Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS
I wrote the message to which you replied, not Michael Clark. See my comments in-line. From: Hendrik Hasenbein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Michael Clark [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: 'Keith Kelly' [EMAIL PROTECTED], Derrick Ryalls [EMAIL PROTECTED], freebsd-bugs [EMAIL PROTECTED], 'freebsd-questions ORG' [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:57:18 +0100 Michael Clark wrote: I configure the two devices that way (CD-ROM as slave, hard drive as master), sysinstall refuses to mount the CD, giving me an error about CD/DVD drive not found!. It's worth noting that no other OS I've run on this same PC ever had any trouble finding the CD-ROM drive when it was configured as the slave. Strange. That you got that problems. I've been always using a CDROM on slave. Never had a problem there. Did you look if the BIOS was able to autodetect the cdrom on boot? Do you use cable select on one of them? Of course the BIOS auto-detected the CD-ROM fine -- the configuration had always worked with all other operating systems and software I had used on this PC. It didn't matter whether I used cable select or explicitly jumpered the devices as master/slave. In either case, if the CD-ROM was the slave, sysinstall failed to detect the CD-ROM. To get around _that_ problem, I had to configure the CD-ROM as the master and the hard drive as the slave. With the CD-ROM as the master, sysinstall is able to actually detect the CD/DVD drive, but then I run into this nonsense with fdisk refusing to detect or accept the correct disk geometry for the hard drive. It's worth noting that I've never had to manually specify hard drive geometry settings in the installer for any other OS I've installed on this PC. They figured it out automatically and worked fine. Another time: Just turn on LBA. LBA is already on on all my devices, and has been from the start. This is most definitely NOT the problem. Besides which, I already explained my findings on another thread on these aliases.. So far, I'm really disappointed by FreeBSD. If FreeBSD lacks the logic or detection to automatically figure all these things out and just work, that is a serious bug (whether due to a programmer mistake or poor software design). I've _never_ had this much trouble getting an operating system installed on this particular PC. It's due to poor hardware design in history. It's equally due to poor software design. If Windows and Linux can deal with the hardware fine, then FreeBSD should be able to also. If I can't get things working within about 1 more hour of tinkering, I'm going to abandon FreeBSD entirely, put my machine back together, and just use the drive as an extra NTFS filesystem for my personal files under Windows XP. That explains, why you don't want to switch from auto to LBA. Sometimes auto is the right thing, but most times you have to think of the right setting, because auto is just a default. (Example: If I leave all values set to auto in my bios, my system is going to creep literally, because some components wont interact correct) When people argue that Windows is easier, and that *nix isn't ready for the desktop, this is *exactly* the kind of problem that they are talking about. I hope any actual FreeBSD developers on these aliases wake up and take notice. The real problem is that we still work around design flaws which exist in hardware for a decade. Everybody uses his/her personal best workaround and sometimes they are in conflict. No, the real problem is a lack of thorough testing on a variety of hardware configurations, and a lack of developer interest in solving problems encountered by people other than themselves. Hendrik _ Get a FREE online virus check for your PC here, from McAfee. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963 ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FreeBSD/FDisk geometry problems - SOLVED!
See my comments in-line. From: Hendrik Hasenbein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Keith Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: FreeBSD/FDisk geometry problems - SOLVED! Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 10:43:17 +0100 Keith Kelly wrote: I've found a bug in FDisk which is responsible for all the problems I've had trying to get FreeBSD installed. I also found a work-around, and I'm happy to report I'm typing this message from Konquerer inside FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE right now. Gratulation. Basically, the problem is that FreeBSD's FDisk and the motherboard BIOS independently calculate a set of CHS values (Cylinders/Heads/Sectors) based on the total sector count of the disk, but they do it in different ways and thus end up with different values. Yes. That is because there are different ways to calculate that. Then FDisk should be updated to include awareness of ALL the different ways, so as to work on a wider variety of hardware. So, the problem is that FDisk makes *different* assumptions than my BIOS does about what the sectors and heads values should be. That has always been the problem for CHS conversions. Then why do Windows, BeOS, Linux, and SkyOS all get it right, while FreeBSD's fdisk is the only one that gets it wrong? I ran across some information on a BIOS manufacturer's site which claimed that for LBA mode SCSI drives (more accurately known as LBA-Assist translation mode), that it is safe to assume that sectors should be 63 and heads should be 255. Given that FreeBSD's roots and developer community seems historically SCSI-centric, I can see how these assumptions would have been picked up and used in FDisk and considered acceptable. But these assumed values are clearly not correct for how CHS gets calculated by many PC BIOSes for IDE drives. LBA is the only common mode known to all BIOS vendors, Harddrive manufactures and so on, because at least someone made up some assumptions and published them instead of developing their own CHS translation. SCSI was first to breach the BIOS CHS barrier on PCs and so they defined that method. If your BIOS is in auto mode, it tries to get the current format from the harddisk most times uses CHS, but will also find a disk with LBA. So in a modern system LBA would be the safe pick and not CHS. Most likely it picks it from disk (the partition table uses entries for cylinders, heads and sectors to describe the partitions), so the first fdisk sets the addressing the bios chooses. So to avoid conflicts and enhance the usabilty of your drive in different PCs and with different systems use LBA. As I've said multiple times now, LBA was already enabled on all my drives. Furthermore, I believe that the reason FDisk rejects the manually entered CHS of 19618/16/255 is because either (1) it tries to enforce those bad assumptions about heads and sectors, or (2) it gets confused by the rounding error. In other words, in the case of rounding error, FDisk may be taking the manually-entered values, multiplying them together, and seeing that it doesn't exactly match (or come close enough to, in its humble but flawed opinion) the total sector count for the drive. The way Fdisk's geometry validation ought to work is like this: - Divide the total sector count of the drive by (H*S), where H and S are the user-supplied values. - Round the result to the nearest whole number. - Compare that result to the user-supplied value for cylinders. - If the result matches, accept the user's input as good. The test will ensure that the user dont make typos, but it can't ensure that the C. H and S are arranged the same in both conversions. Uh, what? In the meantime, the workaround for anyone experiencing this problem is to go into their BIOS and set the hard drive to User mode, and manually enter the same C/H/S settings that FDisk calculated for the drive. Unfortunately, I think this means that if you have to repartition and reformat the entire drive, since the BIOS will now be addressing the drive using different C/H/S settings and will be unable to read any partitions that were formatting using different C/H/S addressing. So while there is a workaround, it is far from an ideal user experience. Better solution, put the IDE drives to LBA and you'll see that you All my drives already were set in the BIOS with LBA-mode On. This isn't just an issue with having LBA mode enabled or not in the BIOS. This is an issue with FDisk being deficient in how it calculates values for LBA IDE drives. get the same CHS every time and on every system except MSDOS 6.3. If you got a filesystem which doesnt bother about CHS and uses linear addressing you 'only' need a new partition table. After redoing the drive you can put the IDE back to Auto. Hendrik _ Check out the coupons and bargains on MSN Offers! http://shopping.msn.com/softcontent/softcontent.aspx?scmId=1418
Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS
My thought here is to double check that the drive is in the master position on the ribbon. Yeah, you would _think_ that would be the way to configure things. But when I configure the two devices that way (CD-ROM as slave, hard drive as master), sysinstall refuses to mount the CD, giving me an error about CD/DVD drive not found!. It's worth noting that no other OS I've run on this same PC ever had any trouble finding the CD-ROM drive when it was configured as the slave. To get around _that_ problem, I had to configure the CD-ROM as the master and the hard drive as the slave. With the CD-ROM as the master, sysinstall is able to actually detect the CD/DVD drive, but then I run into this nonsense with fdisk refusing to detect or accept the correct disk geometry for the hard drive. It's worth noting that I've never had to manually specify hard drive geometry settings in the installer for any other OS I've installed on this PC. They figured it out automatically and worked fine. If I just let fdisk use its suggested defaults for the geometry and proceed with the install, then when the system reboots off the hard drive I get Missing operating system. It's worth noting that I've never seen that severe of an error following any other OS installation claiming it was successful. So far, I'm really disappointed by FreeBSD. If FreeBSD lacks the logic or detection to automatically figure all these things out and just work, that is a serious bug (whether due to a programmer mistake or poor software design). I've _never_ had this much trouble getting an operating system installed on this particular PC. If I can't get things working within about 1 more hour of tinkering, I'm going to abandon FreeBSD entirely, put my machine back together, and just use the drive as an extra NTFS filesystem for my personal files under Windows XP. When people argue that Windows is easier, and that *nix isn't ready for the desktop, this is *exactly* the kind of problem that they are talking about. I hope any actual FreeBSD developers on these aliases wake up and take notice. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FreeBSD/FDisk geometry problems - SOLVED!
I've found a bug in FDisk which is responsible for all the problems I've had trying to get FreeBSD installed. I also found a work-around, and I'm happy to report I'm typing this message from Konquerer inside FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE right now. Basically, the problem is that FreeBSD's FDisk and the motherboard BIOS independently calculate a set of CHS values (Cylinders/Heads/Sectors) based on the total sector count of the disk, but they do it in different ways and thus end up with different values. My hard drive is a Maxtor 5T040H4. This is a 40GB ATA/100 IDE drive. Maxtor reports the physical geometry as 79408/16/63, which yields a total of 80043264 sectors. With a large drive like this, the catch is that 79408 is too big to fit in the cylinders field in the BIOS, so to make the drive work, you have to calculate an equivalent set of CHS values (decrease the cylinders value, while keeping the total sector count the same). For anyone who doens't know, the formula is like this: cylinders x heads x sectors = total sector count. My motherboard (MSI KT4 Ultra) BIOS calculates 19618/16/255 (80041440 total sectors). FreeBSD's FDisk calculates 4982/255/63 (80035830 total sectors). You'll notice that the total sector count is not the same, and you may wonder why. It's because of rounding error and the fact that the calculations were done in reverse. In theory, either set of CHS values should work fine, but the problem is that my BIOS picks one set and FDisk chooses another set -- and FDisk refuses to accept and use the set my BIOS calculated. For instance, my BIOS starts with the REAL total sector count of 80043264. It assumes a sector count of 255, and it assumes a heads count of 16. So it calculates cylinders as 80043264/(255x16)=19618.44706, which rounds down to 19618. My BIOS does all this calculation automatically for me because I chose Auto for the drive in the BIOS. FDisk also starts with the REAL total sector count of 80043264. But it assumes a sector count of 63, and it assumes a heads count of 255. So it calculates cylinders as 80043264/(63x255)=4982.462745, which rounds down to 4982. So, the problem is that FDisk makes *different* assumptions than my BIOS does about what the sectors and heads values should be. I ran across some information on a BIOS manufacturer's site which claimed that for LBA mode SCSI drives (more accurately known as LBA-Assist translation mode), that it is safe to assume that sectors should be 63 and heads should be 255. Given that FreeBSD's roots and developer community seems historically SCSI-centric, I can see how these assumptions would have been picked up and used in FDisk and considered acceptable. But these assumed values are clearly not correct for how CHS gets calculated by many PC BIOSes for IDE drives. Furthermore, I believe that the reason FDisk rejects the manually entered CHS of 19618/16/255 is because either (1) it tries to enforce those bad assumptions about heads and sectors, or (2) it gets confused by the rounding error. In other words, in the case of rounding error, FDisk may be taking the manually-entered values, multiplying them together, and seeing that it doesn't exactly match (or come close enough to, in its humble but flawed opinion) the total sector count for the drive. The way Fdisk's geometry validation ought to work is like this: - Divide the total sector count of the drive by (H*S), where H and S are the user-supplied values. - Round the result to the nearest whole number. - Compare that result to the user-supplied value for cylinders. - If the result matches, accept the user's input as good. I hope that a developer somewhere can take this information and put it to good use. I would be very happy to test a fix if someone can implement it. In the meantime, the workaround for anyone experiencing this problem is to go into their BIOS and set the hard drive to User mode, and manually enter the same C/H/S settings that FDisk calculated for the drive. Unfortunately, I think this means that if you have to repartition and reformat the entire drive, since the BIOS will now be addressing the drive using different C/H/S settings and will be unable to read any partitions that were formatting using different C/H/S addressing. So while there is a workaround, it is far from an ideal user experience. - Keith F. Kelly _ Check out the new MSN 9 Dial-up fast reliable Internet access with prime features! http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-uspage=dialup/homeST=1 ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS
Please see this page: http://lantech.geekvenue.net/chucktips/jason/chuck/1044789670/index_html This is exactly the problem I am having now whenever I try to install either FreeBSD 4.9 or 5.1. Clearly, a lot of other users out there are having this problem too. FDisk absolutely refuses to accept the correct geometry values (the ones my BIOS tells me it is using to address the disk), instead insisting on using some values that are not even close to correct. Then after installation completes and I try to boot, I get a missing operating system message, which is no surprise given that the disk was addressed by the installer using the wrong geometry settings. Why the hell doesn't FDisk properly read the geometry settings from the BIOS in the first place (so that don't have to look them up and enter them myself during install), and why the hell doesn't it accept the correct values when I enter them? Isn't there *ANY* way to force it to accept the values I give it? I have a hard time imagining how this could be considered low priority or not important by the developers of the system. This is clearly a major defect in either documentation (if this is user error, a LOT of users are having the problem, so documentation must be deficient), or a major defect in the code. DISCLAIMER: I don't know if you folks are like the Linux community, but don't tell me to find the bug and fix it yourself, or to quit whining. It's perfectly reasonable for a user of a piece of software to expect it to work right. I'm not a developer, and shouldn't have to be. That's why *other* people are developers, so that I don't have to be. - Keith F. Kelly ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS
Thanks for your thoughtful and helpful reply. I should have given more technical details. I already tried (with both 4.9 and 5.1) letting the FreeBSD install proceed with fdisk's geometry value assumptions, and what I always get is a non-bootable hard drive that gives the Missing operating system error at boot. The hard drive is IDE, not SCSI. It is a Maxtor UltraMax 40GB ATA/100 drive purchased shy of two years ago. The physical geometry reported by Maxtor in the specs for the drive is different from the geometry my BIOS reports that it has auto-detected and is using to address the drive. And both of *those* geometries are different from the one that fdisk keeps trying to assume. I've already read all the FAQs, handbooks, and support sites I could find regarding FreeBSD and disk geometry. None of them have contained any information specific to IDE drives (they all seem SCSI-centric), and none of them have clearly explained all the background context about how drive geometries work. I guess there is a physical geometry provided by the drive manufacturer, and then different geometries (all of which may be valid) your BIOS might use to address the drive depending on the mode it is using (LBA, etc). As far as I can tell, the geometry values a user is supposed to feed to fdisk are the values that the BIOS reports that it is using to address the drive, but I'm not even sure if that is correct because the documentation is so impenetrable. And of course many users are running into this issue where the drive geometries reported and used by their BIOS are simply rejected by fdisk as invalid whenever they try to enter them into fdisk, which makes no sense to me. - Original Message - From: Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Keith Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: freebsd-questions [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 12:44 PM Subject: Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS Please see this page: http://lantech.geekvenue.net/chucktips/jason/chuck/1044789670/index_html This is exactly the problem I am having now whenever I try to install either FreeBSD 4.9 or 5.1. Clearly, a lot of other users out there are having this problem too. FDisk absolutely refuses to accept the correct geometry values (the ones my BIOS tells me it is using to address the disk), instead insisting on using some values that are not even close to correct. Then after installation completes and I try to boot, I get a missing operating system message, which is no surprise given that the disk was addressed by the installer using the wrong geometry settings. Of about 100 to 110 FreeBSD systems we have up and going, I have never had the fdisk reported geometry match the BIOS reported information but I have never had a system fail to install and boot by just ignoring the whole issue and letting it (sysinstall, fdisk, etc) do its own thing as long as I didn't try to tinker with the geometry. This has been with both SCSI and IDE disks, but mostly SCSI and almost entirely on mainstream hardware such as what comes with Dell, Compaq, etc, not homebuilts. The FreeBSD versions have been most of 3.xx through most of 4.xx. I haven't tried any 5.xx yet but the person in the box (cubicle) next to me has 5.1 going and sees the same thing. There have been lots of things written about this. I don't know which ones apply in your case. But, the geometries on recent disks and recent versions of software (recent = in the last 6 or 7 years) are all virtual as far as I can see.So, just try letting it fly and without trying to tinker or reconcile what appears to be a conflict. jerry ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS
Yes, I tried it both ways (installing BootMgr, and installing a standard MBR). - Original Message - From: Chris Pressey [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Keith Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 2:38 PM Subject: Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 14:24:19 -0800 Keith Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks for your thoughtful and helpful reply. I should have given more technical details. I already tried (with both 4.9 and 5.1) letting the FreeBSD install proceed with fdisk's geometry value assumptions, and what I always get is a non-bootable hard drive that gives the Missing operating system error at boot. Hi Keith, Just to be sure - did you elect to install BootMgr (or a regular boot record) on the drive when sysinstall asks? -Chris ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS
See comments in-line. - Original Message - From: Charles Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Keith Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: freebsd-questions [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 2:56 PM Subject: Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS On Jan 22, 2004, at 5:24 PM, Keith Kelly wrote: I already tried (with both 4.9 and 5.1) letting the FreeBSD install proceed with fdisk's geometry value assumptions, and what I always get is a non-bootable hard drive that gives the Missing operating system error at boot. Sufficiently old motherboards and BIOS versions don't understand the LBA addressing mode used by modern drives, and are limited to seeing approx 8.4 GB using the classic C/H/S values. See whether the BIOS lets you configure the drive to LBA mode rather than automatic, C/H/S, or extended C/H/S mode. If it doesn't, check to see whether there is a BIOS update available for your hardware. The motherboard is not old. It is an MSI KT4 Ultra motherboard, if I remember the model number correctly off the top of my head, for the Athlon XP architecture. The BIOS doesn't even explicitly list what mode (LBA, CHS, extended CHS) it is using to address the drive -- I just set it to Auto, it detects the device name, and fills out a small listing telling me the C/H/S geometry it is using. The motherboard is already running the latest available BIOS update from MSI. It may be the case that this doesn't resolve the issue. You can try to create a small (say 32MB) DOS partition using classic MS-DOS 6.x or a utility from the drive manufacturer, and verify whether you can boot into that. If you can't and still get the missing OS error, you've got hardware issues and should consider replacing your MB. I definitely do not have hardware issues, because Linux, Windows XP, Windows 2000, BeOS, and SkyOS have all worked fine at various points, and Windows XP continues to work fine :-) If you can boot to a DOS partition on the hard disk, then try installing FreeBSD to the remaining space, leaving the DOS partition intact. This will give you a better shot of using a geometry that your BIOS is able to boot. [ The only hardware I've seen which required that kind of thing was a no-name P133 grade machine... ] -- -Chuck ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS
No -- no floppy in the floppy drive, and no CD in the CD-ROM drive. Only disk devices attached are the one hard drive, the CD-ROM, and the floppy, and in the BIOS boot sequence, only the one hard drive is set as the boot device. I *did* mark the slice I created using fdisk during FreeBSD install as bootable, and I *did* have the installer write (I've tried it both ways) either a standard MBR or install the BootMgr to the hard drive. There are no other partitions or OSes or anything on the hard drive, but it was previously running WinXP and that booted fine. And just for kicks, I was still able to boot off a DOS floppy, format the hard drive as a system device and put a minimal DOS install on it, and boot fine off the hard drive into DOS. - Original Message - From: Jerry McAllister [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Keith Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: Chris Pressey [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 3:35 PM Subject: Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS Yes, I tried it both ways (installing BootMgr, and installing a standard MBR). I just thought of one more awful thing which has happened to me on a number of occasions, way embarrassingly too many times. You don't happen to have a floppy disk in the floppy drive or possibly a non-bootable CD in the CD drive do you. That is where I see that message most often. If you tried to install using the two floppies, for example and didn't pull the second one out before rebooting, it would do that. The same would be true if you put one of the other CDs in the set to load some things. I'm still guessing something to do with the MBRs and boot blocks and whatever you called the 'a' partition in the slice, etc though. jerry - Original Message - From: Chris Pressey [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Keith Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 2:38 PM Subject: Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 14:24:19 -0800 Keith Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks for your thoughtful and helpful reply. I should have given more technical details. I already tried (with both 4.9 and 5.1) letting the FreeBSD install proceed with fdisk's geometry value assumptions, and what I always get is a non-bootable hard drive that gives the Missing operating system error at boot. Hi Keith, Just to be sure - did you elect to install BootMgr (or a regular boot record) on the drive when sysinstall asks? -Chris ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-bugs To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS
Inline. - Original Message - From: Charles Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Keith Kelly [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: freebsd-questions ORG [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 3:27 PM Subject: Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS On Jan 22, 2004, at 6:04 PM, Keith Kelly wrote: The motherboard is not old. It is an MSI KT4 Ultra motherboard, if I remember the model number correctly off the top of my head, for the Athlon XP architecture. The BIOS doesn't even explicitly list what mode (LBA, CHS, extended CHS) it is using to address the drive -- I just set it to Auto, it detects the device name, and fills out a small listing telling me the C/H/S geometry it is using. The motherboard is already running the latest available BIOS update from MSI. OK, but if the auto mode uses the wrong C/H/S translation, this default may be the source of your problem. What happens when you switch from using auto to explicitly using LBA? I don't know. I've never had to change away from Auto to get any other OS to install or boot from any of my hard drives, though, so I really doubt that is the problem. I'm quite confident the problem must lie with FreeBSD itself, in the form of a bug or a lack of hardware support. Although my integrated IDE controller and all other basic hardware is on the FreeBSD supported hardware list. [ ... ] I definitely do not have hardware issues, because Linux, Windows XP, Windows 2000, BeOS, and SkyOS have all worked fine at various points, and Windows XP continues to work fine :-) Your error message reflects a BIOS-level failure to find a bootable partition. Do you already have a bootable partition on the system, and are trying to install FreeBSD in a second partition? If so, which partition is marked active? No. The hard drive is the only hard drive attached (I detached my two other drives with WinXP and data files on them, so they couldn't get inadvertently hosed during installation... those two devices were on the primary IDE chain. I moved the blank hard drive and the CD-ROM drive, which were on the secondary IDE chain, onto the primary IDE chain to try to get FreeBSD installed that way. There's currently nothing on the secondary IDE chain). And, I did ensure in all my attempts that I marked the single full-disk slice I created with fdisk as bootable. -- -Chuck ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: FreeBSD 4.9: Installation: CD-ROM problems
I bought longer ATA/133 cables and reconfigured the wiring of my IDE devices. The mid-cable connector supposedly should go to the slave device, according to the labels on the cables. So now the wiring arrangement is consistent with how the devices are jumpered. Still, sysinstall is unable to mount any CDs. I do notice that when the kernal load while booting from the CD, it detects all 5 of my disk devices. Anyone else want to take a stab at this? One user's choice of whether to love or hate FreeBSD hangs in the balance... - Keith - Original Message - From: fbsd_user Good job of doing your homework. Lets continue on with the intent of the FAQ you quoted. Are your HD jumpered as master and slave or are they jumpered as CS for cable select? The 2 nipples on the IDE ribbon have predefined meanings as to which one is the master nipple and which one is the slave nipple. Jumpering your IDE drives to CS uses the predefined meanings of the nipples. I have always jumpered my IDE devices as master or slave and plug them into the correct ribbon nipple. Check it out, and post your results. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Keith Kelly Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 12:25 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FreeBSD 4.9: Installation: CD-ROM problems From the FreeBSD FAQ (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/install.html#NO-INSTALL-CDROM): -- 3.16. I booted from my ATAPI CDROM, but the install program says no CDROM is found. Where did it go? The usual cause of this problem is a mis-configured CDROM drive. Many PCs now ship with the CDROM as the slave device on the secondary IDE controller, with no master device on that controller. This is illegal according to the ATAPI specification, but Windows plays fast and loose with the specification, and the BIOS ignores it when booting. This is why the BIOS was able to see the CDROM to boot from it, but why FreeBSD cannot see it to complete the install. Reconfigure your system so that the CDROM is either the master device on the IDE controller it is attached to, or make sure that it is the slave on an IDE controller that also has a master device. --- Well, I'm hitting exactly this problem with the install program after booting off the CD, but in my case the CDROM *is* the slave device on an IDE controller that also has a master device! My configuration is as follows: - IDE1 master: hard drive - IDE1 slave: hard drive - IDE2 master: hard drive - IDE2 slave: CD-ROM drive I'm a long-time Windows user who has dabbled in Linux and hated a lot about it. After reading about FreeBSD, I'm really excited to install it and try it out. But I can't even get into the installation process because of this issue. Can anyone help? I've searched newsgroup and e-mail list archives and have found nothing relevant. - Keith ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FreeBSD 4.9: Installation: CD-ROM problems
From the FreeBSD FAQ (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/install.html#NO-INSTALL-CDROMhttp://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/install.html#NO-INSTALL-CDROM): -- 3.16. I booted from my ATAPI CDROM, but the install program says no CDROM is found. Where did it go? The usual cause of this problem is a mis-configured CDROM drive. Many PCs now ship with the CDROM as the slave device on the secondary IDE controller, with no master device on that controller. This is illegal according to the ATAPI specification, but Windows plays fast and loose with the specification, and the BIOS ignores it when booting. This is why the BIOS was able to see the CDROM to boot from it, but why FreeBSD cannot see it to complete the install. Reconfigure your system so that the CDROM is either the master device on the IDE controller it is attached to, or make sure that it is the slave on an IDE controller that also has a master device. --- Well, I'm hitting exactly this problem with the install program after booting off the CD, but in my case the CDROM *is* the slave device on an IDE controller that also has a master device! My configuration is as follows: - IDE1 master: hard drive - IDE1 slave: hard drive - IDE2 master: hard drive - IDE2 slave: CD-ROM drive I'm a long-time Windows user who has dabbled in Linux and hated a lot about it. After reading about FreeBSD, I'm really excited to install it and try it out. But I can't even get into the installation process because of this issue. Can anyone help? I've searched newsgroup and e-mail list archives and have found nothing relevant. - Keith ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
