From owner-freebsd-current Wed Jul 5 15:12: 2 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mass.osd.bsdi.com (adsl-63-202-177-51.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [63.202.177.51]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 453AE37B94A for ; Wed, 5 Jul 2000 15:11:56 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from msmith@mass.osd.bsdi.com) Received: from mass.osd.bsdi.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by mass.osd.bsdi.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id PAA13242; Wed, 5 Jul 2000 15:18:59 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from msmith@mass.osd.bsdi.com) Message-Id: <200007052218.PAA13242@mass.osd.bsdi.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.1.1 10/15/1999 To: mjacob@feral.com Cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: subtle problem du jour.... In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 05 Jul 2000 15:03:13 PDT." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 15:18:59 -0700 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > This really bit me- it shouldn't have- but it did.... > > I had a i386 system with a 4GB disk -- root partition ~1GB.... but the > motherboard was setting up BIOS as a CHS instead of an LBA arrangement. > > The only time this showed up as problem was that when I reinstalled the > loader (and related forth files), loader silently was not able to read /boot > or /modules- the key word here is "silently". > > There ought to be a warning in loader(8) maybe about this? The loader used to bitch if it couldn't find its startup files, but this got turned off because people didn't like it. There would be a couple of ways to deal with the problem you're seeing (in addition to the very worthwhile documentation) - a) bitch if the loader.rc file can't be found/read. b) bitch in the BIOS disk driver if an illegal read is attempted. Both of these might have given you enough clue to help find the problem more quickly. Any comments, folks? -- ... every activity meets with opposition, everyone who acts has his rivals and unfortunately opponents also. But not because people want to be opponents, rather because the tasks and relationships force people to take different points of view. [Dr. Fritz Todt] To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message