Questions on first-time installation

[Jan Grant]

On Fri, 10 Nov 2006, Jerry McAllister wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 08, 2006 at 08:42:04AM +0000, Jan Grant wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 7 Nov 2006, Bob Schwartz wrote:
> > 
> > > ... at least as it is desribed in the DELL
> > > docs and bios...
> > 
> > Be really careful. The windows boot loader should be able to boot a 
> > freebsd install for you. 
> 
> I have never had a Windows MBR work to boot FreeBSD.   On the other
> hand I have never had a FreeBSD MBR fail to boot any MS-Win system.
> 
> So, I wonder at your comment here.

That's a case of your mileage varying, I guess.

> I have never had to correct any partition/slice alignment when using
> the standard FreeBSD install.  I ignore that Diagnostic slice that
> Dell puts on - just leave it there as slice 1, leave MS there as
> slice 2 and put FreeBSD on slice 3 - or sometimes I put a FAT32 on
> as slice 3 to use for communication if the MS is NTFS, and then put
> FreeBSD on slice 4.   There has never been any problem with any
> alignment or offset.
[...]
> I have been doing this the way I describe since 1998 with no problem.

So to the OP, there you go: use of partition magic to manage the fdisk 
label apparently works.

Cheers,
jan

-- 
jan grant, ISYS, University of Bristol. http://www.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44 (0)117 3317661   http://ioctl.org/jan/
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