*BSD News Article 84464


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.Hawaii.Edu!news.uoregon.edu!news.texoma.com!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!feed1.news.erols.com!worldnet.att.net!uunet!in2.uu.net!199.242.23.5!nwlink.com!usenet
From: cjay <cjay@nwlink.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Failed 2.1.6 Installation
Date: Sat, 07 Dec 1996 20:20:09 -0800
Organization: is lacking
Lines: 62
Message-ID: <32AA41F9.46CD@nwlink.com>
Reply-To: cjay@nwlink.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: ip026.mu3.nwlink.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I)

Hola!

I am a UNIX newbie/M$ quasi-guru.

Upon downloading the /bin, /doc, and /manpages directories from the
RELEASE 2.1.6 directory of ftp.freebsd.org (cdrom.com) I made the
appropriate(?) directories on my "C:" drive (a 1.6 seagate).  Those
directories were called C:\FREEBSD\BIN, C:\FREEBSD\DOC,
C:\FREEBSD\MANPAGES by me as that is what they should be called to the
best of my understanding of the various installation guides available on
www.freebsd.org, INSTALL.TXT in the REALEASE 2.1.6 directory, etc.

I am attempting to install to my "D:" drive (a 540 Maxtor).  I blew out
all existing files on that drive and repartitioned it with a 1 meg
primary DOS partition and nothing else.  (this drive has some bad blocks
at the end of it).

All seemed to go well with the install floppy "boot.flp" from the same
directory on ft.freebsd.org.  I got my hardware devices configured and
detected properly (I used the scroll lock feature upon exiting with the
following error to verify that), I was able to create the file system
with it's "fdisk" like utilty, etc. .

Until....*drum roll*....it started to attempt the file copy from the
"C:" drive (where the distribution files sit...see above).

What happened was it appeared to be copying them briefly as indicated by
the byte count meter or whatever in the lower left-hand corner of the
screen, but the progress meter bar wasn't moving.  It then felt free to
inform me that the files could not be copied (it displayed a standard
"your baked" type of message) saying that 1 of 1024 bytes were copied. 
It then asked me if I wanted to try again.  It did this for all 3 of the
distributions I was attempting to install (see above).

Both drives are EIDE and are connected to a motherboard controller.  The
BIOS does support LBA.  Other machine specifications:
Intel P5100
32 megs of non-edo RAM
Sony CDU-77e 4x CD-Rom
Diamond Stealth 64 Video VRAM with 2 megs
3 com ports (two on the motherboard and one internal USR Sportster 33.6)

Does the fact that the Maxtor has some bad blocks prevent me from
installing it to that drive? or

Do I have the directory structure in C:\FREEBSD wrong? or

Do I absolutely have to have at least some portion of FreeBSD on my "C:"
drive? or

Am I just a clueless UNIX newbie who has NO BUSINESS trying to use it?
<BFG>

I absolutely must be able to install it and I do not have the room for
it on the Seagate (which is running DOS 6.22 as well as Win95/DOS 7.0)

Any help is GREATLY appreciated and I might even be able to repay the
technical advice on FreeBSD with some technical advice on M$ stuff.

mailto:cjay@nwlink.com
http://www.nwlink.com/~cjay
http://www.future-city.com