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From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: First Attempt to Install FreeBSD - Discouraging
Date: Tue, 07 May 1996 14:46:39 -0700
Organization: Me
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Message-ID: <318FC4BF.3BE82C72@lambert.org>
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Don Sleffel wrote:
] I've been trying to install FreeBSD on a Zeos Pantera with a P5, EIDE
] disks and ATAPI CDROM. I already have DOS and Windows NT on it, and
] had previously installed Linux, although it has currently been
] removed. I added a second hard disk, thinking that I would install
] FreeBSD on it.
[ ... ]
] After recovering DOS and NT, I decided that maybe FreeBSD had to be
] installed on the C: drive, even though I could find nothing in the
] instructions either way. I re-partitioned my C: drive to make room
] for it and started the installation again. Now, the install can't
] find my CDROM. Apparently partitioning my drives differently causes
] FreeBSD not to be able to find the CDROM. So now I'm ready to give up
] and go back to Linux.
]
] Does anyone have any suggestions?
Read the installation notes before installing. They clearly state
that you should not install the boot manager as part of the install
process from the protected mode OS. This would be obvious if you
understood how the DOS/NT boot process really worked.
] Is FreeBSD supposed to be this hard to install? At least this ought
] to keep the amateurs from playing with it.
With respect, ametuers rarely have two disks in their system;
certainly to have more than one IDE drive and an IDE CDROM
drive takes two controllers (IDE is limited to two devices).
The installation notes cover this clearly, but it's obvious that
you chose to install on a second drive, and then, in violation
of the installation notes advice, installed a boot record of
some kind, knowing that it would be installed on the wrong (first)
drive, like the installation notes warn will happen.
Instead (again, like the installation notes recommend), you
should have used the DOS installer for the OS-BS or BootEasy
boot selector, or better yet, used the NT boot manager and not
installed a FreeBSD boot manager of any kind.
The inability to boot of the "C:" (I assume you are referring to
the first physical drive, BIOS drive ID 0x80) is because there
were not partitions marked active. This could have been corrected
by (1) booting a DOS boot floppy, the Windows95 boot floppy that
Windows95 insists you make when you install it, or the WindowsNT
boot floppy WindowsNT insists you make when you install it, and
then (2) running fdisk and marking a partition on "C:" bootable.
This isn't really well documented anywhere because you are
expected to read and understand the installtion instructions
before doing a non-standard install, like your install onto
a second drive. This would prevent the situation from ever
arising, hence no one who reads the installation notes ever
needs to recover from the situation you created.
You didn't state whether or not the IDE CDROM was on the primary
or secondard controller, or whether the second ("D:") disk was a
slave on the primary or a master on the secondary.
In either case, if the CDROM was the second device in line, you
will have problems with the boot block when you go to boot your
non-standard installation.
This is because most BIOS manufactured since 1982 (ie: the last
12 years) can not return a value other than 0x00 ("A:"), 0x01
("B:"), 0x80 ("C:") or 0x81 ("D:") for INT 13 drive ID. This
is different that the "DOS names A, B, C, or D which may be
assigned at the INT 21 level. If your EIDE CDROM is slave on
the primary or master on the secondary, with the "D:" drive
master on the secondary or slave on the secondary (respectively),
then your second IDE drive is INT 13 ID 0x82 (or 0x83, if you
have a dumb BIOS or a third drive you haven't told us about).
This would mean that your second drive is not a standardly
bootable device, and since BSD only expects first or second
disk devices (unless you are running a SNAP install and have
got the new bootblocks -- which according to your version
info, you don't) and so must be modified to boot the odd
second disk configuration you have supplied.
The IDE CDROM apparently disappeared because, as docuemented
in the install notes, it's technically required to be a slave
device on a secondard controller. This is because EIDE
CDROM's are so non-standard from vendor to vendor that probing
for all recognized types can mage some hard drives not function
for install.
You can override this, as documented in the handbook at
www.freebsd.org, by booting with a "-c" at the boot prompt to
enter the configuration editor, and then typing "visual" at the
prompt that says ...'or type "visual"', and configuring the
IDE CDROM manually for the install.
This assumes you know what cards are plugged into your machine
(I assume you must, since no matter who plugged the cards in,
you would be unwise to not verify that what the dealer said
you were getting was in fact what was delivered to you).
It's likely that you would benefit from either downloading and
printing a copy of the handbook from www.freebsd.org, or by
purchasing a copy of the handbook from Walnut Creek CDROM, or,
if you ordered a recent CDROM, since it comes with the handbook,
you should "just read it".
In any case, it's quite annoying to see a post complaining about
the install process without you presenting enough information
such that someone with more time and patience than Moses could
walk you through the process clearly documented in the release
materials, and get your non-standard hadrware configuration
running.
Hopefully one of the many possibilities I've had to guess at
for lack of information, which are suggested above, will solve
your problem for you.
Regards,
Terry Lambert
terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.