Date: Sun, 24 Nov 1996 22:03:02 -0800 (PST) From: "Rodney W. Grimes" <rgrimes@GndRsh.aac.dev.com> To: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans) Cc: bde@zeta.org.au, current@freefall.freebsd.org, darrylo@sr.hp.com, jkh@time.cdrom.com Subject: Re: 2.2-ALPHA install failure Message-ID: <199611250603.WAA01934@GndRsh.aac.dev.com> In-Reply-To: <199611250459.PAA17951@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from Bruce Evans at "Nov 25, 96 03:59:42 pm"
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> >> >Dedicating one drive, does not mean dedicating all drives, Microsoft's > >> >install procedures are known for there ``I want the whole world'' phylosophy > >> >and can cause people great pain if installed with on another disk in > >> >the same systems as one of the FreeBSD ``bogus'' partitioned disks. > >> > >> Surely this is only caused by a installer error? I haven't used W95, > >> but older versions of W can be installed in any directory on any hard > >> disk and don't seem to touch other disks or directories (except for the > >> usual things in the root directory). > > > >No, this is not a user error, this is the automagic of Windows 95 and > >the design of the Microsoft installation tools. If it finds unclaimed > >disk space per the MBR it will claim it, fdisk it, and format it for > >you, all without asking you if it is okay to do this. This may have > >been fixed in Win95/SR2. > > Bust surely it only installs on the drive(s) that you tell it to? NO!!! It don't even ask you what drive to install on, really, this thing is an assuming POS that things it has rights to everthing in your box. If you had a chain of 7 scsi disks all with the bogus 50K block MBR WIN95 would gladly fdisk the remaining disk space and DOS format it for you.... > > >I have shipped 100's of systems with ``dedicated disks'' and every single > >one of them had a valid MBR as far as start and size. Every OS I have > >seen and worked with obey these two parameters, infact they favor them > >over the start CHS, end CHS. I am not so concerned about bogus C/H/S > >values in the MBR as I am about start/size values. > > Except W95. It doesn't honor the start and size parameters. A start of 0 > places the MBR inside the slice. This should prevent all OS's except the > one in the slice from modifying the MBR. A size of 1 should work just as > well as a size of 50000. I don't know of any fdisks that actually honor > a 0 start. This shows that a 0 start is invalid. It honours them with the exception that it will write to the MBR, it will save your first 50K blocks, but after that is toast... The 0 start invalid, will, Microsoft gladly listens to that value, and says okay ``sectors 0 to 49999 are in use, but sectors 50000 to EOD are mine for the taking...''. -- Rod Grimes rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com Accurate Automation, Inc. Reliable computers for FreeBSD
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