Date: Wed, 5 Jun 1996 17:57:52 -0600 From: Nate Williams <nate@sri.MT.net> To: "Brian Candler" <B.Candler@dial.pipex.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD boot problem Message-ID: <199606052357.RAA23947@rocky.sri.MT.net> In-Reply-To: <199606052342.AAA03014@typhoon.dial.pipex.net> References: <199606052342.AAA03014@typhoon.dial.pipex.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> > I am using a 486/66 PC, 16MB RAM, 1.2GB IDE hard disk. I had previously > installed Windows 95 in a 500MB partition, leaving the rest free for other > OSes - but when I read the installation book I learned that the FreeBSD > root filesystem must be within the first 504MB... how annoying! Blame it on IBM. Unless you have a special BIOS, this limitation is a hardware limitation and not a FreeBSD specific limitation. > So, what I did was to boot FreeBSD from floppy and run the 'fixit' disk, > create an identically-sized 500MB partition at the end of the disk with > fdisk, use 'dd' to copy all the Win95 data from the beginning to the end of > the disk, then delete the initial partition. This is fine: Windows 95 still > boots happily. That's because the entire boot block for Win95 still exists under the 504MB mark. > parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are: > cylinders=621 heads=64 sectors/track=63 (4032 blks/cyl) Are these numbers correct? (ie; is this what your BIOS says?) > The disk drive is a Western Digital WDAC31200, for which the BIOS setup is > normally 2484 cylinders/16 heads/63 sectors per track. fdisk reports > 621/64/63 instead, which I suspect is an EIDE artifact. Besides, Win95 > boots happily, so I presume the partition table is OK. Not necessarily. You need to tell the FreeBSD install to use the values 2484/16/63, Nate
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199606052357.RAA23947>