Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 15:02:20 -0400 From: "Potts, Ross" <rpotts@harris.com> To: "'john253@crosswinds.net'" <john253@crosswinds.net>, questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Unable to boot 4.1.1 Message-ID: <95B669A7D872D41182A600508BDFFB8C12D5DE@mlbmx7.ess.harris.com>
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Ah! I forgot you mentioned that you have a Compaq. I'm happy with mine, though I haven't set up a SCSI disk. If you can, during bootup, you should have a prompt in the top right of the screen. If you haven't set the IDE DRIVE to dangerously dedicated there should still be a bios partition(weird how Compaq did that). Anyway, hit F10 and you should be able to get into the management side of the machine. disable the IDE, because I have a feeling that it will always try to boot from the IDE insead of SCSI(unless that's what you want. How old is this compaq, what model? Softpaqs will do no good until you can successfully hit F10 and manage your bios partition. Call Compaq, wait 30-40 minutes on the phone until you get ahold of someone and beg for a restore disk. They will need your model, serial, next of kin, etc. Personally, I have a Presario 4112(circa Apr 1996), with two sets of restore disks. You will have to bear with restoring all the way to Win 95 or what ever the machines original OS was, then remember NOT to use dangerously dedicated mode. One other thing, I for the longest, had the onboard video disabled so I could install a better one in Win 95. When I stared to mess with FBSD (2.1.6), it would always report VGA0 and VGA1. So, perhaps it may be setable in your floppy kernel(maybe not initiall, but with the used of another machine you could build a custom install kernel to get around the IDE problem. That's what I did after I got all my system info the 4 millionth time. I always put in a smaller custom kernel reflecting my machine when reloading my system from CD. I'll look at all my old Compaq stuff tonight and bring some info to email to you tomorrow -----Original Message----- From: John Murphy [SMTP:john253@crosswinds.net] Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2000 12:47 PM To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Unable to boot 4.1.1 Cribbins, Jason wrote: >I may have got the ad and da mixed up since I was unable to do copy/paste to >ensure everything was accurate due to the nature of the server at the time >of me writing the email. Right, so where's the 'active' bootable partition, SCSI or IDE? As you've added the IDE drive and controller I would guess you won't be able to boot from it unless you can change the boot order in the BIOS. <snipped the swap explanation> >Also note that the onboard IDE port is disabled in bios which I do not have >access to because of the computer design. Its a Compaq and the bios is >accessed via a partition on the boot drive which BSD apparently wiped out >during the first install. There is a working onboard SCSI controller with a >520MB SCSI drive attached which is way too small for my purposes. >Since I Am unable to find the exact model number of this box I cannot >download the proper "softpaq" from their web site. I have tried 8 different >ones for models that were made in P90 processors and all have failed. There >are about 30+ more I can use but don't have time or patience to bother. It >was easier to just buy this IDE controller card. > >Any other questions you need answered so you can help me out here? I'm afraid I can't help with this problem as I've never owned a Compaq and I'm sure I don't want one if what you say is right. You have my sympathy. Have you tried just a minimal installation on the SCSI drive? You can move /usr /var and /tmp to the IDE drive later. If that doesn't work you should be able to boot the HD from a floppy as a last resort. I would have thought that your new IDE controller card would work ok if the onboard IDE is disabled in the BIOS. But how can you be sure without access to it? One more thing (bear in mind I know 0 about SCSI) I noticed you referred to da4 whereas the kernel was not found on da0. Is this something to do with wiring down the disks? From /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/LINT # SCSI DEVICES # SCSI DEVICE CONFIGURATION # The SCSI subsystem consists of the `base' SCSI code, a number of # high-level SCSI device `type' drivers, and the low-level host-adapter # device drivers. The host adapters are listed in the ISA and PCI # device configuration sections below. # # Beginning with FreeBSD 2.0.5 you can wire down your SCSI devices so # that a given bus, target, and LUN always come on line as the same # device unit. In earlier versions the unit numbers were assigned # in the order that the devices were probed on the SCSI bus. This # means that if you removed a disk drive, you may have had to rewrite # your /etc/fstab file, and also that you had to be careful when adding # a new disk as it may have been probed earlier and moved your device # configuration around. # This old behavior is maintained as the default behavior. The unit # assignment begins with the first non-wired down unit for a device # type. For example, if you wire a disk as "da3" then the first # non-wired disk will be assigned da4. # The syntax for wiring down devices is: # device scbus0 at ahc0 # Single bus device # device scbus1 at ahc1 bus 0 # Single bus device # device scbus3 at ahc2 bus 0 # Twin bus device # device scbus2 at ahc2 bus 1 # Twin bus device # device da0 at scbus0 target 0 unit 0 # device da1 at scbus3 target 1 # device da2 at scbus2 target 3 # device sa1 at scbus1 target 6 # device cd # "units" (SCSI logical unit number) that are not specified are # treated as if specified as LUN 0. # All SCSI devices allocate as many units as are required. Good luck John. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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