Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 13:54:41 -0700 (PDT) From: John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> To: Fred Clift <fclift@verio.net> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org, "freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG" <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org>, Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com>, Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com> Subject: Re: Really odd "BTX halted" problem booting FreeBSD on VALinux h Message-ID: <XFMail.001027135441.jhb@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0010271443130.20866-100000@vespa.orem.iserver.com>
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On 27-Oct-00 Fred Clift wrote: > On Fri, 27 Oct 2000, Robert Nordier wrote: > >> >> Just doing the disklabel -w -r followed by the disklabel -B is creating >> a dangerously dedicated disk, which your BIOS apparently doesn't like. >> (See the first hex dump you did, where boot1 has ended up in the MBR.) >> >> That's why installing boot blocks is messing with the partition table, >> to answer the question you asked elsewhere. >> >> You need to dd and fdisk before the disklabel commands, which will give >> you a standard partition table (at the cost of 63 sectors of disk >> space). >> > > > So why not just put a valid partition table inside the boot1 that gets put > on sector zero? When boot1 gets dropped onto sector zero, it does hose > the partition table, but there is no reason why a valid one couln't be put > there insead of this broken one: Well, for one thing, 99% of the PC architecture assumes that the first track is reserved for the MBR so to speak, so putting boot1 in the MBR is already bogus. The reason it is bogus is to work around disk geometry pain as I mentioned in my previous e-mail to Matt. The only thing you can change is the size of the last slice, but my guess is that that won't fix the problem that the SCSI BIOS's have, but that instead the hack that we use boot1 as an MBR for (having the slice start at 0/0/1) is what is causing the BIOS to choke. -- John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ PGP Key: http://www.baldwin.cx/~john/pgpkey.asc "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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