Subject: Re: 1.3.3 installer problems
To: Jukka Marin <jmarin@pyy.jmp.fi>
From: Paul Wain <paul.wain@nc.com>
List: port-i386
Date: 02/12/1999 00:25:47
Hrm, been a while since Ive dont this, but if you dont mind installing in
/etc by hand I think an "update netbsd" would work once you've partitioned
the disk.

Another thing that also breaks, reguardless of if you want to install X, it
will still fetch it! But if it does exist on the server (eg. the last 1.3I
snapshot) sysinst fails (but of course the tar files are in /usr/INSTALL so
that isnt a disaster and you can install by hand).

And it looks like small disk suffer like big disks (see the "Large Disk /
Clean Install" thread on current-users :)

Paul

Jukka Marin wrote:

> Trying to install 1.3.3 on a 1-gig IDE disk (yes, there used to be disks
> this small and even smaller ;-)
>
> First problem I had: I specified the partition sizes in megabytes and
> defined four partitions.  When I accepted the partitions, installer told
> me two of them were overlapping.  I had set the offsets and sizes like
> this:
>
> partition       size    offset
> /               100     0
> swap            200     100
> /usr            500     300
> /var            300     800
>
> I guess sysinst rounds the sector numbers or something and then gets a
> different result for different partitions.  I had to edit the partition
> sizes so that there was a 1-MB gap between the partitions to make things
> work.
>
> After this, I told it to continue.  For some reason, formatting / failed.
> sysinst complained about a read-only filesystem.  Huh?
>
> Then I typed "newfs /dev/wd0a" in shell and it worked.  I formatted all
> partitions manually without problems.
>
> Then I started sysinst again to let it do the rest of the install - but
> how do I tell it that "the partitions are ok, just go ahead and do the
> install now"?  I think there should be an option "use the partitions
> already found on the disk".  Now, I had to enter the partition sizes
> and offsets again.. then it tried to format / and failed again, argh.
>
> sysinst is a very useful tool, but when something goes wrong, you're
> completely lost.  I don't know why newfs fails now when run by the
> installer and why it works just fine when I run it manually.  Anyway,
> I just can't get NetBSD installed using sysinst on this disk. :-/
>
> I guess the -current installer is better, but I'm not sure if I can
> use it with 1.3.3..
>
>   -jm

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