Problems trying to boot from an 80GB Seagate

[Andrew L. Gould]

On Sunday 14 September 2003 12:06 pm, Sean A Reith wrote:
> I'm trying to get my first FreeBSD (4.8-RELEASE) installation working, and
> I am having trouble getting a system which boots, primarily due to what
> appear to be disk geometry issues (but this is a complete newbie guess).
>
> The hardware:
>   Gigabyte GA-6BXC motherboard
> <http://tw.giga-byte.com/motherboard/products/products_ga-6bxc.htm> (BIOS
> V.F4c <http://tw.giga-byte.com/motherboard/support/bios/BIOS_GA-6BXC.htm>)
> Celeron 366
>   448 MB RAM
>   Seagate ST380011A 80GB HDD
>    
> <http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/marketing/detail/0,1081,581,
>00.html> Mitsumi CD-ROM FX320S
>   Delta CD-Writer
>   No FDD
>   AcerLAN ALN-325 10/100 PCI Ethernet Adapter (Realtek 8139 chipset)
>   Creative Soundblaster SB16 CT2960 ISA sound card
>   Diamond Viper 330 AGP
>   HP 4033B monitor
>
> My first attempt at installing FreeBSD (using the bootable CDROM images
> for 4.8-RELEASE) was rewarded with "Missing Operating System" on next
> boot.  FreeBSD guesses the geometry as being 155061/16/63, which it
> then discards as incorrect (the first time through the install I accepted
> its assumed geometry of 9729/255/63).
>
> The BIOS CMOS is configured to "Auto" detect the drives on boot, if I
> change it to "User" it defaults to 38307/16/255 - but sysinstall/fdisk
> rejects this geometry outright.
>
> Next, I created a NTFS partition on the drive with an XP install CD,
> and then booted from the FreeBSD install CDs with -v, and got the
> following output:
>
> BIOS Geometries:
>   0:03fe0f3f 0..1022=1023 cylinders, 0..15=16 heads, 1..63=63 sectors
>   0 accounted for
> Device configuration finished
>
> ...
>
> Creating DISK ad0
> ar: FreeBSD check1 failed
> ad0: <ST380011A/3.06> ATA-6 disk at ata0-master
> ad0: 76319MB (156301488 sectors), 155061 C, 16H, 63S, 512B
> ad0: piomode=4 dmamode=2 udmamode=5 cblid=1
> ata1-master: piomode=4 dmamode=2 udmamode=4 dmaflag=1
> ata1-master: success setting PIO4 on generic chip
>
> So I tried installing with 1023/16/63.  Still the "Missing Operating
> System" error.
>
> Out of other ideas, I resorted to "Dangerous Dedicated", which at least
> gave a different error:
>
> No /boot/loader
>
> >> FreeBSD/i386 BOOT
>
> Default: 0:ad(0,a)/kernel
> boot:
> No /kernel
>
> A bit of googling suggested 0:ad(0,c)/kernel as an alternative boot
> command, but it had no greater success for my case.
>
> So other suggestions would be appreciated!
>
> As my plan is to use the machine as a dedicated server, "Dangeously
> Dedicated" is not an issue for me, as long this won't be a problem
> for future FreeBSD releases...?
>
> It's also worth noting that I upgraded the BIOS to v.F4c as the
> system would not boot with the ST380011A connected (BIOS hung trying to
> display the drive size).  Interestingly the release notes state
> "Support 75GB HDD", rather than 75GB+...  Particularly since
> the FreeBSD sysinstall partitioning/slice tool reports the drive size
> as 76319MB (less than 75GB), even though it is meant to be an 80GB
> drive.
>
> BTW, when installing/configuring XFree86 I selected "nv RIVA 128" as
> my video card, as this seemed the closest to the Viper 330 (given I
> understand it uses the Riva 128 chipset).  Is this the right selection?
> If I try and run the graphical X-windows configuration tool it fails, so I
> set the above through the curses interface...
>
> Fare thee well,
> Sean.
>

1.  While partitioning the hard drive, did you mark the FreeBSD partition as 
bootable?
2.  After partitioning, but before disk labelling, did you select an option to 
install the boot loader into the MBR?

It sounds like you missed one or both of those steps during one or both of 
your installation attempts.  You may be able to fix those steps using the 
installation CD without repeating the entire installation.

In the past, I frequently got the warnings about incorrect hard drive 
geometries.  I have always ignored the message and let FreeBSD use the values 
it wants, and have never had any problems.  This may be dangerous advice; so 
follow it at your own discretion/risk.  (Or better yet, wait for an expert to 
chime in!)

Best of luck,

Andrew Gould