Failed installation of FreeBSD 5.4

[Milscvaer]

--- "Gary W. Swearingen" <garys at opusnet.com> wrote:

> Milscvaer <millueradfa at yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> > I would like to try to boot the system on the hard
> > driv e from a floppy. Maybe there is something
> wrong
> > with the boot record on the HD. Does anyone know
> if
> > this is possible and how I can do that?
> 
> Sure, but you've left us in the dark as to what you
> have to work with
> there.  Do you have FreeBSD or some unixy OS on
> another system or on a
> "live CD"?  Or just a floppy "fixit"? Or what?  Do
> you have enough
> hard disk space to leave your /usr/home out of the
> picture until you
> get FreeBSD going on another part of the disk?
> (Maybe after deleting
> unneeded parts of /usr/home's filesystem.)
> 

I am sorry, I should explain the situation a more
clearly. I have already run the FreeBSD 5.4
installation program, which seems to have completed
successfully, to install FreeBSD on the hard drive.
However, after I reboot the system after the
installation program completes, I cannot boot FreeBSD
from the F1 FreeBSD prompt. It just beeps when i press
F1. I then booted into the fixit floppy, and it does
appear that the FreeBSD system is there on the hard
drive. Why I cannot boot the system I dont know. I
thought it might be a boot record problem, so I
wondered if I could use a floppy disk with a boot
loader on it, which could then be used to start the
system on the hard disk.

I thought the install program would replace the boot
records, in fdisk  I have marked the partition active,
and it prompted me to install the boot loader. I have
several times gone into fdisk to try to get the boot
records replaced.

I tried using one of the boot floppies used to start
the freebsd install, (kern1.flp), which if I boot off
of that I get what appears to be a boot2 (boot:)
prompt where I can type ad(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel, to
boot the FreeBSD system i have on the hard disk,
however after doing so a lot of numbers and gibberish
appear on the screen with the message "BTX Halted". 

I do have a fixit floppy so I can try to get in there
and do some more things to fix this.

> Anyway, if you can run a FreeBSD off a fixit or live
> CD somehow, you
> can "bsdlabel" to put /boot/boot = boot+boot2 on a
> floppy so you
> should be able to get a "boot2" prompt (the one
> before the "loader"
> prompt) and try to boot your 5.4 from there.  Or you
> could try using
> "fdisk" and "boot0cfg" and "bsdlabel" to put new
> boot records (MBR,
> boot1, and boot2) on a floppy or on your hard disk,
> too.
> 
> If you can DL and burn a CD, get yourself a "live
> CD" or CD-based
> "fixit", else try to find room on your HD for a
> fresh minimal FreeBSD
> install, else get an old HD and install fresh to
> that.  Another thing
> you could try is getting a Grub floppy off the
> Internet and try
> booting from the Grub command line.
> 
> I suppose that your problem is related to the fact
> that your "upgrade"
> is reusing your old partition(s) and maybe old boot
> records.
> 
> BTW, if you can keep your /usr/home out of the
> picture and then copy
> it to your new system, you can end up with nice new
> UFS2 filesystems.
> 
> BTW, if that's your only copy of /usr/home, you
> probably shouldn't be
> trying to install a new OS on the disk anyway.  You
> should be able to
> find another HD for a small FreeBSD (or a copy of
> /usr/home) for VERY
> little money these days.
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com