Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 18:20:39 -0700 From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> To: Mikael Karpberg <karpen@ocean.campus.luth.se> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: BETA problems... Message-ID: <199810130120.SAA01157@dingo.cdrom.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 13 Oct 1998 00:48:38 %2B0200." <199810122248.AAA13243@ocean.campus.luth.se>
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> I just tried to install the newest BETA on current.freebsd.org on a > friend's computer. It worked, let's say, less then satisfactory. Somehow > the installation got messed up, but the main problem was that he had two > IDE drives. Both set to master, on separate comntrollers. On wd0 he had > Window and on wd2 he wanted FreeBSD... That, however, was not much to > FreeBSD's liking. > > At the "boot:" prompt, it would find the kernel at bios unit 1, but for > some inane reason it fails to recognize that the disk is NOT wd1, but wd2. > So you would manually have to enter "1:wd(2,a)kernel" or it would assume > "1:wd(1,a)kernel", and panic when trying to mount root. Why is this, and > shouldn't it be fixed? > > _Is_ it fixed in new boot code, perhaps? No. It's almost impossible to get the distinction right. The difficulty lies in working out which physical drives the BIOS numbers correspond to. Unless you have a *very* new system, there is simply no way to know that the BIOS drive 0x81 is in fact wd2. In order for this to work, the user has to provide the missing data, either by typing 1:wd(2a)kernel every time (tedious) or putting it in /boot.config. Note that you are wrong; the disk is *not* wd1, it's wd2. Check your kernel config if you don't believe me. -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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