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Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 22:26:41 -0400
From: Gary Chrysler <tcg@ime.net>
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Organization: The Computer Guy
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To: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
CC: Nathan Denny <SCHCATS@siu.edu>, questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Disk geometry problems.
References: <199608210001.JAA07495@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
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Michael Smith wrote:
> 
> Firstly, _please_ don't spam the lists with installation questions.
> 
> Nathan Denny stands accused of saying:
> >
> > I tried a floppy and DOS partition installation of FreeBSD 2.1.0-RELEASE and
> > 2.1.5-RELEASE to each of a 386-40 w/2 IDE 115MB disks, a 486DLC-40 w/1 850MB IDE
> > disk, and a Pentium-100 w/1 1.2GB IDE disk.
> >
> > Each time, I got the warning Calculated sectors percyclinder (xxxx) does not
> > agree ... or something and the installation crashed with a written -1 of 512
> > bytes, invalid gzip, etc.
> 
> The 'calculated sectors...' message is harmless and can be ignored.
> 
> The 'invalid gzip etc.' message on the other hand, means that your
> distribution is corrupted.  That's all there is to it.
> 
> > It is not the data or the media.  I've tried two versions,
> > downloaded 10 times, from 3 sites, so at least one of those
> > installations should have worked.
> 
> It _is_ the data, or the means that you are using to get it onto the
> target system.  Without knowing what that is, or which 3 sites you have
> installed from, nobody can help you.
> 
> > It seems to me that the installation program reads the data, and
> > caches it in core memory.  When the buffer is full it flushes it to
> > the disk.  However, since the calculated geometry is wrong, it tries
> > to write it to some unknown destination and thppt...crash!
> 
> You are guessing, and you are wrong.  Don't.
> 
> > How does FreeBSD get such a wild geometry?  It seems to detect the
> > correct geometry at boot and partition parts, but when it creates
> > the file system it's 100%+ wrong.
> 
> The geometry used for the filesystem is a fiction designed to defeat
> some of the old optimisations built into the filesystem design back
> when the old RA81 was a hot piece of disk hardware and it was worth
> the system's time caring about the geometry.  It has nothing to do
> with your mundane data corruption problem.
> 
> > Nate.

Sorry for popin in on the tail here, Geuss I missed the original.

But are the files being ftp'd in binary??

Yup, I trimmed the CC:

-Enjoy
Gary
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