From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Jan 22 10:11:17 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from polaris.cs.laurentian.ca (polaris.cs.laurentian.ca [142.51.24.200]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 7794414BEC for ; Sat, 22 Jan 2000 10:11:12 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from s0121430@cs.laurentian.ca) Received: (qmail 2440 invoked from network); 22 Jan 2000 18:11:10 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO eten-04.cs.laurentian.ca) (142.51.24.4) by polaris.cs.laurentian.ca with SMTP; 22 Jan 2000 18:11:10 -0000 Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 13:11:10 -0500 (EST) From: Marwan Fayed To: Thierry Herbelot Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: disappearing mount points after install In-Reply-To: <3889ECB5.9E75171B@cybercable.fr> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I am writing this after reading two responses, both of which I am grateful for. I should have included this info in the original posting but better late than never, I guess. There have been two suggestions both very related, both of which I have already considered. I thought perhaps my BIOS required a DOS partition so I installed RedHat 6.1 to be sure. Guess what? It worked! Nevertheless, I installed a 2Meg DOS partition and set it to active before re-isntalling 3.3-R. OH, and yes, I also set my freeBSD partition to active as well... every time! But even this did not work. Does this mean I have everyone stumped? ;-) Marwan On Sat, 22 Jan 2000, Thierry Herbelot wrote: > Hello > > [-mobile trimmed] > > Marwan Fayed wrote: > > > > Hello, > > > > I am a seasoned UNIX user but have been using freebsd for only about 6 > > months. I have posted this problem to freebsd-questions with no response > > so, figuring it must be a bug in the install program i'm going to try > > here. Oh, I would like to have traced the code to try to find the bug (if > > one exists) but being a senior year undergrad with a full course load and > > thesis, I have been left with little time... please forgive me. > > > > My problem is this. I am trying to install 3.3-R on an IBM Thinkpad 365XD > > (although I have received mail from a man in France who is having the same > > problem on a desktop). The installation runs completely smoothly but when > > I finish and reboot the machine reports no resident O.S. > > This may be due to a faulty BIOS : some BIOSes do not like at all not > having a DOS partition at the beginning of the disk (I have some HP PCs > with just 20 Megs of FAT at the start of the disk to keep them booting - > from , which is FreeBSD) > > > > > After trying many different things (including messing with the MBR, double > > and triple checking disk geometry, and using a Fixit disk to try to > > diagnose the problem), I booted from the install floppy to the main > > install menu. Rather than re-install all over again for the nth time I > > just entered the label editor. The partitions were still there but the > > mount points were lost. What appeared was > > this: > > > > 40M // supposed to be root > > swap 84M // swap is obviously OK > > 651M // supposed to be /usr > > The mount points for each partition are recorded in /etc/fstab : what > you are seeing is completely normal, as sysinstall has not read the > fstab file from the root partition of your disk. > > > > > This is clearly not what I designated so I tried relabelling the mount > > points, writing the information using 'w' and exiting install only to have > > the BIOS report no O.S. yet again! > > Try and leave a small DOS partition at the beginning of your disk, as > said above. > > > > > The machine is a P100,40M ram,810HD, standard PCI (as far as I have been > > able to tell/test). Has anyone encountered this or know the problem? > > > > Thanks a TON! > > > > Marwan :-) > > TfH > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message