I'm trying to install NetBSD 9.3 as a PV (or NetBSD/10 as PVH[0]) Xen
domain. The Dom0 is running Linux and serves the disks as LVM devices:
$ lvs vg0/netbsd-disk{0,1}
LV VG Attr LSize
netbsd-disk0 vg0 -wi-ao---- 8.00g
netbsd-disk1 vg0 -wi-ao---- 16.00g
However, early during installation the a curious thing happens: NetBSD
thinks the root disk is way too big:
Available disks
│ │
│>a: xbd0 (64G) │
│ b: xbd1 (128G) │
│ c: Extended partitioning │
│ x: Exit
But if continued, the console is flooded with:
[ 624.6300953] xbd1d: error reading fsbn 0 (xbd1 bn 0; cn 0 tn 0 sn 0)
[ 624.6401076] xbd1: dos partition I/O error
And similarly for xbd0. And later the disk configuration process fails
with:
Status: Command failed
Command: disklabel -w -r -f /tmp/disklabel.7603 xbd0 'xbd0' 'default label'
Hit enter to continue
disklabel: ioctl DIOCWDINFO: Input/output error
Sometimes "sysinst" even crashes and dumps core, but I was not able to
analyze it as I don't know how to get it out of the DomU.
So, this is all very weird, and I have to say that This Worked Before:
NetBSD was installed as a PV Xen domain on the same disk, but with a
slightly different LVM setup, and *maybe* the sector size has changed to
4k now. There's a Linux command "blockdev" that queries various disk
parameters, for /dev/vg0/netbsd-disk0 (xbd0) it tells me:
16777216 --getsz - "get size in 512-byte sectors"
0 --getro - "get read-only"
0 --getdiscardzeroes - "get discard zeroes support status"
4096 --getss - "get logical block (sector) size"
4096 --getpbsz - "get physical block (sector) size"
4096 --getiomin - "get minimum I/O size"
0 --getioopt - "get optimal I/O size"
0 --getalignoff - "get alignment offset in bytes"
2560 --getmaxsect - "get max sectors per request"
4096 --getbsz - "get blocksize"
16777216 --getsize - "get 32-bit sector count (deprecated)
8589934592 --getsize64 - "get size in bytes"
256 --getra - "get readahead"
256 --getfra - "get filesystem readahead"
79 --getdiskseq - "get disk sequence number"
This all looks fine, 8 GB is the correct size here and both --getsz and
--getsize64 add up. But maybe that 4096 sectory size is what throws NetBSD
off.
So, my question is: does NetBSD work with 4k sector size disks? I found
two[1][2] threads from 11 years ago, but nothing conclusive and with
somewhat conflicting[3][4] information.
As an additional note: booting NetBSD as a HVM domain[5] works just fine
and disk sizes are recognized correctly.
And ideas on how to tackle this?
Thanks,
Christian.
[0] https://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-xen/2020/05/02/msg009718.html
[1] https://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-kern/2012/06/07/msg013321.html
[2] https://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2012/03/01/msg010168.html
[3] https://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-kern/2012/06/07/msg013326.html
[4] https://mail-index.netbsd.org/tech-kern/2012/06/07/msg013328.html
[5] https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/xen/howto/#index1h2
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