Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2000 11:53:44 -0400 (EDT) From: "Jasper O'Malley" <jooji@nickelkid.com> To: Mark Ovens <mark@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: REVISED: Active partition problems with FreeBSD 4.0/NT dual-boot Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006100856310.42150-100000@cornflake.nickelkid.com> In-Reply-To: <20000610022218.C232@parish>
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On Sat, 10 Jun 2000, Mark Ovens wrote: > On Fri, Jun 09, 2000 at 03:16:06PM -0400, Jasper O'Malley wrote: > > > I didn't boot off C:\BOOTSECT.BSD that time, I "hit F5, then hit F1" to > > boot back into FreeBSD (i.e. I did it entirely through the FreeBSD boot > > loader process). In fact, C:\BOOTSECT.BSD disappeared with everything else > > on the original NTFS partition when the partition table was overwritten ;) > > Yes, but those (F1... F5....) messages come from the FreeBSD loader > (boot0). NT obviously doesn't rewrite the MBR when installing. Nope, sure doesn't. But the thing is that, by this point, boot0 had already taken residence in the MBR of da0, so I wasn't dealing with a situation where I'd trashed the partition table again. > > It did it again because the "active" flag in da0s1's partition table entry > > was cleared when I booted into FreeBSD. Upon reboot, the BIOS--seeing > > that no partitions were marked active on the lowest numbered BIOS drive-- > > threw out the error message and stopped the boot again. It's a bug, but > > it's not uncommon, from what I've seen in the freebsd-questions archive > > and elsewhere. > > The BIOS can't boot from anything other than the first drive, that's > what boot managers are all about. Right, but normally the BIOS doesn't bother checking for active partition on the first drive. Ordinarily, the BIOS just cares that there *is* a first disk, and hands control over to the MBR on the first disk, and the program in the MBR is normally what cares about active partitions and such. Because my particular BIOS is looking for an active partition before the MBR (in this case, boot0) gets control, it's not letting me boot unless I manually use fdisk to set the NTFS partition active (even if I just want to boot into FreeBSD). > Sorry for the problems [the FAQ] has caused but it was done in all good > faith. I understand :) It's really not a problem, I didn't have anything important on my NT partition. Other may people may, however, so it might be wise to remove the instruction altogether until the new wording is completed. Right now, my problem isn't really that boot0 is trashing my partition table anymore, it's that it's clearing the active flag on my NTFS partition when I boot into FreeBSD. Cheers, Mick To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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