greetings,

the machine has:
scsi disk, system and user data.
ide disk, strictly backups of scsi disk.

here's what happened:

i decided to upgrade to solaris 10 (from 9), and i did a fresh install.
as you know, you get a chance to tell it which disks to use, and which
to ignore.  the screen had guessed right, but i moved the ide disk
over to the "use" half of the screen, and then moved it back out.

you guessed it.  afterward i couldn't mount it, or see it in the
format command.  that is, it showed up in the list of drives, but
selecting it failed.  the correct cylinder count shows up.
i reinstalled 9, hoping.  nope.  that's when i saw
the message that the PBR was bad.

i hope i can fix this with fdisk.  i'm pretty sure i know what the
partition table looked like.  one partition at 0, which would
have looked just like the backup partition, slice 2.

is fdisk the thing to use?  i was hoping i could find a fellow sufferer
with some advice.

j.
-- 
Jay Scott		512-835-3553		gl@arlut.utexas.edu
Head of Sun Support, Sr. Operating Systems Specialist
Applied Research Labs, Computer Science Div.                   S224
University of Texas at Austin

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 04:40:08 +0000, Jay G. Scott wrote:

> you guessed it.  afterward i couldn't mount it, or see it in the
> format command.  that is, it showed up in the list of drives, but
> selecting it failed.  the correct cylinder count shows up.
> i reinstalled 9, hoping.  nope.  that's when i saw
> the message that the PBR was bad.
> 
> i hope i can fix this with fdisk.  i'm pretty sure i know what the
> partition table looked like.  one partition at 0, which would
> have looked just like the backup partition, slice 2.

There is a small problem here with semantics.  Solaris x86 can access only
one fdisk DOS partition.  Unless you are multibooting this machine the IDE
drive should have only one of them.


> is fdisk the thing to use?  i was hoping i could find a fellow sufferer
> with some advice.
> 
> j.

I've had other problem with dual booting XP and Sol X x86 on IDE disk (Dell 
Latitude 840). After fresh install over Sol 9 x86 in extended partition, Sol 
X messed up my XP partition (primary). I started all over with same disk 
layout to see what happens.
1 Dell Diagnistics 48MB
2 primary XP
extended
3 solaris X
4 share fat 16

first XP install, then SOL X... again when Sol X shines bright, XP seems to 
suffer from FS corruption.

Anny one anny idea why this happens?



"Dave Uhring" <daveuhring@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:pan.2005.02.26.05.30.05.66892@yahoo.com...
> On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 04:40:08 +0000, Jay G. Scott wrote:
>
>> you guessed it.  afterward i couldn't mount it, or see it in the
>> format command.  that is, it showed up in the list of drives, but
>> selecting it failed.  the correct cylinder count shows up.
>> i reinstalled 9, hoping.  nope.  that's when i saw
>> the message that the PBR was bad.
>>
>> i hope i can fix this with fdisk.  i'm pretty sure i know what the
>> partition table looked like.  one partition at 0, which would
>> have looked just like the backup partition, slice 2.
>
> There is a small problem here with semantics.  Solaris x86 can access only
> one fdisk DOS partition.  Unless you are multibooting this machine the IDE
> drive should have only one of them.
>
>
>> is fdisk the thing to use?  i was hoping i could find a fellow sufferer
>> with some advice.
>>
>> j.
> 

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 20:52:13 +0100, Camille Kotte wrote:

> I've had other problem with dual booting XP and Sol X x86 on IDE disk (Dell 
> Latitude 840). After fresh install over Sol 9 x86 in extended partition, Sol 
> X messed up my XP partition (primary). I started all over with same disk 
> layout to see what happens.
> 1 Dell Diagnistics 48MB
> 2 primary XP
> extended
> 3 solaris X
> 4 share fat 16

That does not work.  Solaris x86 does not even recognize extended logical
DOS partitions.  You must install Solaris x86 to a DOS primary partition.

> first XP install, then SOL X... again when Sol X shines bright, XP seems to 
> suffer from FS corruption.
> 
> Anny one anny idea why this happens?

Solaris fdisk does not comply with BIOS LBA settings and uses its own CHS
format.

Boot a Linux install CD, Slackware preferred.  Execute fdisk, delete then
add each partition and set the partition type correctly.  My own PC's
partition table:

[root]# fdisk -l /dev/hda

Disk /dev/hda: 30.0 GB, 30020272128 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3649 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1               1        1095     8795556    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2   *        1096        2190     8795587+  bf  Unknown
/dev/hda3            2191        3649    11719417+  85  Linux extended
/dev/hda5            2191        2410     1767118+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6            2411        2473      506016   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda7            2474        2505      257008+  83  Linux
/dev/hda8            2506        3090     4698981   83  Linux
/dev/hda9            3091        3649     4490136   83  Linux

Solaris 10-GA is installed on partition 2.  No idea why its type number
has changed from 0x82.  But it was necessary to delete then add both
partitions 1 and 2 before I could get Linux lilo to recreate the MBR.