Re: Pre-install Setup Questions

On 5/15/26 10:55, John Gaskill wrote:
> As a newbie to FreeBSD, I am interested in getting my installation done correctly, providing as much utility to my system as possible.  I have not found an answer in the Man pages or Handbook.  Maybe one of you knows from experience.
> Question 1:   Can the dvd1 iso be copied to a USB thumb drive and used to boot he install from a UEFI BIOS?
> 
> My system is a FreeBSD only system with AMD EPYC CPU, 32 GB RAM, a 2 TB SAMSUNG 2280 SSD, and two 500 GB Seagate SSHDs, plus optical drive and multiple USB ports.  ASUS PRIME motherboard.
> Question 2:  Will a ZFS RAID configuration see a single SSD (ada0) partitioned into the main boot drive partition (512k) freebsd-zfs 480 GB plus freebsd-swap 20gb, plus three additional logical partitions of 480 GB freebsd-zfs and 5.25 GB freebsd-swap, as one disc drive or four for purposes of calculating the RAID configuration?
> The two 500 GB drives will be partitioned at 480 GB freebsd-zfs and 20 GB freebsd-swap.
> Ideally I could then choose a ZFS pool type of raidz3, but it may only be up for raidz1.
> All thoughts are appreciated.
> 
> Yahoo Mail: Search, Organize, Conquer


While some FOSS OS installer ISO files can be burned to a USB flash 
drive and booted directly, I do not believe FreeBSD is one of them.  You 
would probably need a tool to accomplish this -- perhaps Rufus?  The 
simple answer is to download and burn the FreeBSD installer memstick 
image file.


I assume the 2 TB SAMSUNG 2280 SSD is M.2 NVMe/PCIe (?).


Does your motherboard support PCIe bifurcation?


Does your motherboard have SATA DOM ports?


I have a small SOHO network with two FreeBSD servers (primary and 
backup) and various clients.  Each server, desktop, and laptop has a 
single 2.5" SATA SSD with a complete and self-contained OS image (e.g. 
boot, root, and swap).  This works well for my workload, disaster plan 
(image monthly, rsync daily), and budget.


I do not recommend subdividing the 2 TB and 500 GB drives and using the 
pieces for multiple purposes.  KISS works best for me.


I partition my system drives with a small amount of swap (1 GB or less) 
and try to provide plenty of memory for the workloads.  When I have 
built systems without swap, they crashed under load.


While the two 500 GB Seagate SSHD's may seem to be an obvious choice for 
FreeBSD on RAID, beware:

1.  Performance for certain workloads could be reduced.

2.  People who use software RAID for their OS drives often run into 
problems when booting with a failed drive.

3.  How do you monitor the RAID?  How do you monitor the individual 
drives (e.g. SMART)?


I suggest installing one small, fast drive for the FreeBSD system disk. 
NVMe/PCIe would be the fastest, whether M.2 or U.2, but SATA/SAS could 
be sufficient for your workload.


For data, I suggest installing a second 2 TB SAMSUNG 2280 SSD, secure 
erasing each, putting a GPT partition scheme on each, creating one large 
partition on each, and creating a ZFS pool from those partitions. 
Optional -- encrypt partitions with GELI and create the ZFS pool from 
the GELI providers.  If you need fast and/or large swap, create a volume 
within the pool.


David