Re: Can FreeBSD safely use a (un-booted from) drive that is invisible to the BIOS?
Danny MacMillan wrote: Hi, I have a machine with the following two drives (as listed in dmesg): ad0: 12427MB Maxtor 91303D6 GAS54A12 at ata0-master UDMA33 ad2: 76319MB Maxtor 6L080P0 BAJ41G10 at ata1-master UDMA33 ad0 is the boot drive. It is recognized by the BIOS, obviously, and has been in the machine for some years. ad2 is a new drive I just added to the machine yesterday. It is not visible to the BIOS at all. If anyone can posit a reason it would not be visible to the BIOS, I would like to know the answer. The BIOS supports LBA and ad0 is more than 8GB so it wouldn't appear to be the 8GB limit, and the next limit I am aware of is comfortably larger than 76GB. There were quite a few BIOSes that had a 32GB limit; thus, HD manufacturers contrived a (usually) dual-jumpered configuration to limit the reported disk size to 32 GB for these boards. In my experience (which is not extensive) these would be relatively early ATX boards (Pentium II, early K6/2's, etc.). Kevin Kinsey -- Sentient plasmoids are a gas. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Can FreeBSD safely use a (un-booted from) drive that is invisible to the BIOS?
You have 2 problems here. bios not seeing the HD and the old FBSD HD geometry WARNING. For the FBSD HD geometry WARNING you can just let FBSD use what ever it thinks it should be. This is not a problem. Your bios problem is most likely a hardware config thing. If the 2 HDs are on the same ribbon are the HD jumpers set correctly, (master/slave for right nipple on the ribbon or both cs for cable select) Do you have a ata type cdrom drive on the ribbon? Same thing about jumpers here to. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Danny MacMillan Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 3:06 PM To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Can FreeBSD safely use a (un-booted from) drive that is invisible to the BIOS? Hi, I have a machine with the following two drives (as listed in dmesg): ad0: 12427MB Maxtor 91303D6 GAS54A12 at ata0-master UDMA33 ad2: 76319MB Maxtor 6L080P0 BAJ41G10 at ata1-master UDMA33 ad0 is the boot drive. It is recognized by the BIOS, obviously, and has been in the machine for some years. ad2 is a new drive I just added to the machine yesterday. It is not visible to the BIOS at all. If anyone can posit a reason it would not be visible to the BIOS, I would like to know the answer. The BIOS supports LBA and ad0 is more than 8GB so it wouldn't appear to be the 8GB limit, and the next limit I am aware of is comfortably larger than 76GB. At any rate ... it is not visible to the BIOS, but it is visible to FreeBSD. Since I'm not booting from the drive, I think it shouldn't matter ... but when I use Fdisk from sysinstall I get the following familiar error message: |WARNING: A geometry of 155061/16/63 for ad2 is incorrect. Using ¦ ¦a more likely geometry. If this geometry is incorrect or you ¦ ¦are unsure as to whether or not it's correct, please consult ¦ ¦the Hardware Guide in the Documentation submenu or use the ¦ ¦(G)eometry command to change it now. ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦Remember: you need to enter whatever your BIOS thinks the ¦ ¦geometry is! For IDE, it's what you were told in the BIOS ¦ ¦setup. For SCSI, it's the translation mode your controller is ¦ ¦using. Do NOT use a ``physical geometry''. | Since I don't actually know what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, I got cold feet and decided to ask the list. I don't =think= it should matter, since the BIOS shouldn't ever touch the disk, at least as far as my understanding goes. I do have one concern. This drive was purchased more or less to act as an emergency backup of the drive that's already in there. If ad0 ever fails, ad2 drive will have to be put in a new machine whose BIOS recognizes it in order to boot. If I accept the mystery geometry for the drive today, will I later face a problem where the BIOS disagrees and the drive will be unbootable? Thank you for your kind attention. -- Danny MacMillan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Can FreeBSD safely use a (un-booted from) drive that is invisible to the BIOS?
On 3/31/06, Danny MacMillan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [,,,] ad0 is the boot drive. It is recognized by the BIOS, obviously, and has been in the machine for some years. ad2 is a new drive I just added to the machine yesterday. It is not visible to the BIOS at all. If anyone can posit a reason it would not be visible to the BIOS, I would like to know the answer. The BIOS supports LBA and ad0 is more than 8GB so it wouldn't appear to be the 8GB limit, and the next limit I am aware of is comfortably larger than 76GB. If ad2 were operating as the slave drive without a master on that controller, that could explain it, but that doesn't seem to be what's happening here. Are you sure you don't have the second drive disabled in the BIOS somehow? [...] At any rate ... it is not visible to the BIOS, but it is visible to FreeBSD. Since I'm not booting from the drive, I think it shouldn't matter ... but when I use Fdisk from sysinstall I get the following familiar error message: |WARNING: A geometry of 155061/16/63 for ad2 is incorrect. Using ¦ ¦a more likely geometry. If this geometry is incorrect or you ¦ ¦are unsure as to whether or not it's correct, please consult ¦ ¦the Hardware Guide in the Documentation submenu or use the ¦ ¦(G)eometry command to change it now. ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦Remember: you need to enter whatever your BIOS thinks the ¦ ¦geometry is! For IDE, it's what you were told in the BIOS ¦ ¦setup. For SCSI, it's the translation mode your controller is ¦ ¦using. Do NOT use a ``physical geometry''.| Since I don't actually know what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, I got cold feet and decided to ask the list. I don't =think= it should matter, since the BIOS shouldn't ever touch the disk, at least as far as my understanding goes. FreeBSD uses BIOS routines to start the boot process, then uses its own idea of what's on the disk. So, as far as I know, you will only have a problem if they are different enough to either cause the boot process to fail, or on a dual boot system, to cause Windows to think the partitions are in different places than does FreeBSD, or if your BIOS is picky about the partition table. A few years ago I started ignoring that message and it's worked for me. I just let sysinstall do what it wants (I believe I started that practice when a bug in sysinstall gave me no choice). I *think* that with modern block addressed, i/o buffered disks, on which the physical geometry is an illusion anyway, the only real problem you can run into is different ideas of the total size of the disk, i.e. where the last usable block is. One geometry might give you a few megabytes more than another geometry, but the difference is at the end of the disk. That isn't going to have any effect on booting (assuming the BIOS is willing to start the boot process), and not likely to even be a problem when dual booting. I do have one concern. This drive was purchased more or less to act as an emergency backup of the drive that's already in there. If ad0 ever fails, ad2 drive will have to be put in a new machine whose BIOS recognizes it in order to boot. If I accept the mystery geometry for the drive today, will I later face a problem where the BIOS disagrees and the drive will be unbootable? If my understanding is correct, it is unlikely to cause a problem, but it might. The BIOS routines will still be able to read the first few sectors to start the boot process. If your BIOS is so picky that it notices that the partition table claims to use bytes beyond what it thinks is the end of the disk (or some other imagined offense), and refuses to boot, then you might have a problem. I've seen such picky BIOSes, but not for several years. I think (hope) that manufacturers are learning that quibbling over such things doesn't make the system better. If you were to change the geometry settings of a disk after you put a filesystem on it, you would likely trigger other issues, but that's not what you're asking. Thank you for your kind attention. Good luck, - Bob ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Can FreeBSD safely use a (un-booted from) drive that is invisible to the BIOS?
On Fri, Mar 31, 2006 at 03:48:57PM -0500, Bob Johnson wrote: On 3/31/06, Danny MacMillan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [,,,] ad0 is the boot drive. It is recognized by the BIOS, obviously, and has been in the machine for some years. ad2 is a new drive I just added to the machine yesterday. It is not visible to the BIOS at all. If anyone can posit a reason it would not be visible to the BIOS, I would like to know the answer. The BIOS supports LBA and ad0 is more than 8GB so it wouldn't appear to be the 8GB limit, and the next limit I am aware of is comfortably larger than 76GB. If ad2 were operating as the slave drive without a master on that controller, that could explain it, but that doesn't seem to be what's happening here. ad2 is the only device on the second controller and it is definitely jumpered as master. I also get the same behaviour when the second drive is attached as a slave on the first controller (e.g. as ad1). Interestingly, attaching an ATAPI CD-ROM drive as slave on the first controller works. Are you sure you don't have the second drive disabled in the BIOS somehow? Positive. It's an old BIOS, the options are limited, but it is set to Auto (choices Auto, User, and None). I had a thought and changed the addressing mode from Auto to LBA but it made no difference. The only difference between selecting Auto and None in the BIOS is that when the setting is Auto, the machine hangs at the following and will not boot: Secondary Master: Detecting [Press F4 to skip] At this point, the machine is completely stuck -- pressing F4 does nothing, neither does pressing ctrlaltdel if I recall correctly. I have to power cycle it to get it to do anything. Now that I'm going through this thought process, I have some vague recollection that I used to have a second disk in there, but I had to remove it because it stopped working for some reason -- it exhibited the same hang when detecting the second drive. At the time it didn't occur to me to disable the drive in the BIOS to get the machine to boot and just let FreeBSD access the drive directly. Of course, it doesn't speak favourably to the reliability of the hardware. [...] Since I don't actually know what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, I got cold feet and decided to ask the list. I don't =think= it should matter, since the BIOS shouldn't ever touch the disk, at least as far as my understanding goes. FreeBSD uses BIOS routines to start the boot process, then uses its own idea of what's on the disk. So, as far as I know, you will only have a problem if they are different enough to either cause the boot process to fail, or on a dual boot system, to cause Windows to think the partitions are in different places than does FreeBSD, or if your BIOS is picky about the partition table. A few years ago I started ignoring that message and it's worked for me. I just let sysinstall do what it wants (I believe I started that practice when a bug in sysinstall gave me no choice). I *think* that with modern block addressed, i/o buffered disks, on which the physical geometry is an illusion anyway, the only real problem you can run into is different ideas of the total size of the disk, i.e. where the last usable block is. One geometry might give you a few megabytes more than another geometry, but the difference is at the end of the disk. That isn't going to have any effect on booting (assuming the BIOS is willing to start the boot process), and not likely to even be a problem when dual booting. I generally ignore the warning, too. My only concern this time is that in a case where the drive is visible to the BIOS, at least if I get it spectacularly wrong I will find out right away. Also the question of whether different BIOSes will assign the same geometry to the drive. I do have one concern. This drive was purchased more or less to act as an emergency backup of the drive that's already in there. If ad0 ever fails, ad2 drive will have to be put in a new machine whose BIOS recognizes it in order to boot. If I accept the mystery geometry for the drive today, will I later face a problem where the BIOS disagrees and the drive will be unbootable? If my understanding is correct, it is unlikely to cause a problem, but it might. The BIOS routines will still be able to read the first few sectors to start the boot process. If your BIOS is so picky that it notices that the partition table claims to use bytes beyond what it thinks is the end of the disk (or some other imagined offense), and refuses to boot, then you might have a problem. I've seen such picky BIOSes, but not for several years. I think (hope) that manufacturers are learning that quibbling over such things doesn't make the system better. If you were to change the geometry settings of a disk after you put a filesystem on it, you would likely trigger other issues, but that's not what you're asking. If
RE: Can FreeBSD safely use a (un-booted from) drive that is invisible to the BIOS?
sounds like you have hd jumpered as master on second ata controler but have HD on wrong ribbon nipple to match master jumper. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Danny MacMillan Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 5:37 PM To: Bob Johnson Cc: Danny MacMillan; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Can FreeBSD safely use a (un-booted from) drive that is invisible to the BIOS? On Fri, Mar 31, 2006 at 03:48:57PM -0500, Bob Johnson wrote: On 3/31/06, Danny MacMillan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [,,,] ad0 is the boot drive. It is recognized by the BIOS, obviously, and has been in the machine for some years. ad2 is a new drive I just added to the machine yesterday. It is not visible to the BIOS at all. If anyone can posit a reason it would not be visible to the BIOS, I would like to know the answer. The BIOS supports LBA and ad0 is more than 8GB so it wouldn't appear to be the 8GB limit, and the next limit I am aware of is comfortably larger than 76GB. If ad2 were operating as the slave drive without a master on that controller, that could explain it, but that doesn't seem to be what's happening here. ad2 is the only device on the second controller and it is definitely jumpered as master. I also get the same behaviour when the second drive is attached as a slave on the first controller (e.g. as ad1). Interestingly, attaching an ATAPI CD-ROM drive as slave on the first controller works. Are you sure you don't have the second drive disabled in the BIOS somehow? Positive. It's an old BIOS, the options are limited, but it is set to Auto (choices Auto, User, and None). I had a thought and changed the addressing mode from Auto to LBA but it made no difference. The only difference between selecting Auto and None in the BIOS is that when the setting is Auto, the machine hangs at the following and will not boot: Secondary Master: Detecting [Press F4 to skip] At this point, the machine is completely stuck -- pressing F4 does nothing, neither does pressing ctrlaltdel if I recall correctly. I have to power cycle it to get it to do anything. Now that I'm going through this thought process, I have some vague recollection that I used to have a second disk in there, but I had to remove it because it stopped working for some reason -- it exhibited the same hang when detecting the second drive. At the time it didn't occur to me to disable the drive in the BIOS to get the machine to boot and just let FreeBSD access the drive directly. Of course, it doesn't speak favourably to the reliability of the hardware. [...] Since I don't actually know what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, I got cold feet and decided to ask the list. I don't =think= it should matter, since the BIOS shouldn't ever touch the disk, at least as far as my understanding goes. FreeBSD uses BIOS routines to start the boot process, then uses its own idea of what's on the disk. So, as far as I know, you will only have a problem if they are different enough to either cause the boot process to fail, or on a dual boot system, to cause Windows to think the partitions are in different places than does FreeBSD, or if your BIOS is picky about the partition table. A few years ago I started ignoring that message and it's worked for me. I just let sysinstall do what it wants (I believe I started that practice when a bug in sysinstall gave me no choice). I *think* that with modern block addressed, i/o buffered disks, on which the physical geometry is an illusion anyway, the only real problem you can run into is different ideas of the total size of the disk, i.e. where the last usable block is. One geometry might give you a few megabytes more than another geometry, but the difference is at the end of the disk. That isn't going to have any effect on booting (assuming the BIOS is willing to start the boot process), and not likely to even be a problem when dual booting. I generally ignore the warning, too. My only concern this time is that in a case where the drive is visible to the BIOS, at least if I get it spectacularly wrong I will find out right away. Also the question of whether different BIOSes will assign the same geometry to the drive. I do have one concern. This drive was purchased more or less to act as an emergency backup of the drive that's already in there. If ad0 ever fails, ad2 drive will have to be put in a new machine whose BIOS recognizes it in order to boot. If I accept the mystery geometry for the drive today, will I later face a problem where the BIOS disagrees and the drive will be unbootable? If my understanding is correct, it is unlikely to cause a problem, but it might. The BIOS routines will still be able to read the first few sectors to start the boot process. If your BIOS is so picky that it notices that the partition table claims to use bytes beyond what it thinks is the end of
Re: Can FreeBSD safely use a (un-booted from) drive that is invisible to the BIOS?
Danny, FWIW, my FBSD 6 is running on a new 80GB IDE disk my Asus A7V266 (Athlon mobo from end-2001) thought was 8GB in size. I set the disk type to manual in the (latest) BIOS, and defined the geometry as seen by sysinstall. It's the only device on the primary channel, running as master, CD-ROM is on the secondary. The system boots (no dual boot) and runs fine, although the drive isn't listed by the BIOS at POST (the CD-ROM is) and all disk is visible to FBSD: # df -h Filesystem SizeUsed Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ad0s1a496M126M330M28%/ /dev/ad0s1d496M974K455M 0%/tmp /dev/ad0s1e 34G7.0G 24G22%/usr /dev/ad0s1f 34G4.5G 27G14%/var However... # cat /var/log/dmesg.yesterday | grep ad0 ad0: setting PIO4 on VIA 8233 chip ad0: setting UDMA100 on VIA 8233 chip ad0: 76319MB WDC WD800JB-00JJC0 05.01C05 at ata0-master UDMA100 ad0: 156301488 sectors [155061C/16H/63S] 16 sectors/interrupt 1 depth queue GEOM: new disk ad0 ad0: VIA check1 failed ad0: Adaptec check1 failed ad0: LSI (v3) check1 failed ad0: LSI (v2) check1 failed ad0: FreeBSD check1 failed Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ad0s1a ... which it then succeeds to do. I'm not sure how to interpret the 'check1 failed' notices, or what GEOM means by 'new disk' at every boot; but as it works, I'm leaving it alone. I'm not sure if this helps. Why don't you partition the drive, copy whatever data you have on ad0 to it, move it to another machine, and see what happens? At least at this point you have nothing to lose. Best wishes, boink ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
