Date: Sat, 27 Apr 1996 00:56:41 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: schrodingers_cat@m-b-o.com (Schrodinger's Cat) Cc: questions@FreeBSD.org, toivonen@europa.com Subject: Re: Logical DOS Partitions Message-ID: <199604270756.AAA29127@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <31819452.1F93@m-b-o.com> from "Schrodinger's Cat" at Apr 26, 96 08:28:18 pm
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You use netscape or a DOS mailer and don't put in hard returns at 72 colums expecting a default 80 column xterm, don't you. > Dear Sirs, > > I have followed the installation process for FBSD 2.1 (i386) VERY > carefully and am having some troubles. > > My machine: > > Cyrix 486DX100 > VESA MB > Diamond SVGA > 16MB RAM > Hard Drive C: - 840MB EIDE > Hard Drive D: - 200MB IDE > HD Controller - EIDE > Misumi ATAPI CDROM > > > I configured d:/ with a small DOS Partition (5mb) and gave the rest > to FreeBSD using your "novice" installation menu from view.exe. > > What I intended to do is install FreeBSD onto the smaller D: drive > and leave C: untouched. Hoping that I would be able to select between > the two drives, and the OS's they hold, at boot up. I followed the > directions in what I thought was a correct manner and upon > completion/reboot I get a blank system screen with only a "NO ROM > BIOS LOADED" message in the upper right corner. > > Subsequent reboots result in the same unless I use a DOS formatted > boot floppy. > > What I assume is happening is that the install program is overwriting > the boot sector of C: where I have Win95 installed exclusively. Yes, this is what happened, if you chose to install the boot manager at install time. This was a mistake, if that's what you did. This is covered in both the release notes and the handlbook. To recover, you will need to boot either a DOS disk, or the emergency boot floppy Windows 95 has you make when you install Windows95. After booting, run the fdisk program. A) If there is a DOS partition of some kind, set it active, and this will fix the Windows95 boot (though it will ask if you want to boot DOS. B) If there is not a DOS partition of some kind shown, then you will need to reinstall the OnTrack boot manager that came with your system. Then you will need to boot Windows 95 and "Shutdown to DOS prompt", and use the DOS installation for OS-BS to install the boot selector. > I have tested the drive geometry for both drives and have found no > discrepencies with what the install program states. I have also > tried several installations with/without the various "bootmanager" > options. All with the same effect. Yes. This is because there is no active, valid partition on C: because the boot manager tried to make FreeBSD activem but FreeBSD wasn't installed on that drive. > Fortunately I am always able to recover by reinstalling Win95 onto > c: (the FAT remains unharmed) and can subsequently boot into FreeBSD > by use of a floppy created by makeflp. Should not be necessary. > However, at the "boot:" prompt I have to enter wd(1,a)/kernel to > bypass the "view" program. ??? I don't know about this "view" program... > This convoluted method seems to work except that I constantly get > "not enough disk space" errors when trying to view man pages even > though there is over 100mb of free space on the FBSD partition. The FreeBSD disk is split into several pieces, generally. At least one for "/" and one for "/usr". If / is full, there will be no room on /tmp to format the pages, and if /usr is full, then there will be no room to store the converted versions. > Should I delete the DOS partitions while in the label editor > program part of the installation?? No. > Or will such an action litteraly delete those partitions even to DOS?? Yes. Don't do it. > Please offer any advice that you can think of. Or perhaps relay > to me a good book on the subject that I can purchase somewhere. The above should fix you. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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