Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 09:10:58 +0300 From: Valentin Nechayev <netch@netch.kiev.ua> To: Toerless Eckert <eckert@i4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: boot2 broken ? (booting from pst fails) Message-ID: <20030430061058.GC6089@iv.nn.kiev.ua> In-Reply-To: <200304142136.XAA28381@faui40p.informatik.uni-erlangen.de> References: <XFMail.20030414162259.jhb@FreeBSD.org> <200304142136.XAA28381@faui40p.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
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Mon, Apr 14, 2003 at 23:36:59, eckert (Toerless Eckert) wrote about "Re: boot2 broken ? (booting from pst fails)": TE> Don't forget that neither 3ware nor promise list FreeBSD as a supported TE> operating system, both are equally listed in FreeBSDs hardware list, TE> there's no indication that booting for one of them doesn't work but TE> that it's supposed to work on the other. Neither does the documentation TE> of boot2 or loader explain the possible issue so as to buy possible buyers. TE> It would really be nice if this boot-compatiblity/incompatiblity information TE> would be documented somehwere. Like in pst(4) and boot(8). It's not so simple as you think. HCLs (hardware compatibility lists) are stably available only having stable and documented (even under NDA) feature lists of hardware and feature access methods in software. For PC world, it isn't method of duty work; e.g. mainboard manufacturers can skip EDD support from some versions of their BIOSes basing on some internal and non-exported information and decisions, even nowadays; and booting from such mainboard requires more strict partitioning scheme or even dirty tricks (as placing unused, but formatted, FAT16 slice at beginning of boot disk). Reality in PC/Wintel world is devil's dance of drivers variants, tiny-but-painful deviations against standards, etc. Moscow PC construction market, e.g., contains now ~1000 different mainboards for P-III, P-4 and Athlon CPU groups. Who have enough resources to test all of them? ;(( OS vendor, as FreeBSD, tries to keep average between all them and provide product which working on most, and all this in conditions of permanent resource lacking. You can do your's best. You already posted here about problems of booting from such controller, and it is recorded in mailing list archives. If you can, fix it. If no, change hardware and hope that somebody will fix it as soon as possible. -netch-
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