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Date:      Fri, 01 Dec 2000 15:00:34 +0100
From:      "Jose M. Alcaide" <jose@we.lc.ehu.es>
To:        Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com>
Cc:        stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: The trouble with boot0
Message-ID:  <3A27AF02.423BED40@we.lc.ehu.es>
References:  <200012010836.eB18aMq02131@nordier.com>

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Robert Nordier wrote:
> 
> Are you sure that block 3997224 actually has a boot block on it?
> I'd suggest using a utility, or writing a trivial program to access
> the whole disk slice and verify that.  When I set up a lot of
> multiple FreeBSD partitions, I found sysinstall tended to be confused
> by them and didn't always install stuff in the right places.

Yes, ad0s3 has a boot block. In fact I used a "disklabel -B ad0s3"
command. I did a hexdump of /dev/ad0s2 and /dev/ad0s3 and they begin
with the same data.

> To decide when boot0 or something else is at fault: you should be
> able to boot by pressing F2 and then tell /boot/loader to boot from
> the third slice.  If you can't do that, the problem is not due to
> boot0.

I got the loader prompt after booting from ad0s2, and I defined
both currdev and rootdev to "disk1s3a:", unloaded/loaded the
kernel and booted with no problems the system installed in ad0s3.

I did another test: I deleted the ad0s1 entry from the partition
table and replaced it by a replica of the ad0s3 entry:

#   flag     start chs   type       end chs       offset         size
1   0x00    721:  0: 1   0xa5   1023: 87:63      3997224      4418568
2   0x80   1023:255:63   0xa5   1023: 87:63      8415792      8421336
3   0x00    721:  0: 1   0xa5   1023: 87:63      3997224      4418568

Now, pressing F1 or F3 beeps. Only F2 continues to work.

If this a geometry problem, I cannot understand why boot0 cannot
boot from ad0s3 while there are no problems for booting from
ad0s2, which is placed after ad0s3 and beyond the cylinder 1023.

I am more interested on an explanation for this problem than on
finding the solution. I found this problem while doing a
demo for the students of the installation procedure of FreeBSD,
so that I would like to be able to explain clearly the reason of the
boot failure to them.

Thanks,
-- JMA
****** Jose M. Alcaide  //  jose@we.lc.ehu.es  //  jmas@FreeBSD.org ******
** "Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers" --  Leonard Brandwein **


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