Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 17:11:36 -0600 (CST) From: Ryan Thompson <freebsd@sasknow.com> To: Jaime Kikpole <jaime@malkav.snowmoon.com> Cc: edk@null.net, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Trouble installing FreeBSD Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9912131652330.68147-100000@sasknow.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9912121400500.54188-100000@malkav.snowmoon.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I know it sounds obvious, but have you tried a clean boot disk? I'm in the habit of using disks that go back a decade or so for boot disks, and I've been caught with funny errors more than once with a bad floppy. Your kernel is hanging when trying to set the root device; either it's running out of memory, or the root FS on the floppy is corrupt. Remember the boot disk has a compressed filesystem that is mounted as mfs by the installer. GENERIC in 2.2.8 is probably ~1.8MB, add the filesystem, overhead, and application space and you'll chew up memory pretty quickly. And, yes, the kernel isn't reporting the correct memory size. This isn't ALWAYS a problem, but you may need to build a new kernel with a defined maxmem size (see LINT for this, it's been a long time since I've had to do it) and make yourself a new boot floppy. (Provided you have access to another 2.2.8 system somewhere; if not, maybe somebody on this list would be willing to make you an image). I DO recommend increasing the amount of memory at some point, though, if at all possible. (If you're stuck with 32 pin SIMMs, I wish you the best of luck in your search :-) Ryan Thompson <ryan@sasknow.com> 50% Owner, Technical and Accounts Phone: +1 (306) 664-1161 SaskNow Technologies http://www.sasknow.com #106-380 3120 8th St E Saskatoon, SK S7H 0W2 On Sun, 12 Dec 1999, Jaime Kikpole wrote: > On Sun, 12 Dec 1999 edk@null.net wrote: > > The first thing about this that seems odd to me is that both DOS and > > the power on self test report that this system has 4M of memory, not > > the 640K reported here. > > > > Anyone have any more ideas for me? > > Take a look at: > > http://www.freebsd.org/FAQ/install.html#AEN450 > > It looks like your system can't really handle FreeBSD. In a > nutshell, you need 5MB of RAM to run the installer. If you only have 4MB, > FreeBSD 3.0 might run, but I suspect it wouldn't really be worth the > effort. I run FreeBSD 3.2 ona 486sx with 20MB of RAM. I had to upgrade > it from its original 8MB of RAM when I realized that using apache on it > made it resort to swapping into and out of virtual memory for just about > any possible activity. > > Sorry for the bad news. > > Jaime > Jaime; I believe his original message stated that he was installing 2.2.8, not 3.x. 2.8 was a bit more lenient on the memory requirements. In particular, 2.2.8 still had a single 1.44MB boot disk. - Ryan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.10.9912131652330.68147-100000>