Hard Disk problems when installing FreeBSD 5.3BETA7

From: Odhiambo Washington (wash_at_wananchi.com)
Date: 11/01/04

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    Date: Mon, 1 Nov 2004 18:08:21 +0300
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    {REVISED POST}

    Hello experts,

    I have experienced so much problems installing FreeBSD 5.3BETA7 I guess
    it's time for me to ask the experts.

    I have two disks:

    1. Maxtor (DiamondMax Plus 9)
       120GB ATA/133
       Mfg Date: 30 Jan 2004
       Code: YAR41BW0
       E-H011-02-3880 (3.5 SERIES)

    2. Western Digital (WD800) EIDE Drive
       80GB
       WD Caviar
       MDL: WD800LB-00DNA0
       Mfg Date: 19 Jan 2004
       DCM: HSBHCVJAH

    Motherboard: VIA VT8233.

    Those are as much as I can read on the disks.

    Now my woes:

    I have tried more than 20 times installing FreeBSD 5.3 on these disks.
    I have tried this since 5.3BETA1 all the way to 5.3BETA7, hoping at
    each stage that I will get lucky.

    Always things fail. After the disk label stage, I choose the minimal
    distro and commit. That is when I get the message that "I must create
    at least the root and swap partitions".
    Ordinarily, I want to install like this (take the 80GB disk):

    74GB = /
    2GB = swap

    What I am presented with is just 76GB.

    Even for the 120 GB disk:

    112GB = /
      2GB = swap

    Here what I am presented with is 114GB.

    The reason I want to partition like that is because I have another old
    box with 36GB that kinda I managed to install 5.3 on. It's now running
    5.3-RELEASE and it was partitioned the same way. I simply want to tar
    it up, move the tarball to my problematic box and extract, then change
    a few things in fstab and rc.conf and have a machine to enjoy!

    Note that during labelling, I have even used the "Auto" option. The
    thing still fails when it comes to newfs!!!

    I have left the BIOS setting as AUTO as well as LBA.
    I have even changed the disk geometry on the partition editor to match
    what the BIOS thinks is correct.
    I have even attempted to manually commit my changes at the disk label
    stage.
    Whatever I do, the installation does not succeed! I sometimes end up
    installing, but when it comes to mounting the root partition on reboot
    (after install finishes), the thing fails.
    I have even flashed my Award BIOS by getting latest firmware from
    esupport.com and US $25.
    That is how much I would like to run 5.3.

    Do I get any errors at all?

    On Main Console:

    No root device found - you must label a partition as / in the label
    editor

    [I press Enter]

    No swap devices found - you should create at least one sap partition
    .... blah ..

    [I press Enter again]

    Couldn't make filesystems properly. Aborting.

    On vtys - Alt+F2:

    DEBUG: ioctl (3, TIOCCONS, NULL) = 0 (Success)
    DEBUG: Add mapping for /dev/cuaa0 to sl0
    DEBUG: Add mapping for /dev/cuaa1 to sl0
    DEBUG: Scanning disk ad0 for root filesystem
    DEBUG: Scanning disk ad0 for swap partitions

    And that's it. I have checked all the vtys, and the msg is the same.

    Someone please tell me that this has nothing to do with the BIOS at all.
    Winblows apparently has no problems at all installing on these disks,
    but I hate to use Micro*** as a yard stick.

    What shall I do???

    -Wash

    http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html 

    --
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