Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 11:54:26 -0400 (EDT) From: Bill Paul <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: thyerm@camtech.net.au, mike@smith.net.au, Matthey.Thyer@dsto.defence.gov.au, tlambert@primenet.com, jlemon@americantv.com, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 'fatal trap 12' on boot (smp and up) Message-ID: <199806281554.LAA16209@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu> In-Reply-To: <20432.899008615@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Jun 27, 98 09:36:55 pm
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Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Jordan K. Hubbard had to walk into mine and say: > > Summary) There may be no way of booting cleanly using a versions of > > DOS from Microsoft in the future. This is not the case > > now - see STOP PRESS below. > > Actually, what this tells is is that fbsdboot.exe should be deprecated > because: > > A) It's never been that well supported in the past as it is. > > B) It's clearly vulnerable to future Microsoft braindamage. > > C) I'd prefer not to rely on M$ behavior in anything resembling > a supported installation feature. > > So, given all of that, I will now work to remove all references to > fbsdboot.exe in our installation instructions and simply recommend > that a boot floppy be used in *all* installation cases. > > - Jordan Uhm. Just one point I'd like to make here. Removing fbsdboot.exe entirely would be a bad idea. I agree that it can cause confusion, but I encountered one case the other day where I ended up needing it. Some of the people in one of the labs here are working on a mobile computing project of some kind, and they have quite a few laptops floating around. One of them, which I think is a DSI, refuses to run the FreeBSD boot block. (I say 'I think it's a DSI' because the stupid machine doesn't have any identifying vendor markings on it whatsoever.) You can actually configure the thing to boot from internal disk, floppy or CD-ROM. When I put the FreeBSD install floppy or CD-ROM in and try to boot, it says 'Loading boot block from FLOPPY: FAILED' or 'Loading boot block from CD-ROM: FAILED' and moves on to the internal disk and loads LoseNT. As a hack, I dug up a set of MS-DOG 6.22 floppies and put an ATAPI CD-ROM driver on one of them so that I could boot the laptop in MS-DOG and access the FreeBSD install CD. From there I ran fbsdboot.exe, and successfully loaded the install kernel. Clearly, the machine likes the MS-DOG bootstrap and the LoseNT bootstrap, but not ours. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm clever enough to find the exact problem myself, and I can't really load FreeBSD on this machine since they need it with LoseNT (grrrr). I'll try to dig up the exact make and model number in case anyone's really interested. My point is: if you want to deprecate the use of fbsdboot.exe, well I suppose that's okay, but don't nuke it entirely yet. It still has its uses. -Bill -- ============================================================================= -Bill Paul (212) 854-6020 | System Manager, Master of Unix-Fu Work: wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research Home: wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City ============================================================================= "It is not I who am crazy; it is I who am mad!" - Ren Hoek, "Space Madness" ============================================================================= To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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