From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jul 3 06:34:13 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id GAA07571 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 3 Jul 1996 06:34:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from equalis.it (root@intserv.equalis.it [194.21.245.1]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id GAA07566 for ; Wed, 3 Jul 1996 06:34:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from cstrati (ppp-va-25.equalis.it) by equalis.it with SMTP id AA22944 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for questions@freebsd.com); Wed, 3 Jul 1996 15:36:15 +0100 Message-Id: <2.2.32.19960703133255.0067c31c@equalis.it> X-Sender: cstrati@equalis.it X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (32) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 03 Jul 1996 15:32:55 +0200 To: questions@freebsd.com From: Carlo Strati Subject: Help for FreeBSD review Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Hy, I'm a freelance technical editor working for PC Professionale (the italian version of Ziff Davis' PC Magazine). Well, I'd like to write some articles about FreeBSD, but I have some installation problems... I have FreeBSD 2.0.5 on Walnut Creek's CD-ROM. I install it onto my second hard drive with the FreeBSD boot manager; the installation goes well and the PC boots right with the boot manager. But when I ask to boot with FreeBSD, after the correct recognition of all the devices, I get the following messages: "changing root device to wd1a" and "panic: cannot mount root". --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the current configuration of my system: = First disk (primary EIDE channel, master) = Quantum FireBall 1280MB: 100% of space Primary DOS Partition (C:) = Second disk (secondary EIDE channel, master) = Quantum FireBall 1280MB: - 800MB Extended DOS Partition (200MB for D: and 600MB for E:) - 480MB FreeBSD Partition (250MB for /, 120MB for /usr and 90MB for swap) = CD ROM = Plextor 6X SCSI controlled by Adaptec AHA2940 = VGA = S3 based board (I can use NumeberNine Motion 771 with S3-968 or Diamond Stealth 2000 3D with ViRGE, both with 2MB of memory) = CPU & Memory = Intel Pentium 133 with 32MB of RAM --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've installed FreeBSD from CD-ROM after booting from floppy and selected a void partition on my second hard drive. When I look at my partitions within the installation program of FreeBSD I can see: wd0s1 (PRI-DOS), wd2s1 (EXT-DOS), wd2s2a (root FreeBSD), wd2s3e (/usr FreeBSD) and wd2s4b (swap FreeBSD). Why do I have my first disk named "wd0" and my second disk named "wd2"? Where is "wd1"? After the installation, the boot manager goes well and let me start with FreeBSD from my second hard drive, but the system cannot mount the root. Why the message tell me "changing root device to wd1a even if I selected wd2s2 for the root? May be I can't install FreeBSD onto secondary EIDE channel? Or what else goes wrong? I've tried to re-install FreeBSD, but nothing changes. I've also tried to force the boot with "hd(2,a)/kernel" but it hangs... What can I do? I'd really like to have FreeBSD on my PC to let the readers know the advantages of Unix-like systems and FreeBSD itself as a good alternative to Linux, so please help me as soon as possible. Thanks, Carlo Strati ---------------- PC Professionale Italy ----------------