From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Aug 8 02:48:44 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id CAA26722 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 8 Aug 1996 02:48:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from io.iosys.net (io.iosys.net [207.67.20.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id CAA26716 for ; Thu, 8 Aug 1996 02:48:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from ns1.inc.net (ppp-8.iosys.net [207.67.20.40]) by io.iosys.net (Netscape Mail Server v1.1) with SMTP id AAA286 for ; Thu, 8 Aug 1996 04:56:39 +0100 Message-ID: <3209B753.E6E@iosys.net> Date: Thu, 08 Aug 1996 04:45:55 -0500 From: samurai@iosys.net (Rich Bornhofer) X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0b5a (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Disk Geometry. Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Hello, I have been trying for about 2 weeks now to get freebsd to install on my machine, with no luck. I am starting to be convinced that it has something to do with my disk drive geometry, as by changing the geometry to various settings (in the fdisk portion of the install) I am able to get errors to occur at different places, ie, i have been able to access the bin.aa once, pull up bin.aa, bin.ab, and bin.ac once, and one time, the installer couldn't find bin.ab... No matter how far i get, all the files are ultimately corrupt. This leads me to believe that since almost _every_ file i have downloaded (in binary) has been either in the wrong gunzip format or failed checksum, that the installer can't seem to get a 'clean' read of the files from my dos partion. Here is what it looks like : E-IDE 1.6GIG drive. Fips'ed initialy to have 2 primary dos partitions, c:drive for dos related stuff (771 MEG) and d: for Windows (95) related stuff (772 MEG). (I have 2 primary dos partiitions, only c: is bootable) I then used fips again to cut d: down by 250MEG to allow for Freebsd. Fips created a 3rd primary drive that i deleted for Freebsd to install on. My current Drive geometry as set up in my CMOS is: 786 cylinders, 64 heads, and 63 sectors/track. This is what i got from MSD with regards to what DOS 6.22 can see: C: Fixed Disk, CMOS Type 46 392 Cylinders, 64 Heads 512/bytes/sector, 63 Sectors/Track CMOS Fixed Disk Parameters 786 cynlinders, 64 Heads 63 Sectors/Track D: Fixed Disk, CMOS Type 0 267 Cylinders, 64 Heads 512/bytes/sector, 63 Sectors/Track CMOS Fixed Disk Parameters 24783 Cynlinders, 30 Heads 60 Sectors/Track When the install probe looks at my disk, it reports : 3145 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors, 512 bytes/track When i ran the 'pfdisk.exe' program, it reported : 785 cylinders, 64 heads, 63 sectors/track I have tried 785/63/63, 3145/16/63, and 786/64/63.. None of these geometries seems to allow the installer to properly read the files i have downloaded from the ftp.freebsd.org site ( and the last attempt i made, the files (well the 3 i loaded to see if they could be read) were from ftp3.freebsd.org.. still couldn't read the files). I am at a complete loss for what to do to get the installer to be able to read these files, and i am presuming that even if i were to do the ftp install (and avoid reading from dos) I would still have problems with freebsd being able to access it's own files if the geometry isn't set up for what the disk is expecting. (is that correct?) Oh, BTW, i am trying to get the 2.1.5R release installed, i don't know if that makes any difference, but at one point i was able to get Linux (slackware from cd) to install on this system (at the time i was running win3.11, but still had this partitioning scheme.. this exact scheme), perhaps the fact that it came from CD makes a difference, but i will be trying to install the base distribution from dos later thismorning, as i am off to download those files to see if it will install. I am very much wanting to try FreeBSD, and if some guru could delve into this dilema and offer some helpful insight (other than formatting the whole thing and making logical drives ;), I would be very much appriciative. Thank you for you time in advance, Savant, the not so knowledgeable ;)