From owner-freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jan 23 17:50:56 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-bugs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 808ED16A4CE; Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:50:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from hotmail.com (sea1-dav70.sea1.hotmail.com [207.68.162.205]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0506F43D53; Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:49:56 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from c0d3h4x0r@hotmail.com) Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:48:56 -0800 Received: from 131.107.3.86 by sea1-dav70.sea1.hotmail.com with DAV; Sat, 24 Jan 2004 01:48:55 +0000 X-Originating-IP: [131.107.3.86] X-Originating-Email: [c0d3h4x0r@hotmail.com] X-Sender: c0d3h4x0r@hotmail.com From: "Keith Kelly" To: "Derrick Ryalls" References: <006f01c3e219$b370f4d0$0201a8c0@aragorn> Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:48:51 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: MSN 9 X-MimeOLE: Produced By MSN MimeOLE V9.00.0011.1200 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original Seal-Send-Time: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:48:51 -0800 Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 24 Jan 2004 01:48:56.0208 (UTC) FILETIME=[3A547100:01C3E21C] cc: freebsd-bugs cc: 'freebsd-questions ORG' Subject: Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS X-BeenThere: freebsd-bugs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Bug reports List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 01:50:56 -0000 > My thought here is to double check that the drive is in the master > position on the ribbon. Yeah, you would _think_ that would be the way to configure things. But when I configure the two devices that way (CD-ROM as slave, hard drive as master), sysinstall refuses to mount the CD, giving me an error about "CD/DVD drive not found!". It's worth noting that no other OS I've run on this same PC ever had any trouble finding the CD-ROM drive when it was configured as the slave. To get around _that_ problem, I had to configure the CD-ROM as the master and the hard drive as the slave. With the CD-ROM as the master, sysinstall is able to actually detect the CD/DVD drive, but then I run into this nonsense with fdisk refusing to detect or accept the correct disk geometry for the hard drive. It's worth noting that I've never had to manually specify hard drive geometry settings in the installer for any other OS I've installed on this PC. They figured it out automatically and worked fine. If I just let fdisk use its suggested defaults for the geometry and proceed with the install, then when the system reboots off the hard drive I get "Missing operating system". It's worth noting that I've never seen that severe of an error following any other OS installation claiming it was successful. So far, I'm really disappointed by FreeBSD. If FreeBSD lacks the logic or detection to automatically figure all these things out and just work, that is a serious bug (whether due to a programmer mistake or poor software design). I've _never_ had this much trouble getting an operating system installed on this particular PC. If I can't get things working within about 1 more hour of tinkering, I'm going to abandon FreeBSD entirely, put my machine back together, and just use the drive as an extra NTFS filesystem for my personal files under Windows XP. When people argue that Windows is easier, and that *nix isn't ready for the desktop, this is *exactly* the kind of problem that they are talking about. I hope any actual FreeBSD developers on these aliases wake up and take notice.