Sysinstall Drive Geometry

[Lewis Joshua]

Hello List,

I am installing FreeBSD 6.2 on a DELL 2900 with a PERC 5i controller.  
There are three 750GB SATA drives using Hardware Raid 5. When I try  
to install FreeBSD I get errors when fdisking the drive. I have never  
had that problem with FreeBSD so I don't know what to do. Of course I  
have never had the opportunity to install FreeBSD on this kind of  
hardware.

I first thought maybe it was because I was using a FreeBSD x86  
install CD. But the system has a Quad Zeon and that is a 64bit chip  
right? So I downloaded the X86-64 (The one that says AMD64. I read  
the docs on that and on ia64 and I think I chose the correct CD).  
However I still get the same problem.

I realize it was dumb for me to think it was due to the architecture.  
But I was kind of grasping at straws. Dell claims they don't support  
FreeBSD. And I have read on the list just yesterday that you either  
get lucky or not when using Dell and FreeBSD.

This is a test box at home for messing around. So I can do anything  
to the system. Reinstall or what ever. My goal was to install FreeBSD  
and then the VMware server port and use it as a lab/firewall for my  
internal network.

The funny thing is I can fdisk the drive auto create the /, /swap, / 
temp, /var, /usr and just keep going no biggie. The system installs  
fine and boots and is doing a cvsup as we speak. So I don't even know  
if I should worry about it.

Thanks for any input. The FreeBSD list has always been a great help.  
So again thanks in advance.