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Date:      Fri, 12 Jan 1996 15:06:02 -0800 (PST)
From:      Howard Lew <hlew@genome.Stanford.EDU>
To:        Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Ontrack DM & FreeBSD 2.1R
Message-ID:  <Pine.SUN.3.91.960112145400.4393A-100000@vegemite.Stanford.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <199601122048.NAA20633@phaeton.artisoft.com>

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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.




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