From owner-freebsd-stable Sat Jul 27 12:30:21 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D8CE37B400 for ; Sat, 27 Jul 2002 12:30:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from CRWdog.demon.co.uk (p69-199.acedsl.com [66.114.69.199]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 13DB043E3B for ; Sat, 27 Jul 2002 12:30:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from spadger@best.com) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by CRWdog.demon.co.uk (Postfix) with ESMTP id CBF107C; Sat, 27 Jul 2002 15:30:12 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: exmh version 2.5 07/13/2001 with nmh-1.0.4 To: Andrea Monaldi Cc: "David " Sieb rger "" , stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Cannot initialize disklabel In-Reply-To: Message from Andrea Monaldi of "Sat, 27 Jul 2002 09:26:42 PDT." <20020727162642.95117.qmail@web21504.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="==_Exmh_2135505148P"; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sat, 27 Jul 2002 15:30:12 -0400 From: Andy Sparrow Message-Id: <20020727193012.CBF107C@CRWdog.demon.co.uk> Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG --==_Exmh_2135505148P Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > David, > = > If I had this it should not work well under Linux and > W2K too, isn't it? > = > Anyway it's not this problem. It works bad ONLY in > FreeBSD. Hey all, Every time I've upgraded any HDD since ~4.2, I've attempted to install Fr= eeBSD directly without using any other OS. Each time, it's failed due to = fdisk using some strange geometry, which the BIOS can't boot from afterwa= rds (they've almost all been "large" drives, all IDE). I had this problem= most recently about a week ago, upgrading my laptop drive to 40GB with a= 4.6-RELEASE CD. The workaround mentioned in the handbook (creating a partition from DOS f= disk first), forces fdisk to use a more correct geometry (well, the BIOS = can boot from it afterwards, so I presume it's more correct :-), and has = never failed to work for me. You can delete or change the type of the partition in sysinstall (I alway= s set up a suspend partition for my laptop, for example), so it's not a b= ig deal for me, but I agree that it's horribly confusing, not well (as in= In-Yer-Face) documented, likely to cause much frustration for first-time= or infrequent installers and it'd be nice if the problem went away or fd= isk just DTRT. There was, IIRC, a thread on how/why complicated this was to do properly = on this very list some months ago. HTH. Cheers, AS --==_Exmh_2135505148P Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (FreeBSD) Comment: Exmh version 2.5 07/13/2001 iD8DBQE9QvTEPHh895bDXeQRAkolAJ9YjjpvY2+sToEEUSv0g7EmLjtPpwCeJGBi oD/YeWRpMhNjg3S3RdwobSQ= =LLxJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --==_Exmh_2135505148P-- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message