Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 02:36:55 -0800 From: Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au> To: Robert Nordier <rnordier@freebsd.org> Cc: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com>, nate@yogotech.com, mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Here is what IBM thinks about using FreeBSD on their newer Thinkpads Message-ID: <200011301036.eAUAatD94336@mobile.wemm.org>
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Peter Wemm wrote:
> David Wolfskill wrote:
> > >From: Nate Williams <nate@yogotech.com>
> > >Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 10:48:34 -0700 (MST)
> >
> > >> >Didn't Robert shrink it back to 1 sector after 4.1 was released? It
> > >> >would be interesting to know if the 'smaller' bootblock worked as well.
> >
> > >> No; jhb found that there was a bug in the boot0 code & fixed it. My
> > >> archived mail shows that most of the work occurred on 04 August.
> >
> > >Hmm, the log message I'm reading says:
> >
> > > date: 2000/10/02 17:30:22; author: rnordier; state: Exp; lines: +77 -
15
> 1
> > > Go back to occupying just a single sector, reverting r1.17 - r1.20.
> > >[SNIP
> >
> > Right; I expressed myself poorly: what I meant by the above is that the
> > thing that fixed the boot-hang (back in August) was not a change in the
> > size of boot0, but jhb locating & fixing a bug. (I meant no slight to
> > either jhb or rnordier; I hope that's clear.)
>
> This has nothing to do with the problem at hand. We had a thinkpad
> something-20 belonging to a friend of a friend. The bios would lock up with
> *any* FreeBSD installed all the way back to 2.2.5. ie: 2.2.x, 3.x, 4,x and
> 5.x *ALL* didn't work.
>
> ie: bootblocks are not relevant.
>
> >
> > >This is the last commit made to the boot0 code for i386. Ahh, but this
> > >code didn't make it back into FreeBSD 4.X, so 4.2 *might* still be
> > >succeptible if this is a 2-sector boot0 bug.
> >
> > True, though other evidence (in this thread) indicates that at least
> > part of the problem occurs even if a single sector is all that is used.
>
> The bios locks up regardless of which bootblock are used.. 1k, 0.5k, old 3.x,
> or a.out 2.x bootblocks. It simply does not like the partitioning.
>
> Somebody else has suggested that the secret to making FreeBSD work on this
> laptop is to have windows set up on the first slice and part of the disk, and
> set up and *use* suspend-to-FAT32 *before* installing freebsd.
>
> However, if you do this, you windows partition must be less than 8GB as the
> 0.5k bootblocks are not able to boot from above-8G. ie: only 4.x is
> compatable. If rnordier backs this feature out of 4.x too, then 4.x will
> be broken as well because he has not replaced the functionality that he
> destroyed (ie: automatic above-8G support).
This was uncalled for. I apologize to Robert for going over the top here.
On further reading of the mailing list (buried in my mailbox with 7197
other as-yet unread messages), I see that Robert has already pointed out
that the actual bootblocks are likely to have nothing to do with it.
I should not have let my frustration at IBM be misdirected at another
developer who was an innocent bystander.
I should be the last one to complain about missing features of
works-in-progress considering how many loose ends I am presently
implicated in.
Cheers,
-Peter
--
Peter Wemm - peter@FreeBSD.org; peter@yahoo-inc.com; peter@netplex.com.au
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5
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