From owner-freebsd-current  Tue May 25 13:46:27 1999
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From: Robert Nordier <rnordier@nordier.com>
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Subject: Re: Boot process
In-Reply-To: <199905251949.VAA29779@greenpeace.grondar.za> from Mark Murray at "May 25, 1999 09:49:41 pm"
To: mark@grondar.za (Mark Murray)
Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 22:45:29 +0200 (SAST)
Cc: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith), current@freebsd.org
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> > > I am having some problems with a machine I recently rebuilt; I suspect
> > > either the drive geometry or something else in the boot process. The
> > > machine has to be booted "manually".
> > >
> > > Situation: I installed FreeBSD 3.1 on a 4G SCSI disk that had had
> > > Current on it before (CURRENT snaps wouldn't boot). At the
> > > F1 FreeBSD
> > > F5 Disk 1
> > > prompt, the machine just beeps, and does not reboot. (The other
> > > disk is a 2G SCSI)
> >
> > Which disk are you trying to boot from?
> 
> Default: da0(s1)
> 
> > > Drive geometry is 64 heads, 32 sectors and N(>1024) tracks. The
> > > a partition is the first and it is only 32MB. Disklabel looks
> > > OK.
> > >
> > > If I play around (Hit F5 or space or enter), I get "Invalid partition"
> > > errors. Hitting enter at that stage gets me a Boot: prompt. The only
> > > thing that gets an actial boot is typing 0:da(1,a)/boot/loader. Then
> > > both disks are visible and fine. Both disks have had fdisk -b and
> > > disklabel -B done to them.
> > >
> > > Any clues?
> >
> > Sounds like the layout of the first disk is not compatible with your
> > BIOS.  What's the slice scheme look like?
> 
> Not sure _exactly_ what you want; fdisk says: (copying)
> 
> :
> cylinders=4340 heads=64 sectors/track=32 (2048 blocks/cyl)
> :
> The data for partition 1 is:
> sysid 165,(FreeBSD/....
>         start 32, size 8888288, (4339 Meg), flag 80 (active)
>                 beg: cyl 0/head 1/sector 1;
>                 end: cyl 1023/head 32/head 63;
> The data for partition 2 is:
> <UNUSED>
> :
> 
> I've seen some funny things in fdisk, but they usually work. ("Funny"
> == cyl-is-strange-due-to-11-bit-limit).

If you want to dd the first sector of /dev/rda0, and the first 17
sectors of /dev/rda0s1, and send them to me, I don't mind taking
a look.  It's usually just quicker to resolve these things with the
raw disk sectors handy.

--
Robert Nordier


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