Installation problems: filesystem is (not) full

[Bill Moran]

om Verbreyt wrote:
> New to the lists, new to FreeBSD, so please kindly forgive me if this
> isn't the right place for my question (tough choice anyway, since
> there are that many different lists...).

You're in the right place.

> However, I still want to give myself a try with FreeBSD, so I burned
> the mini-ISO this morning, figuring the errors back then might have
> been caused by bad installation media. However, the exact same
> problem occurs time and again.

4.8, right?

> Basically, installation is - ehm... smooth sailing, at least, until the point
> where real installation should start. I create a slice, create partitions
> and select a distribution set. Then, however, installation fails. These
> are some random notes I took (copied):
> 
> write failure on transfer (wrote -1 bytes of 240640 bytes)
> unable to transfer the base distribution from acd0
> / : write failed, filesystem is full
> 
> and on VT4:
> 
> pid 131 (cpio), uid 0 inumber 171 on /: filesystem is full
> 
> Those errors are quite clear to me, but I can't think of any reason
> for the root filesystem to be full... I devoted all of my HD to FBSD,
> so how could it possibly be full! :-s Anyway, at that point, I can't
> exit the installer, a never-ending cycle of trying to retrieve the files
> again and telling that it won't succeed starts, so basically, I then
> just shut the power down and remain with a useless machine... :-)
> 
> I don't recall my exact partitioning scheme, but root had about 1.5
> gigs, and /usr got 2,5. For a minute, I remembered the I/O-thingy
> I read about in the book, but also that it defaults to "enabled". So
> I'm lost.
> 
> What am I doing wrong? Could someone please enlighten me...?

I don't know what's going wrong, but (on a hunch) can you try the (a)uto
option in sysinstall to auto-size the partitions and see if that works.
If not - I apoligize for the time wasted.

If it doesn't work you'll probably find it helpful to post hardware
details, as this could be a hardware problem.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com