Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 11:12:32 +1030 From: Brian Astill <bastill@sa.apana.org.au> To: "newbies" <freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: install from floppy Message-ID: <0102261151010E.00803@PhD_1.testname.com.au>
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If you have a CD-absent laptop and want to install from floppy disk (eg using Doug Young's super "Pedantic FreeBSD" guide - DON'T! Doug's guide is excellent, but the person who wrote the floppy installation routine is another matter. That clown should have been subject to God's error handling and never been born. Why do I say this? Installing from floppy is no small matter. You are looking at re-formatting 25 DOS disks, then preparing them for use (which also involves copying six files at a time to each of 23 disks), then using the first two to boot to the FreeBSD sysinstall and the remaining 23 to copy six files at a time onto your new system. I found that it took roughly 10 minutes per disk to do that final copying. Overall time you should allow - five hours! I got almost to the end of this process but disk 21 of the 23 had some fault and sysinstall could not read one of the files on that disk. "Would I like to try again" said the error message. Of course I would - so the $##@*&% idiot system started again - from disk 1. "Thanks", I said (among other things). Obviously noone would want to go through the four-hour process of inserting 23 disks at 10-minute intervals, knowing that the slightest error at any point would result in a compulsory re-start. Even a newbie knows that the error handling routine should (a) preferably produce a more specific message (eg "cannot read file bin.eu" would be helpful) and (b) allow recovery from the point of the error (eg "please correct this disk and reinsert when ready"). So, like I said, if you want to install from floppy disks - DON'T. Of course, if you can get hold of the source and can insert a SENSIBLE error-handling routine, that would be NICE! I am going to have a go at installing using PLIP. Will let you know how that goes. -- Regards, Brian ******************************************************** Dr Brian Astill Visiting Research Fellow Flinders University Institute of International Education Bus 8201 3480 FAX 8449 9199 bastill@sa.apana.org.au ******************************************************** To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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