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From: rvbj30@email.sps.mot.com (hai nguyen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Installation & Booting Problem
Followup-To: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Date: 25 Jul 1996 16:43:13 GMT
Organization: Motorola
Lines: 55
Message-ID: <rvbj30-240796134042@hai.sps.mot.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hai.sps.mot.com
hello all !
i have been trying to install FreeBSD 2.1 for quite sometimes and
encountered a problem that I could not resolve. Perhaps, some kind souls
out there can provide me a hint on how to resolve this problem.
problem description :
after a successful installation, at the boot prompt, entering the command
"hd(1,a)/kernel" at the boot prompt to boot FreeBSD from a scsi disk but it
came back with the boot prompt again.
System configuration is :
Motherboard : PCI AMD586-133Mhz with built in PCI IDE controller and 256 K
cache
Memory : 48Mb
Storage : 1st IDE : 1.08 Gb Fujitsu on primary and a 850Mb Western
Digital on secondary
2nd IDE : 340Mb Maxtor on primary, Reveal CD ROM on
secondary.
SCSI Adaptec:1542 ISA SCSI controller : 1.08 Gb SCSI-II Fujitsu hard drive.
Video : ATI Graphics Expression 64 resides on my VLB slot.
I used the atapi boot floppy image to install FreeBSD on the SCSI 1GB disk.
The boot process went fine and detected all the system hardware. When the
system asked for disk partition, I partitioned the disk as follows:
1st partition 50M
2nd partition 950M
When the disk label editor came up, I mounted / on the first partition and
for the second partition, I created 450M for /usr, 10M for /tmp, 60M for
/var, 100M for /home and 96M for swap and the rest for /usr/src.
The installation went fine, I was also able to switch to a virtual console
and checked out on all the system files. After the installation process
completed, I rebooted the system and using the boot floppy to boot FreeBSD
by entering hd(a,1)/kernel at the boot prompt but it came back with the
boot prompt again.
I suspected the problem is contributed by the drive geometry as Fdisk
reported the disk geometry as 1041 cylinders, 64 heads, 32 sector. My first
installation, I used the above geometry and it won't boot. The second
installation, i changed the disk geometry to 4164 cylinders ( 4x the
original ), 16 heads and 32 sectors. It still won't boot. I also changed
the way i partitioned the disk and made sure the root device is always
somewhere between the cylinders of 0 and 1023. I finally called the disk
manufacturer and found out the actual disk geometry is 3457 cylinders, 6
heads and 94 sectors. The disk geometry is kind of odd, since I cannot use
the number of sector greater than 64. But I did reformatted the drive,
turned off the BIOS translation from the Adaptec controller, set the disk
geometry to 4164,16, 32 and reinstalled BSD but the problem still persists.
please reply to my email rvbj30@email.sps.mot.com.
Best regards !!!