From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Apr 18 22:28:30 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id WAA02301 for questions-outgoing; Thu, 18 Apr 1996 22:28:30 -0700 (PDT) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id WAA02282 Thu, 18 Apr 1996 22:28:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from msmith@localhost by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.6.12/8.6.9) id OAA17789; Fri, 19 Apr 1996 14:51:35 +0930 From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199604190521.OAA17789@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: freebsd-uk To: gpalmer@FreeBSD.ORG (Gary Palmer) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 14:51:34 +0930 (CST) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, nik@blueberry.co.uk, questions@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <2478.829890217@palmer.demon.co.uk> from "Gary Palmer" at Apr 19, 96 06:03:37 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Gary Palmer stands accused of saying: > > > Why am I narked? Because you're bagging FreeBSD for something that's not > > actually it's fault. 8) > > Are you sure? I've heard several reports of extremely awkward or > failing FreeBSD installs. The common factor? Large IDE drives. Makes > me think that there is something not right there... Most of these begin with a disk layout that has some FAT partition sitting on the first 500M or more. There's just no way to win in a situation like this, short of having a pile of alternative bootstraps that understand the different mutant forms of LBA and try to guess which one to install. FWIW, I've done plenty of installs onto 'large' IDE disks, on systems with and without LBA support, and generally haven't had any trouble if they've been properly configured. One place you _will_ lose is if the BIOS reports a bogus geometry to the bootstrap - it's not telepathic, so if the BIOS geometry setting doesn't match the disk's reported geometry, the installer has to be told the BIOS geometry manually. That's a configuration error, not a FreeBSD problem. > Gary -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] Collector of old Unix hardware. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[