From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Jan 27 19:59:33 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA14992 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 19:59:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from who.cdrom.com (who.cdrom.com [204.216.27.3]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id TAA14986 for ; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 19:59:30 -0800 (PST) Received: from chicago.netpc.com (root@chicago.netpc.com [208.133.118.10]) by who.cdrom.com (8.7.5/8.6.11) with ESMTP id TAA28681 for ; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 19:59:27 -0800 (PST) Received: from mj-2.javapc.com ([208.133.118.100]) by chicago.netpc.com (8.8.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id VAA03724 for ; Mon, 27 Jan 1997 21:48:01 -0500 Message-ID: <32ED76E2.7672@javapc.com> Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 21:47:46 -0600 From: Matt Evans Organization: Bitstream Solutions, Inc. X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Getting error on installation procedure Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I'm installing FreeBSD from a DOS Partition, which resides on a Seagate 2GB Baracudda drive. The DOS partition is 313MB, the rest is reserved for FreeBSD. The problem is, after setting up the FreeBSD slice and individual filesystems; /, /var, /usr, and swap. I get a "Write failure on transfer! (wrote -1 bytes of 1024 bytes)" message. After reading a previous posting where someone used to Alt-F2 to get debug info, I was able to get a little more info: --------------------------------------------------------------------- DEBUG: Generating /etc/fstab file mountmsdosfs(): Warning: root directory is not a multiple of the clustersize in length DEBUG: Mounted DOS device (/dev/sd0s1) on /dos. . bin bin/cat bin/chmod /stand/cpio: invalid header: checksum error gunzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--format violated DEBUG: Switching back to VTY1 /stand/cpio: premature end of file --------------------------------------------------------------------- This would seem to indicate a problem with the compressed install files located in the c:\freebsd\bin, c:\freebsd\des, etc. I have downloaded and verified the byte size of all the files in question, many times. I have checked the integrity of the DOS partition, which is good. The only thing I can think of is a possible incompatiblity between the freebsd loader and DOS partitions. I might add that this is actually an uncompressed Windows 95 partition. I have since read that there is a problem with installing FreeBSD from DOS partitions. ARRRGH!!!! Has this been fixed yet???!!! I would gather this present a major problem for people installing FreeBSD, if they aren't loading from CD-ROM. Please help. Matt Evans Bitstream Solutions, Inc. bitstream@javapc.com