From: dfilip@colornet.com
Newsgroups: comp.os.coherent
Subject: Re: installation help
Keywords: coherent os/2
Date: 12 Dec 92 14:55:43 GMT
Distribution: world
Summary: Using OS/2 with Coherent 
Organization: ColorNet Information Systems

Christopher Mauritz writes:
>Richard Warwick (WARWICKR@SLUVCA.SLU.EDU) wrote:
>OS/2> DATE SENT:  29-NOV-1992 14:07:47
>OS/2> 
>OS/2> well, I had coherent working on my new machine, and then I went an did it-
>OS/2> I installed OS/2  [I know, I know]
>OS/2> 
>OS/2> I installed the OS/2 Boot manager, and told it that coherent was
>OS/2> in my #3 partition.

The OS/2 boot manager does NOT know how to deal with booting a Coherent
partition.
 
>OS/2> when I pick the coherent partition, I get a "?" prompt, and nothing
>OS/2> obvious seems to work.

I would not expect it to.

>OS/2> Is there an easy way to fix this, or do I have to <shudder> reinstall?
>OS/2> 
>OS/2> also, the MWC master boot program seems to be still functioning - yet
>OS/2> the installation manual says that using FDISK will wipe it out.  How can
>OS/2> I remove this without having to reformat my hard disk?

You want to keep the MWC master boot, since IT can boot the Boot Manager, but
the Boot Manager cannot boot Coherent.

If Coherent is your 'active' partition, and the MWC boot program is installed,
you should simply be able to turn on your system and Coherent will come up.

If you want to boot OS/2, and the MWC boot program is still there, right after
the floppies reset and the system 'beeps' type in the # of the partition that
the OS/2 Boot Manager resides in, and then boot OS/2 (partition # is 1-4 (i.e.,
NOT zero offset)).

Personally, I have done the opposite : my active parition is the OS/2 Boot
Manager, and therefore if I do nothing it starts up and gives me a choice
of either DOS or OS/2. If I type the partition # of Coherent, then the MWC
boot program starts up Coherent (I have done this because my wife occasionally
uses DOS on my PC, and I don't want her booting up Coherent without knowing
how to cleanly shut it down).

>In a nutshell....you are fucked.  I have had this ongoing problem with
>OS/2 2.0 and Coherent for a few months now.  As near as I have been
>able to figure out, you will have to re-install Coherent.  No amount
>of hacking could ever bring MY file system back from this point.

This is only true if OS/2 has scribbled on your Coherent partition as it was
trying to boot it. Although I have never tried this, so I can't say for sure,
I would think it would be a read-only action.

>I hope you had backups...OS/2 and Coherent do NOT cohabitate nicely.

Actually, I do not have any problems. My configuration is as follows :

					Format	Drive	Contents

	Partition 1	Primary DOS	FAT	C:	DOS 5.00
	Partition 2	Ext DOS		FAT	D:	DOS files
					HPFS	E:	OS/2 2.0
	Partition 3	Coherent
Active	Partition 4	OS/2 Boot Mgr

>Eventually, OS/2 will decide that your Coherent parition is really
>a wayward OS/2 partiion and chkdsk will "fix" it.  I do not know why
>this happens.

Of course, once OS/2 scribbles on your Coherent partition, everthing is
lost !

>  The good news is that in my limited testing of linux,
>I have not seen this behavior.  Try them both and choose the one
>that works best for you.

And I have not seen this behavior with OS/2 and Coherent, either. I believe
the problem is that the procedure is not as well documented as is should be,
and the OS/2 Boot Manager just has no idea what a Coherent partition is.
Although I would doubt it knows what a Linux partion is (???) unless it
looks like Xenix or something else it knows about ?

Regards,

Dave.

--
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=   David E. Filip                UUCP   : dfilip@colornet.com              =
=   ColorNet Information Systems  CIS    : 76430,3111                       =
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=    If David Cutler had been a heavy drug user in the 60's, he probably    =
=                    would have written Unix instead ...                    =
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