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Date:      Thu, 01 Feb 1996 9:10:07 PST
From:      John Fenwick <fenwick@hposl03.cup.hp.com>
To:        questions@freebsd.org
Cc:        fenwick@hposl03.cup.hp.com
Subject:   Install/Configuration questions
Message-ID:  <9602011710.AA06525@hposl03.cup.hp.com>

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Hello,

I am trying to understand the operation of the FreeBSD boot managers 
to solve some install difficulties.  The install target is a SCSI disk PC.
Perhaps you can shed some light on these questions. 

* Is the boot manager - either booteasy or osbs - typically installed 
  in the first 60-odd sectors of a boot disk, and if so is it installed
  on top of what existing DOS boot manager may have already been there?
  
* Using one particular install configuration results in only the first 
  17 sectors of the disk being used to install the boot manager.  
  What has been installed in this case, and why is it different 
  from the 62 or 63 sectors noted above?
  
* If I overwrite my current Win95-installed boot manager by installing
  one from BSD, would I be able to recover the original Win95-installed
  boot manager by running the DOS "fdisk /mbr" command?
  
* Are the install tools for boot managers available under UNIX,
  or are they only available under the DOS tools on the CDROM?
  If I wanted to migrate my BSD installation to a different disk,
  would I be able to copy the boot sectors also?  Would "dd" be able
  to do the copy in this case?
  
* Can you recommend some documentation that would describe where such 
  things as the locations and sizes of partition tables, disk labels, 
  and boot managers, are typically found on boot disks?
  
  
Much thanks for any pointers.
 
 - John Fenwick



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