Date: Wed, 03 Jun 1998 23:06:37 -0700 From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> To: connie@primenet.com (connie crowley) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, dan.early@mail.sprint.com Subject: Re: Installation bug REPLY: dan.early@mail.sprint.com or connie@primenet.com Message-ID: <199806040606.XAA00811@antipodes.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 03 Jun 1998 18:18:13 PDT." <199806040118.SAA01145@smtp01.primenet.com>
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> > ---------- > > From: Dan Early > > Sent: Monday, June 01, 1998 8:19 AM > > To: 'freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org' > > Subject: Installation bug REPLY: dan.early@mail.sprint.com or > > connie@primenet.com > > Importance: High > > > > I sent the below a week ago. Since then gave up on the pc, put > > Windows on it and gave it to my wife. I tried making a small dos > > partition and putting BSD on the rest of the drive. All the tricks > > mentioned in the book. Same results as below. But I'm planning on > > building a new pc with an smp board, onboard scsi controller & > > several fancy options. I'd still like to load BSD on this machine, so > > if there is anything I did wrong below I'd still like to know what it > > was. I decided to try BSD at the recommendation of a friend here who > > is on your development list. At this point it's not looking very > > good. How 'bout a reply? This is probably something that should have gone to the -questions list, simply because -hackers is for development chatter, not installation issues. Being the wrong forum, people are generally just going to ignore you. > > This system is a Pentium 166, 32 Meg RAM, BTC IDE 24X CD drive, > > Conner 540 (?) Meg IDE with 1048/16/1048/63 geometry. Graphics from > > a Trident 512K card. It uses an onboard IDE controller. The > > installation described below has also been tried with a second IDE > > drive, a Maxtor 200 Meg IDE with the same results. Both of these > > drives have previously had Linux loaded without any problem. It's unlikely that you've had *exactly* the same results, particularly given the nature of the problem you describe. > > Bios is Award P&P v1.0A. It is set to autoconfigure the drive and > > recognized the IDE drive as a secondary master at 540 Meg, etc. on > > boot. This formats to 515 Meg, I understand because of having > > greater than 1024 cylinders. The CD drive is recognized at boot and > > the installation boots from the CD without any apparent problem. FreeBSD does not support booting from a secondary master drive when there is no primary slave drive without a little help. This is due to the odd way that the BIOS disk numbers and BSD unit numbers interfere. > > On rebooting the machine, it does a probe to assorted devices, > > sends a "panic, can't mount /" message and goes into a reboot > > cycle. If I try giving it a specific boot command, such as "boot: > > 1:wd(2,a)?" or many variations of that, it either says it can't > > find it or it returns an "error [memory address]" in an infinite > > loop. 1:wd(2,a)kernel should boot correctly in the case where you are installed on the second drive as described above. If the error message you refer to is "Error: D:0x? C:? H:? S:? this reflects an inability to talk to the BIOS drive that you are requesting (eg. wd(2,a) implies a third BIOS disk which you don't have). > > I have tried variations on this installation numerous times from > > the CD and also from a diskette boot image. It always fails the > > same way. I gave the CD to a friend here at work, who put it on a > > partition on his PC. It installed normally for him. > > > > Any suggestions appreciated. Please reply e-mail to either: > > connie@primenet.com or Dan.early@mail.sprint.com. The simplest answer would be to move your desired installation disk to the primary bus, thus keeping the BIOS and FreeBSD unit numbers in sync. -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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