installation problems of FreeBSD 7 beta 2 on Dell D610 (multiboot con solaris, linux, winxp)

[Julian H. Stacey]

"Stefano Spinucci" wrote:
> I encountered some problems installing FreeBSD 7 beta 2 on my Dell
> D610 laptop, on the original 60 gb hd; the hd is formatted as follows:
> - primary 1, 15 gb, ntfs for Windows XP
> - primary 2, 15 gb, solaris for Open Solaris
> - primary 3, 10 gb, fat32 for FreeBSD
> - extended, 20 gb, 3 partitions for linux
> 
> I tried to install FreeBSD many times, but after the geometry error
> (the geometry is however correctly recognized), FDISK doesn't find any
> partition and the space is shown as free, unpartitioned.
> 
> I tried to set the partition type for FreeBSD to FAT16, FAT32, FreeBSD
> and I also reformatted the partition many times, but with no success.
> 
> have you any idea???

Stefano & stable@

Your symptoms seem likely laptop specific, so if you remain stuck,
later try mobile@

I saw similar installing 7.0-BETA3 on my Digital HiHote Ultra
2000 laptop: it recognised the 5G laptop disc, but did Not recognise
the 3 x FreeBSD-5.1-RELEASE boot partitions that work OK there.

So I thought, OK, abandon installing on an fdisk partition, install
on whole disk.  It went through partitioning, then failed to find
its file system.  5.1 was still intact & booted.  I assume it's my
laptop ATA interface, seen that problem before.  FreeBSD for old
hardware often needs extra instructions manually to loader to tell
WD/ATA (&/or ep0) to run in a more conservative mode.

I'll look for right syntax. eg maybe hw.ata.ata_dma=0 etc starting
in my http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/hardware/laptops/#loader.conf

/Soapbox:
	This frequent `FreeBSD defaults to need high end modern
	hardware' is bad for publicity, newbies who dont know where
	to look will tell friends: I gave up & went Linux.

	( For those who might say "buy high end", No! spare old
	laptop sufficient for Xterm + mp3 + LAN for stereo in living
	room, leaving main laptop free for more demanding things.
	Plus not all can afford latest, + conservation, green etc,
	...  just needs more generous install defaults. )

	FreeBSD has improved elsewhere though on old hardware: The
	same laptop that failed to go beyond 5.1 without losing
	ep0, now sees ep0 in 7.0-BETA3 install.
End Soapbox/

-- 
Julian Stacey. Munich Computer Consultant, BSD Unix C Linux. http://berklix.com
	Ihr Rauch = mein allergischer Kopfschmerz. Dump cigs 4 snuff.