i386/61603: sysinstall: wrong geometry guessed

[Chris Pepper]

>Number:         61603
>Category:       i386
>Synopsis:       sysinstall: wrong geometry guessed
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-i386
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Jan 19 18:00:24 PST 2004
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Chris Pepper
>Release:        FreeBSD 4.9-STABLE i386
>Organization:
>Environment:
System: FreeBSD www.reppep.com 4.9-STABLE FreeBSD 4.9-STABLE #13: Thu Nov 13 23:50:39 EST 2003 root at www.reppep.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/REPPEP i386


	
>Description:
	sysinstall under 5.2-RELEASE guessed my geometry wrong. I have a 6gb WinXP partition and a 32gb FreeBSD partition. After upgrading from 4.9-STABLE (including requesting BootEasy), the system failed to boot. I was able to boot from CD and set currdev to load the 5.2 installation, and install BootEasy w/ boot0cfg, but not to get the system booting correctly -- with BootEasy, F2 for FreeBSD just beeped, although the WinXP installation was accessible.

	sysinstall chose a good geometry for this system from 4.5 through 4.9, but not booting from 5.2 disc 1. sysinstall 5.2 guessed 4865/255/63, which didn't work. fdisk inside 5.2 claimed 77545/16/63. pfdisk suggeted 1023/240/63, which worked for sysinstall when entered manually.

	Note: http://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/4-STABLE/installation/i386/trouble.html #4.2.2 claims sysinstall can determine the geometry from a 'DOS partition' at the beginning of the disk, but that didn't work for me.

	I will write up another PR for documentation issues associated with this problem.
	
>How-To-Repeat:
	Install from 5.2-RELEASE CD on an HP Pavilion with 40gb WD disk, accepting sysinstall's (incorrect) geometry.
	
>Fix:
	Make sysinstall smarter, if possible.

	Additionally, improve the documentation on disk geometry (next PR).

	Offer a method for fixing a usable FreeBSD installation without reinstalling. My system was bootable and looked fine, except boot code was missing. Presumably there is a way to install boot code for FreeBSD (for BootEasy to load) without reinstalling from scratch, but I was unable to find it. This is obscure, but would have been useful.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: