*BSD News Article 49009


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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.


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