Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2001 16:45:22 -0500 From: Nathan Vidican <webmaster@wmptl.com> To: questions@freebsd.org, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD + Mylex DAC960 (RAID 1) + DEC Prioris HX 6000 Server will not recognize boot record for some reason Message-ID: <3A524BF2.E2E1F3BF@wmptl.com>
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This machine is an Intel Pentium Pro based system, (not a DEC Alpha), it currently has one 200mhz 512K CPU, 196megs RAM, (4 x 32edo simms, 4 x 16edo simms), and two 4.5Gig SCSI disks in hot-swappable drive carriages configured using RAID 1 (mirrored), attached to a Mylex DAC960P/PD dual-channel controller. I have flashed the firmware of the controller card to 3.52, as reccomended during the dmesg prompts (the card initially had < 3.51). The problem seems to be with booting, I have tried several installs; all seem to partition fine except for 'dangerously dedicated'. After an install using a 4.4Gig root, and an 80meg swap, (leaving 20megs un-partitioned at the end of the drive), the system will not boot. If I boot off of the installation floppies, I can mount/view the files on the drive. This leaves me thinking it's got to have something to do with FreeBSD's MBR. Having problems booting; the system installs to the mylex system drive fine, but when I reboot, I get the FreeBSD boot MGR, and it only beeps when I press F1 for FreeBSD. If I install using a normal boot record, the system reports 'No operating system found'. I'm thinking it may be an issue with the Mylex card, but I don't know for sure if the system's bios could cause this either. I cannot attempt to install the mylex card in another machine; as the drives attached to it are in a hot-swap carriage which is part of the system's chassis. On a hunch, I tried re-partitioning and installing MsDos; maybe the RAID configuration isn't bootable at all I figured; but it partitioned fine, and booted properly. I then tried installing NT, and now Linux. All three had no problems, and all three booted fine. Seeing as how the other O/S's all installed/worked fine; I'm assuming this is just a software issue. Maybe with the bios of the Raid controller, or maybe with the system bios, has anyone else run into similar problems? Am I just missing something blatenly obvious? Does FreeBSD not boot from a mirrored volume (if so... why not)? I've only ever done one other server install with FreeBSD, and a Mylex Raid controller; it booted fine. It was using an AcceleRAID PCI 150 card, with foud 9.1gig SCSIUW's in a RAID 5 configuration. It went fine with no hitches, (cept that it took like 1hr to newfs). However, this is a different controller, and having little to no experience working with RAID controllers I figured I'd ask. Baring no absolute solutions, or better partial ones from this mailing list, I'm going to install Linux on a 200meg partition, and attempt to install FreeBSD on the rest and boot it using Lilo (don't know if it's going to work...but it's worth a try). -- Nathan Vidican webmaster@wmptl.com Windsor Match Plate & Tool Ltd. http://www.wmptl.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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