Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 21:00:02 -0700 (PDT) From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.ORG> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: "Anders Chr. Skoe" <skoe@owlnet.rice.edu>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Anyone resolved "Missing operating system" issue? Message-ID: <XFMail.000713210002.jhb@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <20000714095926.C27141@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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On 14-Jul-00 Greg Lehey wrote: > On Thursday, 13 July 2000 at 17:25:53 -0700, John Baldwin wrote: >> >> On 12-Jul-00 Greg Lehey wrote: >>> On Tuesday, 11 July 2000 at 11:35:58 -0500, Anders Chr. Skoe wrote: >>>> Howdy, folks! >>>> >>>> unfortunately, this email follows a pretty good history of posts regarding >>>> the "Missing operating system" error. we install 3.2 with no problems on >>>> our western digital WDE4360-1807A3, but it just won't boot. our bios is >>>> the adaptec AHA 2940 Ultra/Ultra W BIOS v1.23. >>>> >>>> a) if we only create a freebsd partition, and try to boot it, we get the >>>> infamous "Missing operating system" error. >>>> >>>> b) if we create both dos & freebsd partitions, we get to the boot manager, >>>> but selecting freebsd doesn't work. we've tried putting the freebsd >>>> partition first as well as the dos partition first, but it makes no >>>> difference. we've also tried various combinations of partition sizes. >>>> >>>> c) setting the drive geometry to 4095/64/32 doesn't help (someone >>>> suggested this in an earlier mail). >>>> >>>> d) using FDISK we've set the active partition to the freebsd >>>> partition. it doesn't help. >>>> >>>> e) we can boot from the floppy & cdrom drives. >>>> >>>> we would really appreciate some useful feedback 'cause it's drivin' us >>>> crazy. >>> >>> This sounds like a geometry issue. Have you selected LBA in the BIOS >>> setup? If so, have you tried both "dangerously dedicated" and >>> Microsoft compatible partitions? >> >> Eek! Don't use dangerously dedicated on SCSI. It causes SCSI disks >> to break horribly. > > I've never seen any problems using "dangerously dedicated" on SCSI. > I've been doing it all the time for over 8 years. Care to explain > your claim? I know that Doug White for one had serious issues with dangerously dedicated mode on SCSI. The problem has more to do with newer SCSI controllers that attempt to match the geometry speecified in the MBR of the disk. Since dangerously dedicated mode uses a completely fake and made up geometry, this can greatly confuse the SCSI controller. > Greg -- John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ PGP Key: http://www.cslab.vt.edu/~jobaldwi/pgpkey.asc "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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