From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Mar 8 21:18:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA26416 for questions-outgoing; Sat, 8 Mar 1997 21:18:42 -0800 (PST) Received: from tahiti.netreach.net (tahiti.netreach.net [205.197.101.10]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id VAA26411 for ; Sat, 8 Mar 1997 21:18:38 -0800 (PST) Received: from fastdata (gwinet.pepboys.com) by tahiti.netreach.net (5.x/SMI-SVR4) id AA17963; Sun, 9 Mar 1997 00:18:33 -0500 Message-Id: <33224913.4BDA@netreach.net> Date: Sun, 09 Mar 1997 00:23:14 -0500 From: Scott Nichol X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (WinNT; I) Mime-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Installation hangs Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I am trying to install FreeBSD 2.1.6 from CD-ROM. The target system is a UMC based 486 PCI motherboard, 16M RAM, NE2000 NIC, Tseng SVGA, Adaptec 1542C SCSI controller, Toshiba 3401 SCSI CD-ROM and single Conner hard drive. I'll note here that the Adaptec controller is *very* old; the BIOS is 1.01 and the board does *not* support Fast SCSI. The kernel loads successfully for both CD-ROM and floppy install; all hardware appears to be detected correctly. I choose the Novice install, Entire disk (I've tried both "true partition geometry" and not), BootMgr, Auto defaults and CD-ROM. After confirming that I wish to proceed, the install program says "Writing partition information to drive sd0". At this point, my drive activity LED lights and stays on. Soon thereafter, I get the message "sysinstall: write: Input/output error" "Panic: going nowhere without my init" The install program was able to write to the SCSI drive well enough to wipe out my original DOS partitioning (at my request). I have done a low-level format on the drive and checked for bad blocks, too. The disk and controller had been running on an NT system for about three years with no problems I know of. Can anyone offer any suggestions? Thanks. -- Scott Nichol