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Hi, I am installing FreeBSD on an old laptop. I clicked yes to the
option about linux compatibility, and after more than eight hours it is
still processing the file linux-base-fc-4. Does anyone know what it is
doing? How long can I expect it to take? The pc is a pentium with 24meg
of ram.
Begin <Zoydnd6_JaAFVjTVnZ2dnUVZ8v-dnZ2d@eclipse.net.uk>
On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:20:56 +0100, T. Sparrow <tree-sparrow@jubii.co.uk> wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi, I am installing FreeBSD on an old laptop. I clicked yes to the
> option about linux compatibility, and after more than eight hours it is
> still processing the file linux-base-fc-4. Does anyone know what it is
> doing? How long can I expect it to take? The pc is a pentium with 24meg
> of ram.[/color]
That doesn't sound too good, now does it? Unfortunately the only person
able to take a look at the machine is you, so I can't tell you exactly
what is going on. Switching to the next vty over (ctrl-f2) should tell
you some more -- this should be documented in the handbook in some more
detail.
An approach more likely to bear fruit looks like this: Install a basic
system (with docs and manpages) without all the extra stuff, and see
that you can make it boot. You should be able to do that inside of an
hour at most; it takes me less than 15 but I've had some practice.
Once you have a booting system you can try to add more things. You have
various options for that, including going back to sysinstall and using
its menu system.
I strongly suggest looking at the handbook and the INSTALL document
to see what options you have.
--
j p d (at) d s b (dot) t u d e l f t (dot) n l .
This message was originally posted on Usenet in plain text.
Any other representation, additions, or changes do not have my
consent and may be a violation of international copyright law.
jpd wrote:[color=blue]
> That doesn't sound too good, now does it? Unfortunately the only person
> able to take a look at the machine is you, so I can't tell you exactly
> what is going on. Switching to the next vty over (ctrl-f2) should tell
> you some more -- this should be documented in the handbook in some more
> detail.[/color]
There are some warning messages from hours ago. Nothing about what's
happening at the moment. (actually I think it is alt-f2). Alt-f4 gives
me a prompt and using the df command I see that the amount of space
being used up on /mnt is gradually going up. So it must be doing something.
[color=blue]
>
> An approach more likely to bear fruit looks like this: Install a basic
> system (with docs and manpages) without all the extra stuff, and see
> that you can make it boot. You should be able to do that inside of an
> hour at most; it takes me less than 15 but I've had some practice.[/color]
I wish I had done this. And I think my only mistake was to say yes to
the linux compatibility. At first it seemed reasonable to be patient, as
it could have finished at any moment. But like hanging on to a balloon
wondering when the best moment to let go would be, it only becomes
apparent when it is too late.
[color=blue]
>
> Once you have a booting system you can try to add more things. You have
> various options for that, including going back to sysinstall and using
> its menu system.
>
> I strongly suggest looking at the handbook and the INSTALL document
> to see what options you have.
>
>[/color]
I've had a lot of problems as I am installing from an MS-DOS partition.
I couldn't find anything in the manual telling me where I should put the
files and had to go through it by trial and error, installing the five
floppy disks several times over. If I could run the install process
directly from the ms-dos partition and use the cdrom that would be very
useful. This laptop has a cdrom drive and a floppy disk drive which are
both plug-in modules and cannot be used at the same time. And the
computer will not boot from a CD-R.
For those suffering the same problem, I eventually created a structure
as follows:
C:\FREEBSD\BASE\(base files here)
C:\FREEBSD\KERNELS\(generic kernel files here)
FreeBSD would not install from an extended dos partion, it had to be a
primary one. And the DOS fdisk command will not allow more than one
primary partition, so you have to install from your one and only primary
dos partition.
On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:20:56 +0100
"T. Sparrow" <tree-sparrow@jubii.co.uk> wrote:
[color=blue]
> Hi, I am installing FreeBSD on an old laptop. I clicked yes to the
> option about linux compatibility, and after more than eight hours it is
> still processing the file linux-base-fc-4. Does anyone know what it is
> doing? How long can I expect it to take? The pc is a pentium with 24meg
> of ram.[/color]
I have seen this too while installing linux-base on old machines with
few RAM, and eventually interrupted it. My guess is it is unpacking a
bzip package, and this may very well take ages when you are low on RAM
thus continously swapping. May never finish, who knows?
You'll be better off installing just a base system, get that running
and install linux-base later -- maybe even grab the package and extract
it on another machine.
Michael
In article <irydnURV0KcvSjTVnZ2dnUVZ8j-dnZ2d@eclipse.net.uk>,
T. Sparrow <tree-sparrow@jubii.co.uk> wrote:[color=blue]
>There are some warning messages from hours ago. Nothing about what's
>happening at the moment. (actually I think it is alt-f2). Alt-f4 gives
>me a prompt and using the df command I see that the amount of space
>being used up on /mnt is gradually going up. So it must be doing something.[/color]
Run ps (use "ax" arguments), try top if it's already
installed. There are tools to find out what's actually
going on rather than trying to infer stuff from things like
disk consumption.
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis - [email]shore@panix.com[/email]
Prouder than ever to be a member of the reality-based community
Michael Ross wrote:[color=blue]
>
> I have seen this too while installing linux-base on old machines with
> few RAM, and eventually interrupted it. My guess is it is unpacking a
> bzip package, and this may very well take ages when you are low on RAM
> thus continously swapping. May never finish, who knows?
>
> You'll be better off installing just a base system, get that running
> and install linux-base later -- maybe even grab the package and extract
> it on another machine.
>[/color]
According to top, the command which is doing all the work is bsdtar, so
you might be right. I think it is time to hit reset, after nearly 10
hours of processing.
In article <N-KdnQqdPqg_QTTVnZ2dnUVZ8qvinZ2d@eclipse.net.uk>,
"T. Sparrow" <tree-sparrow@jubii.co.uk> writes:[color=blue]
> Michael Ross wrote:[color=green]
>>
>> I have seen this too while installing linux-base on old machines with
>> few RAM, and eventually interrupted it. My guess is it is unpacking a
>> bzip package, and this may very well take ages when you are low on RAM
>> thus continously swapping. May never finish, who knows?
>>
>> You'll be better off installing just a base system, get that running
>> and install linux-base later -- maybe even grab the package and extract
>> it on another machine.
>>[/color]
> According to top, the command which is doing all the work is bsdtar, so
> you might be right. I think it is time to hit reset, after nearly 10
> hours of processing.[/color]
Try swapinfo
With only 24MB of ram, you're just killing your disk.
--
Steve
[url]http://troutmask.apl.washington.edu/~kargl/[/url]
I reset the computer, and it rebooted from the hard disk with a working
system. I am not sure what state it was in. But I shut it down, and then
replaced the floppy disk drive with the cdrom drive, and then started it
up. When it booted I was able to run sysinstall, and it recognised the
cdrom drive, so I was able to repartition the disk and re-install. This
is important because it's just a 1gb disk, and having half of it
allocated to an msdos partition is a waste of space. Now I am doing a
re0install from cdrom.
I think this would be useful information to be put into the
documentation. I would be happy to write it all up. How do I go about
doing that?
In article <_cqdnSCWGf42czTVnZ2dnUVZ8tHinZ2d@eclipse.net.uk>,
"T. Sparrow" <tree-sparrow@jubii.co.uk> writes:[color=blue]
> I reset the computer, and it rebooted from the hard disk with a working
> system. I am not sure what state it was in. But I shut it down, and then
> replaced the floppy disk drive with the cdrom drive, and then started it
> up. When it booted I was able to run sysinstall, and it recognised the
> cdrom drive, so I was able to repartition the disk and re-install. This
> is important because it's just a 1gb disk, and having half of it
> allocated to an msdos partition is a waste of space. Now I am doing a
> re0install from cdrom.
>
> I think this would be useful information to be put into the
> documentation. I would be happy to write it all up. How do I go about
> doing that?[/color]
Send an email to [email]freebsd-doc@freebsd.org[/email]. Describe what you
want to document, and you'll probably get sufficient pointers
and help.
--
Steve
[url]http://troutmask.apl.washington.edu/~kargl/[/url]
I spoke too soon before. Although sysinstall allowed me to repartition
the disk, it ignored my changes and re-installed into the 500 meg
partition occupying only half the disk. I have subsequently tried going
into the sysinstall configuration option and changing the msdos
partition into a freebsd partition, but it will not allow me to do this,
when I select W to write the changes it says I cannot change the
partitions for a running system. I tried booting from the floppy disks
again to do the same thing, but the W option was not there and when I
exited the sysinstall and rebooted, the partition changes were ignored.
So it seems that I am stuck with a 500 meg installation, and I do not
have enough space to install x-windows. Is this the way things are
supposed to be? Is it possible to create freebsd slices spanning across
more than one partition, and so for example to have /usr in a different
partition?
In article <KZydnV5VfOpHKDfVnZ2dnUVZ8jqdnZ2d@eclipse.net.uk>,
T. Sparrow <tree-sparrow@jubii.co.uk> wrote:[color=blue]
>Is it possible to create freebsd slices spanning across
>more than one partition, and so for example to have /usr in a different
>partition?[/color]
I don't know if the raid 0 implementation (man 8 geom, man 8
gstripe) will allow you to stripe on the same disk, although
I doubt it. However, the canonical way to do what you want
to do is to create another filesystem on another partition
and mount it on a directory of your choosing, possibly
/usr/X11R6 or whatever.
--
Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis - [email]shore@panix.com[/email]
Prouder than ever to be a member of the reality-based community
T. Sparrow wrote:[color=blue]
> Melinda Shore wrote:[color=green]
>> I doubt it. However, the canonical way to do what you want
>> to do is to create another filesystem on another partition
>> and mount it on a directory of your choosing, possibly
>> /usr/X11R6 or whatever.[/color]
>
> How do I do that? The FDisk in sysinstall doesn't seem to allow me to
> make any changes.
>[/color]
I have figured this out. I used dslabel, and then newfs. I am coming
from linux so this is all odd to me.
On Aug 18, 2:20*pm, "T. Sparrow" <tree-spar...@jubii.co.uk> wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi, I am installing FreeBSD on an old laptop. I clicked yes to the
> option about linux compatibility, and after more than eight hours it is
> still processing the file linux-base-fc-4. Does anyone know what it is
> doing? How long can I expect it to take? The pc is a pentium with 24meg
> of ram.[/color]
That is the resilience of FreeBSD.