From owner-freebsd-bugs Fri Jul 19 21:15:33 1996 Return-Path: owner-bugs Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA11824 for bugs-outgoing; Fri, 19 Jul 1996 21:15:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from hera.cwi.nl (hera.cwi.nl [192.16.191.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id VAA11815 for ; Fri, 19 Jul 1996 21:15:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from zeus.cwi.nl by hera.cwi.nl with SMTP id ; Sat, 20 Jul 1996 06:14:04 +0200 Received: by zeus-184.cwi.nl id ; Sat, 20 Jul 1996 06:14:16 +0200 Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1996 06:14:16 +0200 From: Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl Message-Id: <9607200414.AA09748=aeb@zeus-184.cwi.nl> To: Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl, jkh@time.cdrom.com Subject: Re: installation fails Cc: freebsd-bugs@freebsd.org, questions@freebsd.org Sender: owner-bugs@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" > I just tried to install 2.1.5-RELEASE. > At the point where the actual installation is to begin > (I suspect: the first moment the ethernet card is actually used) > I get the text (I tried twice) > Fatal signal 11 caught! I'm dead .. > and indeed, FreeBSD is dead. Can you tell me the very last thing it did successfully? I used novice install, got twice in an fdisk-like program - maybe once to cut a partition into slices and once to select mount points - I just took the defaults - got a menu to tell about IP-number and hostname, and maybe that was the last. [But don't trust my bad memory.] Maybe I can ask a question: In the meantime I tried a different approach and wrote 2.1.5-RELEASE to a SCSI tape and installed from there. The installation process was more or less successful; it complained `couldn't extract compat1x compat20 commerce xperimnt' even while this release did contain subdirectories commerce and xperimnt (and compat21). I also got a `unable to fetch samba-1.9.15p8' (or sth very similar). One very funny point was that at the point where I had to give my local time the digit 7 did not work (but 6 and 8 did) - very strange. One point in the installation procedure consisted of the question whether a boot manager should be installed. I have a rather delicate setup with 3 IDE and 3 SCSI disks, and as far as I can see there is no information at all about the precise properties or configuration of this boot manager, so I answered No. But now I find that I have no means to boot this installed system! The fixit floppy is not a boot floppy - booting from it leads to an attempt at destroying my floppy reader - instead of halting, the system gets into an infinite boot cycle. And the install floppy, which is a boot floppy, doesn't seem to offer the opportunity to start the just installed system. So my present question is: is there a way to let the installation procedure make a boot floppy that boots a given partition? Or can I ftp somewhere a working boot floppy? Or can I escape from the install procedure of the install floppy? [Under Linux I have a root filesystems on the fourth and fifth disks but kernel images on the first or second disk so that LILO or OS/2 BM can find it, and the kernel is booted with parameter root=/dev/sdb3, for example. I hope that it is not required that FreeBSD lives on the first or second disk.] All the best - Andries