Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 14:36:08 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: "Michael R. Wayne" <wayne@msen.com> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Install problems with FreeBSD 2.2.7-RELEASE Message-ID: <19980728143608.A716@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <m0z11qV-0003cUC@ilium.troy.msen.com>; from Michael R. Wayne on Tue, Jul 28, 1998 at 12:58:42AM -0400 References: <m0z11qV-0003cUC@ilium.troy.msen.com>
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On Tuesday, 28 July 1998 at 0:58:42 -0400, Michael R. Wayne wrote: > >> ----------> >> (-questions readded to the list. This could interest other people >> too). >> >> On Tuesday, 28 July 1998 at 0:01:28 -0400, Michael R. Wayne wrote: >>> >>>> Moved to -questions. I see nothing in this message that suggests it's >>>> a detailed technical discussion. >>>> >>>> On Saturday, 25 July 1998 at 5:18:40 -0400, wayne@msen.com wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Trying to from-scratch via-ftp install 2.2.7 and seeing an odd >>>>> problem. Most of the way through the process an error occurs. The >>>>> screen says something like "if this is repeatable send mail". While >>>>> it's repeatable (takes about 40 minutes to get there so we only did it >>>>> 3 times), instead of pausing at this point, the machine reboots so fas >>> t >>>>> after printing this that the message is not easily read. >>>> >>>> OK, it's something like "if this is repeatable send mail". What's it >>>> exactly like? Under what circumstances does it happen? >>> >>> Problem: It takes 40 minutes to get to this point, then a message is >>> on the screen for about a second. NOT easy to give precise diagnosis. >> >> Ugh. All the more reason to describe it as well as you can. >> >>> I felt it was a TECHNICAL problem because any error message like that >>> should HALT the install process, not cause the machine to reboot giving >>> no indication that there was a problem. >> >> Agreed. If you're implying that that's a reason to send it to >> -hackers, though, I disagree. -hackers is less about bugs than about >> (actively) improving the system by way of code modification. Check >> out http://www.lemis.com/questions.html and let me know if there's >> anything that could be improved there. >> ----------> > > Well, you asked :-) > Part of the problem is that there are SO MANY mailing lists for > FreeBSD. I found a page that had a one screen summary of every list > and it said that -hackers was "technical questions" so that's where > this went. Once one gets into the >2,000 email messages a day > category, one tends to look for very TERSE summations. your HowTo > is fairly detailed and long, Well, the details are needed sometimes, unfortunately. At least you only need to read them once. > as well as not being linked to from the freebsd home page. Yes, I suppose we should do something about that. >> ----------> >> >>> I ran it again and the same thing happened, again I was unable to get >>> much more off the screen. Repeated, I >think< it happened but I missed >>> it (at least the machine rebooted). Repeated again, that time it went >>> OK (although I saw something about DEBUG on the screen). >> >> You could at least describe what you did and at what point this >> happened. What you've said so far could be summarized as "there's a >> bug". We need a little bit more in order to fix it. >> ----------> > > First of all, there appears to be messages going to /dev/console in black > and white behind the pretty screens. This is where the message in question > shows up. If someone points me to the source of this stuff, I can likely > see the same error message and give some good guesses as to where it happens. > This is also where the message about "DEBUG" showed up when everything went OK. > I'm familiar w/ Unix but not with the specific install procedures used with > FreeBSD. There is in fact a description of this somewhere when you start the installation, but it's not easy to find. Alt-F2 will show you what's really going on, and once the commit phase has started, you'll get a shell to play with under Alt-F4. > Part of why this is so vague is that the first time it happened, I assumed I > screwed up (I generally start with the user for errors). When I dediced that > I had to go through and do a step-by-step with detailed notes is when the darn > thing worked. > > What I did: > quick install of kernel sources + binaries and ports. > I >think< install got to ports. > It is possible that there was one directory or file with permission problems. OK. Let's hope that you can get some better information now you know what to watch. > I continue to maintain that whatever is writing to the console should halt the > installation process if it detects an error, not permit a reboot. As before, agreed. But if we can't find out where it's happening, it's difficult to fix it. Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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