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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!network.ucsd.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!geraldo.cc.utexas.edu!usenet From: stew@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Stewart Lilley) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: Problem Installing Date: 12 Apr 1993 20:51:31 GMT Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX Lines: 43 Message-ID: <1qckoj$efg@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu> References: <1qcj31$shs@agate.berkeley.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: sylvester.cc.utexas.edu I am having a problem installing 386BSD on my hard drive. Actually, the problem only occurs when I try to install it on PART of my hard drive. I have an i486DX/33 ISA with AMI BIOS and a Conner 120MB IDE drive. When I run the install program from the Tiny 386BSD disk, if I tell it to install on the whole disk, it installs just fine and I can boot off of the hard disk and 386BSD comes right up. I am using the unpatched 0.1 bootables from agate. The problem is that I need a 32Mb DOS partition and boot time OS-selection. If I make a 32Mb DOS partition using the last 32Mb of the disk, and install 386BSD on the first part, starting at sector zero (using Norton Utilities to create the partitions), the install works and I can boot 386BSD from the hard disk. However, if I then want to run DOS applications (which I need to for classwork), I have to boot off a floppy. This means that most of the time an application quits, it tuns the floppy drive to reload COMMAND.COM. Since I switch back and forth between applications a lot, this is really annoying. If I want DOS to boot at power-up, I can use FDISK to make it active, but then making 386BSD bootable again is a major pain in the butt because when 386BSD is installed starting at sector zero on the hard disk, it puts its boot code where DOS expects to find the partition table, so to make DOS bootable again requires overwriting the 386BSD boot code, which must be reinstalled from the floppy disk to make it bootable. I have tried several different "OS-selector" programs that give you a menu at boot-up, but none of these can boot 386BSD when it's installed at sector zero because the boot selector code overwrites the 386BSD bootstrap routine. However, if I install 386BSD starting anywhere else (I have tried a number of different cylinder boundaries) then when booting from the hard drive it dies at various points early in the boot process. The most common problem is "unable to mount root". The practical upshot of this posting: what do I need to do to install 386BSD so it will work when it's installed somewhere other than sector zero? Do I need patched bootables? If so, where do I get them? Any ideas, hints, and information would be greatly appreciated! -- ********************************************************************** * Stewart Lilley * The meek shall inherit the earth: * * stew@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu * the rest of us will head for the stars. * **********************************************************************