Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 21:56:53 +0300 From: Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> To: "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@attbi.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: using an extended partition for freebsd Message-ID: <20021017185653.GL14331@hades.hell.gr> In-Reply-To: <r43cr46h90.cr4@localhost.localdomain> References: <200210161434.g9GEYJe19859@clunix.cl.msu.edu> <oiwuoi5fvi.uoi@localhost.localdomain> <20021017101055.GB14331@hades.hell.gr> <r43cr46h90.cr4@localhost.localdomain>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On 2002-10-17 11:40, "Gary W. Swearingen" <swear@attbi.com> wrote: > Someone slandered FreeBSD thusly: > > > It just needs slices (which are called partitions by Microsloth). > > Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> writes: > > Some (broken in my opinion) BIOS implementations will refuse or fail > > to boot from disks that do not have a "valid partition table". They > > are simply broken, since it's not that hard to load the master boot > > record of the first system disk in memory and run its code, but their > > very existence makes disks with "valid" partition tables a necessity :-/ > > Are you sure? I suspect that they just need 0x55aa at the end of the > MBR. Otherwise, their definition of "valid" is probably broken too, so > that you still don't need actual slices. I've installed FreeBSD 4.x a few years back on a Pentium machine with a BIOS written by AMI that refused to boot from dangerously-dedicated disks (without a slice table), with the evil "INSERT BOOTABLE MEDIA" message or something similar. I didn't try to find out more about the particular BIOS version or to check if other BIOSes had similar problems too. Simply making one primary slice of type 165 (FreeBSD) and partitions within the disklabel of that slice solved the booting problems. I guess that's why it was called "dangerously" dedicated mode in sysinstall :-) Giorgos. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20021017185653.GL14331>