Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2000 09:49:46 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: doug@safeport.com, Damon Hammis <squirrel@hammis.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, James Howard <howardjp@glue.umd.edu> Subject: Re: Anyone resolved "Missing operating system" Message-ID: <20000713094946.C4094@wantadilla.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007121401440.4789-100000@pemaquid.safeport.com> References: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0007121808500.27011-100000@y.glue.umd.edu> <Pine.BSF.4.10.10007121823130.2805-100000@markl.com> <20000712125711.M30262@wantadilla.lemis.com> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007121401440.4789-100000@pemaquid.safeport.com>
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On Wednesday, 12 July 2000 at 14:18:12 -0400, doug@safeport.com wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 11 July 2000 at 22:30:30 -0400, Doug Denault wrote:
>>> On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Anders Chr. Skoe wrote:
>>>
>>>> Howdy, folks!
>>>>
>>>> unfortunately, this email follows a pretty good history of posts
>>>> regarding the "Missing operating system" error. we install 3.2
>>>> with no problems
>>>> [cut]
>>>
>>> I encountered the same characteristics installing 3.3 and 4.0 on two
>>> different Dell Latitude notebooks trying the FreeBSD only setup. It
>>> appeared that the install went fine, lots of "writing this" messages. The
>>> system just would not boot. It seemed that no boot record was installed.
>>> In this path if you run sysinstall the "w" option does not appear on the
>>> menu where you set the disk parms and each time when I boot from the
>>> floppies there was partition was not marked bootable.
>>>
>>> In consulting with a FreeBSD "veteran", we reached the conclusion this
>>> option just did not work (at least on this system).
>>>
>>> In my case disk geometry was not an issue, as long as I used an DOS
>>> partition table.
>>
>> Which model was this? I've never had trouble installing on Latitudes.
>
> Kinda cool - this came with no FROM from wantadilla.lemis.com
Can you be more specific?
> The answer is two of them: Dell Latitude LM P133 circa 1997 and an LM M166MMX of
> the same year.
>
> Note that the ONLY path that gave me any trouble at all is using a
> FreeBSD parition only; the option that any sane person would be
> talked out of by the warnings :)
This option is in fact the best choice, if it works. You waste a lot
of space with a Microsoft partition table. Here's a partition table
from a Latitude CPi with two partitions:
Disk name: wd0 FDISK Partition Editor
DISK Geometry: 789 cyls/255 heads/63 sectors = 12675285 sectors
Offset Size End Name PType Desc Subtype Flags
0 63 62 - 6 unused 0
63 4192902 4192964 wd0s2 2 fat 6
4192965 8482320 12675284 wd0s1 3 freebsd 165 C
12675285 10395 12685679 - 6 unused 0
Note the 63 sectors at the beginning. One of them is the partition
table, the other 62 are waste. Also the 10395 (that's right, over 5
MB) at the end. You can't use this space. With dedicated disks, you
get the entire disk.
The problem with the Latitude is probably that the BIOS is broken, and
that it expects to see a Microsoft partition table at the beginning of
the disk.
On Wednesday, 12 July 2000 at 18:23:51 -0400, Damon Hammis wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, James Howard wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 12 Jul 2000 doug@safeport.com wrote:
>>
>>> Note that the ONLY path that gave me any trouble at all is using a FreeBSD
>>> parition only; the option that any sane person would be talked out of by the
>>> warnings :)
>>
>> Bah, sane is for boring people.
>>
>> In the past, I have had no difficulty using "dangerously dedicated."
No, neither have I. But some machines have problems, and it looks
like Doug has one of them.
> I've used dedicated disks on systems that ran multiple os' without a
> problem.
How do you do that? You can't use dedicated disks with more than one
OS.
Greg
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