From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Oct 30 11:46:06 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA24590 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 30 Oct 1996 11:46:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from answerman.mindspring.com (answerman.mindspring.com [204.180.128.8]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA24585 for ; Wed, 30 Oct 1996 11:46:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from ms039149.mindspring.com (ip93.malibu.ca.interramp.com [38.14.108.93]) by answerman.mindspring.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id OAA25996; Wed, 30 Oct 1996 14:50:45 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <2.2.16.19961030194553.807f3136@pop.mindspring.com> X-Sender: jrasins@pop.mindspring.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 11:45:53 -0800 To: "Thomas R. Gillingham" From: "John W. Rasins" Subject: Re: HELP....!!! Cc: questions@freebsd.org Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk At 03:33 PM 10/29/96 -0500, you wrote: >I am a new user to FreeBSD and I am having a hard time installing it. I >get to the point (after answering all the questions for Novice Install) >and it asks me for another disk. > >I don't have any disks to insert. I downloaded rawrite and boot.flp I >copied both of them to the C drive and typed rawrite and made a file >called boot.flp on a new floppy disk. > >I booted with that disk and started the novice install. > >What else do I need to download to get up and running. > You need to at least download all of the files in the bin distribution (bin directory off the ftp site). You will most likely want some of the other distributions as well (e.g. manpages, some of the src, etc.). Once you have a distribution downloaded, copy files (usually five at a time will fit on one 1.44mb floppy) to a diskette or diskettes. The first floppy of any distribution (the one containing the .aa file) needs to also have the .inf file for that distribution on it. When the installation process asks you to insert the next floppy, after the boot floppy, put in the first diskette of the bin distribution. This diskette should have bin.aa, bin.ab, bin.ac, bin.ad, bin.ae, and bin.inf on it. When the install is done with that diskette, it will ask you to insert the next diskette for the bin distribution, and indicate to you that the bin.af file should be on that diskette. You would, of course, put as many distribution files on the diskette as possible. The trick with the 2.1.5R version (or later if the process has not changed) is that the first .aa and .inf file of the next distribution you want to install needs to be on the last diskette of the current distribution being installed. What does this mean? Let's say that in addition to the bin distribution, you also wanted the subin distribution. What you would do is put at least the last bin file on a diskette (bin.cc?), along with subin.aa and subin.inf; you could put more of the subin files onto the diskette if they fit. By doing this, the install process knows that it is done with the bin distribution, and then checks for other .inf files on the same diskette. The only other nuance is that there is an order that the install process expects to find the distributions, and if you don't follow the order, it doesn't matter what .inf is on the diskette. If it isn't the right one, then the install process moves on and complains that it couldn't find other selected distributions. So, the order is as follows: bin, doc, games, manpages, proflibs, dict, info, sbase, sgnu, setc, sinclude, slib, slibexec, slkm, srelease, sbin, ssbin, sshare, ssys, subin, susbin, smailcf, des, krb. Hope this helps you get through the floppy install process. John