Date: Fri, 02 Aug 1996 14:20:54 +1000 From: Dennis Perry <drp@mds.rmit.edu.au> To: questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: A dud CDROM copy or Drive Geometry problems? Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.19960802042054.006b7ba8@mailserver.citri.edu.au>
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I have been trying for several days to install FreeBSD 2.1 from the Walnut Creek January 1996 DCROM distribution. I have copied the files from the CD to a DOS partition (C:\FREEBSD) as per the manual (Installing and Running FreeBSD by Greg Lehey p39). I have also RTFM and I'm starting from scratch, so there is no data to worry about. As you can see I want to run DOS on one partition and FreeBSD on the other. I have a 1 Gb drive, and I've also followed instructions in the manual for partitioning a large EIDE drive (p27) and a Shared OS Installation (p61) I'm not sure whether I've got a hardware problem, or a problems with the distribution. The hardware setup may be the heart of the problem: specifically the hard disk and controller. So I'll quickly describe it the hardware: IT486SMV motherboard (with 2 VL-Bus slots) with a 1992 AMIBIOS (with automatic disk detection, but no LBA or Large disk support) 486DX2-66 Intel Overdrive processor and 20 Mb RAM Lighting Speed VL-Bus I/O Controller (SIDE jr Pro) with on board BIOS with support for IDE > 528Mb (>1024 cylinders) in either LBA or XCHS modes Western Digital Caviar AC31000 (2100/16/63 1083.8Mb) There is no CDROM drive, which is why I copied the CD files across the network. I noted in the manual that the PROMISE EIDE controller doesn't work with FreeBSD. Perhaps I have found another dud controller card. I partitioned the 1 Gb drive into one DOS partition and then used FIPS to create a second partition. The DOS partition is 400Mb and the FreeBSD is 600Mb. The root partition for FreeBSD should still be within the first 504 Mb -- Yes? During a minimal installation I get: On VTY1 Write failure on transfer! (wrote -1 byte of 10240 bytes) On VTY2 gunzip: stdin: invalid compressed data -- format violated DEBUG: Dummy [default] close called for wd0s1 with fd of 7 DEBUG: Switching back to VTY1 /stand/cpio: premature end of file This happens a short way into the /bin extraction, ie after /bin/chmod The system appears to lockup and reboot :-( When I boot to DOS and try FIPS again I get an error message: Partition Table Corrupt - end partition 1 I'd really appreciate some suggestions on how to proceed from here :-) ============================================================= Dr Dennis Perry tekniche pty ltd Multimedia Database Systems mobile: 0412 173 154 drp@mds.rmit.edu.au http://www.mds.rmit.edu.au/~drp/ "Prediction is always difficult, especially of the future" Niels Bohr was fond of quoting this "old Danish proverb", presumably in Danish (but it's hard to predict).
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