This tutorial outlines how to install a FreeBSD minimal setup using version 7.2.

Instead of trying to put the whole process into writing I thought that a “screen by screen” approach would be a better idea. I hope the screenshots speak for themselves. Note that I’ve included every single screen and taken the screenshots after selecting the options (so you know what I chose).

It might look a bit daunting when you see that there are over 40 screenshots, but bear in mind that most of them are simple yes or no questions or alert messages. I just thought I would include as much detail as I could since there is nearly no accompanying text.

At this step simply press “A” to use the entire disk and then “Q” to continue.

At this step simply press “A” to use auto defaults and then “Q” to continue.

After the system restarts it should boot your newly installed FreeBSD operating system.

Before you continue working with your system I would strongly suggest to make sure the hostname is set correctly and that it resolves to itself. First, determine your hostname using the following command:

$ hostname
intranet.mydomain.com

In his example I chose “freebsdbox” as the hostname and “localdomain’ as the domain during the installation. If we were setting up a server to go live at server1.example.com you would probably want to set the host name to “server1″ and the domain to “example.com”. To change the hostname open /etc/rc.conf as root in a text editor and edit the file:

> ee /etc/rc.conf

Using the arrow keys, scroll down until you find the line that specifies the host name of the FreeBSD system. By default, this section says:

### Basic network options: ###
hostname="localhost.my.domain" # Set this!

Change this section to match the hostname you want to use:

### Basic network options: ###
hostname="freebsdbox.localdomain"  # Set this!

Then open your hosts file in the editor:

> ee /etc/hosts

Change all the host items to match:

::1 localhost.freebsdbox.localdomain localhost
127.0.0.1 freebsdbox.localdomain localhost
192.1.0.123 freebsdbox.localdomain freebsdbox
192.1.0.123 freebsdbox.localdomain.