From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Feb 24 20:11:31 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from posgate.acis.com.au (posgate.acis.com.au [203.14.230.14]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7578414CED for ; Wed, 24 Feb 1999 20:11:20 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from andymac@bullseye.apana.org.au) Received: from bullseye.apana.org.au (uucp@localhost) by posgate.acis.com.au (8.9.2/8.9.2/Debian/GNU) with UUCP id PAA14702; Thu, 25 Feb 1999 15:03:26 +1100 (EST) Received: from bullseye.apana.org.au (central.apana.org.au [203.9.107.245]) by bullseye.apana.org.au (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id IAA25634; Thu, 25 Feb 1999 08:26:54 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from andymac@bullseye.apana.org.au) Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 08:25:01 +1100 (EDT) From: Andrew MacIntyre To: zhihuizhang Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: A multi-OS Installation of FreeBSD 2.2.8 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: X-X-Sender: andymac@bullseye.apana.org.au MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, zhihuizhang wrote: > I have posted similar messages some time ago and I have not figured out my > problem since then. My machine already has Windows-NT, DOS, Linux > installed on it. I tried to install FreeBSD at the last primary partition > which is 1.4Gig. Everthing went soomthly except when I reboot the machine > and let system commander to choose the partion labeled as BSD to boot > from, I got the "read error" message and the system hangs. Have you tried using a boot floppy and attempting to mount the hard disk partition containing your FreeBSD installation? This might give an indication as to whether your machine's BIOS or System Commander doesn't like the FreeBSD partition or there's some other problem. > My question is: (1) Does the order of installation affect the co-existence > of these OSs? It is usually best to install MS products first, because they have the nasty tendency of deleting any reference to non-MS products from the MBR. Otherwise no. > (2) Do we have to put FreeBSD at the front of the disk? The only thing that comes to mind is that there is/was a requirement that bootable partitions (or perhaps the OS boot code at least) had to be within the first 1024 cylinders. Depending on the BIOS settings, some BIOSes remap drive geometries so that the whole disk appears to unsophisticated boot code/OSes to have <=1024 cylinders, which avoids the problem. I don't know whether System Commander is capable of working around such BIOS limitations. You also don't say how big the drive is - if its greater than 8.4GB (which will remap to >255 heads with 1024 cylinders) then its not inconceivable this might be part of your problem. FreeBSD 2.2.8 itself will not have any problems with such a large drive though. -- Andrew I MacIntyre "These thoughts are mine alone..." E-mail: andrew.macintyre@aba.gov.au (work) | Snail: PO Box 370 andymac@bullseye.apana.org.au (play) | Belconnen ACT 2616 Fido: Andrew MacIntyre, 3:620/243.18 | Australia To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message