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Re: FreeBSD Installation Difficulties
- To: lets@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Richard Letsinger)
- Subject: Re: FreeBSD Installation Difficulties
- From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 03 Jan 1995 17:57:14 -0800
- Cc: questions@xxxxxxxxxxx (FreeBSD Org), lets@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 03 Jan 95 19:33:20." <9501040133.AA42263@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Sender: questions-owner@xxxxxxxxxxx
> My first concern after reading the installation guide, release note, etc.
> was that I was not going to be able to install FreeBSD from the Walnut Creek
> CD because my CD drive is probably not supported by FreeBSD. Obviously I
> could get started, because the top level of the CD is DOS format, but it
You can copy the bindist directory to your C: drive (copy it whole, directory
and all contents) and select `DOS' installation when asked. This will work
fine, as long as you're using your C drive.
> - Assuming that my CD drive is not Mitsumi (and not SCSI), is it hopeless to
> try to install FreeBSD from the Walnut Creek CD? If so, can the files on
> the CD be copied to my empty DOS E: drive and install from E:? Other
> alternatives?
Not hopeless at all - see above.
> - Why didn't my disk 1 153MB DOS slice show up at h with "MSDOS"?
Only primary DOS partitions are currently seen.
> - If I keep my DOS partition on disk 1 as an extended DOS partition, will I
> be able to mount it under FreeBSD? If so, how?
You'll need to edit your disklabel and try to bump the starting location
forward by secs/track number of blocks. This is kludge, but for now we
don't have native support for DOS extended partitions, sorry!
> The hard disk reboot went well at first. My first prompt, from the boot
> manager was:
>
> F2 ... dos
> F3 ... OS2
> F5 ... disk 2
>
> Default: F?
>
> - Why does the boot manager call it disk 2 when unix calls it disk 1 (wd1)?
F5 *leads* you to disk2. You're currently looking at disk1. If you hit
F5, you'll see a boot menu item for disk1 leading back.
> FreeBSD began to come up. It checked a slew of devices. I recognized my
> parallel port and my 2 hard disks and the data displayed for them seemed
> correct to me. Then the boot stopped with:
>
> panic: cannot mount root
The doc is wrong. You'll have to type: wd(1,a)/kernel
I need to change this, sorry.
> I'd also like to ask a few things about the boot manager.
>
> - Did I do any damage when I accidently did a Write MBR in FreeBSD Fdisk on
> disk 0? Was anything written anywhere by this? Maybe I was supposed to
> do a Write MBR on disk 0?
I don't think so.
> The FreeBSD boot manager didn't go in the same place as the OS/2 boot
> manager I already had installed. I say this because if I press F3 (the OS/2
This is correct. The boot manager is on disk0. OS/2's boot manager
is on its OWN partition. It's done sort of different than most boot
managers.
> My guess on this is that there is a boot record (my term) at the beginning
> of (one or each) disk that sends the boot to code in a disk partition and
> that the FreeBSD boot manager is in the FreeBSD slice. Then the FreeBSD
> boot manager is able to branch to any other partition on any disk and it
> happens that the OS/2 boot manager is in it's own partition on disk 0.
You need to read the Tutorial.. :-) It talks about all of this.
> - Last, I saw in questions that someone said the FreeBSD boot manager can be
> manipulated with DOS FDISK using the /MBR option, but it wasn't clear to
> me what FDISK /MBR did. I'll read the DOS manual when I get home tonight,
> but can you tell me in case the manual is not clear with regard to non-DOS
> setups like mine?
It reinitializes the MBR, nuking any boot manager resident there..
Jordan