Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 17:34:25 -0700 (MST) From: Fred Clift <fclift@verio.net> To: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: Fred Clift <fclift@verio.net>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, "freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG>, Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>, Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com> Subject: Re: Really odd "BTX halted" problem booting FreeBSD on VALinux h Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0010301727210.28195-100000@vespa.orem.iserver.com> In-Reply-To: <XFMail.001027135441.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
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> > Well, for one thing, 99% of the PC architecture assumes that the first > track is reserved for the MBR so to speak, so putting boot1 in the MBR > is already bogus. but boot one replaces the MBR with better code and an fdisk table. It does it have a 'bogus' fdisk table in it already. The only real problems are that if you have other oses on the disk, then they can get confused -- for instance microsoft OSes put their secondary loader followed by the fat and all that crap. The whole point of a dedicated install is that, by definition, I dont want/have any other os on the disk. So, I have a valid fdisk table (writing over the bogus one in boot1) and bioses are happy. Yet, my 'customized' boot code in boot1 that replaces the mbr boots FreeBSD instead. I haven't yet seen bioses that choke if you dont have a fat/fat32 filesystem inside your active partition, though I hear Itanium will carry that brokenness one step forward. So, in short, if I dont have 'lesser' oses on the disk, a 'fixed' boot1 should be just fine. > The reason it is bogus is to work around disk geometry pain as I > mentioned in my previous e-mail to Matt. The only thing you can > change is the size of the last slice, but my guess is that that won't > fix the problem that the SCSI BIOS's have, but that instead the hack > that we use boot1 as an MBR for (having the slice start at 0/0/1) is > what is causing the BIOS to choke. Actually, it perfectly solves the problems I have with the adaptec scsi bios as found in the VAlinux boxes, among others (wyle, gateway, sgi all use the same motherboard in 2U servers, and all exhibit the identical problem...) At any rate, I'll move our install stuff over to use the patches that will hopefully be accpeted posted earlier in this thread. Fred -- Fred Clift - fclift@verio.net -- Remember: If brute force doesn't work, you're just not using enough. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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