BSD

Hi all, I'm new to the world of Unix/Linux (though not to computing in general) and I'm having a few issues installing FreeBSD (v6.2).

Firstly, I realise that it's not the most user-friendly of distros, especially for newbies, but it's what I'm required to install so unfortunately I have to stick with that. However I am hoping to eventually dual-boot with something like Ubuntu to try and make learning a bit easier.

At the moment all I'm trying to do is install the product. The CD boots fine and it has been used to successfully install FreeBSD on another computer, so we know it's not a dodgy disc or anything.

Once booted, we just let it select the default install option and it goes and starts checking what the system has. According to everything I've seen in manuals and online, the last thing it checks is the hard drives and then it *should* say "Trying to mount kernel" or similar.

On the computer I'm having issues with, it detects and correctly identifies the hard drives and then, before it gets to saying "Trying to mount kernel" it hangs. Definitely hangs as we've left it while watching a 2hr film just to make sure - no CD drive activity, no HDD drive activity at all. We've taken everything out that was not "essential" (i.e. just leaving mobo, CPU, RAM, gfx card, HDD and CD drive) and it still hangs at the same place.

I haven't been able to find anything online and most of the friends I have that know about this sort of stuff are more into Linux than Unix and say they don't know enough to help. I'm really stuck with what to try next.

The computer is as follows:
Mobo - Asus A7N8X-E
CPU - Athlon XP 2600+
RAM - 2 x 1GB DDR2
HDD - 250GB Western Digital
CD/DVD drive - not sure of make
Gfx card - Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro


If anyone has any suggestions of what I could try to get this to install, I'd appreciate it!

Uh, tough one, I've never had issues installing BSD on any hardware that I had and still have. My suggestions :
try different machine - same disk
try latest bsd - 7.0 on the first machine.
try looking at BIOS options at boot time, something could have gone wrong.
Last question - is this going to be server ? Because if it's intended for GUI with KDE for example, you can try PCBSD - PC-BSD - Home - it's a clone of FreeBSD 6.2

Thanks for your reply!

We've already successfully installed on another machine using this disk.

That would have been one of the first things I'd try, except for the fact that I need to run v6.2

Could you clarify this point a little? I'm not quite sure what I should be looking for.


It's confusing - basically we're trying to get our heads round FreeBSD 6.2 so that we can take over maintenance of a server that is using it. So although we won't actually be using it as a true server, we need to be able to pretend it is so that we can work our way round the server (basically something to test on without messing up the real thing).

I'll keep this in mind but I'd really be more comfortable using the actual FreeBSD 6.2 as then we know software is the same across the board when it comes to trying new things.