*BSD News Article 31073


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From: nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: Help needed
Date: 31 May 1994 04:49:39 GMT
Organization: Montana State University, Bozeman  Montana
Lines: 53
Message-ID: <2sefl3$mvn@pdq.coe.montana.edu>
References: <2ru9vr$p0e@panix2.panix.com> <2rvoc3$o4h@panix2.panix.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 153.90.192.29

In article <2rvoc3$o4h@panix2.panix.com>,
Boris Pitel <scibp6p@panix.com> wrote:
>   After this I was able to reach the point where BSD asking questions about
>hard drives. It offers me to select the type of controller I have, and when
>I select IDE ( I think I have IDE local bus VESA controller) - it after
>short hesitation says that it is unable to read my disk and am I sure that
>the controller is ST506(???).

The statement is probably "no disklabel" at this point, which is true
since the install hasn't yet installed a FreeBSD disklabel on your
disk.

>If I answer NO the conversation starts again
>(loop), if I answer "yes" - It is asking me about the geometry of my hard
>drive.  I don't understand does it know that I have 2 HD, and geometry of
>which one I should give to it.

No, it's telling you the data it thinks your hard-disk has, which may or
may not be the same as what your computer thinks it is.  FreeBSD 'asks'
the hardware what the geometry is, but sometimes this isn't the same
as what other parts of the system think it is.  (DOS limits you to
< 1024 cylinders)

>   If I give the geometry of the 2nd HD - BSD displays part. table - empty,
>which is not right, it isnt't empty.

Because you gave it the geometry of the second.  The FreeBSD 1.0 install tools
don't deal very well with the second hard-drive.

>     After that it asks questions about how to distribute the available
>disk space between different areas of BSD - I think there I am screwing things
>up a little bit. It says after some processing and trying to create somrthing,
>that "Disk is full" or something like this, and "Please halt the system".
>     Please help me if possible! I don't know where to go next.

Back up and read the floppy install notes.

>PS.
>     My ideal configuration is :
>     Leave the 340 MB hard drive C: as it is - now it has MSDOS, WINDOWS and
>other usefull things - I would like to keep this "untouched".
>     The new 540 HD D: (secondary drive) give to 386BSD.

With the 1.0 install, this isn't an easy thing to do.  I believe the FreeBSD
FAQ will give you instructions on how to do it, but it is non-trivial.


Nate
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