DragonFly users List (threaded) for 2009-04
DragonFly BSD
DragonFly users List (threaded) for 2009-04
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Re: Installing DragonFly


From: Bill Hacker <wbh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:57:11 +0800

Colin Adams wrote:
I couldn't use Windows anything - that is banned from my house.

Good news, that. Should reduce your long-term rosk of stroke or hear attack.


;-)


Equally, I can't use a Linux fdisk (for instance), because I can't boot the computer at all if the disk is plugged in. If I remove uncable the disk, then I can boot from the DragonFly live DVD (or any other live CD/DVD presumably). But then I can't do anything to the disk because it isn't plugged in.

Suggestion (from 'bitter' experience) - get your hands on another HDD, (temporarily) make that one the 'primary' and set it up with (at least) one or more *BSD and a low-hassle Linux. My mix of choice is FreeBSD, NetBSD, DFLY & Vector Linux 5.9 Std edition. (It often helps to see how, or IF 'the other guy' reads your MBR and disklabel)


You should then be able to attach the problematic disk - before or after boot. (Suspicion - is your BIOS set ot boot form it? and if so, can that be changed?)

Further - RAID quite aside, FreeBSD atacontrol, DFLY natacontrol have convenient utilities to list, attach/detach, re-scan, ATA chanels and devices et al w/o reboot.

fdisk and disklabel / bsdlabel, then newfs should let you re-slice etc to clean up the problematic HDD.

Presuming thet HDD is the newer/larger/faster or otherwise more desirable device, you should then be able to reverse the process and do further experimentation on the 'other' less-valuable HDD as a secondary.

It can be helpful to have multiple versions of /etc/fstab on each that can be 'cp'ed into place rather than edited to either/both get desired dev ID's to fit detached/swapped situations, and/or do only partial mounting with the rest done manually or by script other-than-fstab.

Thereafter, DFLY/FreeBSD boot manager should handle the rest painlessly.

You *can* 'get there from here' with a Live CD - but a fully-functional HDD install give you a richer toolset and more flexibility for relatively low cost in time and hardware - especially if the 'other' HDD can be USB-attached.

HTH,

Bill Hacker


2009/4/15 Simon 'corecode' Schubert <corecode@fs.ei.tum.de>:
I bet this is the "set all bits to one on CHS overflow" thing in fdisk.  I'd
really like to know how we are supposed to handle this (better).

Colin, sorry for trashing your computer.  I think we are well aware of this
issue, but we simply don't know exactly how to deal with it.  Could you
maybe use window's fdisk to create a large partition on the drive and then
report back how the partition table looks like?  In this case we could
adjust our fdisk so that this won't happen again.

thanks
 simon

Colin Adams wrote:
What appears to have happened is that in some way it has trashed my
disk-drive - I can still get the machine to boot from the live CD, but
only if I physically disconnect the hard-disk first.


2009/4/8 Hasso Tepper <hasso@estpak.ee>:
Colin Adams wrote:
Well, if that is the case the ISO should not be available for download
- there should be a fixed version.
Well. It shouldn't be any way fatal, but in general I agree - we should
release 2.2.1 ASAP, really.


-- Hasso Tepper





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