PC-BSD 9.1 - Installation Comments

 v 0.2

17 Jan 13

I wrote recently about my initial look at PC-BSD 9.1.  I gave initial installation impressions and some general thoughts about what it felt like.  I did give a detailed explanation of getting it dual-booting with Debian Linux, and emphasised that you should use an nVidia video card for best results.  Here, I'll talk in a bit more detail about the installation process.

In point form, here are the steps I went through to get the installation completed.

• Reboot with Parted Magic
• Once it had booted, the CD was ejected.
• Started Gparted - tray retracted
• Shrunk my Debian Wheezy install - shrinking and moving partitions.  There was a warning when I moved a partition that this could render the system unbootable, however this only referred to the boot partition.
• Created a new Primary partition at the end (1.6 TB) to contain the BSD install.
• Took over an hour to do tasks.

• Rebooted in to Debian to make sure it worked.
• Booted with PC-BSD DVD.
• Default boot went into full screen graphical installer
• English
• Desktops - Customise - I chose all those desktops and components I wanted
• Disk - Advanced - I chose the disk, and selected the patition I wanted from the drop-down list.  CAREFUL, default is to gobble the entire disk.
• File system - ZFS because I have more than 2 gig memory AND I am 64 bit.
• Left the "install bootable MBR" so that it would install the boot loader to the start of the partition, as well as the initial part on the MBR
• IF you have multiple HDD AND you will use all of them, you have the option of configuring RAID
• Do you want to Encrypt your data?
• Mount point options
• Summary
• Start Installation

I found the PC-BSD installation screens quite straightforward, though you really do need to look and think about what you are doing.  If you make a mistake, you can always do the installation again - after all, for most of the time

There are a number of desktops that are available to be installed - they are all on the DVD.  The KDE desktop is the primary one - check which parts of the desktop you want installed.  As an example the KDE office Calligra is not installed by default.  You also have the choice of Gnome2, LXDE, XFCE, and then a host of "unsupported" desktops.

Along with the desktops, there are development, Hardware drivers (nVidia, HPLip) and Miscellaneous sections (Compiz, MythTV, VMWare and Virtualbox Guest additions) as well as a couple of other packages.  As I have said before, I would definitely want to use an nVidia video card because of its support in PC-BSD.

The ZFS file system seems to have a number of advantages when it comes to the subject of Jails, so I'm glad I installed that.  I was quite impressed that there was the option to set up a RAID array, so installing two or three identical disks could well be worthwhile.  I initially thought I might be able to do RAID 5, but I think there is only RAID 1,2 or 3.  Another great feature is being able to easily encrypt your data directories.  Excellent.



Still early days yet, but looking promising.  I have noted that using Dropbox and the like may have some limitations, but on the other hand, there are other things that can be done ...





Later ....