Re: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed
Gayn Winters wrote: -Original Message- From: Alex Zbyslaw [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2005 1:59 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed Gayn Winters wrote: Alex Zbyslaw [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Why do you think it's not safe to add hard drives? It doesn't seem safe if Windows blows away the multiboot MBR that FreeBSD so carefully made! Windows overwriting the MBR seems to be the reason people recommend loading Windows before loading FreeBSD, which I do. I just never realized that this problem would come back to bite me when I added another disk drive. I know of know reason why it should. I've added disks half a dozen times without blowing away any MBRs. Even the Windows blowing away the MBR is an annoyance, not a disaster since it is easy to rewrite. Whatever pickle you find yourself in seems to have to do with more than just adding a disk or Windows killing your MBR. --Alex I certainly am willing to admit that I'm doing something stupid! The motherboard and its BIOS are also known to be strange. One thing to note is that if I reconfigure (fresh FBSD install), add hardware, and then boot first into FBSD, all is well EXCEPT the boot loader, whose prompt is: F1 ??? F2 FreeBSD F5 Drive 1 Default: F2 If I select F2, then I get FreeBSD. If I select F5 I get Windows! I.e. F5 gives me the same slice as does F1!!! (Drive1 is the extra IDE drive.) I can't blame Windows for this, since it never got booted. Also, if FBSD gets booted first, Windows doesn't (further) corrupt the MBR. Incidentally, rewriting the MBR with boot0cfg -B -o packet /dev/ad1 does not change anything. The F5 option is still there, and it still brings up the Windows that is on slice1. If I add a third IDE drive, the situation also remains the same. In particular, I don't get an F9 option. I know too little about your setup. Are you sure ad1 is your second disk? (There's nothing to stop you booting from any disk whatsoever if you BIOS allows, and many do). When you boot off F2, what does say df show? If you had a FreeBSD MBR on the second disk, then you *ought* to get another F1, F2 etc menu. If you have a third disk, then the second disk would also have an F5 option e.g. DISK1 DISK2 DISK3 F5-DISK2 F5-DISK3 F5-DISK1 There's never anything higher than F5 since there can never be more than 4 slices on a disk (F1-F4), plus F5 for the next disk (if any). --Alex ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed
Gayn Winters wrote: Alex Zbyslaw [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Why do you think it's not safe to add hard drives? It doesn't seem safe if Windows blows away the multiboot MBR that FreeBSD so carefully made! Windows overwriting the MBR seems to be the reason people recommend loading Windows before loading FreeBSD, which I do. I just never realized that this problem would come back to bite me when I added another disk drive. I know of know reason why it should. I've added disks half a dozen times without blowing away any MBRs. Even the Windows blowing away the MBR is an annoyance, not a disaster since it is easy to rewrite. Whatever pickle you find yourself in seems to have to do with more than just adding a disk or Windows killing your MBR. I need to be able to operate on my clients' disks. Sometimes I need a tool that runs under Windows, and other times I need a tool that runs under FBSD. This doesn't permit adding an OS to their disks. I don't really understand what you're saying here; sorry. Dual boot machines are really common (I have three here) and despite adding disks to each of them at some point in their lives, I've never ended up with anything going wrong. A bootable external USB drive may be the ideal Fixit drive ... Of course, I'd rather figure out how not to have the problem at all! It would be nice if FreeBSD could write out whatever changes to the MBR and the partition/slice tables that the new hardware required so that Windows didn't feel obligated to fix things. FreeBSD can do that. I'm not denying that you're in a pickle, but that is not a necessary consequence of adding a disk. --Alex ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed
-Original Message- From: Alex Zbyslaw [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2005 1:59 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed Gayn Winters wrote: Alex Zbyslaw [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Why do you think it's not safe to add hard drives? It doesn't seem safe if Windows blows away the multiboot MBR that FreeBSD so carefully made! Windows overwriting the MBR seems to be the reason people recommend loading Windows before loading FreeBSD, which I do. I just never realized that this problem would come back to bite me when I added another disk drive. I know of know reason why it should. I've added disks half a dozen times without blowing away any MBRs. Even the Windows blowing away the MBR is an annoyance, not a disaster since it is easy to rewrite. Whatever pickle you find yourself in seems to have to do with more than just adding a disk or Windows killing your MBR. --Alex I certainly am willing to admit that I'm doing something stupid! The motherboard and its BIOS are also known to be strange. One thing to note is that if I reconfigure (fresh FBSD install), add hardware, and then boot first into FBSD, all is well EXCEPT the boot loader, whose prompt is: F1 ??? F2 FreeBSD F5 Drive 1 Default: F2 If I select F2, then I get FreeBSD. If I select F5 I get Windows! I.e. F5 gives me the same slice as does F1!!! (Drive1 is the extra IDE drive.) I can't blame Windows for this, since it never got booted. Also, if FBSD gets booted first, Windows doesn't (further) corrupt the MBR. Incidentally, rewriting the MBR with boot0cfg -B -o packet /dev/ad1 does not change anything. The F5 option is still there, and it still brings up the Windows that is on slice1. If I add a third IDE drive, the situation also remains the same. In particular, I don't get an F9 option. I'm still in a curious pickle, but at least this one isn't choking me! Thanks again for the help! -gayn ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed
Gayn Winters wrote: Alex Zbyslaw [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Why do you think it's not safe to add hard drives? It doesn't seem safe if Windows blows away the multiboot MBR that FreeBSD so carefully made! Windows overwriting the MBR seems to be the reason people recommend loading Windows before loading FreeBSD, which I do. I just never realized that this problem would come back to bite me when I added another disk drive. I know of know reason why it should. I've added disks half a dozen times without blowing away any MBRs. Even the Windows blowing away the MBR is an annoyance, not a disaster since it is easy to rewrite. Whatever pickle you find yourself in seems to have to do with more than just adding a disk or Windows killing your MBR. --Alex I certainly am willing to admit that I'm doing something stupid! The motherboard and its BIOS are also known to be strange. One thing to note is that if I reconfigure (fresh FBSD install), add hardware, and then boot first into FBSD, all is well EXCEPT the boot loader, whose prompt is: F1 ??? F2 FreeBSD F5 Drive 1 Default: F2 If I select F2, then I get FreeBSD. If I select F5 I get Windows! I.e. F5 gives me the same slice as does F1!!! (Drive1 is the extra IDE drive.) I can't blame Windows for this, since it never got booted. That sounds correct to me. F1-F4 would be the the [up t0] four slices on the first disk and then F5 tells it to look on the second disk. There is looks for an MBR. If it happened to be a FreeBSD MBR you should get a second menu something like F1 ??? F2 FreeBSD, F3 DOS, etc. But if it is an MS MBR, it will only know to boot MSxxx. Also, if FBSD gets booted first, Windows doesn't (further) corrupt the MBR. Incidentally, rewriting the MBR with boot0cfg -B -o packet /dev/ad1 does not change anything. The F5 option is still there, and it still brings up the Windows that is on slice1. If I add a third IDE drive, the situation also remains the same. In particular, I don't get an F9 option. You would never get an F9. They are only F1--F4 +F5 which takes you to the next disk's F1-F4.What the MBR on the second disk does when you hit F5 depends on what MBR is on it. You may have something weird on the second disk. I really don't know from what you say. But, at least the main boot disk (ad0 ??) behavior looks correct. Adding the FreeBSD MBR to the second disk wouldn't change much if the slice on the second disk has a boot sector that boots MSxxx. If it is MS, it may insist on booting from the first disk anyway. I am not that familiar with weirdnesses from MS other than that they are weird. jerry I'm still in a curious pickle, but at least this one isn't choking me! Thanks again for the help! -gayn ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed
Gayn Winters wrote: Life was good until I wanted to add another disk. The w2k operating system, when booted, saw the new hardware, installed it, and demanded that I reboot. OK, but when I did, the FreeBSD boot manager was trashed. Its menu looked like: F1 ??? F2 FreeBSD F5 Default: F# I could not boot either operating system. In fact the only keys that did anything were ctrl-alt-del! I removed the new hardware and using Fixit on the 5.4 release CD, I tried boot0cfg -B ad1 This recovered the boot manager, and allowed me to boot w2k, but FBSD wouldn't boot. Pressing F2 in the boot menu still did nothing. How far into the disk was FreeBSD? I had a similar problem until I specified -o packet i.e. boot0cfg -B -o packet ad1 You could also try writing the boot manager using sysinstall/boot CD: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=61+617364+/usr/local/www/db/text/2005/freebsd-questions/20050626.freebsd-questions --Alex ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed
Gayn Winters [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 1. What did/do I need to do to completely fix the Master Boot Record? (Short of reinstalling FreeBSD!) I like what the other guy said about -o packet. 2. Was the disk label on the FreeBSD slice ad1s2 really corrupted? If Unlikely, at least until you ran sysinstall. I've never figured out how it handles existing disklabels. Badly, in my limited experience. Use bsdlabel from a rescue CD and see what you have there. If you're concered about the mount points, mount the / device and look in /etc/fstab. 3. I couldn't get sysinstall to fix this mess - even though I thought it was fixing the FreeBSD partition mount points and applying a new BSD Boot Manager. I couldn't get these fixes to commit. Can sysinstall fix this mess without reinstalling? I'd use a rescue system -- either CD or another hard disk. 4. How do I avoid this situation when I add another disk? (Other than trash the w2k partition.) I don't know about dual-booting MSFT, but you could dd the first tracks of the HDD and it's primary partitions to files on a formatted floppy or two for safe-keeping, before doing anything that could mess up the boot records. You might want to save the first track of your FreeBSD primary partition too. You can then put them (or selected sectors) back with dd from most unixy rescue OSes. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed
-Original Message- From: Alex Zbyslaw [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 2:06 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed Gayn Winters wrote: Life was good with my dual boot w2k/fbsd system until I wanted to add another disk. The w2k operating system, when booted, saw the new hardware, installed it, and demanded that I reboot. OK, but when I did, the FreeBSD boot manager was trashed. Its menu looked like: F1 ??? F2 FreeBSD F5 Default: F# I could not boot either operating system. In fact the only keys that did anything were ctrl-alt-del! I removed the new hardware and using Fixit on the 5.4 release CD, I tried boot0cfg -B ad1 This recovered the boot manager, and allowed me to boot w2k, but FBSD wouldn't boot. Pressing F2 in the boot menu still did nothing. How far into the disk was FreeBSD? I had a similar problem until I specified -o packet i.e. boot0cfg -B -o packet ad1 Ah ha! FreeBSD started at cylinder 41610. Looks like I definitely needed the packet option. You could also try writing the boot manager using sysinstall/boot CD: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=61+617364+/usr/local/www /db/text/2005/freebsd-questions/20050626.freebsd-questions --Alex You know, I think I tried that, unsuccessfully. Here are Gary's thoughts: -Original Message- From: Gary W. Swearingen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 8:03 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed Gayn Winters [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 2. Was the disk label on the FreeBSD slice ad1s2 really corrupted? Unlikely, at least until you ran sysinstall. I've never figured out how it handles existing disklabels. Badly, in my limited experience. Use bsdlabel from a rescue CD and see what you have there. If you're concerned about the mount points, mount the / device and look in /etc/fstab. 3. I couldn't get sysinstall to fix this mess - even though I thought it was fixing the FreeBSD partition mount points and applying a new BSD Boot Manager. I couldn't get these fixes to commit. Can sysinstall fix this mess without reinstalling? I'd use a rescue system -- either CD or another hard disk. 4. How do I avoid this situation when I add another disk? (Other than trash the w2k partition.) I don't know about dual-booting MSFT, but you could dd the first tracks of the HDD and it's primary partitions to files on a formatted floppy or two for safe-keeping, before doing anything that could mess up the boot records. You might want to save the first track of your FreeBSD primary partition too. You can then put them (or selected sectors) back with dd from most unixy rescue OSes. Regarding repair: Alex (above) seemed to think sysinstall would do it, but I tried a couple times (reloading FreeBSD each time) and gave up. Given Gary's comments, I suspect that I corrupted the disk label on the FreeBSD partition mis-using sysinstall somehow. I like Gary's idea of a spare copy of the MBR saved on a floppy. Seems like good insurance. Regarding avoidance: I would still like to add additional hard drives to my dual boot systems. Is there any safe way to do this? Thanks!!! -gayn ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed
Gayn Winters wrote: Regarding repair: Alex (above) seemed to think sysinstall would do it, but I tried a couple times (reloading FreeBSD each time) and gave up. Given Gary's comments, I suspect that I corrupted the disk label on the FreeBSD partition mis-using sysinstall somehow. Sorry, I didn't follow the whole discussion; I have no idea how sysinstall might handle a corrupted disk label, but I do think that when it works, it will do -o packet writing the MBR when it thinks it necessary, possibly by default. I thought you'd said that you'd run boot0cfg from a fixit shell, and all I was really suggesting was that -o packet would fix your boot selection issue. Regarding avoidance: I would still like to add additional hard drives to my dual boot systems. Is there any safe way to do this? Why do you think it's not safe to add hard drives? My own policy is to have every disk in my system capable of booting FreeBSD, some more than once (mostly to allow easy upgrading between major revisions, or to allow me to try out 6.X ow whatever), but even a disk mostly given over to , say, XP, will have a bit at the end that boots BSD. Doesn't solve everything, but even if one disk goes ka-blooey I'll be able to boot something more than a fixit shell (I hope :-)). My new policy is to have a hardcopy of fstab, df and all bsdlabels for all partitions... being printed even as this email is being sent :-) --Alex ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed
-Original Message- From: Alex Zbyslaw [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 2:43 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed Gayn Winters wrote: Regarding avoidance: I would still like to add additional hard drives to my dual boot systems. Is there any safe way to do this? Why do you think it's not safe to add hard drives? It doesn't seem safe if Windows blows away the multiboot MBR that FreeBSD so carefully made! Windows overwriting the MBR seems to be the reason people recommend loading Windows before loading FreeBSD, which I do. I just never realized that this problem would come back to bite me when I added another disk drive. My own policy is to have every disk in my system capable of booting FreeBSD, some more than once (mostly to allow easy upgrading between major revisions, or to allow me to try out 6.X or whatever), but even a disk mostly given over to , say, XP, will have a bit at the end that boots BSD. Doesn't solve everything, but even if one disk goes ka-blooey I'll be able to boot something more than a fixit shell (I hope :-)). My new policy is to have a hardcopy of fstab, df and all bsdlabels for all partitions... being printed even as this email is being sent :-) --Alex I need to be able to operate on my clients' disks. Sometimes I need a tool that runs under Windows, and other times I need a tool that runs under FBSD. This doesn't permit adding an OS to their disks. A bootable external USB drive may be the ideal Fixit drive ... Of course, I'd rather figure out how not to have the problem at all! It would be nice if FreeBSD could write out whatever changes to the MBR and the partition/slice tables that the new hardware required so that Windows didn't feel obligated to fix things. Thanks for the help, -gayn ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fixing a MBR (and more) that ??? trashed
I recently installed Windows 2000 and FreeBSD 5.4 on an old HP Pavilion XG836. [The FreeBSD installation was a breeze (Kudos to the FBSD hardware team), while w2k was a disaster! But, that's another story...] For reasons of space and cabling (it is a very small box) I put the CD as the master and the HDD as the slave on a single IDE cable so that the HDD was ad1. I dual booted using the FreeBSD Boot Manager. Life was good until I wanted to add another disk. The w2k operating system, when booted, saw the new hardware, installed it, and demanded that I reboot. OK, but when I did, the FreeBSD boot manager was trashed. Its menu looked like: F1 ??? F2 FreeBSD F5 Default: F# I could not boot either operating system. In fact the only keys that did anything were ctrl-alt-del! I removed the new hardware and using Fixit on the 5.4 release CD, I tried boot0cfg -B ad1 This recovered the boot manager, and allowed me to boot w2k, but FBSD wouldn't boot. Pressing F2 in the boot menu still did nothing. Fdisk indicated that the two slices were ok, and the disklabel in sysinstall showed that the partitions in ad1s2 were fine, but the mounting information was apparently gone. If I went into Fixit, disklabel (bsdlabel) indicated that the label on ad1s2 was bad. I was a little surprised, since I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that all the corruption that w2k caused was in the Master Boot Record. I tried fixing it with the disklabel in sysinstall without luck. Back in Fixit mode, I could execute bsdlabel -w ad1s2, I couldn't get bsdlabel -e ad1s2 to work since I couldn't get an editor to run. EDITOR was /mnt/stand/vi, which didn't work and blanking EDITOR didn't work either. Reinstalling FreeBSD brought everything back. Questions: 1. What did/do I need to do to completely fix the Master Boot Record? (Short of reinstalling FreeBSD!) 2. Was the disk label on the FreeBSD slice ad1s2 really corrupted? If so, I tend to doubt that w2k did it; hence, the culprit would be ... me! What did I do? 3. I couldn't get sysinstall to fix this mess - even though I thought it was fixing the FreeBSD partition mount points and applying a new BSD Boot Manager. I couldn't get these fixes to commit. Can sysinstall fix this mess without reinstalling? 4. How do I avoid this situation when I add another disk? (Other than trash the w2k partition.) TIA, -gayn ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
