On Sun, Jul 18, 1999 at 03:17:18AM -0400, Keith Browne wrote:
> I've reset the SCSI target number of my new drive to 2, which is lower
> than the current boot drive at 3.  I've booted the install floppy and
> stepped through the install procedure, using install sets on a NetBSD
> filesystem on the older 2-gig drive.  When I reboot after
> installation, however, I'm getting the message "No operating system"
> at the point where normally I'd expect to see the NetBSD boot prompt.
> I'm using an Adaptec 2940 SCSI card with BIOS revision 1.16, and Award
> BIOS 4.51PG.  The drive seems all right, though, as I've set up an FFS
> partition on it under my NetBSD 1.3 installation.
"No operating system" is an error the mbr creates. AFAIK This means,
you have an mbr installed, but the mbr can't boot the active partition.

If the DOS partition table looks ok, there's maybe a problem with the
second bootstrap code. You can (re)install it with
/usr/mdec/installboot /usr/mdec/biosboot.sym <disk>

If this doesn't help, some more information would be great:
Are you planning to use the entire disk for NetBSD? (I hope so :-)
What does the output of fdisk and disklabel look like?
What are the dates of your BIOS'? (The version numbers tell me nothing.)
What exactly is the geometry of your disk? (dmesg)

> Is there some obvious step I've neglected in making this drive
> bootable?  I've tried specifying a smaller cylinder count to get the
> total drive size under any ~8-gig limit the BIOS might have, I've used
This should not be neccessary. I boot from an >8GB SCSI drive myself.
> the MBR editor to mark the NetBSD partition as active, and I've run
> the install utility straight through a half-dozen times or more, but
> the drive won't boot.

> Another strange thing: during the install process, I specify that the
> 9-gig drive has 9006 cylinders, which is what's reported by dmesg and
> other sources.  The install program, however, then goes on to allow me
> to use 9036 cylinders, adding 30.  I've been allocating the last 30
> cylinders to a filesystem I didn't plan to use, assuming this was a
> minor error in the install program.  Does the program know how to get
> away with using this extra space?  It'd be nice to have, if I can
> trust it.
Don't know. But IIRC the 1.4 install disk was/is plagued with various
bugs. I may be wrong here...
-- 
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