Date: Tue, 09 May 2000 12:27:55 +0300 From: Sergiu Partenie <sergiu.partenie@connex.ro> To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, "questions@FreeBSD.org" <questions@FreeBSD.org> Subject: 4.0-RELEASE install problems with old ATA hdd Message-ID: <3917DA1B.B1687115@connex.ro>
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Hello all I tried to install (for the first time) 4.0-RELEASE on an 486dx50 8Mb ram ed0: 3c503 ad0: Conner periphals CP3000 42Mb ad1: Maxtor 119Mb the kernel misdetects the geometry of ad0 - the 40Mb ata hdd the bios CHS settings are 977/5/17 (Type 17) but freebsd detects it as 1053/2/40 I tried to fdisk-it with no data on it: it screams hell with I/O errors and sysinstall aborts the instalation proces returning to the menu Adter reading the faq I made a small dos partition (500k), the kernel still detects the disk wrongly but fdisk reports a hore human value (971/5/17) After making a partition/slice for freebsd (either in the free space or using all the hdd) and [W]riting it (or using Comit) all hell breaks loose: panic: Going nowhere without my init ! syncing disks... done Uptime: xx:xx Automatic reboot in 15 seconds - press a key on the console to abort and in Alt-F2 (with debug enabled) DEBUG: Notify: Writting partition information to drive ad0 ad0: HARD READ ERROR blk#18 status=59 error=10 ad0: HARD READ ERROR blk#857 status=59 error=10 sysinstall:read:Input/output error init died (signal 0, exit1) ... the partition information is not written but the BootMgr is. everything works okey-dokey with ad1 The openbsd and the netbsd boot disks will also misdetect the geometry The BIOS autodetect finds the drive with the wrong geometry but is not able to acces the disk in that way (low level format fails) everything is ok if i set the geometry by hand. The linux kernel will sometimes misreport the geometry but that can be easy fixed with the "hdX=cyl,head,sect" kernel boot option. (the drive was used as a / partition for a linux box) Is there a posibility to pass to the freebsd kernel a similar option ? is there something like that ? and without recompiling the kernel (nobody i know in this side of the planet uses bsd - only linux) ? I have used Linux for 5 years but i'm new to *BSD ... thank you very much. -- Sergiu Partenie - UNIX System Administrator - MobiFon S.A. sergiu.partenie@connex.ro psergiu@xmail.ro #1764 093250006 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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