From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Oct 23 01:12:30 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D41771065676 for ; Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:12:30 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from lankfordandrew@charter.net) Received: from que21.charter.net (que21.charter.net [209.225.8.22]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6DE768FC1F for ; Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:12:30 +0000 (UTC) Received: from imp09 ([10.20.200.9]) by mta31.charter.net (InterMail vM.7.09.01.00 201-2219-108-20080618) with ESMTP id <20091023005404.QEZA25738.mta31.charter.net@imp09>; Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:54:04 -0400 Received: from [192.168.1.100] ([75.138.208.143]) by imp09 with smtp.charter.net id w0tz1c00736AQff050u3Ba; Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:54:04 -0400 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.0 c=1 a=TytK2yoJ9wAA:10 a=rEuvY6gjfpq8zqJuDyoA:9 a=mGSAOlNnt6h176sweoEA:7 a=fL7aw7L9Kec54QNcrnKNJ1hUMAcA:4 Message-ID: <4AE0FEA5.9070004@charter.net> Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:53:57 -0400 From: Andrew Lankford User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (X11/20090822) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Yuri , freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailman-Approved-At: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:10:38 +0000 Cc: Subject: Failure to boot from HD formatted not by FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:12:30 -0000 Looks to me like you're trying to get your computer to dual-boot Vista and FreeBSD 8.0, something I finally succeeded in doing. If by "MBR" you mean the first-stage boot program (512 bytes), I couldn't get that to work, nor could I use the standard boot0 menu from FreeBSD. I'm using the windows boot program instead. I think what I did was copy "/boot/boot1" from my root partition to my NTFS partition and then added an option to the Windows boot menu to boot with it. I get the GEOM "track boundary" complaint when I boot up as well. The FBSD 8.0 kernel has a new option 'GEOM_PART_MBR" on by default. Vista insisted on partitioning my drive, so if the new partition handler doesn't like it, it can lump it. In order to get the 8.0 kernel to recognise your old partitions, you need the "GEOM_MBR" option activated. That means you need to load "geom_mbr.ko" into memory before you load and boot from the 8.0 kernel. If you're booting from a FreeBSD 8.0 CD directly into sysinstall, you can escape to a shell and kldload geom_mbr.ko, but you have to then restart sysinstall without rebooting the computer in order for your hard disk partitions to show up. The only reliable way I could find to restart systinstall without rebooting was by pressing the power button. Wierd, eh? I added "option GEOM_MBR" back into my kernel, recompiled, fiddled with my network settings, and now everything seems to work alright. Anyway, all this procedure should be 75% correct since I've managed to successfully upgrade to 8.0 from 7-stable this way. For all I know, I might end up with a corrupted partition six months from now. Either that or Marcel Moolenar will get angry at me. Regards, Andrew Lankford