Hi,

I'm having a problem getting NetBSD 3.0 (and 3.0.1) to boot from an 80GB Barracuda 7200.7 
SATA drive on an MSI K7N2 Delta 2 Platinum mobo (Nvidia NForce2 chipset). The SATA 
controller apperas as controller 2 in dmesg. 

NetBSD appears to install OK, but when I try to boot (pointing the BIOS to the correct drive 
with the BIOS boot menu) I get:
 
NetBSD MBR boot
Error no operating system

I've booted from the CD and done mount /dev/wd1a /mnt and all the files in /mnt seem to be 
the right size compared to those in /usr/mdec. I've run installboot -v -o timeout=5 /dev/rwd1a 
/usr/mdec/bootxx_ffsv1 to no avail.

It makes no difference whether the drive is connected to the first or second SATA channel. 
I've hooked an old IDE drive into the IDE channel 0 and netBSD installs and boots from this 
OK and the other drive can be seen by fdisk and disklabel and mounted OK.

Running fdisk and disklabel against the SATA drive from NetBSD on the IDE drive, fdisk 
reports:

NetBSD disklabel disk geometry:
cylinders: 155061, heads: 16, sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 156301488

BIOS disk geometry:
cylinders: 1023, heads: 16, sectors/track: 63 (1008 sectors/cylinder)
total sectors: 156301488

Partition table:
0: NetBSD (sysid 169)
    start 63, size 156301425 (76319 MB, Cyls 0-155061), Active
1: <UNUSED>
2: <UNUSED>
3: <UNUSED>
Bootselector disabled.

disklabel reports:

type: unknown
disk: NetBSD_1
label: 
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 16
sectors/cylinder: 1008
cylinders: 155061
total sectors: 156301488
rpm: 3600
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0		# microseconds
track-to-track seek: 0	# microseconds
drivedata: 0 

16 partitions:
#        size    offset     fstype [fsize bsize cpg/sgs]
 a:   4195296        63     4.2BSD   2048 16384 21872  # (Cyl.      0*-   4162*)
 b:   2097648   4195359       swap                     # (Cyl.   4162*-   6243*)
 c: 156301425        63     unused      0     0        # (Cyl.      0*- 155060)
 d: 156301488         0     unused      0     0        # (Cyl.      0 - 155060)
 e:  16778160   6293007     4.2BSD   2048 16384 27680  # (Cyl.   6243*-  22888*)
 f:   4195296  23071167     4.2BSD   2048 16384 21872  # (Cyl.  22888*-  27050*)
 g:  16778160  27266463     4.2BSD   2048 16384 27680  # (Cyl.  27050*-  43695*)

I tried the boot manager (fdisk -B) on the SATA drive, but this made no difference. I sort of 
assume I must have a geometry problem, but I can't see what it is. The installer thinks its a 
type 81 drive with 1023/16/63 chs, which is what fdisk reports. 

This (I think) is the first time I've tried to boot NetBSD from anything other than the first drive 
on the first controller. Do I need to to anything different for drives on subsequent controllers? 

Does anyone have any ideas as to what might be wrong?

Thanks,-- 
Peter Hardman
Acre Cottage, Horsebridge
King's Somborne
Stockbridge
SO20 6PT

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