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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!gatech!news.emf.net!overload.lbl.gov!eubie.lbl.gov!jin From: jin@eubie.lbl.gov (Jin Guojun[ITG]) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Help - installing rel 2.0 Date: 23 Aug 1995 03:06:05 GMT Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Lines: 55 Message-ID: <41e5ut$hv@overload.lbl.gov> References: <412jv8$232@sentinel.synapse.net> <3473@browns.co.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: eubie.lbl.gov Keywords: boot In article <3473@browns.co.uk>, Alistair Bell <alistair@browns.co.uk> wrote: >In article <412jv8$232@sentinel.synapse.net> you write: > >> wd0: DOS (234MB) >> wd1: partition 1 - DOS (500MB) >> partition 2 - Linux (350MB) >> partition 3 - Linux swap (16MB) >> partition 4 - FreeBSD (365 MB) >> >> After the boot floppy's scripts are complete it asks for the system to be >> rebooted. When I do this, the BSD >> MBR prompt shows up, I select F5 for DISK2 and then F4 for the FreeBSD >> partition. Problem is that nothing >> happens, I just get the function key menu again. > >I've got some bad news for you. FreeBSD 2.0 doesn't like disks of more than >500M. You'll almost certainly find that it's overwritten part of your DOS >partition. > >Basically what happens is that the partitioning says that FreeBSD starts at >cylinder 432 (or whatever) and so the installer goes and writes to cylinder 432 >However, what the partitioning _actually_ meant was 'cylinder 432 before >translation from the logical 64 heads to the actual 16 heads', i.e. cylinder >432*4. However, FreeBSD doesn't know this, and writes to _real_ cylinder 432. >Result: it's trashed part of your DOS partition. This happened to me recently; >fortunately I had a backup. > >I understand 2.0.5 is rather better in this regard. I just posted a message regarding this problem. I worked for a long time and beleive it is a bug -- FreeBSD cannot boot from physical partition # 4 (the slice 4, some one would say; not the BSD partition # 4 -- ?d#sd) FreeBSD can boot only on physical partition 1-3. I kludge fixed by doing this: wd1: partition 1 - DOS (500MB) partition 2 - Linux (350MB) partition 3 - Linux swap (16MB) partition 4 - FreeBSD (365 MB) change Linux swap to partition 4 and use partition 3 as FreeBSD slice wd1: partition 1 - DOS (500MB) partition 2 - Linux (350MB) partition 3 - FreeBSD (365 MB) partition 4 - Linux swap (16MB) It works for me now. Hopefully it will be fixed or be noticed in installation. -- /-------------- Jin Guojun ------------ v ---- Internet: g_jin@lbl.gov ----\ | Imaging & Distributed Computing | Usenet: ucbvax!g_jin@lbl.gov | | Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory | Bitnet: -- | | 50B-2239, Berkeley, CA 94720 - jin%george.lbl.gov@Csa3.LBL.Gov |