From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Jun 10 11:37:17 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA01254 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 10 Jun 1996 11:37:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gde.GDEsystems.COM (gde.GDEsystems.COM [134.120.3.4]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id LAA01243; Mon, 10 Jun 1996 11:37:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from sparkstp@localhost) by gde.GDEsystems.COM (8.6.10/8.6.9) id LAA26086; Mon, 10 Jun 1996 11:36:17 -0700 From: "Timothy P. Sparks" Message-Id: <199606101836.LAA26086@gde.GDEsystems.COM> Subject: The Next Level..... To: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 11:36:16 -0700 (PDT) Cc: rsnow@lgc.com, gpalmer@freebsd.org, questions@freebsd.org X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL22] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Doug, Rob, Gary, et al, I'm writing in regards to the problems I was having with getting the boot floppy to recognize the built-in PCI EIDE controller. I tried booting the system with the "-c" option and using the the visual interface I deleted everything but the floppy drive, ide drive and system console. I physically removed the ethernet adapter just to minimize the possibilities. Still no go. I didn't spend the time to format the 1.6G drive for DOS because I was confident it would work. I chose a different path....costly, but effective. Saturday I went out and purchased an Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller and an HP 2.1G SCSI hard drive. Once again, I booted using the "-c" option and using the visual interface, eliminated everything but the adaptec controller, floppy drive, network card, lpt0 and system console. Lo and behold, the system booted up and even recognized all installed components....no conflicts. I actually began to regain some optimism. I went through the "novice" configuration, allocated the entire drive(2.1G) to the system and toggled the flag for boot(selection S) and took the default system labelsand sizes for for /, swap, /var and the balance allocated to /usr. Next the install program asked which apps I wanted to install. I selected the full install(700M) and finally it asked what my installation medium was(Floppy). Of course, then came the required "Do you really want to do this?" messages and I answered yes. The system proceeded to go out and do what ever it does and then prompted me to insert the "root.flp" disk. I did and it continued doing it's thing. Next it prompted me to insert the first install disk. In my case, that disk contains /bin.aa - /bin.af plus checksums. Note: These disks were created using a DOS based machine. The file checksums was reduced to "checksum" since DOS has an 8 character filename constraint. What happend next still defies comprehension. I inserted the first load disk, /bin.aa etc and pressed the enter key. It started to read the disk and about that time, I accidently hit a key on the keyboard and the system gave a "PANIC" message crashed and rebooted. The keyboard that I got with this system has a few keys that have "MS-Windows" symbols on them and that is one of the keys that I hit. Perhaps this is only a coincidence. I don't know. Ever since then, though, I can't get the boot disk to get beyond the "newfs" part of the program. It gives a write error which is covered by a graphical window message the says "error mounting /mnt/dev/sd0s1e on /mnt/var". The system then once again proceeds to give a PANIC message and reboots. I've tried low level reformatting the hard drive and using a different boot floppy. The results are the same. I did find the extended error messages by pressing alt-F2 and managed to retrieve the info "Panic: Page Fault 12" and noticed the other error messages being displayed with hex codes etc. The systems reboots before I can copy anything down. Is there anything specific I need to retrieve from this that will be of use in determining the problem? Is there any way to over-ride the reboot process so I can get the info? On a different, forward looking note, I downloaded via FTP, the files bin/bin.aa - bin/bin.cp, checksums and install.sh. Does install.sh need to be on the first disk with checksums? Will the fact that checksums was truncated to checksum cause problems? Do those files in the bin directory contain the entire load or is that the basic installation? If so, what other files do I need to get the full install? None of the readme files that I've found so far document this. Finally, do any of you know of anyone local to the San Diego area that I may be able to contact for assistance as well? As I said in a previous email, in the past, I've only been a "user" of UNIX, with some crude sys admin experience. There is much about the low level features I haven't been exposed to.....until now. As always, your assistance is appreciated. R/ Tim Sparks -- =========================================================================== Tim Sparks * Logical And Uncle Sam sparkstp@gdesystems.com * Intelligent doesn't want to hear * Efficient about any LIES!!!! * Supportable ===========================================================================