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Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 13:59:11 +0100
From: "leon j. breedt" <ljb@neverborn.org>
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Sender: leon j breedt <ljb@neverborn.org>
Subject: GRUB 0.92 on FreeBSD 5.x
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hi,

is it a new feature of 5.x disallowing direct writes to the device nodes
/dev/ad*?

getting weird behaviour trying to use the GRUB 0.92 port on all versions
of 5.x i've used so far (currently on 5.1-RELEASE).

the problem being that i can't see any disks in the 'grub' shell. the
'device' command works, and then a subsequent command like 'root' still
fails with "No such disk".

i've tracked down the problem to a call in the GRUB source where its
trying to open(2) the device node /dev/ad0 with O_RDWR which fails with
EPERM, which causes GRUB to delete the drive from its device map without
any warning, just silent failure.

i am running the 'grub' executable as root though.  

when i patch that section of the source file (asmstub.c, function
get_diskinfo()) to accept EPERM and only open in read-only mode,
suddenly i can see my drives. but obviously anything wanting to modify
the drive, like 'setup', fails.

is my only recourse to install GRUB from floppy when using it from
FreeBSD?

please cc me on replies, i'm not subscribed to -questions.

thanks
leon