*BSD News Article 31882


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From: mkirk@beringa (mikel kirk)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Troubles installing
Date: 20 Jun 1994 09:55:11 GMT
Organization: NovX InterServ News Service
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Hi, all!

I had some trouble installing BSD.  It all started with stacker... I 
wanted to install BSD on my maxed out 170 IDE drive, which was already 
partitioned for one big partition under DOS 5, STACKED and filled to the 
rafters.  I deltree'd a few old apps I didn't use every week, and 
scrimped half the drive out and restacked the drive.  Now I've got two 
drives, one real one that's got 80 megs free and the tarballs from the 
FreeBSD CD(v1.0), and one software-emulated STACKER drive, containing 
only the map to the lost dutchman mine, the confessions of Kennedy 
conspirators and 3 .gifs of Barney the dinosaur with his dominatrix.

So then I drank a couple pots of coffee, got all full of myself, and went 
right in and edited the partition table manually. << (NOT recommended!).  
Snagged myself 80 megs for BSD and away we go with the install...

But, regardless what the documentation sez, 80 megs is just a teensy bit 
not enough.  Just a tad.  A few bytes shy.  Time for pizza.  Backups?  
What backups?  Dual boot utility would be nice... sez it's on 
such-and-such directory of the CD, which is in the CDROM, which is, er, 
not supported.  Gawsh I gotta read this stuff more carefully before I go 
mucking about like this. 

Now I've got 99% of the os installed, and can wander around reading the 
docs, right?  Nope.  man requires some layup space.  Delete some apps, 
still no joy.  What's up with that? I'm not a *nix guru -- is there some 
app that recovers space once you've deleted the files?

No joy, so I snag my DOS panic disk and boot to an A:> prompt and get set 
to fdisk /mbr and recover some sanity while I reconsider... This  is 
where it gets unpleasant.  The keyboard is completely locked.  I can boot 
dos, get my prompt, and that's all.  Does it have to do this?

If anybody else gets in this situation, BTW (yeah, right!) it happens 
that booting DOS6 install disk clears everything right up... you get to 
keep all your apps and data even.  The DOS 5 install disk (if that's your 
current OS) may work as well.  The downside is that you're once again 
running Redmond product, and you've got 80 megs of nonfunctional OS 
floating around out there.

So much for running on the gear I've got... so off to the store for a new 
HD.  Pleeze, pleeze, will some newer version of BSD boot from D:?  
Inquiring mimes want to know.  If there is, where can I get it? (I can't 
FTP, but this site is mail-order capable.) I'd like to run this OS, but 
don't want to fight the gods of Stac again and would rather not have to 
reconfigure all my apps.

OH, <not btw> elvis still edits on a mounted DOS floppy, and maybe how to 
mount a dos floppy should be in the install doc somewhere.