*BSD News Article 64090


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: How do I specify the root partition?
Date: 24 Mar 1996 23:34:00 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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JHofacker@msn.com (Jay Hofacker) writes:
> I have two IDE drives that don't get along, so one is the master on the 
> primary channel (/dev/wd0), and the other is the master on the secondary 
> channel (/dev/wd2). There is no slave device on the primary IDE channel. Both 
> drives are entered in my compuer's CMOS.

>  When I try to boot off the hard drive, the kernel 
> thinks it's been loaded from wd1, so it tries to mount the root partition 
> /dev/wd1a, which doesn't exist.

That's because FreeBSD numbers the first disk on the second controller
wd2 by default (leaving space for wd1 on the first controller), while
the BIOS didn't find a wd1 (in FreeBSD terms), and therefore assigned
drive number 0x81 to what BSD names `wd2'.

There are two solutions: Bruce Evans has been posting a fix for the
bootblocks, where you can explicitly tell which are the BSD and which
the BIOS devices.

Short of this, you might see to get the system running in the first
place, e.g. by putting the wd2 as controller 0 / disk 1, just to get
the system up.  Then, create a new kernel, where you manually assign
the wd1 disk to the wdc1 controller.  After this, swap the disks
again, and reboot.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)