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For me, a UNIX/ Linux newbie, FreeBSD installer is a bit dodgy to use. So I want to share the successful FTP installation steps.

To get FreeBSD, go to http://www.freebsd.org/where.html. I’m using livefs version of FreeBSD ISO.

I created a new VMWare virtal machine with the following settings: NAT networking, 256MB RAM, 8GB HD, and CD-Rom pointing to the downloaded ISO.

Start up the Virtual Machine.

1. On “Welcome to FreeBSD!” page, press Enter to choose default boot option.
2. Select your “Country Selection”.
3. Arriving at “Sysinstall Main Menu”, choose “Standard”.
4. On “FDISK Partition Editor” page, choose “A” for “Use Entire Disk”, and “Q” to exit.
5. On “Install Boot Manager” page, choose “BootMgr”.
6. On “FreeBSD Disklabel Editor”, create 2 labels: 512M for “Swap” and the rest for root (/) “FS”. Press “Q” to exit.
7. On “Choose Distribution”, choose Minimal and Custom: base, kernels, info, man, ports.
8. On “Choose Installation Media”, choose “FTP Passive”.
9. On “FTP distribution site”, choose “URL” and enter the “IP Address” of your nearest FreeBSD distribution site e.g. ftp://210.171.226.46/pub/FreeBSD (for ftp.jp.freebsd.org).
10. On “Network interface information”, choose “le0″.
11. Choose “No” for IPv6 configuration.
12. Choose “No” for DHCP configuration.
13. Enter your hostname, domain, IPv4 Gateway, Name Server, IPv4 Address, Netmask.

Step number 8, 9, 12, and 13 are critical. I never got the installer working, by choosing other choices on those steps.