Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1999 18:04:51 -0700 (PDT) From: richw@webcom.com To: freebsd-gnats-submit@freebsd.org Subject: kern/12315: install fails on system with old IDE hard drives Message-ID: <19990621010451.E4F0C14BF6@hub.freebsd.org>
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>Number: 12315 >Category: kern >Synopsis: install fails on system with old IDE hard drives >Confidential: no >Severity: critical >Priority: medium >Responsible: freebsd-bugs >State: open >Quarter: >Keywords: >Date-Required: >Class: sw-bug >Submitter-Id: current-users >Arrival-Date: Sun Jun 20 18:10:01 PDT 1999 >Closed-Date: >Last-Modified: >Originator: Rich Wales >Release: 3.2-RELEASE >Organization: >Environment: N/A >Description: I tried to install 3.2-RELEASE on a 486 system with two "old" IDE hard drives that do not support the WDCC_READP command. The drive geometries are specified in the BIOS setup. 3.2 detected the existence of the two drives (wd0/wd1), but it ignored the BIOS geometry info and said it was using "fake" geometry values. Subsequent attempts to find the drives' real geometry info failed, and the installation process died with a "Going nowhere without my init!" kernel panic after /stand/sysinstall exited prematurely. An attempt to install 3.1-RELEASE failed in the same way. 2.2.7-RELEASE (previously installed) works just fine on this system, however, and the 2.2.8-RELEASE installation code appeared to work fine too. So it looks like the bug arose somewhere between 2.2.8 and 3.1. After the kernel panic, I switched to the debugging log (ALT-F2) and saw the error "sysinstall: read: no such file or directory". I restarted the 3.2-RELEASE installation kernel with the "-v" boot flag, and this time, the debugging log also included numerous messages such as "wd0: invalid primary partition table: no magic". >How-To-Repeat: Try to install 3.2-RELEASE (or 3.1-RELEASE) on a system with an "old" IDE hard drive that doesn't support automatic geometry detection. >Fix: Either replace the hard drive(s) with a newer drive, or else be content to run 2.2.8-RELEASE and forget about upgrading to 3.x versions. >Release-Note: >Audit-Trail: >Unformatted: To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-bugs" in the body of the message
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