The boot selector complains about having more than 2000 cylindars and you're hosed. How-To-Repeat: Tell the Jordan's nice install program to use the whole thing and not to worry about DOS. Then tell it to install the nice F1, F2, etc. boot selector.
As David Muir Sharnoff wrote: > > > Use a disk with > 2000 cylindars. > > >Description: > > The boot selector complains about having more than 2000 > cylindars and you're hosed. > > >How-To-Repeat: > > Tell the Jordan's nice install program to use the whole thing > and not to worry about DOS. > > Then tell it to install the nice F1, F2, etc. boot selector. Do you say you've been using the ``dangerously dedicated'' option? You are assumed you know what you are doing when using it. That's why it is not the default. -- 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. ;-)
* Do you say you've been using the ``dangerously dedicated'' option? * * You are assumed you know what you are doing when using it. That's why * it is not the default. The message says that you can't use it with DOS if you do that. That's fine. If I can't use my friendly neighboorhood boot selector, then it should either mention that too or not let me. I know it makes sense in retrospect, but it wasted a bunch of time. -Dave
As David Muir Sharnoff wrote: > > > * Do you say you've been using the ``dangerously dedicated'' option? > * > * You are assumed you know what you are doing when using it. That's why > * it is not the default. > > The message says that you can't use it with DOS if you do that. ``This is dangerous in that it will make the drive totally uncooperative with other potential operating systems on the same disk. It will lead instead to a totally dedicated disk, starting at the very first sector, bypassing all BIOS geometry considerations. You will run into serious trouble with ST-506 and ESDI drives and possibly some IDE drives (e.g. drives running under the control of sort of disk manager). SCSI drives are considerably less at risk. Do you insist on dedicating the entire disk this way?'' I don't really know how to make it more explicit that this is dangerous if you don't know what you are doing. Please, submit a better warning text... we failed to find one. > That's fine. If I can't use my friendly neighboorhood boot selector, > then it should either mention that too or not let me. What the heck do you wanna use a boot selector for if the *entire* disk is dedicated? The BSD label starts at sector 0, so there's no more room for a fancy boot selector. The usage of a boot selector is not even offered for the regular sequence of doing things (the menu is bypassed if ``dangerously dedicated'' has been selected). This option is really only intended for people who don't care for anything else than BSD, but therefore do not understand why they had to undergo major hassles in tweaking their brain for a disk ``geometry'' that was never really important again for them. As i wrote: please submit a better text. -- 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. ;-)
* I don't really know how to make it more explicit that this is * dangerous if you don't know what you are doing. Please, submit * a better warning text... we failed to find one. What you are warning against is that it doesn't work with other operating systems. It also needs to warn that it cannot be used with the bootmgr. * > That's fine. If I can't use my friendly neighboorhood boot selector, * > then it should either mention that too or not let me. * * What the heck do you wanna use a boot selector for if the *entire* * disk is dedicated? The BSD label starts at sector 0, so there's no * more room for a fancy boot selector. Choosing which disk to boot off of. * The usage of a boot selector is not even offered for the regular * sequence of doing things (the menu is bypassed if ``dangerously * dedicated'' has been selected). * * This option is really only intended for people who don't care for * anything else than BSD, but therefore do not understand why they had * to undergo major hassles in tweaking their brain for a disk * ``geometry'' that was never really important again for them. * * As i wrote: please submit a better text. Either it wasn't bypassed or a different boot manager wasn't written. As far as I know the problems I had were because the boot selector didn't work. I didn't do anything special to install it, but there was an old one already there. If a special boot loader must be used with a disk that isn't using slices, then that boot loader needs to be installed! I've always had trouble getting the boot stuff work right because I insist on installing onto sd1. I really an easy way to add boot selectors and boot blocks onto other disks and partitions. Linux's LILO is a bit more flexible and I might use that as my primary boot selector if I could get it to work. -Dave
As David Muir Sharnoff wrote: > > What you are warning against is that it doesn't work with other > operating systems. It also needs to warn that it cannot be used > with the bootmgr. It also warns that it eats up the disk ``from the very first sector''. > * As i wrote: please submit a better text. > > Either it wasn't bypassed or a different boot manager wasn't written. A different ``boot manager'' was written. The disklabel itself. > As far as I know the problems I had were because the boot selector > didn't work. I didn't do anything special to install it, but there > was an old one already there. It should be wiped out without a whisper. > If a special boot loader must be used with a disk that isn't using > slices, then that boot loader needs to be installed! No special boot loader. Please think about it. The disk is being used by FreeBSD *from the very first sector*. That is exactly the sector of the disk where your beloved boot manager was sitting. It's apparent that there is no room for any fancy boot selector anymore, and that's why we decided to make it not the default, and why there's yet another warning that you might shoot into your foot if you don't really know what you are doing. Sigh, you apparently didn't know what you are doing, but selected it anyways. How should we protected people like you from shooting in their feet without bothering those too much that have a good reason to use the feature? The feature is intended for people who do not care at all about DOS, Linux, OS/2, Winglows, boot selectors, or whatnot. There are those folks around, allot actually, and they are our ``more serious customers'', i.e. often in the corporate environment, where the machines run 7*24 hours per week. We have been embarassing them too much with our 2.0.5 attitude of ``install a DOS partition first if you can't get the geometry troubles resolved''. That's the whole story why the ``dangerously dedicated'' mode is there. Perhaps we should add this headline to the window, with an emphasize on ``dangerously''. Again: submit a better warning text, please, or i'll close the PR since i fail to see how to `fix' the problem. -- 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. ;-)
* Again: submit a better warning text, please, or i'll close the PR * since i fail to see how to `fix' the problem. Warning text isn't needed. Just don't ask me which boot selector to use. I didn't go seek it out. I wouldn't have specified if it hadn't of asked. (I did a "commit" to start the process going, so perhaps if I had written the partition information first it wouldn't have asked, but I still think there is a bug in there.) I would have been happy to use the whole disk, I just need it to boot! Actually, the system this disk ended up on has 3 2GB disks with nothing but FreeBSD partitions on them. * It also warns that it eats up the disk ``from the very first sector''. Or at this point, is should say "precluding any possible boot selector (not that you would need one anyway)" -Dave
As David Muir Sharnoff wrote: > > Warning text isn't needed. Just don't ask me which boot selector to > use. I didn't go seek it out. I wouldn't have specified if it hadn't > of asked. (I did a "commit" to start the process going, so perhaps if > I had written the partition information first it wouldn't have asked, > but I still think there is a bug in there.) I regularly doing this using just `commit', and it never happened to me. But maybe there's a bug, yes. sysinstall should base the decision to ask for the MBR contents based on the fact whether the FreeBSD slice starts at sector 0 or not. By now, this decision is made based on the history of entered commands, i.e. only if you have actually been selecting ``dangerously dedicated'' just a few seconds prior, it will supress the question. This doesn't account for cases where the disk is already in a state where the FreeBSD slice is at the very beginning (which could happen for various reasons). > * It also warns that it eats up the disk ``from the very first sector''. > > Or at this point, is should say "precluding any possible boot selector > (not that you would need one anyway)" Ok, i will add this. -- 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. ;-)
State Changed From-To: open->closed Added one more hint in sysinstall/disk.c rev 1.35.