FreeBSD 5.3 - Write failure on transfer

[Loren M. Lang]

On Sun, Jan 02, 2005 at 03:53:33PM +1030, Lino Fusco wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I am a newbie to this list and I hope I am posting to the correct list - 
> apologies if I am off target.
> 
> I am installing FreeBSD 5.3 on a  hp netserver LC2000r. The box is a 
> dual processor P3 with three scsi2 drives running in a raid1 
> configuration with one hot spare.
> 
> We have six of these boxes. Three of them are running FreeBSD 4.8 or 4.9 
> without a hitch.
> 
> I decided to install 5.3 from CD on a fourth box and I am having a problem.
> 
> I go through the install process. When it goes to write the file 
> structure to the drives it does this in a around 1 second - this seems 
> very fast. Then it starts copying from the CD and I quickly get the 
> following error:
> 
> "Write failure on transfer! (wrote -1 bytes of 1425408 bytes)"
> 
> I click ok and the next error message is:
> 
> "unable to transfer the base distribution from acd0, do you want to try 
> to retrieve it again?".
> 
> So this has started me troubleshooting the possible causes of the problem:
> 
> 1) First stop was to suspect the freebsd iso I had burnt was suspect. So 
> I re burnt the cd  and the problem persisted. I then suspected the ISO I 
> had downloaded was corrupted. So I downloaded it again, burnt the cd but 
> the problem still persisted.
> 
> 2) I then suspected the second copy could have come from a cache and 
> therefore may have the same problem as the first copy - so I checked the 
> md5 signature but it lines up with the original from freebsd.org
> 
> 3) I suspected the CD Rom drive - so I swapped it with one of our other 
> Netserver boxes - problem still persisted.
> 
> 4)I suspected a drive formatting problem - so I went back into the SCSI 
> software, redid the raid drives and reformatted them - problem still 
> persisted.
> 
> 5) I suspected another hardware problem - so I pulled out FreeBSD 4.9 to 
> see if that would install - and it did install without any errors. That 
> sort of discounts there being any hardware problems. It points to 
> something specific to freebsd 5.3.
> 
> So this is where I have got to - FreeBSD 4.9 will install without errors 
> but 5.3 will not install.
> 
> I suspect the problem has to do with the initial setting up of the file 
> structure - 5.3 is doing this in about one second whereas 4.9 takes 
> closer to a minute to do this.
> 
> Any thoughts or suggestion?

I believe FreeBSD 5.3 does support using UFS 1 in the install, just
check the option in the disklabel program, but if the partitioning also
fails then that may not be the problem.

> 
> Lino
> Webzone
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