Dell S2D partition woes

[h***@visi.com]

Hi all.

OK, I'm pretty satisfied with how FreeBSD 4.5 is running on this Dell
CPi D233ST I've got, except for one niggler: The suspend-to-disk feature.

Due to a poorly-written lphdisk utility, which I have on a Linux "fixit
diskette", I had to make the S2D slice #4, otherwise it wouldn't format
it. In and of itself, that isn't a big deal, except that the Dell BIOS
won't use it; I'm thinking it's because it isn't slice #1.

I used fdisk to re-arrange the MBR slice table, moving FBSD to slice
#4 and S2D to slice #1, but as you'd expect, that fouled things due to
invalid disk labels (I did manage to restore everything!).

So, two questions: Is my assumption correct, that the BIOS wants S2D on
slice #1, and if so, can I make the existing disk labels "jibe" with the
changed FBSD slice? I'm assuming that simply editing /etc/fstab before
rebooting with the new slice table won't cut it.

Please CC me, I'm not subscribed to this list. TIA,
Dave

[p***@pir.net]

OK, I'm wrong. I can try the DOS phdisk.exe utility. I found "phdisk.zip",
"phdisk34.zip", and "phdisk43.zip". Is one preferable over the others?

I used the one supplied by the manufacturer of the particular laptop.

Not an issue; the disk is just 3Gb.

*nod*

P.

[h***@visi.com]

All the laptop save to disk BIOS stuff I have experience with is
phoenix bios, I set them up with phdisk.exe from DOS. These have
always had to be fdisk partition #4. Always. IBM laptops, Sony
laptops, they've all been the same.

OK, I finally got it working. On this particular machine, a Dell Latitude
CPi D233ST A12, neither lphdisk nor any of the phdisk.exe utilities I
found work.

These utilities expect an S2D slice signature of 0xa0 at the fourth slice,
as you wrote. However, this machine expects an S2D slice signature of 0x84,
as created by Dell's mks2d utility (specifically, DE987901 'mks2d -F'). It
put the S2D slice at what I assume is the first open table entry (the
second one, in my case).

I haven't experimented with moving the S2D slice to another table entry
to see if the BIOS will find it at any entry. All is well just as it is.

For future reference (if that's an appropriate preamble, considering this
machine's age), the existing FreeBSD slice was not harmed, p'raps due to
the "-F" switch? I followed the directions in the supplied readme.s2d
explicitly.

Dave