8.2-RELEASE-amd64.iso weirdness (help!)

Polytropon freebsd at edvax.de
Tue Aug 2 23:57:53 UTC 2011


On Tue, 2 Aug 2011 18:06:06 -0500, Conrad J. Sabatier wrote:
> As another user mentioned elsewhere, the packages distributions are
> beyond minimal, consisting only of some basic documentation in a
> variety of locales or languages.  No software packages at all.

Since the documentation has been moved out of the regular
system installation and turned into packages, this is now
the normal behaviour.

For adding packages, it's easy when you've booted your
new system for the first time and got networking up and
running. Then simply use "pkg_add -r <package>" to add
things. Decide if (and how) to use ports - they are often
more convenient for maintaining the installed software.



> Worse still, though, is what I ran across in the
> partitioning/labeling/boot record section of sysinstall; no more
> "dangerously dedicated" mode (unless you go into "expert" mode, which
> is rather a mystery to me), [...]

This functionality has also been removed. To install a
system in a dedicated layout, you'll have to use the
"basic tools" (e. g. fdisk and newfs, or partitioner
of your choice).



> [...] and worse yet, it seems that the options to
> install a plain master boot record or boot manager have no effect
> whatsoever!

Can you be more specific on this?



> The really crucial problem I'm facing right now is that I can't get
> Linux's damned "grub" off of my hard drive!  

This should be easy by dd'ing the beginning of the hard disk
with /dev/zero's. Otherwise, overwriting with FreeBSD's standard
booting mechanisms should be possible too.



> I was hoping that using
> "dangerously dedicated" mode in sysinstall would allow me to overwrite
> the lingering copy of grub on my hard drive that I just can't seem to
> get rid of. 

No. The dedicated layout "happens" in "further" parts of
the hard disk, as far as I remember. Try to clean the
relevant parts of the disk using the Fixit shell first.



> The FreeBSD install works for the most part, despite the
> few oddities mentioned above, but when I try to boot into it afterwards,
> grub seizes control and hangs with an error code.

This indicates that it is still present - in a nonfunctional
state.



> I've tried numerous workarounds, using boot0cfg and both FreeBSD's and
> Linux's fdisk and friends, but to no avail.  I'm stymied at this point,
> and desperately in need of some advice here.

The boot0cfg would have been my suggestion too. There is
also "fdisk -BI <disk>", if you want to use that. To
stay with the "old-fashioned tools", the next step in a
manual install would be "bsdlabel -w -B <slice>", and
then "bsdlabel -e <slice>" to add the partitions you want.

Anyway, sysinstall should be able to do that for you.
I have to admit that I'm still using this method for
maximum compatibility, and I even tend to use sysinstall
because I'm lazy. :-)

In the slice editor, remove everything. Then add one
FreeBSD slice for the whole disk. Add a standard MBR
so booting gets you directly into FreeBSD. Then use
the partition editor to add /, swap, /tmp, /var, /usr,
/home and anything you like.



> Can some sage person out there help me out of this predicament?  Right
> now I feel like I'm doomed to keep running Linux or nothing at all!  I
> am dying to get back to FreeBSD again.

First try to use dd to clean the beginning of the hard
disk. In _worst_ case, clean the whole disk. Then start
sysinstall as usual (and as explained in the Handbook).



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...


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