Date: Mon, 18 Dec 1995 23:31:10 +1030 (CST) From: Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au> To: shovey@buffnet.net (steve hovey) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Boot problems (was Re: Western Digital boot failures ) Message-ID: <199512181301.XAA07321@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SCO.3.91.951218074342.27454D-100000@buffnet5.buffnet.net> from "steve hovey" at Dec 18, 95 07:46:48 am
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steve hovey stands accused of saying: > > READ THE INSTALLATION NOTES! SET THE GEOMETRY IN THE INSTALLER TO MATCH > > WHAT YOUR BIOS THINKS THE DISK IS. DO NOT GUESS. DO NOT PASS GO. > > DO NOT COLLECT $200. DO YOU UNDERSTAND? > > Dont beat up the guy - you will continue to have to say this until there > is a utility for this sort of thing. There are several. > It is not clear to most people (yes, that is a general sweeping > statement) how one is supposed to divine the correct geometry. Because most people don't read the installation notes? > In many instances Ive left the primary drive an IDE for lack of being > able to get freebsd to not choke on scsi drives for which I was not > clarvoyant enough to produce a 'correct' geometry. > > Is there no way for a utility to ask the damn bios what it thinks it is, > thus making it able to tell the user if no other damn thing is possible? As suggested in the installation notes; run 'pfdisk' or 'fips' under DOS, and they will tell you. Boot with the '-v' flag, and the kernel will tell you. Run the diagnostic tools supplied with most host adapters, and they will tell you. The information is available; instructions on how to obtain it are available. If it was something obscure and difficult, I could understand the confusion, but it's not 8( -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 041-122-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] "Who does BSD?" "We do Chucky, we do." [[
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