103 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
103 lines
3.8 KiB
Plaintext
Troubleshooting Tips - or "These are the times that try men's souls"
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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The following tips and tricks may help you turn a failing (or failed)
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installation attempt into a success. Please read them carefully.
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---
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Summary: Hardware conflict or misconfiguration.
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Problem: A device is conflicting with another or doesn't match
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the kernel's compiled-in IRQ or address.
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Cause: While most device drivers in FreeBSD are now smart
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enough to match themselves to your hardware settings
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dynamically, there are a few that still require fairly
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rigid configuration parameters to be compiled in (and
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matched by the hardware) before they'll work. We're
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working hard to eliminate as many of these last
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hold-outs as we can, but it's not always as easy as
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it looks.
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Solution: There are several possible solutions. The first,
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and easiest, is to boot the kernel with the -c flag.
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When you see the initial boot prompt (from floppy or
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hard disk), type:
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/kernel -c
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This will boot just past the memory sizing code and
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then drop into a dynamic kernel configuration utility.
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Type `?' at the prompt to see a list of commands. You
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can use this utility to reset the IRQ, memory address,
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IO address or a number of other device configuration
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parameters. You can also disable a device entirely
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if it's causing problems for other devices you'd much
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rather have work. Note that this only affects the
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kernel being booted temporarily, it does not "write out"
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the information to the kernel so that these settings
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are permanantly altered (this would be actually rather
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hard). If you reboot, you'll have to make the same
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changes again. The goal of the -c utility is to get
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you up far enough to be able to download the appropriate
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sources and configure and rebuild a kernel more specific
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to your needs.
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Another solution is, obviously, to remove the offending
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hardware or simply strip the system down to the bare
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essentials until the problem (hopefully) goes away.
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Once you're up, you can do the same thing mentioned
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above - compile a kernel more suited to your hardware,
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or incrementally try to figure out what it was about
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your original hardware configuration that didn't work.
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---
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Summary: Newfs crashes, requesting that blocksize be 32K
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Cause: You have your SCSI controller configured to translate
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geometries for disks >1GB in size.
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Solution: Turn such translation OFF in your controller's BIOS
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setup! FreeBSD has no problems with disks >1GB just
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so long as the root partition starts and ends BELOW
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cylinder 1024. This is a PC hardware limitation.
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---
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Summary: FreeBSD won't boot off the hard disk
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Cause: Root partition does not start and end below cylinder 1024.
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Solution: See solution for newfs crashes, or move your root
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partition. This limitation holds true for ANY operating
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system you wish to boot from your hard drive.
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---
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Summary: FreeBSD still won't boot off the hard disk
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Cause: No boot code is installed in sector 1.
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Solution: Chose the Write MBR (B)oot code in the FDISK editor.
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---
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Summary: Nope, FreeBSD's still not booting from the hard disk.
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Cause: BIOS disk geometry different from that used when
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installing FreeBSD.
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Solution: With IDE drives, pay careful attention to the geometry
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information that FreeBSD prints out when it's first
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booting off the floppy. Use this geometry in your BIOS
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setup or use the BIOS geometry when you install FreeBSD.
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Either way, they have to match.
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With SCSI drives, the values they report is most often
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bogus and cannot be used. In this situation, the SCSI
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controller is performing geometry translation and
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it's probably wise to assume a default of 64 heads,
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32 sectors and 1MB/cylinder. Use these values when
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you install FreeBSD. See above comments concerning
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newfs failures for more info.
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