Date: Wed, 14 Feb 1996 15:48:36 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: lehey.pad@sni.de (Greg Lehey) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org, freebsd-doc@freebsd.org, mollers.pad@sni.de Subject: Re: Confused!!!! (fwd) Message-ID: <199602142248.PAA00886@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199602141531.QAA17344@nixpbe.pdb.sni.de> from "Greg Lehey" at Feb 14, 96 04:27:35 pm
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> Forwarded message: > > > From: Frank J Estremera <festremera@shell.monmouth.com> > > > > I am so confused as to how to boot FreeBSD from a boot manager, while on a > > second drive. I have an internal IDE drive running Windows95. I also have a > > secondary SCSI drive (device 0), totally devoted to FreeBSD. I do have > > FreeBSD loaded on it, but when I installed FreeBSD, and selected BootEasy > > as the boot manager, The operating system could not be found when booting to > > Windows95 (primary drive). I deinstalled BootEasy and installed System > > Commander as my boot manager. It recognized the SCSI drive as having FreeBSD > > loaded on it, but when selected, System Commander tells me that the boot block > > is missing on this device. The only way that I can boot FreeBSD is to insert > > the install diskette in the A drive, boot from it, and when the BOOT prompt > > appears, pointing it to hd(1,a)/kernel (I think). Just for laughs I did a > > disklabel -B sd0 to maybe try to force a boot block on the SCSI device, but > > to no avail (unless I am totally out in left field, which is likely). What > > am I missing??? Why is my operating system under Windows95 being clobbered?? > > (I then have to do an fdisk from diskette to activate my C: partition again). > > Please shine a flashlight on my face and enlighten me! > > Could it be that the lack of replies to this message is the result of > everybody else being confused as well? I currently can't get near a > running FreeBSD system, and I honestly don't know a good answer, but I > get the feeling that we have a bug which manifests itself when using > booteasy when FreeBSD is not on the first drive. I've had another > report of this kind of problem here at SNI, and in this case I'm > pretty sure it wasn't user error. Any comments from others? I haven't answered because of the formatting. It's impossible to quickly scan through the provided information and see the problem (but then I'm dyslexic and use eidetic memory coexamination as a crosscheck for what I read, so I may be the only one bothered by the way the question was organized). Comment if this is incorrect: 1) One IDE drive. Drive is primary boot device (DOS drive "C:"). 2) One SCSI drive. Drive is seen by DOS FDISK as drive "D:". 3) Loading FreeBSD on SCSI drive. 4) Want boot manager to boot DOS on IDE or BSD on SCSI. If this is correct, then: o When you install BSD on the second drive, you *don't* want to use BSD to install the boot manager. It doesn't do this very well because of OnTrack and similar translation strangeness not being equally applicable to both drives. o FDISK up the SCSI drive as a bootable drive. You may have to disable the IDE and boot from floppy to do this. If you disabled the IDE, reenable it afterwards. This will put the standard DOS MBR on the SCSI disk. o Install BSD. If you disabled the IDE in the previous step, it's easiest to do this with the IDE disabled (the SCSI drive will be drive "C:" if the IDE is disabled). o Make sure you can boot the floppy and give the device name at the floppy boot prompt and boot BSD from the SCSI. This means that BSD is properly installed on the SCSI. o With the IDE enabled, use the DOS install for the OS-BS/Booteasy boot selector *after* booting from the IDE drive. If you are running Windows95, you need to pick "Restart the computer in MS-DOS Mode" from the shutdown dialog". You have to do this because: o If you boot from a floppy instead of the IDE drive, you may not have the translation software correctly loaded. o When you are installing OS-BS/Booteasy during the BSD install, it doesn't look for the translation software except on the install drive, and even then, it only looks for the translation software it knows about. o Windows95 "MD-DOS Prompt" windows go through Windows95 I/O by default (you *can* make one that doesn't, but it involves making a shortcut to the DOS prompt and changing the properties by clicking the "Advanved..." button on the "Program" tab and checking "MS-DOS mode" in the "Advanced Program Settings" dialog). Now the boot manager will offer you to boot "DOS" (Windows95) or to boot from the second drive (which has no boot selector, only a DOS MBR with the BSD partition marked "active"). This presumes the SCSI drive looks like drive "D:" to fdisk and the SCSI BIOS correctly implements interrupt chaining for INT 13. Adapetc does, not everyone else does. Note that some BIOS incorrectly fill out the register that is supposed to contain the device actually booted from. If this happens, you will need to replace the MBR on the second drive with the boot selector as well. Do that with the IDE drive disabled, or after booting from a floppy instead of the IDE drive. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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