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Date:      Tue, 19 Mar 2002 00:46:04 -0500
From:      Brian T.Schellenberger <bts@babbleon.org>
To:        Carlos Antonio Ruggiero <toto@sdf.lonestar.org>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: booting from extended slice
Message-ID:  <20020319054604.C4F75BABF@i8k.babbleon.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NEB.4.33.0203190407360.13962-100000@sdf.lonestar.org>
References:  <Pine.NEB.4.33.0203190407360.13962-100000@sdf.lonestar.org>

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On Monday 18 March 2002 11:50 pm, you wrote:
| On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Brian T.Schellenberger wrote:
| > Date: Mon, 18 Mar 2002 21:44:07 -0500
| > From: Brian T.Schellenberger <bts@babbleon.org>
| > To: Carlos Antonio Ruggiero <toto@sdf.lonestar.org>,
| >      freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
| > Subject: Re: booting from extended slice
| >
| > On Monday 18 March 2002 08:48 pm, Carlos Antonio Ruggiero wrote:
| > | Hi,
| > |
| > | 	I'm trying to boot from an extended partition (slice).  From
| > | what I have read in the archives, FreeBSD doesn't support this. I
| > | managed to boot the 4.5R kernel by hacking boot2.c to point directly
| > | to the start of the extended partition..It does work if I boot the
| > | kernel directly but if I boot the loader, it does not see the extended
| > | slice. In fact, lsdev seems to see SOME extended slices but not the
| > | others...
| > |
| > |    My question: is this a normal behaviour of the loader? a bug? some
| > | kind of limitation?
| >
| > What good will it do you if do boot it?  FreeBSD doesn't support UFS in
| > extended partitions anyway.  I guess you could use ext2 or FAT32
| > partitions as your paritions for the sysem (ext2 would presumably work a
| > lot better), but why do you want to do such a thing?  You'd be working in
| > a very unsupported environemnt.
|
| I don't think you're right here. FreeBSD does seem to support FFS in
| extended slices. 

I could swear I tried that, but heavens, it could have been back in 2.x or 
even earlier when I did.  I guess I missed the announcement when it became 
possible.

Does seem odd not to go the last mile and enabled it to boot & load from an 
extended partition.

| And please note that, right now, I am able to boot the
| 4.5R kernel from FFS-ad0s10a (which is hda10 in linux), and use it
| normally
| I was even able to make buildworld in it! X + KDE works fine, etc..
| The only thing is that I cannot mount linprocfs, probably because
| I am booting directly into the kernel, without the loader (I am guessing
| here :-)
| You're probably refering to the fact that sysinstall doesn't allow
| you to edit slices inside an extended slice which is true, but note
| that sysintall in wizard mode shows my messy partition table quite
| correctly. Disklabeling an extended slice, however, is quite a pain,
| without the help of sysinstall.
|
| > I consider this a major FreeBSD weakness but other O/S's don't care so
| > much about primary vs. extended and FreeBSD only needs one
| > partition--it'll subdivide the rest.
|
| I am using quite a few OSs and NONE of them are comfortable with extended
| partitions, except linux. Windoze sees them but do not boot from them.
| FreeBSD, which is my favorite OS since the days of 386BSD0.1, seems
| to have everything to support them except the boot blocks (boot1 boot2
| and loader) and the installation script (/stand/sysinstall).
|
| > What are the "73" type partitions?  Immovable?
|
| I use Sstem commander to boot the different OSs and, when I boot linux,
| I have to hide a few other partitions (linux loves to format
| partition types 0x82 as swap and Solaris FS uses this same type
| number). I think 73 is the way System Commander changes the SCO
| Openserver and Unixware partition types to "HIDE" them. They
| are in fact type 0x63.
|
| > | Some info on the hard disk:
| > |
| > |
| > | Linux fdisk reports:
| > |
| > |
| > | Command (m for help):
| > | Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 9732 cylinders
| > | Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
| > |
| > |    Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
| > | /dev/hda1             1       230   1847443+   6  FAT16
| > | /dev/hda2           231       395   1325362+  73  Unknown
| > | /dev/hda3           396       560   1325362+  73  Unknown
| > | /dev/hda4   *       561      9731  73666057+   5  Extended
| > | /dev/hda5   *       561      1023   3719016   83  Linux
| > | /dev/hda6          1024      1087    514048+  82  Linux swap
| > | /dev/hda7          1088      2235   9221278+  83  Linux
| > | /dev/hda8          2236      2482   1983996    b  Win95 FAT32
| > | /dev/hda9   *      2483      3056   4610623+  83  Linux
| > | /dev/hda10  *      3057      3630   4610623+  a5  BSD/386
| > | /dev/hda11  *      3631      4205   4618624+  83  Linux
| > | /dev/hda12         4206      4460   2048256    6  FAT16
| > |
| > | Command (m for help):
|
| Brian, this IS FREEBSD 4.5 now:
| > | I trying to boot from hda10
| > |
| > | and /stand/sysinstall (in wizard mode) says:
| > |
| > | --==##==--
| > | Debug_Disk(ad0)  flags=0  bios_geom=9732/255/63 = 156344580
| > |   boot1=0x0, boot2=0x0, bootmgr=0x0
| > | -->        0x82e5480        0 156355584 156355583 ad0      whole   
| > | 0x00 -->      0x82e54c0        0       63       62 -        unused  
| > | 0x00 -->      0x82e5500       63  3694887  3694949 ad0s1    fat     
| > | 0x06 -->      0x82e5540  3694950  2650725  6345674 ad0s2    unknown 
| > | 0x63 -->      0x82e55c0  6345675  2650725  8996399 ad0s3    unknown 
| > | 0x63 -->      0x82e5600  8996400 147332115 156328514 ad0s4    extended
| > | 0x05 -->    0x82e5640  8996400       63  8996462 -        unused   0x00
| > | -->    0x82e5580  8996463  7438032 16434494 ad0s5    unknown  0x83 --> 
| > |   0x82e56c0 16434495       63 16434557 -        unused   0x00 -->   
| > | 0x82e5700 16434558  1028097 17462654 ad0s6    unknown  0x82 -->   
| > | 0x82e5740 17462655       63 17462717 -        unused   0x00 -->   
| > | 0x82e5780 17462718 18442557 35905274 ad0s7    unknown  0x83 -->   
| > | 0x82e57c0 35905275       63 35905337 -        unused   0x00 -->   
| > | 0x82e5800 35905338  3967992 39873329 ad0s8    fat      0x0b -->   
| > | 0x82e5840 39873330       63 39873392 -        unused   0x00 -->   
| > | 0x82e5880 39873393  9221247 49094639 ad0s9    unknown  0x83 -->   
| > | 0x82e58c0 49094640       63 49094702 -        unused   0x00 -->   
| > | 0x82e5900 49094703  9221247 58315949 ad0s10   freebsd  0xa5 --> 
| > | 0x82e5940 49094703   819315 49914017 ad0s10b  part     0x01 --> 
| > | 0x82e59c0 49914018  8401932 58315949 ad0s10a  part     0x07 -->   
| > | 0x82e5980 58315950      126 58316075 -        unused   0x00 -->   
| > | 0x82e5a00 58316076  9237249 67553324 ad0s11   unknown  0x83 -->   
| > | 0x82e5a40 67553325       63 67553387 -        unused   0x00 -->   
| > | 0x82e5a80 67553388  4096512 71649899 ad0s12   fat      0x06 -->   
| > | 0x82e5ac0 71649900 84678615 156328514 -        unused   0x00 -->     
| > | 0x82e5680 156328515    27069 156355583 -        unused   0x00 ad0>
| > |
| > | lsdev says:
| > | ....
| > | disk1s5:ext2fs
| > | disk1s7: Linux swap (shouldn't it be s6? s7 is ext2fs...)
| > |
| > | Thanks for any help/pointers..
| > |
| > | Toto
| > | toto@sdf.lonestar.org
| > |
| > | To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
| > | with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
| >
| > --
| > Brian T. Schellenberger . . . . . . .   bts@wnt.sas.com (work)
| > Brian, the man from Babble-On . . . .   bts@babbleon.org (personal)
| >                                 ME -->  http://www.babbleon.org
| > http://www.eff.org   <-- GOOD GUYS --> 
| > http://www.programming-freedom.org
| >
| > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
| > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
|
| toto@sdf.lonestar.org
| SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

-- 
Brian T. Schellenberger . . . . . . .   bts@wnt.sas.com (work)
Brian, the man from Babble-On . . . .   bts@babbleon.org (personal)
                                ME -->  http://www.babbleon.org
http://www.eff.org   <-- GOOD GUYS -->  http://www.programming-freedom.org 

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