cant boot from large disk

[Andrew Boothman]

FreeBSD User wrote:

> Howdy Questions,
> 
> I am having problems with 4.8 Release booting from a large hard disk 
> (80 - 160G) on an old (socket7) motherboard.
> 
> I have the same problem with linux. Making the root partition
> smaller that 1000M, puting it on the first disk, etc etc  doesnt 
> help in either case. I have also tried a few different bootloaders,
> in all cases, the bootloader either failed to load, or failed to 
> boot the OS.
> 
> With Linux (redhat7.x) I was able to build a bootable floppy on which
> the location of the root partition was stored, and boot off that.
> I could also interrupt the boot, enter different values, and boot
> off of a different partition. Hardly ideal, but satisfactory.

What bootloader did Redhat give you? Isn't it grub? I've used grub for 
ages to dual-boot Win2k and FreeBSD - it can boot FreeBSD no problem.

My FreeBSD slice is at the start of my second drive so I type into grub:

root (hd1,0,a)
chainloader +1
boot

And hey-presto FreeBSD boots no problem!

There's possibly a way to get other bootloaders to boot FreeBSD, I'm not 
to sure. But you might want to give grub a try anyway.

Good luck.

Andrew