Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 20:34:22 -0400 From: "Dave Blizzard" <blizzard@torqmail.sunpub.com> To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com> Cc: "questions" <questions@freefall.freebsd.org> Subject: Re: FreeBSD NOT Message-ID: <n1377957427.2959@torqmail.sunpub.com>
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RE>>FreeBSD NOT 6/7/96
Jordan
Here is the original message, sorry for the delay as I was away for two days.
To bring you up to date,
1) I have now installed the BSD by turning off my IDE drive. As long as I boot
from a floppy, it seems to work fine. So far no corruption of the IDE drive's
partition table. (touch wood)
I have received mail from others who have had the same problem as well as one
that didn't.
2) I used the A option for partitioning the SCSI drive and therefore am no
longer worrying about the geometry. The disklabel still sees the drive as
about 300mb too large so I am manually reducing the size of the /USR so that
the system won't try and write to the non-existent space.
3) do you have any problems with the /dev/lpt0 driver? This device works great
for me in dos but the lptest > /dev/lpt0 prints blank pages. (the kernel is
set to use the IRQ 7)
dave B
--------------------------------------
Date: 6/3/96 9:04 PM
To: Dave Blizzard
From: Jordan K. Hubbard
> Sorry, the BSD version is 2.1 from the curent CD.
> the motherboard is a mylex 486 but the same symptoms occured on my 386 with
> an AMI bios
OK, now that we've established that - please send me the text of your
bug report again and I'll look at it. I'm afraid I deleted the
previous message already due to email overload and an aggressive
mail-deletion policy. :-)
Jordan
Ok I have to admit defeat.
For three weeks I have tried every permutation of installing Free BSD on a
386 and 486 pc so that it installs on a SCSI drive purchased especially for
the install.
The problem is that I have an IDE drive as drive C and the SCSI as drive D.
DOS sees everything fine and I have no hardware conflicts.
What were the problems?
1) BSD's Fdisk cannot see the correct geometry for the SCSI drive. Even though
I plug in the right numbers for the drive, BSD adds the size of the IDE drive
to the SCSI drive and then destroys the partition table of both drives.
Even when I dedicate the entire SCSI drive to FreeBSD, The install destroys
the IDE partition and Boot sectors.
2) The installer destroys the partition table of the IDE drive even if the
install is aborted. I assume that that last little syncing drives 1...2... is
what does it before the install quits.
3) Even though the install seems to go without errors, the bootmgr uses virus
technology (sic) to install itself in track 0 sector 1. This cannot be removed
by using fdisk /mbr as it also seems that the track is write protected. Even
diskedit cannot zero out the sector. This has cause several screaming fits
around here as the only low level format I have is in the bios of my old 386
board so I then have to reinstall it to retrieve the drive.
SOMEONE WHOULD WARN USERS OF THIS.
THE RECOVERY PROCEDURE IS AS FOLLOWS:
low level format the drive
install DOS from the original setup. The usual procedures do not work I
suspect because they use BIOS routines while the original DOS install writes
directly to the disk
4 Even if I put a small BSD partition on the IDE drive for root and swap, the
BSD fdisk still screws up the SCSI partitions (thinks the drive is much larger
than reality) and then destroys the IDE drive.
5 The FIPS program has a serious bug in it as it creates a second primary dos
partition which confuses the hell out of DOS
Short of dedicating a complete machine to BSD, is there any way to install BSD
on a SCSI drive D when an IDE drive is already installed.
How can one deinstall the stupid Bootmgr??? The last response to this question
was some words about patching INT13 but had no real mechanism or software to
do this.
--------------------------
The following is from Tony Kimball and I beleive he cc'd the questions list.
From: Dave Blizzard <blizzard@canoe.ca>
Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 11:43:36 -0400
Subject: FreeBSD.NOT
Ok I have to admit defeat.
Don't give up so easily. The rewards are quite substantial.
Even when I dedicate the entire SCSI drive to FreeBSD, The install
destroys the IDE partition and Boot sectors.
This is a known problem with the 2.1 Boot. Switch to the 2.2-current
disks. Or, unplug the IDE drive before installing.
3) Even though the install seems to go without errors, the bootmgr
uses virus technology (sic) to install itself in track 0 sector 1.
SOMEONE WHOULD WARN USERS OF THIS.
It is well-known, but not adequately advertised. It caused me
lots of problems. I was using the NT loader on my IDE drive,
and found that running the first phase of the Win95 install
would restore the boot info to the IDE drive. I did that several
times, until I became familiar with the procedure.
THE RECOVERY PROCEDURE IS AS FOLLOWS:
low level format the drive
install DOS from the original setup. The usual procedures (format &
fdisk etc) do not work I suspect because they use BIOS routines while
the original DOS install writes directly to the disk
A Win95 CD is cheaper:-)
Short of dedicating a complete machine to BSD, is there any way to
install BSD on a SCSI drive D when an IDE drive is already installed.
Again, I suggest unplugging the IDE drive until the system is stable.
Sorry if this sounds like I am venting here but something is seriously
wrong with the docs or I just don't understand this OS.
Oh you are absolutely right, the 2.1 install docs should have
big red letters around every page saying "you will probably destroy
your other OSen unless you remove their disks and send them to bed
until the dirty deed is done."
Thing is, unless you *absolutely* need MS-Office or some such,
you'll probably find the precautions wasted, since you will
just end up wiping all other OSen from your system within a month
or two. I get ill just thinking about booting WinNT. Never again.
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