Date: Mon, 03 Nov 1997 13:05:41 +0100 From: Agostino Sonaggere <austin-x@iol.it> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD installation support request Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19971103130541.00686e1c@popmail.iol.it>
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Agostino Sonaggere
E-mail: austin-x@iol.it
Rome, 2 November 1997
Dear Sirs,
I have recently bought the FreeBSD 2.2.2 2-CD set and want to install it
on my PC. I tried about four or five times but I either had to give up or
something went wrong. I am a novice at installing Unix-like systems and I
only once helped a friend of mine to install Linux on his own PC. I don't
think I have any particular hardware problem. In few words, my computer is
an Intel Pentium 100 based machine, with a Triton VX motherboard, 1 floppy
drive, a Goldstar (ATAPI) 16x CD drive, two large EIDE hard disks, a Cirrus
Logic 5434 PCI video card, a Genius PnP souncard and a standard modem.What
is probably worth mentioning is that I run several OSes on the same
machine. I am an OS/2 Warp 3 user but I also have Windows 95 and will
probably install Linux. I have VComm's System Commander do the booting into
the partition I choose when I turn on the system. My boot manager is
FreeBSD compatible and the manual claims it works fine with almost any OS
you can install on a PC. I use Partition Magic by PowerQuest to modify
partitions. Unfortunately, Partition Magic does not support the FreeBSD
file system (it will be detected as "other"), but if you are going to help
me I'll write to Mr Fairbanks at PowerQuest complaining they could do a
little bit more for FreeBSD users.
This is the way I repartitioned my 2 hard drives (I read in the Bios LBA is
enabled): the former HD is 2,5 GB large and contains 3 Fat16 primaries and
1 extended partition with 1 Fat16 and 1 HPFS logical partitions. I could
use the latter HD (1,6 GB) for the FreeBSD, of course not entirely, for I
might be needing some space on it if I decided to add Linux or anything
else in the future.
These are the problems I need to be helped to work out: when I booted from
floppy I almost immediately got a message telling me to press some keys in
order to... well I don't remember now, but I am sure that pressing "?"
actually does nothing despite what is written on the screen: is it because
I have an Italian keyboard? By the way, booting from Windows 95 DOS mode
will fail in a moment...
Anyway, after booting I entered the visual configuration screen: what does
"collapsed" mean? Need I do anything at this stage? I then chose the drive,
i. e. wd02. The editor displayed TWO unused partitions when I only had ONE!
I knew it was just ONE: I had created it!! Besides, I didn’t know whether I
had to set the partition I was going to assign to the FreeBSD active.
Probably not: my Bios boot sequence only allows either "A:,C:" or "C:, A:".
I gave up the installation program and reentered Partition Magic from
Windows 95 DOS mode to see if I had made mistakes splitting the drive. Of
course everything was OK. No problem, then. I started again, did the same
things as before and found myself at the point I had to choose whether I
had to install the FreeBSD boot manager, do a simple MBR installation (?!),
or do nothing. Perhaps I know too little about MBRs. Perhaps I do not need
to install a boot manager if I already have my own and maybe the MBR
istallation will do as well: as I told you I use System Commander to switch
between OSes and I expected it to detect FreeBSD as promised in the
literature that came along with it: the only problem is that the paragraph
covering the FreeBSD installation is barely 10 lines long and the book is
detailed only when it deals with Windows 95's installation quirks (I'll
drop VComm a line, too). At first I never went any further than this
because I always came upon the message the installation had been completed
with some errors.
I found the heart to do more last fryday morning. And I could not believe
my eyes reading everything was proceeding smoothely. No boot manager, no
MBR. I was happy as a baby, really! But I fell hard back down on to the
ground from cloud 9 when I attempted to install several applications. Only
the archivers were installed on the disk. The best part of the selection I
had made was not: error code 1 (?). I was relieved to see that System
Commander displayed a green Unix BSD selection entry in the choice menu.
But very unfortunately, it didn’t work: I wasn’t able to boot into my new
partition fom there. What a disappointment... I had gone through the OS/2
Warp red package installation all by myself but the tiny huge footed red
devil was now mocking at me. I checked the patition from Partition Magic
screen. I had a new 498MB partition on my second HD, but was surprised to
see it was only one. I expected to see at least another smaller primary for
the swap. Doesn’t the FreeBSD require it? Perhaps I am only a bit too
apprehensive, but I would so much appreciate some help and moral support. I
am aware these are too many questions at a time and perhaps they’re even
very stupid. But if you help me I might be of some help to other people. In
addition I could make this OS known to my friends who keep sticking to
Microsoft Windows and do not know about other operating systems. Also, I
haven’t yet found any book on the FreeBSD here in Rome. Perhaps you can
give me some advice on what to read and where to get it.
Well, I think it’s enough for this time although I could put you another
hundred questions. I’d be really thankful if you would give me a little
help and advice.
Best regards.
Agostino Sonaggere.
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