Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 16:57:56 -0700 From: "Kerry Davis" <kedavis@uswest.net> To: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Fw: puzzlement Message-ID: <0abf01c03315$e96e3ea0$0200000a@system>
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the problem isn't with booting off the floppies originally. I guess I wasn't clear about that. the problem is, AFTER I FINISH the install, and remove the boot floppies and the CD, my system won't boot. Even if I set the boot option in the BIOS to "C: Only" it STILL goes to the floppy after power-on, and STAYS THERE. floppy light on steady, etc. It doesn't appear to even LOOK AT the hard disk, where I just finished installing BSD, supposedly "successfully." and the CD might be bootable, but I don't have that option on this system. (Gateway 2000 P4D-66 tower, PhoenixBIOS, 486-66 originally, upgraded to Intel 486-75 overdrive.) There is no boot-from-CD option in the BIOS. Boot options available are A: then C:, C: then A:. and C: Only The motherboard is a PCI board, with on-board IDE and Floppy. I have two CD drives connected to IDE, but the actual "storage" for the system is SCSI, using a Qlogic 1080 SCSI card. I'm using an IBM 2gig SCSI drive dedicated to the OS, and I have a Compaq/Seagate 36.4 gig drive for "mass storage." Another issue I ran into is that when I had the 36.4 gig drive connected, the install crashed shortly after the "visual mode kernel configuration" screen, with a Kernel Panic, Error 18, Integer Divide Error While In Kernel Mode, right after a line showing that it was looking at the 36.4 gig drive. I disconnected that drive while installing, and that error stopped coming up. But frankly, the whole installation process - booting from the floppies, anyway - seems pretty sloppy and half-baked to me. Even leaving aside the crashing-on-the-large-drive problem (what would I have done if that was the ONLY drive I had for my system?), once it gets to the "visual mode kernel configuration" screen, the floppy drive is spinning steadily until I get out of that. If I started the boot/install and then had to go off for an emergency or something, it's going to sit there and spin the floppy for 24 hours or whatever? Just what I need. Then the kernel configuration thing comes up with 4 SCSI interface options that I guess it "detected", NONE of which is what I actually have. (It shows Advansys Narrow SCSI, two Adaptec options - one of them being a sound card with SCSI interface for CD! - and a Buslogic.) As well as about 8 ethernet card options, again none of which actually matches what I have, and a PC Card (PCMCIA) interface, which also doesn't exist in this system. Then half the time when I select some installation option, it jumps right to "installation completed with some errors" without EVER copying ANYTHING from the CD. So then I go back to the Install Options menu, and go through Standard Install stuff AGAIN, but select a different option down the line. The whole thing is getting rather disappointing, even disgusting. And here I'm the guy who's been telling people to use FreeBSD, instead of linux. Because it's more mature, more stable, not "amateur-ware" which is how I refer to linux. And now when I try to actually install it myself, and all THIS stuff happens. It makes me look rather foolish, and I can't say that I like how it's turning out so far. Some people have told me to get rid of the DOS partition that I originally set up on the system, in order to read the readme.txt and install.txt, and to do the makeflp.bat thing to create the boot/install floppies. But right in the .txt files, it RECOMMENDS keeping a small DOS partition on the system, in case of "emergencies." You'd think that, with a recommendation like that, they'd at least make it so it could actually WORK. But apparently not, at least not so far as I can see. Sorry for the bitter tone, but I'm getting rather fed up with the whole thing. Any suggestions you can offer would be greatly appreciated. I've tried using two different sets of fresh floppies for the boot/setup thing, they both do the same thing. Maybe this CD I got isn't really any good. Although it came from some kind of demo thing held in Texas I think, supposedly they were passed out by actual high-end BSD honchos, so you'd think the CDs would be known-good too, but the way things have been going maybe I shouldn't assume that either... -----Original Message----- From: Rick Hamell <hamellr@heorot.1nova.com> To: Kerry Davis <kedavis@uswest.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Date: Tuesday, October 10, 2000 3:37 PM Subject: Re: puzzlement > >> I started out by installing DOS in a small (200 meg) partition on the first >> drive (IBM 2 gig SCSI, on a Qlogic 1080 card), along with IDE CD-ROM >> drivers, which is how I read the readme.txt and install.txt files. > > For a first time install, I would recommend this... I personally >don't do it anymore, but that's me... :) > >> Then I created the 2 boot/install floppies from makeflp.bat (which is an >> issue to me right there: why can't there just be a DOS install program on >> the CD? seems like that couldn't be any more difficult than putting >> together the 2-floppy "bootstrap" thing), and booted from those > > Actually, the CDROM is bootable. No need for such a dos program on >the CDROM. Though there probally is. > >> Everything seemed to go more or less okay, as it looked. But after the >> installation is completed, my system won't reboot. Even if I change the >> boot sequence to C: Only, it goes through the POST stuff, then goes to the >> floppy drive and stays there. > > Um... if you've got floppies in the disk drive, and the CDROM in >the CDROM drive, you should be booting off of A: or d: first.. not your >c:\... Now, if you've formated and put a system on the c:\ then that >should work. But you've created the floppies, so boot off of >them. BTW.. 90% of the boot problems with floppies are bad disks. > > > Rick > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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