Skip to main content

FreeBSD in Virtual PC 2004

I finally managed to install FreeBSD 6.1 in Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 with NATted networking behind a firewall. Here's how:
  1. Download the boot ISO image and mount it in the VM.
  2. Reset the VM.
  3. Run the FreeBSD setup until you have to choose the type of installation. Select "Standard".
  4. When asked to slice the disk, type A for "Auto", then Q for "Quit".
  5. When asked about the boot manager, select "Standard". Do not select the boot manager.
  6. When asked to partition the slice, again type A for "Auto", then Q for "Quit".
  7. Select the packages you want.
  8. When prompted for the media type, select "FTP Passive".
  9. When prompted for the download server, select the "Primary" server (not the "Main Site").
  10. When prompted for network configuration, skip IPv6, but do use DHCP.
  11. In the DHCP results dialog, correct the name server entry. It must be 192.168.131.254. (See this article for details.)
  12. Proceed with the installation, until prompted to reboot. Eject CD and reboot.
  13. Boot into your new system.
  14. When it seems to hang at "keymap blanktime", press Ctrl+C to proceed. (This is a DNS and sendmail problem; see this article in german for details.)
  15. Assuming you are connecting to the internet via the LAN, append the following to /etc/dhclient.conf:
    interface "de0" { supersede domain-name-servers 192.168.131.254; }
  16. Then reboot using shutdown -r now.
This worked for me. But I must confess I was quite disappointed to see this base system inflate my VM harddisk file to about 700 KB. And installing the JDK 1.5 on it is another story awaiting - first success, and then - telling.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Threaded chat article and demo

While nothing major, managing threaded conversations in chat has bothered me for quite a while. Yesterday I had an idea on how to improve matters: Works using existing chat infrastructure. Needs only augmented clients. Plays well even if other party uses a non-thread aware chat tool. Separates threads automatically based on interaction patterns. I've written an article and have created an online demo about it. Discussion welcome.
4 comments
Read more

Access 2003 and the DCOM Server Process Launcher

Here's a hint: Don't disable the "DCOM Server Process Launcher" service on XP SP2. It may look like one heck of a vulnerability when you really don't use DCOM at all, but, unfortunately, Microsoft Access 2003 does. It will simply open an instant message box stating "A problem occurred while Microsoft Access was communicating with the OLE server or ActiveX Control." if the service is not running.
3 comments
Read more

Beyond TDD: Documentation Driven Development

There are quite a few articles extolling the virtues of test-driven development these days ( here's one ). And for good reason, too. Having done TDD for quite a while, I recently started combining it with documentation-driven design. This is what my open-source tool, JCite , is all about. With this approach, I sketch out the most important use cases, combine them into the index of a tutorial (links plus teasers summarizing the use-case), flesh out the tutorial topics (and thus use-cases) one by one, develop the use-case tests in parallel to each topic, cite the important parts of the tests as actual code samples into the topic, and only then start doing the implementation (this last step is accompanied by more tests, which are now more like unit-tests). In all, this is like literate programming, but of the use-case tests rather than the implementation code. TDD already helps to make you focus on the user during API design. DDD takes the effect further by making you tell consistent ...
Post a Comment
Read more