3.8. Choosing the Installation Media

If installing from a CD/DVD, use the arrow keys to highlight Install from a FreeBSD CD/DVD. Ensure that [ OK ] is highlighted, then press Enter to proceed with the installation.

For other methods of installation, select the appropriate option and follow the instructions.

Press F1 to display the Online Help for installation media. Press Enter to return to the media selection menu.

Figure 3.27. Choose Installation Media
Choose Installation Media

FTP Installation Modes:

There are three FTP installation modes to choose from: active FTP, passive FTP, or via a HTTP proxy.

FTP Active: Install from an FTP server

This option makes all FTP transfers use Active mode. This will not work through firewalls, but will often work with older FTP servers that do not support passive mode. If the connection hangs with passive mode (the default), try using active mode.

FTP Passive: Install from an FTP server through a firewall

This option instructs sysinstall(8) to use passive mode for all FTP operations. This allows the user to pass through firewalls that do not allow incoming connections on random TCP ports.

FTP via a HTTP proxy: Install from an FTP server through a http proxy

This option instructs sysinstall(8) to use the HTTP protocol to connect to a proxy for all FTP operations. The proxy will translate the requests and send them to the FTP server. This allows the user to pass through firewalls that do not allow FTP, but offer a HTTP proxy. In this case, specify the proxy in addition to the FTP server.

For a proxy FTP server, give the name of the server as part of the username, after an @ sign. The proxy server then fakes the real server. For example, to install from ftp.FreeBSD.org, using the proxy FTP server foo.example.com, listening on port 1234, go to the options menu, set the FTP username to ftp@ftp.FreeBSD.org and the password to an email address. As the installation media, specify FTP (or passive FTP, if the proxy supports it), and the URL ftp://foo.example.com:1234/pub/FreeBSD.

Since /pub/FreeBSD from ftp.FreeBSD.org is proxied under foo.example.com, the proxy will fetch the files from ftp.FreeBSD.org as the installer requests them.

All FreeBSD documents are available for download at http://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/

Questions that are not answered by the documentation may be sent to <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>.

Send questions about this document to <freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org>.