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Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 11:17:42 -0500
To: questions@freebsd.org
From: "Tim M. Kelley" <tkelley@cy.com>
Subject: 2.1 install problem (failed to load ROOT distribution)
Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org
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I'm trying to install FreeBSD 2.1 (on CD from Walnut Creek). Unfortunately,
I have an IDE CDROM drive, and the installation software isn't recognizing
my CD. (I've got 2 IDE drives, one IDE CD configured as master on secondary
IDE ribbon).

Since the installation isn't recognizing my CD, I've attempted to install
from a DOS partition. Here's how I set up the DOS partition:
XCOPY /S E:\DISTS C:\FREEBSD
XCOPY /S E:\FLOPPIES C:\FREEBSD\FLOPPIES

I've set aside my second IDE drive for use solely for FreeBSD.

The installation starts to do its thing, until I get the following message box:
        Failed to load the ROOT distribution. Please correct this problem
        and try again.

I switch to the second (debug) screen, and see the following:
        ...
        stand/df
        stand/cat
        stand/ls

        gunzip: stdin: invalid compressed data - format violated
        /stand/cpio: premature end of file
        DEBUG: cpio returned error status of 1!
        Debug: Dummy [default] close called for wd0s1 with fd of 7.

Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Anyone out there have any
suggestions?

Here's my configuration:
        Pentium 70 Mhz, 32 MB
        IDE drive 1: 1202 Mb (DOS)      wd0
        IDE drive 2: 202Mb (FreeBSD)    wd1
        CDROM IDE drive                 wc1 (not fully recognized on inst. boot)

Tim Kelley