From owner-freebsd-bugs Tue Jan 30 21:08:28 1996 Return-Path: owner-bugs Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id VAA15082 for bugs-outgoing; Tue, 30 Jan 1996 21:08:28 -0800 (PST) Received: from eac.iafrica.com (slipper119232.iafrica.com [196.7.119.232]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id VAA15032 for ; Tue, 30 Jan 1996 21:08:14 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rnordier@localhost) by eac.iafrica.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id HAA02676; Wed, 31 Jan 1996 07:07:11 +0200 From: Robert Nordier Message-Id: <199601310507.HAA02676@eac.iafrica.com> Subject: Re: Installation of FreeBSD from DOS partition To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 07:07:10 +0200 (SAT) Cc: jeff@stat.uconn.edu, bugs@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199601302207.XAA15755@uriah.heep.sax.de> from "J Wunsch" at Jan 30, 96 11:07:47 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 ME8a] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-bugs@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk On Tue, 30 Jan 1996, J Wunsch wrote: > As Jeffrey M. Metcalf wrote: > > > > An important fact is that I am able to install a WORKING version of the > > the minimal distribution of FreeBSD on my machine from floppy. It's > > an annoying 14 disk installation, but it works. I mount my DOS partition > > at /dos. When I go to read my files from DOS, I have the problem that > > the files appear in a directory, but they are somehow corrupt. Trying > > to read them using vi, it seems that a good portion of my system becomes > > corrupt. ... > > It seems that you've got serious disk troubles. Either you've got > serious memory problems, and since parity chips on the SIMMs have been > eliminated these days, you don't get the usual parity error warnings > for this. Try making the memory timing more benign and see if this > would help. > > But i'd rather suspect the IDE controller. Try replacing it by > another one temporarily. Any dumb IDE adaptor should do, FreeBSD > doesn't use any nifty EIDE extensions anyway. I also thought this might be hardware, but the problems he describes are those a number of other users have reported when accessing the MS-DOS partition from FreeBSD. (I'm in the process of revising the msdosfs code, which was why I was particularly interested.) Elsewhere he writes: > ...... When I stay entirely in BSD, I am fine. I can boot the machine > (the boot manager gives me the option between Windows 95 and BSD and it > works properly), I can log in as root. I can create users. They can > create files in their directories. It all basically works. I think this is a msdosfs problem. He can run MS-DOS/Windows; he can run FreeBSD; he can access MS-DOS floppy disks during installation. It all falls apart only when the MS-DOS partition is involved. For some configurations, the current msdosfs just doesn't work at all. :-( Regards -- Robert Nordier