Date: Sun, 12 Jan 2003 23:34:06 +0000 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Newbie needs help with installation tasks. Message-ID: <20030112233406.GA2155@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi> In-Reply-To: <F40V54Ogddu5qE8DzHx00005f65@hotmail.com> References: <F40V54Ogddu5qE8DzHx00005f65@hotmail.com>
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On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 11:19:35PM +0000, Steve Gladstone wrote:
> I formatted two floppy disks and used the /tools/fdimage utility on the
> CD-R disk to copy /floppies/kern.flp and /floppies/mfsroot.flp to the
> floppy disks.
>
> I rebooted again with the new partition marked as active after selecting
> the floppy drive as the first boot device in the BIOS settings.
>
> I got the FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader message as expected but instead of
> being prompted to insert the mfsroot disk I got the following messages...
>
> /kernel text=0x2833b1 zf_read: unexpected EOF
> zf_read: unexpected EOF
>
> elf_loadexec: archsw.readin failed.
> can't load module '/kernel'; input/output error.
This looks to me like a problem with one of the floppy disks you made.
Try again with a fresh floppy. From experience, I've found that
there's quite a high failure rate on floppy disks used in this way ---
a single bad sector on the disk will make it useless for booting a
kernel from.
If you've got a FreeBSD machine available, running fdformat(1) on the
floppy and making sure that it formats without error will generally
confirm that the floppy is usable. Plus reformatting the disk seems
to improve you chances of success when you copy one of the download
disk images onto it.
Cheers,
Matthew
--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks
Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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