From owner-freebsd-mobile Thu Nov 30 2:36:59 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Received: from mobile.wemm.org (adsl-64-163-195-99.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [64.163.195.99]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5AA9C37B400; Thu, 30 Nov 2000 02:36:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from netplex.com.au (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mobile.wemm.org (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id eAUAatD94336; Thu, 30 Nov 2000 02:36:55 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from peter@netplex.com.au) Message-Id: <200011301036.eAUAatD94336@mobile.wemm.org> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.2 06/23/2000 with nmh-1.0.4 To: Robert Nordier Cc: David Wolfskill , nate@yogotech.com, mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Here is what IBM thinks about using FreeBSD on their newer Thinkpads Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 02:36:55 -0800 From: Peter Wemm Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Peter Wemm wrote: > David Wolfskill wrote: > > >From: Nate Williams > > >Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 10:48:34 -0700 (MST) > > > > >> >Didn't Robert shrink it back to 1 sector after 4.1 was released? It > > >> >would be interesting to know if the 'smaller' bootblock worked as well. > > > > >> No; jhb found that there was a bug in the boot0 code & fixed it. My > > >> archived mail shows that most of the work occurred on 04 August. > > > > >Hmm, the log message I'm reading says: > > > > > date: 2000/10/02 17:30:22; author: rnordier; state: Exp; lines: +77 - 15 > 1 > > > Go back to occupying just a single sector, reverting r1.17 - r1.20. > > >[SNIP > > > > Right; I expressed myself poorly: what I meant by the above is that the > > thing that fixed the boot-hang (back in August) was not a change in the > > size of boot0, but jhb locating & fixing a bug. (I meant no slight to > > either jhb or rnordier; I hope that's clear.) > > This has nothing to do with the problem at hand. We had a thinkpad > something-20 belonging to a friend of a friend. The bios would lock up with > *any* FreeBSD installed all the way back to 2.2.5. ie: 2.2.x, 3.x, 4,x and > 5.x *ALL* didn't work. > > ie: bootblocks are not relevant. > > > > > >This is the last commit made to the boot0 code for i386. Ahh, but this > > >code didn't make it back into FreeBSD 4.X, so 4.2 *might* still be > > >succeptible if this is a 2-sector boot0 bug. > > > > True, though other evidence (in this thread) indicates that at least > > part of the problem occurs even if a single sector is all that is used. > > The bios locks up regardless of which bootblock are used.. 1k, 0.5k, old 3.x, > or a.out 2.x bootblocks. It simply does not like the partitioning. > > Somebody else has suggested that the secret to making FreeBSD work on this > laptop is to have windows set up on the first slice and part of the disk, and > set up and *use* suspend-to-FAT32 *before* installing freebsd. > > However, if you do this, you windows partition must be less than 8GB as the > 0.5k bootblocks are not able to boot from above-8G. ie: only 4.x is > compatable. If rnordier backs this feature out of 4.x too, then 4.x will > be broken as well because he has not replaced the functionality that he > destroyed (ie: automatic above-8G support). This was uncalled for. I apologize to Robert for going over the top here. On further reading of the mailing list (buried in my mailbox with 7197 other as-yet unread messages), I see that Robert has already pointed out that the actual bootblocks are likely to have nothing to do with it. I should not have let my frustration at IBM be misdirected at another developer who was an innocent bystander. I should be the last one to complain about missing features of works-in-progress considering how many loose ends I am presently implicated in. Cheers, -Peter -- Peter Wemm - peter@FreeBSD.org; peter@yahoo-inc.com; peter@netplex.com.au "All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message