Re: problems with sysinstall

 Wed, Oct 29, 2003 at 05:44:44, sem (Sergey Matveychuk) wrote about "problems with sysinstall": 

SM> The first one: when I install -current on disk where WinXP on first 
SM> slice, sysinstall brakes WinXP boot complete. I got 'Missing operation 
SM> system' everytime. Even I've tried 'fixboot' and reinstall WinXP.
SM> Helps only 'dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 count=100' and reinstall WinXP 
SM> on clean disk.

It can be better reported if you show here
1) 0th block of disk (where MBR and master PT resides)
2) full PT listing, with both standard fdisk and linux fdisk (from ports)
and both of them before installing FreeBSD (when XP works) and after
(when is already broken).

SM> When I've installed first -current on first slice and second -current on 
SM> second slice I got booting only first one. I use grub and either I set 
SM> root(hd1,0) or root(hd1,1) (yes, it's a second disk) and 'chainloader 
SM> +1' and 'boot' I've got always first -current boot. Looks like problem 
SM> with boot sector where hardcoded booting from first slice (?).

Yes, this is tied to algorithm of boot1. On first step, it founds first
*active* BSD partition in master PT. If didn't find any, it tries to find
BSD partition in any state (inactive, due to first step failure).
When found, records its number and starts boot2.
Boot switcher, called boot0 (/boot/boot0) or BootEasy (in sysinstall),
changes active partition flag (see boot0cfg(8)).
When you use GRUB to call chainloader, it will start boot1 with the described
result. To select boots using GRUB, use UFS1 (GRUB can't understand UFS2),
with "root (hd0,1); boot /boot/loader", or use boot0.

SM> The second: when I've tried to save results from Fdisk or Label menu 
SM> I've got the message: 'ERROR: Unable to write data to disk ad0!'
SM> Why? I can change slices and partitions only when I boot from CD-ROM.

Current GEOM implementation is too restrictive and doesn't allow any write
to disk which has opened slices/partitions. phk_at_ promised change of this
as soon as someone gives working implementation.


-netch-