The following tips and tricks may help you turn a failing (or failed) installation attempt into a success. Please read them carefully. Hardware conflict or misconfiguration

Problem: A device is conflicting with another or doesn't match the kernel's compiled-in IRQ or address. Cause: While most device drivers in FreeBSD are now smart enough to match themselves to your hardware settings dynamically, there are a few that still require fairly rigid configuration parameters to be compiled in (and matched by the hardware) before they'll work. We're working hard to eliminate as many of these last hold-outs as we can, but it's not always as easy as it looks. Solution: There are several possible solutions. The first, and easiest, is to boot the kernel with the -c flag. When you see the initial boot prompt (from floppy or hard disk), type: /kernel -c This will boot just past the memory sizing code and then drop into a dynamic kernel configuration utility. Type `?' at the prompt to see a list of commands. You can use this utility to reset the IRQ, memory address, IO address or a number of other device configuration parameters. You can also disable a device entirely if it's causing problems for other devices you'd much rather have work. Note that this only affects the kernel being booted temporarily, it does not write out the information to the kernel so that these settings are permanantly altered (this would be actually rather hard). If you reboot, you'll have to make the same changes again. The goal of the -c utility is to get you up far enough to be able to download the appropriate sources and configure and rebuild a kernel more specific to your needs. Another solution is, obviously, to remove the offending hardware or simply strip the system down to the bare essentials until the problem (hopefully) goes away. Once you're up, you can do the same thing mentioned above---compile a kernel more suited to your hardware, or incrementally try to figure out what it was about your original hardware configuration that didn't work. My floppy-tape drive isn't probed

Cause: Last-minute problems with this driver caused it to be disabled by default. Solution: Boot with -c (described above) and set the flags value of fdc0 to 1. This will re-enable the floppy tape driver. Sorry, but it was causing problems for other people! When I boot for the first time, it still looks for /386bsd!

Cause: You still have the old FreeBSD 1.x boot blocks on your boot partition. Solution: You should re-enter the installation process, invoke the (F)disk editor and chose the (W)rite option. This won't hurt an existing installation and will make sure that the new boot blocks get written to the drive. If you're installing for the first time, don't forget to (W)rite out your new boot blocks! :-) I want to boot FreeBSD off the second drive. It doesn't!

Cause: FreeBSD will actually install just fine on a drive other than 0 (the first drive), and the boot manager will even allow you to select it, but the boot blocks rather pathologically assume 0. This should be fixed in 2.1. Solution: Easy - follow these steps: 1. Select the first (0) drive from the (F)disk editor and write out the boot manager with the (B) option. This will enable the boot manager that allows you to actually boot off the other drive. 2. Exit the fdisk editor for the first drive and and re-enter it again for the drive you wish to install on. Set up a partition on this drive, or select (A)ll for the entire drive. 3. Enter the disklabel editor and allocate space on your second drive as normal. Proceed with the installation. 4. Once you've installed on the disk and are going to reboot from the hard disk, enter the following at the boot prompt: hd(1,a)/kernel This will ensure that you really boot from the second drive. If you've actually installed on a drive other than 1 (the 3rd or 4th drive?), substitute that number in for the above. You will need to enter this EVERY time you reboot from the hard disk. If you're feeling brave and have a srcdist + the requisite experience, you can hack the boot blocks in: /usr/src/sys/i386/boot/biosboot So that this drive you're booting from is hard-coded. Recompile the boot blocks and reinstall them on your drive with `disklabel -B ...' You can then have the default Do The Right Thing. Newfs crashes, requesting that blocksize be 32K

Cause: You have your SCSI controller configured to translate geometries for disks >1GB in size. Solution: Turn such translation OFF in your controller's BIOS setup! FreeBSD has no problems with disks >1GB just so long as the root partition starts and ends BELOW cylinder 1024. This is a PC hardware limitation. FreeBSD won't boot off the hard disk

Cause: Root partition does not start and end below cylinder 1024. Solution: See solution for newfs crashes, or move your root partition. This limitation holds true for ANY operating system you wish to boot from your hard drive. FreeBSD still won't boot off the hard disk

Cause: No boot code is installed in sector 1. Solution: Chose the Write MBR (B)oot code in the FDISK editor. Nope, FreeBSD's still not booting from the hard disk

Cause: BIOS disk geometry different from that used when installing FreeBSD. Solution: With IDE drives, pay careful attention to the geometry information that FreeBSD prints out when it's first booting off the floppy. Use this geometry in your BIOS setup or use the BIOS geometry when you install FreeBSD. Either way, they have to match. With SCSI drives, the values they report is most often bogus and cannot be used. In this situation, the SCSI controller is performing geometry translation and it's probably wise to assume a default of 64 heads, 32 sectors and 1MB/cylinder. Use these values when you install FreeBSD. See above comments concerning newfs failures for more info.