trouble after successful(?) freeBSD install

[fitzfan]

i am having some trouble, but i dont exactly know what the problem is, but i hope an expert here can help me out. i spent a few hours installing freeBSD 5.something on my pentium 2 machine, and i got to the end, where i created the root acount and another account, then it kind off finished ( ithink it was complete) it told me it would reboot and i should make sure to remove the floppy or cd, i was using a CD if it matters, then it rebooted, and it came up in the screen i saw when i first started the isntall, it had a list of 8-10 ways to boot, in safe mode, with usb keyboar, normal, etc, idk the rest of the options, but anyways i tried all of those, then it goes threw a lot of text, auto checks, or whatever, and then i come to the place to log in, i log in, i tried with both my root and a user name, and it then brings me to a screen that doesnt say there is an error, but it just says somethign about where to get technical support and something about a -a command and man man. and then the place i can type jsut has the $ sign. is this normal am i just missing something? or is there an error? i try typing man man to see the manual but i dont see anythign helpful, thanks for the help.

 

[fitzfan]

dang, sorry for the double thread, could a mod delete one, well actually both, i realize it was a dumb question and i figured it out now.

 

[furtivefelon]

could you give us the solution to whatever problem you were having? as it's more valuable than deleting the thread and hope your having fun with freebsd

 

[fitzfan]

well from what i read on another forum it seems that im not having a problem at all, its just that i guess i didnt install the GUI, so it is runnign fine, but it is all comand based, so now i am trying to figure out how to install the gui, they call it X something i believe.

 

[horndude]

X is a graphical server, you will need a GUI to go with it as well, in linux everything for the most part is setup as a modular client-server type arrangement, graphics is no different, X provides a graphics server and the GUI passes commands to it-------KDE,Gnome,xfce,blackbox,fluxbox,icewm are some of the popular GUI's you can install

it should have xorg or xf86 on the install disk, if not it either can be found easily, check the package list or README or index on your install disk, somewhere it should have a list of whats on it

you will also likely have to setup the sound as well, probably have to install ALSA and possibly recompile the kernel for sound as well, Ive never done a freeBSD install since the 4 series, hardware support with any of the BSD's can be tough to deal with for newbies

 

[popey]

To install Xorg type the command sysinstall and choose configure then distributions then Xorg.

To configure X use xorgconfig, you'll need to know your monitor's horizontal and vertical refresh rates and the type of graphics card you have. To run X type kdm for kde gdm for gnome.

To set up sound (there's no Alsa on FreeBSD) type kldload snd_driver, this will load all sound drivers, then cat /dev/sndstat will tell you the actual driver selected for your card, then add a line to /boot/loader.conf to load sound on boot, for example an audigy uses snd_emu10k1 so add the line snd_emu10k1_load="YES".

For much better and totally comprehensive details see the FreeBsd handbook
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html

 

[fitzfan]

ok thanks for the great help guys, i now see that freeBSD is more advanced then i had thought, but i will keep trying to learn it.

 

[furtivefelon]

mmm.. install the port system first.. then su into root (make sure your user is on the wheel group.. i learnt that the hard way).. then do pkg_add -r kde, it'll install both kde (desktop manager) and kdm (login manager).. then when you've done that, reboot, login into root, and then type at command line kdm, that launches the graphical login manager, and then you can choose which GUI you want to login to..

that's the easy way, i haven't had too much time to fine tune my stuff.. if you want more detail, feel free to pm me

 

[fitzfan]

thanks felon i will try that and report back.