Must FreeBSD or PCBSD be installed in the first bootable disk?

saikee · 11-23-2005, 07:25 PM

Edited addtion --- More reading led me to believe I am flogging a dead horse as FreeBSD does not use the BIOS at all.

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Haven't had much luck to install these two BSD in the 2nd, 3rd or 4th disks. The installation went alright if I remove the 2nd, 3rd and 4th disks.

Is this a BSD characteristic? or it can't pass the stage 1 of its boot loader to a disk that doesn't hold the MBR?

reddazz · 11-24-2005, 12:24 PM

They need to be installed on a primary partition. On my computer, freebsd is on the first primary partition of my second hard drive.

saikee · 11-24-2005, 01:00 PM

reddazz,

I know FreeBSD and PCBSD do not entain logical partitions. Did you installed FreeBSD in the 2nd disk while booting to the first?

I think I have installed FressBSD in a single disk format in all cases in the second primary and it boots OK. My problem is none of them want to be installed in the final setup with 4 disks. The vcant partition is in the 2nd and 3rd partitions of the second disk. I have first disk hda1 1Gb), hda2(2Gb) and hda3(3Gb) as DOS, win3x and Win9x partitions and the extended hda4 holds about 40 logical partitions. The FreeBSD and PCBSD installers always did a check and bugger off to reboot. I thought they may dislike my 200Gb disks but on a single disk format I managed to install FreeBSD in a 300Gb disk, again in 2nd primary partition.

I manage to boot all the BSD with a Grub floppy and not worrying about to fire it up, as long as it can be installed.