Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 03:20:49 -0800 From: Vagabond Jim <jim@vagabondage.com> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: installation failure: Message-ID: <34E42C1D.1B24@vagabondage.com>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
I have unsuccessfully tried to get FreeBSD 2.2.5 RELEASE up and running on my machine. I've searched the mailing list archives and while I've discovered many people have had similar problems, none of the solutions listed there have worked for me. if anyone has any idea where I should go from where I am I would be exceptionally grateful. THE HARDWARE ----------------------------------------- Cyrix 6x86 PR200 Maxtor 84320D3 4.3 gig IDE drive Takaya ATAPI IDE CD-ROM Award Modular BIOS version 4.51PR WHAT I"M TRYING TO DO ----------------------------------------- I boot using a floppy and try to install from CD-ROM. I get to the sysinstall screens with no problem. This machine is intended to be a standalone server running only FreeBSD, so in the Partition Editor, I select "Use Entire Disk". I have also tried leaving a DOS partition in, as that was what worked for some other people. in the Disk Label editor, I have tried setting this up the way I want to: / 50M swap 128M /usr 600M /var 300M /tmp 50M /home 2992M I've also tried going with the Auto Defaults setting. I then either custom configure my install, or usr the Developer package, including DES and ports. THE PROBLEM ----------------------------------------- Regardless of anything I do, the install hangs without any error messages on screen 2 with everyone's favorite cryptic error message: Write failure on transfer! (wrote -1 bytes of 1024 bytes) It does this at complete random everytime. CLUES ----------------------------------------- The only thing I get that even vaguely resembles an error message is Warning: 3006 sectors in last cylinder unallocated I have no idea how to interpret this, or what to do about it. At one point I thought I had found the problem. in my low level formatter, (which I've used several times to put the drive in factory condition) I had it format the drive with LBA mode off instead of on. Unfortunately, this didn't solve the problem. In the BIOS, the drive is configured: cyl head sector size 8930 15 63 4320 this set itself up automatically, and is consistent with the drive's documentation. FreeBSD takes that geometry and calculates 8438850 total sectors. however, when choose to use the entire disk, FreeBSD changes the equation: cyl head sector 525 255 63 and calculates 8434125 total sectors. I've run it both ways and it has hung both times. Is there something I'm overlooking? Can any of you take these clues and solve the mystery? any ideas are greatly appreciated. thank you in advance for your time. - J. PS: I haven't yet subscribed to the list so please cc the email address above on any replies. thanks again! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?34E42C1D.1B24>