Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 13:24:17 -0700 (PDT) From: Matt Dillon <dillon@earth.backplane.com> To: Fred Clift <fclift@verio.net> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Really odd "BTX halted" problem booting FreeBSD on VALinux h Message-ID: <200010272024.e9RKOHL07526@earth.backplane.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0010271344480.20866-100000@vespa.orem.iserver.com>
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:I have a bunch boxes based on the L440GX+ intel motherboard that get
:confused by 'dangerously dedicated' labels. If you want real fun, dd
:boo0 from 3.4 onto the first block of any hard disk in your system and
:you will be unable to boot _any_ device in your system as the bios gets a
:wedgie somewhere before the bootloader gets invoked. PXE or other network
:boot still works and from there you can 'fix' the disk, or you can just
:yank it from the box too.
:
:At any rate, I've found a workaround in that if I put in valid partition
:info into the boot0 bootblock, the wedgie problem goes away.
:
:Am I confused about something? Perhaps I'm mistaken about how things work
:-- if so, enlighten me, please.
:--
:Fred Clift - fclift@verio.net -- Remember: If brute
I think that the days of the 'dangerously dedicated partition' are
numbered. It has obviously caused much more havoc then people have
realized. We don't have time to fix it for the current release, but I
took a good hard look at the code and as far as I can tell the only
reason we *have* a dangerously dedicated partition at all is because
the disklabel code is too cheap to create a real one - it is just copying
the skeleton fdisk data from boot0 verbatim and leaving it. Disklabel
could very easily create a real partition - in fact, I think with my
proposed patch for labeling slices all it needs to do is exec
'fdisk -I disk' to do it, and then generate a virgin label for the slice.
An interim solution would be to get my proposed patch (DIOCGVIRGIN
and giving disklabel the ability to label a slice) in for this release,
assuming it passes muster. We definitely need something for this
release, or everyone running VALinux hardware is going to be real
confused if they ever disklabel a disk manually.
-Matt
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