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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mira.net.au!news.netspace.net.au!serval.net.wsu.edu!netnews.nwnet.net!oracle.pnl.gov!osi-east2.es.net!lll-winken.llnl.gov!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news1.digex.net!digex.net!not-for-mail From: ggrant@access.digex.net (Gary E. Grant) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: FreeBSD install - suggestions needed Date: 23 Jan 1995 18:06:55 -0500 Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA Lines: 91 Message-ID: <3g1cqf$s74@access4.digex.net> References: <3fsjk6$otr@wolfe.wimsey.com> <1995Jan22.132924.2650@robkaos.ruhr.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: access4.digex.net In article <1995Jan22.132924.2650@robkaos.ruhr.de>, Robert Schien <robsch@robkaos.ruhr.de> wrote: >John Henders (jhenders@vanbc.wimsey.com) wrote: > > > >: I have a rather crowded setup on my computer, and I want to >: complicate it more by installing FreeeBSD. I have 2 IDE drives, one with >: DOS and one with OS/2. I also have a 1542b with 2 scsi drives, one of >: which has linux on it. I want to put FreeBSD on the other. >: Because the 1542b bios doesn't work with 2 IDE drives in place, >: I have a 15 meg partition on one of the IDE drives that I use to put >: linux kernels on, and the DOS, OS/2 and 15meg linux partition are all >: active and selectable from the OS/2 boot manager. I am planning, if it's >: possible, to split the 15 meg partition and use a similar method to boot >: FreeBSD if posssible. >: However, after reading the INSTALL txt and the FAQ, a few things >: aren't clear and I was hoping someone could suggest the most elegant way >: to get FreeBSD onto this setup. Feel free to point me to any other >: install documentation I may have missed. >: I tried to install from the boot floppys from ftp.cdrom.com. I >: partitioned the disk, but when it came time to roboot, there was, of >: course, no way to to boot from the scsi drive. Is there a way to tell >: the boot kernel on the floppy to mount the scsi file system? Also, I >: didn't see it written down anywhere, but can I put the bindist/* files >: on a dos partition and install them from there? >: The alternatives I see are a) Disconnect my OS/2 ide drive and >: re jumper the dos drive, so the boot loader can boot the kernel from the >: scsi drive, or b) Attempt to do a minimal install on the 15 meg ide >: partition and mount the scsi as /usr until I can get enough FreeBSD >: installed to change things around to boot the way I want. If no one can >: suggest a more elegant way, option b would be my preference, if >: possible. >: Suggestions? > >Yeah, creative people have a crowded setup :-) > >The problem you are suffering from is the fact that you can boot only >from the first two 'BIOS drives'. Let me explain this a litte >further: >When you boot a PC, the BIOS issues an interrupt and reads the >first sector of the first drive into memeory and the bootstrap >process begins. When you have only IDE drives in your system, >you have entries selected for them in the standard PC BIOS. >When you have only SCSI drives in your system, the BIOS support >comes from the host SCSI host adapter. Nevertheless, the boot >process is the same. What differs is that in the case of SCSI >the host adapter BIOS translates the boot interrupt into SCSI >commands which are sent to the SCSI drive to read the first sector. >This means when you have both IDE and SCSI drives in your system >and you disable the IDE drives in the PC-BIOS, you boot from >the (first) SCSI drive. However, you get problems when you have >more than two drives (irrespective of SCSI and/or IDE) and want to >boot from the third drive, for example . Because of the archaic >PC architecture BIOS knows only about two drives (usually known >as C: and D:). Of course, as soon as you have an real OS >(like Linux or FreeBSD) running, you can access all the drives, >because these OSs have their own drivers and don't rely on BIOS. >Therefore, you can install FreeBSD on any SCSI drive (provided >there are enough minor devices enabled in the kernel), but you're >stuck when you want to BOOT from, let's say, the fifth drive :-) > >To summarize, when it comes to booting you rely on the PC BIOS >(various boot managers do, too). What you need, would be >a boot manager which can access all drives. But this would >mean that the boot manager would know about SCSI :-( > >What can you do? > >One solution is: disable your IDE drives in the standard CMOS setup. >You will now have only 2 drives for the BIOS and you can boot >from the first or (via a boot manager) from the second SCSI drive. >But always enabling and disabling in the BIOS is annoying :-( > >Another solution would be: boot from the first IDE drive as usual >and execute a program which accesses the boot blocks of the >SCSI drives via ASPI or so. Unfortunately, such a program >doesn't seem to exist. > >A further solution: >To run various OSs, simply create small root partitions of all >the OSs on the first IDE drive. > >Robert What about using Linux's LILO as a multiboot manager? Gary :-)