Download

[Peter N. M. Hansteen]

"Luis Thillet" <l_thillet at hotmail.com> writes:

> I have been trying (FOR A LONGTIME) to download a FreeBSD Unix OS (i.e. 5.4, 
> 6.0-RELEASE iso.i386).  But it has never worked.  I was wondering if your 
> company/team/crew have disabled it.

Neither the operating system itself nor its download sites have been
disabled for any noticeable length of time, if ever. The files needed to
install FreeBSD have to the best of my knowledge been available
continuously from the moment the respective versions were released.

The description is a little short on details, so any suggestions from
here are pure guesswork. Off the top of my head,

- did the download complete?

  The size of a typical release ISO CD image file is likely to be in 
  the 550 to 650 megabytes range, and could take considerable time
  if you are on a skinny line or downloading from somewhere distant
  network-wise. The Handbook lists a number of mirror sites which
  could be closer to your location than the primary site at
  http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html

- if the download did complete, what did you download and what did you
  do with it?

  Assuming you downloaded an ISO image, you would need to burn the
  file as an image, not a file, to a suitable CD medium.

  If you opted for the floppy images, you would need to follow the
  procedure outlined in the install docs to create a usable set.
  Installing by letting the installer fetch packages as needed could be
  time consuming as well, depending on your line speed and network
  conditions between your location and the chosen installation source.

I suppose the most sensible thing to do is first to try to locate a user
group or other friendly FreeBSD people in your area.  People on this
list should be able to provide pointers.  I suppose even people not in
your area should be able to burn you an install CD and mail it to you if
that is what you need to get started.

-- 
Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team
http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/ http://www.datadok.no/ http://www.nuug.no/
"First, we kill all the spammers" The Usenet Bard, "Twice-forwarded tales"
20:11:56 delilah spamd[26905]: 146.151.48.74: disconnected after 36099 seconds.