Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 23:55:39 -0400 From: Bob Johnson <bob89@bobj.org> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Cc: "10,000 Screaming Monkeys" <bsd@in-flux.org> Subject: Re: SOLVED - 5.2.1-RELEASE boot problem Message-ID: <200404122355.40699.bob89@bobj.org> In-Reply-To: <20040413002147.GA30156@neverwhere.in-flux.org> References: <20040409174919.GJ4404@neverwhere.in-flux.org> <20040413002147.GA30156@neverwhere.in-flux.org>
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On Monday 12 April 2004 08:21 pm, 10,000 Screaming Monkeys <"10,000 Screaming Monkeys" <bsd@in-flux.org>> wrote: > Nobody has been able to help me here or elsewhere, but I did discover > one strange thing that seems to have taken care of things. > > The way I usually build my systems, since they're strictly FreeBSD > machines, is to "dangerously dedicate" the drive. When the system was > installed that way, regardless of what I did in /boot.config, > regardless of which IDE channel I had the drive connected to, and > regardless of BIOS settings tweaked to hell and back, it refused to > boot from the IDE drive and the boot loader would default to > 22:fd(22,a)/kernel. > > On a lark, I reinstalled the system using a "true" partition and the > FreeBSD bootmgr. When I rebooted the system after the install, it > prompted me for the partition to boot (F1 for FreeBSD) and booted > successfully without any trickery. > > When I installed the system yet another time using a "true" partition > and chose the "standard" option (for just a standard MBR, rather than > a boot manager or "none"), the system booted completely normally > without any intervention on my part at all. > > So, while I have no explanation for why it acts differently depending > on whether or not the drive is DD'd or given a "valid" partition, > that's what fixed the problem for me. I thought I would make a > follow-up post just in case this ever happens to anybody else and > they need some place to start. > > - Jamie > > On 04/09, 10,000 Screaming Monkeys rearranged the electrons to read: [...] To reiterate for anyone tempted to use "dangerously dedicated" mode: it has that name for a reason. It is not only incompatible with other operating systems, but it is incompatible with some BIOSes, I suppose because they see it as an unformated disk. Some computers refuse to even attempt to boot from a DD disk. It would appear that yours is willing to attempt to boot, but then passes bogus information to the FreeBSD boot loader. - Bob
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