[ale] Closure - Re: [ale] Back to the Future!

[John Mills]

ALErs -

Thanks for the lead, which was repeated in the FreeBSD. I found I needed a
second step for the disk geometry to "take".

1) I opened the box, dismounted the $#@!! HDDs, and wrote down their
geometries. Then I reran the FreeBSD installation, explicitly setting the
disk geometries at the repartitioning step. I got the same result: no
kernel image was found.

2) I rebooted to the BIOS and forced the disk geometries to the actual
drive parameters, instead of the auto-detected values the BIOS had chosen.

I booted the box and prepared for _yet_another_ slog through the
sudden-death, no way to backup FreeBSD installtion.

OOPS! WHOOPIE!! The box now found and booted the kernel I had previously
installed, came up with its 'login:' prompt and obediently started X11/KDE
at 'startx'. Now I have to learn how to manage the new baby.

On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, Alan Bowman wrote:

> On Sat, 30 Mar 2002, John Mills wrote:
> >... When I exit, however, I don't seem to have left a bootable kernel
> > or proper MBR in place.

>  I've gotten this on my FreeBSD installs if I didn't specify the correct
> disk geometry.  I've found that the values reported when I go into the
> fdisk part of the install do not always match the actual geometry of my
> HDD (cyls/hd/sectors).

Thanks for the helping hands.
 - John Mills


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