From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Mar 7 15:44:56 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3744B37B401 for ; Fri, 7 Mar 2003 15:44:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from blueyonder.co.uk (pcow058o.blueyonder.co.uk [195.188.53.98]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E36E443F3F for ; Fri, 7 Mar 2003 15:44:52 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from bbdl21548@blueyonder.co.uk) Received: from orion ([62.31.178.34]) by blueyonder.co.uk with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.5.1877.757.75); Fri, 7 Mar 2003 23:44:51 +0000 Message-ID: <002d01c2e503$9590c2b0$0200010a@orion> Reply-To: "Jasvinder S. Bahra" From: "Jasvinder S. Bahra" To: Subject: Installing FreeBSD on older machine on a 20GB Hard Drive Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 23:45:07 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Evenin' folks, I have an old Pentium 120Hz machine that is acting as a firewall/gateway = for my network. Recently, the 4GB hard drive started to make strange noises and drive = errors started popping up. So I replaced the hard drive with the = smallest new hard drive I could get hold of - a 20GB. Straight away, *strange* things started to happen. In the BIOS setup = screens, I got it to auto-detect the new drive settings, and got a bit = of a surprise. You see it only detected it as a 8GB hard drive. Whats = more, when the system booted at the hard drive detection stage, the = system locked. I also tried manually entering the correct hard drive = settings, but the BIOS would not accept them. Finally, in desperation, I tried entering the drive settings of the old = hard drive. Surprisingly, it worked. Or at least, the boot process = passed the drive detection stage. I successfully installed FreeBSD and I = now have a fully working firewall/gateway machine again. Theres just one problem. When FreeBSD boots, I get the following... -------------------------------------------------8<----------------------= --------------------------- Disk error 0x1 (lba=3D0x14b09f) No /boot/loader >> FreeBSD/i386 BOOT Default: 0:ad(0,a)/kernel -------------------------------------------------8<----------------------= --------------------------- After a few seconds, or when I press the enter key, FreeBSD boots as = normal, with the following message... -------------------------------------------------8<----------------------= --------------------------- WARNING: loader(8) metadata is missing -------------------------------------------------8<----------------------= --------------------------- ...followed with the usual config details that show up when you enter = the 'dmesg' command. Now I admit that this is fairly minor. The system does boot, and = everything else seems to be working as normal, but I would like to get = this sorted. From what I can find on the net, I suspect its to do with = the boot information not being on the hard drive within the first 1024 = cylinders. Anyone know a way to *fix* this? Or if I reinstall fro scratch, will = creating the /boot mount point, and setting it to a size of 1024 = cylinders work? Any help you folks could provide would be great! I dont really want to = reinstall, but if its the only way. *shrugs* Regards, Jazz To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message