Torfinn Ingolfsen
2006-Feb-19 14:59 UTC
Difference in slice numbering FreeBSD 4.x vs. 6.x?
Hi, Yes, this is a strange question; is the slice numbering in FreeBSD 4.x different from that in FreeBSD 6.x? I'm talking about for fdisk(8), boot(8) and loader(8). Background: I have this old laptop (a HP OmniBook 5500CT). I replaced the tiny (1.2GB) hard drive in it with a 20GB hard drive. I installed FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE on it, using fdisk to partition the disk in two. 4.11-R installed on slice1, ie. root on /dev/ad0s1a. All was well. Now, the story: Then I decided to install FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE on the second half of the disk, but it didn't work out of the box. To make a long story short, it turned out that the PCCard controller / slots wasn't detected properly, and as this laptop doesn't have a cd-rom drive, I just took out the hard drive, mounted a 2.5-to-3.5 inchadapter on it and put it into another machine. This machine had a cd-rom, and it installed FreeBSD 6.0-R on the second slice without a problem. I even testedt that it would boot both slices (4.11-R or 6.0-R) on that machine, it did. On this machine, 4.11-R was on slice 1, and 6.0-R on slice 2. Now, I took the hard drive out and put it into the laptop again. Mahor problem - it wouldn't boot at all. A not-so-quick boot with the floppies (3 floppies for boot, plus the fixit floppy) later, I ran fdisk on ad0. Much to my surprise, the twor FreeBSD installations had now moved to slice 3 and slice 4. 4.11-RELEASE on slice 3 and 6.0-RELEASE on slice 4. I am utterly amazed by this. What has happened? -- Yours, Torfinn Ingolfsen, Norway
Giovanni P. Tirloni
2006-Feb-21 03:19 UTC
Difference in slice numbering FreeBSD 4.x vs. 6.x?
Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:> Hi, > > Yes, this is a strange question; is the slice numbering in FreeBSD 4.x > different from that in FreeBSD 6.x? > I'm talking about for fdisk(8), boot(8) and loader(8). > Background: I have this old laptop (a HP OmniBook 5500CT). I replaced > the tiny (1.2GB) hard drive in it with a 20GB hard drive. > I installed FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE on it, using fdisk to partition the > disk in two. 4.11-R installed on slice1, ie. root on /dev/ad0s1a. > All was well. > > Now, the story: > Then I decided to install FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE on the second half of the > disk, but it didn't work out of the box. To make a long story short, it > turned out that the PCCard controller / slots wasn't detected properly, > and as this laptop doesn't have a cd-rom drive, I just took out the hard > drive, mounted a 2.5-to-3.5 inchadapter on it and put it into another > machine. This machine had a cd-rom, and it installed FreeBSD 6.0-R on > the second slice without a problem. > I even testedt that it would boot both slices (4.11-R or 6.0-R) on that > machine, it did. On this machine, 4.11-R was on slice 1, and 6.0-R on > slice 2. > > Now, I took the hard drive out and put it into the laptop again. > Mahor problem - it wouldn't boot at all. A not-so-quick boot with the > floppies (3 floppies for boot, plus the fixit floppy) later, I ran fdisk > on ad0. > Much to my surprise, the twor FreeBSD installations had now moved to > slice 3 and slice 4. > 4.11-RELEASE on slice 3 and 6.0-RELEASE on slice 4. > > I am utterly amazed by this. What has happened?I've moved hard disks around many times and this has never happened. Can you send us `fdisk /dev/ad0` from 4.11 and 6.0 so we can spot anything not normal ? Does it still boot in the machine after we've booted in the laptop ? -- Giovanni P. Tirloni http://blog.tirloni.org