Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 13:38:35 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: "Anders Chr. Skoe" <skoe@owlnet.rice.edu>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Anyone resolved "Missing operating system" issue? Message-ID: <20000714133835.X30012@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <XFMail.000713210002.jhb@FreeBSD.org> References: <20000714095926.C27141@wantadilla.lemis.com> <XFMail.000713210002.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
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On Thursday, 13 July 2000 at 21:00:02 -0700, John Baldwin wrote: > > On 14-Jul-00 Greg Lehey wrote: >> On Thursday, 13 July 2000 at 17:25:53 -0700, John Baldwin wrote: >>> >>> On 12-Jul-00 Greg Lehey wrote: >>>> On Tuesday, 11 July 2000 at 11:35:58 -0500, Anders Chr. Skoe wrote: >>>>> Howdy, folks! >>>>> >>>>> unfortunately, this email follows a pretty good history of posts regarding >>>>> the "Missing operating system" error. we install 3.2 with no problems on >>>>> our western digital WDE4360-1807A3, but it just won't boot. our bios is >>>>> the adaptec AHA 2940 Ultra/Ultra W BIOS v1.23. >>>>> >>>>> a) if we only create a freebsd partition, and try to boot it, we get the >>>>> infamous "Missing operating system" error. >>>>> >>>>> b) if we create both dos & freebsd partitions, we get to the boot manager, >>>>> but selecting freebsd doesn't work. we've tried putting the freebsd >>>>> partition first as well as the dos partition first, but it makes no >>>>> difference. we've also tried various combinations of partition sizes. >>>>> >>>>> c) setting the drive geometry to 4095/64/32 doesn't help (someone >>>>> suggested this in an earlier mail). >>>>> >>>>> d) using FDISK we've set the active partition to the freebsd >>>>> partition. it doesn't help. >>>>> >>>>> e) we can boot from the floppy & cdrom drives. >>>>> >>>>> we would really appreciate some useful feedback 'cause it's drivin' us >>>>> crazy. >>>> >>>> This sounds like a geometry issue. Have you selected LBA in the BIOS >>>> setup? If so, have you tried both "dangerously dedicated" and >>>> Microsoft compatible partitions? >>> >>> Eek! Don't use dangerously dedicated on SCSI. It causes SCSI disks >>> to break horribly. >> >> I've never seen any problems using "dangerously dedicated" on SCSI. >> I've been doing it all the time for over 8 years. Care to explain >> your claim? > > I know that Doug White for one had serious issues with dangerously > dedicated mode on SCSI. He never documented them to my satisfaction. > The problem has more to do with newer SCSI controllers that attempt > to match the geometry speecified in the MBR of the disk. Since > dangerously dedicated mode uses a completely fake and made up > geometry, this can greatly confuse the SCSI controller. I very much doubt that newer SCSI host adaptors cause any problems. In any case, I have a number of different ones here, and I've never had any problems. Greg -- Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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