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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: bootinst (bteasy14) and FreeBSD on SCSI drive
Message-ID: <CFLxM1.IAw@latcs1.lat.oz.au>
From: wongm@latcs1.lat.oz.au (M.C. Wong)
Date: Thu, 28 Oct 1993 12:34:48 GMT
Organization: Comp Sci, La Trobe Uni, Australia
Lines: 71
Hi,
I have an IDE Conner CP3544 and Micropolis SCSI-2 2112 on AHA-1542C.
I used to have the following systems on the drives :
CP3544 : DOS6 on partition 1, about 150 M
FreeBSD (base and unstable) on partition 4, about 350 M.
MI2112 : FreeBSD (bas and unstable) on whole disk, 992 MB
Then I got bteasy14 from the net and run bootinst to setup the new boot
record on both drives, ie CP3544 and MI2112. But after I am done with that
and reboot the system, I choose FreeBSD on MI2112, but it complains about
No operating system. But before I ran bootinst, I used to be able to boot up
from MI2112, of course wy IDE physically disable in BIOS! So I thought I should
try that, so again I disable my IDE from motherboard BIOS, and boot up from
MI2112, and it still can't boot. So I put IDE back, and do :
bootinst bootsav.bin, answer yes and then
bootinst bootsav2.bin, and answer yes.
Then I tried to boot up the system, and it boots from my default C:DOS
partition. But when I tried disable the IDE and tried to boot from MI2112
again, I still got theNo operating system. So I recalled how I screwed up
the MBR in my IDE before, and I then installed a primary/bootable DOS partition
into MI2112 partition 1 from my IDE C:DOS parition, and boot up from a DOS
floppy, and run fdisk/mbr to install a DOS MBR to my SCSI drive. I can't do
fdisk/mbr after I newly installed DOS onto MI2112, and I can't set active
partition to MI2112 parition 1 either. Next, I boot up the system, and yes
the DOS on MI2112 can boot. So I re-install FreeBSD again on MI2112 coexist
with DOS (32M),but when I am to boot off from sd0a after done with kernel
copying, I got back the No operating system message again. So it appears to
me that DOS can boot but FreeBSD can't, and I think the FreeBSD boot block
must be get screwed up somehow when I ran bootinst! So I did a low level
format on my MI2112 from the AHA1542C firmware disk utilities, reinstall DOS
on it as before, including fdisk/mbr and repeat the FreeBSD installation, but
I keep getting the same error.
So, I go back to have my IDE setup again, and re-ran bootinst, and I notice
the problem, here is the partition table it prints when prompting me with
the MI2112 disk :
N | Parition | Can | Boot | Beginning | Ending | Relative | # of
| Type | Boot | Part | Head Cyl Sect | Head Cyl Sect | Sectors | sect
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | dos-16 | yes | no | 1 0 1 | 63 30 32 | 32 | 63456
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 | empty | no | no | 0 0 0 | 0 0 0 | 0 | 0
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 | empty | no | no | 0 0 0 | 0 0 0 | 0 | 0
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4 | 386bsd | no | yes | 0 55 1 | 14 735 13 | 63525 |1969275
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note that the 4th partition on my SCSI drive it says Can't boot but has been
set as active partition.
So I wonder how can I have the 4th partition boot block restored to bootable,
note that I do not have Norton Utilities or the like, I just wonder if any quick
and dirty way can fix it ? I did tried resinstalling FreeBSD on the whole
disk, but that is not going to change the thing as *BSD always get installed on
the 4th partitition. So I tried this : boot up from FreeBSD floppy and fdisk
to change parition 0 - 2 (which is 1 - 3) to the setup of 3 (4) which is FreeBSD
and cancels out the parameters of the original parition occupied by FreeBSD,
ie 3 in *BSD fdisk (4 in DOS fdisk)! But that doesn't help either. It looks
like I got a problem here. Can someone help me please ?
--
- wongm@latcs1.lat.oz.au