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Date:      Wed, 7 Jul 1999 21:28:55 -0400 (EDT)
From:      yossman <yossman@nonline.net>
To:        mike@hyperreal.org
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   FreeBSD 3.2.0-RELEASE -- HDD code weirdness?
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.05.9907072114390.12961-100000@yoss.nonline.net>

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just wanted to let you know i recently went through hell trying to get the
boot process to go right on a FreeBSD3.2.0R install i was doing on a pretty
standard minimal pentium 166MHz.  two IDE drives in the system, they both
had a bootable copy of FreeBSD on them (from two different versions).  the
FreeBSD booteasy manager would (seemingly) randomly pick which drive to boot
from, which would cause all sorts of interesting hangs and 'i'm stuck,
help!' prompts.

both drives were IDE, BIOS MODE 1, full FreeBSD partitions, in compatibility
mode (165).

i finally managed to get around my problem of non-bootness by arranging the
drives physically as master and slave in the order i wanted them to boot
from on the primary chain, then booting the install floppy, going into the
partition editor, editing wd0, doing nothing, hitting 'Q', selecting
'standard boot record', then going BACK into the partition editor under wd0,
and 'W'riting out the changes.

the system didn't seem to have a choice but boot from wd0 after that and now
things are cool. ;)


however, now i have a new problem with another machine, pentiumII-233MHz,
ASUS P5A-B r1.04 motherboard, single IDE drive on primary chain, 64M RAM
(DIMM).  it refuses to boot from wd0 once i've finished installing
FreeBSD3.2.0-R from the Net.  everything goes fine in the installation
process, floppies boot fine, no mention of anything bad that i can see.  i
finish adding some packages, set the root password, exit the install, system
reboots, i get 'F1 FreeBSD' (my only choice of course), then as soon as the
little spinning character comes up the system stops.  i can still get a
response from the keyboard LEDs (numlock, etc), but the rest of the system
is just gone.  i have to reset, only to have the same thing happen again.

i even tried changing every single piece of hardware in the box, making a
brand new config, with a random celeron i had, ASUS P2B r1.10, some standard
PCI S3 card.. exact same problem.  tried pulling cards, replacing this and
that, etc.

i'm going to try installing FreeBSD3.2.0-R on it AGAIN i think, if it fails
again on first bootup from harddrive i think i'm going to go back to 2.2.8-R
or even 2.2.6-R, both of which have worked flawlessly on any system i
installed them on..  ;(  is there some sort of new drive probe at bootup?  i
noticed another person on here was having no luck booting his -current
system after 02may1999, with a problem that sounds similar to mine.

there is the remote chance that the harddrive is screwed in some way, but i
have this funny feeling if i installed w95 on it things would work fine.


yossman
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Yossarian Holmberg (yossman)                        yossman@nonline.net
Senior Systems Administrator                    http://www.nonline.net/
National Online Inc.                    National Computers and Supplies




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