Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 19 Apr 1996 14:51:34 +0930 (CST)
From:      Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
To:        gpalmer@FreeBSD.ORG (Gary Palmer)
Cc:        msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, nik@blueberry.co.uk, questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: freebsd-uk
Message-ID:  <199604190521.OAA17789@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
In-Reply-To: <2478.829890217@palmer.demon.co.uk> from "Gary Palmer" at Apr 19, 96 06:03:37 am

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
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  [[



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199604190521.OAA17789>