Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2000 03:32:33 -0500 (CDT) From: David Talkington <dtalk@prairienet.org> To: Nathan Vidican <webmaster@wmptl.com> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD killed my laptop, (twice) re-posting Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0009290323260.627-100000@sherman.spotnet> In-Reply-To: <39D36A51.626078EE@wmptl.com>
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Wow, that's pretty ugly. The only thing I can think of is that FreeBSD somehow changed the way the geometry of the drive is translated. If that's the case, what I'd expect to see is a very long pause during boot (probably after the memory check, as you said), and then a minute or two later, a "hard disk failure" message and an option to jump into BIOS. This is typical of the way desktop machines used to handle misconfigured hard drives, back before autodetect was widespread. Did you wait long enough (could be a few minutes) to see if it would, in fact, time out and drop you into BIOS? That said, most ThinkPads have a Phoenix BIOS that comes with a "phdisk" utility. That utility can create either a hibernation partition or a hibernation file on a FAT/FAT32 partition. Did you fdisk the drive clean, and make sure all existing partitions were eliminated, including the hibernation partition if one existed? MS-DOS fdisk would show it as a "non-dos" partition of about 130MB; Caldera DR-DOS would recognize it as an IBM system partition of some sort. Red Hat's disk tools see it, but call it "unknown". Perhaps it's possible that FreeBSD didn't see it at all, and misconfigured the partition table as a result. I hope some of this helps ... please let us know how it turns out. - -d - -- David Talkington Community Networking Initiative dtalk@prairienet.org 217-244-1962 PGP key: http://www.prairienet.org/~dtalk/dt000823.asc Nathan Vidican wrote: > Has anyone got FreeBSD running, successfully on an IBM ThinkPad A20M, >(24U - PII 500/128megs Ram/6Gig HD) ? I have attempted to install twice >now, both times have resulted in my having to replace the hardisk with a >new one from IBM. > Here's what happens: I boot off of the kernel disk (floppy), >insert the >MFSroot disk (also floppy), everything seems normal. I create a 4gig >MSDOS partition, and set it bootable, I then create a FreeBSD partition >with the remaining space on the disk. I then told it to use the BootBGR. >The install goes fine, (installed over FTP to a local machine; laptop >has Intel 'fxp0' PCI ethernet on-board). Everything seems well, then I >reboot, and the trouble begins. > The system runs it's ram test, scans the floppy, spins the >cdrom, then >halts. I cannot get into the bios, nor can I boot off of a floppy or >bootable cdrom. If I remove the hardrive, then it still hangs, but I can >at least get into the bios. The computer store tried replacing the drive >with one from another identical machine... works fine, can enter/exit >the bios, system boots up fine, (running win98se that is). They then >tried putting my drive into another laptop, and it causes the same >problem on the other laptop; system halts. The computer store then came >to the conclusion that the hardrive was no good, (which is what I told >them when I came...before they spent two hours trying to figure it out). > It seems almost as if the BIOS maintains something in the MBR of >the >disk. The system works fine with Win98SE, as it came pre-installed, and >it works fine if I use the IBM recovery cd-rom to install Win98SE with. >I can't imagine that the machine is incapable of running FreeBSD. I >suspect that it may have something to do with the way the system goes >into 'hybernation' mode, (wherein it writes it's current status to >hardisk, and shuts off; so as to resume operations when turned back >on... similar to suspend mode, except that it's automatic when the lid >is closed). This might explain why it wouldn't boot from the hardisk, as >it may be looking for a 'last-left' image or something; but it doesn't >produce any errors, and will not boot from floppy or cdrom either. > IBM then sent out a brand new replacement drive. The computer >store >installed it, and made sure the system booted from a floppy; they did >not touch the partitioning on the drive. I took it home, ran the FreeBSD >install (again over LAN), and rebooted. Same problem, black-screen; no >functions. I called IBM tech support directly this time, and after >spending about an hour trying to tell their technician that his >solutions, (eg boot of a floppy and run 'diskzap' utility), would not >work, they opted for me to send the machine back for them to look at. >The machine is currently in the mail somewhere, they should receive it >tonight or tomorrow morning. They say there's a 3-5 working day return >time, but somehow I doubt that it will come back fixed. > Any ideas, comments, suggestions, or otherwise would be greatly >appreciated at this point. I don't think it'd be something with FreeBSD, >but just in case, should I try to install a different version maybe? >(was trying to install FreeBSD 4.1-STABLE-20000924 I believe, or round >the 24th's snapshot anyhow). > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 6.5.8 Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.75-6 iQEVAwUBOdRTpr1ZYOtSwT+tAQHKnwgA3LwMm2Cd+wPFG4SNMST+StkXSKyCINpA 55c9/E/+6ZFp2FJPZ1qxFfUl6l1qesKZTfCgXcKxZX6+udh5dm0RSo2ggyZkqR0u l4ZvGFYGukbCWvAx9v1wnJmA25IkDjXEiTRyqsbv3suGzEnINrEX362YxcdcJ3/d +fI9SjV27NQfZlLNMukZr7H1upbqGDLAhdeMr8Uftm2vvFYjrddDcVXb/+ZiMeAX VJnE/BXOP2ftnFONKawOKJkMhnW9WS3wqJovV9ra5SZ3iHcqAsedE5l+jfgmsk32 6E4taDbGIiSACSbufH5XKALJPeUj/t1yPPfgtzD0YNFtvlmKHHmFuQ== =EJaz -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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