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Date:      21 Mar 1995 17:35:17 EST
From:      "RLARSO01" <HARRIS.RLARSO01@IC1D.HARRIS.COM>
To:        questions@FreeBSD.org
Cc:        "RONALD N. LARSON" <HARRIS.RLARSO01@IC1D.HARRIS.COM>
Subject:   FreeBSD 2.0 Installation problem/question/concern
Message-ID:  <ATCSD3L.RLARSO01.3960.1995 0321 17 35 17 35>

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      I'm recently purchased the 2.0 1-95 Release CD-ROM from Walnut Creek.
      I'm switching from Coherent 4.2.05 to FreeBSD as far as a home use
      UN*X platform goes because of more cutting edge stuff, as well as Mark
      Williams Co. being nonexistent since 1 Feb. God willing, and with any
      kind assistance on your part (fingers crossed), you'll have a very
      thankful & fanatically faithful convert on you hands...:-)

      Currently I'm at the point of where you do your first reboot off the
      hard disk, and install the rest of the goodies off the CD (which I
      would VERY much like to achieve ASAP). After all the device status
      messages have been pumped out (they SEEM to be correct,everything that
      I have on my system registers - I don't know what all the devnames
      translate out to yet), I get a "panic: could not mount root" message.

      Using the plain 2.0 boot disk for initial setup, before a disk sync
      and reboot is done, this is what I get:

      changing root device to sd0a....
      --- something about adjusting d partition blocks on wd0 -----
      panic: could not mount root

      Then the sync/reboot goes into effect.

      This would be fine if I had set up BSD root in sd0a, but if I've got
      this devname convention down right, it should be looking for the
      kernel in sd1a - I have three hard drives, 1 325MB IDE drive, 1 327MB
      SCSI-2 drive, and 1 1.8GB SCSI-2 drive with an 856MB BSD
      partion/"slice" :-) at the beginning of the disk (and I've already
      disabled extended translation and blew away the disk down to nothing).
      Boot defaults to wd(0,a) still so if I type in hd(2,a)/kernel it boots
      up saying it's booting sd(0,a)kernel. If I type in hd(1,a)kernel it
      doesn't find anything, same with wd(1,a)kernel. However if I type in
      sd(2,a)kernel it does start booting up except at the end it tries to
      change the boot device to sd2a (aggggh!) and the issues the same panic
      message. Again I think if I've caught a clue about the devnames, it
      should be looking for the initial kernel in sd1a because I set things
      up in my second SCSI drive.

      Hoping that maybe the 2-10-95 snapshot could help me get further, I
      rawwrote (is that a valid word?) the boot & cpio floppies and tried
      again. I noticed that booting was quicker/smoother (hopefully an
      indication of better things on the way!) and some of the boot-up
      messages changed, but basically I still get the same panic message.:-(
      Oh, I did get to install the cpio disk first...ha ha.

      Using the 2.1-950210-SNAP boot/cpio disks for initial setup, I noticed
      that Boot now defaulted to wd(2,a) and would find the kernel without
      any redirection, but it would still get to the point of saying
      "changing /dev/root to sd2a...." (aggggh! again) and then the panic in
      the streets message with a sync/reboot to go. Is there anything else I
      can do? Should I try again with ext. translation set on? If I do get
      this to work with the SNAP disks, will I be able to load the 2.0 CD or
      should I get the rest of the snapshot? Is this message getting to be
      too long?

      I would really appreciate any comments/suggestions/assistance, and I
      am willing to devote the time and effort to get this setup going. I'll
      post my system configuration at the end of this message. As far as I
      know, all of my hardware is supported/compatible. At any rate thaks in
      advance, and I'm looking forward to contributing to this effort in
      anyway in the future (once I'm past first base of course).

      Sincerely,

      Ron Larson
      rlarso01@ic1d.harris.com

      Here's my system specs (thanks for bearing with me!):

      Vega 486DX2-66 Motherboard with Haydn Symphony II chipset,AMI BIOS
      (11-11-92 date), 32MB RAM (could be 64MB soon), 1MB cache

      Diamond Viper VLB 2MB VRAM (Weitek P9000 based)

      Adaptec AHA2842VL SCSI adapter (AIC-7770 based) - host adap. #1 with:
       - a Quantum LPS340 327MB SCSI-2 drive, ID #0 (DOS data only)
       - a Quantum PD1800S 1.8GB SCSI-2 drive, ID #1 (855MB BSD slice, 62MB
         OS/2 2.11 HPFS system part., 800MB OS/2 HPFS data part.)
       - a Tandberg 4100 2GB tape drive, ID #2

      A generic FooSong,Ltd. Taiwan VLB IDE controller with 2 ser., 1 par.,
         1 game port with:
       - a Western Digital AC2340 325MB IDE drive ( 323MB DOS 6.22/Windows
         for Workgroups 3.11 part., 1MB OS/2 2.1 Boot Manager part. which
         finds the BSD slice without a glitch, or so I may think)
       - a TEAC Combo 3.5/5.25 floppy drive

      Soundblaster 16 SCSI-2 (AHA 1522 equiv.?) - host adap. #2 with:
       - a Toshiba XM-3401 2x CD-ROM drive, ID #4

      Zoom 14.4 v.32bis FaxModem (set to COM4).


      As I've indicated, I'm using OS/2 Boot Manager. I have disabled
      extended translation so the geometry for my 1.8GB drive is 64 heads,
      32 sectors, and 1717 cylinders. I used BSD's FDISK to re-set up my
      slices, with slice 1 going to BSD, 2 going to OS/2 system, 3 going to
      OS/2 data, 4 unused).

      For disklabeling, my a partition is 20MB, my b swap partition is
      128MB, my e partition is 250MB, my f partition is 350 something, and g
      partition is 105MB, all being '/', swap, '/usr', '/usr/local', and
      '/usr/users' respectively (h partition is unused).

      I was getting 32k block size messages originally prior to disabling
      ext. translation and haven't gotten that since then (plus the
      filesystems were getting an initial build). But at the time I also
      didn't know what the Adaptec's geometry was (it's 255 heads, 63
      sectors). Do you think setup would have worked had I had this data at
      the time? Or does BSD really hate ext. translation like Clinton hates
      Congress? Is there a problem with my using the 2nd SCSI drive (i.e.
      the 3rd hard drive in the system)? Or does God have a special plan for
      me?


      Once again thanks in advance, cause I could sure use the help.





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