Can't boot NanoBSD on an Alix board

[Lyle Scott III]

I still can't seem to get NanoBSD running on an ALIX board.  I have tried
everything mentioned in the list it seems.  Maybe I am overlooking
something?

I even tried to go into sysinstall's fdisk and change the bootloader to
standard mbr (no boot selector) for the da0 device (flash card)

now i get the error:
DISK SLICING WARNING: chunk 'da0s1' [63..997919] does not start on a track
boundary

any other suggestions?  Could it be the fact that I am using the card on the
USB interface and info isn't getting written to the proper geometry? (my ide
card reader should be here tomorrow reguardless)

On Dec 10, 2007 4:07 PM, Markus Dolze <bsdfan at nurfuerspam.de> wrote:

> Markus Dolze wrote:
> >> :/ I get what you are saying, but i'm not quite sure i understand how
> to do
> >> /:/ that.  I specified the info from diskinfo -v /dev/da0 and put it in
> a
> >> /:/ myconf.conf file for NanoBSD... i thought that would take care of
> it.
> >> /:/
> >> /:/ hostname# diskinfo -v /dev/da0
> >> /:/ /dev/da0
> >> /:/         512             # sectorsize
> >> /:/         512483328       # mediasize in bytes (489M)
> >> /:/         1000944         # mediasize in sectors
> >> /:/         488             # Cylinders according to firmware.
> >> /:/         64              # Heads according to firmware.
> >> /:/         32              # Sectors according to firmware.
> >> /
> >> This geometry is the fake geometry that I was talking about.  You
> >> can't trust it any more than you can a used car salesman...
> >>
> >> :/ > : > : Phys C/H/S 993/16/63 Log C/H/S 993/16/63
> >> /
> >> This is the geometry that you must use.
> >>
> >> To do that, you'll need to set the start of the FreeBSD partition to
> >> 63 and the end to 940463 (which is 993 * 16 * 63 - 1).  You'll need to
> >> make sure that the start chs is:
> >>
> >>         beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
> >> and the end should be
> >>         end: cyl 992/ head 15/ sector 63
> >>
> >> once you have that, you can then newfs, etc.  You'll also need to make
> >> sure that you've done both fdisk -B and bsdlabel -B to make sure the
> >> MBR and FreeBSD boot loader is on the new partition.
> >>
> >>
> > Hello,
> >
> > as you are using NanoBSD you might just want to add the line
> >
> > 'FlashDevice Sandisk 512'
> >
> > in your nanobsd.cfg. This instructs NanoBSD to read the flash
> > configuration from the 'FlashDevices.sub' file. The entry for Sandisk
> > 512 shows 512483328 bytes with 16 heads and 63 sectors which matches the
> > values of your card.
> >
> > NanoBSD should take care of creating the slices in the right way...
> >
> > As of version 1.7.2.7 it already uses 'packet mode'. The version is
> > printed on top of nanobsd.sh, just below the copyright message.
> >
> > Also, this post might be helpful:
> >
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-embedded/2007-November/000253.html
> .
> >
> > Regards,
> > Markus Dolze
> >
> >
> I just had a look at my running WRAP installation. There I do not have
> any boot manager at all, as I am just using the 'one image'
> configuration of NanoBSD. I am not sure how I did this, but I think I
> removed (commented out) the line
>
>  boot0cfg -B -b ${NANO_WORLDDIR}/boot/boot0sio -o packet -s 1 -m 3 ${MD}
>
> in nanobsd.sh.
>
> Regards
> Markus Dolze
>
>


-- 
Lyle Scott, III
http://www.lylescott.ws