From: Bill.Viggers@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Bill Viggers)
Subject: Magic match failed!
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 21:36:00 GMT


        I tried using the SLS release 0.98 for the first time last 
        night.  Placing the a1 disk in the drive, all proceded fine.  However
        after it said 'place root disk in the drive' things
        began to fail rather badly.
        I placed the disk a2 (as this is the other rawrite'ed disk
        I assume this is the root disk) in the drive and got
        a message 'magic match failed', along with:

magic match failed (a second time)
[cms-dos FS rel. alpha 8, FAT 12, check=n, conv=b]
[no=cxf9, cs=1, #f=2, fs=1, f1=7, ds=15, de=224, data=29, se=2400,es=0]
no bmap support


        What have I done wrong?  And is it likely to be related to
        installing a new HD on my machine?

Bill

From: sct@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Stephen Tweedie)
Subject: Re: Magic match failed!
Date: 16 Oct 92 16:50:10 GMT

In article < Bw2xC1.4t5@comp.vuw.ac.nz>, 
Bill.Viggers@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Bill Viggers) writes:

> Nntp-Posting-Host: debretts.comp.vuw.ac.nz

> I tried using the SLS release 0.98 for the first time last night.
> Placing the a1 disk in the drive, all proceded fine.  However after
> it said 'place root disk in the drive' things began to fail rather
> badly. I placed the disk a2 (as this is the other rawrite'ed disk I
> assume this is the root disk) in the drive and got a message 'magic
> match failed', along with:

> magic match failed (a second time)
> [cms-dos FS rel. alpha 8, FAT 12, check=n, conv=b]
> [no=cxf9, cs=1, #f=2, fs=1, f1=7, ds=15, de=224, data=29, se=2400,es=0]
> no bmap support

> What have I done wrong? And is it likely to be related to
> installing a new HD on my machine?

> Bill

The "magic match failed" message is issued by the kernel when it tries
to mount a file system and cannot find the correct header information
for that file system on the block device.

When Linux mounts the root partition, it tries to look for all the
different possible file system types on the partition in the order
minix, extfs, dosfs.  It does this by trying to mount the different
types in that order, until one of the mounts succeeds.  The messages
you describe means that linux has mounted a DOS filing system as root
--- the two magic match failures mean that linux has failed to find a
minix or an extfs file system, and the rest of the blurb is the
standard information printed out whenever linux mounts a dos file
system.

I'm not familiar with SLS --- I started out with mcc-interim --- but I
suspect that your rawritten disk should NOT have a dos file system on
it; mounting a dos file system as root is legal, but probably not what
was intended.  Rawrite should be able to create a valid minix disk,
completely overwriting the dos information formatted onto it by the
dos format command.  Your best bet might be to download the a2 disk
again.  Then again, I might be talking garbage... Your mileage may
vary.

Good luck anyway - Who said Linux was the best thing since sliced
bread?  Sliced bread doesn't even come close!

Cheers,
 Stephen Tweedie.
---
Stephen Tweedie    (Internet: )
Department of Computer Science, Edinburgh University, Scotland.