freeBSD installation
 

i got freeBSD 5.1 on cds. Booting with my floppies than after a few screens it gives me a warning message saying WARNING: A geometry of 79656/16/63 for ad0 is incorrect. Using a more likely geometry etc Remember you need to enter whatever your BIOS thinks the geometry is! For IDE its what you were told in the BIOS setup etc. Do NOT use a physical geometry. So i just ignored it continuing with the steps. After the final step to install it says unable to find device node for /dev/ad0s2b in /dev! The creation of filesystems will be aborted. I have windows ME on my primary partition im not sure how to fix this problem i really want to learn freeBSD. :)

help appreciated

a few people are having the same problem as me but they say when they installed 4.8 it worked fine didnt have that warning message. im thinking i should just install 4.8. is there a big difference from 4.8 to 5.1?
cant i later just install 5.1 over 4.8 later?

5.1 one is unstable, as its the testing branch. Try going for 4.8

Rgds

Rus

I really think "unstable" is a misleading term. My 5.1 box is extremely stable. Sure, I've already run into a few bugs, but it is nothing to worry about. There is always a work around. I say you try to stick with 5.1. It really is a great distro.

From the sound of that error, it sounds like the actual size of the drive, and the size indicated by your machines bios are not one in the same. Try going into your bios setup and make sure the drive in question is set to autodetect. If that is not an available option, double check the settings and make sure they are correct.

ok i got 4.8 working the only problem is its in command mode i want to see the whole desktop how can i get that to work to see the desktop. i tried xf86 in graphical mode but theres no terminal or nothing then i tried to install it again using xf86config shellscript based and it gave me command mode. did i do something wrong?
when choosing the video card monitor etc setup part i didnt know everything so i just used default for some parts was this a bad thing?
i want to get a terminal and see my desktop. sorry new to this stuff :)

i did everything right i believe and when i run startx it gives me

Fatal server error:
xf86EnableIO:Failed to open /dev/io for extended I/O

x connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown) xauth : 1: bad display name "(isp name in here) :0" in "remove" command

i also installed KDE

Check out the online manual at FreeBSD.org....

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO.../x-config.html

You need to first configure # XFree86 -configure

Then:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...ok/x11-wm.html

edit your /etc/ttys file so that you are using kdm, rather than xdm.

create an .xsession file (rather than using the .xinitrc, but with the same start command.)

That will tell startx what to run.

You might have to create a few more entries in the XF86Config file --> /usr/X11R6/lib/X11
which should be here once you copy the default one to this directory.

I may have forgotten something, but it is pretty well explained on these pages.

ok ive done everything right i think so far. i have the xfreeconfig file in etc/X11/ which is where im supposed to have according to the manual than i type startx that wont work so i try startkde which i installed before and says

starting KDE and says some other stuff than
unable to open display
cannot connect to X server
cannot connect to X server
cannot connect to X server
cannot connect to X server
etc...

not sure where i went wrong or what i did wrong or what i didnt do.

Was your XF86Config.new file in that directory? I have it located at /usr/X11R6/etc/X11/XF86Config.new, which is where my XF86Config file is.
....and the file is named XF86Config (and not xfreeconfig).

So you see a .xinitrc and/or a .xsession file in your
/usr/home/*name* - the user you are logged in as?

yes i do have .xinitrc and .xsession there

i dont have XF86Config.new but i do have XF86Configand i used XF86Config to setup my video card monitor and my mouse works and it looks all right

What is in those .xsession and .xinitrc files?

i decided to switch over to redhat for now until i get learn enough to go into BSD thanks anyway. i would still prefer to go to BSD tho :)

lol same thing happened to me, try Slackware, then you will get used to config files and go back to FreeBsd

ok I got freeBSD to install properly the only problem now is I use ppp0e for internet. Ive tried http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...-and-slip.html but did not help me very much does anyone have an example of a working ppp0e the ppp.conf and rc.conf file.