Dual booting Free BSD and Slackware Linux.







Installing OSs with gore series:







Written by gore in Vim.










Introduction:









This is a tutorial to kind of help people who are using Linux or Free BSD use the other.... And the other way around.



Just recently I did this for my very first time, and so I decided after the third time I had it down rather well and so I'm going too write this and that way others can do this too.


Free BSD and Slackware are very closely related OSs. Slackware is the most UNIX like of all Linux and Free BSD is well... BSD. And they both use .tgz and they are more related in that well, on the Slackware home page they say Slackware belongs to Patric and BSDi.



Anyway, to begin, first, go get my other tutorials. Get the one for installing Slackware Linux, and the one for installing Free BSD, as I really don't plan on re-writing the whole thing twice. And that will help keep the overall size of this one from being huge.













Getting Started:





Get the ISO files for Free BSD 5.3, which is what I'll be using for this, or just use whatever version of free BSD you have. The installation is pretty much the same for all of them, except 5.3 has a new boot screen which looks awesome. The ASCII Daemon rocks hardcore.


If you aren't using a 5.X version don't worry, just read on anyway, the only difference is you won't see the first boot up screen.


I'm going to install Free BSD first because well, that's how I feel like doing it.



I am also going to use the Free BSD boot loader to keep this simple. So you won't need to edit LILO.











Assumptions:




You want your hand held like a little baby

You have a sense of humor

You will give me all your money

You want Slackware Linux and free BSD on the same machine







To get started, grab the first CD for Free BSD and pop it in your CD-ROM drive. If you're really good like me you can even do this while the machine is booting..... But that's because I install a new OS almost daily.




When the computer boots, two things can happen:


You've screwed up the ISO and don't see anything but whatever OS you have on the machine already


You see a really awesome BSD Daemon in ASCII






If the latter is true, keep reading.











You may want to hit the space bar so the timer quits counting down. Or if you don't care what the screen says, just press 1 so it starts booting Free BSD.



The text flis around on the screen like a really poor quality IRC channel.


When it comes time that you see the pretty looking screen, Press the DOWN arrow key ONE time, so this way you see "Standard" highlighted, and press ENTER.


After you have pressed ENTER, do it again on the screen you come too.


Now some people may see something about a drive geometry being wrong, some won't, if you do press ENTER.




After pressing ENTER again, or at ;east when you're at the screen showing your partitions, this is where the tutorials I wrote become different.

See you're not going to make ONE partition, this screen is going to make it a little different, but don't worry! Your fearless leader of OS installs is here.

first off, press the up and down arrow keys. See how it moves stuff on the screen?

Well, select each partition you may have on this disk, and press the D key on your keyboard and delete the partitions until you have one big unused space, and then, I'll show you how to create slices.

When you have everything deleted, and it's just one partition, press C.

Now, depending on how much disk space you have, this will be up to you.

I have 120 GBs of disk, so I'm going to make my Partitions one way, and you can make your's however you want.

Now the first I'm going to make is going to be about 30 GB.


This is going to be the partition Free BSD will use by itself.

So I type 30000M

I type it into that little mini pop up that came up when you press C.

If you for example want to make a 10 GB or so partition, you would type into that little pop up this:


10000M


Then press Enter.


A little window pops up and since this is for the Free BSD partition, just press Enter.


Now, you need to highlight the Free BSD partition you just made, and press S on the keyboard to make it bootable.


After you have done that, LEAVE THE OTHER PARTITION ALONE FOR NOW.



Press Q so save the things and quit.

Now, the next screen you see is for the Free BSD boot loader. Here, you need to just press Enter as you are going to use the Free BSD boot loader, which is pre-selected.


You press Enter and then see a new screen saying how you now get to play with Partitions again.

Remember the one you just made? Well now you're going to use it.

This part is very simple.

Press Enter and you'll see the black Fdisk window.


Now I know this is going to seem VERY simple, because, well, it is.

Press A on your keyboard.


Now press Q

Now grab my Free BSD installation tutorial because all you have to do now is pick pacjages to install, and that's it.



Free BSD installs, and THEN, after a while, I'll show you how to get Slackware on now. This really isn't hard at all.



After Free BSD is done installing, you can go ahead and boot up for the first time if you want to make sure it installed properly.

After it boots up just log in as root and type reboot after you've popped in the Slackware installation disk.












Slackware installation:



Grab my tutorial for installing Slackware, as you can use that except for the partitions part.






When the machine reboots, Slackware should start up without a problem, and then you can grab my Slackware tutorial, then when it comes time for typing cfdisk, you'll see that there is a Free BSD partition, and whatever free space you left with it from Free BSD.





Use the up and down arrow keys to highlight the partition saying "Free Space" and then using the arrow keys again, make sure you have "new" highlighted by pressing the RIGHT Arrow key once, and hitting Enter.


This partition is going to be the Slackware Linux Swap space.


When you hit Enter, and you see "Primary" "Logical" "Cancel" just hit Enter and it default selects Primary.


After you press Enter, it asks you for the size in MBs you want the new partition, and I'm telling it 1024 MBs.

Press Enter after you have entered how large you want it to be.


When you press Enter, press it again because you want this towards the begining.




Now just press the down arrow key, to highlight the other remaining free space. You have to press the right arrow key again, which then highlights the "New" option, and hit Enter.

Again just hit the Enter key for another Primary partition. This is going to be the main Slackware partition, so it should probably take up the rest of the space unless you're setting up a server and want to make another for /var, but for what you're probably doing if you're reading this, it will be fine to just press Enter and let it take the rest of the space up on the HD.

Press Enter again after you press Enter to tell it how much space when you get back to the Fdisk screen to set this as bootable, and then hit the right arrow key until you have "type" selected, and then Enter Again, and then type 83 for "Linux".

Now press the up arrow key to highlight the first partition made in Slackware, then press the right arrow key until you have "type" highlighted again, and press Enter, then Enter again, then Enter again because type 82 is selected by default, which is Linux Swap.

Then press the right arrow key until you have "Write" highlighted and press Enter. Then type yes to tell it to right to the disk. It probably will beep at yuo while it does this, don't worry, it's normal. When you have all this done, press the right arrow key until you have quit highlighted, and press Enter.



ALL you have to remember now, is that when you go to install LILO, TELL IT TO INSTALL IT ON THE ROOT PARTITION, NOT THE MBR BECAUSE THAT WILL OVERWRITE THE FREE BSD BOOT LOADER AND YOU DON'T WANT THAT TO HAPPEN.


Just remember, when you get to where you need to put lilo, Don't put it on the MBR and don't put it on floppy, the only other option left is the safe one.

After you get done with my Slackware install tutorial, and Slackware is done installing, YOU'RE DONE!! Enjoy .