Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 09:52:59 +0000 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Installation trouble Message-ID: <20021107095259.GA25770@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi> In-Reply-To: <20021107085742.37107.qmail@web40805.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20021107085742.37107.qmail@web40805.mail.yahoo.com>
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On Thu, Nov 07, 2002 at 12:57:42AM -0800, victor burzlaff wrote: > I am trying to install freebsd 4.2 onto an old PII > computer. Having read the entire 734 page comlete > manuel, I have not com across this problem mentioned > in the book at all. This is my problem: > > I setup my bios to boot off cdroom, then install the > disk 1 installation boot (i386) cd into my cdrom > drive. > It goes past the memory check then as it tries to boot > off my boot cd I get this error: > > Invalid format It looks to me as if the BIOS on that machine is incapable of booting from a FreBSD CD-Rom. That used to be a significant problem back when the PII was the cutting edge of processor design. Try creating 'kern' and 'mfsroot' floppy disks from the images supplied on your CDs as described at http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-pre.html Section 2.2.7 --- these should be sufficient to boot the system into /stand/sysinstall, from where you can procede with installing the system from your CDRoms. Nb. You can download floppy images from eg. ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/4.7-RELEASE/floppies/ or one of the mirrors around the world, but those will be configured to install the indicated version, which is the latest release right now. Due to space constraints, older versions than the latest two STABLE releases plus a CURRENT snapshot can't be carried on the ftp sites. If you have network connectivity (even just a 56k dialup) on the machine you're trying to install it's actually quite handy to install over the net. Time consuming, certainly, but the install system is cunningly desgined so that you work through the menus first as quickly as you like, answering all the different configuration questions, and then hit the 'Commit' button after which you can leave the machine on it's own to get on with all the time consuming stuff you've told it to do. Cheers, Matthew -- Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks Savill Way Marlow Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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