# max one 'fat' allowed as child of 'whole'



## ororo (May 26, 2009)

I am not able installing FreeBSD.

The disk is already partitioned, I just want to use a partition for FreeBSD leaving unchanged the remaining partition. When I try to confirm this, the installer gives me the error in title.

My situation:

ad0s2 FAT32 20Gb
ad0s3 FAT32 20Gb
ad0s1 ext3 12Gb (trying to replace with freebsd)
ad0s4 extended DOS partition 30Gb (the installer doesn't look inside it).

Really cannot I have more that one FAT primary partition? this looks incomprehensible for me.


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## SirDice (May 26, 2009)

ororo said:
			
		

> Really cannot I have more that one FAT primary partition? this looks incomprehensible for me.


You cannot have more then 4 primary BIOS/PC partitions (slices in bsd speak). The filesystems don't matter.

Looking at this:
ad0s2 FAT32 20Gb
ad0s3 FAT32 20Gb
ad0s1 ext3 12Gb (trying to replace with freebsd)
ad0s4 extended DOS partition 30Gb (the installer doesn't look inside it).

When in fdisk during the install, remove that ext3 slice and create a new bsd slice in the available space. There shouldn't be any problems with that.


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## tangram (May 26, 2009)

Googling for the error you'll find some thread in the mailing lists, so investigate.

Btw FreeBSD doesn't install on logical partition, so is ad0s1 a logical partition or not?

If so there a thread on this forum Installation of FreeBSD onto a Logical Partition, but honestly it seems nobody achieved success.


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## SirDice (May 26, 2009)

tangram said:
			
		

> Btw FreeBSD doesn't install on logical partition, so is ad0s1 a logical partition or not?


No, it's a primary (first slice actually). Logical ones are labeled s5 and beyond.


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## tangram (May 26, 2009)

SirDice said:
			
		

> No, it's a primary (first slice actually). Logical ones are labeled s5 and beyond.



Doh!


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## ororo (May 26, 2009)

Thank you both.

@tangram: I already googled, but all the posts seems useless for me.
Moreover, I have not listed my logical partitions. All the logical partitions are /inside/ the extended partition, of course. Fdisk does not list them.

@SirDice: I will try deleting the partition and creating it again.

I don't know if this is useful, but the installer also gives me another warning: "A geometry of 155061/16/63 for ad0 is incorrect. Using a more likely geometry."


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## ororo (May 26, 2009)

I have tried, but nothing has changed. The same error as before.


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## tangram (May 26, 2009)

ororo said:
			
		

> I don't know if this is useful, but the installer also gives me another warning: "A geometry of 155061/16/63 for ad0 is incorrect. Using a more likely geometry."



Nevermind this error.

Delete the partition and try to use it again.


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## SirDice (May 26, 2009)

Ok. As far as I understood it it's a rather old message. More a warning actually. The one FAT partition limit was with the old DOS. It could only handle one primary FAT partition, all others had to be in an extended partition. 

Freebsd doesn't really mind it though and just pressing on OK should continue the install process.


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## ororo (May 28, 2009)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Freebsd doesn't really mind it though and just pressing on OK should continue the install process.



If you are talking about the warning "A geometry of 155061/16/63 for ad0 is incorrect. Using a more likely geometry.", yes, I think you are right. I click "ok" and the installation goes on.

If you are talking about the error "max one 'fat' allowed as child of 'whole'", no, there is no "OK" button to press, I cannot go on in any way.

I have tried to delete and re-create the freebsd partition, but I have the same error again.

Now, I will try to backup and delete one of the FAT partitions... and let's hope everything's good!


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## ororo (May 28, 2009)

Solved.
Yes, the problem was with having more than one FAT partition.

In Linux, with fdisk I have changed the disk-id of one of the FAT partitions into something other; then, I installed FreeBSD; lastly, I returned to Linux changing again the disk-id of my FAT partition.
So, I did not need to reinstall completely the partition! (and luckily I did not lost any data).

Anyway, I think this is a very strange behaviour of sysinstall.


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## Beastie (May 28, 2009)

ororo said:
			
		

> In Linux, with fdisk I have changed the disk-id of one of the FAT partitions into something other; then, I installed FreeBSD; lastly, I returned to Linux changing again the disk-id of my FAT partition.
> So, I did not need to reinstall completely the partition! (and luckily I did not lost any data).
> 
> Anyway, I think this is a very strange behaviour of sysinstall.



Have you tried using FreeBSD's fdisk manually (i.e. outside sysinstall)? I don't know if it behaves the same with FAT partitions as sysinstall, but it easily allows you to change a partition ID just like you did in Linux.


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## SirDice (May 28, 2009)

ororo said:
			
		

> If you are talking about the error "max one 'fat' allowed as child of 'whole'", no, there is no "OK" button to press, I cannot go on in any way.


That's weird, all the screenshots I saw of it had an OK button.
Even old ones from the 4.x days :q


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## ororo (Jun 3, 2009)

oh, you are (partially) right.
@Beastie: yes, fdisk does the job, in the same way as linux does.
@SirDice: I was using an *old* freebsd version (6.2). There was no "OK" button there. Now I have tried with the 7.2, and there is an "OK" button that allows me to avoid the problem.

Anyway, now I have got FreeBSD. Thank you all!


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