Hard Disk problems when installing FreeBSD 5.3BETA7

[Odhiambo Washington]

{REVISED POST}


Hello experts,

I have experienced so much problems installing  FreeBSD 5.3BETA7 I guess
it's time for me to ask the experts.


I have two disks:

1. Maxtor (DiamondMax Plus 9)
   120GB ATA/133
   Mfg Date: 30 Jan 2004
   Code: YAR41BW0
   E-H011-02-3880 (3.5 SERIES)

2. Western Digital (WD800) EIDE Drive
   80GB
   WD Caviar
   MDL: WD800LB-00DNA0
   Mfg Date: 19 Jan 2004
   DCM: HSBHCVJAH

Motherboard: VIA VT8233.


Those are as much as I can read on the disks.

Now my woes:

I have tried more than 20 times installing FreeBSD 5.3 on these disks.
I have tried this since 5.3BETA1 all the way to 5.3BETA7, hoping at
each stage that I will get lucky.

Always things fail. After the disk label stage, I choose the minimal
distro and commit. That is when I get the message that "I must create
at least the root and swap partitions".
Ordinarily, I want to install like this (take the 80GB disk):

74GB = /
2GB = swap

What I am presented with is just 76GB.

Even for the 120 GB disk:

112GB = /
  2GB = swap

Here what I am presented with is 114GB.


The reason I want to partition like that is because I have another old
box with 36GB that kinda I managed to install 5.3 on. It's now running
5.3-RELEASE and it was partitioned the same way. I simply want to tar
it up, move the tarball to my problematic box and extract, then change
a few things in fstab and rc.conf and have a machine to enjoy!

Note that during labelling, I have even used the "Auto" option. The
thing still fails when it comes to newfs!!!

I have left the BIOS setting as AUTO as well as LBA.
I have even changed the disk geometry on the partition editor to match
what the BIOS thinks is correct.
I have even attempted to manually commit my changes at the disk label
stage.
Whatever I do, the installation does not succeed! I sometimes end up
installing, but when it comes to mounting the root partition on reboot
(after install finishes), the thing fails.
I have even flashed my Award BIOS by getting latest firmware from
esupport.com and US $25.
That is how much I would like to run 5.3.


Do I get any errors at all?

On Main Console:

No root device found - you must label a partition as / in the label
editor

[I press Enter]

No swap devices found  - you should create at least one sap partition
.... blah ..

[I press Enter again]

Couldn't make filesystems properly. Aborting.


On vtys - Alt+F2:


DEBUG: ioctl (3, TIOCCONS, NULL) = 0 (Success)
DEBUG: Add mapping for /dev/cuaa0 to sl0
DEBUG: Add mapping for /dev/cuaa1 to sl0
DEBUG: Scanning disk ad0 for root filesystem
DEBUG: Scanning disk ad0 for swap partitions


And that's it. I have checked all the vtys, and the msg is the same.



Someone please tell me that this has nothing to do with the BIOS at all.
Winblows apparently has no problems at all installing on these disks,
but I hate to use Microshit as a yard stick.

What shall I do???



-Wash

http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html

--
+======================================================================+
    |\      _,,,---,,_     | Odhiambo Washington    <wash at wananchi.com>
Zzz /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_ | Wananchi Online Ltd.   www.wananchi.com
   |,4-  ) )-,_. ,\ (  `'-'| Tel: +254 20 313985-9  +254 20 313922
  '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)     | GSM: +254 722 743223   +254 733 744121
+======================================================================+
Hindsight is an exact science.