*BSD News Article 46308


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From: james@jraynard.demon.co.uk (James Raynard)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Installation Problems : 2.0.5-RELEASE
Date: 2 Jul 1995 00:29:19 -0000
Organization: A Private FreeBSD Box
Lines: 61
Message-ID: <3t4p8v$lq@jraynard.demon.co.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.jraynard.demon.co.uk
X-NNTP-Posting-Host: jraynard.demon.co.uk

I have experienced some problms in upgrading from 2.0 to 2.0.5 and would be
grateful for any help or comments.

The machine is a Dell 433/L with a Phoenix 1.10 A12 BIOS and a Conner 420MB
hard disk. The main problem is that the Conner is detacted as a 340MB during
bootup and there doesn't seem to be any way to get 2.0.5 to change its mind!

I had the same problem with 2.0, but easily got around it by making the
partitions with linux's fdisk (or for FreeBSD purists, doing a minimal 
install, editing the disklabel from the command line and re-installing).
Unfortunately, neither of these work with 2.0.5. Trying to change it in
the installation partition editor has never worked for me - the correct
number of cylinders is displayed when I enter it, but the old one is still
used in calculations!

With 2.0.5, some error messages appear at the end of the boot sequence when
I try these kludges, but are obliterated by the initial menu before I 
can read them, and do not appear on the debug screen. They are apparently 
something to do with chunks, whatever those are.

I have soldiered on regardless and completed the installation on the part
of the disk I can use. It's very nice - congratulations to all - but it
would be so much nicer if I could use all my disk, not just 80% of it! 8-)

There were a few other irritations in the installation procedure, though
not quite as serious as the one above:-

1. Disklabel editor hung when I did an "undo". Everything was ignored except
   ^C.

2. Timezone. After setting up my timezone for local time, Europe, Great
   Britain (excluding N. Ireland) I was asked, at 6.16pm, 
   "does 05:15:10 5.0.96 GMT look reasonable" ?!! The only alternative I
   was given was to choose a different part of the UK to live in!!

3. In the menu to choose the location of the boot code, the only option
   that can be selected is the boot manager. Two others are shown, and the 
   highlight can be moved to them, but the selection star doesn't change. 
   This is particularly annoying as I selected the "use whole disk" option 
   in the partition editor.

4. When rebooting at the end, the "syncing disks... done" message comes up
   but the system doesn't reboot. This can only be achieved by switching
   to vty0 then back to vty1 and pressing a key. As the user has already
   been asked to confirm the reboot, why not reboot straightaway?

BTW I used floppies to install, if that makes any difference (don't laugh - 
I have a standalone computer, the CD isn't available here yet and the price
of local phone calls has just gone up by 15%, so the only sensible way to
do it is to download it at work onto floppies).

This isn't meant to be a flame - I'm a big fan of FreeBSD and have a lot
of respect and admiration for the people who work on it, but it's so
^%$%$@^%$ frustrating when you can't get something to work as well as you
know it's capable of.

Cheers,
James
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Segmentation fault (core dumped): cannot find file '.signature'