Date: Mon, 3 Jun 1996 11:06:38 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug White <dwhite@riley-net170-164.uoregon.edu> To: Dave Blizzard <blizzard@canoe.ca> Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG, blizzard@canoe.ca Subject: Re: FreeBSD.NOT Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960603105850.13784G-100000@riley-net170-164.uoregon.edu> In-Reply-To: <31B30828.70F8@canoe.ca>
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On Mon, 3 Jun 1996, Dave Blizzard wrote: > For three weeks I have tried every permutation of installing Free BSD > on a 386 and 486 pc so that it installs on a SCSI drive purchased > especially for the install. > The problem is that I have an IDE drive as drive C and the SCSI as > drive D. DOS sees everything fine and I have no hardware conflicts. > What were the problems? > 1) BSD's Fdisk cannot see the correct geometry for the SCSI drive. > Even though I plug in the right numbers for the drive, BSD adds the > size of the IDE drive to the SCSI drive and then destroys the > partition table of both drives. Odd. I probably suggested this once before but did you try putting a small DOS partition on your SCSI disk, then deleting that partition from sysinstall and install FreeBSD over it? FreeBSD can't read the geometry information sometimes and putting the DOS partition on there gets it going in the right direction. > Even when I dedicate the entire SCSI drive to FreeBSD, The install > destroys the IDE partition and Boot sectors. It sounds like the disks are getting crossed. If they were on the same IDE controller I'd say you'd jumpered them both master. But that's not the case here. Did you try removing the IDE disk from the system? > 2) The installer destroys the partition table of the IDE drive even if > the install is aborted. I assume that that last little syncing drives > 1...2... is what does it before the install quits. Still sounds like your disks are crossed. Are the disks plugged into the correct cables & controller? Are the two controllers using separate resources? What controllers are you using? What is the boot message output? > 3) Even though the install seems to go without errors, the bootmgr > uses virus technology (sic) to install itself in track 0 sector 1. > This cannot be removed by using fdisk /mbr as it also seems that the > track is write protected. Even diskedit cannot zero out the sector. > This has cause several screaming fits around here as the only low > level format I have is in the bios of my old 386 board so I then have > to reinstall it to retrieve the drive. Are you running Windows95? If so you need to boot to MSDOS mode to delete the MBR. Win95 write-protects it. Are you using an IDE disk translator so your BIOS can see a >500MB disk? > 5 The FIPS program has a serious bug in it as it creates a second > primary dos partition which confuses the hell out of DOS No, that is what it's supposed to do. DOS does what it's supposed to and will map the primary disks first. Your drive letters are changing and it messed up your boot sequence, I bet. > Short of dedicating a complete machine to BSD, is there any way to > install BSD on a SCSI drive D when an IDE drive is already installed. Yes. It should be just like installing to a second IDE, other than you have an option for "sd0" instead of "wd1" in the fdisk setup and disklabel. I would thouoghly(sp?) check your SCSI disk first. Put a DOS partition on it and give it a good workout. You have some sort of hardware problem between your disks. Doug White | University of Oregon Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major
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