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Date: Sun, 21 Sep 1997 20:18:31 -0700 (PDT)
From: Doug White <dwhite@gdi.uoregon.edu>
Reply-To: Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu>
To: "Ronald F. Guilmette" <rfg@monkeys.com>
cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: BootEasy?  It ain't so easy for *me*!
In-Reply-To: <1298.874838522@monkeys.com>
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On Sun, 21 Sep 1997, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:

> So anyway, getting back to the point, I successfully installed FreeBSD into
> one partition of the (new) lower number drive on this system.  Then, at the
> end of the install, there is the normal reboot sequence.  (Note that I had
> requested the FreeBSD ``BootEasy'' thingy to be installed in the MBR during
> my install of FreeBSD.)
> 
> So the reboot happens and the first prompt I get is something that looks
> vaguely like:
> 
> 	F1.....BSD
> 	F5.....second disk
> 
> 	Default F?
> 
> at which point it waits patiently for me to type in something.
> 
> Well, I wanna tell you that I tried just about every contorted keystroke
> and combination of keystrokes and NOTHING would get me past this prompt...
> NOTHING!

Booteasy problems can usually be traced to geometry problems.  This is a
shortcoming with the FreeBSD installer and booteasy to some extent.  The
usual way to fix this involves reinstalling, which isn't what you sound
like you want to do.

note that you should be able to boot up if you use the boot floppy and
type "sd(0,a)/kernel" at the Boot: prompt.

I'm not sure why you went ahead and installed booteasy if you're going to
play games by swapping SCSI IDs anyway.  If you aren't going to use it to
boot multiple partitions, delete it.  (fdisk /mbr from dos should do it)

In case you're interested, however, here is how to fix your problem:

1.  Use DOS FDISK to remove the FreeBSD slice from the disk.  It'll show
up as a non-dos partition.

2.  Create a small primary DOS partition on the disk.

3.  Install FreeBSD, and remove the primary DOS partition when you get to
the FDISK Editor and install FreeBSD over it.

That should convince booteasy to work properly.

Doug White                              | University of Oregon  
Internet:  dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu    | Residence Networking Assistant
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite    | Computer Science Major
Spam routed to /dev/null by Procmail    | Death to Cyberpromo