Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 08:13:47 -0500 From: Randall Hopper <rhh@ct.picker.com> To: Jonathan Hahn <hahn@and.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-install@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: installing on FAT32 w/Partition Magic Message-ID: <19980122081347.46523@ct.picker.com> In-Reply-To: <199801152242.OAA04752@and.com>; from Jonathan Hahn on Thu, Jan 15, 1998 at 02:42:27PM -0800 References: <199801152242.OAA04752@and.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Jonathan Hahn:
|if anyone's interested. I had read many things about partition restrictions
|restricitons. In particular, I read that the FreeBSD DOS partition
|cannot be beyond 1024 cylinders from the MBR. This is the restriction
|I violated, as far as I know (my disk is 2GB, Win95 is 1.5GB and
|FreeBSD is .5GB).
|
|The issue is that my (logical?) disk geometry had less than 600
|cylinders, so I didn't think I had to worry about the 1024 cyl
|restriction. I wouldn't be surprised if there were > 1024 physical
|cylinders and there probably are and it's probably the physical
|cylinder number that the restriction refers to. I don't believe I've
|encountered a tools which tells me the number of physical cylinders...
Your 2GB drive is almost certainly way above 1024 "physical" cylinders.
However, if your BIOS supports LBA and you format your disk with LBA, you
should have no trouble booting FreeBSD from anywhere on the disk you want
to put it.
Almost all of my FreeBSD installs have been like this (FreeBSD slice(s) are
given the biggest chunk at the end of my disk, with root typically above
physical cylinder 1024).
Check section 7.3.1 of the FreeBSD MultiOS tutorial for details:
http://www.freebsd.org/tutorials/multios/multios.html
|> The problem is that when I try to create Unix partitions in the new
|> DOS partition, the install program refuses. If I try to create a
|> root file system of any size, I get:
|>
|> This region cannot be used for your root partition as the
|> FreeBSD boot code cannot deal with a root partition created
|> in that location. Please choose another partition or
|> smaller size for your root partition and try again!
|>
|> I suspect a problem in my DOS partition setup. Here's my table:
|>
|> Name PType Desc Subtype Flags Comment
|> - 6 unused 0 size = 1 track
|> wd0s1 1 unknown 11 win95 (1.5 GB)
|> wd0s3 2 fat 6 for freebsd (.5 GB)
Maybe this isn't related to cylinders at all. You said you tried to create
a UNIX partition in the DOS partition? Do you mean replace the DOS slice
with a UNIX slice? Or create UNIX partitions in the UNIX slice? Or
(another possibility).
I'm not at my FreeBSD box now, but here's the procedure I go through that
you might mentally check against. Move the cursor down to wd0s3, hit (D)
(I think) to free up the space for that slice (wd0s3), move the cursor back
up to the free space pool at the top of the screen, hit (C)reate to create
a FreeBSD slice.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like you might not have marked your
old wd0s3 FAT partition for deletion (D) before trying to create a FreeBSD
slice in its place.
Randall
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19980122081347.46523>