Re: Asus P3B-F MoBo -> Invalid partition table (5.x, 6.x)

2006-04-03 Thread wc_fbsd 

At 11:35 AM 4/3/2006, Ewald Jenisch wrote:
o) Has anybody else experienced this behavior - possibly also on a 
PC with Asus P3B-F motherboard?


I have a few systems around with that board, and have never 
experienced such troubles with 4, 5, or 6.  Just use the "auto" 
setting.  What do you have set in the bios' boot menu for device boot 
order?  If you hit "esc" on the keyboard, this mobo will offer a menu 
of boot devices, allowing you to completely override the bios setting.


   -Wayne

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"

Asus P3B-F MoBo -> Invalid partition table (5.x, 6.x)

2006-04-03 Thread Ewald Jenisch 

Hi,

I ran into an interesting problem installing FreeBSD on the following
hardware:

MoBo: Asus P3B-F, latest BIOS 
CPU: PIII, 500MHz 
HD: Maxtor 90871U2 (9GB) = primary IDE master 
CD: Sony CDU 4811 = secondary IDE master 
256MB RAM 
Boot Sequence: Floppy, CD, HD 

FreeBSD is to be installed into two slices on the HD - one slice for
everything except /home, the other one for /home.

The problem: When installing FreeBSD (doesn't matter 5.x or 6.x) the
PC can't be booted off the HD after installation. When trying to boot
I get an error message saying "invalid partition table".

Digging further into the problem I've found out a workaround: When I
change the BIOS-parameters for the HD to "User Defined Harddisk" and
"LBA" booting is possible.

Even more: during initial installation of FreeBSD it doesn't matter if
the setting for the HD in the BIOS is Auto or User-defined/LBA -
however when trying to boot off the HD this setting does very well
matter. To cross-check I've installed FreeBSD with a HD-setting of
Auto, then changed the BIOS to User-defined/LBA and was able to boot
the PC from the HD.

Please note that this happens with both 5.4, 6.0 and 6.1-Beta4.

When checking the BIOS-settings I found out that Auto and
User-defined/LBA show different values:

Auto-setting: (PC cannot boot from HD with these settings)
Cylinders   1024
Heads   16
Sectors 63
CHS capacity528MB
Maximum LBA Capacity8700MB



User-defined HD / LBA: (PC can boot from HD)
Cylinders   1024
Heads   255
Sectors 63
CHS capacity8422M
Maximum LBA Capacity8700MB


Here are my questions:

o) Has anybody else experienced this behavior - possibly also on a PC
with Asus P3B-F motherboard?

o) Why does this happen? (I suppose something weird with HD-geometry,
i.e. the BIOS not reflecting the correct HD-parameters)

o) Is there a way to boot with the HD-parameters in the BIOS left to
default (Auto)?


Thanks much in advance for your help,
-ewald

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"