On Tue, 18 Feb 1997, Robert Malcolm Speed wrote:

> Once again, that time has come, inter-semester weeks, so I have come back
> to try to install BSD (yet again.....)
> 
> My setup is ;-
> RPC 600, 16+1MB, 850 Conner, 6x Mitsumi CD-ROM drive.
> 
> My problem is ;-
> Getting the xxxxing thing to install.
> 
> I've partitioned the drive, run bb_riscbsd, I use the October 1996 loader
> which is setup thus ;-
> 
> Root :- /dev/rd0a
> Swap :- /dev/wd0b
> single user mode ticked
> native kernel ticked

You don't want native ticked, this causes the boot program to look for a
kernel in a unix partiion (of which you have none)

What do you have the kernel path set to ? 

> no other boxes are ticked
> ramdisk setup to be 1440

As should be the case

> If I use kernel 3598 I get through the installation program.
> (this gets IDE drive, wd0, call is what I want, setup the bytes/sector
> (512), the cylinders (1656), heads (16), sectors (63).
> I then specify 655 cylinders for the size of BSD partition
> 1001 for the offset, 50 for root, 50 for swap and the rest (555) for the
> main partition.

check you're setting the swap to be bigger than your memory (16Mb) (should
the kernel dump core, something that's not happened to me, it dumps it on
the swap partition)

> I set the mount point to be /usr/mnt
> (Jasper corrected me once, but again, I've deleted the mail and forgotten
> where to actually set the mount point to - I remember it didn't work
> though.)

Should be /usr or /var, you probably want it as /usr
 
> It then goes away creating super-blocks and so forth, but I get
> ffs:/dev/wd0a on /mnt : operation not supported by device

This is related to the wrong mounting place, it mounts the /usr partition
on /mnt and then copies thing onto it.

> Another problem with this kernel is that at the start, the last line is
> filled with different coloured pixels, 

Do you mean the 6 bars of colours that appear? these are to indicate how
far the boot has got.

> this then changes after a screenfull to be text that has previously
> scrolled up off the screen.....
> Odd !!!
>
> If I try kernel 4554 I get initial text (about 10 lines) then the screen
> goes blank, the HD light stays on and I have to reboot (reset switch).

This is because you're trying the native boot (I think)
 
> If I use the kernel Voyager-4956 I get 8 lines (about 1 cm high (each))
> over the normal grey screen (textured backdrops disappear), the mouse
> pointer stays on-screen but will not take input (keyboard also locks (no
> caps-lock)) and again I have to re-boot.

Which coloured bar does it stop on?  (again with native booting it starts
unixfs to find a kernel)

> I've been through the FAQ and the installation guide a few times, quite a
> few people have helped me in the past, but it just does not seem to do any
> good.
> 
> On another note, if this helps, I can't copy anything via unixfs (get
> permission denied errors)

copy things into /usr/tmp, or set the permissions on the dir you're
copying to to world writeable (chmod a+w unixfs)

Hope this helps,

Chris Gilbert