Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 21:32:20 -0400 From: Bryan Batten <BryanBatten@compuserve.com> To: Doug White <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu> Cc: FreeBSD Questions <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.2.2 Won't Boot Message-ID: <199709152132_MC2-208B-FA39@compuserve.com>
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Hi Doug, More on whether or not System Commander can overcome the 500MB limitation: I should have RTFM. Page 9 of the manual states flatly that "System Commander supports drives up to 8.1 GB in size, ...". In fact, I boot Linux from exactly the same location on my second EIDE drive with no problems. What I eventually did was to de- install System Commander, then install FreeBSD yet again, this time using the "Install MBR" option ... and it worked! I could boot FreeBSD. However, when I re- installed System Commander and tried to boot my newly installed FreeBSD using that, I was once again back to the "No bootable partition" message. Now, System Commander does have a bad habit of ****ing around with the System Indicator byte in partition table entries (it loves to set bit 4) - but that doesn't seem to bother any other OS I'm running - Linux, OS/2 Warp, MSDOS, and, yes, even SCO once I overcame its gratuitous reorganization of the partition table. One option would be just to use "Booteasy"; but the problem there is that two of these OSes boot from my second drive, and Booteasy only shows me options for my first drive. System Commander also provides a "Boot through MBR" option in which a file containing MBR data is read into memory, and control transfers to that. I had saved the MBR containing "Booteasy" and tried that. Sure enough, I could select it from System Commander's menu, and FreeBSD would boot. However, on rebooting, SC was out of the picture, and I was once again back to Booteasy. This indicates that somehow the MBR was overwritten in the proces of booting up FreeBSD. Trying to recover from that left my first drive unaccessable until trusty Linux was brought into play from a floppy to repair the damage. So it'll be a while before I do that again. I guess what's really confusing me now is why boot code for a particular partition should care what's in the MBR? Whatever is in the MBR obviously has run, located the partition boot sector, loaded that, and transferred control to it. Could it be that "Booteasy" is a little too paranoid? Less checking and validation might improve interoperability - IMHO. At any rate, the FreeBSD boot procedure has me stumped. Is source code available for "Booteasy"? Perhaps being able to see what is actually going on might help me to resolve matters. Looks like I also need to browse through V Communications info to see if they say anything about FreeBSD, and Free BSD info to see what I can resolve, there. In the meantime, thanks for your interest in my problem. Bryan
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