From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Jan 15 07:52:57 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id HAA04027 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 15 Jan 1998 07:52:57 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from hwcn.org (al043@james.hwcn.org [199.212.94.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id HAA03968; Thu, 15 Jan 1998 07:52:30 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from strangways@hwcn.org) Received: from localhost (al043@localhost) by hwcn.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id KAA03631; Thu, 15 Jan 1998 10:48:50 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 1998 10:48:44 -0500 (EST) From: Stephen Strangways To: Jonathan Hahn cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-install@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: installing on FAT32 w/Partition Magic In-Reply-To: <199801151039.CAA01387@and.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk Stephen Strangways CEO, Nightstar Technologies Nightstar@mindless.com Jonathan, I had a similar problem installing FreeBSD 2.2.1 on a machine with Win95 OSR2 and FAT32. The soulution came about after long hours into the wee morning, when I made a sloppy mistake. I resized the main FAT32 partition containing DOS and Win95 down by about 200MB (The size I wanted for FreeBSD) and left the empty space just that - empty space, unformatted, so it was a gray bar in Partition Magic. I then installed FreeBSD, and going through a novice install (very intuitive), followed it through to the FDISK portion of the install, selected the free space, chose auto defaults (or something like that) for all, and FreeBSD installed and worked prefectly. Hope that helps. It's been a while since I installed FreeBSD (last summer) so I might have told it to you incorrectly. If that doesn't solve your problem, let me know and I'll re-do the install, and take notes that I can pass on to you. -Steve On Thu, 15 Jan 1998, Jonathan Hahn wrote: > I'm a long-time FreeBSD user and have performed many installations, > but I'm stuck. I recently purchased a Sony VAIO 707C laptop. I > discovered it uses a FAT32 file system which fips doesn't yet > support. There is a modified fips (fips1.5b, > http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/people/chaffee/fat32.html) which I tried. > It did something, but the machine wouldn't boot afterwards. > Fortunately, restorrb backed those changes out. > > So next I purchased Partition Magic. It split the main partition > nicely and apparently on a cylindar boundary. So far so good. I > can boot off a freebsd boot disk, and run install. > > The problem is that when I try to create Unix partitions in the new > DOS partition, the install program refuses. If I try to create a > root file system of any size, I get: > > This region cannot be used for your root partition as the > FreeBSD boot code cannot deal with a root partition created > in that location. Please choose another partition or > smaller size for your root partition and try again! > > An attempt to create the smallest root file systems still gets me > this message. If I try and create a swap partition of any size, > or any other file system (e.g. /usr) I get: > > Unable to create the partition. Too big? > > I suspect a problem in my DOS partition setup. Here's my table: > > Name PType Desc Subtype Flags Comment > - 6 unused 0 size = 1 track > wd0s1 1 unknown 11 win95 (1.5 GB) > wd0s3 2 fat 6 for freebsd (.5 GB) > wd0s2 1 OS/2 bootmgr 10 size = 1 cyl > wd0s4 1 unknown 160 for mem image save (390 MB) > - 6 unused 0 size = 1 cyl > > > When I change the type of wds3 to FreeBSD, the line then reads: > > wd0s3 3 freebsd 165 for freebsd > > I have no idea what's going on. I took a look at the source for > sysinstall and it's hairy. Does anyone have any insight/suggestions? > I'm obviously violating some requirement, but I have no idea what. > > thanks in advance, > -jonathan hahn > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > Jonathan Hahn > And Communications > hahn@and.com > (408) 736-7014 >