From owner-freebsd-mobile Sun Sep 6 20:54:54 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id UAA08034 for freebsd-mobile-outgoing; Sun, 6 Sep 1998 20:54:54 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from word.smith.net.au (castles157.castles.com [208.214.165.157]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id UAA08028 for ; Sun, 6 Sep 1998 20:54:48 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@word.smith.net.au) Received: from word.smith.net.au (LOCALHOST [127.0.0.1]) by word.smith.net.au (8.9.1/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA11182; Sun, 6 Sep 1998 21:00:56 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@word.smith.net.au) Message-Id: <199809070400.VAA11182@word.smith.net.au> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 To: Brian Handy cc: Mike Smith , freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Partitioning HD's on a TP In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 06 Sep 1998 20:24:42 MDT." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Sun, 06 Sep 1998 21:00:55 -0700 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > [I've solved my own problem... > > >> I'm setting up an IBM TP560X with a relatively gargantuan 6.4GB hard drive > >> to run Win95 and FreeBSD. > >> > >> My plan was to make the Win95 partition 2GB and give the rest to FreeBSD, > >> but I seem to be bumping up against the "keep all your root partitions > >> below the 1024 cylinder limit" problem. In the tutorials there is talk of > >> using an "LBA" mode under some BIOS setups. I haven't been able to locate > >> this animal in the startup stuff on my Thinkpad. > > > >Boot the FreeBSD install floppy with "-v" and when sysinstall comes up, > >use the scrollback to look for the "BIOS geometries" message. > > OK, I figured out what's up. I was starting with blank, empty hard > drives, and sysinstall wasn't getting the geometry right. I went in with > MS-DOS, fdisk and format and made partitions and formatted the first one. > Having done this, suddenly the disk geometry changed completely and I was > able to do what I wanted to do. > > Interestingly...FreeBSD guessed the geometry to have something like 13,000 > cylinders on a 6.4GB HD. When I DOS-formatted the first partition, that > number dropped down to < 900. :-) FreeBSD was asking the disk for its default geometry, while the BIOS was translating and using an alternate. I'm right now trying to work out a way to use the BIOS information, but there's a fundamental problem related to mapping the BIOS drive number to a BSD major/minor pair. 8( > SO: The TP's seem to have LBA in the BIOS. (I think that's what this > means anyway.) Always keep your old MS-DOS floppies running around. It's not LBA, it's probably just the EDD standard translation rules. -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message