FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS

[Keith Kelly]

I wrote the message to which you replied, not Michael Clark.

See my comments in-line.


>From: Hendrik Hasenbein <hhasenbe at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>
>To: Michael Clark <MClark at Nemschoff.com>
>CC: 'Keith Kelly' <c0d3h4x0r at hotmail.com>,  Derrick Ryalls 
><ryallsd at datasphereweb.com>, freebsd-bugs <freebsd-bugs at freebsd.org>,  
>'freebsd-questions ORG' <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>
>Subject: Re: FDisk won't detect or accept correct disk geometry from BIOS
>Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:57:18 +0100
>
>Michael Clark wrote:
>>I configure the two devices that way (CD-ROM as slave, hard drive as 
>>master), sysinstall refuses to mount the CD, giving me an error about 
>>"CD/DVD drive not found!".  It's worth noting that no other OS I've run on 
>>this same PC ever had any trouble finding the CD-ROM drive when it was 
>>configured as the slave.
>
>Strange. That you got that problems. I've been always using a CDROM on 
>slave. Never had a problem there. Did you look if the BIOS was able to 
>autodetect the cdrom on boot? Do you use cable select on one of them?

Of course the BIOS auto-detected the CD-ROM fine -- the configuration had 
always worked with all other operating systems and software I had used on 
this PC.

It didn't matter whether I used cable select or explicitly jumpered the 
devices as master/slave.  In either case, if the CD-ROM was the slave, 
sysinstall failed to detect the CD-ROM.

>
>>To get around _that_ problem, I had to configure the CD-ROM as the master 
>>and the hard drive as the slave.  With the CD-ROM as the master, 
>>sysinstall is able to actually detect the CD/DVD drive, but then I run 
>>into this nonsense with fdisk refusing to detect or accept the correct 
>>disk geometry for the hard drive.  It's worth noting that I've never had 
>>to manually specify hard drive geometry settings in the installer for any 
>>other OS I've installed on this PC.  They figured it out automatically and 
>>worked fine.
>
>Another time: Just turn on LBA.

LBA is already on on all my devices, and has been from the start.  This is 
most definitely NOT the problem.  Besides which, I already explained my 
findings on another thread on these aliases..

>>So far, I'm really disappointed by FreeBSD.  If FreeBSD lacks the logic or 
>>detection to automatically figure all these things out and just work, that 
>>is a serious bug (whether due to a programmer mistake or poor software 
>>design).  I've _never_ had this much trouble getting an operating system 
>>installed on this particular PC.
>
>It's due to poor hardware design in history.

It's equally due to poor software design.  If Windows and Linux can deal 
with the hardware fine, then FreeBSD should be able to also.

>
>>If I can't get things working within about 1 more hour of tinkering, I'm 
>>going to abandon FreeBSD entirely, put my machine back together, and just 
>>use the drive as an extra NTFS filesystem for my personal files under 
>>Windows XP.
>
>That explains, why you don't want to switch from auto to LBA. Sometimes 
>auto is the right thing, but most times you have to think of the right 
>setting, because auto is just a default. (Example: If I leave all values  
>set to auto in my bios, my system is going to creep literally, because some 
>components wont interact correct)
>
>>When people argue that Windows is easier, and that *nix isn't ready for 
>>the desktop, this is *exactly* the kind of problem that they are talking 
>>about. I hope any actual FreeBSD developers on these aliases wake up and 
>>take notice.
>
>The real problem is that we still work around design flaws which exist in 
>hardware for a decade. Everybody uses his/her personal best workaround and 
>sometimes they are in conflict.

No, the real problem is a lack of thorough testing on a variety of hardware 
configurations, and a lack of developer interest in solving problems 
encountered by people other than themselves.

>
>Hendrik
>
>

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