ftp install / base not found
Andy Reitz
reitz at eecs.cwru.edu
Thu May 11 11:41:44 PDT 2006
On Thu, 11 May 2006, Mike Hunter wrote:
> Dear FreeBSD Questions,
>
> I have a not-so-new laptop that I tried to install FBSD on yesterday.
> This laptop can only be made to boot from floppies (usb boot doesn't work,
> no cdrom) and I happen to have some 5.3-RELEASE boot floppies laying
> around.
>
> I am successfully able to get into the installer, format the disk, create
> new FS's, DHCP, select the "Minimal" distribution and try the FTP install.
> But, no matter what I do, the ftp servers never have the distribution. I
> tried several, including ftp.freebsd.org.
>
> I have had this problem repeatedly over the years, always with older
> distributions. The error message says that I can go to the Options menu
> and change my distribution to "any", but that never works either.
>
> What's the story? Do older bases get removed from the ftp servers, or is
> there a different string I should be using in options (I tried
> 5.3-STABLE), or am I missing something? Please don't make me create new
> boot floopies! :)
Dear Befuddled,
If you FTP to 'ftp.freebsd.org' and poke around, you'll find this
directory listing in the '/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/' directory:
ncftp .../FreeBSD/releases/i386 > dir
drwxr-xr-x 19 110 0 1024 Apr 2 00:40 2.2.9-RELEASE
lrwxr-xr-x 1 110 0 10 Nov 25 18:36 4.11 moved to
ftp-archive -> README.TXT
drwxrwxr-x 2 110 0 512 Apr 11 2005 5.0-CURRENT
lrwxr-xr-x 1 110 0 10 Dec 19 18:36 5.3 has moved to
ftp-archive -> README.TXT
drwxrwxr-x 19 110 0 1024 May 9 2005 5.4-RELEASE
drwxrwxr-x 19 110 0 1024 Feb 4 09:17 5.5-BETA1
drwxrwxr-x 19 110 0 1024 Mar 14 18:58 5.5-BETA4
drwxrwxr-x 13 110 0 512 Nov 4 2005 6.0-RELEASE
drwxrwxr-x 13 110 0 1024 Feb 4 09:18 6.1-BETA1
drwxrwxr-x 14 110 0 1024 May 8 00:52 6.1-RELEASE
drwxrwxr-x 8 110 0 512 Apr 1 07:50 ISO-IMAGES
-rw-rw-r-- 1 110 0 637 Nov 23 19:21 README.TXT
As you can see, they have a nice symlink which states that FreeBSD 5.3 has
been moved to the 'ftp-archive'. Here is the relevant section from
README.TXT:
NOTE: Old releases are available at:
ftp://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/
And if you go and poke around on that server, you will find all of the
bits for 5.3-RELEASE.
HTH,
-Andy.
More information about the freebsd-questions
mailing list