From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Feb 21 10:52:11 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id KAA19568 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 10:52:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id KAA19563 for ; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 10:52:07 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id LAA18438; Wed, 21 Feb 1996 11:46:21 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199602211846.LAA18438@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: booting from primary wd on wdc1 To: peters@staidan.qld.edu.au (Peter Stubbs) Date: Wed, 21 Feb 1996 11:46:21 -0700 (MST) Cc: coredump@nervosa.com, questions@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <6163C4237E6@aidan.staidan.qld.edu.au> from "Peter Stubbs" at Feb 21, 96 09:26:31 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > finds wdc0 irq 14 > finds wd0 (geometry is correct) > finds wdc1 irq 15 > finds wd2 (geometry is correct) > finds aha0 > finds cd0 > finds npx0 > panic cannot mount / > reboot in 15 sec, .... > > The messages are similar if I put it on the first controler, only > the second drive is wd1, not wd2. In either case at boot time it > comes up with wd(1,a)/kernel, boots, but can't mount root when on > wdc1. The motherboard is an ASUS PCI 486, and the CPU is an AMD > DX4-100 The root is assumed to be on the first controller in the file: /sys/i386/i386/userconfig.c. Perhaps your BIOS is (incorrectly) leaving 0x80 instead of 0x81 in the unit number. Have you tried booting -c and changing the boot device at the config prompt so that it will modify the kernel image for subsequent attempts? This is different than booting the floppy and specifying the device as other than the floppy at the boot prompt. If the floppy kernel and the one on the disk do not match, you will be screwed. > It should be possible to boot from the second controler on the newer > motherboards, and it can't be too unusual. Booting requires that the BIOS drive number be correctly passed. The motherboard BIOS is only going to know about 0x00 (A:), 0x01 (B:), 0x80 (C:), and 0x81 (D:). You can not boot from a drive other than that. Since the problem is that you can't mount root, I suspect you have one of those bogus BIOS that doesn't correctly set the unit number in the d register. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.