Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1997 22:02:36 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: j_mini@efn.org Cc: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu, questions@freebsd.org, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.2.2 Won't Boot (fwd) Message-ID: <199711182202.PAA24807@usr01.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <19971118101910.03616@micron.mini.net> from "Jonathan Mini" at Nov 18, 97 10:19:10 am
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> > My suggestion for Booteasy is to modify it so that it doesn't write itself > > back to disk. This has the disadvantage of no longer being able to change > > the default boot drive selection, but the advantage is that > > interoperability with other products (e.g. System Commander) is improved. > > Modifying Booteasy to fix a bug in System Commander is a Bad Idea. There > is no reason why you should be using both System Command and Booteasy at > the same time. V Communications is Frank Van Gilluwe's company. This is the company of the person who wrote "The Undocumented PC" book (a standard reference work used by the BSD community). Clearly, it's depending on the idea that a BIOS drive ID maps to a primary parittion ID, and assuming that FreeBSD will use the %dl value instead of relying on searching the partiton table, yet again, for the ID. This works for Linux because Linux doesn't have to deal with a "dangerously dedicated" mode -- and fails for FreeBSD for the same reason. Arguably, FreeBSD is correct; use of a partition table places an 8G limit on the drive size, and FreeBSD's method means that it does not suffer this restriction (of course, LBA mode would do the same thing, yielding 32 bits * 512 bytes per sector as a limit). I believe "system commander" does this twiddle to "remember" which partition was booted last. You seeing this problem is probably endemic to your use of a third primary parition for FreeBSD: BIOS does not support more than two primary partitions reported (0x80, 0x81) in %dl. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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