Install FreeBSD via pxeboot Using mfsbsd for Systems That Have Less Than 512MB Memory

If you are PXE booting a client machine with an ISO file that is bigger than available memory on your client, the PXE boot will probably fail. This is because PXE boot is copying the ISO into memory. Nowadays, most of the OS install ISOs are more than 512MB, even for FreeBSD. So here’s the process to install FreeBSD on your very old hardware with 512MB memory or less.

• Go to https://mfsbsd.vx.sk/
• Grab an iso based on your architecture. For example I got the iso from here - https://mfsbsd.vx.sk/files/iso/10/i386/ as my old machine was an i386! (Yes, its not the latest FreeBSD but I can always upgrade).
• Setup tftpboot
• Once booted, run: zfsinstall -d /dev/ada0
• If needed to remove partitions use destroygeom -d /dev/ada0
• Reboot
• bsdconfig and run network setup so the ethernet card is up and running
• pkg install pkg to install the package manager

Configure basic FreeBSD tasks

• Install efl and xorg
• Edit .xinitc file to include exec englightenment_start startx
• Edit rc.conf to include sshd_enable=“YES”; edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config to allow root login and X forwarding
  
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