Install 8.0

[efmoya]

About three years ago (2006) I retired my old computer (Pentium Pro 200MHz, Intel motherboard, 65 MByte disk, Broken floppy drive) and bought a modern, high speed computer.

I put my old computer under the TV set and adapted it as a server that I can use to locally test the performance of web sites I make.

I found out by my research that most sites are hosted on Unix(-like) boxes and use Apache, PHP and MySQL so I determined to make that my sites software suite. With that in mind I selected FreeBSD 6.0, Apache 2.0, PHP 5.1.6 and MySQL 5.0.18 and proceeded to install them all.

I remember having a LOT of trouble with the installation CD in that it would hang waiting for BTX something. Finally I wrote some floppy disks as instructed on the FreeBSD website and with them I was able to finish the installation. My server has been working with the same software since then.

Since I now have some extra time and since my server software is starting to get old I decided to do it again with the latest software as the base.

So I went to the FreeBSD site, found that the latest and greatest is 8.0 and downloaded the RELEASE i386-All file. The next morning I had all 3.65 GByte worth of data. I proceeded to burn 'disk1' onto a blank CD and then put that CD in my server's reader and pressed the RESET button.

What happened next:

1) The computer blinked then proceeded with the BIOS routines.

2) The BIOS finished and the computer then accessed the CD and started the boot routine.

3) When it got to the point that the BTX (??) started it printed "BTX version 1.0 Something version 1.2" or something like that.

4) Did nothing else for half an hour.

FREEBSD PEOPLE: WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN DOING FOR THREE YEARS ?? THIS IS THE SAME PROBLEM FROM THREE YEARS AGO AND STILL IT HASN'T BEEN FIXED !! SHOULDN'T THIS HAVE BEEN FIXED WITH VERSION 6.1 ??

With this longwinded start -- my question:

How can I execute sysinstall with this failure and NO floppy disks? I threw all my floppies away some years ago. x(

[LateNiteTV]

EFMOYA MAYBE ITS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR COMPUTER SEEING AS HOW IT STILL DOESNT WORK!!!!!!!

everything always has worked fine on every system ive installed freebsd on. you should probably look at why your computer refuses to boot the cd and not be condescending to the freebsd developers. juuuuuust a thought.

[DutchDaemon]

What hasn't evolved since FreeBSD 6.0? Your CD drive settings, or the FreeBSD boot process? I think I know.

Have you ever looked at the BIOS? Have you ever updated the BIOS? Have you looked at jumper settings?

[efmoya]

My BIOS ROM is soldered in.

My CD was in use every day using V6.0.

This is the first mention of this problem I've found with a quick search:
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=608&highlight=BTX+loader

Thank you both for your VERY condescending answers.

Does anyone know anything about this problem and can help?

Thanks,
efmoya

[robertclemens]

FREEBSD PEOPLE: WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN DOING FOR THREE YEARS ?? THIS IS THE SAME PROBLEM FROM THREE YEARS AGO AND STILL IT HASN'T BEEN FIXED !! SHOULDN'T THIS HAVE BEEN FIXED WITH VERSION 6.1 ??

Guess it's okay for you to be "condescending" and to actually expect 100% serious answers.

Basically what they are saying is true though. You are wanting an updated software without updating your system.

What steps have you taken? The answers given above are applicable to your situation and you should look into them. This is a technical forum and you will need to be technical.

Try looking at BIOS settings such as ACPI.

[SirDice]

My BIOS ROM is soldered in.
This doesn't mean it can't be updated. I have much older boards lying around. You can update the BIOS on all of them.

[michaelrmgreen]

Can your system boot from USB flash disks? If it can try the USB image here: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-i386/8.0/ Its the one called memstick.

The instructions for getting it on a USB drive are here : http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.0R/announce.html

If you can't boot from USB sticks come back with a detailed description of the hardware you want to use.

[DutchDaemon]

.. after upgrading your BIOS.

[davidgurvich]

You already have the iso on another system and the current system is running freebsd. Have you considered an in place upgrade or an upgrade using pxe?

[paean]

Or just upgrade directly from FBSD 6 to 8 via CSup (http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=8406).

The above link includes information on how to upgrade your ports as well.

[efmoya]

This link: http://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-questions@freebsd.org/msg224635.html is exactly what my system is and does.

I followed the instructions contained and successfully installed V7.2. I still could not boot V8.0. I kept getting a page fault when I tried to boot the V8.0 CD.

Yes, my BIOS is current.

I still want to install V8.0 but I'll just have to wait till someone fixes BTX and the page fault.

Regards,
EFM

[SirDice]

File a PR. If nobody knows about the problem nobody will fix it.

24.3.1.2.3 Fault Handling

BTX does not ignore faults. Instead, it prints out a rather cryptic
register dump, followed by a stack dump and a code dump. While this
information may not seem very understandable, it is very helpful to
the people who work on BTX. If you get a fault, please include the
full fault in your bug report.

Example BTX Fault

int=0000000d err=00000000 efl=00010207 eip=00004316
eax=00000008 ebx=00000001 ecx=fffffff7 edx=00001000
esi=0000000a edi=0003f7c4 ebp=000845d8 esp=0008459c
cs=002b ds=0033 es=0033 fs=0033 gs=0033 ss=0033
cs:eip=fb b3 68 31 68 af 30 79-fa 32 68 00 00 00 8b 55
ss:esp=c4 f7 03 00 01 00 00 00-c4 f7 03 00 00 10 00 00


http://people.freebsd.org/~jhb/docs/loader.txt

[Brandybuck]

BTX is not FreeBSD, it runs before FreeBSD even starts. All it has to work with is your BIOS. Hence all the posts suggesting updating your BIOS. But it might possibly be the CD drive, so you might want to consider replacing that.

p.s. 7.3 is due any day now, and will probably be more stable than 8.0. You may want to stick with the 7.x branch for the time being.