Chapter 1: Installation

Before you can learn to run FreeBSD, you need to install it. A successful installation requires both the software (FreeBSD) and supported hardware. You can get FreeBSD easily enough by visiting http://www.FreeBSD.org/ and clicking the link that says "Getting FreeBSD," or by ordering it from any of several vendors, such as FreeBSD Mall (http://www.freebsdmall.com/) or Daemon News (http://www.daemonnews.org/).[1]

Hardware is another issue entirely.

FreeBSD Hardware

FreeBSD runs on several different hardware platforms, the most popular of which are Intel−compatible systems 80386 and better. It also runs on the late and lamented Compaq Alpha, and ports are in process to the SPARC, StrongARM, and PowerPC as well.

This book discusses the Intel platform (aka X86 or i386) because they're the most common and best supported, and you probably have one around. In fact, even your old systems can run FreeBSD; you probably have something in storage that would do nicely. Since our focus is on network servers, the instructions given here discuss installing FreeBSD on a dedicated machine. To learn how to make FreeBSD coexist with other operating systems, see the FreeBSD online documentation.

Still, FreeBSD will run best with certain minimum configurations. Here are some basic recommendations.

Processor

Your brand of processor is really irrelevant to FreeBSD; FreeBSD won't care if you're running an Intel, AMD, IBM, or Cyrix CPU. It probes the CPU on booting, and uses whatever chip features it recognizes. I've run effective servers on 486 machines before—in fact, I've filled a T1 Internet circuit with a 486. However, I would still recommend that you get a Pentium or faster CPU. Some of the demonstrations in this book take less than an hour on my twin 1 GHz Pentium system, but take almost three days on my ancient 25 MHz 486.

Memory (RAM)

First, memory (as in RAM) is good, and the more memory, the better. In fact, adding RAM will do more than anything else to accelerate your system. You should have at least 16MB of RAM at a bare minimum.

Hard Drives

Hard drives can be a big performance bottleneck. While IDE drives are dirt cheap, they don't perform as well as SCSI drives. A SCSI system can transfer data to and from each and every drive at the full speed of the SCSI controller, while an IDE controller splits its available speed between the drives. Also, a SCSI controller can have up to 15 drives, while an IDE controller can have no more than 2. Having 15 drives, each running at full speed, versus 2 drives averaging half speed makes a big difference in the amount of data throughput!

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