Happy 20th Birthday FreeBSD!

November 26, 2018

( First published on FreeBSD Now in 2013: http://freebsdnow.blogspot.com/2013/10/happy-20th-birthday-freebsd.html ) The links below work. Those in the article above have expired.

Whimsical demo with sound by the Berlin Philharmonic Trumpets start at about 18 seconds.

In honor of the 20th birthday of FreeBSD, we’ve reconstituted FreeBSD 1.0 on Qemu. We had some help from Warren Block’s post. Nonetheless, it was a significant challenge.

Here’s how we got it up and running. If you’re up to the challenge, grab the ISO here, and give it a whirl. (Note - In case you just can’t get it working, I’ve included some links to a working Qemu image at the end of this blog post.)

If you just want to copy and paste, be aware that just copying and pasting the examples below from this website may introduce extra lines or characters. Copy first to a local text file and clean up as needed.

Getting started

First, we needed to use the stable version (0.11.1) of Qemu instead of the development version. [Editor’s Note: it’s likely that the current version, 2.12.1, will do.] We had to use the Bochs bios instead of Seabios. We could not get Seabios to recognize a second floppy drive. Refresh your ports collection and make Qemu from source with the options shown:

Build Qemu from ports with the options shown

cd /usr/ports/emulators/qemu
make
make install

Set up a working directory and disk image name. Also setup some handy environment variables.

mkdir /usr/fbsd1_0
export QDIR=/usr/fbsd1_0
export QHDA=FreeBSD-1.0_HDA.img

Next, grab the 1.0 ISO (cd1.iso) , mount it, copy all all the files to a directory we will later use for FTP. Something like:

mkdir -p /var/ftp/pub/FreeBSD-1.0
mdconfig -a -t vnode -f cd1.iso -u 0
mount -t cd9660 /dev/md0 /mnt
cp -av /mnt/* /var/ftp/pub/FreeBSD-1.0 

Copy all the floppies we will need to get bootstrapped into our working directory:

cp -av /mnt/floppies/*.flp $QDIR

Now create the Qemu hard disk image. We’ll use the qcow format for now. See the Qemu docs if you want a different Qemu image format. 2GB is plenty of space.

cd $QDIR
qemu-img create  -f qcow $QHDA 2G

OK, here we go! Light ’er up…

export QHDA=FreeBSD-1.0_HDA.img
export QDIR=/usr/fbsd1_0
/usr/local/bin/qemu -monitor stdio \
-vga cirrus \
-m 128 \
-localtime \
-fda $QDIR/kcopy_ah.flp \
-fdb $QDIR/filesyst.flp \
-hda $QDIR/$QHDA \
-boot a \
-net nic,vlan=0 \
-net user,vlan=0 \
-name "FreeBSD 1.0"

Hit “B” to load the filesystem floppy when prompted.

Take the defaults except for “Install FreeBSD on entire disk” option (y) and MS DOS option (n), and if you want a verbose install (y). Do not take the default disk layout. Give the root disk about 500MB (1000 sectors) and the /usr filesystem the rest. Everything should work (partition and newfs).

Depending on the speed of your system, the disk creation and formatting can take 20 minutes or longer. Grab a cup of coffee and check your email. The guest installer will want you to reboot. You can exit Qemu and reuse the same command line, or just hit return at the guest reboot prompt.

For the 2nd boot - just hit RETURN on the disk switch prompt. Enter “copy” at the kc> prompt, and “wd0a” for the disk.

3rd boot. For this boot, you’ll have to shut down the Qemu guest and restart with the cpio.flp in floppy b and select ‘1’ at the prompt. Use the command line below:

export QHDA=FreeBSD-1.0_HDA.img
export QDIR=/usr/fbsd1_0
/usr/local/bin/qemu -monitor stdio \
-vga cirrus \
-m 128 \
-localtime \
-fda $QDIR/kcopy_ah.flp \
-fdb $QDIR/cpio.flp \
-hda $QDIR/$QHDA \
-boot c \
-net nic,vlan=0,model=ne2k_isa \
-net tap,vlan=0,ifname=tap0 \
-name "FreeBSD 1.0"

Files are copied from the floppy to the hard disk. If you selected no MS DOS option above, enter ’n’ for “Install optional dos floppy?” prompt. Enter ‘halt’ to reboot.

You need networking for the next step. Set up for bridge/tap networking here and start an FTP server on the host. You’ll need the 1.0 sources in the ftpd download directory you copied above (/var/ftp/pub/FreeBSD-1.0/)

Might need to disable any firewall you have running

pfctl -d
or
ipfw disable firewall

Start up an FTP server

/etc/rc.d/ftpd onestart
or
service ftpd onestart

Load some kernel modules for bridge and tap devices. (It may no longer be necessary to load some of these modules.)

kldload aio
kldload if_bridge
ifconfig bridge0 create
ifconfig bridge0
kldload if_tap
ifconfig tap0 create
ifconfig tap1 create

Add devices to the bridge. Replace em0 with your network interface on the next line.

ifconfig bridge0 addm tap0 addm em0

or, if your host is using wireless interface,

ifconfig bridge0 addm tap0 addm wlan0

The following sysctls allow a user program (Qemu) to open the tap device.

sysctl net.link.tap.user_open=1
sysctl net.link.tap.up_on_open=1

Make sure the bridge is actually running!

ifconfig bridge0 up

Now boot from the hard disk. No floppies needed. The OS will complain that the filesystem has not been checked and will run fsck to check it and will then reboot by itself.

export QHDA=FreeBSD-1.0_HDA.img
export QDIR=/usr/fbsd1_0
/usr/local/bin/qemu -monitor stdio \
-vga cirrus \
-m 128 \
-localtime \
-hda $QDIR/$QHDA \
-boot c \
-net nic,vlan=0,model=ne2k_isa \
-net tap,vlan=0,ifname=tap0 \
-name "FreeBSD 1.0"

Qemu should now boot from hd(0a,)/386bsd and you should get to the shell prompt with the “To finish installation:” screen.

It’s now time to load all the tarballs. We will set up a network interface (ed1) on the Qemu guest and FTP back to the host system. Both the host and the guest should be on the same network segment. For this example, the host is at 192.168.1.200/24, and the guest is set to 192.168.1.150/24. Choose the network address that works best for you.

Commands indented below are entered on the GUEST, not the HOST.

# On the GUEST
mkdir /usr/distrib
cd /usr/distrib
ifconfig ed1 192.168.1.150 netmask 255.255.255.0

Check the TAP interface onthe host above. both tap0 and bridge0 devices should be UP.

Now FTP into the HOST and cd to the 1.0 download area and get the files you need.

# On the GUEST
ftp 192.168.1.200
  anonymous
  you@
  cd pub/FreeBSD-1.0/tarballs/bindist
  prompt off
  hash on
  binary
  mget *
  quit

Extract the bindist tarballs onto the guest The EXTRACT.sh script produces no output by default and can take several minutes, possibly as long as 30 minutes for some tarball extractions.

sh EXTRACT.sh


# It looks like this:
#!/bin/sh
#
# This file will extract all of the FreeBSD binaries into /.
#
#  SOURCEDIR=.
#  DESTDIR=/
#  cd $SOURCEDIR
# Note that base.aa is REQUIRED to be able to use the source tree for
# building in.
#
#  cat bin_tgz.* | gunzip | tar --directory ${DESTDIR} -xpf -

# Wait for it to finish

Note that you must FTP and EXTRACT.sh the bindist, objdist, srcdist, xfree86, and xfreesrc tarballs separately because each has it’s own EXTRACT.sh file.

Finally, from the install.txt doc:

mv /.profile /.profile.install
ln /root/.profile /.profile

Then read “Configuring Your System” in the install.txt guide and run the command “configure”

Now halt the guest system and shut down Qemu.

Finally, back on the host, restart Qemu with the command:

export QHDA=FreeBSD-1.0_HDA.img
export QDIR=/usr/fbsd1_0
/usr/local/bin/qemu -monitor stdio \
-vga cirrus \
-m 128 \
-localtime \
-hda $QDIR/$QHDA \
-boot c \
-net nic,vlan=0,model=ne2k_isa \
-net tap,vlan=0,ifname=tap0 \
-name "FreeBSD 1.0"

Hopefully, you now have a working FreeBSD 1.0 system!

Note that, by default, there is no root password. Please set a root password if that is a concern for your system.

Happy 20th Birthday FreeBSD!

–Jim B.

NB- Here are some links:

Qemu image from the above with all tarballs loaded (but no root password!) Use the last command line above to run.

SHA256 (FreeBSD-1.0_HDA.img) = a88447e2cc54f322ca747793d8958f9679fae012ca365f898212f8a0c8304e37

SHA256 (fbsd_bd.mpg) = 839bc810e14cbda512b0cd2a6cedf3a0e820ac29a0db3a996622ef73e414250d

The above demo works with VLC and most modern browsers.

Enjoy!