FreeBSD 7 Install on an older Mac Mini

[Garance A Drosihn]

At 4:44 PM -0800 1/26/09, Colin Dick wrote:
>Hello again,
>   Well, it has been a couple weeks and I had a couple positive
>responses that if I can just get FreeBSD installed, the rest of
>the maintenance should be quite similar to i386 based systems,
>so I have tried again.
>   I saw a few posts from Garance A Drosihn <drosih at rpi.edu> that
>seemed to have useful information, however, I still cannot seem
>to get this system installed.

Heh.  It happens that I'm in the process of doing an install on
a new-to-me PowerPC Mac-mini.  Right now I'm doing that by copying
things from my working mac-mini, so it's not quite the same as
doing a clean install.  But once I get that working exactly the
way I want, then I'll probably do a clean install on my older
Mac-mini.  I'm not sure how much help I can be for your situation
until I have tried the clean install.  A lot has changed since
the install where I wrote all those earlier notes!

>I boot with a Mac Install 10.3.7 disk (my 10.4.5 install disk
>   kernel panics)

Hmm.  That is a little disturbing.  The MacOS install DVD should
not be kernel-panicing, unless the DVD itself is bad!  I'm doing
all my recent work using a MacOS 10.4.4 install disk, and have
not seen any problems.  Could it be that the Mac itself is bad?
Bad memory, perhaps?  Failing hard drive?

If it kernel panics with your 10.4.5 DVD, then see if you can
get it to work with some other MacOS 10.4.something install DVD.

>I enter the Installer -> Open Disk Utility system
>I select my drive (37.3 GB TOSHIBA MK4025GAS
>I select the Partition option and choose
>   Volume Scheme: 1 partition
>   Name: FreeBSD
>   Format: Unix File System
>   Size 37.26GB
>   Click the "Partition" option
>   Confirm that I understand information will be destroyed
>     This disk has 1 volume: "disk0s3"

When I do this, I have the MacOS utility create all the partitions
I will need in FreeBSD-land.  I create

   p #1: MacOS HFS+ partition.  a "small" size.  In my case, it's
         large enough to do a minimal MacOS install into, but then
         I'm starting with a larger hard disk.  I suspect that it's
         still true that it's more convenient to have some MacOS
         partition that you can put the freebsd boot loader on,
         even if it's only 10 meg's worth.
   p #2: Unix partition to use for /, size = "most of the disk",
         name (in DiskUtility) == fb_root
   p #3: Unix partition to use for /var, size = 750 meg,
         name (in DiskUtility) == fb_var
   p #4: Unix partition to use for SWAP space.  It looks like you
         planned on using 2 gig, which is a good size.
         name (in DiskUtility) == fb_swap

So, IMO you want the partitions in that order (or at least with
MacOS one first, and the '/' one second).  Pick the sizes you
want for #1, #3, and #4, and then make #2 take all that's left.
In my case, I didn't bother splitting up '/' and '/usr' on PowerPC,
even though I do that for FreeBSD on other hardware platforms.
Also note that I like having a huge '/var'.  Most people are happy
with much less than 750 meg.

>     Click "Partition"
>Quit Disk Utility

After the disk is partitioned, you might want to start up the
Terminal application (it should be in the same menu where you
selected the "Disk Utility" application), and then do the unix
command:   df -kl

One thing that will show you is that your disk partitions will
be numbered something like:

Filesystem    1K-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s5   10354005      452  9835853     0%    /Volumes/fb_root
/dev/disk0s7    1312266      452  1246201     0%    /Volumes/fb_var
/dev/disk0s9    3140772      452  2983282     0%    /Volumes/fb_swap

(you'll see more lines than that, but those are the lines for your
Unix partitions).  Ignore most of those numbers, except the fact
that the filesystems are "/dev/disk0s5", "/dev/disk0s7", and
"/dev/disk0s9".  The disk utility is actually creating two
partitions for every unix partition that you ask for.  The extra
partitions will probably eat up 8.5 meg each.  The 'df' command
in MacOS will not show them to you, but if you're really curious
you could also try the unix command:    diskutil list disk0

>Quit Installer [Quit]
>Boot to OFW and 'eject cd'
>I boot the FreeBSD 7.0 disk (PPC bootonly ISO)
>Run through the initial screens to select country etc...
>Sysinstall asks to create partitions and recognizes ad0
>            (s2 is OWM 8MB I think and s3 38145M)

"s2" was probably the hidden partition for the single unix
partition that you created, and "s3" was the actual unix
partition.

If you follow the steps I suggested above, the top section of
the disklabel editor will probably show you *something* like:

Disk: ad0    Partition name: ad0s1   Free: 63 blocks (0MB)
Disk: ad0    Partition name: ad0s2   Free: 262144 blocks (128MB)
Disk: ad0    Partition name: ad0s3   Free: __n__ blocks (10MB)
Disk: ad0    Partition name: ad0s4   Free: 17408 blocks (8MB)
Disk: ad0    Partition name: ad0s5   Free: __n__ blocks (33000MB)
Disk: ad0    Partition name: ad0s6   Free: 17408 blocks (8MB)
Disk: ad0    Partition name: ad0s7   Free: __n__ blocks (750MB)
Disk: ad0    Partition name: ad0s8   Free: 17408 blocks (8MB)
Disk: ad0    Partition name: ad0s9   Free: __n__ blocks (2000MB)

(except you might only see 4 lines at a time, and the
"__n__" fields will have real numbers in them).

Using the up-and-down arrow keys, select the line for "ad0s5",
press 'C', say you want a filesystem, and the name will be '/'
(the single character, without the quotes around it).

Using the up-and-down arrow keys, select the line for "ad0s9",
press the 'C' key, and say that you want a swap area.

Using the up-and-down arrow keys, select the line for "ad0s7",
press the 'C' key, say that you want a filesystem, and the
name you want will be '/var'.

Note that you should check the sizes (in "MB") on each of those lines,
and make sure they're the sizes that you're expecting based on the
partitions that you actually created.  The sizes from that 'df -kl'.
Ignore all partitions which claim to be 8-megs.

Once you've done that, I think it's the 'Q' key will drop you out
of the disklabel editor, and you can go on with the rest of your
steps.  Note that what I'm skipping is the part about using the
default "A" option.  Maybe that works fine, but I have not done a
brand new PowerPC install in years, and when I last did an install
that option simply didn't work.  So, out of paranoid superstition,
I will suggest that you avoid it for now.

>I choose Developer install without ports
>I choose FTP media for install

Presumably you will have better luck at this point.  If not, maybe
someone else will chime in with answers.  Once I do have enough
spare time, I will try a clean install for real, and then I shall
try to write up some better directions.  But it is very unlikely
that I will have enough spare time for at least a week or two.

-- 
Garance Alistair Drosehn            =   gad at gilead.netel.rpi.edu
Senior Systems Programmer           or  gad at freebsd.org
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute    or  drosih at rpi.edu