From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-Id: <200311302058.hAUKwV6B005668@math.Princeton.EDU> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] restoring p9 boot blocks In-reply-to: References: From: John Stalker Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2003 15:58:31 -0500 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 98536052-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 I was using GAG, which is functionally similar to LILO but less hideous. It just loads the boot sector of the selected partition into memory and jumps. Yesterday I tried disk/format -b /386/pbslba -d -r 2 /dev/sdC0/9fat \ /386/9load /386/9pcdisk /386/9paddington 9paddington was a 9pcauth variant I was playing with. This more or less worked. I neglected to include plan9.ini, so I had to recontruct that from memory and the man page. 9load can't find 9paddington. I assume this is the usual 8+3 nonsense. It doesn't matter much as (a) 9load can still find it as sdC0!fs!/386/9paddington and (b) it doesn't work properly so I am using 9pcdisk anyway. The current status is that I have a working boot loader chain again, so there is no need to bother anyone further. Thanks to all who sent suggestions, either by mail or on 9fans. I'm still not sure how I blew away the boot blocks in the first place. Once I figure that out, presumably by repeating the same error, I will warn others here. > > Unfortunately it's an extended partition, so disk/fdisk won't > > set it as active. I believe that's a limitation of the pc > > architecture rather than of fdisk itself. This is, in fact, > > the main problem with installing FreeBSD on an extended > > partition. plan9 is supposed to be happy on an extended > > partition, or rather I know I've done it in the past without > > incident. > > > > > > > try setting the 'bootable' flag on the 9fat partition in disk/prep... > > > > > > i remember this solving my problem several times in both plan9 and freesb d > > :) > > if it were a primary partition you'd use > > disk/format -b /386/pbslba /dev/sdC0/9fat > > however, as an extended partition i'm not sure > you can actually boot from it. which boot loader > were you using before? i'm not sure i know of any > that will boot extended partitions. > > disk/mbr -m /386/mbr /dev/sdC0/data > > will install a new mbr, as andrey said, but that > shouldn't be necessary -- the windows one is > typically fine. > > how were you selecting between windows and plan 9? > the windows boot menu perhaps? > > -- John Stalker Department of Mathematics Princeton University (609)258-6469