From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 10 01:44:28 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D93B16A41F for ; Wed, 10 Aug 2005 01:44:28 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from wmanley@intergate.com) Received: from corpweb.trip.net (corpweb.trip.net [216.139.64.18]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 108014576D for ; Wed, 10 Aug 2005 01:11:59 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from wmanley@intergate.com) Received: from [4.152.252.117] (dialup-4.152.252.117.Dial1.Atlanta1.Level3.net [4.152.252.117]) (authenticated bits=0) by corpweb.trip.net (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id j7A1BtSh060267 for ; Tue, 9 Aug 2005 20:11:56 -0500 (CDT) Message-ID: <42F95459.5080208@intergate.com> Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 21:11:53 -0400 From: William Manley User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freeBSD questions mailinglist Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.51 on 216.139.64.8 Subject: FreeBSD 5.4 install problem. Newbee needs help. X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 01:44:28 -0000 I am a new FreeBSD user and I have an installation that has gone bad. My problems started when I enabled XDM for a graphical logon into Gnome. When I logged in as root the system just looped back to the logon screen. I then assumed I had configured my .xinitrc file wrong so I booted the install cdrom into Fixit mode and tried to mount the root filesystem on the hardisk which the operating system would not let me do. The following are the commands I typed with the output. mount /dev/ad0s1a /mnt operation not permitted disklabel -r ad0 no valid label found ls did show something. ls /dev/ad0* /dev/ad0 /dev/ad0sla /dev/ad0s1c /dev/ad0s1e /dev/ad0s1 /dev/ad0s1b /dev/ad0s1d /dev/ad0s1f fdisk /dev/ad0 working on /dev/ad0 figures below won't work with bios for partitions not in cyl 1. Parameters to be used for bios calculations are: cylinders= 77504 heads= 16 sectors/track= 63 (1008 blks/cyl) media sector size is 512 Warning: bios sector numbering starts with sector 1 Information from DOS boot block is: The data for partition 1 is: sys id 165 (0xa5), (FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 63, size 78124032 (38146 meg) flag 80 active beg: cly0/ head1/ sector 1 end: cyl 1023/ head 254/ sector 63 Does the warning tell me that my bios is not set up properly for FreeBSD to work with the hardisk setup. The handbook says to set up your bios to select hardisk's naturally. Before starting the install I looked at the bios and was not sure what to configure. Should I go to the basic page and set the hardisk as uninstalled? Any help in getting back into my system will be appreciated. If I have to reinstall I'll do it. Bill