Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 21:54:29 -0800 (PST) From: Doug White <dwhite@gdi.uoregon.edu> To: Drew Derbyshire <ahd@kew.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: file systems eaten by space DOS, film at 11? Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.94.961029215036.369K-100000@gdi.uoregon.edu> In-Reply-To: <32729b0a.kendra@pandora.kew.com>
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On Sat, 26 Oct 1996, Drew Derbyshire wrote: > *** Please copy to me directly, since my subscription to the list is > still being processed. Sorry *** majordomo takes about 1 minute to return your subscription requests from freebsd.org. > I did my first FreeBSD 2.1.5 installation on a Gateway 386DX/25 with 8M, > ISA bus only, 80M and 1600M WD IDE hard drives. Small drive (wd0) is ~ > 30M dos fat, ~ 32M root file system, 16M swap, a little left over for a > possible additional primary disk partition (disk slice) for later > addition of a non-FreeBsd boot manager. Large disk (wd1) has large > /var, /usr, and /u (home) partitions, plus another 40M swap. (Yea, I > know I'll thrash like a grain combine first if I need it). System also > has AHA-1542CF, NEC CDR-74, and SMC Elite Ultra, and usual assortment of > parallel/serial ports. The fact that you have both IDE and SCSI hardware is significant. In some cases it can confuse the boot blocks and cause them to confuse the kernel like it has in your case. Have you tried booting those disks explicitly with a boot disk and typing wd(0,a)/kernel at the Boot: prompt? That will work 99% of the time. Then you can rebuild your kernel and point it in the proper direction with the 'kernel' directive in your kernel config. > <expletive deleted>, I figure I must have torched non-DOS partition/disk > slice information, although after FreeBSD decides my wd0 disk geometry > has changed to utterly bogus numbers and it forgets wd1's disk slices as > well, I'm starting to wonder. To recover it, I end up using WD's > wdclear to nuke the entire wd0 disk including cylinder 0 to hex 00, and > then I lay down new DOS and freeBSD partition. (This is when I discover > wd1 has forgotton its disk slices, and I nuke its cylinder 0 as well.) Hm. I would not suggest using sysinstall to build muliple disks. Make the first one first (with a minimal system if necessary) then go back and add the second. > I'm willing to dedicate all of wd0 to FreeBSD, but if I lose root again, > I'm _not_ going to be happy. Where the hell is root going? (I can look > on the disk with Norton or whatever, if you can tell where to check.) I don't think the / partition is going anywhere, it's just that the kernel is getting confused as to where you're booting from. A gentle hint using the boot: prompt should allow you to boot. Doug White | University of Oregon Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major
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