> 1. what were the results with dma on? I first tried to install with dma on. I got errors on disk writes and reads, though certainly not on all of them. It seemed safer to start again with dma off.
> 2. how does fmtarenas fail? what is the error message? fatal venti/fmtarenas error: can't initialize /dev/sdC0/arenas, writing block 0 failed: can't write partition='/dev/sdC0/arenas': i/o error done with /dev/sdC0/arenas fatal venti/fmtisect error: can't initialize /dev/sdC0/isect, writing block 0 failed: can't write partition='/dev/sdC0/isect': i/o error done with /dev/sdC0/isect There were errors formatting the indices and arenas. > 3. how do you verify that the disk driver is hosed? disk/fdisk claims it can't read the mbr: The disk you selected HAS NO master boot record on its first sector. (Perhaps it is a blank disk.) You need a master boot record to use the disk. Should we install a default master boot record? Install mbr (y,n)[no default]: The mbr was written earlier by disk/fdisk and is read by FreeBSD without problems. It was read by disk/prep a few minutes before, also without problems. > i would try installing with just fossil on a laptop. I may do that, but I am reluctant to continue without figuring out what went wrong. From my point of view the error message above means at least one of the following must be true: 1) my hard disk is bad, or 2) my bios is setting it up incorrectly on boot, or 3) there is a bug in the disk driver Any of these would be bad and could turn around later and bite me in some other, worse, way later. I would like to fix this while the problem is repeatable and the consequences are not too scary. > - erik -- John Stalker School of Mathematics Trinity College Dublin tel +353 1 896 1983 fax +353 1 896 2282
