From: eddy@aludra.usc.edu (George Edmond Eddy)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Installation adventures and other magic, (a cry for help!!!)
Date: 3 Sep 1992 16:08:56 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu


Hello everyone,

I was successfull installing 386bsd on my home PC a:

	386/20, Pheonix bios 
	4 MG RAM
	AST EGA adapter w/mono monitor 8-/ (it's all i got)
	seagate 4096 (80MG mfm)

i just did the standard install, i even got sys.386bsd out of
the source distributaion at work so i could recompile the kernel
and i was a happy lad :-).

Well i decided to take the plunge, i forked out $400 for 
Conner 3204 (200MG IDE), having been successful with the
3104 at work, way back in the 0.0 days... i thought this would
be a safe choice.

after getting the controller replaced (rusty's law: if i buy hardware
something *will* fail, i don't even get frustrated anymore,
i expect it to happen).  I decided i needed to do the *real*
installation, multiple partitions and swap space.  (If anyone
is interested i'll be glad to post my disktab entry).

i booted off the fixit floppy, created the appropriate desktab entry
(i'm pretty sure), including the "d" partition, as pointed out
by cgd, the entire disk is dedicated to bsd - btw.  ran disklabel,
after running disklabel i did the paranoid "disklabel -r wd0"
everything seemed to be ok, with one curious exception, the 
flags entry had: bad sectors, or something like that i can't 
remember, i was tempted to run bad144, but after reading the 
installation doc almost throughly (amazing, i know), i resisted
the evil.

i then ran newfs on my / and /usr partitions, then painstakingly
cpio'd the fixit disk directory tree onto the hard disk.  Copied
the mount and umount's too / (make sure the execute permissions are set
if you do this, i didn't :^\.

Then i rebooted, just to go into an endless reboot cycle...  so
i rebooted the fixit floppy, ran disklabel -e and removed the
bad sector flag entry.  

	*I think this may have been a mistake*????

rebooted and IT WORKED!!! gee what clever guy, i thought i was.


So now i set out to extract bin01, had to use /usr/tmp because
tmp was not big enough, extract sent me into OS panics.  so
i just extracted by hand.  zcat | unompress | cpio -pdalmu.

it completed with no complaints, however when i rebooted, i 
found out that some of the files in /etc where garbled, also 
only the fixit device drivers were in /dev.  i know the bin01
dist were ok, they were the ones i installed on my st4096.
i then became worried as to what other files might be wrecked,
especially executables, oh well.  

i then reinstalled my st4096 and cpio'd the /dev and etc directories,
(with the exception of the wd?? and rwd?? device drivers) on to 
a floppy.  then reinstalled my cp3204 and cpio'd the /dev and /etc
directories, then rebooted, played a couple games of rogue and
figured everything must be OK.

i extracted the src01 stuff and attempted to build the GENERICISA
kernel, i did the config, and make depend and then i typed make, 
by this time it's about 12:30 in the mourning and i start nodding off,
after waking up a couple hours latter, i wipe the dribble off my desk
and look at the screen...  it was the remains of a reboot screen 
with some not too friendly error type messages, hmm.... oh well,
i logged back in and found core.rm and core.cp in the root 
directory, hmmm.

i go back into the .../compile/GENERICISA directory to complete the
make and went to bed.  the next mourning (today), all the compilations
completed, but while linking the kernel "loading vmunix", the
thing core dummped, BUMMER!  i found the file core.cp, what? the
cp file core dumped, odd...

so i recompiled, rm and cp and copied them back into /bin.  i rebooted
again this time only cp core dumped, not rm???  so i go back
to the source directory for cp, and tried cp'ing some stuff, no
problem, i then try cp'ing back to /bin.  [someting happend]
can't remember  what, but i started getting core dumps when tring
to cp across filesystems.   i then went into / and tried 
cp'ing, the command completed but never created the new file????
never gave an error just did not create the new file.

and that's were i'm at now.  when i get off work i'm going back to
try to conquer this beast, or kill it.  i'm affraid editing out
the bad sectors flag from the disklabel, may be the culprit,
i'd hate to think about reinstalling everything again, but if
i have to... this will be about the 15 time starting from 0.0
back in march, so i guess i should be getting good at it.  i'm
also concerned that the C compiler somehow got zonked, but if
that was the case i would think the executable it produced would
bomb out or not even run.

anyway, sorry for the long typed explanation, but if you've read
this far, thanx, and if you have any suggestions i would *really*
be greatfull.  if not sympathy would be nice 8^/.

So long, 

--

- rusty

Rusty Eddy

eddy@usc.edu
rusty@kirra.ema.rockwell.com                        (310) 922-1231


Bagel: Sugar free donut, for the health concious hacker.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd