From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Sep 11 02:16:57 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id CAA09213 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 02:16:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from freebie.lemis.com (gregl1.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.136.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id CAA09203 for ; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 02:16:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from grog@localhost) by freebie.lemis.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) id SAA08944; Thu, 11 Sep 1997 18:46:40 +0930 (CST) Message-ID: <19970911184639.57405@lemis.com> Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 18:46:39 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: rfg@monkeys.com Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Bummer... Trying to install WITHOUT DOS References: <6288.873966789@monkeys.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.81e In-Reply-To: <6288.873966789@monkeys.com>; from Ronald F. Guilmette on Thu, Sep 11, 1997 at 01:33:09AM -0700 Organisation: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8250 Fax: +61-8-8388-8250 Mobile: +61-41-739-7062 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog Fight-Spam-Now: http://www.cauce.org Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Thu, Sep 11, 1997 at 01:33:09AM -0700, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > > Greetings, > > I just got the FreeBSD 2.2.2 VCD ROM from Walnut Creek and made the > requsite boot floppy from it, as directed. > > The boot floppy boots up to the Boot: brompt OK, but then after about > 5 seconds it takes off running and just generates a long stream of > repeating device errors of some sort. Of what sort? At this point you should be getting a twirling baton. > Needless to say, I am not pleased. I can understand that. > I'm trying to do this whole install without the benefit of any > of that crud from Redmond in touching my system, but so far I seem > to be failing pretty badly. It works better without the crud. Believe me. > So please gimme the clue I need to get rolling. > > Obviously, the boot prompt wants me to type in some special incantation > which will cause the rest of the boot process to proceed to suck a kernel > off of the CD-ROM (and yes... I _do_ have that loaded into the drive) > but I have no idea what the exact response is that I need to give to > the boot prompt to make this happen. At some point, that's true. It will give you a full-screen menu which should be pretty unambiguous. You don't seem to be getting that far. I think you have a defective floppy, but without the message it's difficult to say. > Please tell me that you are NOT going to force me to format this drive > under (yeccch) DOS and then load FreeBSD into that just to get FreeBSD > installed!!! No, I won't tell you that. > I believe that there's just GOT to be another way to skin this cat. Just > please tell me how. Report the error message. If it's telling you that it can't your floppy, throw it away and start again. Booting FreeBSD is pretty much like booting SunOS 3 or 4. You should see familiar-looking device probes and all that good stuff. It looks as if you're not getting that far. Greg