Pre-installation Tasks

Pre-installation Tasks

Back Up Your Data

Be sure to back up all important data on the computer before installing GhostBSD. The GhostBSD installer will not provide a prompt before making changes to the hard disk drive. Once the process has started, changes to the hard disk drive cannot be undone.

Check for FreeBSD Errata

GhostBSD is based on Trueos, and TrueOS is based on FreeBSD. Although the TrueOS Project strives to ensure that each release of TrueOS is as stable as possible, bugs occasionally creep into the process. On very rare occasions those bugs affect the installation process. As these problems are discovered and fixed, they are noted in 11.1-RELEASE Errata page on the FreeBSD web site. Check the errata before installing to make sure that there are no problems that might affect the installation.

Prepare the Installation Media

The GhostBSD installation media is available as a .iso file. Copies of GhostBSD installation media are available for free at the GhostBSD download page.

Creating a bootable USB Flash Drive

Introduction

After downloading the appropriate .iso file, copy it to a USB flash drive using one of the methods described below. Depending on the operating system, issue one of the following appropriate commands:

On BSD

dd if=/path/to/GhostBSD18.10.iso of=/dev/da0 bs=4m conv=sync

On Linux

sudo dd if=GhostBSD18.10-RC1.iso of=/dev/sdf bs=4M conv=sync

On Mac

dd if=/path/to/GhostBSD18.10-RC1.iso of=/dev/disk2 bs=10240 conv=sync

On Windows

1. Download the desired .iso file
2. Download Disk Imager from http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
3. Insert your USB flash drive
4. Note the drive letter assigned to your flash media
5. Start Disk Imager
6. Select the downloaded file and target device, and click "Write"
7. Remove your USB flash drive when the operation is complete

Conclusion

The steps described above will create a bootable GhostBSD system on a USB flash drive. To start a live session, connect the USB thumb drive into the computer and reboot the computer. Further information can be found here.