From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Aug 16 21:05:52 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA01583 for questions-outgoing; Sat, 16 Aug 1997 21:05:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from Hydro.CAM.ORG (Hydro.CAM.ORG [198.168.100.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA01568 for ; Sat, 16 Aug 1997 21:05:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from guyaux (DynamicPPP-112.HIP.CAM.ORG [205.151.119.112]) by Hydro.CAM.ORG (8.8.4/8.8.4) with SMTP id AAA00576; Sun, 17 Aug 1997 00:05:43 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <33F661FC.1B36@cam.org> Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 22:29:16 -0400 From: Pierre Sarrazin X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Debian knocked out my FreeBSD system... Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I can't boot under my FreeBSD 2.2.2-RELEASE system since I tried to install Debian GNU/Linux 1.3.1... Here are the details. I have a 1912M IDE hard disk (primary IDE controller, master disk). I also have an IDE CD-ROM as a slave on the same controller. This disk was initially partitioned in 4 equal parts of 478M each: - bootable DOS 5.0 (FAT 16) partition that now contains Windows 95 and is the C: drive; - FreeBSD 2.2.2-RELEASE; - FAT 16 (D:); - FAT 16 (E:). A boot time, a driver installs itself in order to allow this large disk to be used with an older BIOS. It was necessary with the previous motherboard, but the current motherboard is very recent and does not need it. I left the driver there anyway to avoid trouble. I used the Debian 1.3.1 binary CD-ROM to install Linux on the 3rd partition (drive D: up to then). The installation went well, except for the installation of packages, which apparently corrupted the whole Linux system and beyond... Later, I tried to boot FreeBSD, but the kernel loader could not find the kernel... The "Boot:" prompt appears and after the normal delay, instead of finding the kernel and booting it, the screen said: dosdev= 80, biosdrive = 0, unit = 0, maj = 0 Can't find /kernel Saying "?" does not produce anything: it looks like the loader can't read the file system. I tried "wd(0,a)/kernel" and "wd(0,b)/kernel", but the loader said it could not find that either. I also tried those two names with a 1 instead of the 0, but then I got an infinite repetition of this line: Error: D:0x81 C:0 H:0 S:0 I suppose that wd(1,?) refers to the CD-ROM or to a drive I don't have, so this failure is expected. Is there a possibility of recovering my FreeBSD system? (I have backups to the important data, so this is not dramatic.) Is this something that happens often when installing Linux? -- Pierre Sarrazin [Montreal]