Re: SCSI error

Matt R wrote:
> 
> I've trying to install OpenBSD 3.3 on a quadra 800.
> The installer constantly hangs about halfway through
> the base system or installing the etc files, or
> anything else that is roughly the same size.  Error is
> can't find blk in cyl or a scsi read/write error.  I
> have tried multiple hard drives and even muliple
> computers--the same issue always happens.  Whats the
> story?

Precise error message are important.

However, a *possible* reason:
  The installer used in the MacOS environment seems to have a problem
with large partition sizes. 

The solution is to install a minimal system to a "small" root
partition, then build out the rest as you want it.

So, let's say you want a 200M /  (ok, that's not very small by a lot
of people's standards, and is pretty good sized for that vintage
computer).  Create the root partition, create the other partitions you
want, newfs them all. 

Install etc33.tgz and base33.tgz to this / partition.

Mount your other partitions on a temporary mount point, and copy over
the directories you want to them, following 
    http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq10.html#DupFS

modify /etc/fstab, reboot, and unpack the rest of the .tgz files as in 
    http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#AddFileSet

I'm not sure where this magic limit is, and I have some reason to
believe it isn't a hard number -- I'm guessing some of the variables
my include: total drive size, memory on system, etc.  I *think* I did
a 1G drive as a single 700M or 800M partition many releases ago, but
since, I have never been able to get more than a 500M partition going
on bigger drives.  Most of my machines I've built up recently have
some serious memory (for a mac68k, at least), so if you are at the
"low" end, you may find much smaller numbers.

And yes, this thing produces some kind of cryptic error message that
*looks* like it might be a SCSI error, but isn't.


Another possible issue: OpenBSD/mac68k doesn't seem to like multiple
drives.  This is some kind of SCSI-related issue, but you would be
hard pressed to tell by the panic (post boot).
	
Nick.
-- 
http://www.holland-consulting.net