From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jan 23 9:32:58 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail.utexas.edu (wb2-a.mail.utexas.edu [128.83.126.136]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 7D4B437B401 for ; Tue, 23 Jan 2001 09:32:36 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 8898 invoked by uid 0); 23 Jan 2001 17:32:35 -0000 Received: from chepe.cc.utexas.edu (HELO chepe.mail.utexas.edu) (128.83.135.25) by umbs-smtp-2 with SMTP; 23 Jan 2001 17:32:35 -0000 Message-Id: <4.3.2.7.2.20010123112121.00b535c0@mail.utexas.edu> X-Sender: oscars@mail.utexas.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 4.3.2 Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 11:31:27 -0600 To: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org From: Oscar Ricardo Silva Subject: Installation of FreeBSD fails on machine with large disks Cc: questions@freebsd.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I have a PC with the following configuration: Pentium III 650MHz 256MB RAM 3COM 3C905C-TX 3 hard drives: Primary master: IBM DPTA-373420 Primary slave: IBM DPTA-373420 Secondary master: IBM DPTA-373420 Secondary slave: ATAPI CD-ROM The drives are all 32GB and all on the ATA-33 bus. I have tried installing FreeBSD 4.1 and 4.2 but each time, when the machine boots after the install, I get a prompt: No /boot/loader >>FreeBSD/i386 BOOT Default: 0:ad(0,a)/kernel boot: No /kernel >>FreeBSD/i386 BOOT Default: 0:ad(0,a)/kernel boot: I've tried changing the drive modes in the BIOS, using NORMAL, LBA and LARGE, reinstalling the OS after each change. The result is still the same. I've also tried the STANDARD install and the CUSTOM installation, even taking the defaults for the slice sizes some of the times. Still the same thing. I tried the default slice sizes so that the "/" slice would be at the beginning of the drive, hopefully within 1024 cylinders. From what I understand though, FreeBSD 4.2 doesn't have this limitation and can be installed anywhere on the drive. I can't see why there should be a problem installing on such a system with these types of drives. I haven't had any problems installing FreeBSD on systems with 9GB SCSI drives or 13.6GB IDE drives. Any information would be appreciated. I would like to stay with FreeBSD and changing the hardware in the system is not an option. I've looked through the Handbook, The Complete FreeBSD and the mailing list archives. There are some similar messages but nothing that points me to getting this fixed. I've tried some of the suggestions and have installed the system over 7 times, all with the same result. Booting off of CD2 with the live filesystem, I see that the OS files are on the drive and I see that there is indeed a /boot/loader but I always get the same message as above. Thanks, Oscar To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message