Return to BSD News archive
Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au!news.apana.org.au!cantor.edge.net.au!news.teragen.com.au!news.access.net.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!news.mel.aone.net.au!grumpy.fl.net.au!news.webspan.net!news.intersurf.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.sprintlink.net!news-peer.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.net!news-hub.sprintlink.net!news.sprintlink.ne t!news-fw-22.sprintlink.net!news.onramp.net!usenet From: Dave Littell <dlittell@onramp.net> Newsgroups: neosoft.users.freebsd,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Free BSD trouble Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 20:34:10 -0600 Organization: We don't need no steenkin' organization! Lines: 48 Message-ID: <32F15A22.6221@onramp.net> References: <32EAF919.17A0@neosoft.com> <5cflae$gal@bonkers.taronga.com> <5cpfsk$fqk@uuneo.neosoft.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp2-57.dllstx.onramp.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01 (Win95; I) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:34778 Conrad Sabatier wrote: > > In article <5cflae$gal@bonkers.taronga.com>, peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) wrote: > >In article <32EAF919.17A0@neosoft.com>, > >Matthew Hall <mhall@neosoft.com> wrote: > >>Anyone have any suggestions? > > > >Buy the 2.1.6 CDROM from Walnut Creek. It's just out, it's the end point of > >the current "-stable" development line, and it's got the latest drivers. > > > >Buy it as a "subscription" and it's $25, and you can cancel your sub after > >one disc if you want. > > Not sure that'll solve his problems, Peter. > > I just got the 2.1.6 CD-ROM and, among other things, it: > [deleted some very valid complaints - "It just ain't there yet."] > > Frankly, I find the latest release a major letdown. And I do mean *major*. Yeah, for something that was supposed to be the best in the 2.1-era releases, it seems to have regressed significantly in the installation area. Our big problems with 2.1.6 were in two areas: - Somebody somewhere blew it in mastering the 2.1.6.1 CD. The first CD-ROM drive we tried couldn't even read it. This same drive worked great with 2.1.5. We finally found a drive that could read the CD, but I pity the poor souls that don't have a lab full of stuff to cobble together every time someone doesn't do their homework. - If we set up the install to give 2.1.6 the entire disk (no boot manager) *something* changed enough in the boot blocks to cause the BIOS to wedge the entire machine during the IDE autodetect phase. Once again, 2.1.5 worked perfectly. The disk had to be physically removed, installed in another machine (we luckily found a machine that had a BIOS that didn't get hung up on whatever it ran across in the boot blocks), FDISK'ed there, and reinstalled. Again, if I were some poor soul at home without a lab full of equipment, I'd have a dead machine and no way to fix it. Too much joy for me. I can't really pin all of this on FreeBSD (BIOS boneheads are really at fault here), but I after wasting far too much time on this kind of silliness, I'd like to hope for better installation testing. I sure hope the bug fixes and improvements in the kernel itself don't prove to be as problematic. Dave