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Date: Wed, 21 May 1997 09:23:15 +0300
From: Nadav Eiron <nadav@barcode.co.il>
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To: Guy Avraham <guya@netvision.net.il>
CC: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: problems.
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Guy Avraham wrote:
> 
> hello
> 
> i had been trying to install the freebsd 2.1.0
> 
> and i an facing some annoying fenomina.
> 
> i chose the novice installation, followed all the help guieds and finally
> 
> got 'you have successfu......press <enter> to reboot'
> 
> i thought it was the end of the installation, but when rebooting
> 
> the kernel loads up and i get a msg. saing "panic: canot mount root .!"
> 
> "system will reboot in ..."
> 
> well i tryd repartitioning the disk and reinstalling from scratch...but
> 
> got the same old msg. again.
> 
> well .... what should i do ?? i am almost ready to give up and install
> 
> red-hat linux...
> 
> my machine is :
> 
> 1. intel p-100-s.
> 
> 2. tryton III mother-board.
> 
> 3. 16 MB of EDO ram memory.
> 
> 4. SCSI (IDE based) supported cd-r.
> 
> 5. HDD :
> 
>         1. 850 IDE primary master.
> 
>         2. 120 IDE primary slave.
> 
>         3. 730 IDE secondary master.
> 
> the HDD with i am tring to install upon is a 730 MB in size and it is all
> 
> dedicated to the FreeBSD system. (does not have any DOS partition).
> 
> if you need any more setales pls. let me know and i will be more that
> 
> happy to give it to you.
> 
> pls. tell me what to do, since i had waisted a full night and a lot of
> 
> internet hours searching the FAQ with no success.
> 
> thanks a lot.
> 
> Madg.
2.1.0 is ancient, and I think this trick won't work on it. Had you
installed 2.1.5 or later the solution would have been to give
1:wd(2,a)/kernel

at the Boot: prompt. You can try this, but I think it won't work on
2.1.0. The best thing would be (IMHO) to install a newer version. If
that's impossible, reinstall and put the root partition (which can be
pretty small - ~30MB is more than enough) on the first hard disk.

Nadav