From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Oct 23 09:08:59 1995 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id JAA11949 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 23 Oct 1995 09:08:59 -0700 Received: from mailgate.ericsson.se (mailgate.ericsson.se [130.100.2.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id JAA11938 for ; Mon, 23 Oct 1995 09:08:53 -0700 Received: from egg.lmc.ericsson.se (egg.lmc.ericsson.se [142.133.32.1]) by mailgate.ericsson.se (8.6.11/1.0) with SMTP id RAA14510 for ; Mon, 23 Oct 1995 17:08:40 +0100 Received: from wheatear.lmc.ericsson.com (wheatear.lmc.ericsson.se) by egg.lmc.ericsson.se (4.1/LME-2.2) id AA00904; Mon, 23 Oct 95 12:08:38 EDT Date: Mon, 23 Oct 95 12:08:38 EDT From: lmcerpr@lmc.ericsson.se (Eric Primeau) Message-Id: <9510231608.AA00904@egg.lmc.ericsson.se> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Missing operating system Cc: lmcerpr@lmc.ericsson.se Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk Hi, Congratulations on a sensational product! It would even be better if....I could get it to run on my system. PLEASE HELP ME!! I am facing the famous "Missing operating system" problem. I tried installing FreeBSD 2.0.5 on my 486 PC, but it appears that I cannot boot from the hard disk. I MUST BE REAL CLOSE. After reading every possible FAQ file on the problem, I must have tried at least 10 installation/partition variations, so I call to you as a last resort. ----------------------- Before FreeBSD, in my very typical DOS/Windows PC setup, I would boot DOS off my disk C: (170Mb IDE drive). Then I bought a 1Gb IDE disk and split it into two partitions: 400Mb intended for FreeBSD and 600Mb for DOS (defined as primary DOS). (I put the FBSD partition lower because of a note I read somewhere about a possible problem with this.) NOTE: DOS sees this 600Mb partition as drive D:. Because my IDE CDROM isnt supported by FreeBSD 2.0.5, I copied the DISTS files unto the D: disk (600Mb DOS partition). Next I start the FreeBSD installation and instruct it as follows: disk 0 (C:) mounted as /cdisk disk 1 400Mb FreeBSD partition split into /wds3a 50Mb / (root mountpoint) /wds3b 30Mb swap /wds3e 320Mb /usr 600Mb mounted as /ddisk NOTE: I set the geometry of my drive according to the specification written on it e.g. 2112/16/63. The root partition is set to be bootable ("A" appears in fdisk). I perform a "Minimal" installation from Media="DOS partition" and it seems to succeed with no error messages. NOTE: I choose the "Boot Manager" option. When all is finished and I reboot, the boot manager prompts me for: F1 DOS F5 disk 2 If I choose F1, DOS boots OK. If I choose F5, I get "Missing operating system" and the system hangs. ------------------------------- Variations: At one point I got desperate. I tried installing with the "Standard MBR" instead of with the Boot Manager. After the installation I rebooted and got the message (something like) "NO ROM SYSTEM HALTED" with system hang. I figured the MBR had been wiped out somehow. I rebooted and reinstalled with the Boot Manager; this time DOS can boot on F1 but "Missing operating system" still appears when booting on disk 2. ------------------------------- Now there are a few things I dont understand. 1) Where does the boot manager reside? On disk 0 (e.g. my 170Mb DOS C: drive)? Or on disk 1 (1Gb) ? 2) Why cant the boot manager boot from the 1Gb drive? Must I make a small FreeBSD partition on disk C:? 3) What's the problem with the geometry? Initially, fdisk states "528/64/63" and I have to change it to "2112/16/63" (when you add it up it's the same thing, no?). What does the geometry have to do with boot ? 4) Two of my colleagues have FreeBSD but they have dedicated disks. In my case I dont want to use the whole 1Gb drive just for FreeBSD. Is it possible to get DOS and FreeBSD to co-exist on my disk? ------------------------------- THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR TIME AND COOPERATION! /Eric (a desperate would-be-home-user-of-unix) ======================================================== Eric PRIMEAU lmcerpr@lmc.ericsson.se Software Engineer (514) 738-8300 x2371 Ericsson Research Inc. Montreal (Qc) Canada ========================================================