From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Apr 20 12:31:57 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id MAA08482 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 12:31:57 -0700 (PDT) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.50]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id MAA08475 for ; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 12:31:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id MAA08368; Sun, 20 Apr 1997 12:30:12 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199704201930.MAA08368@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: disklabel -- owner? To: helbig@MX.BA-Stuttgart.De (Wolfgang Helbig) Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 12:30:11 -0700 (MST) Cc: imp@village.org, hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199704200823.KAA02207@helbig.informatik.ba-stuttgart.de> from "Wolfgang Helbig" at Apr 20, 97 10:23:24 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-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > Then we used LiLo -- Linux was living on another (IDE) disk -- to install > an MBR and partition table. > Linux and the freshly installed FreeBSD could read and write the SCSI disk, > but the kernel loaded by LiLo paniced with > "cannot mount root" > (root was on sd0, the wdc-driver was disabled!) > > It seems that during sysinstall and booting a geometry was used which is > different from the one used by the disk-kernel. This has nothing to do with disklabel. It has to do with FreeBSD reiniting the IDE drive with a geometry other than the BIOS geometry, for no good reason. > This installation was really time consuming and it shows there is some > potential to improve fdisk, disklabel and sysinstall. Actually, it's the second stage boot, and it's communication with the kernel that is the problem here... > It would be great to install FreeBSD w/o the need to install DOS as a > helper and to synchronize the ideas which sysinstall and the installed > kernel have about the disk properties. Agreed. On the other hand, a DOS install will occasionally install a boot-sector loaded TSR to supply LBA support to a system that does not already have LBA support, by hooking INT 13 and driving it that way. It's very helpful for future work if LBA support is in there somehow -- and we don't have an LBA boot-sector TSR to replace the DOS installed one in those cases. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.