Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2001 14:26:30 -0500 (EST) From: "[gill]" <gill@topsecret.net> To: Oscar Ricardo Silva <oscars@mail.utexas.edu> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Problems installing 4.x on large disks Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0102091422130.13183-100000@pacific.int.topsecret.net> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20010209103748.00b9e240@mail.utexas.edu>
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I had an issue with installing 4.2 on a 40G drive a couple of weeks ago. The software that came with the drive gave me one set of c/h/s numbers, the BIOS gave me another, the FreeBSD disk config sections of the installer gave me another .... none of them agreed. I updated my BIOS and let it automagically detect and selected LBA mode ... then I let the FreeBSD installer use it's 'more sensible' numbers and upon reboot my BIOS had yet another set of numbers that made no sense at all to me. I reset the BIOS numbers to something that made sense (sorry, I don't remember if that was the original BIOS LBA numbers or the FreeBSD disk slicer numbers) and it has been booting and working perfectly ever since. oh, and because of the way that I wanted to use this drive I put a 2G partition on first and put the full OS in that and then went back and created a second slice and partition for the remainder. hth, --gill -- This is my ~/.signature file. It is the digital equivalent of a bumpersticker. Remember? When you said: ->At first I thought I was the only one having problems installing FreeBSD on ->machines with large disks. Looking through some newsgroups and the mailing ->list archives, I've found that more and more people are having problems, ->but unfortunately, I haven't found any solutions. The basic problem is ->that the operating system is installed on a large disk. First the ->partitions are created, then the slices, and finally the files are copied ->over. Then, on reboot, a message looking something like this comes up: -> ->No /boot/loader -> -> >>FreeBSD/i386 BOOT ->Default: 0:ad(0,a)/kernel ->boot: ->No /kernel -> -> >>FreeBSD/i386 BOOT ->Default: 0:ad(0,a)/kernel ->boot: -> -> ->Some of the suggestions to previous questions of this type suggested that ->the problem might have something to do with the 1024 cylinder limit. But ->from my reading of the latest release notes, this is no longer an ->issue. I've tried entering the boot commands by hand at this prompt but ->still no boot. And I've booted off of the live filesystem disk and I can ->see that there is a "/boot" directory and that "/boot/loader" as well as ->"/kernel" does exist. -> ->Here's the other thing I've seen in some of these similar ->messages: installation of Linux (mostly Red Hat), happens without a ->problem. I have two identical machines, one currently running Red Hat ->Linux 6.2 and on the other one I'm attempting to install FreeBSD. -> -> ->Any thoughts/suggestions/recommendations? Even though the release notes ->say the 1024 cylinder limit is no longer a problem, I've tried doing the ->install with a / of as little as 50MB and still the same problem. Here are ->some details of the computer I'm working on: -> -> ->The machine is a 650MHz Pentium III, with 256MB of RAM one 3COM PCI ->3C905C-TX and the following disk configuration: -> -> Primary master: IBM DPTA-373420 -> Primary slave: IBM DPTA-373420 -> Secondary master: IBM DPTA-373420 -> Secondary slave: Toshiba CD-ROM -> ->The IBM drives have a capacity of 32864MB. In the BIOS, I've tried setting ->the mode on the disks to: Auto, LBA and LARGE. In addition, when using ->FDISK in the install, I set each disk to dangerously dedicated. The ->operating system is installed on the primary master. I've also played ->around with the size of the root partition, initially setting it to 5GB but ->now going down to 2GB. After each install, we get the same error mentioned ->above. -> -> -> -> ->Oscar -> -> -> ->To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org ->with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message -> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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