From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Aug 29 20:47:14 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) id UAA06964 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 29 Aug 1995 20:47:14 -0700 Received: from localhost.lightside.com (user52.lightside.com [198.81.209.52]) by freefall.FreeBSD.org (8.6.11/8.6.6) with ESMTP id UAA06948 for ; Tue, 29 Aug 1995 20:47:07 -0700 Received: (from jehamby@localhost) by localhost.lightside.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id UAA01125; Tue, 29 Aug 1995 20:47:10 -0700 Date: Tue, 29 Aug 1995 20:47:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Jake Hamby X-Sender: jehamby@localhost To: "Rodney W. Grimes" cc: freebsd-hackers@freefall.FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Does fdisk work? In-Reply-To: <199508300222.TAA05612@gndrsh.aac.dev.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Tue, 29 Aug 1995, Rodney W. Grimes wrote: > > > > Does fdisk work for others? I have not been able to get it to > > write anything on the disk. I run it with the -i flag and answer > > all the questions in the affirmative, yet upon running it again > > (or disklabel) the disk still has no valid partion table (at least > > not what I specified). This on both a 2.0.5R and a 950726-SNAP > > level system. > > > > All I can figure is that either fdisk is terminally broken or I am > > missing something very fundamental about its use. :-(( > > fdisk -u, the -u option is required if you wish to write to the > disk, -i write a master boot record, but no partition table. > I just set up FreeBSD a few days ago (after a few years using Linux) and overall it's excellent! But fdisk/disklabel are REALLY difficult to figure out. What FreeBSD needs is an menu-based fdisk more like Linux's (or the sysinstall program). At any rate, the one major problem I had setting up FreeBSD was that I installed it on my second IDE hard drive and it refused to boot (well actually it booted into LILO which is what I was running before I installed FreeBSD). I ended up having to download the DOS program BootEasy in order to boot, but now BootEasy won't boot my DOS partition (also on the second IDE drive). And I never did figure out how to reinstall the EasyBoot MBR from within FreeBSD! Considering my configuration, what would be the EXACT command to install a master boot record on my first and second IDE hard drive from within FreeBSD? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jake Hamby | E-Mail: jehamby@lightside.com Student, Cal Poly University, Pomona | System Administrator, JPL -------------------------------------------------------------------------------