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Date:      Sat, 10 Jun 2000 02:22:19 +0100
From:      Mark Ovens <mark@ukug.uk.freebsd.org>
To:        "Jasper O'Malley" <jooji@nickelkid.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: REVISED: Active partition problems with FreeBSD 4.0/NT dual-boot
Message-ID:  <20000610022218.C232@parish>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006091454020.33860-100000@cornflake.nickelkid.com>; from jooji@nickelkid.com on Fri, Jun 09, 2000 at 03:16:06PM -0400
References:  <20000609192827.D233@parish> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006091454020.33860-100000@cornflake.nickelkid.com>

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On Fri, Jun 09, 2000 at 03:16:06PM -0400, Jasper O'Malley wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 9 Jun 2000, Mark Ovens wrote:
> 
> > It did it again because you still have boot0 in C:\BOOTSECT.BSD. As I
> > explained, boot0, as found in /boot, has an *empty* PT as per the
> > dd(1) output I included. Get rid of C:\BOOTSECT.BSD.
> 
> I didn't boot off C:\BOOTSECT.BSD that time, I "hit F5, then hit F1" to
> boot back into FreeBSD (i.e. I did it entirely through the FreeBSD boot
> loader process). In fact, C:\BOOTSECT.BSD disappeared with everything else
> on the original NTFS partition when the partition table was overwritten ;)
> 

Yes, but those (F1... F5....) messages come from the FreeBSD loader
(boot0). NT obviously doesn't rewrite the MBR when installing.

Try booting from a DOS floppy and running ``FDISK /MBR'' then
re-installing NT.

> It did it again because the "active" flag in da0s1's partition table entry
> was cleared when I booted into FreeBSD. Upon reboot, the BIOS--seeing
> that no partitions were marked active on the lowest numbered BIOS drive--
> threw out the error message and stopped the boot again. It's a bug, but
> it's not uncommon, from what I've seen in the freebsd-questions archive
> and elsewhere.
> 

The BIOS can't boot from anything other than the first drive, that's
what boot managers are all about.


> For what it's worth, I followed the procedure in the FAQ to do what I did:
> 
>     "If FreeBSD is installed on the same disk as the NT boot partition
>      copy /boot/boot1 to c:\bootsect.bsd or if FreeBSD is installed on a
>      different disk copy /boot/boot0 to c:\bootsect.bsd."
> 
>      --from http://www.freebsd.org/FAQ/admin.html#AEN2066
> 
> Considering the results, the information in the FAQ should probably be
> changed.
> 

Yes, you are 100% correct and *I* accept partial responsibility for
this. About a year ago there was a long thread on -questions about
multi-OS booting and , since no-one chipped in with something like
"that's a load of bollocks, you'll trash your PT doing this", I took
what was said as gospel and submitted a PR. Obviously it is incorrect
(isn't hindsight a wonderful thing?) and I am working on revised
wording.

Sorry for the problems it has caused but it was done in all good faith.

> > If you want to use NTLDR to boot FreeBSD you *will* need boot0, but
> > you *must* let sysinstall install it and you *must* install it on
> > *both* disks.
> 
> It's already on both disks, at this point. It seems to have installed
> itself the one time I loaded C:\BOOTSECT.BSD off the NTLDR menu. Should I
> have expected this?
> 
> > The only other way that I can see, without re-installing FreeBSD, is
> > to get your system running and then boot FreeBSD from the Fixit floppy
> > and dd(1) *only* the first 446 bytes of boot0 to your MBR (the PT is
> > the last 66 bytes - 64 bytes + the 2-byte signature)
> 
> Thanks for that info; it'll definitely come in handy in the future,
> and now I know what the hell happened to the partition table on da0 the
> first time around.
> 
> The problem at the moment is simply that the "active" flag on da0s1 is
> unset every time I boot into FreeBSD. Now that boot0 is installed on both
> disks, I can make the system usable after booting into FreeBSD by
> remembering to use fdisk to set da0s1 active before rebooting, or by
> booting off a Win98 startup floppy, and using Win98 fdisk to set da0s1
> active. It's a pain, though. Should I just stick the appropriate fdisk
> command in rc.shutdown?
> 
> Cheers,
> Mick
> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
        ...and on the eighth day God created UNIX
________________________________________________________________
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