Date: Tue, 08 Apr 1997 09:51:02 -0700 From: "Steven L.Richardson" <stretch@dsp.net> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: boot from beyond 1024 cyl? Message-ID: <334A7776.6FA1@dsp.net>
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I tried finessing around the 1024 cylinder limit on active paritions by using a copy of the root partition's boot record (using dd and the raw device copying 512 bytes) and employing a boot manager (NT's in this case). But it barfs and I guess I've learned the hard way that only 10 bits are allocated at some very low level, such as in the boot record itself, for addressing cylinder location. Is there any way around this? I phoned my bios (Award) manufacturer and all they could suggest was LBA. Is a bios change the only way out of this predicament? background: 1.6 gig WD drive with 3000+ cylinders being addressed with that geometry. NT installed with warnings about invisibility to dos, but i don't run dos, so whatever. installed freebsd out around cyl 2000 hoping that copying the mbr to the first partition (wd0) would end-run the limitation. Doesn't work, I believe because the MBR when executed then tries to load and run executable from some cylinder equal to freebsd root cylinder MOD 1024 (only 10 bits allocated). I think the answer is that there is simply no way around this and that I should have done installation with LBA or fragmented my NT partition and installed freebsd root below cyl 1024 (as your documentation clearly states!) Is that in fact the case? Thanks for any help! -Steve (stretch@dsp.com)
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