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Date:      Thu, 05 Nov 1998 10:11:16 -0500 (EST)
From:      Simon Shapiro <shimon@simon-shapiro.org>
To:        Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
Cc:        freebsd-alpha@FreeBSD.ORG, Mike Haertel <mike@ducky.net>
Subject:   Re: attempting to install 10/31 snapshot on a Noname
Message-ID:  <XFMail.981105101116.shimon@simon-shapiro.org>
In-Reply-To: <199811050726.XAA00484@dingo.cdrom.com>

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Mike Smith, On 05-Nov-98 you wrote:
> > So I downloaded the 10/29 snapshot, and made the necessary
> > boot floppies.  After some difficulties with preparing
> > a floppy for mfsroot.gz (during which I discovered that
> > the FreeBSD kernel will happily boot using the old NetBSD
> > root file system, and run at least some NetBSD binaries--so
> > I know the kernel works well enough to load and run user
> > programs off the hard disk on this machine), I managed
> > to get it to load the mfsroot image and drop into the
> > FreeBSD install screen.  Exceedingly cool!  But is it
> > really supposed to be red?  Anyway...
>  
>  No, it's not, and this is a symptom.
>  
> > Problem: the install menu is completely non-responsive
> > to keyboard input at this point.
>  
>  Yes, we know about this.  No, we don't know (yet) what's wrong, but 
>  current suspicion is that it's 64-bit uncleanliness in either ncurses 
>  or libdialog.  The console driver is fine, and if you reboot a couple 
>  of times, you'll probably come up one time and work.

I found that switching to the release of the 31st, rather than the 29th
cured this particular problem.

As to the mfsroot floppy, I found out that this mad formula works rather
well, every time:

*  When you dd the kernel.flp, make TWO floppies.
*  Mark one correctly, and put aside.
*  Leave the second one in the drive and do:

   mount /dev/fd0 /mnt
   rm -rf /mnt/*
   cp mfsroot.gz /mnt
   umount /mnt
   sync;sync;sync

In other words;  The disklabel and newfs operations documented are somehow
wrong for this floppy.  the filesystem created by the boot/kernel floppy
image preparation is correct.

Also, Do NOT forget to fix the bootability after tihe install is done. 
This has been documented by (at least) Doug anmd Mike and summarized by
myself.

Simon
Who finally can offer some help to others!

Simon
 

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