Re: FreeBSD Installation Horror
On Thursday 05 May 2005 02:26, Sebastian Reichelt wrote: Hello! As a programmer and computer science student, I wanted to try out FreeBSD on my old computer (Pentium 166). Mainly I just want to get to know the differences between FreeBSD and Linux, and see whether it really has a better design (which many people I know claim). However, so far I have not been able to install it on my hard drive. I have already spent several days on this. Please help me, this is becoming really frustrating. You can also have a look at http://www.pcbsd.org/ From their website : PC-BSD has as its goals to be an easy to install and use desktop OS, which is built on the FreeBSD operating system. To accomplish this, it currently has a graphical installation, which will enable even UNIX novices to easily install and get it running. It will also come with KDE pre-built, so that the desktop can be used immediately. Currently in development is a graphical software installation program, which will make installing pre-built software as easy as other popular operating systems. Beni. pgpLwKXmzX9aG.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: FreeBSD Installation Horror
Now I got the CD from someone else, and finally the installation went well. It would still have been nice if all the things I described had just worked. I was able to install Debian without any problems, even though I didn't have any Unix experience at all. Compared to that, the FreeBSD installation should have been a piece of cake for me now. If I have to spend several days on it, I think a normal computer would give up without getting very far. Anyway, trying to establish a PPP connection still crashes the entire system. Actually, it's probably the serial port driver: It also crashes when I just do: echo Hello /dev/cuaa0 Any ideas? -- Sebastian Reichelt ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FreeBSD Installation Horror
a normal computer Oops, that should read: a normal computer user. :-) -- Sebastian Reichelt ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FreeBSD Installation Horror
I downloaded the three floppy images for 5.3-RELEASE and dd'ed them on the disks. Then I booted the installation and tried to partition my hard drive. To my surprise, the partition table shown by the installation was complete nonsense. I figured it probably had something to do with the fact that my BIOS doesn't support the disk size. I'm using the OnTrack disk manager to fix the problem for Windows. So I booted from the disk, and used the OnTrack feature to boot from a floppy after OnTrack has been loaded. The partition table was exactly the same junk, though. I also tried different geometries (reported by LILO, BIOS, FreeBSD installation, etc.), but this didn't change the view of the partition table either. I was able to install FreeBSD 5.2 on a machine of this generation that didn't support large partitions either, but it wasn't easy. Windows-based workarounds like OnTrack won't work. The trick I used was to make a primary bootable partition on the hard drive that fit within the size limitations that the BIOS could natively understand. (I don't have that number in front of me right now, I'm sorry.) Put the parts of FreeBSD that you need to boot in this partition and boot from it. Once FreeBSD boots, it's able to support large partitions that your old BIOS can't understand, so you can mount the rest of your hard drive, no matter how large it is. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: FreeBSD Installation Horror
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Sebastian Reichelt Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 6:56 AM To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD Installation Horror Now I got the CD from someone else, and finally the installation went well. It would still have been nice if all the things I described had just worked. I was able to install Debian without any problems, even though I didn't have any Unix experience at all. Compared to that, the FreeBSD installation should have been a piece of cake for me now. If I have to spend several days on it, I think a normal computer would give up without getting very far. FreeBSD isn't written for normal computer users. It's not deliberately written to be difficult, but it simply is difficult for normal users, in the same way that a Formula 1 race car would be rather difficult for your mother to drive, I'd wager. If you put the effort and time into it you will learn a lot and get many benefits. However most normal computer users don't want to put a lot of time into a computer, they just want it to work meaning work in whatever definition of work that they have for a computer. Many of the Linux distributions have chosen to make a special effort to cater to these people, and that is fine for them. FreeBSD has chosen not to make a special effort to cater to this group, and that is fine too. You as a user need to choose which approach you want to take and use the appropriate operating system for that approach. Anyway, trying to establish a PPP connection still crashes the entire system. Actually, it's probably the serial port driver: It also crashes when I just do: echo Hello /dev/cuaa0 What is your dmesg output? The above should not crash the computer. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FreeBSD Installation Horror
I changed some BIOS settings, and now it works. Thanks for your help. -- Sebastian Reichelt ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: FreeBSD Installation Horror
Your pc is so old that the bios do not support LBA in native mode. You have to upgrade your bios chip on the motherboard. check out http://www.unicore.com/ for replacement chip. OnTrack is designed for ms/windows only. In a nut shell 5.3 does support your very old motherboard. You may have better luck with 4.11 If the cdrom you burned for 5.3 install has only single file then you created it incorrectly. Extended partitions are a windows thing only. You are mixing windows things with old bios and FreeBSD and it will never work. check out this install guide it may help you with creating install cdrom. http://www.unixguide.net/freebsd/fbsd_installguide/index.php -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Sebastian Reichelt Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 8:26 PM To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD Installation Horror Hello! As a programmer and computer science student, I wanted to try out FreeBSD on my old computer (Pentium 166). Mainly I just want to get to know the differences between FreeBSD and Linux, and see whether it really has a better design (which many people I know claim). However, so far I have not been able to install it on my hard drive. I have already spent several days on this. Please help me, this is becoming really frustrating. I downloaded the three floppy images for 5.3-RELEASE and dd'ed them on the disks. Then I booted the installation and tried to partition my hard drive. To my surprise, the partition table shown by the installation was complete nonsense. I figured it probably had something to do with the fact that my BIOS doesn't support the disk size. I'm using the OnTrack disk manager to fix the problem for Windows. So I booted from the disk, and used the OnTrack feature to boot from a floppy after OnTrack has been loaded. The partition table was exactly the same junk, though. I also tried different geometries (reported by LILO, BIOS, FreeBSD installation, etc.), but this didn't change the view of the partition table either. OK, so I emptied another (smaller) disk and tried to install FreeBSD on it. I have a PPP connection to another PC over a serial cable on COM1, which works fine from Windows. (The other PC is running Linux with a script to emulate a modem.) So I thought I would use the same link for the FreeBSD installation. I selected PPP on COM1, then it ran the PPP program, but this program always crashes the entire computer after a few seconds, even if I don't type anything. Of course, then I got someone to burn me a CD. I booted from the CD, but then the kernel said it couldn't figure out which drive it was booting from. Apparently it had not detected the CDROM at all for some reason. So I had to boot from floppy over and over again. (It would be nice to be able to put the installation program on a small hard disk partition.) Then I selected CD as the installation medium. Somehow the CDROM has some problems reading the CD; this is not FreeBSD's fault, of course. However, when it gets to the bad locations, usually it reports a page fault and reboots! Now this is getting really annoying... By now, I have tried to get the CD burnt three times, but every single one of them seems to be broken at some place. With the latest one, at least the installation doesn't page fault any more. But it still aborts if it can't read some file. If it didn't do that, I would probably be finished by now. As a last resort, I tried to copy the installation files from the CD to a disk. I can't use the OnTrack-formatted disk because FreeBSD can't read it. So I have to use the disk I want to install to. After all, it could read the files, and the installation went fine. When I rebooted, the boot manager showed up, and asked me to press F1 for DOS (the source partition), F2 for FreeBSD, and F5 for the other disk. When I pressed F2, it just beeped, but didn't do anything. I thought that maybe I could only install FreeBSD on the first partition, then. (Although that really surprises me.) So I created an extended partition, copied the installation files there, and deleted the primary partition. Oh no, FreeBSD can't read extended partitions! How nice: It expects the installation files to be on a primary partition, but you can only install it on the first partition? I think that in the Linux fdisk, I can create up to 4 primary partitions, but the Windows version only supports one. This is the story so far. Please help me find a happy end. Thank you very much. -- Sebastian Reichelt ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FreeBSD Installation Horror
Sebastian Reichelt wrote: As a programmer and computer science student, I wanted to try out FreeBSD on my old computer (Pentium 166). Mainly I just want to get to know the differences between FreeBSD and Linux, and see whether it really has a better design (which many people I know claim). Sebastian, About 5 years ago, I made the transition form Linux to FreeBSD. That also gave me some headaches, and the first few times nothing seemed to work. Slowly I learnt that FreeBSD (Installation OS) does things quite different. Ever since I got the hang of how these things worked, I never used anything else than FreeBSD. Anyway, I hope this helps you a bit deal with your current frustration. I also run FreeBSD 5.3 on an old Pentium-1: Pentium/P54C (149.69-MHz 586-class CPU) real memory = 33554432 (32 MB) Note: you need at least 24 MB during installation. On a running system, you can do with less. Boot from the floppies. Then: 1) FDISK Partition editor I recommend to ignore any geometry issues here. Delete all existing slices, and say 'A', to use the entire disk. If I remember well, the geometry issues are irrelevant when you dedicate the entire disk to FreeBSD. 2) Install Boot Manager I always choose BootMgr here. 3) FreeBSD Disklabel Editor Initially you should have no entries here (if you have, remove them); then choose 'A' autodefaults. These autodefaults will be fine for a first time installation rehearsal :). Leave the finetuning for subsequent installations, when you are more familiar with it. 4) Choose Distributions Choose here The smallest configuration possible. This will give you a running FreeBSD system in a minimal amount of installation time. 5) Media Since you have CDs, choose here Install from a FreeBSD CD/DVD. - Does this help you overcome the issues you encountered earlier? Rob. __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
