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Date:      Mon, 20 Jan 97 19:06:44 +0800
From:      dragon@illusions.com
To:        bugs@freebsd.org
Subject:   BIG BUG installing to notebook
Message-ID:  <9701210218.AA0482@dragon.ns.dx.net.ns.dx.net>

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Okay boys, here's the problem.  Never in my life have I been so frustrated trying to install 
and OS on any machine.  OS/2 no problem, Windows great, Solaris easy, FreeBSD WHAT A FRIGGIN 
JOKE!!!  Your release 2.1.5 states and I quote from your own file install.txt from the root of 
the CD-ROM

"After you've formatted the floppies for DOS or UFS, you'll need to
copy the files onto them.  The distribution files are split into
chunks conveniently sized so that 5 of them will fit on a conventional
1.44MB floppy.  Go through all your floppies, packing as many files as
will fit on each one, until you've got all the distributions you want
packed up in this fashion.  Each distribution should go into its own
subdirectory on the floppy, e.g.: a:\bin\bin.aa, a:\bin\bin.ab, ...

Once you come to the Media screen of the install, select "Floppy" and
you'll be prompted for the rest."

NOT.  Oh it prompts alright, "unable to extract bin", what a good message that is.  I have also 
tried the following:

A:\dists\bin
A:\freebsd\bin
A:\
A:\bin

all to no good purpose.  At least Linux had a "make floppy" command, and it will install on the 
same notebook that I am trying to get yours onto.

Now, I am a full time UNIX administrator working on Sun SPARC and x86 Solaris.  I have been 
doing this for a long time, and I have installed UNIX on systems that it was not even suppose 
to run on, and yet I have never had these kinds of problems.  Either the documentation is 
wrong, or the install program does not like floppies, and since that is all I have on this 
notebook, that's all I can use.

The notebook is a Compaq LTE Lite 4/25 with a 130 MB hard drive and 12MB of ram.  No it is not 
color and no I will not be installing any graphics programs on it.  This is a development and 
e-mail box.  I wanted to use FreeBSD because of the similarity to Solaris in many respects, 
however, that does not seem possible now.

If you have a solution to this problem, I would love to hear it, and even give it a try.  Who 
knows, there might even be a page missing from my install.txt file.  All I know is, IT DON'T 
WORK LIKE IT SAYS IT WILL!!!  Your help is appreciated.


______________________________________________________
Karl E. Taylor

UNIX Systems Administrator

Desert Dragon SOHO Solutions

dragon@illusions.com
______________________________________________________
"If it does not say UNIX on it,,, then it is a toy!!!"



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