From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 3 07:01:59 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E740B106566C for ; Wed, 3 Aug 2011 07:01:58 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from conrads@cox.net) Received: from eastrmfepo102.cox.net (eastrmfepo102.cox.net [68.230.241.214]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 916018FC0A for ; Wed, 3 Aug 2011 07:01:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: from eastrmimpo02.cox.net ([68.1.16.120]) by eastrmfepo102.cox.net (InterMail vM.8.01.04.00 201-2260-137-20101110) with ESMTP id <20110803070152.TVVR3919.eastrmfepo102.cox.net@eastrmimpo02.cox.net>; Wed, 3 Aug 2011 03:01:52 -0400 Received: from serene ([98.164.77.61]) by eastrmimpo02.cox.net with bizsmtp id Fj1s1h0021KMa2A02j1s9D; Wed, 03 Aug 2011 03:01:52 -0400 X-CT-Class: Clean X-CT-Score: 0.00 X-CT-RefID: str=0001.0A020205.4E38F260.008C,ss=1,re=0.000,fgs=0 X-CT-Spam: 0 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.1 cv=VVfSoB9EhnV18W7Ttu+1ezfIXSJ0l7myRtJlh1i+5TE= c=1 sm=1 a=KS9RXunQXfMA:10 a=G8Uczd0VNMoA:10 a=kj9zAlcOel0A:10 a=+z5gOwi1mWmWLWYHm+9pGA==:17 a=69EAbJreAAAA:8 a=kviXuzpPAAAA:8 a=_2cI9RyXvO6_V-DsCLkA:9 a=CjuIK1q_8ugA:10 a=EfJqPEOeqlMA:10 a=4vB-4DCPJfMA:10 a=nB67imMwa6kLN41J:21 a=Um4bmHC2btjAx1hV:21 a=+z5gOwi1mWmWLWYHm+9pGA==:117 X-CM-Score: 0.00 Authentication-Results: cox.net; none Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2011 02:01:51 -0500 From: "Conrad J. Sabatier" To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20110803020151.44ac6ada@serene> In-Reply-To: References: <20110802180606.4599d800@serene> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.7.2 (GTK+ 2.18.3; x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Subject: Re: 8.2-RELEASE-amd64.iso weirdness (help!) X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2011 07:01:59 -0000 On Wed, 03 Aug 2011 01:35:30 -0400, Michael Powell wrote: >Conrad J. Sabatier wrote: ... >> Worse still, though, is what I ran across in the >> partitioning/labeling/boot record section of sysinstall; no more >> "dangerously dedicated" mode (unless you go into "expert" mode, which >> is rather a mystery to me), and worse yet, it seems that the options >> to install a plain master boot record or boot manager have no effect >> whatsoever! > >"Dangerously dedicated" is being deprecated in favor of more modern >ways and methods to slice and partition. You should no longer seek to >utilize it, and I think, if memory serves there was some talk at one >time on removing it from fdisk and/or sysinstall. Well, in 8.2, it *has* been removed essentially. The only way to try to effect a DD partitioning is to go into the mysterious and error-prone "expert" mode, as it's no longer provided as an option in the partitioning menu. ... >> The really crucial problem I'm facing right now is that I can't get >> Linux's damned "grub" off of my hard drive! ... >Sounds like you need to zero the first part of your drive. The >following is best done before installing, rather than afterwards. >Either boot a LiveFS CD (which I have done before) or, I believe this >is also possible from the Fixit shell (which I have not tried). In >order to gain the ability to "force" writes to this area do this at a >root prompt: > >sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 > >then to zero out the beginning of your disk do: > >dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 > >where x is the drive number. This should get the grub gone. Then >install as normal. With the grub MBR out of the way you should now be >able to install FreeBSD bootloader/MBR as you have in the past. I have already tried using dd to zero out the beginning of the drive, just the MBR sector at first, then later even up to a full gigabyte, but grub is still there. I didn't, however, set that sysctl first. Is that why dd didn't work? I'm not familiar with that particular setting. I still don't understand, though, why sysinstall's option to install the MBR didn't do the trick. Neither the boot manager nor the plain-vanilla MBR installation seemed to have any effect at all. Weird. Anyway, thanks for the advice. I'll keep trying. I am determined to get back to my beloved FreeBSD, which I had been using since 1996, until this unfortunate situation occurred with my newly acquired machine's (not so new anymore) hard drive and CD-ROM not being recognized during attempts to install. Will post back later on the results. I just hate to have to keep trashing and then reinstalling Linux, just to get back online so I can get more information about this seriously annoying problem. :-) Stay tuned! :-) -- Conrad J. Sabatier conrads@cox.net