*BSD News Article 53274


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From: james@jraynard.demon.co.uk (James Raynard)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: URGENT! Help with FreeBSD 2.0.5  install/post install
Date: 14 Oct 1995 20:49:50 -0000
Organization: A FreeBSD box
Lines: 23
Message-ID: <45p7pe$phq@jraynard.demon.co.uk>
References: <45hf9a$lmg@solaris.cc.vt.edu>
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In article <45hf9a$lmg@solaris.cc.vt.edu>, 'Fro Boy <dbackeri@vt.edu> wrote:
>to run it for school  I did everything right, but now when I get the 
>boot: prompt, it says that the partition is out of reach of the BIOS and 
>it can't find /kernel.

Yes, any bootable partition must fall completely within the first 1024
cylinders, due to a limitation in the PC's architecture (and due to a
limitation in DOS's architecture, all of its partitions must fall 
completely within the first 1024 cylinders, as you mentioned).

The solution? Put a BSD root partition of say 20MB near the start of the
disk, which the BIOS will be able to read. Once the kernel is loaded, 
FreeBSD doesn't need the BIOS anymore, so it doesn't matter where the
rest of it goes.

If you're worried about running out of primary partitions, it's worth
remembering that DOS and OS/2 can dual boot off a single FAT partition,
although that's not much use if you want to use HPFS.

James
-- 
Segmentation fault (core dumped): cannot find file '.signature'