 boot image to your virtual floppy drive and reboot. Taking a screenshot (HOSTKEY+e) to use for later reference never hurt nobody.

Step 2: By this point the installation program was largely designed and would be unchanged for some twenty-odd years. If you installed FreeBSD in the 2000s or 2010s it will look largely familar to you,albeit with missing features. Pick "Install"

Step 3: Pick "(F)disk" and disk 0 Pick W and write Delete slice 2 and then select W Edit slice 2 and replace it with a FreeBSD partition. type "B" to write the bootmanager to the MBR Q to return to the previous screen.

Step 4: Pick Disklabel and disk 0 Partition the disk

create the root directory

It will tell you to type "W" to save changes to disk; do so. type 'd' and delete partition 'f'. Then type "w" to save your changes. Create the "a" partition by typing "e" and typing a. To avoid potential boot issues you probably want to make this disk smaller, I would advise making it 40mb to 60mb. You want it to begin under the 1024 cylinder if possible. type "a" for "assign" and type /

b:edit 'b' and create a 64mb swap file, write, then a for assign.

c:edit the f slice and give it the rest of the disk space, write, then assign it /usr

When you're done, your screen ought to look similar to this: [fdisk] [back to diskspace editor] Type 'p' to proceed and tell the installer that yes, we do want to proceed: [installer]