# installing on USB



## kachukumma (Mar 31, 2009)

Hello
I am a new user here and new to freebsd also, I have a laptop HP and have vista home premium. laptop config is amd turion tl-68 processor and 4 gb ram and 320 hdd. I want to ask that is it possible that i can install freebsd 7.1 on external usb for example any toshiba or wd big usb hard drive and boot my laptop with that usb ext hdd and use it normal way as free bsd based laptop. i do not want to install on internal hdd of laptop. would you please explain the concept and solution
regards
kachukumma


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## SirDice (Mar 31, 2009)

It should be possible, I've done it on one of my laptops. Just make sure you select the correct harddrive which is usually da* for USB HDs.


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## phoenix (Mar 31, 2009)

Depends on whether or not your laptop can boot from USB devices.  If it can, then you'll be fine.  Check the BIOS for options related to Mass Storage Devices, boot order, and similar.

You may also be able to install a boot manager like GRUB or GAG onto the internal harddrive, and configure that to load /boot/loader off the USB drive.

Or, you can always create a primary partition on the internal harddrive, and use that for /, with /usr, /home, /var, and /tmp installed on the USB drive.  That way, it would boot off the internal harddrive, and then mount the external USB drive for everything else.  (You can also create a separate /boot on the internal drive, but that requires editing a bunch of things under /boot/ and /etc/ to get it working right.)


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## gordon@ (Apr 1, 2009)

You could use a vmware image to try out FreeBSD. I believe there are some preconfigured appliances you can use for free with the vmware player.


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## ligregni (Apr 12, 2009)

SURE YOU CAN!!!

I said that because I have already do it.

Here is what I have:

- A Laptop HD in an USB/IDE adapter, so I can use it as an external drive
- It works in almost any computer

The steps are here:

1.- Boot from CD in ANY machine (your laptop recommended, but not needed)
2.- Let the Sysinstall start
3.- When prompted, choose da0 (well, "ad" means IDE drives, "ad0" means first IDE drive, "da" means external drives, "da0" means first external drive, this will be propably what you need)
4.- Set the slices, whith the commands shown below in the fdisk screen, remember the type of FreeBSD slice is the default (165) and remember to "Set Bootable" your FreeBSD slice, with the 'S', and you will see an 'A' in the rigthmost column of your FreeBSD slice.
5.- After that, press 'Q' (not 'W', it's not needed for the install)
6.- I strongly recommend you not to install MBR, just choose "Leave the MBR untouched" or "Install an standard MBR", this is because you will boot from your USB-HD and as we have just one Bootable Slice, it will go automatically to FreeBSD.
7.- I would Partition my slice with the auto defaults ('A')
8.- First, don't choose to install anything else, this is because you maybe wanna try it out if the size/partition/disk is what you wanted.

If you wanna more advices, just post.

Really, TRY FreeBSD, it is great!!!

Just boot from CD,


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## fronclynne (Apr 15, 2009)

ligregni said:
			
		

> 3.- When prompted, choose da0 (well, "ad" means IDE drives, "ad0" means first IDE drive, "da" means external drives, "da0" means first external drive, this will be propably what you need)


For propriety's sake, adN is for IDE, ATA, & SATA devices, daN is for SCSI, some RAID, & all USB drives (including ATA USB enclosures).  Some RAID hardware has its own type of device (ida(4) comes to mind, with (iirc) idadN), & I have no idea what SAS looks like.  HTH


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## mercurysquad (May 6, 2009)

I'm trying to install FreeBSD on an external USB hdd but the partition editor just won't show da0! All I get is my internal drive as ad0 and I can't for the life of me figure out how to change it to da0. PCBSD installer recognized the external drive and installed fine, but vanilla freebsd's sysinstall just won't. Any ideas?


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## pablo (May 6, 2009)

*possible variant*

Go to sysinstall's rescue console (by pressing Alt-F4) and check out usb availability
(if dmesg is available at this phase):

```
# dmesg | grep usb 
usb0: OHCI version 1.0, legacy support
usb0: SMM does not respond, resetting
usb0: <OHCI (generic) USB controller> on ohci0
usb0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0: <nVidia OHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1> on usb0
usb1: OHCI version 1.0, legacy support
usb1: SMM does not respond, resetting
usb1: <OHCI (generic) USB controller> on ohci1
usb1: USB revision 1.0
uhub1: <nVidia OHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1> on usb1
usb2: EHCI version 1.0
usb2: companion controllers, 4 ports each: usb0 usb1
usb2: <NVIDIA nForce2 USB 2.0 controller> on ehci0
usb2: USB revision 2.0
uhub2: <nVidia EHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1> on usb2
```
Then chekout kernel modules da & pass. You must see somewaht like:

```
# kldstat -v | grep da
               41 da
# kldstat -v | grep pass
                42 pass
```
If not, try to load it

```
# kldload da
```
Next, try to dig out your drive

```
# camcontrol rescan all
Re-scan of bus 0 was successful
Re-scan of bus 1 was successful
Re-scan of bus 2 was successful
[root@free /usr/src]# camcontrol devlist
<_N    CD -RW NR-9400A  R8 0000>   at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (cd0,pass0)
<ASUS DVD-E616P 1.04>              at scbus1 target 1 lun 0 (cd1,pass1)
<Generic USB Flash Disk 0.00>      at scbus2 target 0 lun 0 (pass2,da0)
```

If success
 return to sysinstall
else try++


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## mercurysquad (May 6, 2009)

Thanks a lot. Strangely enough, converting the DVD image into a bootable image (one slice with bsd disklabel and one UFS partition) and booting from a usb flash drive, all harddrives show up and are selectable in the partitioning step.

Now I've stumbled upon another roadblock: sysinstall won't let me choose my 8gb flash drive as the installation source media. I've tried choosing "use existing filesystem" as the source media and entering /, /7.2-RELEASE and /packages as the paths. None of them work ("cannot retrieve package blah from ufs"). According to this thread it's not possible to install _from_ a USB flash drive! Is this true or am I missing something obvious?


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## mercurysquad (May 7, 2009)

Never mind. I copied the contents of the installer DVD onto a FAT32 partition and installed via that...


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