Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 00:31:46 +0000 From: "Brian Candler" <B.Candler@dial.pipex.com> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: FreeBSD boot problem Message-ID: <199606052342.AAA03014@typhoon.dial.pipex.net>
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Hello all,
I'm having a problem getting FreeBSD 2.1(from the Walnut Creek CD-ROM to
boot after installation, and I need it running quickly! Walnut Creek tech
support has suggested I dedicate the entire hard drive to FreeBSD, but I
was wondering if anyone could come up with an alternative solution before
I take this drastic step.
I am using a 486/66 PC, 16MB RAM, 1.2GB IDE hard disk. I had previously
installed Windows 95 in a 500MB partition, leaving the rest free for other
OSes - but when I read the installation book I learned that the FreeBSD
root filesystem must be within the first 504MB... how annoying!
So, what I did was to boot FreeBSD from floppy and run the 'fixit' disk,
create an identically-sized 500MB partition at the end of the disk with
fdisk, use 'dd' to copy all the Win95 data from the beginning to the end of
the disk, then delete the initial partition. This is fine: Windows 95 still
boots happily.
----------------------------------------------------------
| Old Win95 | |
----------------------------------------------------------
v
v
----------------------------------------------------------
| | New Win95 |
----------------------------------------------------------
Now I had 700MB free at the start of the disk, so I installed FreeBSD,
giving it 300MB of space (leaving me 400MB to play with later, e.g. for
Linux). The installation went fine.
----------------------------------------------------------
| FreeBSD | | New Win95 |
----------------------------------------------------------
However, when I restart, press F1 for the boot manager to select the BSD
partition, and hit Enter at the boot: prompt, the system just hangs. Here
is what I get:
>> FreeBSD BOOT @ 0x10000: 637/15616 k of memory
Use hd(1,a)/kernel to boot sd0 when wd0 is also installed
Usage: [[wd(0,a)]/kernel][-abcCdhrsv]
Use ? for file list or press Enter for defaults
Boot: {here I hit Enter}
|
That's it - "|" and no more. If I hit '?' then Enter at the Boot: prompt,
the same happens.
If I hit F4 at the boot manager prompt, Windows 95 boots up fine.
Here is the partition table, as shown by booting FreeBSD from floppy and
using the fixit disk, and running 'fdisk':
# fdisk
******* Working on device /dev/rwd0 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=621 heads=64 sectors/track=63 (4032 blks/cyl)
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=621 heads=64 sectors/track=63 (4032 blks/cyl)
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 0 is:
sysid 165,(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
start 63, size 612801 (299 Meg), flag 80
beg: cyl 0/ sector 1/ head 1;
end: cyl 151/ sector 63/ head 63
The data for partition 1 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
sysid 6,(Primary 'big' DOS (> 32 MB))
start 1479807, size 1024065 (500 Meg), flag 0
beg: cyl 367/ sector 1/ head 1;
end: cyl 620/ sector 63/ head 63
#
The disk drive is a Western Digital WDAC31200, for which the BIOS setup is
normally 2484 cylinders/16 heads/63 sectors per track. fdisk reports
621/64/63 instead, which I suspect is an EIDE artifact. Besides, Win95
boots happily, so I presume the partition table is OK.
The FreeBSD slice is partitioned into 20MB root, 32MB swap, 40MB /var, and
the the remaining 207MB /usr.
If you can shed any light it would be much appreciated!
Thanks in advance,
Brian.
<B.Candler@dial.pipex.com>
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