Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 11:19:39 -0400 (EDT) From: yossman <yossman@nonline.net> To: mike@hyperreal.org Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD 3.2.0-RELEASE -- HDD code weirdness? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9907081115030.12961-100000@yoss.nonline.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9907072114390.12961-100000@yoss.nonline.net>
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following my own post, i discovered later last night that if i changed the BIOS on the system to read the HDD with LBA mode, instead of NORMAL mode, the bootup from the HDD suddenly started working. maybe this sounds like newbieness, but i didn't realize that the FreeBSD boot manager needed to have the drive geometry translated for it on bootup. i know that it seems to ignore what the system BIOS is saying AFTER the initial bootstrap phase, when it's mounting all the drive slices it appears to be reading the C/H/S straight from the HDD's BIOS itself, but while it's doing the initial boot drive selection/bootstrap loading it seems to NEED that drive translation service provided by the system BIOS. perhaps it depends what harddrive you're using (HDD brand/model) and what BIOS you're using on the system.. i haven't quite determined what the full details are yet, but i definitely learned something last night. ;) even though i installed FreeBSD in on the system with only NORMAL mode from the BIOS, changing it after the install seems to work fine.. not sure if i'm going to run into problems later, but assuming my 'theory' is correct about FreeBSD ignoring the system BIOS after initial boot i don't think i'm going to have a problem. thanks for listening. ;) yossman ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Yossarian Holmberg (yossman) yossman@nonline.net Senior Systems Administrator http://www.nonline.net/ National Online Inc. National Computers and Supplies On Wed, 7 Jul 1999, yossman wrote: > > 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 > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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