Date: Mon, 8 Jan 1996 10:17:15 -0800 (PST) From: Doug White <dwhite@riley-net170-164.uoregon.edu> To: "barry (b.l.) friedman" <friedman@bnr.ca> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: New Install / Observations & Gripes Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960108100908.1609D-100000@gdi.uoregon.edu> In-Reply-To: <9601080706.AA00136@nmerh209>
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On Mon, 8 Jan 1996, barry (b.l.) friedman wrote: > First of all my cdrom is on a soundblaster which had it's port address > set to 0x340 which defaulted to mcd1 instead of mcd0. So my first reaction > to the install procedure which was "WOW - this is a SYSTEM!" (After > struggling with the InfoMagic linux maze) was quickly nipped when the > install informed me that I didn't have a CD-ROM on my system. Dings everyone. The instructions really should say to boot -c the first time through to make sure all the devices are in order, inevitably you have a device, and FreeBSD thinks it's somewhere else. > The next problem was that I wanted to install on a second hard-drive > without messing up a running dos/win3.1 system already installed on > the first drive. Should be able to do this no problem. I have a dos/os/2 system on a 1gb ad put fbsd on a 540mb second ide. > After sorting the cdrom port address out and going through the first install > I chose not to install a boot manager and assumed that the boot track would > not be disturbed. I received a rude shock when my machine would no longer > boot anything -- in fact it displayed a frightening message in double height > letters to the effect that my CMOS was destroyed or something. > > I had to re-install dos to fix this (I didn't know about the fdisk /mbr > undocumented boot track restorer at this point) that's unfortunate. It's a really helpful option :-) Let's cut to the chase here... > 1) What the heck is the second cd-rom (live filesystem) supposed to be > used for. (Couldn't find anything on that at all, neither in the > little guide or in the docs.) I wish I knew too :-) -- I think it's for reference purposes. (Someone help me here) > 2) How do I mount a DOS disk if this is possible? The mount_msdos man page > informs that it doesn't work with post dos 3.3 filesystems and in > any case it didn't like any of the /dev files I tried. The FAQ only refers > to DOS extended partitions, what about a DOS-only disk. The man page is correct. mount_msdos is pretty old and doesn't correctly support dos partitions made after 3.3. you can open them read only OK, but don't try to open them in write mode or you'll corrupt it. Also, mount_msdos only supports primary partitions. > 3) How can I get the boot floppy to automatically boot my wd1(1,a)/kernel > without having to type it in every time? (I'm still not brave enough, nor > do I see how to install the boot manager without re-doing the entire install.) You have to rebuild the boot disk. You don't want to do that. The boot manager, in my experience, won't work on a second disk. SO, I would recommend pulling the `os-bs' utility from the tools/dos directory off the CD and installing that. OS-BS is a fancy boot manager that will support the second disk OK. > 4) I hesitate to mention this but I haven't had any luck getting X11 > running yet. I have an ATI SVGAWONDER-XL card and a mumble bus mouse which > doesn't get recognized although the probe finds it even though it appears > at a non standard place. Worse luck is that I don't have any docs on the > SAMTRON monitor I've got and not a clue to the vert refresh rates -- Oh, well. > X comes up in B/W with the pointer frozen in the lower right of the the screen. > Maybe a pointer to the XF86 docs would be in order? /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/doc Have you run the xf86config script to build a nice /etc/XF86Config? > As a footnote to the above, I must add that I am really quite pleased with > the flexibility of the boot disk device re-assignment capabilities since the > reason I gave up on linux in the first place was that it would not recognize > my ethernet card (NE2000) by autoprobing and I was told that I would have > to re-build the kernel and hard code the card address to get it to work. I can't believe that. :-) The new visual utility in the install kernel is fantastic. They've done an excellent job in the boot-time configuration department. Hope this helps. Doug White | University of Oregon Internet: dwhite@gladstone.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major
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