*BSD News Article 49878


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From: jkodadek@winternet.com (J. Kodadek)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Installation woes, part 2
Date: 31 Aug 1995 22:41:41 GMT
Organization: StarNet Communications, Inc
Lines: 54
Message-ID: <425dr5$i98@blackice.winternet.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: parka.winternet.com
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]


Ok, I posted a few days ago, but my post seems to have disappeared. Also, 
if you read this, Jordan, I sent you a much more specific email a few 
days ago but haven't gotten a response (I probably messed up, though).  
So, I will start again.


I have a brand new Dell Dimension P75 with IDE controller built into the 
motherboard, I can't find any other info on it.  The drive is a Quantum 
Fireball 1080A.  I have a ~350M dos partition at the beginning of the 
disk (according to dos fdisk anyways.)  I have the files from the 2.0.5R 
cdrom copied to this partition (bin, xf86311, manpages, etc).  

I can use the boot disk and get through the installation menus and 
everything fine, but when I do "Commit", I get the following error:

Failed to load the ROOT distribution. Please correct this problem and try 
again.

I was told this probably a disk geometry problem, so I checked the real 
geometry.  The label on the disk and pfdisk both say it's 2112/16/53.  
The FreeBSD fdisk thinks it's 528/64/63.  When I tried to change it in 
FreeBSDs fdisk to the correct settings, here is what I try to do with the 
partition table and the error I get:


Disk name: wd0
Bios Geom: 2112/16/53

   Offset     Size       End   Name    Ptype   Desc   Subtype  Flags
   
        0       63        62     -     6       unused    0
       63   717633    717695   wd0s1   2       fat       6
   717696  1410784   2128479   wd0s2   3       freebsd  165      C
  2128480      416   2128895     -     6       unused    0


--------------------------------Message-------------------------------
 chunk 'wd0s1' [63...717695] does not start on a track boundary.
 chunk 'wd0s2' [717696...2128479] does not start on a track boundary.
----------------------------------------------------------100%--------
--------------------------------[EXIT]--------------------------------


If I confirm and go ahead and try to install from here, it messes up my 
dos partition and it still does not install FreeBSD.  I'd appreciate some 
help so I can give FreeBSD a try on a real system and decide if I want to 
keep it over Linux. :) Thanks.

P.S.: regarding the first error, YES, the root.flp IS in the correct 
place. :)

jess kodadek
jkodadek@winternet.com