Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 12:38:38 +0300 From: Odhiambo Washington <wash@wananchi.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD 5.3BETA7 and Disk Woes!! Message-ID: <20041026093838.GC91555@ns2.wananchi.com>
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Hello experts, [If I haven't provided any info, please let me know what it is and I will] I have experienced so much problems installing FreeBSD 5.3BETA7 I guess it's time for me to ask the experts. I have two disks: 1. Maxtor (DiamondMax Plus 9) 120GB ATA/133 Mfg Date: 30 Jan 2004 Code: YAR41BW0 E-H011-02-3880 (3.5 SERIES) 2. Western Digital (WD800) EIDE Drive 80GB WD Caviar MDL: WD800LB-00DNA0 Mfg Date: 19 Jan 2004 DCM: HSBHCVJAH Motherboard: VIA VT8233. Those are as much as I can read on the disks. Now my woes: I have tried more than 20 times installing FreeBSD 5.3 on these disks. I have tried this since 5.3BETA1 all the way to 5.3BETA7, hoping at each stage that I will get lucky. Always things fail. After the disk label stage, I choose the minimal distro and commit. That is when I get the message that "I must create at least the root and swap partitions". Ordinarily, I want to install like this (take the 80GB disk): 74GB = / 2GB = swap What I am presented with is just 76GB. Even for the 120 GB disk: 112GB = / 2GB = swap Here what I am presented with is 114GB. The reason I want to partition like that is because I have another old box with 36GB that kinda I managed to install 5.3 on. It's now running 5.3-RELEASE and it was partitioned the same way. I simply want to tar it up, move the tarball to my problematic box and extract, then change a few things in fstab and rc.conf and have a machine to enjoy! Note that during labelling, I have even used the "Auto" option. The thing still fails when it comes to newfs!!! I have left the BIOS setting as AUTO as well as LBA. I have even changed the disk geometry on the partition editor to match what the BIOS thinks is correct. I have even attempted to manually commit my changes at the disk label stage. Whatever I do, the installation does not succeed! I sometimes end up installing, but when it comes to mounting the root partition on reboot (after install finishes), the thing fails. I have even flashed my Award BIOS by getting latest firmware from esupport.com and US $25. That is how much I would like to run 5.3. Someone please tell me that this has nothing to do with the BIOS at all. Winblows apparently has no problems at all installing on these disks, but I hate to use Microshit as a yard stick. What shall I do??? -Wash http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html -- +======================================================================+ |\ _,,,---,,_ | Odhiambo Washington <wash@wananchi.com> Zzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ | Wananchi Online Ltd. www.wananchi.com |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-'| Tel: +254 20 313985-9 +254 20 313922 '---''(_/--' `-'\_) | GSM: +254 722 743223 +254 733 744121 +======================================================================+ "Why was I born with such contemporaries?" -- Oscar Wilde
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