can you help out newbie? :)

hey guys,
please bear with me thru this:
Well my question is quite simple - how could I uninstall freebsd from my hd? Here is the whole problem:
I've downloaded install cd (chickened out use other method) and tried to install freebsd. First time I did it, I droped some brick on my open pc box and installation cancled. Whenever I tried to start bsd it simply said no kernel. Now I know there was probably way to fix that but I didn't know one so I reinstalled bsd.
So second time I forgot to add 'boot master' and messed up with options/configurations. So I tried to reinstall it third time.
Third time was alright, except that when it started install kde, I got a message '/mnt/usr: write failed, file system is full', now I take it as there is no free space left. But I did get to shell though
Now, I only have ~1.5gigs hd on the box I'm installing bsd to, and apparantly bsd did not delete itself when I installed one more over it. I am not sure if thats true, but that seems to be the case.
So now when you know my story, how would I go about cleaning up my hd so I can try to install bsd one more last time (when I try to do it now it just simply says 'file system is full', and shows 0 free space). I am sure bsd doesn't take up 1.5 gigs, thats why I think it did not delete it self.

>> Whenever I tried to start bsd it simply said no kernel

Because the installation has never been complete.

>> So second time I forgot to add 'boot master' and messed up with options/configurations

No matter how smart you are, you still need to read the FreeBSD handbook, if you don't have any prior knowledge with it or other *BSDs. Linux experiences doesn't help at all.

>> except that when it started install kde

I already said there are 50 essential steps you must first do before installing X. In case you are wondering, here is the top 10 my list of post-install on a fresh install with the CD:

1) Check hostname
2) Check date
3) Disable inetd and all network daemons including SSHd. That's to alter /etc/rc.conf.
4) Configure /etc/syslog.conf
5) Recompile a kernel
6) Reboot and setup ipfilter
7) Configure /etc/make.conf
8) Install cvsup-bin
9) cvsup to the latest
10) buildworld

>> I only have ~1.5gigs hd

I already mentioned FreeBSD runs ok on 486 with 16mb RAM and 2GB hard disk.

>> bsd did not delete itself when I installed one more over it

You need to delete your partition table and reconfigure it.

>> how would I go about cleaning up my hd

If you want it really clean, do a low format.

>> I am sure bsd doesn't take up 1.5 gigs

Why are you so sure if you haven't even tried it yourself?

so.... what youre saying is that there is no way I can make full installation from cd with my 1.5gigs, right? Thats too bad.
And if so, how would I go about still using freebsd with so little space?

>> there is no way I can make full installation from cd with my 1.5gigs, right?

Not quite. You need 500mb ~ 800mb to get it installed. With X, you will need 300mb ~ 500mb. Minus the disk space you allocated to virtual memory, obviously 1.5GB is a bit short. Still, 1.5GB can do just fine. The problem with 1.5GB is that, if you cvsup and buildworld, which most FreeBSD users would always do, you will need another 600MB. In addition, when you are installing programs from the ports tree, extracting and compiling from source takes another few hundred MB, not to mention if you are installing KDE from ports. Also, your disk space allocation to your partitions makes a huge difference. Say I have 1.5GB with X, with no plan to cvsup and buildworld and with 16MB RAMs:

/ - 50MB
/var - 50MB
/usr/X11R6 - 500MB
SWAP - 32MB
/usr - 868MB

If you run database heavily, your /var needs at least 200MB.

Hard disk costs $0, why can't you get more? Compile something, then delete something just to free up disk space. Fighting with disk space problem just doesn't make sense these days.

aight cool.
Assume I dont have any other users besides me and I wont run db heavily so I might actually get a chance to live a little bit. But probably it'll boil out to me buying extra hd or pc. It'll be 4th in my room lol. I just use this old box for experemitation puproses and I got it for free long time ago, that is why its so slow.
One more question.... where do I start? That is, I have sort of working freebsd installed, and I am reading handbook thoroughly, so is there something else I could read online for newbies like me? I mean I know there are literally tons of documentation, but is there smth you would recommend?
And one more thing, you were ctitisizing x-win, so are you saying I'd be better off starting working from shell directly and not trying to get x to work (because it doesn't )?

P.S. do I need to turn off sshd in cf.conf?

>> I dont have any other users besides me and I wont run db heavily

Then start by setting /var - 30MB and allocate all the rest to /usr. Actually you don't need to create /usr/X11R6 partition if you don't wish to.

>> It'll be 4th in my room lol

I bet the living room in my tiny 2 bedroom apartment won't be any larger. I have 12 machines there (including dinning room, if there is one), 10 of them running *BSDs, all over the places.

>> is there something else I could read online for newbies like me?

Try the following:
http://www.freebsddiary.org
http://bsdvault.net
http://www.onlamp.com/bsd

>> so are you saying I'd be better off starting working from shell directly

Yes. Just learn vi basics to get you going. Then utilize virtual terminal. Just so you know, in my 4 years Free, 3 years Net and 2 years Open, I have never installed X on any of my machines. I use the right tool for the right task. Windows 98SE has always been my desktop.

>> do I need to turn off sshd in cf.conf

It's turned off by default unless you explicitly have it turned on during initial install. To turn it on manually, append sshd_enable="YES" to /ec/rc.conf, not /etc/defaults/rc.conf. BTW, you should NEVER alter anything in /etc/defaults/*. If you need to overwrite the defaults, put them in /etc/rc.conf or /etc/make.conf or so.

A couple other nice FreeBSD sites:

http://www.mostgraveconcern.com/freebsd/ (Cheatsheets)
http://freebsd.peon.net/freebsd/index.html (tutorials)

I agree that since HD space is cheap, why cause yourself trouble down the road by skimping? But, the amont of space you use for FreeBSD depends completely on what you want to do with it.

I haven't spent the amount of time freebsd has on *BSD, but in 1999 my first FreeBSD development server was a P90 with 16 MB RAM and a 1 GB SCSI disk. That was all I needed to run Apache/PHP/Perl/MySQL. I knew I didn't need X, and at that time I didn't really want to spend time compiling a lot of other apps or messing with cvsup. I had a specific purpose and that machine was perfect for it.

Now, I have 2 larger BSD machines at home, and several at my ISP, and I regularly do all the the other fun stuff, like recompiling my kernel, etc... But I took things one step at a time. My recommendation is decide on a specific thing you want to do, such as running Apache/PHP (I know you hang out in the PHP forum a lot ). Then, from there, that will start you using your system, and learning how to configure and administrate it. I will say that after you realize how straightforward and logical FreeBSD's config system is, you will never feel the same about Linux again.

Oh, and a couple other small tips:

1. If you are used to Linux, you are used to the Bash command shell. I think that is still not installed by default with FreeBSD, so you might want to choose Bash from the Ports while you are installing (or by running /stand/sysinstall afterwards).

2. FreeBSD doesn't include Midnight Commander by default, if you are used to typing "mc". You can install it from the ports, and you execute it by entering "midc".

3. I know vi is the de rigeur geek text editors, but FreeBSD includes a nice simple editor called "ee". It doesn't have the features of vi, but for simple stuff like editing your httpd.conf file, etc... it's nice and fast and just about the easiest text editor I ever saw.

aight cool, thanks guys for the tips and advises, I will probably go and buy a new pc for freebsd and then continue such an interesting topic (at least for me )

okie, freebsd, I am sorry, but I think you have deleted one or two of your posts, which is not very good because I was going to use them for referneces OK. As far as I remeber I was not recommended to download iso images, is that right? But what I do not remember is what I was supposed to download... Currently I am dling mini iso, and will try to install it... without x win of course ... but I would like to know if I am doing something wrong (by installing iso) as soon as possible.
Thanks!

>> I think you have deleted one or two of your posts

Never myself. Perhaps moderators.

>> what I was supposed to download

Daily snapshot for 4.4-STABLE and no ISO available. Go to the FTP site at releng4.freebsd.org.

okie. I have installed freebsd yesterday, and now I have some questions. Before I start, I want to assure you that I am reading handbook, suggested articles, and oreilly's 'learning unix'.
While installing, I set domain name to 'gangster' which of course is not real, but I had no idea it is important. So now whenever I start computer it says 'unable to qualify domain name' or something of that matter. Then is 'sleeps' for 3 minutes and tries again. Same thing with sendmail (I think), so therefore I have about 6 minutes extra to my loading time. I was wondering how would I go about making bsd not look up domain name or at least not to wait 3 minutes.
I thought it was in rc.conf (and it might be) but I decided to to edit it and ask for advice.

edit: forgot to mention that every so often (when I loged in as root) I get message

that frankly sounds like chinese to me... but that is why I installed bsd - to learn that stuff... So if anyone has any hints for me and is willing to post them here, I'd really appreciate that.

Even you haven't brought a real domain, you still should pick a fake (unregistered domain) one. And your hostname must be set to a FQDN in this form: xxx.yyy.zzz where xxx is your hostname -s and yyy.zzz is your fake domain.
Linux or BSDs no difference.
In /etc/rc.conf, you need to set hostname="xxx.yyy.zzz"