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FreeBSD Support :P
Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 3:17 am
by s.dot
I want to run a dual boot with Windows XP (what i'm currently using) and FreeBSD
I imagine I need to partition my hard drive, since I don't have an additional physical drive.
So being as I'm not too familiar with linux, can a person dual boot with windows/linux. I believe I read somewhere that you can, but it can be quite tricky not to wipe out your entire harddrive?
Does windows come with a partitioning tool? If not, how can I go about partitioning?
Thanks.
Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 4:00 am
by n00b Saibot
The procedure is quite long so here is the link to the help page. this should surely rectify your problem.
How to Dual-Boot Linux with W2K/XP
Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 4:43 am
by Chris Corbyn
It's actually not that difficult if you understand what you are doing rather than following instructions blindly
If you could get your hands on "Partition Magic" for windows it would be very simple and you should not need to sacrifice any data.
Most distros will offer to re-partition the drives for you too without loss of data in most cases but that can be slightly more confusing and risky if it's your first time.
My suggestion....
Get partition magic or similar for windows. Shrink your windows partition using that (it's all done by wizards normally). You'll now have some unpartitioned space on your drive. Your distro's installer should offer to use that space to create two new partitions for you. One is a swap partition which is just like your swap file in windows but on it's own drive. The other is the root partition where all the files go. Everything should go smoothly from there and it will most likely detect that you have windows and give you a boot menu at start up (There's two bootloaders, GRUB and LILO... I prefer Grub). If it doesn't see windows then just remember where it was positioned on the hard disk in Partition Magic and we will be able to configure Grub to boot to it too.
If you prefer to use window's own bootloader and boot.ini it's doable but takes a bit of playing around copying boot-sectors etc
Good luck.
Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 9:52 am
by s.dot
I bought partition magic.
I shrunk the existing partition (containing windows xp) to 20 GB, and had 20 GB of unpartitioned space.
I then used the FreeBSD CD to create a partition with the remaining 20 GB. So now I have what I want. A dual boot windows / freebsd system.
I can switch between the two easily. So I really like that =)
Now I guess is where this turns into a "support" thread. When I boot into FreeBSD, I get two windows. A login window, and an xterm window. (From what I've scarcely read about things, this is the Xserver?)
How do I go about getting into a desktop environement such as KDE or GNOME?
startx works, but startx kde does not
Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 10:02 am
by Roja
scrotaye wrote:When I boot into FreeBSD, I get two windows. A login window, and an xterm window. (From what I've scarcely read about things, this is the Xserver?)
How do I go about getting into a desktop environement such as KDE or GNOME?
startx works, but startx kde does not
First, you need to install KDE or GNOME.
http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/faq2.html#q1
I won't quote them, but trust me, its *really* simple.. just get on the shell, and its a few commands away.
If you have problems following their hints, I'll try to help.. I generally use OpenBSD when doing BSD-ish stuff, but they are remarkably similar, so I should be able to help.
Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 10:08 am
by s.dot
Could you link me to some documentation for KDE (I have heard praise for this one over GNOME)
I'm searching freebsd.org, but it doesn't seem to be very n00b friendly.
Edit: Actually it appears that kde or gnome wasn't on the install cd (that i can find) so it must be on the second cd which I still have to burn. Hopefully I have a cd-r sitting around somewhere

Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 11:27 am
by Chris Corbyn
scrotaye wrote:Hopefully I have a cd-r sitting around somewhere

Never used FreeBSD but I'd guess you can install KDE directly from an FTP server... if you can't do that you can definitely download it using the command line and install from there

Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 11:41 am
by Roja
scrotaye wrote:Could you link me to some documentation for KDE (I have heard praise for this one over GNOME)
Google, "Freebsd kde". first link, click on right hand side ("Installation and upgrade"):
http://freebsd.kde.org/instructions.php
C'mon, at least TRY to look before asking.
And you don't need the install CD. Ports can pull it from the remote site if your 'net connection is solid.
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 8:28 am
by s.dot
I spent the better part of the last day doing a clean install of KDE compiling from source. After like 7 hours or something I gave up and looked up how to do it from packages.
So now I have KDE installed (I guess... all the packages downloaded and I was given the # command line) on FreeBSD, but I don't know how to start it.
I tried startx KDE
cd /usr/ports/x11/kde3
startx
no luck. I also searched freebsd.kde.org but all I could find was "can't start kde after port upgrade"
I'll continue searching, but some help would be nice.
Edit: So, startkde was what I was looking for. However I get a bunch of "kpersonalizer: cannot connect to X server" messages.
So I googled, and I'm reading a bunch of stuff about my .xinitrc file. Do I need to edit that?
I hate being n00bish

Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 9:10 am
by Chris Corbyn
Yep you most likely need to edit either ~/.xinitrc or /etc/X11/xorg.conf (wherever yours is).
Can you startx successfully with no purpose (you get a black and white patterned screen with a cursor on it... CTRL, ALT + BACKSPACE gets you back out)?
You'll get there... we've all been there, it's how we learn what to do and where to look

Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 9:34 am
by s.dot
Yes, I can start the xserver successfully. I don't see a black/white patterened screen, just the login and xterm windows.. so I'm not sure if that's what you mean.
I was reading some forums regarding an xf86config setup regarding my monitor horizontal/vertical displays. so I'm going to try to edit that now. Then, I'll go back on windows (sigh) and look up how I need to edit xinitrc
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 9:43 am
by Roja
http://freebsd.kde.org/faq.php#q11
How do I get KDM to work?
A11.1 Replace the ttyv8 line in /etc/ttys with:
ttyv8 "/usr/local/bin/KDM -nodaemon" xterm on secure
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 10:28 am
by s.dot
Thanks a lot guys. =)
I can manage to startkde inside of the xterm window.. but that throws me a lot of errors. I'm just going to google for a while and see what I can come up with.
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 6:40 pm
by s.dot
So I was reading how to make my monitor display correctly.. because currently there's a black bar going through the bottom portion of the screen, which acts as the top of my screen... only it's as the bottom

if that makes sense.
So, I read this paragraph:
The specifications for the monitor are used by X11 to determine the resolution and refresh rate to run at. These specifications can usually be obtained from the documentation that came with the monitor or from the manufacturer's website. There are two ranges of numbers that are needed, the horizontal scan rate and the vertical synchronization rate.
Naturally, I consult the gateway "tech" support team for my monitor, which is
FPD1520 - 15-inch Analog Input LCD Monitor with 15-inch Viewable Area Rev. 0
They keep trying to tell me about screen resolution. And I keep confirming to them that this is not the information I need. The only help they give me is this link:
http://support.gateway.com/s/MONITOR/70 ... 3312.shtml
Does this link contain the information I need? (I can't find it anywhere) If not, how ELSE would I go about getting this information?
Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 6:49 pm
by feyd