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#! rnews 2670 bsd Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.mira.net.au!inquo!in-news.erinet.com!imci5!pull-feed.internetmci.com!news.internetMCI.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!newsxfer2.itd.umich.edu!agate!reason.cdrom.com!usenet From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: First Attempt to Install FreeBSD - Discouraging Date: Wed, 08 May 1996 16:46:00 -0700 Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM Lines: 39 Message-ID: <31913238.62319AC4@FreeBSD.org> References: <Dr1FK7.FLH@avenger.daytonoh.attgis.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: time.cdrom.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0b2 (X11; I; FreeBSD 2.2-CURRENT i386) To: Don.Sleffel@WichitaKS.attgis.com Don Sleffel wrote: > the instructions said. I was a little nervous about the boot > selection since I didn't know how it would play with the NT boot, so I > wanted to just build a floppy to boot off of as I had done with Linux. > It wasn't clear to me how to do that, but I selected that last choice > for booting (none, I think or something like that). Fortunately I had Wrong choice. You can't boot off the second drive then. > re-boot. When I did so, I discovered the boot track had been blown > away. The BIOS reported no operating system! No DOS. No NT. No > FreeBSD. You also don't say which version of FreeBSD you're installing, but 2.1.0-RELEASE had a bug where it would whap an MBR onto your drive even when you didn't select that drive for usage. A bad bug, I'll agree, and one I've fixed. Fortunately, most folks use the boot manager provided to boot off the first or second drives (in latter case it being _mandatory_ anyway) so the bug doesn't manifest itself. > 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. That's pretty odd - I've not seen that failure mode before. All I can suggest is going back to your original objective of installing on the second drive and this time say "yes" to the boot manger - it will co-exist just fine with NT (and does on my own box). > Is FreeBSD supposed to be this hard to install? At least this ought > to keep the amateurs from playing with it. No, it's not supposed to be this hard to install. Neither is Windows, but both operating systems have PCs (and users) who prove an exception to the rule. -- - Jordan Hubbard President, FreeBSD Project