Date: Tue, 3 Sep 1996 18:16:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug White <dwhite@gdi.uoregon.edu> To: johnson@charming.nrtc.northrop.com Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: 2.1.5-RELEASE installation question Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.94.960903180829.223A-100000@gdi.uoregon.edu> In-Reply-To: <9609032105.AA20325@charming.nrtc.northrop.com>
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On Tue, 3 Sep 1996 johnson@charming.nrtc.northrop.com wrote: > I have been trying to install Free BSD 2.1.5-RELEASE, and have > encountered the problem described below. > > I did a minimal install from a DOS partition. The install claimed to > have completed successfully. > > Then, when I boot the machine, I get a rather lengthy list of devices, > IRQ's, etc., and finally the following message appears: > > panic: cannot mount root Hm. My guesses are as follows: 1) The kernel can't figure out just where the root directory is. This may be caused by the enhancer, as it's data area does not conincide with the BIOSs and thus FreeBSD can't identify any disks. 2) The wdc0 probe isn't finding any disks, period. Watch the boot messages for wd* devices and see if your disk & controller is found and identified. I have the feeling the SIIG card works similarly to the Promise series, minus the incompatibility problems. The only way to get a Promise to work is to disable the BIOS on that card. > Is there some canonical hardware solution that is known by the FreeBSD > community to work when upgrading an old 486 system to support large EIDE disk > drives? The best way appears to be the boot sector 'overlay' which is invisible to the BIOS and the system in general. The only caveat is that you cannot put anything in the boot sector (such as a boot manager). > Alternatively, is there some kernel configuration trick or other installation > technique that will work with my current configuration? (This would of course > be the preferred option.) Try typing this at the Boot: prompt: wd(0,a)/kernel If the disk in question is the second IDE disk, type wd(1,a)/kernel instead. I haven't seen this problem with IDE; usually it pops up on systems with both IDE and SCSI disks. Doug White | University of Oregon Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major
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