Just for fun, putting FreeBSD onto an old 32-bit machine.

Just for fun, putting FreeBSD onto an old 32-bit machine, to get my mind away from W**doze. 

 

All this info, I pinched off t'internet thingy.

I don't want to use a DVD, so I grabbed an old USB stick to use.

Go to the FreeBSD web page here:- https://www.freebsd.org/

Then navigate to the downloads page, and find an image suitable for your machine's architecture.

As its a USB stick and not a DVD, we need to find an appropriate .img file and not a .iso.

I found FreeBSD-10.2-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img .

All the instructions to install it are here:-

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/bsdinstall.htm

Here is a precis:-

They suggest:-

dd if=FreeBSD-10.2-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=1M conv=sync

As I was using Linux for this, my output file was /dev/sde, and I carelessly used a blocksize of 512, and the first time I forgot the sync, and it didn't copy correctly.

Doing sync after this command is a good idea.

Booting the target machine from this USB stick worked ok, and I selected install.

All the questions and answers are the usual for any install, I had an unused disk to install to, so plodded on and selected commit. There are then more of the usual questions, and at last we get to reboot into our newly-installed disk.

Unfortunately this only gets to a command line interface. Not everyone's cup of tea.

So we plod on:-

Log in as root, and you get a # prompt:-

Then:-

pkg install xf86-video-fbdev mate-desktop mate xorg

Add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf

moused_enable="YES"
dbus_enable="YES"
hald_enable="YES"
Test it with:-
xinit mate-session

Now, in a command box,
Install Slim

pkg install slim

Add the following line to /etc/rc.conf

slim_enable="YES"

Add the following line to .xinitrc file in the user’s home directory

exec mate-session

Probably, the file .xinitrc doesn't exist yet, so just make it.
N.B. Do this for root as well as your user. I forgot, and had to do some sneaky recovery.
Root's home dir is /root, and not in /home/root!
It's also worth installing and configuring sudo, so while still root:-
pkg install sudo
and add this line with visudo (where username is your login name).

 username ALL=(ALL) ALL

And while we're still root, remove some rubbish you get when logging in:-

:>/etc/motd

touch /etc/COPYRIGHT

And most annoyingly, login as your user and edit .profile
Find a line similar to
-x /usr/games/fortune ] && /usr/games/fortune freebsd-tips 

and put a # and the beginning to comment it out.
You'd probably best then reboot and test all the logins.
Obviously, this is only your starter for 10, and there's lots more installing and configuring you might want to do, once you've found out what it can do.