Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 07:56:31 -0800 (PST) From: Dirk Hans Krakaur Floranes <dkrakavr@ccr.dsi.uanl.mx> To: hackers@freebsd.org, bugs@freebsd.orgs, questions@freebsd.org Subject: SOS for a Freebsd instalation Message-ID: <199612161556.HAA13885@freefall.freebsd.org>
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ok, this is a bigone so readit if you have time... this is a (REAL) history of a friend of my called johny 5 and its obsesion whit a failed intent of installing freebsd 2.1.5. like 4 months ago jonhy and a freind called jimbo, tried to install freebsd 2.1.5 in the jimbo's "pentium-166-16-ram-1.6-gigabyte-windows-95-equiped" computer... they didnt have enougth money to bougth the cd so they downloded the system from one of the ftp of freebsd.org in brazil. they downloaded the boot4.flp fixit.flp and all the /bin subdirectory and for some reason the boot.flp didnt function so they used the boot4.flp and evrythings was going so far so good until they discover thath didnt have space for another partition.. they didn't know of the fips utility so after a week they get 23 diskettes & backup all in the backup was all the bin.?? files and some of the information that jimbo didnt want to loose... so they runed again the boot.flp that they already have rawrite in a disk.. the from the partitions utility in the novice window of the installation program they erased all of the dos partition and then settled 300 megabytes for a partition of freebsd... then they reiniciated formated the rest of the disk installed installed windows 95 filesystem only from a boot disk with the A:> sys c: command , and with A:>pkunzip -d freebsd.zip c: they restored the backup then they formated all the 20 diskettes whit the C:>format a: /u they was specialy carefull in that none of it had a bad cluster or something in this case they used another... all the diskettes was perfect and formated so they created the bin subdirectory in each one and copied in it the bin files. 5 bin in each one... exactly like the instalation.txt indicates evrything was going well and they was very (i mean very) ilusioneted, motivated, all this proccess took like five or 6 hours since the begging until then... then the bug came out... it was the worst thing that you could imagine. the most frustrating one. all the installation process was going well... the partition, the labeling / they read it all the menus so they worked well whit evrything in the media the chosee flopy disks set in the distribution the one marked as bin. and then it happen evrything was going well until the menu "please insert the flopy disk" they inserted the first diskette whit the A:\BIN\BIN.AA A:\BIN\BIN.AB A:\BIN\BIN.AC A:\BIN\BIN.AD A:\BIN\BIN.AE files in the drive and then hit the enter whit sweat int he face and the heart pumping. and a menu that says "Couldn't extract the following distributions this maybe becouse they were not available on the instalation media you have chosen" bin they were fully determined so they tried evrything from changing the directory of a:\bin to a:\dist & then to a:\dist\bin, a:\bin.aa, a:\freebsd\bin a:\freebsd i mean evrything then they tried installing from a msdos partition they created the C:\FREEBSD\BIN directory and then copied the bin files to it the same thing happen. the same awful menu. the worst was that the instalation program didnt find a kernel image to link so they have to boot from the flopies constantly after a few hours triying they give it up and tried whit the fixit flopie the floppie replied whit a # and they didn't know enougth unix to fixit.. after all they didn't have been root's never. so they give up heartbrokenly. that was 4 months ago... the last week jhony tried in his own computer the same thing... this time he had readit all of the install.txt and most of the freebsd online handbook in fact. so whit the fips utility he created another partion of 480 megabytes in the 1.6 Gb (IDE) of his pentium /133 24-ram computer and tried exactly the same thing. and exactly the same thing happened: he had downloaded the fips. the boot.flp, fixit.flp and bin.aa to bin.ee from ftp mirror #2 in a near computer that had internet conection, compressed put it back in home uncompresed and installed. the version was again the 2.1.5 & this time he had special careful in formating the diskkets from a ms-dos (6.22) based machine. (this time the boot.flp works well and the help files where available something that wasn't in the boot4.flp) and exactly the same thing happened... he tried again changing the ms-dos subdirectorys and installing from a ms-dos partition there where no diferrence. but this time johny 5 was fully determined. he find a old unix SVR5 reference manual put the fixit floppie inside and tried for over 12 continuos hours to learn enough unix to make the install proccess from the hostile # prompt. he tried mounting and umounting, making nfs to the hard disk, whit fsck, changing the path removing the floppie & trying of copy the kernel from the boot.. then mounting the ms-dos partition and coping the bin. files to a new bin directory in /dev/wd0s2 mounted as /mnt and then trying to uncompress it with restore & rrestore the with gunzip, whit zcat he look evrywhere for a command like the 'sys' of ms-dos so he dont have to boot from floppie some of this functioned... but none enougth to install the bin files or to link the kernel in the hard disk he become obsesionated whit it and since then he is still trying but now had become pale and thin. he didnt ate or drink nothing or almost nothing, if some one speaks to him he didn't answer or says something about 'the kernel' im worried about im and his live so i decided to write this letter to those fellows in freebsd.org that surely could help. what should johny do where was the mistake? in compressing the files at the beggining? should he downloaded it again and try it all? its a bug in the installation program? should the bin files go in another subdirectory? i mean it was in a:\bin should it be in a:\dist? or something its a bug in the instalation program? are somewhere a procedure to install the kernel and the all the system in the hard disk trougth the fixit # prompt ? and finally... to install freebsd, what should he done?
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