From owner-freebsd-stable Mon Jul 24 11:45: 3 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from freeway.dcfinc.com (cx74889-a.phnx3.az.home.com [24.1.193.157]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D378A37B584 for ; Mon, 24 Jul 2000 11:44:52 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from chad@freeway.dcfinc.com) Received: (from chad@localhost) by freeway.dcfinc.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id LAA14420; Mon, 24 Jul 2000 11:44:36 -0700 (MST) (envelope-from chad) From: "Chad R. Larson" Message-Id: <200007241844.LAA14420@freeway.dcfinc.com> Subject: Re: No /boot/loader (dangerously dedicated) In-Reply-To: <200007231444.QAA94743@hugo10.ka.punkt.de> from "Patrick M. Hausen" at "Jul 23, 0 04:44:56 pm" To: hausen@punkt.de (Patrick M. Hausen) Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 11:44:36 -0700 (MST) Cc: mi@aldan.algebra.com, jhb@pike.osd.bsdi.com, stable@FreeBSD.ORG Reply-To: chad@DCFinc.com X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL40 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG As I recall, Patrick M. Hausen wrote: > Folks, gemoetries are for brain damaged PC operating systems. > All the box needs to boot is a proper MBR. BIOSes that > don't boot from a dedicated disk are _broken_. I agree. Which is not to say there aren't some =broken= BIOSs out there. Earlier Compaq systems wouldn't boot unless the disk had a special signature in the boot records (probably a cheezy way to force you to buy replacement disks from Compaq. Newer Compaqs no longer refuse to boot, but the BIOS does have special support for a special diagnostic partition that will boot if you hit F10 right after the RAM check. Which is why, if I have the choice, I refuse to buy Compaq hardware. So, I think leaving things the way they have been (letting the administrator decide at installation time) with regard to "dangerously dedicated" is the way to go. Perhaps with a little more verbose warning about "don't try this unless you know what you're doing" thrown in. -crl -- Chad R. Larson (CRL15) 602-953-1392 Brother, can you paradigm? chad@dcfinc.com chad@larsons.org larson1@home.net DCF, Inc. - 14623 North 49th Place, Scottsdale, Arizona 85254-2207 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message