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FreeBSD 1.0

SystemSystem
edited July 2020 in Product Comments

imageFreeBSD 1.0

FreeBSD is an open source Unix variant based on BSD Unix 4.3. Its licensing terms permit use of its code with more restrictive / closed-source code.

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  • rlieghrliegh
    edited July 2020
    Poking around ftp://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/ with a lot of patience will yield some rewards. Including iso images of older releases (including 2.0 ..which along with netbsd 1.0 is as close to the original 4.4BSD as you're likely to get). There's also ports (for each version, I think) and distfiles there as well.

    [edit]
    The layout of their ftp is kinda confusing (to me, at least). Poking around I'm finding 2 or 3 different versions of FreeBSD 1.0.

    As far as I can tell (I'm REALLY not sure) there's 1.0 and 1.1.5.1 (?); but both are named "cd1.iso".
  • MissileboiMissileboi
    FreeBSD is not based on 4.3BSD. It is based on 386BSD.
  • TimRockItTimRockIt
    Just in case anyone was wondering - FreeBSD 1.x can be installed as a virtual machine using VirtualBox 7.x, but not the entire distribution package. All you get is the basic minimal cpio system, but still, it may be interesting to someone that has absolutely no experience in gnu/linux command line operations. It's definitely a learning experience.

    There are a couple of tricks though.
    Trick #1 - You'll have to make sure the guest is switched over to 5.25-1.2mb floppy disk compatibility mode. This must be done manually using the command-line virtualbox manager (don't know why there's no switch in the gui for it, but oh well). The command is ...
    VBoxManage setextradata "vm name" VBoxInternal/Devices/i82078/0/LUN#0/Config/Type "Floppy 1.20"
    ... and you only have to set it once for the specific guest vm name you use.
    Trick #2 - I discovered this by accident during frustration, but for some strange reason the cpio.flp installation fails, UNLESS you ignore the original instructions. Right after the kernel get's copied and before the reboot (it's actually a crash shutdown instead, lol), go ahead and load the cpio.flp image. When Vbox reloads press F12 for the boot manager and select 1 for primary master boot. Watch the boot process and just press enter for the cpio portion when called for. The magic happens and the cpio actually gets copied over. I have no idea why this works, but it does.
    After another reboot (crash shutdown) occurs, restart the guest one more time and eventually you'll get access to a root command prompt. It's not much to look at since it's just in a "barebones" state, but digging around in the files gives you an idea what it's like.

    The reason why I, and apparently others too, can't install the dists is because the old FreeBSD kernel can't find the cdrom. I've seen examples of others using a newer version of FreeBSD to manipulate it's distribution files and adding the ones for FreeBSD version 1.1.5.1 into that one, but that's NOT the same thing as getting the intended version, because the kernels are not the same, and the file systems are a bit different too. However, if someone really wanted to, just for the heck of it, somebody could make a floppy disk set for installing the distributions. I've heard there was, once upon a time, such a thing, but it was like 16+ disk swaps to get there, LOL. No thanks, I'm not that dedicated. Time to move on!
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