Can't install 3.3 (thinks IDE disk too small)
Dylan Kohler
Hi,
I've had no luck installing NEXTSTEP 3.3 on my Compaq Presario. As the
NeXTanswers dictate, I've set my harddrive to be the master device and
the CD-ROM to be the slave device on the primary IDE controller; I've
used the EIDE.pkg drivers (versions 3.31 and 3.35). Nonetheless, it
recognizes both drives, but thinks the harddrive is only 24MB large,
even though it's 4GB. I also tried it with my 6GB disk, but it thought
it was only 2108MB; it got further and actually installed the software
from CD-ROM but had biosread errors reading the EIDE driver floppy upon
reboot!
Thanks for any help!
Dylan
-----------------------------------------------
Dylan Kohler
DreamWorks Feature Animation
dy...@dreamworks.com
TjL
You will have to partition the drive to 2047mb or less.
There should be info in Dejanews and there is an FAQ on www.doubleu.com IIRC
TjL
--
"soon": (adv) a time interval somewhere between this afternoon and
the end of the world, if all goes as according to plan"
-- From the Dictionary for Marketing
H.-R. Oberhage
Dylan Kohler (dy...@anim.dreamworks.com) wrote:
: > You will have to partition the drive to 2047mb or less.:
: Thanks TjL. I'm afraid it hasn't worked for me, though. After
: partitioning my Maxtor 84320D4 4MB drive into three partitions of about
: 1.6MB each, the NEXTSTEP 3.3 recognizes that the drive has 8930
: cylinders, 15 heads, and 63 spt, but nonetheless calculates in the next
: line that it has a 512 blocksize and only 24MB of capacity!
Acutally it should have succeeded, if you made a DOS/FDISK partition of
(less than) 2 GB (i.e. e.g. 2047MB), but then the rest of the disk is
not(!) usable for NS/OS!!!
:
: Still trying.... (Any help appreciated.)
Let's try it, though it's not easy! Most probably your disk has a
size of 4GB+something (sometimes 2GB+something) the 'something' being
24 MB in your case. Now BuildDisk, which by decisions of almighty NeXT
evaluated your disk geometry, regardless of (at least) any UNIX
(not FDISK!) partitioning scheme that you did.
Actually any value for something being less than what BuildDisk things
is the minimum amount to install NS/OS on, will give you this behaviour.
[This value is something about 105 MB or so, if I remember it well, so
with an e.g. 5GB drive you would be fine :-).]
So UNIX-partition the disk to your liking, making no UNIX partition
larger than 2GB (proposal: As many 2GB as you can get, but nearly
anything (large enough to hold NS/OS) will do.
Then let the installing begin. At the point, where you could select
software if BuildDisk wouldn't decide, that you don't have enough
space, quit the system. Actually the 'base system' is already installed
now!
Now you have to boot into single user mode ('-s'), which is possible,
as the system is already on disk (see above!). Make a file
'/usr/adm/BuildDisk.custom' (e.g. by 'touch /usr/adm/BuildDisk.custom'),
mind the exact spelling of the file!
Now you can reboot and after that install (additional) package for
package as you want to have your configuration. It's somewhat slower
than the 'normal initial install', but it gives you everything you
need - at least it should.
You can then enter the additional UNIX partitions to the /etc/fstab
file to have them automatically mount on the next(!) (re-)boot.
Hope, you'll succeed.
Greetings,
Ruediger Oberhage
--
H.-R. Oberhage
Mail: Univ.-GH Essen E-Mail: phy...@sp2.power.Uni-Essen.DE
Fachbereich 7 (Physik) rued...@Theo-Phys.Uni-Essen.DE
S05 V07 E88
Universitaetsstrasse 5 Phone: (+49) 201 / 183-2493
D-45117 Essen, Germany FAX: (+49) 201 / 183-2120
Dylan Kohler
H.-R. Oberhage wrote in message <6m7qns$h0...@mx2.hrz.uni-essen.de>...
>Dylan Kohler (dy...@anim.dreamworks.com) wrote:
>:
>: Thanks TjL. I'm afraid it hasn't worked for me, though. After
>: partitioning my Maxtor 84320D4 4MB drive into three partitions of about
>: 1.6MB each, the NEXTSTEP 3.3 recognizes that the drive has 8930
>: cylinders, 15 heads, and 63 spt, but nonetheless calculates in the next
>: line that it has a 512 blocksize and only 24MB of capacity!
>Acutally it should have succeeded, if you made a DOS/FDISK partition of
>(less than) 2 GB (i.e. e.g. 2047MB), but then the rest of the disk is
>not(!) usable for NS/OS!!!
Thanks for your assistance, Ruediger.
To check my sanity, I tried this as well--seeing if I could get it on the
disk in any way, even sacrificing half the disk space. I made a < 2GB
partition using DOS/FDISK (2045MB) and tried to install NEXTSTEP. As usual,
it went as far as loading all drivers from floppy and then attempted to
boot, but couldn't since it thought the disk only had a capacity of 24MB.
:-(
>: Still trying.... (Any help appreciated.)
>Let's try it, though it's not easy! Most probably your disk has a
>size of 4GB+something (sometimes 2GB+something) the 'something' being
>24 MB in your case. Now BuildDisk, which by decisions of almighty NeXT
>evaluated your disk geometry, regardless of (at least) any UNIX
>(not FDISK!) partitioning scheme that you did.
>Actually any value for something being less than what BuildDisk things
>is the minimum amount to install NS/OS on, will give you this behaviour.
>[This value is something about 105 MB or so, if I remember it well, so
> with an e.g. 5GB drive you would be fine :-).]
>So UNIX-partition the disk to your liking, making no UNIX partition
>larger than 2GB (proposal: As many 2GB as you can get, but nearly
>anything (large enough to hold NS/OS) will do.
>
>Then let the installing begin. At the point, where you could select
>software if BuildDisk wouldn't decide, that you don't have enough
>space, quit the system. Actually the 'base system' is already installed
>now!
To be clear, I never get this far. I only get past the point where I
install drivers from floppies and am about to load the base system from CD.
Before it loads, it declares my disk is only 24MB and fails.
I tried another way, by installing the "Cylinder Limitation" jumper on the
Maxtor drive. (This jumper is for BIOS's with cylinder limitations;
basically it fools the computer into thinking the there are fewer cylinders
with more capacity.) This somehow tricks the NEXTSTEP install program into
thinking it's a drive with 1.8GB capacity and I can at least load the base
system from CD. When it's done, however, it reboots and asks for the EIDE
driver from floppy and fails with a "biosread errors" when it tries to read
the floppy again.
Basically, this is a complicated problem because of the three variables:
NEXTSTEP with its partition restriction, Compaq with its quite automatic and
opaque BIOS, and the Maxtor drive. I have installed Rhapsody RDR just fine
on this very system and drive, so I know the latter two are ready to
roll--it's just the finicky NEXTSTEP 3.3 installer I need to learn the magic
for....
Thanks again for any input. The whole point of this exercise is to see if I
can salvage some NEXTSTEP 3.3 code for use on Rhapsody.
>Now you have to boot into single user mode ('-s'), which is possible,
>as the system is already on disk (see above!). Make a file
>'/usr/adm/BuildDisk.custom' (e.g. by 'touch /usr/adm/BuildDisk.custom'),
>mind the exact spelling of the file!
>
>Now you can reboot and after that install (additional) package for
>package as you want to have your configuration. It's somewhat slower
>than the 'normal initial install', but it gives you everything you
>need - at least it should.
>
>You can then enter the additional UNIX partitions to the /etc/fstab
>file to have them automatically mount on the next(!) (re-)boot.
I think this would be helpful if I could get the base package and EIDE
driver installed, but as I mention above, I can't get that far.
------------------
Dylan Kohler
dko...@hotmail.com
MARMIER Raphael
> H.-R. Oberhage wrote in message <6m7qns$h0...@mx2.hrz.uni-essen.de>...
> >Dylan Kohler (dy...@anim.dreamworks.com) wrote:
> >:
> >: Thanks TjL. I'm afraid it hasn't worked for me, though. After
> >: partitioning my Maxtor 84320D4 4MB drive into three partitions of about
> >: 1.6MB each, the NEXTSTEP 3.3 recognizes that the drive has 8930
> >: cylinders, 15 heads, and 63 spt, but nonetheless calculates in the next
> >: line that it has a 512 blocksize and only 24MB of capacity!
So it would seem as the driver is anable to get the proper geometry of
your drive at boot... no fun!
I have no solution, but I remeber some people have already had the
problem. Search the news (www.dejanew.com is a good start). There may be a
workaround for this.
One possiblity to ensure BIOS isn't for anything in the problem is to
erase bios entry for that drive end booting from another. (That's what I
do, as I have three drives and my BIOS supports only two, works, fine)
hope this helps
Raph
Dylan Kohler
Satoru Uzawa is a hero! With Satoru's guidance, and some trial and error on
my part, I was finally able to install NEXTSTEP 3.3 on a system with a 4GB
EIDE disk and ATAPI CD-ROM: my Compaq Presario 4850 with a Maxtor 84320D4
disk.
Basically, the trick is to boot single-user from CD-ROM and run the commands
in /etc/rc.cdrom manually, avoiding those that check you've enough disk
space by incorrectly calculating the drive's capacity. After that, there
are some magic tricks to install the EIDE driver set from floppy and have
the right one be recognized.
Below are the detailed instructions.
Thanks again, Satoru.
--Dylan
-------------------
Dylan Kohler
dko...@hotmail.com
1. Get a floppy disk with the 3.3 Beta drivers on it from NeXTanswers.
This
will include the EIDE.config required for your harddisk.
2. Start up the computer with the install floppy in it. At the boot:
prompt,
type -s for single user mode.
3. Then the installation process will begin. Load an Adaptec 154x driver
for
the CD-ROM driver. (Even though your CD drive is ATAPI, a bug in
NEXTSTEP
3.3 only selects the SCSI drivers.)
4. Load the EIDE/ATAPI controller from the 3.3 Beta floppy. No additional
drivers are needed.
5. Run "/usr/etc/fdisk /dev/rhd0h" and create a NEXTSTEP partition of 2045
MB,
followed by whatever else. (I have a DOS, 12 bit FAT after it.) I
think
you can devote a larger partition to NEXTSTEP with this approach, but I
didn't try it.
6. Run "/usr/etc/disk -i /dev/rhd0a" to intialize the disk
7. Run the following to install the Base System:
HD=/private/tmp/mnta
mount -n /dev/hd0a ${HD}
mkdirs ${HD}/private/vm
mkdirs ${HD}/private/tmp
mkfile 16m ${HD}/private/vm/swapfile
mach_swapon -o nocompress ${HD}/private/vm/swapfile
/NextCD/CDIS/ditto -T -arch i386 -bom /usr/lib/NextStep/BaseSystem.bom \
-outBom ${HD}/BaseSystem.bom / ${HD}
8. Run this to begin configuring the system:
echo "/dev/hd0a / 4.3 rw,noquota,noauto 0 1" > ${HD}/private/etc/fstab
echo "/dev/sd0a /NEXTSTEP_INSTALL 4.3 ro,noquota 0 2" >> \
${HD}/private/etc/fstab
chmod 1777 ${HD}
chmod 1777 ${HD}/private/tmp
echo "LANGUAGE=English" > ${HD}/private/adm/CDIS.custom
ln -s Drivers/i386 ${HD}/private/Devices
mkdirs ${HD}/usr/Devices/System.config
echo "ROOT=/" >> ${HD}/private/adm/CDIS.custom
echo "FDISK_FLAGS=" >> ${HD}/private/adm/CDIS.custom
echo "diskie=hd0a" >> ${HD}/private/adm/CDIS.custom
BOOTDRIVERS=`/NextCD/CDIS/sysconfig -c -a i386`
cp /private/Drivers/i386/System.config/Default.table \
${HD}/usr/Devices/System.config/Default.install
DEFAULT_FILE=/usr/Devices/System.config/Default.table
grep -v 'Boot Drivers' ${HD}/usr/Devices/System.config/Default.install >
\
${HD}${DEFAULT_FILE}
echo "\"Boot Drivers\" = \"${BOOTDRIVERS}\";" >> ${HD}${DEFAULT_FILE}
echo "\"Language\" = \"English\";" >> ${HD}${DEFAULT_FILE}
9. Now reboot with the Install floppy inserted. At the boot: prompt type
"-s fd()mach_kernel rootdev=hd0a".
10. At the # prompt, run:
driverLoader d=Floppy (say "yes" to everything)
driverLoader d=SerialPorts (say "yes" to everything)
mount -n /dev/fd0a /private/tmp/mntb
cd /private/tmp/mntb/private/Drivers/i386
tar cf - EIDE.config | ( cd /private/Drivers/i386 ; tar xf -)
11. These 3 lines are important, or else it will try the IDE driver by
default:
cd /private/Drivers/i386/EIDE.config
mv Default.table IDE.table
cp Dual_EIDE.table Default.table
mount -n /dev/sd0a /NEXTSTEP_3.3
INSTALLHINTS=/usr/Devices/System.config/InstallHints
rm -rf ${INSTALLHINTS}
mkdir ${INSTALLHINTS}
BOOTDRIVERS=`/NEXTSTEP_3.3/NextCD/CDIS/sysconfig -c -a i386`
for driver in ${BOOTDRIVERS}
do
/NEXTSTEP_3.3/NextCD/CDIS/sysconfig -d ${driver} > \
${INSTALLHINTS}/${driver}.table 2>>/dev/null
done
chmod -R 777 ${INSTALLHINTS}
12. Reboot with no special flags at the boot: prompt. When it boots,
remove
the IDE driver with Configure.app and add the Dual Primary/Secondary
EIDE/ATAPI driver instead.
13. Tadaa! You're now running NEXTSTEP 3.3.
gi...@juno.com
This is awesome!!!
But one question, How do I do the installation without wiping out my
Win95 Partition? I have Win95 in the first partition and the second
partition is empty.
Carl...
John David Duncan
Here's what I had to do in this situation:
1. In the bios, set the "mode" or "type" of the drive to LBA -- Logical
Block Assignment. If your bios won't do this, you might need a new
motherboard...
2. Don't use builddisk to create a boot drive of this size -- Use ditto,
as per NextAnswer 1986, which happens to mention that "BuildDisk isn't
supported under NEXTSTEP for Intel processors because of its inability to
deal with drivers."
On Tue, 16 Jun 1998, Dylan Kohler wrote:
> TjL wrote:
> >
> > You will have to partition the drive to 2047mb or less.
> >
> > There should be info in Dejanews and there is an FAQ on www.doubleu.com IIRC
>
> Thanks TjL. I'm afraid it hasn't worked for me, though. After
> partitioning my Maxtor 84320D4 4MB drive into three partitions of about
> 1.6MB each, the NEXTSTEP 3.3 recognizes that the drive has 8930
> cylinders, 15 heads, and 63 spt, but nonetheless calculates in the next
> line that it has a 512 blocksize and only 24MB of capacity!
>
> Still trying.... (Any help appreciated.)
> -----------------------------------------------
> Dylan Kohler
> DreamWorks Feature Animation
> dko...@dreamworks.com (MIME, ASCII)
>
>
TjL
In <Pine.NXT.3.96.980625114812.4201B-100000@allie> John David Duncan wrote:
> 2. Don't use builddisk to create a boot drive of this size -- Use ditto,
> as per NextAnswer 1986, which happens to mention that "BuildDisk isn't
> supported under NEXTSTEP for Intel processors because of its inability to
> deal with drivers."
Which is ridiculously stupid IMO since it will work fine except for making a
few links.
Seems to me it would have been easy enough to have it duplicate the links
necessary, but maybe I'm missing something...
TjL
sat...@candenext.lsa.berkeley.edu
Hi folks,
Dylan did overcome the hurdle of NeXTSTEP 3.3 installation on large disks.
The root of problem is "/usr/etc/disk" which reports wrong total size for
large hard drives. The "etc/rc.cdrom" script will halt when it's reported
too small size for installation. I know this is fixed in 4.2 but don't know
in OPENSTEP 4.0 or 4.1. Basically, the same workaround Dylan used can be
applied to later systems, too. I'm not sure whether it will work on NeXTSTEP
3.2 or 3.1.
Here is how Dylan overcame the installation hurdle. It's pretty long. I
helped him in initial steps but the final success is a triumph of his effort
and patience and this procedure should be credited to him. I'll post this
for others who might have trouble with installation. The basic idea is to
run the /etc/rc.cdrom by hand (now you know how patient Dylan is!!). I made
several comments
Enjoy!
START QUOTE*************
I was finally able to install NEXTSTEP 3.3 on a system with a 4GB
EIDE disk and ATAPI CD-ROM: my Compaq Presario 4850 with a Maxtor 84320D4
disk.
Basically, the trick is to boot single-user from CD-ROM and run the commands
in /etc/rc.cdrom manually, avoiding those that check you've enough disk
space by incorrectly calculating the drive's capacity. After that, there
are some magic tricks to install the EIDE driver set from floppy and have
the right one be recognized.
Below are the detailed instructions.
Thanks again, Satoru.
--Dylan
-------------------
Dylan Kohler
dko...@hotmail.com
1. Get a floppy disk with the 3.3 Beta drivers on it from NeXTanswers.
This will include the EIDE.config required for your harddisk.
2. Start up the computer with the install floppy in it. At the boot:
prompt, type -s for single user mode.
3. Then the installation process will begin. Load an Adaptec 154x driver
for the CD-ROM driver. (*This is required for interfacing install script
to ATAPI protocol which is an implementation of SCSI CD-ROM command set.
The order you load the drivers are important*)
4. Load the EIDE/ATAPI controller from the 3.3 Beta floppy. No additional
drivers are needed.
5. Run "/usr/etc/fdisk /dev/rhd0h" and create a NEXTSTEP partition of 2045
MB, followed by whatever else. (I have a DOS, 12 bit FAT after it.) I
think you can devote a larger partition to NEXTSTEP with this approach,
but I didn't try it. (*NeXTSTEP partition larger than 2047MB will be
split into equal sized BSD paritions, /dev/hd0a, /dev/hd0b, etc. This is
within the fdisk partition*)
6. Run "/usr/etc/disk -i /dev/rhd0a" to intialize the disk
(*If you have "fdisk parition larger than 2047MB, you can give a "-p
SIZEinBlocks" option to create different size BSD paritions. 1 Block=512
bytes. *)
mkdirs ${HD}/usr/Devices/System.config
**********END QOUTE
---
Satoru Uzawa, *my_first_name_here*@candenext.lsa.berkeley.edu (NeXTmail
welcome)