Date: Sat, 07 Jan 2012 10:57:23 +0800 From: Fbsd8 <fbsd8@a1poweruser.com> To: Bill Tillman <btillman99@yahoo.com> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: 9.0-RELEASE amd64 Bricked My Hard Drive Message-ID: <4F07B493.9060600@a1poweruser.com> In-Reply-To: <1325819792.82542.YahooMailNeo@web36502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <4F0517BA.1050405@mykitchentable.net> <1325819792.82542.YahooMailNeo@web36502.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
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Bill Tillman wrote: > Today I encountered a problem which has me stumped. I downloaded and > burned the ISO image for 9.0-RELEASE for amd64. I installed an older > IDE hard drive to test the new OS with and did the install. I was very > surprised at the (1) the dvd is actually a live CD if you wanted it to be > and (2) the installers screens have all been revamped. I can't say for sure > if the partitioning part was where it went south on me because I was > attempting to setup some additional partitions but the input screens had > me confused and I pressed Auto so it took off and made the default > paritions. The computer would > start up, show me the flash screen to do the Bios setup and then nothing. > I put the other drive back in and it worked fine. I tried another computer > and the results were the same. > snip This is a known problem with bsdinstall in 9.0. Newer pc's have bios that use gpart format disk partition layouts (IE windows7) so for FreeBSD to be compatible with new PC hardware, Bsdinstall defaults to using the gpart format disk partition layouts. Bsdinstall provides no automatic way to create (mbr, Dos) format partitions. The user is suppose to know before installing 9.0 that their pc hardware requires (mbr, Dos) format partitions and instead of using the automatic gpart format disk partition layouts they must select the manual option which opens a shell where the installer must enter the native commands to create the (mbr, Dos) format partitions like sysinstall did in 8.2 and older releases. This puts a unfair burden on users to know beforehand whether their pc bios are gpart aware. Bsdinstall provides no displayed information informing the user of what they need to know about their equipment before selecting the disk format to use. I believe this user is just the tip of the iceberg of users installing 9.0 on older hardware. At this time the only way to automate the creation of the (mbr, Dos) format partitions using the 9.0 bsdinstall is to select the manual option in the disk config screen and them launch "sade", this is the disk configuration dialog from sysinstall that has been turned into a standalone utility. If you think "sade" should be made a option of the bsdinstall disk config dialog then post your comments here and cc to nwhitehorn@freebsd.org the author of bsdinstall. The bsdinstall has absolutely no built in HELP, But there is some new documentation in the online freebsd manual. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall.html It's under constant revision so it may not be totally accurate, but it will provide you some insight to your disk config problems. Note: before you can use that gpart disk to create mbr you have to delete the (crap) gpart writes at the end of the physical disk. This script works great to do that. http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html After running the script, then on same disk pc install 8.2 and reboot. If it boots fine then you know for sure your pc bios is not gpart aware, and you will always have to use mbr disk format on that pc hardware combination. The SADE utility will become your long time friend. Good luck.
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