problem installing on i386

[Jerry McAllister]

On Tue, Sep 26, 2006 at 11:09:05AM +0200, Desmond Coughlan wrote:

> Hi,
>   I hope that I'm not sending this to the wrong list, or that the question 
> hasn't already been answered.
>    
>   I'm trying to install 6.1-RELEASE onto a Pentium-3.
>    
>   I had a lot of trouble creating the diskettes, but after changing the 
> floppy drive, no problem.  Now, when I do the install, I have two hard 
> drives, and configure them as follows...
>    
>   disk0
>   150M / 
>   512M /etc
>   512M /etc
>   512M /var
>   1024M /bin
>   4096M /usr
>   1024M swap
>    
>   disk1
>   4096M /forums
>   4096M /mail
>   4096M /sql
>   1024M swap
>    
>   I go through the installation, via ftp, and then set the root password.  
> Oh, and the 'FreeBSD boot manager' is the option I choose, when configuring 
> the disks.

This exact same question and situation was on the list about a week ago
from someone else.  You should check out recent archives.

Anyway, my guess was that you must not make /etc a separate file system.
It should remain as part of  /  (root).  

When the installation is going on, the system is really working from a
different root and kernel and everything - one from the floppy or CD
or in a 'memory' file system.   That includes a special separate /etc
directory.

After the install, when the system is booting, it first mounts only root 
in a special Read Only state.  It takes a wild guess that root is in 
partition 'a' of the boot slice - which is required so it is a true 
guess.

But, then it tries to do a remount rw and to read /etc/fstab and maybe 
some other files to find out what to do for the rest of the boot, but 
since only root is mounted, it cannot find /etc/fstab because /etc is 
not mounted.  So, you need to leave etc as part of root.

This was initially a shot in the dark suggestion by me when this 
problem was posted a week ago, but the previous poster with that 
problem wrote back and said redoing the partitioning without a 
separate /etc solved the problem for him.

So, my suggestions on the above are to get rid of the separate /etc
partitions and to increase your /var to at least double.  

I also noted that you have  '/etc'  listed twice, but I was assuming that
is a typo.   If not, well, you can't do that - have two partitions mounted 
at the same mount point - at least not and still make use of both of them.

////jerry    

ps.  You do not need 512 MB for /etc.  Mine uses up only about 1.6 MB 

>    
>   When I reboot, this is what I see ... 
>    
>   Manual root filesystem specification 
>   <fstype>:<device> Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype> eg 
> ufs:da0s1a 
>   ?                           List valid disk boot devices 
>   <empty line> Abort manual imput 
> 
>   ... and that's it.
>    
>   Nothing else.  The machine just sits there.  
>    
>   Is there something I've missed ?  We've tried the same install on three different machines, using three different motherboards, and four different hard drives.  Something is wrong, either with the installation media, or else with our method of going about it.  Oh, and I tried installing 5.5 on the same machines, with the same result.
>    
>   FreeBSD rocks; I've used it for a long time on many different machines, and this is the first time that this has happened.
>    
>   Could someone suggest a solution?  The people with whom I'm installing this, are starting to whisper the word 'Linux', and it's giving me nightmares....   :(
>    
>   Thanks.
>   
> D.C
>    
> 
>  		
> ---------------------------------
>  D?couvrez un nouveau moyen de poser toutes vos questions quelque soit le sujet ! Yahoo! Questions/R?ponses pour partager vos connaissances, vos opinions et vos exp?riences. Cliquez ici. 
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>