From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Oct 26 16:20:13 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id QAA21773 for questions-outgoing; Sat, 26 Oct 1996 16:20:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from wizard.pn.com (root@wizard.pn.com [204.96.36.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id QAA21767 for ; Sat, 26 Oct 1996 16:20:12 -0700 (PDT) Received: from pioneer.ci.net (pioneer.ci.net [205.136.67.65]) by wizard.pn.com (8.8.0/8.8.0) with ESMTP id TAA20509 for ; Sat, 26 Oct 1996 19:20:09 -0400 Received: from kendra.UUCP (root@localhost) by pioneer.ci.net (8.8.0/8.8.0) with UUCP id TAA30228 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Sat, 26 Oct 1996 19:16:11 -0400 Received: by pandora.kew.com (UUPC/extended 1.12s); Sat, 26 Oct 1996 19:13:14 -0500 Message-ID: <32729b0a.kendra@pandora.kew.com> Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 19:13:06 -0500 From: "Drew Derbyshire" Organization: Kendra Electronic Wonderworks (PO Box 80144, Stoneham MA 02180) To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: file systems eaten by space DOS, film at 11? Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk *** Please copy to me directly, since my subscription to the list is still being processed. Sorry *** This is starting to get annoying. Personally, I'm a generic multi-platform jockey, 15 years MVS, 10 years PCs and UNIX (SunOS, AIX, and Solaris), a little OS and admin experience along the way. Decent, not great, admin, mostly I'm a TCP/IP C++ applications hacker. I did my first FreeBSD 2.1.5 installation on a Gateway 386DX/25 with 8M, ISA bus only, 80M and 1600M WD IDE hard drives. Small drive (wd0) is ~ 30M dos fat, ~ 32M root file system, 16M swap, a little left over for a possible additional primary disk partition (disk slice) for later addition of a non-FreeBsd boot manager. Large disk (wd1) has large /var, /usr, and /u (home) partitions, plus another 40M swap. (Yea, I know I'll thrash like a grain combine first if I need it). System also has AHA-1542CF, NEC CDR-74, and SMC Elite Ultra, and usual assortment of parallel/serial ports. First time I installed FreeBSD, the system ran for about a week, then I booted to DOS, rewrote the MBR on wd0 to lose the FreeBSD boot manager (I don't need it, I just set the active partition and run w/o a keyboard or monitor, use the serial console to serial port on OS/2 server). However, as I reboot to FreeBSD * B L A M M O * kernel panics because it can't mount root. , I figure I must have torched non-DOS partition/disk slice information, although after FreeBSD decides my wd0 disk geometry has changed to utterly bogus numbers and it forgets wd1's disk slices as well, I'm starting to wonder. To recover it, I end up using WD's wdclear to nuke the entire wd0 disk including cylinder 0 to hex 00, and then I lay down new DOS and freeBSD partition. (This is when I discover wd1 has forgotton its disk slices, and I nuke its cylinder 0 as well.) I reinstall, regen kernel from scratch (faster than figuring out how restore from the ZIP drive dump I took of root, especially since the drive is disconnected), system works great through 4 days. However, I have serial port COM3 hiding from me, since I must have IRQ wrong, so I botto back to DOS via floppy. I don't screw with fdisk, I do access the C: partition and copy a few programs on it, but nothing special with partition table.) I determine the proper IRQ with DOS kermit, then reboot from hard drive into FreeBSD again, same kernel I'd booted previously ... ... and * B L A M M O * kernel panics because it can't mount root. I'm willing to dedicate all of wd0 to FreeBSD, but if I lose root again, I'm _not_ going to be happy. Where the hell is root going? (I can look on the disk with Norton or whatever, if you can tell where to check.) Have I got space aliens loose or what? DOS virus is unlikely, since the DOS install was from fresh write protected MS (tm) disks. -- Internet: ahd@kew.com Voice: 617-279-9810 Expect the unexpected-- HE does.