Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 20:12:47 -0600 From: Michael Clark <MClark@Nemschoff.com> To: 'Keith Kelly' <c0d3h4x0r@hotmail.com>, Derrick Ryalls <ryallsd@datasphereweb.com> Cc: 'freebsd-questions ORG' <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: RE: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS Message-ID: <A2A28DB6D52E084783ACD6E6C6F5D790B43E15@EMAILSERVER2.nemschoff.com>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
don't complain. Your not committing... -----Original Message----- From: Keith Kelly [mailto:c0d3h4x0r@hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 7:49 PM To: Derrick Ryalls Cc: freebsd-bugs; 'freebsd-questions ORG' Subject: Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS > My thought here is to double check that the drive is in the master > position on the ribbon. Yeah, you would _think_ that would be the way to configure things. But when I configure the two devices that way (CD-ROM as slave, hard drive as master), sysinstall refuses to mount the CD, giving me an error about "CD/DVD drive not found!". It's worth noting that no other OS I've run on this same PC ever had any trouble finding the CD-ROM drive when it was configured as the slave. To get around _that_ problem, I had to configure the CD-ROM as the master and the hard drive as the slave. With the CD-ROM as the master, sysinstall is able to actually detect the CD/DVD drive, but then I run into this nonsense with fdisk refusing to detect or accept the correct disk geometry for the hard drive. It's worth noting that I've never had to manually specify hard drive geometry settings in the installer for any other OS I've installed on this PC. They figured it out automatically and worked fine. If I just let fdisk use its suggested defaults for the geometry and proceed with the install, then when the system reboots off the hard drive I get "Missing operating system". It's worth noting that I've never seen that severe of an error following any other OS installation claiming it was successful. So far, I'm really disappointed by FreeBSD. If FreeBSD lacks the logic or detection to automatically figure all these things out and just work, that is a serious bug (whether due to a programmer mistake or poor software design). I've _never_ had this much trouble getting an operating system installed on this particular PC. If I can't get things working within about 1 more hour of tinkering, I'm going to abandon FreeBSD entirely, put my machine back together, and just use the drive as an extra NTFS filesystem for my personal files under Windows XP. When people argue that Windows is easier, and that *nix isn't ready for the desktop, this is *exactly* the kind of problem that they are talking about. I hope any actual FreeBSD developers on these aliases wake up and take notice. _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This electronic transmission, including all attachments, is directed in confidence solely to the person(s) to whom it is addressed, or an authorized recipient, and may not otherwise be distributed, copied or disclosed. The contents of the transmission may also be subject to intellectual property rights and all such rights are expressly claimed and are not waived. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender immediately by return electronic transmission and then immediately delete this transmission, including all attachments, without copying, distributing or disclosing same.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?A2A28DB6D52E084783ACD6E6C6F5D790B43E15>