Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 17:45:34 +0100 (BST) From: Nik Clayton <Nik.Clayton@brunel.ac.uk> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Problems with 2.0.5 950622 SNAP Message-ID: <4626.9507011645@mishmash.brunel.ac.uk>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
How do, My soon to be FreeBSD box is as follows: 100Mhz Pentium, 16Mb RAM, 1Gb SCSI HD (Adaptec AHA-2940 card, it's PCI). The disk is currently partitioned with the first 150Mb for DOS, and the rest (hopefully) for FreeBSD. There are no other disk controllers in the machine. Under DOS it all works fine. I've created c:\freebsd, and put the \bin and \floppies directories in there (in seperate directories, obviously). However, there are problems with FreeBSD. SYMPTOMS My boot floppy works fine. I can partition and label the disk, select the distribution I want to load and specify the distribution media no problem. However, when I commit the installation, one of two things can happen. 1. The machine almost immediately reboots. If I then go back to the partition/labeller, I see my partitions and labels are still intact, but the mountpoints have disappeared. If I re-allocate the mountpoints and re-commit then... 2. It starts unpacking the distribution. However, (with debugging messages turned on) we get to piece 31 of the 59 or so binary distribution bundles and then abort with the message that /mnt/usr is full. A quick "df -k" over on Alt-F4 (the 'holographic' shell(!)) shows that /mnt/usr is 104% full, consisting of 20,000 1K disk blocks. This despite allocating over 700Mb to /usr in the label. At this point the installation falls over. BIOS Anticipating that this might be causing problems, I've investigated the options. At the moment, the BIOS is configured for a SCSI disk, (although these problems remain if I tell the machine's BIOS that there is no disk attached (and hence no geometry), and let the controller BIOS handle it) and the controller has Host Adapter BIOS turned *ON*. If I turn this option off then the BIOS refuses to see the disk at boot time. Since this is my only boot disk it's kinda critical to have it on... ... however, I have turned "Extended BIOS translation for DOS Drives > 1GB" off. As far as I know, this should remove any problems, particularly since the DOS partition is completely below the 1Gb limit. When I get to the partition screen, I'm told that my BIOS geometry is 1010 cyls, 64 heads and 32 sectors. Quoting from the FreeBSD handbook (http://freefall.cdrom.com/How/handbook/handbook-62.html) I see that "As you might already know, the FreeBSD kernel reports the geometry of SCSI disks when booting." I wish it did. On booting my system I just get told that it's a 1010Mb drive with 512byte sectors (I think). Nothing that looks vaguely like a BIOS geometry is reported. KERNEL I'd love to include a dmesg output from bootup, but the system is unable to link the kernel into the correct place, so the chrooted holographic shell can't pick it up. I'm not booting the kernel with any -c parameters to disable devices (although, after reading the mailing list archives I've tried disabling lpt0, ie0, mcd0, mcd1 and wt0, which had no effect). THINGS I'VE TRIED Just about every BIOS setting I can think of (it's an AMI BIOS BTW). I've turned drive translation on and off. I've told the controller not to enable the host adapter BIOS (which then means it can't boot). I've alternately told the BIOS that there's a SCSI drive attached and that there's no drive attached. All to no avail. I've tried labelling partitions of different sizes (and different numbers of partitions). Net result: 0. I even tried booting from a 2.0R boot floppy I've got lying around. No joy. I'm off to play Descent for an hour or so to get my brain away from this problem (total time spent battling so far, 6 hours). If any of you out there have got any clue how to fix, please, please enlighten me. N PS: Other than this small problem, I really like the look of the new install process. =-[Opinion, n: See the above text for an example]=-=[Kibo #: e]-[RYRYRY]=-= =-[The Silly Sod Society: To perfect and to swerve]=-[beable]-=[TP U BG]=-= There's no future in time travel.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?4626.9507011645>