Date: Mon, 09 Aug 1999 22:08:20 +0200 From: Roelof Osinga <roelof@nisser.com> To: Brian Candler <B.Candler@pobox.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Booting from large IDE drive, not first partition Message-ID: <37AF3534.2E92A559@nisser.com> References: <19990809181618.A11386@linnet.org>
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Brian Candler wrote:
>
> Sorry if this is a FAQ, but I've searched the archives and can't find
> anything recent regarding large IDE hard drives.
Hm. I'm pretty sure I've answered this before <g>.
> I have installed 3.2-19990809-STABLE on a workstation with a 13GB hard
> drive, which is sliced like this:
>
> s1 2GB Windows95 FAT16
> s2 6GB Extended (2GB FAT16, rest in reserve)
> s3 5GB FreeBSD
>
> Unfortunately, I am unable to make it boot. The FreeBSD bootloader is in the
> MBR[1], and at boot time it asks me
> ...
> The machine is a Gateway box (GP7-450 is what the label says) and the BIOS
> setup says that the disk is in LBA mode.
You'll have to make sure that all cylinders of the boot partition are
below the 1024 boundary. That is a BIOS enforced boundary. This usually
means switching to LBA from the default CHS addressing scheme. Since
you already are in LBA mode...
> (2) boot a kernel from floppy disk and have it continue to load with wd0a as
> its root filesystem (not ideal but it would be acceptable)
I thought that was a function of the install diskettes? Must admit I
haven't had need to, though.
> (OK, I admit it, I am a Linux user. However I am trying to avoid installing
> LILO or just giving up :-)
Finally it all comes out <g>. Don't worry, so was I. A huge difference, in
this, between Linux and FreeBSD is that the latter uses its own partitioning
scheme inside a huge regular partition. This makes it harder to stay
within the 1024 boundary. My system with a 10+ GB disk looks like
this:
nisser:~# fdisk
******* Working on device /dev/rwd0 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=1247 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)
Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=1247 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)
Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165,(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
start 63, size 20032992 (9781 Meg), flag 80 (active)
beg: cyl 0/ sector 1/ head 1;
end: cyl 1023/ sector 63/ head 254
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
<UNUSED>
meaning I got some 200 cylinders unused. But it boots! Inside it
looks like:
nisser:~# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/wd0s1a 297663 20695 253155 8% /
/dev/wd0s1d 3455406 838004 2340970 26% /home
/dev/wd0s1e 297663 22 273828 0% /tmp
/dev/wd0s1g 2977230 834468 1904584 30% /usr
/dev/wd0s1h 1984479 75127 1750594 4% /usr/local
/dev/wd0s1f 297663 16783 257067 6% /var
procfs 4 4 0 100% /proc
Anyway, start looking at the cylinders.
Hope this helps.
Roelof
--
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