Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 20:38:17 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@clark.net> To: bugs@freebsd.org Subject: originally a newsgroup post, but news server here isn't working Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.91.950614203752.3747C-100000@clark.net>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Subject: FreeBSD 2.0.5R: need disklabel help Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Organization: The Star-Lit BBS, Bethesda, Maryland, USA Summary: Keywords: X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] My installation of 2.0.5 provied messy from the beginning -- where 2.0R installed the first time it took an epic 10attempts (and 3 trashed partition tables) to get 2.0.5R to even install the binary installation on my system. Admittadly it's a 386sx20 w/4megs of ram, but that's supposedly the min platform line or such. The problem is essentially this: 1) sysinstall has problems with memory -- first it started killing its own processed (hadn't set up swap yet, hadn't given me a chance, but was still complaining). sysinstall killed off rather vital applications, such as the newfs of the root partition, etc. Eventually this worked, but for no discernable reason. It should have worked the 3rd time running, but apparently something cleared out of memory (?). 2) Having the ppp installation line go down trashes the installation program, locking up the ppp dialer and not letting you reload a further installation. Or at the least, ppp quits, but you can't load another copy. My ppp line went down three times during the installation process (ten isntallations is a lot of time connected) since the default packet timeout was 1:30 and sometimes processing a file took longer. I also had a problem with ppp freezing or not talking to the modem. when the line went down, I typically lost my partition table and couldn't boot anything (either of my dos partitions on two drives, for example.) Thank god for Norton, which rebuilt the partitions. This isn't to say that I don't love FreeBSD ;). We run our main router on 2.0R beautifully (although its a slightly higher end machine) -- my system is a bottom end system we do installations on to see if software is reall as stable as it claims. Right now I have the binary installation on the disk, and the X installation, etc. I set up a ping process on the shell on ttyv4 during the installation to stop the ppp line from dropping, and set the timeout to an hour (assuming that would be enough.) When I got back, it had installed fine, but the system froze shortly afterwards when I tried to abort part of sysinstall. (pressing ctrl-c results in a reboot of sysinstall is locked, because answering no gets you stuck again waiting between dialogs, and yes reboots.) Sysinstall never installed my boot blocks, so I have to stick in a floppy, and at the floppies boot prompt, type in wd(1,a)/kernel. So I'm ppp'd right now, and happy, except that I can't boot the system without a floppy in the drive. I also found that no /dev/tty0? files were created for my comm ports, which left the Xconfig program confused, as it suggested /dev/tty00 as a possible mouse device, but there wasn't one (after linking random tty files to /dev/mouse, I eventually found /dev/ttyid0 for the mouse on com1.) Now I'm doing complaining, it's time for praise ;). The performance on my 386sx20 is dramatically better under 2.0.5R than 2.0R w/4 megs of ram. It swaps, but not as insanely as before ;). If the boot problem can be fixed easily (I just don't know the unix side commands to install a boot label/manager from freebsd) then I'll go ahead with my router installation (routes several ethernets -- pricingwise beats normal routers into the ground, since we don't do too much heavy stuff on our ethernets.) I assume a lot of the problems with sysinstall were RAM related -- I don't know what the processes were that died (all it reported on the debug screen was the process ids, not the names) -- they probably didn't do something they were meant to as a result, meaning some installation portions never occured. Boot assistance would be great -- I have a 230 meg FreeBSD slice on wd1 (a maxtor 540 drive) and a 130 meg dos slice on wd0 (130 meg maxtor drive) and a 270 meg and 40 meg slice on wd1 again. (eg., freebsd should boot off of wd(1,a)/kernel -- which it did one installation, only the sysinstall program never installed all of the binary installation that time ;). Thanks.. -- Robert Watson rwatson@sidwell.edu http://www.sidwell.edu/~rwatson/ The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice. Robert Watson rwatson@sidwell.edu http://www.sidwell.edu/~rwatson/ The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.SOL.3.91.950614203752.3747C-100000>