freeBSD problem installation

[DazeiHead]

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. Im not sure how to fix this problem i really want to learn freeBSD.

help appreciated

[ricstr]

You could find out what hard drive you have in the system, once you know what drive you have try and visit the manufactures website for information on the drives geometry.

The BIOS will also have information on the drives geometry, when your computer starts it usualy says 'Press ?? key to enter setup', the key could be 'DEL' or 'F1'.

In the BIOS you can see the drives configuration, and take note of it.

[DazeiHead]

i need to know my harddrives geometry it says its incorrect i have a maxtor 40gig 7200 ata. i tried the website no info. i think this is what the problem is.

[DazeiHead]

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?

[bandwidth_pig]

Don't forget the anything newer than 4.8 is a testing and development release. If you want to assist in debuging then by all means run 5.1, but it is not for general use. I would advise you use 4.8.

[DazeiHead]

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 :)

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

As the root user, run xf86cfg. It's a GUI program that allows you to set up your X configuration. After that, startx will get you to your GUI desktop.

[xulfralos]

Originally posted by Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379
As the root user, run xf86cfg. It's a GUI program that allows you to set up your X configuration. After that, startx will get you to your GUI desktop. I have to give my $0.02 here... xf86cfg sucks, xf86config is much more straightforward and works better in case you have a card that xf86cfg won't work with.

Why no one has updated XF86Setup for 4.x.x, I'll never understand, that has always worked for me on 3.x.x. Ahh, but to each his own.

[xulfralos]

Originally posted by DazeiHead
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?xf86config is a command-line script for setting up X, and yes, you should know all your hardware before setting X up, it makes it that much easier. Go dig up your manuals or open up your case and document everything you have, for future reference... Certain video cards use drivers that won't work with defaults, so keep that in mind. Defaults 'usually' work, but you'll want to search around for sample XF86Config files to learn from.

'dmesg' is also your friend for finding out what hardware you have.

[DazeiHead]

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

[xulfralos]

Originally posted by DazeiHead
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 The first error I've never encountered before, but the second one can be resolved by adding your fully-qualified hostname to /etc/hosts:

ip.add.re.ss myhost.domain.dom myhost

[DazeiHead]

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.

[bandwidth_pig]

Did you select the correct video card for your system? Did you look up your monitors horizontal and vertical refresh rates and include those when configuring X?

[DazeiHead]

yes i have

[bandwidth_pig]

Hmmm. I would go through the config again. Maybe you have a type 'o. Also, I don't think you can call kde directly...IE startkde. I am pretty sure you have to use startx which will then call up either .xsession or .xinitrc in which you should have the line "exec startkde" somewhere.

[Himynameis]

Just my .002, I used "vesa" on my graphics card info. Worked like a charm. As an aside, new BSD user, I used xf86config to set it up, seems much better than any other option.

[DazeiHead]

XF86config is what I used to configure everything