Date: Sat, 4 Sep 1999 16:12:03 -0500 From: Stephen Pitts <smpitts@midsouth.rr.com> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Install problems..root partition seems dead Message-ID: <19990904211203.29303.qmail@orwell.midsouth.rr.com>
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Hi! I'm a Linux user who decided to try out FreeBSD. I used the install floppies for 3.2-STABLE to install over FTP, and after a bit of trouble getting the system to boot (my root FreeBSD partition is on the secondary master..that seems to be a common issue), I got the system up and running. With help from FreeBSDZine, I rebuilt XFree86 3.3.3.1 with nVidia's patches and played with OpenGL and some of the xlockmore demos. Looking in the handbook, I used cvsup to grab a current ports tree and build some software. This is _really_ cool :-) The only problem I had was WRT the syntax for the 'ldconfig' command (in Linux..ldconfig <dirname> rescans the directory, I figured out _real_ fast that in FreeBSD that erases the ld.so cache and puts only that directory in the cache!) I had given 3 GB to FreeBSD (used the default configuration because I wasn't sure about disk space requirements; now I'm glad because I needed > 512 MB in /usr/ports to build stuff!), and I tried to install Debian today. I screwed up in the install program and mapped /usr to a partition drive and /var to a 512 MB partition. After crapping out in the middle of the setup program, I deleted all partitions with Partition Magic and tried to get back into FreeBSD. The boot loader just beeped when I pressed F5, then F1 to get into FreeBSD. I reinstalled it with the install program (using Custom..then pressing W while in fdisk) and now it says "no ufs" when I try to boot. As a last resort, I tried to use the fixit disk. Booting from the setup program, I hit 'Fixit' and got a shell from the Fixit disk, but I couldn't find any binaries! Is that normal? Where is ls and its fileutils friends? What about mount, fsck, et. al? I pretended to Upgrade to see if it could mount my filesystems. Switching to the second vt, I saw the message: ** /dev/rwd2s1a BAD SUPER BLOCK: MAGIC NUMBER WRONG /dev/rw2s1a: INCOMPLETE LABEL: type 4.2BSD fsize 0, frag 0, cpg 0, size 81920 Ahh, so the superblock is dead! But, how do I tell the mount program to use an alternate superblock? Don't I have one every 8192 inodes (correct term?) or so? I've spent around 24 hours playing with my new FreeBSD system, and I don't want to have to reinstall from scratch. Is there any way I can fix my root partition? On another note, will I have any problems using this partition system for FreeBSD if I do have to reinstall? / - 64 MB /var - 128 MB /usr - 768 MB swap - 256 MB /home-backup - 1 GB (/home is over NFS) /usr/local - all else (any better way to split this up?) Here's my drive layout (all IDE): Primary Master: 6 GB - FAT32 Primary Slave: HP 8100i - CDRW Secondary Master: 6 GB slice 1 (3GB) / - 40 MB UFS /var - 20 MB UFS swap - 262 MB /usr - 2.7 GB UFS linux ext2 - 64 MB (during Linux install) linux ext2 - 128 MB (during Linux install) DOS-style Extended partition (during Linux install) linux ext2 - 512 MB linux ext2 - 1024 MB linux ext2 - 1700ish MB -- Stephen Pitts smpitts@midsouth.rr.com webmaster - http://www.mschess.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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