Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Quick guide to a FreeBSD system

https://share.google/aimode/SbEiDntxdthxzYial

Read the entire thing because you will need that

to install the image.

Set your bios to boot from USB image after

you have enabled legacy boot and have

disabled secure boot.

Okay:

Fedora media writer for Windows :

https://fedoraproject.org/workstation/download/

The download link is at the bottom of the page. 

Latest FreeBSD AMD64 (x86_64) ISO images:

https://download.freebsd.org/releases/amd64/amd64/ISO-IMAGES/14.4/

You may pick boot only or the next smallest 

in size.  Download.  This will be the image for 

installation.  Use thus when choosing the media 

for the fedora media program. 

Go  back and check the bios settings on your

laptop.  Legacy,  no secure boot, boot first from

USB drive.

Boot from the USB. 

Install. 

Full/ dedicated disk. Let it set up everything. 

Your job is:

Create a root user account.

Create a privileged account that is a member 

of the group wheel. This is your administrative

and maintenance user.  Do not use this account 

for running any bhyve VM instance.

Create an unprivileged account. This is the

user you will add to the vmm type account

/ group mentioned in the earlier reference 

post. Choose to hide all user data from all

other users. If someone manages to enter and

escape your VM, they will be stuck in a

useless account that can't see anything. 

Do add ports. 

Check everything  

Remove media. Reboot. 

Okay. 

Here is where you search for packages:

https://www.freshports.org/

Search for: automount, wifimgr, Xfce4,

SciTe or scite, nap, nessus, wireshark, and

all of your other wonderful tools.  On your

portable system with the privileged user - 

not root -

su, enter administrative/ root password 

cd to /usr/ports

For every query on freshports  cd to that

subsection.

Using ls will show you the directories. 

Using ls| more will allow you to see the

directory listing a page at a time.

Cd to chosen directory.

Cd to port.

Type make && make install && make clean. 

Cd to /ust/ports

Repeat for each port.

Configure X - the windowing graphical system-

using the link references in the reference post. 

Your xorg configuration may already be 

available, to check either use 

forums.freebsd.org

Or search the mailing lists by stating your

system, GPU,  etc in Google search along 

with the query freebsd mailing lists. 

As privileged user in su mode,

type dmesg -v|more or dmesg -vv| more to

see the system specs.

You will need this to see your GPU,  wireless 

card etc.

You will need to setup Bluetooth accordingly. 

Newer protocols may not be supported. 

You will need to study the references 

about vm permissions before creating 

the vm instances in the unprivileged user's 

account.

At this point you will need, if you have it,

a windows install image to put on a USB

as the install media for the windows' vm.

An openbsd install image from

https://www.openbsd.org/amd64.html

Read through. Read instructions. This is

for your openbsd vm.

Another freebsd iso so you can run a

Freebsd vm.

And a netbsd amd64 image 

https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/amd64/

As with openbsd,  read the instructions. 

Please note not to ask anything on the

Openbsd mailing lists until you have 

exhausted every research option possible. 

Do not run more than two vm instances

if you only have two cores.

Do not run more than one if you have a

single core.

Only run 3 on a quad core.

Do not use a desktop more complex than

Xfce4 unless you have quad-core and

more than 16G RAM.

Set up each vm to be as minimalist as

possible. 

You will need to setup vlan.

You will need to setup pf and other security

/ firewall settings on the host. 

Firefox in a jailed environment can be

setup in any of the VMs using: 

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/how-to-execute-firefox-in-a-jail-using-iocage-and-ssh-jailme.53362/


This should keep anyone busy for some time. 

I choose ports over packages because

ports allow you more control while 

packages are based on someone else's 

configuration files. 

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