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Welcome to the tutorial guide. The guide will provide a user with advice and guidance on how to install freebsd. before we go ahead with the installation process, it is good to know the hardware requirements. Let’s have a look at hardware requirements.

Hardware Requirements
It is good to know the minimal configuration to install FreeBSD varies with the FreeBSD version and the hardware architecture.

Please note that both FreeBSD/i386 and FreeBSD/pc98 require a 486 or better processor and at least 24 MB of RAM. You will need at least 150 MB of free hard drive space for the most minimal installation.

If you would like to install FreeBSD/alpha, then you require a supported platform and a dedicated disk for FreeBSD. It is not possible to share a disk with another operating system at this time. This disk will need to be attached to a SCSI controller which is supported by the SRM firmware or an IDE disk assuming the SRM in your machine supports booting from IDE disks.
You will also require the SRM console firmware for the platform. In some cases, it is possible to switch between AlphaBIOS (or ARC) firmware and SRM. In others it will be necessary to download new firmware from the vendor’s Web site.

If you would like to install a FreeBSD/sparc64
To install FreeBSD/sparc64, then you require a supported platform and you will also need a dedicated disk for FreeBSD/sparc64. It is not possible to share a disk with another operating system at this time.

plesde note that a list of supported hardware is provided with each FreeBSD release in the FreeBSD Hardware Notes.

Please note that we need to have a look at following pre-installation Tasks

Inventory Your Computer
It is a good idea to inventory the components of the computer before installing FreeBSD. The FreeBSD installation routines will show a user the components which are CDROM drives, network cards, hard disks, etc., with the model number and manufacturer. FreeBSD will also attempt to determine the correct configuration for these devices, which includes information about IRQ and IO port usage.

Once the inventory of the components in the computer is done, you have to check if they match the hardware requirements of the FreeBSD release you want to install.

Backup the Data
If the computer you will be installing FreeBSD on contains valuable data, then ensure you have it backed up, and that you have tested the backups before installing FreeBSD. The FreeBSD installation routine will prompt you before writing any data to your disk, but once that process has started it cannot be undone.

How to decide that where to Install FreeBSD
If you would like FreeBSD to co-exist with other operating systems then you need to have a rough understanding of how data is laid out on the disk, and how this can affect.

Disk Layouts for FreeBSD/i386
A PC disk can be divided into discrete partitions. Since FreeBSD internally also has partitions, the naming can become confusing very quickly, therefore these disk partitions can be referred to as disk slices or simply slices in FreeBSD itself.

By design, the PC only supports four partitions per disk. These partitions are called primary partitions. To work around this limitation and allow more than four partitions, a new partition type was created, the extended partition. A disk may contain only one extended partition. Special partitions, called logical partitions, can be created inside this extended partition.

Please note that each partition has a partition ID, which is a number used to identify the type of data on the partition.

FreeBSD must be installed into a primary partition. FreeBSD can keep all its data, including any files that you create, on this one partition. However, if you have multiple disks, then you can create a FreeBSD partition on all, or some, of them. When you install FreeBSD, you must have one partition available. This might be a blank partition that you have prepared, or it might be an existing partition that contains data that you no longer care about.

A minimal installation of FreeBSD takes as little as 100 MB of disk space. A more realistic minimum is 250 MB without a graphical environment, and 350 MB or more if you want a graphical user interface. Please note that if you are planning to install a lot of third-party software, then you will require more space. If you want to resize the partitions, then you can use free tool.

Please note that you will need a dedicated disk for FreeBSD on the Alpha. It is not possible to share a disk with another operating system. Depending on the specific Alpha machine you have, this disk can either be a SCSI disk or an IDE disk, as long as your machine is capable of booting from it.

IF you would like to know the names and types of disks in the machine, then please use the SHOW DEVICE command from the SRM console prompt:
>>>SHOW DEVICE
dka0.0.0.4.0 DKA2 TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-57 3476
dkc0.0.0.1009.0 DKC4 RZ1BB-BS 0658
dkc100.1.0.1009.0 DKC104 SEAGATE ST34501W 0015
dva0.0.0.0.1 DVA0
ewa0.0.0.3.0 EWA0 00-00-F8-75-6D-01
pkc0.7.0.1009.0 PKC0 SCSI Bus ID 7 5.27
pqa0.0.0.4.0 PQA0 PCI EIDE
pqb0.0.1.4.0 PQB0 PCI EIDE

The mentioned shows three disks attached to the machine. The first is a CDROM drive called DKA2 and the other two are disks and are called DKC4 and DKC104 respectively.
Disks with names of the form DKx are SCSI disks. For example DKA100 refers to a SCSI disk with SCSI target ID 1 on the first SCSI bus (A), whereas DKC300 refers to a SCSI disk with SCSI ID 3 on the third SCSI bus (C). Devicename PKx refers to the SCSI host bus adapter. As seen in the SHOW DEVICE output SCSI CDROM drives are treated as any other SCSI hard disk drive.
IDE disks have names similar to DQx, while PQx is the associated IDE controller.

If you are planning to connect to a network then you need to know the network configuration. Please note that you will be prompted for this information during the installation so that FreeBSD can connect to the network to complete the install.

If you want to connect to an Ethernet network, or you have an Internet connection using an Ethernet adapter via cable or DSL, then following information is important:
IP address
IP address of the default gateway
Hostname
DNS server IP addresses
Subnet Mask

If you do not know have this information then you can contact the system administrator or service provider.

If you are going to use a dial up to an ISP using a regular modem then you can install FreeBSD over the Internet. The only weakness with this is that it will take a long time.

You will need to know:
The phone number to dial for your ISP
The COM: port your modem is connected to
The username and password for your ISP account

If you have followed the steps as mentioned in this tutorial, then you will have successfully understood the FreeBSD installation process.