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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!metro!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.erols.net!news.mathworks.com!uunet!news-in2.uu.net!rice!asia.cs.rice.edu!cobbe From: cobbe@asia.cs.rice.edu (Richard Cobbe) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Basic installation question Date: 30 Sep 1996 05:03:16 GMT Organization: Rice University Lines: 42 Message-ID: <52nkak$6d3@listserv.rice.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: asia.cs.rice.edu X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2] Greetings, all. I have a fairly basic installation question: I have been told that the default kernel installed as part of the FreeBSD install must be on the first IDE device in order for the system to boot. Is this in fact correct? Does it necessarily need to be on the first partition of said device? I currently have 2 HD's, both on the primary EIDE interface. The master is a 400M which has a single Win95 partition. Based on what I've been told about MS operating systems, it pretty much has to *stay* on the primary drive, or it won't boot. The slave drive on the same controller is a 1.2G fireball. Linux fdisk gives the following info about it: Disk /dev/hdb: 32 heads, 63 sectors, 1242 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2016 * 512 bytes Device Boot Begin Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 1 1 588 592672+ 83 Linux native /dev/hdb2 589 589 621 33264 82 Linux swap /dev/hdb3 622 622 1242 625968 83 Linux native I plan to install FreeBSD on what is now /dev/hdb3 (that particular Linux partition has nothing useful in it). So, will this work? Will I have to physically swap drives, install BSD, recompile the kernel to look for itself on the second drive, and then swap the drives back? That ranks as a large pain, but if it has to be done, it has to be done. Thanks in advance for any advice, Richard Oh, you're probably wondering...why a 3rd OS? Well, several of the people I work with in the CS dep't here at Rice tend to be fairly condescending about Linux, so I thought I'd try both Linux & FreeBSD & see which one I like better.