Re: fresh install of 5.2-r doesn't book on 80gig disk

On Thursday 05 February 2004 12:44 pm, Jev wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I'm trying to install 5.2-R on a Western Digitial WD800 hard disk. By
> using all the "default" settings used by the freebsd installer, when I
> attempt to boot the machine I get:
>
> Invalid Partition
> Invalid Partition
> No /boot/loader
>
> FreeBSD/i386 boot
> Default: 1:ad(1,a)/kernel
> boot:
> Invalid partition
> No /kernel
>
> FreeBSD/i386 boot
> Default: 1:ad(1,a)/kernel
> boot:
>
> As suggested in the warning message before I get to set up my slices, I
> attempted to manually set the disks geometry to what my bios reports it as.
>
> This is what shows in dmesg:
> ad0: 76319MB <WDC WD800BB-32FRAO> [155061/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA100
> My bios reports the [cylinder/head/sector] value as:
> [38309/16/255]
>
> Specifying either of those values causes the install program to inform
> me that they are incorrect and setting the geom back to [9729/255/63]. I
> don't know if the failure to boot is caused by the geometry.
>
> In addition, I tried to split up the disk into smaller slices, without
> success. [Not]Using the freebsd bootmgr makes no diff either. I also
> tried this with a 5.0-R cd, and had the exact same result.
>
> Also, the above mentioned warning message tells me to "please consult
> the Hardware Guide in the Documentation submenu" but I couldn't find any
> relevant information there :/
>
> Help is greatly appreciated.....
>
> -Jev

Might not work for 5.x but try BIOS mode=lba rather than auto.

-- 
ian j hart

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20031016