Return to BSD News archive
Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA6463 ; Sat, 09 Jan 93 17:14:46 EST Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!malgudi.oar.net!hyperion!wright!corcoran From: corcoran@valhalla.cs.wright.edu (Michael P. Corcoran) Subject: SOLUTION to 386bsd problem of panic:can't mount / Message-ID: <1993Jan12.051517.12955@cs.wright.edu> Sender: corcoran@cs.wright.edu (Michael P. Corcoran) Organization: Wright State University Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 05:15:17 GMT Lines: 35 The problem: I posted a message a couple of days ago saying that I could not get 386bsd to boot correctly because it kept failing with a message panic: "can't mount root" I found that the disk label was being corrupted whenever I rebooted. The cause: The disk controller was mapping the 1632 Cyls 8 heads into 1024 cyls 16 heads to overcome the dos 1024 cyl limitation. BSD was trying to use the "real" mapping while DOS was trying to use the translated mapping and they conflicted. (thanks to ejh@slustl.slu.edu for pointing it out!) The solution: My solution was to simply tell the controller to use native 1 to 1 mapping. This was an option in the ROM setup program in the controller run by getting in through DOS debug and then -g=c800:5. This causes DOS to think the entire disk is only about 200 Meg (out of 360) but I don't care. The dos partition only uses the first few sectors anyway. BSD correctly sees that dos partition and reports the right number for the amount of disk left (total - dos). So I'm on my way to an endless wonderland in bsd, installing and maintaining yet another OS on top of the 60 Sun and Dec workstations I already help to maintain. Now I have to install X and a billion patches.... <yawn> time for sleep. Mike -- _____________________________________________________________________________ Michael P. Corcoran, Computer Systems Engineer (corcoran@cs.wright.edu) College of Engineering and Computer Science FAX :(513) 873-5009 Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio. VOICE:(513) 873-5157