Date: Sun, 2 Apr 2000 00:01:30 +0000 (UTC) From: Hans Davidson <harley@pobox.se> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Installing and booting FreeBSD 4.0 Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1000401212811.183A-100000@hd990116.zzz.xxx>
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Hello !
I have tried to install FreeBSD 4.0 on a computer that has CD-ROM units
on the first IDE bus and sometimes a harddrive (for example the one I
am installing FreeBSD on) as slave on the second IDE bus (the master
on that bus is a ZIP drive (fixed electronics but removable media)).
Before presenting my questions, I will explain why I have that more
or less strange order of drives:
1. I have NOT tried all 24 permutations of my IDE units. I have
concentrated only on configurations with the CD-ROM reader as
master on the same bus that has the CD-Writer as slave, so I have
selected one of the four remaining cases. The cases are described
using linux device names as ide adresses:
/dev/hda /dev/hdb /dev/hdc /dev/hdd
Case 1 Removable ZIP CD-ROM CD-Writer
drive drive
Case 2 ZIP Removable CD-ROM CD-Writer
drive drive
Case 3 CD-ROM CD-Writer Removable ZIP
drive drive
Case 4 CD-ROM CD-Writer ZIP Removable
drive drive
2. Because the harddisk is removable (and sometimes no hardisk is
mounted), the other unit on that bus may have better to be master,
and observations indicate that case 1 and case 3 seems cause
problems with accessing ZIP drive or its media when no removable
harddisk drive (with its integrated electronics) is not present.
3. Case 2 seems to prevent a CD-ROM in /dev/hdc from being bootable
when the removable harddisk drive is not present.
That leaves case 4 working (OK, at least sometimes because sometimes
my Linux (SuSE) seems to have difficulties in finding the removable
drive (when present (NOT removed)) (maybe more often if there is a
ZIP disk in its drive too early during startup when I am booting Linux
from diskett). That has been observed only when I am booting Linux with
the root filesystem on ZIP media.
My conclusion:
I seem to have some problems with my Intel BIOS and it doesn't help
that I prefer to be able to use different combinations, sometimes
with only removable medias mounted. I usually boot Win98 from harddisk
(Microsoft OSs seems to be enough stupid to not notice my strange
configuration), but I am always using boot floppies to boot linux on
that computer. (I also am not capable to make bootable ZIP disks (at
least not with lilo under Linux), maybe because the ATAPI ZIP drive
seems to report more than 63 (in fact 96, I think) sectors per track).
OK, now to the FreeBSD questions:
1. Is the procedure for booting FreeBSD 4.0 (or the principles
for configuration of the booting process) the same as in
FreeBSD 3.2 ?
2. Is any of the floppy images that are on the FreeBSD 4.0 Release
disk intended for "daily" booting of an installed system without
need for boot managers and/or correct settings of the partitions'
boot flags ?
3. What options do I have during installation time and what options
do I seem to have to make bootable floppies/CD-ROMs.
For example:
* What did I forget to do during installation (how should you know) ?
* May I be able to copy a boot manager from a harddisk MBR into a
boot floppy or must I use a different boot manager when booting
from diskett ?
* Is there any problem (like the bZImage case in Linux) when you
try to copy a boot diskett image into a CD-R media using
"Eltorito" ?
I have the book I got together with FreeBSD 3.2, so if you think that
I have been too lazy to read it, then please tell me that (or maybe what
sections seem to be most relevant to me when installing and making boot
disks (OK, I have no problems with RAWRITE.EXE or dd)).
Best regards !
harley@pobox.se
Hans Davidson
Filipstadsbacken 20, 1tr
SE-123 43 FARSTA
SWEDEN
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