Installation Hang

[Jez Hancock]

Hi Nick,

On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 01:27:20AM -0500, Nick P. wrote:
> 
> I am a first-time user who is having a nightmare installing FreeBSD.
> I've tried several different methods, but my installation hangs at
> various points during the installation.

Have you checked the integrity of the installation CD you're trying to
install from?  It could be that it's corrupted and causing problems.

You can check the integrity as follows:

- grab a utility called 'md5sum' (windows/DOS app) - it's around on the
  net in various places, http://www.etree.org/md5com.html was the first
  place I found just now :)
- download the MD5 checksum file that should be in the same directory
  as the ISO image you downloaded:
  ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/4.9/CHECKSUM.MD5
  (presuming you downloaded the first 4.9 CD which is all you need
  really)
- run:
  md5sum 4.9-i386-disc1.iso
  (again presuming that's the iso image you downloaded)
- check the output from the last step against the checksum contained in
  the checksum file

If the checksum's match then all is well, if not best to download it
again.

The installation process is usually fairly painless and generally very fast - as
less than 5 minutes for a minimal install on an amd athlon 2000.
Certainly shouldn't be taking as long as you mention :(

Presumably you've read the handbook as well:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.html

if you know enough to use Google you no doubt stumbled across the
handbook pretty early on :=)

-- 
Jez Hancock
 - System Administrator / PHP Developer

http://munk.nu/