FreeBSD

Install side-by-side with Linux on a BIOS computer

Installation

In my experiment with FreeBSD 12 I was not able to create a partition for FreeBSD using the installer. So I created an unformatted partition using gparted in Linux, which got the number "sda9" in Linux. However, FreeBSD's installer still did not let me choose that partition for installation. So I had to choose to manually format and mount the partition from the command line:

newfs /dev/ada0s9
mount /dev/ada0s9 /mmt

After that I had to create a "fstab" file in a directory called "bsdinstall_etc":

mkdir bsdinstall_etc
echo "/dev/ada0s9 / ufs 0 0" > /bsdinstall_etc/fstab

As soon as I pressed Ctrl+D to leave the shell, installation would start.

Booting

The installer does not change anything in the boot process of the PC. Since there was GRUB installed on it, it was no problem booting FreeBSD with the following entry:

menuentry "FreeBSD" --class freebsd --class bsd --class os {
 insmod ufs2
 insmod bsd
 set root=(hd0,msdos10)
 kfreebsd /boot/kernel/kernel
 kfreebsd_loadenv /boot/device.hints
 set kFreeBSD.vfs.root.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/ada0s9
 set kFreeBSD.vfs.root.mountfrom.options=rw
 set kFreeBSD.hw.psm.synaptics_support=1
}

Credits

Chainloading, as some sources state, would not work, because the FreeBSD installer did not write the boot code to the boot sector of the partition.

Setting a different language

In /etc/rc.conf:

keymap="de"

In ~/.profile:

LANG=de_AT.UTF-8
export LANG

Essential packages

pkg install nano bash dfc wget htop

Running MATE Desktop Environment

Installation:

pkg install -y mate mate-desktop xorg slim

Credits

Configuring:

sysrc dbus_enable="YES"
sysrc slim_enable="YES"
echo "exec mate-session" >> ~/.xinitrc