From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Jan 13 16:37:22 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id QAA29865 for questions-outgoing; Sat, 13 Jan 1996 16:37:22 -0800 (PST) Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id QAA29835 Sat, 13 Jan 1996 16:36:54 -0800 (PST) Date: Fri, 12 Jan 1996 15:06:02 -0800 (PST) From: Howard Lew To: Terry Lambert cc: questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Ontrack DM & FreeBSD 2.1R In-Reply-To: <199601122048.NAA20633@phaeton.artisoft.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Fri, 12 Jan 1996, Terry Lambert wrote: > > Here's a little more info about Ontrack DM (version 7 I believe) and > > FreeBSD > > 2.1R. > > > > My configuration: > > wd0 is Windows 95 only. > > wd1 is FreeBSD only. > > > > During the installation of FreeBSD 2.1R to wd1, I carefully chose none for > > the mbr or multi-boot code, but FreeBSD 2.1R still does something to wd0 > > which makes the Win95 hard drive unbootable. > > > > How to recover wd0.... Need to rewrite the mbr using Ontrack DM after > > booting from a DOS floppy. After that, need to reboot from a DOS disk > > one more time to set the DOS/WIN95 partition active on wd0 with fdisk. > > After that, everything is back to normal. > > > > > > 3 Questions: > > > > 1) Is there any chance that a future version of FreeBSD will truly > > not touch wd0? > > The current version doesn't, unless you tell it to. The problem is you > told it to, but you didn't know it. Hmmm... I am perfectly sure I didn't tell it to install any boot manager unless the "None" option does something. I was really careful here. > > > 2) And can fbsdboot.exe be made as an option to boot a kernel from wd1 > > instead of wd0? Or am I just missing the syntax somewhere? > > Yes. You will have to recompile it (I believe -- it may have options now > that it didn't used to have). > Thanks. I'll check it out. > > 3) Will FreeBSD 2.1R soon notice my Teac 4X Model 55A cdrom drive? > > Dunno. > oh.... also noticed this Teac CDROM drive will not play long music CDs properly even in Windows... hardware bug I guess.... Anyway, it comes with an 8 bit interface card (not ATAPI). > > > The nitty-gritty on what is happening: > > Because you are booting the FreeBSD boot disk, you aren't loading the > OnTrack code. The OnTrack code operates by redirecting INT 13 after > loading an INT 13 to LBA and geometry traslantion TSR. > > When you tell BSD to install its boot manager, it goes to the boot > device (wd0) and rewrites the boot code, assuming that the valid > partition table entry there (which is the Ontrack relocation entry for > the DOS partition table) is the one it wants to write. > > > Basically, because you installed onto the second disk, BSD became > confused. > > In reality, you could call this a BSD bug, because BS should see the > OnTrack partition ID on the wd0 disk and realize that the MBR it is > supposed to write to enable the boot selector is actually 64 sectors > further in on the disk. > > The workaround is to use the DOS version of the OS-BS install from > a DOS prompt after booting DOS from wd0 (if you are booting Windows95, > you will need to pick the "reboot to DOS prompt" option from the > "Shutdown" on the Windows95 "Start" menu or the install will be > prevented, since they guard their boot track as a virus safeguard). For some reason, this OS-BS never did work with booting on the second drive if the first had Ontrack DM. I've tried this with 2.05 and the snaps before it. > > This means you should *NOT* install the boot selector when you install > BSD on the second drive, since the boot selector must always be > written to the boot drive's boot sector (and that's not where BSD > thinks it is in the current release of the install tools). > Hmmm... maybe if just before installing the boot selector, the installation program could check if Ontrack DM is there. Oh well... I guess I should just pop the FreeBSD hard drive out and place it in a new machine dedicated for FreeBSD.