From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Sep 4 05:30:07 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id FAA08399 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 4 Sep 1996 05:30:07 -0700 (PDT) Received: from horton.iaces.com ([204.147.87.98]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id FAA08394 for ; Wed, 4 Sep 1996 05:30:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from proot@localhost) by horton.iaces.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id HAA02275; Wed, 4 Sep 1996 07:28:41 -0500 From: "Paul T. Root" Message-Id: <199609041228.HAA02275@horton.iaces.com> Subject: Re: 2.1.5-RELEASE installation question To: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 07:28:40 -0500 (CDT) Cc: johnson@charming.nrtc.northrop.com, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "Doug White" at Sep 3, 96 06:16:00 pm X-Organization: !nterprise Networking Services - ACES X-Phone: (612) 663-1979 X-Fax: (612) 663-8030 X-Page: (800) SKY-PAGE PIN: 537-7270 X-Address: 200 S. 5th St., Suite 1100 X-Address: Minneapolis, MN 55402 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk In a previous message, Doug White said: > > On Tue, 3 Sep 1996 johnson@charming.nrtc.northrop.com wrote: > > > I have been trying to install Free BSD 2.1.5-RELEASE, and have > > encountered the problem described below. > > > > I did a minimal install from a DOS partition. The install claimed to > > have completed successfully. > > > > Then, when I boot the machine, I get a rather lengthy list of devices, > > IRQ's, etc., and finally the following message appears: > > > > panic: cannot mount root > > Hm. My guesses are as follows: > > 1) The kernel can't figure out just where the root directory is. This > may be caused by the enhancer, as it's data area does not conincide with > the BIOSs and thus FreeBSD can't identify any disks. > > 2) The wdc0 probe isn't finding any disks, period. Watch the boot > messages for wd* devices and see if your disk & controller is found and > identified. I have one other guess. He didn't say how he set up the disk slices. I'm going to guess that he split it in half and FreeBSD starts somewhere up in the 800-900 Meg range. For EIDE drives, the root partition *MUST* be completely contained within the first 504Meg of the drive, due to the PC architectures BIOS limitations. Paul. -- Paul T. Root E/Mail: proot@iaces.com 200 S. 5th St. Suite 1100 PAG: +1 (800) SKY-PAGE PIN: 537-7370 Minneapolis, MN 55402 WRK: +1 (612) 663-1979 NIC: PTR FAX: +1 (612) 663-8030