Hi,

If you go through the FAQ, you are going to see something like:

"This is an indication that an error of type 5 (a phase error) occurred.
It is a result of a bug in the earlier installers (often they are trying
to read the disk label off of a CD-ROM drive). It occurs in the Mkfs
utility as well. However, this is harmless, and it is safe to ignore this
particular error message. The newest version of the Installer seems to
have fixed this particular bug, although it may still exist in the latest
version of the Mkfs utility."

However, when I was trying to install on my Centris 650, this "harmless"
error gave me all sorts of problems, because the Installer just couldn't
get past it.  Here are some things to try:

1) Increase the memory partition for the Installer program (use "Get
Info..." after selecting the appllication icon).  Set it to a really high
number.  My C650 has 40MB so I set it to 35000K.  This cut down on some of
the errors and let me install some packages that would not install.

2) Make sure your external drive has "active" termination.

In the end, I just could not get the base tarball to completely install.
Since the installer installs in order and tar is in /usr/bin/tar, I could
not just use tar.  So I had to use MacGZIP and SunTar on the MacOS side,
get enough of the base files to let me boot single user into the system
using the Mini-shell and cpin.  I also installed tar.  I then used cpin to
copy in the entire base file as base.tar.gz.

Then, I booted single user, mounted my disks in read/write mode, and was
able to untar the files using:

tar --unlink -xzpvf base.tar.gz

The reason why the SCSI phase error was such a problem in this case is
still a mystery to me.  However, according to some docs I found on Apple
support web pages, there is a bug in the C650/Q650 SCSI controller.
Perhaps something in the Installer code is tickling this bug when you try
to install large files(?).

Hopefully, dratsically increasing the memory partition will work for you
and you won't have the troubles I had.  I should mention that once I got
NetBSD installed, it has worked very well for me.  In fact, my computing
time is now spent about 95% in NetBSD and 5% in MacOS (and the trend is to
use MacOS less and less).

Mark

On Sat, 17 May 1997, James Frederick Zumberge wrote:

> I have a Quadra 650 w/ 24 Mb ram , a 230-Mb internal drive, and a LaCie
> 2.1 Gb external drive (SCSI 2, looks like IBM DOR-32160 to mkfs).
> 
> I used Silverlining to partition the external drive into a big Mac partition
> (kids need lots of room for games), a 128-k usr, a 128-k root, and a 64-k swap,
> for a total of 4 partitions. (It took me a couple of times to get this
> the way I wanted.)
> 
> I then used mkfs_1.4 to make NetBSD usr and root file systems.
> 
> I had fetched from ftp.netbsd.org the current release snapshot from
> early April.
> 
> When I run Installer 1.1e I get the enclosed log. 

Mark Andres             E-mail: mark@giganet.net
    Running NetBSD and 100% Microsoft Free!
URL: http://www2.giganet.net/private/users/mark/