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From: brian@shift.lan.awfulhak.org (Brian Somers)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Install kernel panic problem
Date: 1 Apr 1997 15:46:05 GMT
Organization: Awfulhak Ltd.
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <5hrajt$nme@ui-gate.utell.co.uk>
References: <5hbq4q$8rn@chronicle.concentric.net>
Reply-To: brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk, brian@utell.co.uk
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:38204
In article <5hbq4q$8rn@chronicle.concentric.net>,
Rslater@cris.com (Rick Slater) writes:
>
> As some of you know, I've been trying to get FreeBSD 2.1.0 to deal with
> a 4 Gig EIDE drive, one half of which is devoted to Windows 95 in a 2047M
> primary dos partition. One of the very first things I did was to carefully
> trash the dos partition by letting FreeBSD write to it. At the time, I
> didn't realize that FreeBSD is limited to 1024M dos partitions.
>
> After restoring the machine to its original configuration from a backup
> tape, I decided not to repartition the Win 95 area, but rather to shrink
> an extended dos partition that covered the remainder of the disk and
> install FreeBSD in what remained.
>
> The extended dos partition was resized to 1004M with the dos fdisk
> program, and the FreeBSD cdrom installation program was started. Unlike
> the previous install (which had to deal with only one dos partition),
> this one did not succeed. After selecting (C)ommit from the installation
> menu, the kernel paniced! No changes were made to either the MBR or the
> partition table (the panic message indicated an install read error), and
> Windows 95 successfully rebooted.
[.....]
I'm not sure what you mean by re-sizing here. I didn't know DOS fdisk
allowed you to resize anything. Be careful. If you have a >1028Mb
partition (with 16k clusters) and shrink it to <=1028Mb, the cluster
size will be wrong and FreeBSD will scribble just as wildly as last
time.
I'm not sure what's going on with the panic. You should make sure that
the entire 'a' logical FreeBSD partition resides on a bit of your disk
that your BIOS can understand (and read). In order to do this, you
may have to play with the drive geometry. Tell your BIOS what you
want it to be (you're not allowed >1024 cylinders) then tell FreeBSD
the same thing - you may have to do this manually in the partitioning
screen. If this doesn't work, I'm surprised (&confused).
Your best bet is to wipe the disk, play with the BIOS, create your
Win95 partition making sure it knows the geometry you chose, then
create the FreeBSD partition. Don't muck around installing software
'till you can boot everything you want to.
Good luck. This sort of stuff is a pain in the ass 'cos it takes so
long to find out you've screwed up.
--
Brian <brian@awfulhak.org> <brian@freebsd.org>
<http://www.awfulhak.demon.co.uk>
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour !