gpart weirdness: diskid/DISK-3EV0P4PZ00007250010X GPT (17G)
# gpart show = 34 35566411 da1 GPT (17G) 34 35566411 - free - (17G) = 34 35566411 diskid/DISK-3EV0P4PZ7250010X GPT (17G) 34 35566411- free - (17G) = 34 35566411 da2 GPT (17G) 34 35566411 - free - (17G) = 34 35566411 diskid/DISK-3EV0PWCX72500ZNJ GPT (17G) 34 35566411- free - (17G) # This is on ia64 10.0-CURRENT #5 r255488. Both disks appear twice in gpart show output. Is there some corruption in gpart data. What am I do to? Thanks Anton ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart weirdness: diskid/DISK-3EV0P4PZ00007250010X GPT (17G)
On Wed, Oct 9, 2013, at 4:33, Anton Shterenlikht wrote: # gpart show = 34 35566411 da1 GPT (17G) 34 35566411 - free - (17G) = 34 35566411 diskid/DISK-3EV0P4PZ7250010X GPT (17G) 34 35566411- free - (17G) = 34 35566411 da2 GPT (17G) 34 35566411 - free - (17G) = 34 35566411 diskid/DISK-3EV0PWCX72500ZNJ GPT (17G) 34 35566411- free - (17G) # This is normal. Gpart is showing you both the physical dev versions of the devices and the GPT label versions of the devices. I'll admit it can be confusing, though. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart weirdness: diskid/DISK-3EV0P4PZ00007250010X GPT (17G)
From: Mark Felder f...@freebsd.org To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: gpart weirdness: diskid/DISK-3EV0P4PZ7250010X GPT (17G) Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2013 06:56:17 -0500 On Wed, Oct 9, 2013, at 4:33, Anton Shterenlikht wrote: # gpart show = 34 35566411 da1 GPT (17G) 34 35566411 - free - (17G) = 34 35566411 diskid/DISK-3EV0P4PZ7250010X GPT (17G) 34 35566411- free - (17G) = 34 35566411 da2 GPT (17G) 34 35566411 - free - (17G) = 34 35566411 diskid/DISK-3EV0PWCX72500ZNJ GPT (17G) 34 35566411- free - (17G) # This is normal. Gpart is showing you both the physical dev versions of the devices and the GPT label versions of the devices. I'll admit it can be confusing, though. Well, I haven't seen this before. And it only shows this for some disks, not all: # gpart show = 34 143374671 da0 GPT (68G) 34 4096001 efi (200M) 409634 1429650712 freebsd-ufs (68G) = 34 35566411 da1 GPT (17G) 34 35566411 - free - (17G) = 34 35566411 da2 GPT (17G) 34 35566411 - free - (17G) = 34 142255508 da3 GPT (67G) 34 1422555081 freebsd-ufs (67G) = 34 35566411 diskid/DISK-3EV0P4PZ7250010X GPT (17G) 34 35566411- free - (17G) = 34 35566411 diskid/DISK-3EV0PWCX72500ZNJ GPT (17G) 34 35566411- free - (17G) = 34 142255508 da4 GPT (67G) 34 1422555081 freebsd-swap (67G) = 34 142255508 da5 GPT (67G) 34 1422555081 freebsd-ufs (67G) = 34 286744118 da6 GPT (136G) 34 2867441181 freebsd-ufs (136G) # Thanks Anton ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
gpart: table 'da0' is corrupt; operation not permitted
Hello again, Not happy to be posting so much lately especially being so new. I grabbed a few disks from a Mac and am using them for sys disks. Upon booting from an install CD into a shell, I type; gpart show and see several partitions; 34 78165293da0 GPT (37G) [CORRUPT] 34 6 - free - (3.0k) 40 409600 1 efi (200M) 409640 774935362 !52414944--11aa-aa11-00306543eacac (37G) 77903176262144 3 apple-boot (128M) 781653207 - free- (3.5k) Upon doing; gpart destroy da0 I get; gpart: Device busy Upon doing; gpart delete -i 1 da0 I get; gpart: table da0 is corrupt: Operation not permitted Any insight would be huge, thanks in advance, - aurf ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart: table 'da0' is corrupt; operation not permitted
On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 1:44 PM, aurfalien aurfal...@gmail.com wrote: Upon doing; gpart destroy da0 I get; gpart: Device busy crude but effective: DISK=da0 offset=`diskinfo $DISK | awk '{ print $4 - 131072 }'` dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$DISK bs=64k count=1 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$DISK bs=64k seek=$offset gpart create -s gpt ${DISK} ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart: table 'da0' is corrupt; operation not permitted
On Jul 16, 2013, at 1:50 PM, Michael Sierchio wrote: On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 1:44 PM, aurfalien aurfal...@gmail.com wrote: Upon doing; gpart destroy da0 I get; gpart: Device busy crude but effective: DISK=da0 offset=`diskinfo $DISK | awk '{ print $4 - 131072 }'` dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$DISK bs=64k count=1 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$DISK bs=64k seek=$offset gpart create -s gpt ${DISK} This is what I ended up doing. I unplugged it, waited a few, re plugged and then I was able to delete/destroy. I will keep your method on hand though as I prefer not doing a hot plug. - aurf ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart: table 'da0' is corrupt; operation not permitted
On Tue, 16 Jul 2013, aurfalien wrote: On Jul 16, 2013, at 1:50 PM, Michael Sierchio wrote: On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 1:44 PM, aurfalien aurfal...@gmail.com wrote: Upon doing; gpart destroy da0 I get; gpart: Device busy crude but effective: DISK=da0 offset=`diskinfo $DISK | awk '{ print $4 - 131072 }'` dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$DISK bs=64k count=1 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$DISK bs=64k seek=$offset gpart create -s gpt ${DISK} This is what I ended up doing. I unplugged it, waited a few, re plugged and then I was able to delete/destroy. I will keep your method on hand though as I prefer not doing a hot plug. Hot plug? That just wipes the beginning and end of the disk. I would erase 1M just to be sure. The more elegant version is gpart destroy -F da0 If it gives an error when doing that, disabling the safety may be necessary: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 Do that only when necessary. It usually is not. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart: table 'da0' is corrupt; operation not permitted
On Jul 16, 2013, at 3:01 PM, Warren Block wrote: On Tue, 16 Jul 2013, aurfalien wrote: On Jul 16, 2013, at 1:50 PM, Michael Sierchio wrote: On Tue, Jul 16, 2013 at 1:44 PM, aurfalien aurfal...@gmail.com wrote: Upon doing; gpart destroy da0 I get; gpart: Device busy crude but effective: DISK=da0 offset=`diskinfo $DISK | awk '{ print $4 - 131072 }'` dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$DISK bs=64k count=1 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/$DISK bs=64k seek=$offset gpart create -s gpt ${DISK} This is what I ended up doing. I unplugged it, waited a few, re plugged and then I was able to delete/destroy. I will keep your method on hand though as I prefer not doing a hot plug. Hot plug? That just wipes the beginning and end of the disk. I would erase 1M just to be sure. The more elegant version is gpart destroy -F da0 Oh for sure, I did that after the hotplug which finally allowed me to f do it. I had to hot plug a few times though. If it gives an error when doing that, disabling the safety may be necessary: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 Do that only when necessary. It usually is not. Funny, I did that based on some googling but no dice. I booted in both regular shel and Live CD. - aurf ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart
Hi, On Sun, 31 Mar 2013 21:06:24 -0500 Joshua Isom jri...@gmail.com wrote: On 3/31/2013 8:54 PM, Erich Dollansky wrote: I have had only one problem with this description. I could not boot from a GPT setup on my machine done as described there. But I have a disk done with PCBSD based on 9.0 which booted well. I cannot tell you if this is a problem caused by a later chance on the side of FreeBSD. Did you make sure to install the gpt bootloader instead of the standard bootloader? I believe I have the gptzfsboot, so I have no UFS partitions and everything's partitioned with GPT. There's no guarantee it will fix it, bios quirks happens. it is a real weird thing. As I installed a PCBSD on that disk originally, I have had a running system. It stopped working after some FreeBSD update. As this is an external disk, I do not boot often from it. I use it mainly for backup purpose. I stopped working on this problem for some time but I will have to go back soon after other work is finished. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
RE: gpart
-Original Message- From: Erich Dollansky [mailto:erichsfreebsdl...@alogt.com] Sent: March-31-13 9:55 PM To: Grant Peel Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: gpart Hi, On Sun, 31 Mar 2013 21:28:40 -0400 Grant Peel gp...@thenetnow.com wrote: I am in the midst of setting up the framework for new servers using FreeBSD 9.1. I used the bsdinstall and Manual`` option when setting up the disk geometry using GPT - graphical setup. The idea will be to eventually dump the 4 file systems, (/, /usr /var and /home) and restore them on other servers when the time comes. using a separated home is a very good idea. http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html I have had only one problem with this description. I could not boot from a GPT setup on my machine done as described there. But I have a disk done with PCBSD based on 9.0 which booted well. I cannot tell you if this is a problem caused by a later chance on the side of FreeBSD. Which worked well. But as yet I do not have dumps to test with. If all worked well for you, I do not see any problems coming for you then. I was wondering in anyone sees any issues creating the drive geometry using this method, with the intent of restoring dumped filesystems to to, including the root filesystem. I have some drives which partitioning I did according to this. The only problem I have is booting. The rest is all working perfectly. I am yet to use 9.1 to do so, so any tips would be appreciated. If you want this for serious servers, you might even consider 8.3, if your hardware is supported. Nothing beats the robustness of the older FreeBSD versions. Erich Interesting. Up to this point I have always upgraded to the latest release version of FreeBSD. I am currently running 8.0 and am in need of many of the ports to be upgraded, and have never had much luck doing the upgrade thing with the base system and ports, preferring instead to completely rebuild in restore user data. Can I assume that the versions of the ports shown on the freebsd.orgéports site will be available in 8.3 and 9.1é -G ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart
Hi, On Mon, 1 Apr 2013 09:20:21 -0400 Grant Peel gp...@thenetnow.com wrote: I am currently running 8.0 and am in need of many of the ports to be upgraded, and have never had much luck doing the upgrade thing with the base system and ports, preferring instead to completely rebuild in restore user data. I do upgrades via portupgrade since 6.x days. Can I assume that the versions of the ports shown on the freebsd.orgéports site will be available in 8.3 and 9.1é Ports do not use a version. So, what ever FreeBSD version you have does not matter. If you updated your ports tree, you will always get the current port version. erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
gpart
Hi all, I am in the midst of setting up the framework for new servers using FreeBSD 9.1. I used the bsdinstall and Manual`` option when setting up the disk geometry using GPT - graphical setup. The idea will be to eventually dump the 4 file systems, (/, /usr /var and /home) and restore them on other servers when the time comes. I am reading everything there is about GPT at this point as I have never used it before. It seems gpart is the tool to use. I have done several test runs setting the drive geometry using this as a guide: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html Which worked well. But as yet I do not have dumps to test with. I was wondering in anyone sees any issues creating the drive geometry using this method, with the intent of restoring dumped filesystems to to, including the root filesystem. I am yet to use 9.1 to do so, so any tips would be appreciated. -G ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart
Hi, On Sun, 31 Mar 2013 21:28:40 -0400 Grant Peel gp...@thenetnow.com wrote: I am in the midst of setting up the framework for new servers using FreeBSD 9.1. I used the bsdinstall and Manual`` option when setting up the disk geometry using GPT - graphical setup. The idea will be to eventually dump the 4 file systems, (/, /usr /var and /home) and restore them on other servers when the time comes. using a separated home is a very good idea. http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html I have had only one problem with this description. I could not boot from a GPT setup on my machine done as described there. But I have a disk done with PCBSD based on 9.0 which booted well. I cannot tell you if this is a problem caused by a later chance on the side of FreeBSD. Which worked well. But as yet I do not have dumps to test with. If all worked well for you, I do not see any problems coming for you then. I was wondering in anyone sees any issues creating the drive geometry using this method, with the intent of restoring dumped filesystems to to, including the root filesystem. I have some drives which partitioning I did according to this. The only problem I have is booting. The rest is all working perfectly. I am yet to use 9.1 to do so, so any tips would be appreciated. If you want this for serious servers, you might even consider 8.3, if your hardware is supported. Nothing beats the robustness of the older FreeBSD versions. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart
On 3/31/2013 8:54 PM, Erich Dollansky wrote: I have had only one problem with this description. I could not boot from a GPT setup on my machine done as described there. But I have a disk done with PCBSD based on 9.0 which booted well. I cannot tell you if this is a problem caused by a later chance on the side of FreeBSD. Did you make sure to install the gpt bootloader instead of the standard bootloader? I believe I have the gptzfsboot, so I have no UFS partitions and everything's partitioned with GPT. There's no guarantee it will fix it, bios quirks happens. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart
On 3/31/2013 8:28 PM, Grant Peel wrote: I was wondering in anyone sees any issues creating the drive geometry using this method, with the intent of restoring dumped filesystems to to, including the root filesystem. Geometry or partition size? If it's geometry, and you need to worry about it, buy a new system. Nowadays it's making sure your 4k block hard drive has everything aligned to 4k blocks when the drive reports 512b blocks. If it's partition size, no. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart
On 31 March 2013, at 18:28, Grant Peel gp...@thenetnow.com wrote: Hi all, I am in the midst of setting up the framework for new servers using FreeBSD 9.1. I used the bsdinstall and Manual`` option when setting up the disk geometry using GPT - graphical setup. The idea will be to eventually dump the 4 file systems, (/, /usr /var and /home) and restore them on other servers when the time comes. I am reading everything there is about GPT at this point as I have never used it before. It seems gpart is the tool to use. I have done several test runs setting the drive geometry using this as a guide: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html Which worked well. But as yet I do not have dumps to test with. I was wondering in anyone sees any issues creating the drive geometry using this method, with the intent of restoring dumped filesystems to to, including the root filesystem. I am yet to use 9.1 to do so, so any tips would be appreciated. I just finished doing exactly that. Worked fine. I installed 9.1 on a drive and it had boot problems. Apparently the drive was previously a part of a raid and graid would get involved during boot and wait and wait and wait. To get rid of that, I formatted another drive using gpart and then used dump-restore to move the data from the first drive to the second. The new drive is now the master drive for the system. The original drive has been returned to a spare drive pool. The new drive boots fine and just works. I did a complete zero of the drive before starting the partitioning though as I have no way of knowing if that drive was previously in a raid array. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
9.1 install wipes out gpart boot blocks?
I used gpart to set up a new disk, then went through a 9.1 install. Everything seemed to go fine, but when time came to boot the new drive, it wouldn't boot. When doing the 9.1 install, I selected the disk and had to assign the partitions to the various filesystems. AFIK, I did not otherwise modify the filesystems. Does the 9.1 install process trash the boot areas? My gpart setup was: clean up (delete) the original partitions gpart destroy ada3 gpart create -s GPT ada3 gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr ada3 gpart add -t freebsd-boot -i 1 -s 512K -l gptboot ada3 gpart bootcode -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 ada3 gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4K -b 1M -s 4G -i 2 -l fbsdroot ada3 # / gpart add -t freebsd-swap -a 4K -s 2G -i 3 -l fbsdswap ada3 # swap gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4K -s 2G -i 4 -l fbsdvar ada3 # /var gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4K -s 2G -i 5 -l fbsdtmp ada3 # /tmp gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4K -i 6 -l fbsdusr ada3 # /usr newfs /dev/ada3p2 # / newfs -U -b 4096 -g 8192 -i 1024 /dev/ada3p4# /var newfs -U /dev/ada3p5# /tmp newfs -U /dev/ada3p6 At this point: gpart show -l ada3 = 34 488397101 ada3 GPT (232G) 34 1024 1 gptboot (512k) 1058 6- free - (3.0k) 10648388608 2 fbsdroot (4.0G) 83896724194304 3 fbsdswap (2.0G) 125839764194304 4 fbsdvar (2.0G) 167782804194304 5 fbsdtmp (2.0G) 20972584 467424544 6 fbsdusr (222G) 488397128 7- free - (3.5k) The / /var and /usr partitions seem to have been written properly. Do I simply need to rewrite the boot areas, or is something more fundamental screwed up? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
9.1 install wipes out gpart boot blocks?
Gary Aitken writes: I used gpart to set up a new disk, then went through a 9.1 install. Everything seemed to go fine, but when time came to boot the new drive, it wouldn't boot. While the it wouldn't boot is catastrophically imprecise, I had what sounds like a similar problem about a month ago. I installed from the 9.0 CD and everything appeared to go correctly. However, on final re-boot the loader couldn't identify the root partition. The solution was to identify the disks using the GPT labels in fstab. Check the archive of questions@ for more details. Robert Huff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 9.1 install wipes out gpart boot blocks?
On Wed, 30 Jan 2013, Gary Aitken wrote: I used gpart to set up a new disk, then went through a 9.1 install. Everything seemed to go fine, but when time came to boot the new drive, it wouldn't boot. What did it say? When doing the 9.1 install, I selected the disk and had to assign the partitions to the various filesystems. AFIK, I did not otherwise modify the filesystems. Does the 9.1 install process trash the boot areas? My gpart setup was: clean up (delete) the original partitions gpart destroy ada3 These two steps can be replaced with gpart destroy -F ada3 gpart create -s GPT ada3 gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr ada3 gpart add -t freebsd-boot -i 1 -s 512K -l gptboot ada3 gpart bootcode -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 ada3 I do the bootcode in one step: gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 ada3 gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4K -b 1M -s 4G -i 2 -l fbsdroot ada3 # / gpart add -t freebsd-swap -a 4K -s 2G -i 3 -l fbsdswap ada3 # swap gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4K -s 2G -i 4 -l fbsdvar ada3 # /var gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4K -s 2G -i 5 -l fbsdtmp ada3 # /tmp gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4K -i 6 -l fbsdusr ada3 # /usr It's not necessary to use partition numbers with add, gpart will just use the next one available. Here are my notes: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
creating bootable disk with gpart
Hi, I followed http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html to create bootable disks with GPT. As you know from my former post, I tried to boot via USB from a GPT disk and failed. I inserted the disk into the notebook and bootin also failed. Irony is that inserting the MBR disk into the USB case results also in a failure but much later. Booting from the GPT disk fails already at BIOS level. The BIOS does not find the loader and returns to the selection menu of available boot devices when using the GPT disk. I know that I could boot via USB. But I do not know anymore if I booted from the GPT or from the MBR disk. I can exclude an error with the USB adapter as booting from a thumb drive via USB also fails. The BIOS of my X220 did not get any updates since I purchased it. So, nothing should have changed. I am bit irritated at the moment as you can imagine. If somebody has an idea what is wrong or what I am doing wrong, please tell me. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: creating bootable disk with gpart
On Mon, 28 Jan 2013, Erich Dollansky wrote: Hi, I followed http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html to create bootable disks with GPT. As you know from my former post, I tried to boot via USB from a GPT disk and failed. I inserted the disk into the notebook and bootin also failed. Irony is that inserting the MBR disk into the USB case results also in a failure but much later. What failure? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: creating bootable disk with gpart
Hi, On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:41:10 -0700 (MST) Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com wrote: On Mon, 28 Jan 2013, Erich Dollansky wrote: Hi, I followed http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html to create bootable disks with GPT. As you know from my former post, I tried to boot via USB from a GPT disk and failed. I inserted the disk into the notebook and bootin also failed. Irony is that inserting the MBR disk into the USB case results also in a failure but much later. What failure? 'GEOM_PART integrity check failed (da0 MBR)' It is obviously not a problem with the disk as the disk worked again after being put back into the notebook. I did another test with a fresh FreeBSD 9.0 installation on an USB disk. It is the same story. The loader is not found and the system does not boot. It seems to me that my notebook is not able to boot on the combination out of USB and GPT. I will do later some more testing. It all would work for me if the machine boots with MBR. The only thing which irritates me is the fact that it started last year from the GPT formatted disk in the USB case. Of course, it also started from this disk when it was in the notebook. It still could be that I have overwritten something which comes after the loader but I cannot imagine that I have changed the loader by chance. But - as we all know - things happen. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: creating bootable disk with gpart
Hi Warren, On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:41:10 -0700 (MST) Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com wrote: On Mon, 28 Jan 2013, Erich Dollansky wrote: Hi, I followed http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html to create bootable disks with GPT. As you know from my former post, I tried to boot via USB from a GPT disk and failed. I inserted the disk into the notebook and bootin also failed. Irony is that inserting the MBR disk into the USB case results also in a failure but much later. What failure? it is all getting really confusing for me. When I try now your example, it also fails: [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart destroy -F da0 da0 destroyed [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart show da0 gpart: No such geom: da0. [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart create -s mbr da0 da0 created [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart show da0 = 63 312581745 da0 MBR (149G) 63 312581745 - free - (149G) [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr da0 bootcode written to da0 [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart show da0 = 63 312581745 da0 MBR (149G) 63 312581745 - free - (149G) [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart add -t freebsd da0 da0s1 added [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart show da0 = 63 312581745 da0 MBR (149G) 63 3125817451 freebsd (149G) [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart set -a active -i 1 da0 active set on da0s1 [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart show da0 = 63 312581745 da0 MBR (149G) 63 3125817451 freebsd [active] (149G) [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart create -s bsd da0s1 gpart: geom 'da0s1': File exists [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart show da0 = 63 312581745 da0 MBR (149G) 63 3125817451 freebsd [active] (149G) Of course, there was a da0s1 before on the disk. Shouldn't gpart destroy -F da0 have destroyed it all? Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: creating bootable disk with gpart
Hi, On Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:08:19 +0700 Erich Dollansky erichsfreebsdl...@alogt.com wrote: Hi Warren, On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:41:10 -0700 (MST) Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com wrote: On Mon, 28 Jan 2013, Erich Dollansky wrote: Hi, I followed http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html to create bootable disks with GPT. As you know from my former post, I tried to boot via USB from a GPT disk and failed. I inserted the disk into the notebook and bootin also failed. Irony is that inserting the MBR disk into the USB case results also in a failure but much later. What failure? it is all getting really confusing for me. When I try now your example, it also fails: [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart destroy -F da0 da0 destroyed [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart show da0 gpart: No such geom: da0. [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart create -s mbr da0 da0 created [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart show da0 = 63 312581745 da0 MBR (149G) 63 312581745 - free - (149G) [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr da0 bootcode written to da0 [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart show da0 = 63 312581745 da0 MBR (149G) 63 312581745 - free - (149G) [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart add -t freebsd da0 da0s1 added [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart show da0 = 63 312581745 da0 MBR (149G) 63 3125817451 freebsd (149G) [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart set -a active -i 1 da0 active set on da0s1 [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart show da0 = 63 312581745 da0 MBR (149G) 63 3125817451 freebsd [active] (149G) [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart create -s bsd da0s1 gpart: geom 'da0s1': File exists [X220]/home/erich (root) gpart show da0 = 63 312581745 da0 MBR (149G) 63 3125817451 freebsd [active] (149G) Of course, there was a da0s1 before on the disk. Shouldn't gpart destroy -F da0 have destroyed it all? even using the image to install FreeBSD 9.0 from a thumbdrive gives the same result. It seems that old partitions re-appear after a deleted slice is created again. I then installed FreeBSD 9.0 from that thumbdrive onto that USB disk using a MBR schema. Of course, this booted after editing /etc/fstab. My problem are still the re-appearin partitions. I would like to have a script which flattens a media and creates new partitions and puts a new file system on each partition. There are now two options I have. Looking at the source (would be the ideal one) or do a hack deleting partitions which might not exist. The original problem of a GPT device not booting would still be there. I will go back to my normal work now. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart, glabel and newfs -- what am I doing wrong
Hi, On Sun, 13 Jan 2013 01:36:21 -0500 kpn...@pobox.com wrote: On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 08:09:00AM +0700, Erich Dollansky wrote: For what is glabel then still good? It is still useful for partition schemes that don't have labels (eg, MBR) AND the filesystem used doesn't support labels itself AND the end of the partition does not get touched by the filesystem. Note that UFS in FreeBSD does support labels. I believe it is the '-L' option to newfs. ZFS does not in this sense, and ZFS touches the end of the partition. That's a long list of conditions. So, really, glabel should typically be avoided. thanks for the explaination. I am not able to use the labels outside gpart but if they work for me - as it currently looks like - I will stick with them. I will later report in more detail when I have finished my scripts. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart, glabel and newfs -- what am I doing wrong
On Sun, 13 Jan 2013, kpn...@pobox.com wrote: On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 08:09:00AM +0700, Erich Dollansky wrote: For what is glabel then still good? It is still useful for partition schemes that don't have labels (eg, MBR) AND the filesystem used doesn't support labels itself AND the end of the partition does not get touched by the filesystem. But it doesn't matter what the filesystem does. Access to the last block is not allowed by the label device. The filesystem does not even see it. See my reply in -fs: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-fs/2013-January/016113.html ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart, glabel and newfs -- what am I doing wrong
On Sun, 13 Jan 2013, Warren Block wrote: On Sun, 13 Jan 2013, kpn...@pobox.com wrote: On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 08:09:00AM +0700, Erich Dollansky wrote: For what is glabel then still good? It is still useful for partition schemes that don't have labels (eg, MBR) AND the filesystem used doesn't support labels itself AND the end of the partition does not get touched by the filesystem. But it doesn't matter what the filesystem does. Access to the last block is not allowed by the label device. The filesystem does not even see it. See my reply in -fs: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-fs/2013-January/016113.html Sorry, forgot to mention that one possible use for glabel is to label a swap partition on an MBR drive. # glabel label myswap /dev/ada0s1b And then in /etc/fstab: /dev/label/myswap noneswapsw 0 0 One block is used for metadata at the end of ada0s1b, but it's safe from overwriting because /dev/label/myswap does not include that block. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
gpart, glabel and newfs -- what am I doing wrong
Hi, in general, I try to create the partitions with gpart, add a label with glabel and put a filesystem. I think that I am doing something very simple the wrong way but I cannot see the error. I try to do it in the following way: # gpart destroy -F da0 # gpart create -s GPT da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -s 64k da0 # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 512m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2boot da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 10m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2root da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-swap -s 10m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2swap da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 10m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2var da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 10m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2tmp da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2usr da0 Label the partitions: # glabel label Toshiba16GB2boot /dev/da0p2 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2root /dev/da0p3 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2swap /dev/da0p4 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2var /dev/da0p5 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2tmp /dev/da0p6 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2usr /dev/da0p7 And put a file system onto the partitions. # newfs /dev/label/Toshiba16GB2boo # newfs /dev/label/Toshiba16GB2roo # newfs /dev/label/Toshiba16GB2var # newfs /dev/label/Toshiba16GB2tmp # newfs /dev/label/Toshiba16GB2usr But newfs on the first partition results in this: Filesystem size 15 minimum size of 48 When I ran the newfs directly on the device, I get this: [X220]/home/erich (root) newfs /dev/da0p2 /dev/da0p2: 512.0MB (1048576 sectors) block size 32768, fragment size 4096 using 4 cylinder groups of 128.03MB, 4097 blks, 16512 inodes. super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at: 192, 262400, 524608, 786816 Of course, this is what I expect. I believe that it is something simple but I am not able to see my mistake. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart, glabel and newfs -- what am I doing wrong
FWIW I could not partition using the FreeBSD 9.0 amd64 install DVD. I partitioned with the PcBSD 8.2 DVD and then tried to install from 9.0, but it anyway caused partitioning issues. After that I partitioned using FreeBSD 8.3, installed 8.3 and then updated to 9.1. Regards, Ralf ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart, glabel and newfs -- what am I doing wrong
On Sat, 12 Jan 2013, Erich Dollansky wrote: in general, I try to create the partitions with gpart, add a label with glabel and put a filesystem. I think that I am doing something very simple the wrong way but I cannot see the error. I try to do it in the following way: # gpart destroy -F da0 # gpart create -s GPT da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -s 64k da0 # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 512m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2boot da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 10m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2root da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-swap -s 10m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2swap da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 10m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2var da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 10m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2tmp da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2usr da0 Label the partitions: # glabel label Toshiba16GB2boot /dev/da0p2 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2root /dev/da0p3 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2swap /dev/da0p4 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2var /dev/da0p5 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2tmp /dev/da0p6 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2usr /dev/da0p7 There is no need for all this. You already created GPT labels with 'gpt -l' above. And those labels don't need extra metadata at the end of the partition. And put a file system onto the partitions. # newfs /dev/label/Toshiba16GB2boo # newfs /dev/label/Toshiba16GB2roo # newfs /dev/label/Toshiba16GB2var # newfs /dev/label/Toshiba16GB2tmp # newfs /dev/label/Toshiba16GB2usr Those look cut off. And there's surely a limit to the length of label names, but I'm not sure what it is. Anyway, use # newfs /dev/gpt/Toshiba16GB2boot And consider using -U with newfs. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart, glabel and newfs -- what am I doing wrong
Hi, On Sat, 12 Jan 2013 09:56:39 -0700 (MST) Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com wrote: On Sat, 12 Jan 2013, Erich Dollansky wrote: in general, I try to create the partitions with gpart, add a label with glabel and put a filesystem. I think that I am doing something very simple the wrong way but I cannot see the error. I try to do it in the following way: # gpart destroy -F da0 # gpart create -s GPT da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -s 64k da0 # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 512m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2boot da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 10m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2root da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-swap -s 10m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2swap da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 10m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2var da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 10m -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2tmp da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 4k -l Toshiba16GB2usr da0 Label the partitions: # glabel label Toshiba16GB2boot /dev/da0p2 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2root /dev/da0p3 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2swap /dev/da0p4 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2var /dev/da0p5 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2tmp /dev/da0p6 # glabel label Toshiba16GB2usr /dev/da0p7 There is no need for all this. You already created GPT labels with 'gpt -l' above. And those labels don't need extra metadata at the end of the partition. For what is glabel then still good? And consider using -U with newfs. Do not worry, this was just for the test. Erich ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
gpart and FreeBSD 8.x
For anyone interested, Posted a new blog with regards to gpart on FreeBSD 8.x (with a link to one of Warren's blog posts): http://blog.hostileadmin.com/2012/12/03/freebsd-partitions-and-filesystems-with-gpart/ -- Take care Rick Miller ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart and FreeBSD 8.x
On 12/03/2012 13:31, Rick Miller wrote: For anyone interested, Posted a new blog with regards to gpart on FreeBSD 8.x (with a link to one of Warren's blog posts): http://blog.hostileadmin.com/2012/12/03/freebsd-partitions-and-filesystems-with-gpart/ gpart is in BASE on 8.x so there is nothing to install -- No trees were killed in the creation of this message. However, many electrons were terribly inconvenienced. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart and FreeBSD 8.x
On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 7:49 AM, Julien Cigar jci...@ulb.ac.be wrote: gpart is in BASE on 8.x so there is nothing to install Thanks, Julien! I added a comment to this effect on the post! -- Take care Rick Miller ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Manually partitioning using gpart
This is what I've got: # gpart show ada0 = 63 625142385 ada0 MBR (298G) 63 121274683 - free - (57G) [snip] IIUC I now have to do: # gpart add -s 64k -t freebsd-boot -l boot0 ada0 # gpart add -s 8G -t freebsd-swap -l swap0 ada0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 256k -l root0 ada0 Here I already don't understand how large the swap should be. Really 2 * size of the RAM? I also don't know if 256k is a sane alignment value, I just copied this from a howto. How to continue after this is done? I want to use GRUB from my Linux installs, this is the Linux menu.lst: timeout 8 default 0 color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue title FreeBSD 9.0 root (hd0,a) kernel /boot/loader [snip] Regards, Ralf ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On Sun, 25 Nov 2012 12:26:14 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote: This is what I've got: # gpart show ada0 = 63 625142385 ada0 MBR (298G) 63 121274683 - free - (57G) [snip] IIUC I now have to do: # gpart add -s 64k -t freebsd-boot -l boot0 ada0 # gpart add -s 8G -t freebsd-swap -l swap0 ada0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 256k -l root0 ada0 Here I already don't understand how large the swap should be. Really 2 * size of the RAM? Won't be wrong; my understanding of the rule was 2 * size of _possible_ RAM in the machine. But disk space is cheap, so 8 G should be fine. But again, the requirement for the swap partition depends on what you're doing with the machine and what you're expecting (e. g. will you want to save kernel dumps to the swap partition?). You can find an example here: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html Also see man newfs for options. I also don't know if 256k is a sane alignment value, I just copied this from a howto. Modern disks work faster when everything is aligned to 4k. But they _work_ with any other alignment. How to continue after this is done? You will have new partitions /dev/ada0pN. You need to format them with newfs. If I see this correctly, you have created one big / partition (for everything); this is _valid_ and possible, but may be less optimum for a couple of reasons. Doing functional partitioning requires at least an idea of how much disk space will be needed per functional part, and this can differ from use as server or desktop, or what kind of software you run. The advantage is that you can backup data partition-wise (using dump + restore) and have a functional base system on / in case there's a severe disk corruption. The disadvantage is that if finally one partition is too full, you cannot easily resize them (even though this is possible). When done, add them to your /etc/fstab. You can use the labels for that instead of the device names. I want to use GRUB from my Linux installs, this is the Linux menu.lst: timeout 8 default 0 color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue title FreeBSD 9.0 root (hd0,a) kernel /boot/loader My Linux multiboot experience is limited, but this looks okay. You will delegate boot control to the loader, hd0a = sda1 = adap1, the partition of freebsd-boot type. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On 2012.11.25 12:26, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Here I already don't understand how large the swap should be. Really 2 * size of the RAM? It depends on use patterns and the amount of RAM in your computer. 1.5* to 2* installed memory is a traditional works for most value, but I feel it's outdated for 64-bit machines with 8 GB or more. I also don't know if 256k is a sane alignment value, I just copied this from a howto. If you're using a single, not too recent-and-huge hard drive, 512 bits (that is, no alignment) is fine. If you have an Advanced Format Drive or you don't know if you do, use 4k. If you have an underlying RAID array, 256k is a better choice. If it's an SSD, go with 4 MB to avoid taking any chances with performance over time. How to continue after this is done? Once you're satisfied with your partition organization, the easiest is to restart bsdinstall, dd your new partition table somewhere safe (flash drive, or network drive), use the (n?)curses UI to designate the target partitions to install to, and go on with the installation to install the sets. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: [Bulk] Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On Sun, 2012-11-25 at 13:29 +0100, Polytropon wrote: On Sun, 25 Nov 2012 12:26:14 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote: This is what I've got: # gpart show ada0 = 63 625142385 ada0 MBR (298G) 63 121274683 - free - (57G) [snip] IIUC I now have to do: # gpart add -s 64k -t freebsd-boot -l boot0 ada0 # gpart add -s 8G -t freebsd-swap -l swap0 ada0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 256k -l root0 ada0 Here I already don't understand how large the swap should be. Really 2 * size of the RAM? Won't be wrong; my understanding of the rule was 2 * size of _possible_ RAM in the machine. But disk space is cheap, so 8 G should be fine. But again, the requirement for the swap partition depends on what you're doing with the machine and what you're expecting (e. g. will you want to save kernel dumps to the swap partition?). You can find an example here: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html Also see man newfs for options. I'll read this. I want to test what's possible and/or impossible regarding to MIDI and audio productions using FreeBSD. I also don't know if 256k is a sane alignment value, I just copied this from a howto. Modern disks work faster when everything is aligned to 4k. But they _work_ with any other alignment. I'll use 4k. How to continue after this is done? You will have new partitions /dev/ada0pN. You need to format them with newfs. If I see this correctly, you have created one big / partition (for everything); this is _valid_ and possible, but may be less optimum for a couple of reasons. Until now I haven't done anything. It's still free. Doing functional partitioning requires at least an idea of how much disk space will be needed per functional part, and this can differ from use as server or desktop, or what kind of software you run. On Linux I only use /. So I don't have to think about how much space what directory might need and I never run into issues, when the file system hierarchy does change. Off cause I've got special partitions for audio productions mounted with noatime and a own partition for emails, but anything else, including /home is inside /. The advantage is that you can backup data partition-wise (using dump + restore) and have a functional base system on / in case there's a severe disk corruption. The disadvantage is that if finally one partition is too full, you cannot easily resize them (even though this is possible). On Linux I can backup partition-wise too, but it's also possible to backup directory-wise ;). Btw. I never sync backups, I always keep several backups of the system, since setting up a hard real-time jitter free DAW is a special task for modern computers. In the 80s hard real-time really was hard real-time (C64, Atari ST), nowadays it is hard work to get something similar. When done, add them to your /etc/fstab. You can use the labels for that instead of the device names. I want to use GRUB from my Linux installs, this is the Linux menu.lst: timeout 8 default 0 color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue title FreeBSD 9.0 root (hd0,a) kernel /boot/loader My Linux multiboot experience is limited, but this looks okay. You will delegate boot control to the loader, hd0a = sda1 = adap1, the partition of freebsd-boot type. Thank you. Regards, Ralf ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
I'm reading http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html at the moment. Seemingly there are many outdated howtos first hits for searching with Google. I frst read 64k for boot and now 512k. IIUC Install the GPT bootcode into the boot partition has to be done and is independent of the GRUB in the MBR. On Sun, 2012-11-25 at 13:32 +0100, Lucas B. Cohen wrote: On 2012.11.25 12:26, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Here I already don't understand how large the swap should be. Really 2 * size of the RAM? It depends on use patterns and the amount of RAM in your computer. 1.5* to 2* installed memory is a traditional works for most value, but I feel it's outdated for 64-bit machines with 8 GB or more. It's a 64-bit machine with 4GB RAM. I also don't know if 256k is a sane alignment value, I just copied this from a howto. If you're using a single, not too recent-and-huge hard drive, 512 bits (that is, no alignment) is fine. If you have an Advanced Format Drive or you don't know if you do, use 4k. If you have an underlying RAID array, 256k is a better choice. If it's an SSD, go with 4 MB to avoid taking any chances with performance over time. No RAID, a modern SATA drives, so 4k seems to be the way to go. Thank you. Regards, Ralf ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On 2012.11.25 13:57, Ralf Mardorf wrote: IIUC Install the GPT bootcode into the boot partition has to be done and is independent of the GRUB in the MBR. Not in your case. You won't need bootcode other than GRUB's (in the MBR, and the Linux partition where the bulk of it is installed). ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
At the moment I still have: This is what I've got: # gpart show ada0 = 63 625142385 ada0 MBR (298G) 63 121274683 - free - (57G) [snip] Regarding to http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html for my set up it should be ok to run: # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -l boot -b 40 -s 512K ada0 # gpart add -t freebsd-swap -l swap -s 8G ada0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -l root -b 1M ada0 Should use all the free space, so no option -s?! # newfs -U /dev/gpt/root # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 ada0 Will install the FreeBSD bootloader independent of the GRUB in the MBR? My GRUB menu.lst still is: timeout 8 default 0 color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue title FreeBSD 9.0 root (hd0,a) kernel /boot/loader [snip] So kernel /boot/loader has to be replaced by /boot/foo? /etc/fstab: # DeviceMountpoint FS Options DumpPass# -- is this # needed at the end? Or is it ok like this: # DeviceMountpoint FS Options DumpPass And this are the entries I need: /dev/gpt/swap noneswapsw 0 0 /dev/gpt/root / ufs rw 1 1 *???* Ralf ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On Sun, 2012-11-25 at 14:13 +0100, Lucas B. Cohen wrote: On 2012.11.25 13:57, Ralf Mardorf wrote: IIUC Install the GPT bootcode into the boot partition has to be done and is independent of the GRUB in the MBR. Not in your case. You won't need bootcode other than GRUB's (in the MBR, and the Linux partition where the bulk of it is installed). Thank you. I don't need it, but I could add it for what ever worst case emergency scenario and GRUB in the MBR anyway will work? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: [Bulk] Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On Sun, 25 Nov 2012 13:43:46 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote: On Sun, 2012-11-25 at 13:29 +0100, Polytropon wrote: I'll read this. I want to test what's possible and/or impossible regarding to MIDI and audio productions using FreeBSD. Will be interesting. I know there is some good support for this case in specialized Linux distributions. Doing functional partitioning requires at least an idea of how much disk space will be needed per functional part, and this can differ from use as server or desktop, or what kind of software you run. On Linux I only use /. Yes, this is common, even though Linux can support functional partitioning as well, still ext2/3/4/... partitions != UFS partitions. And with GPT partitioning, it's even easier to separate parts of the system across partitions and devices (which _can_ provide you performance boosts). So I don't have to think about how much space what directory might need and I never run into issues, when the file system hierarchy does change. Off cause I've got special partitions for audio productions mounted with noatime and a own partition for emails, but anything else, including /home is inside /. This _could_ develop into disadvantages, like some half-dead process filling the whole partition until problems arise. But for common desktop use, it should not be problematic. The advantage is that you can backup data partition-wise (using dump + restore) and have a functional base system on / in case there's a severe disk corruption. The disadvantage is that if finally one partition is too full, you cannot easily resize them (even though this is possible). On Linux I can backup partition-wise too, but it's also possible to backup directory-wise ;). Tools like rsync or cpdup make selective backing up and restoring easy, that's true. :-) The idea is that if there is some damage, all you need to boot your machine in a minimum and _defined_ state is on /. No need for /usr or /var at this point, so you could - if required - do analytics and recovery from this point on. As all 3rd party software is in /usr/local, there won't be a problem as nothing of that stuff is needed to perform the boot into this early stage (the single user mode). If you don't have to experience such a situation, the better. Btw. I never sync backups, I always keep several backups of the system, since setting up a hard real-time jitter free DAW is a special task for modern computers. In the 80s hard real-time really was hard real-time (C64, Atari ST), nowadays it is hard work to get something similar. There are specialized operating systems emphasizing real-time use. Still those more simple computers required a close to the hardware programming that modern OSes will hardly allow, so if you don't have this kind of access from the OS level, how would you get it from the application level, with tons of dependencies unter your hands? :-) BTW, I still have some Atari ST hardware here. Impressive what has been possible with this (quite limited) machines, but with _efficient_ programs... -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On Sun, 25 Nov 2012 14:30:17 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote: At the moment I still have: This is what I've got: # gpart show ada0 = 63 625142385 ada0 MBR (298G) 63 121274683 - free - (57G) [snip] Regarding to http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html for my set up it should be ok to run: # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -l boot -b 40 -s 512K ada0 # gpart add -t freebsd-swap -l swap -s 8G ada0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -l root -b 1M ada0 Should use all the free space, so no option -s?! See man gpart for details (yes, there are _excellent_ man pages installed locally, or accessible via web): If -s option is omitted then new size is automatically calculated to maximum available from given geom geom. Here: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=gpartapropos=0sektion=0manpath=FreeBSD+9.0-RELEASEarch=defaultformat=html # newfs -U /dev/gpt/root Maybe you would also consider using -J (journaling). Still the traditional approach when using functional partitioning is to format the / partition without soft updates (-U), but in your case, using them on a everything in one / partition is okay. # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 ada0 Will install the FreeBSD bootloader independent of the GRUB in the MBR? Hmmm... I'd assume that ada0 (the beginning of the disk) contains GRUB already (or a redirect to where it's actually located), so I think ada0p1 would be the location to write to... still I'm not sure if you need to have any boot code at all because GRUB will perform the redirection to the FreeBSD loader which will then load the FreeBSD kernel. See man 8 boot for details. I'm not a multi-booter so I can't be more specific, sorry. My GRUB menu.lst still is: timeout 8 default 0 color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue title FreeBSD 9.0 root (hd0,a) kernel /boot/loader [snip] So kernel /boot/loader has to be replaced by /boot/foo? No, I think /boot/loader is correct here; it's a program that sets up the kernel environment, loads it, maybe loads modules, and passes control to the kernel. It's located on the ada0p1 partition. /etc/fstab: # DeviceMountpoint FS Options DumpPass# -- is this # needed at the end? Or is it ok like this: # DeviceMountpoint FS Options DumpPass No, it means pass number; according to man 5 fstab: The sixth field, (fs_passno), is used by the fsck(8) and quotacheck(8) programs to determine the order in which file system and quota checks are done at reboot time. The fs_passno field can be any value between 0 and `INT_MAX-1'. But it's a comment line anyway. :-) And this are the entries I need: /dev/gpt/swap noneswapsw 0 0 /dev/gpt/root / ufs rw 1 1 Looks correct. (You can later on add lines to access data partitions or even your Linux partitions if you want, optical drives or NFS shares if you need.) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Wheres the FreeBSD PBR ? (was Re: Manually partitioning using gpart / wh)
On 2012.11.25 14:35, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I don't need it, but I could add it for what ever worst case emergency scenario and GRUB in the MBR anyway will work? I don't see how it could ever come in handy, and I'm not sure it wouldn't do any hamr either. The /boot/gptboot code to be written weighs 15kB, that could be big enough to mess up the filesystem on the partition. That /boot/gptboot code is designed to work on a special-purpose small GPT partition that doesn't hold a filesystem. So I would refrain from doing it. It would be useful for emergency purposes to write MBR-partition scheme-compatible bootcode to that partition instead, but I've yet to find out how to do it. gpart(8) seems to have the ability to do it, but it's manual page doesn't mention what file to pass to its -p option to do that. Maybe it's one of those /boot/boot1 or /boot/boot2 files I'm seeing on my system. Maybe someone can enlighten me on that. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On 25/11/2012 12:29, Polytropon wrote: Won't be wrong; my understanding of the rule was 2 * size of _possible_ RAM in the machine. But disk space is cheap, so 8 G should be fine. But again, the requirement for the swap partition depends on what you're doing with the machine and what you're expecting (e. g. will you want to save kernel dumps to the swap partition?). You probably want to stop following that rule some time before you get to 8 TB RAM (http://semiaccurate.com/2010/09/29/inphi-imbs-can-stuff-8tb-ram-system/) :) -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Wheres the FreeBSD PBR ? (was Re: Manually partitioning using gpart / wh)
On Sun, 2012-11-25 at 15:10 +0100, Lucas B. Cohen wrote: On 2012.11.25 14:35, Ralf Mardorf wrote: I don't need it, but I could add it for what ever worst case emergency scenario and GRUB in the MBR anyway will work? I don't see how it could ever come in handy, and I'm not sure it wouldn't do any hamr either. The /boot/gptboot code to be written weighs 15kB, that could be big enough to mess up the filesystem on the partition. That /boot/gptboot code is designed to work on a special-purpose small GPT partition that doesn't hold a filesystem. So I would refrain from doing it. It would be useful for emergency purposes to write MBR-partition scheme-compatible bootcode to that partition instead, but I've yet to find out how to do it. gpart(8) seems to have the ability to do it, but it's manual page doesn't mention what file to pass to its -p option to do that. Maybe it's one of those /boot/boot1 or /boot/boot2 files I'm seeing on my system. Maybe someone can enlighten me on that. Ok. I don't install it. Regards, Ralf -- At the moment I'm watching The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so I'll continue the install later today. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
OT: Manually partitioning using gpart
On Sun, 2012-11-25 at 14:37 +0100, Polytropon wrote: BTW, I still have some Atari ST hardware here. Impressive what has been possible with this (quite limited) machines, but with _efficient_ programs... I still have the C64 in some cartons and the Atari ST is still beside my PC, but I don't remember when I turned it on the last time. Btw. no QL emulator here, but a 80286 emulator and to my Atari 520 ST there are old PC RAM soldered, so it has got the full 4096KB. An issue is to replace the old monitor, since it's hard to get a monitor that can go low enough with the frequencies. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
Polytropon, I'll use journaling. I've to apologize for my broken English. Regarding to the comment line my question is, if it's enough to us a # at the beginning, or if it's needed to begin and to end with a #. I suspect just a # at the beginning is needed. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On Sun, 25 Nov 2012 15:42:38 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Polytropon, I'll use journaling. That should give you additional security in integrity, especially on a everything in one / partition. I've to apologize for my broken English. No understanding problem here. Regarding to the comment line my question is, if it's enough to us a # at the beginning, or if it's needed to begin and to end with a #. I suspect just a # at the beginning is needed. Yes, every line starting with a # is considered a comment (like in shell scripts). In case of the default comment line, the second # is just pass number written as Pass#. Comment line and empty lines can appear in /etc/fstab as desired. You can use them to structure your fstab file as soon as it gets too many entries (which may be possible when you're utilizing NFS a lot). -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On Sun, 25 Nov 2012, Ralf Mardorf wrote: This is what I've got: # gpart show ada0 = 63 625142385 ada0 MBR (298G) 63 121274683 - free - (57G) [snip] IIUC I now have to do: # gpart add -s 64k -t freebsd-boot -l boot0 ada0 # gpart add -s 8G -t freebsd-swap -l swap0 ada0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -a 256k -l root0 ada0 No. MBR does not need or use a freebsd-boot partition. Also, GPT labels don't work for MBR because, well, it's not GPT. Here I already don't understand how large the swap should be. Really 2 * size of the RAM? No, that's less true than it used to be. Depends on how much RAM you have, but the more RAM, the less you really need swap. If disk space is not at a premium, I usually use 4G. I also don't know if 256k is a sane alignment value, I just copied this from a howto. For a hard drive, 4K alignment and starting the main partition at 1M is good. How to continue after this is done? Realize this multi-boot stuff is painful and inconvenient and install everything in a VM? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On Sun, 2012-11-25 at 13:49 -0700, Warren Block wrote: Realize this multi-boot stuff is painful and inconvenient and install everything in a VM? Unfortunately this is impossible. I'll install FreeBSD, because there's a driver for my sound card, a RME HDSPe AIO, that perhaps enables to use all ADAT IOs. On Linux I only can use 2 ADAT IOs. Another step could be to replace Linux by FreeBSD on my machine, but I suspect FreeBSD isn't ready for audio production yet. Assumed it should be ready, a virtual machine can't be used. Any layer does cause issues for audio production machines. I was thinking of doing a test install in VBox, but I guess it's a minor risk that I'll lose everything by making an mistake. Regards, Ralf ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
Hi Warren, On 2012.11.25 21:49, Warren Block wrote: For a hard drive, 4K alignment and starting the main partition at 1M is good. Why would one leave 1024 full kbits before the first partition on a HDD ? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On Mon, 2012-11-26 at 02:22 +0100, Lucas B. Cohen wrote: Hi Warren, On 2012.11.25 21:49, Warren Block wrote: For a hard drive, 4K alignment and starting the main partition at 1M is good. Why would one leave 1024 full kbits before the first partition on a HDD ? Create a partition for /. It should start at the 1M boundary for proper sector alignment on 4K sector drives or SSDs. This is compatible with GPT drive layout for many other systems. Give it a GPT label of gprootfs. - http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html It doesn't explain it for me, but at least it might be an explanation for somebody with more knowledge? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Manually partitioning using gpart
On Mon, 26 Nov 2012, Lucas B. Cohen wrote: On 2012.11.25 21:49, Warren Block wrote: For a hard drive, 4K alignment and starting the main partition at 1M is good. Why would one leave 1024 full kbits before the first partition on a HDD ? The second only is only relevant to GPT. We went over this last week, but briefly there are two reasons: compatibility with what few GPT standards are out there (Windows and others), and proper alignment on hard drives and SSDs. It's not the first partition, but the first filesystem partition. The boot partition can go in the space before it. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
help with gpart
I am trying to put FreeBSD on an HP laptop. The use up all the partitions to I deleted the least useful one, shrunk the windows partition and tried to add freeBSD. gpart show: = 63 625142385 ada0 MBR (298G) 63 1985- free - (992k) 2048 407552 1 ntfs [active] (199M) 409600 311951360 2 ntfs (148G) 312360960 33- free - (16k) 312360993 283115448 4 freebsd (135G) 595476441 577575- free - (282M) 596054016 28880896 3 ntfs (13G) 624934912 207536- free - (101M) I do not have any flexibility as to where #4 is. I would like to use the 9.0 installer from this point but it wants to add BSD partitions to the 282M space. I am not sure after much man-ing and google-ing what gpart commands are required. I guess I could use sysinstall at this point but learning gpart seems like a good thing. I assume I need to do something like: gpart add set -a active -i 4 ada04 (not sure geom is correct) gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot0 ada04 and then add the mounts. I would like / swap /var 10g /usr 20g /home (the rest) but am somewhat lost about the syntax and geom values. thanks for any help _ Douglas Denault http://www.safeport.com d...@safeport.com Voice: 301-217-9220 Fax: 301-217-9277 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: help with gpart
On Wed, 31 Oct 2012, d...@safeport.com wrote: I am trying to put FreeBSD on an HP laptop. The use up all the partitions to I deleted the least useful one, shrunk the windows partition and tried to add freeBSD. gpart show: = 63 625142385 ada0 MBR (298G) 63 1985- free - (992k) 2048 407552 1 ntfs [active] (199M) 409600 311951360 2 ntfs (148G) 312360960 33- free - (16k) 312360993 283115448 4 freebsd (135G) 595476441 577575- free - (282M) 596054016 28880896 3 ntfs (13G) 624934912 207536- free - (101M) I do not have any flexibility as to where #4 is. I would like to use the 9.0 installer from this point but it wants to add BSD partitions to the 282M space. I am not sure after much man-ing and google-ing what gpart commands are required. I guess I could use sysinstall at this point but learning gpart seems like a good thing. I assume I need to do something like: gpart add set -a active -i 4 ada04 (not sure geom is correct) No, for slice 4, it would be ada0s4. For the MBR setup, bootcode must be added to both the MBR (ada0) and the slice. gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot0 ada04 and then add the mounts. I would like / swap /var 10g /usr 20g /home (the rest) but am somewhat lost about the syntax and geom values. thanks for any help bsdlabel partitions are created inside a slice. No idea whether the partition numbers being out of order will be a problem... gpart create -s bsd ada0s4 gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot ada0s4 Then add partitions inside that: gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 2g ada0s4 gpart add -t freebsd-swap -s 4g ada0s4 gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -2 10g ada0s4 ... I strongly suggest taking advantage of labels with the -l option. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
gpart and mbr give no operating system message at boot.
I am trying to partition a disk to be used as the primary boot disk for a FreeBSD 8.3 installation using gpart to install an MBR partition. The system is an existing FreeBSD 5.2.1 system at a remote location (ie impossible to boot from CD/netboot/etc), but has no data of value. To do this I am copying /boot and mfsroot.gz from an mfsbsd iso image to boot to an MFS live system so I can wipe the drive and do a clean install of 8.3. After booting to the MFS I do this: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad2 bs=1m count=1 gpart create -s mbr ad2 gpart add -b63 -t freebsd ad2 gpart create -s bsd ad2s1 gpart add -i1 -s 1g -t freebsd-ufs ad2s1 gpart add -i2 -s 1g -t freebsd-swap ad2s1 gpart add -i4 -s 2g -t freebsd-ufs ad2s1 gpart add -i5 -s 1g -t freebsd-ufs ad2s1 gpart add -i6 -t freebsd-ufs ad2s1 gpart set -a active -i 1 ad2 gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr ad2 newfs /dev/ad2s1a newfs -U /dev/ad2s1d newfs -U /dev/ad2s1e newfs -U /dev/ad2s1f followed by a sysinstall and some configuration. When I reboot I get a message that says Operating system not found and the system hangs. If I follow the same procedure but create a gpt partition it works swimmingly. I am OK with using a gpt partition if needed, but for the sake of curiosity I would like to know why I can't make the MBR partition partition work. Am I missing something? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart and mbr give no operating system message at boot.
On Fri, 7 Sep 2012, markham breitbach wrote: I am trying to partition a disk to be used as the primary boot disk for a FreeBSD 8.3 installation using gpart to install an MBR partition. The system is an existing FreeBSD 5.2.1 system at a remote location (ie impossible to boot from CD/netboot/etc), but has no data of value. To do this I am copying /boot and mfsroot.gz from an mfsbsd iso image to boot to an MFS live system so I can wipe the drive and do a clean install of 8.3. After booting to the MFS I do this: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad2 bs=1m count=1 gpart create -s mbr ad2 gpart add -b63 -t freebsd ad2 gpart create -s bsd ad2s1 gpart add -i1 -s 1g -t freebsd-ufs ad2s1 gpart add -i2 -s 1g -t freebsd-swap ad2s1 gpart add -i4 -s 2g -t freebsd-ufs ad2s1 gpart add -i5 -s 1g -t freebsd-ufs ad2s1 gpart add -i6 -t freebsd-ufs ad2s1 gpart set -a active -i 1 ad2 gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr ad2 newfs /dev/ad2s1a newfs -U /dev/ad2s1d newfs -U /dev/ad2s1e newfs -U /dev/ad2s1f followed by a sysinstall and some configuration. When I reboot I get a message that says Operating system not found and the system hangs. If I follow the same procedure but create a gpt partition it works swimmingly. I am OK with using a gpt partition if needed, but for the sake of curiosity I would like to know why I can't make the MBR partition partition work. Am I missing something? Need to install bootcode to the slice also: # gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot ad2s1 Why are you skipping partition 3? For that matter, don't give partition numbers when adding, and gpart will just use the next available. If GPT works, there is little reason to use MBR. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart and mbr give no operating system message at boot.
Thanks Warren! I was always under the impression that partition 3 was not to be touched as the raw partition, so figured it was best left alone. I was mostly concerned with installing MBR so it would still be compatible with sysinstall, although I can't really think of a terribly good reason not to go GPT. Installing the bootcode gets me a step closer, but is now puking at the loader. I'm not sure if this is because the bootcode is coming from and 8.1 install, but at this point I'm pretty much out of time and out of patience for this, since it is something of a bandaid situation anyway. On 12-09-07 2:48 PM, Warren Block wrote: On Fri, 7 Sep 2012, markham breitbach wrote: I am trying to partition a disk to be used as the primary boot disk for a FreeBSD 8.3 installation using gpart to install an MBR partition. The system is an existing FreeBSD 5.2.1 system at a remote location (ie impossible to boot from CD/netboot/etc), but has no data of value. To do this I am copying /boot and mfsroot.gz from an mfsbsd iso image to boot to an MFS live system so I can wipe the drive and do a clean install of 8.3. After booting to the MFS I do this: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad2 bs=1m count=1 gpart create -s mbr ad2 gpart add -b63 -t freebsd ad2 gpart create -s bsd ad2s1 gpart add -i1 -s 1g -t freebsd-ufs ad2s1 gpart add -i2 -s 1g -t freebsd-swap ad2s1 gpart add -i4 -s 2g -t freebsd-ufs ad2s1 gpart add -i5 -s 1g -t freebsd-ufs ad2s1 gpart add -i6 -t freebsd-ufs ad2s1 gpart set -a active -i 1 ad2 gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr ad2 newfs /dev/ad2s1a newfs -U /dev/ad2s1d newfs -U /dev/ad2s1e newfs -U /dev/ad2s1f followed by a sysinstall and some configuration. When I reboot I get a message that says Operating system not found and the system hangs. If I follow the same procedure but create a gpt partition it works swimmingly. I am OK with using a gpt partition if needed, but for the sake of curiosity I would like to know why I can't make the MBR partition partition work. Am I missing something? Need to install bootcode to the slice also: # gpart bootcode -b /boot/boot ad2s1 Why are you skipping partition 3? For that matter, don't give partition numbers when adding, and gpart will just use the next available. If GPT works, there is little reason to use MBR. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: gpart and mbr give no operating system message at boot.
On Fri, 07 Sep 2012 17:00:24 -0600, markham breitbach wrote: I was always under the impression that partition 3 was not to be touched as the raw partition, so figured it was best left alone. No, that is regarding traditional partitioning. But it's not the 3rd partition, it's the 'c' partition, which means nothing more or less than the whole device or the whole slice. In today's FreeBSD /dev representation, the 'c' is left out, e. g. /dev/ad0c = /dev/ad0, and /dev/da3s2c = /dev/da3s2. For GPT partitions, that doesn't matter. It's only relevant for the kind of partitions disklabel (bsdlabel) creates inside a slice or directly on the device. Reserved names (or those with special purpose) are 'a' for a bootable partition, 'b' for a swap partition and 'c' for the whole slice or disk. I think even 'd' has had a special meaning, but I didn't encounter it yet, even though I'm using FreeBSD since 4.0. :-) Partitions created with the gpart / gpt tools usually use e. g. /dev/ad0p1 and so on for partitioning, if I remember correctly. Additionally, I typically point to http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html to encourage the use of labels, because that lets you leave devices names alone. More information can be found here: http://www.daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=2666 http://www.freebsdonline.com/content/view/731/506/ http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/disks.html And also http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/geom-glabel.html regarding labels (GEOM labels, UFS labels, UFSIDs). I was mostly concerned with installing MBR so it would still be compatible with sysinstall, although I can't really think of a terribly good reason not to go GPT. Maybe that is significant only on older hardware where you intendedly want to preserve the traditional approach of MBR partitioning, maybe to keep compatibility with other systems that have trouble with GPT layouts. Installing the bootcode gets me a step closer, but is now puking at the loader. I'm not sure if this is because the bootcode is coming from and 8.1 install, but at this point I'm pretty much out of time and out of patience for this, since it is something of a bandaid situation anyway. The version number should not be the problem. It's only important that the boot elements installed refer to the layout that is present on disk correctly. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Partitioning with gpart
from Lynn Steven Killingsworth blue.seahorse.syndic...@gmail.com: I have installed PC-BSD 9.1 RC1 last week. Very nice I must say. The default file system is zfs. I have one storage disk which is ufs and another which is on an mbr partition. I thought I would format the mbr disk with zfs and move everything from the ufs disk and then format the ufs disk with zfs. I have not tried the command line before so I just tried to create over the disk with: gpart create -s gpt ada2 The message is that ada2 already exists as a file system. Show indicates that it is not gpt but mbr. Then in order to start over I tried to delete and destroy by starting with: gpart delete -i 1 ada2s1 The message is that ada2s1 is an invalid argument. I cannot experiment on my backup as it has only one disk. Comment please? Either gpt (included in FreeBSD prior to the switch to gpart) or gdisk (now at v0.8.5 and in FreeBSD ports) can migrate an MBR-partitioned disk to GPT without loss of data in many cases, though backing up is still advised. You can find information about gdisk at http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/ gdisk is much more versatile than gpart, can be used to make partitions for Windows, Linux, NetBSD, etc. I don't think you can get gpt for FreeBSD, but if you're curious, you can go to http://www.netbsd.org/ and look for the documentation/man pages. It was gpt in NetBSD that I used to migrate an NTFS partition (MBR) spanning an entire 3 TB Western Digital My Book USB 3.0 hard drive to GPT, no data was lost. I subsequently booted Linux from the System Rescue CD (http://sysresccd.org/) and copied the software/data to a USB stick so I could free the USB 3.0 hard drive for better things. Maybe I could have done the repartitioning with gdisk, which is included on the System Rescue CD, this would be Linux. Tom ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Partitioning with gpart
On Tue, 28 Aug 2012 21:33:16 -0400, Warren Block wbl...@wonkity.com wrote: On Tue, 28 Aug 2012, Lynn Steven Killingsworth wrote: I have installed PC-BSD 9.1 RC1 last week. Very nice I must say. The default file system is zfs. I have one storage disk which is ufs and another which is on an mbr partition. I thought I would format the mbr disk with zfs and move everything from the ufs disk and then format the ufs disk with zfs. I have not tried the command line before so I just tried to create over the disk with: gpart create -s gpt ada2 The message is that ada2 already exists as a file system. The exact message would help; gpart is not a filesystem tool. Show indicates that it is not gpt but mbr. Then in order to start over I tried to delete and destroy by starting with: gpart delete -i 1 ada2s1 The message is that ada2s1 is an invalid argument. I cannot experiment on my backup as it has only one disk. gpart takes a -F option to destroy which makes it unnecessary to delete all the partitions first. Back up data first, and make certain that you and the computer agree on which drive is which. Great. My storage disks are formatted with zfs and my files are moved. Thanks. -- Steve Blue Seahorse Syndicate http://www.blueleafsyndicate.org Maine New Hampshire Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Partitioning with gpart
Dear FreeBSD - I have installed PC-BSD 9.1 RC1 last week. Very nice I must say. The default file system is zfs. I have one storage disk which is ufs and another which is on an mbr partition. I thought I would format the mbr disk with zfs and move everything from the ufs disk and then format the ufs disk with zfs. I have not tried the command line before so I just tried to create over the disk with: gpart create -s gpt ada2 The message is that ada2 already exists as a file system. Show indicates that it is not gpt but mbr. Then in order to start over I tried to delete and destroy by starting with: gpart delete -i 1 ada2s1 The message is that ada2s1 is an invalid argument. I cannot experiment on my backup as it has only one disk. Comment please? -- Steve Blue Seahorse Syndicate http://www.blueleafsyndicate.org Maine New Hampshire Using Opera's revolutionary email client: http://www.opera.com/mail/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Partitioning with gpart
On Tue, 28 Aug 2012, Lynn Steven Killingsworth wrote: I have installed PC-BSD 9.1 RC1 last week. Very nice I must say. The default file system is zfs. I have one storage disk which is ufs and another which is on an mbr partition. I thought I would format the mbr disk with zfs and move everything from the ufs disk and then format the ufs disk with zfs. I have not tried the command line before so I just tried to create over the disk with: gpart create -s gpt ada2 The message is that ada2 already exists as a file system. The exact message would help; gpart is not a filesystem tool. Show indicates that it is not gpt but mbr. Then in order to start over I tried to delete and destroy by starting with: gpart delete -i 1 ada2s1 The message is that ada2s1 is an invalid argument. I cannot experiment on my backup as it has only one disk. gpart takes a -F option to destroy which makes it unnecessary to delete all the partitions first. Back up data first, and make certain that you and the computer agree on which drive is which. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 08/07/2012 13:10, Warren Block wrote: bsdinstall(8) has a curses partition editor. There is probably a trick needed to use that outside of an install context. Just run bsdinstall partedit. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 08 Jul 2012 23:27:23 -0400, Thomas Mueller wrote: You mean the non-subdivided 1.44 MB or other capacity of a floppy is called a partition? Let's try to use the correct terminology. If you're talking about an MS-DOS disk, then yes, it contains a DOS partition which is formatted. In FreeBSD, we would call it a slice (slice == DOS primary partition). In this case, there is no (sub)partitioning, the _slice_ carries the MS-DOS file system here. You know that MS-DOS does not have support for partitioning. Same question for CDs? Not sure. A CD contains an ISO-9660 file system without an enclosing partition per se. If we look back into OS history, we find the magical 'c' partition. Historically, partition letters have been reserved for specific purposes: the 'a' partition means a bootable partition, 'b' is a swap partition, and 'c' is the whole disk, refering either to the disk device (da0c == da0) or the whole slice (da0s1c == da0s1). You _can_ put a UFS file system, even many of them, on a CD, that is possible, but don't expect any Windows to be able to deal with it. :-) Also, a file system can be contained in an image file. Or is this a virtual partition? As devices and real files are quite the same, you can mount a file system that is contained in a file. You typically do this when doing data recovery and forensic analysis, where your starting point is an image file of a disk, a slice or a partition. You then connect it to a virtual node (vnconfig - e. g. md0) and then you mount it as if it was a device file. Might # tar xf /dev/da0 work in other BSDs or even other (quasi-)Unixes including Linux, using the appropriate device name where applicable in place of da0? That's quite possible. I've been speaking about tar as the most universal file system which isn't one -- I've been using it on floppies many many years ago, to transfer data among Sun Sparcstations, Linux workstations and a BSD server. It's important not to use any fancy tar features, and of course you need to know the device names corresponding to the floppy drive which differ across the systems, but it is possible to first use fdformat, then tar cf, then tar xf. This of course happened before the dawn of networking. :-) While that particular construst could probably not be booted, it is possible to boot from a floppy or image file that does not contain a file system. For bare booting, a file system isn't that essential. You just have to make sure the boot chain is properly resolved, such as for example the FreeBSD boot mechanism works. You can read more about it in man 8 boot. Some of the disk images on the System Rescue CD (sysresccd.org) are not viewable/mountable as file systems. I haven't looked into this particular one, but that is very well possible. A CD doesn't _need_ to be in a ISO-9660 format (even though it's the default data format). The _implementation_ of the boot mechanism matters: it could even select from several different boot images stored in some arbitrary (but addressable) manner on the CD. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
If you're talking about an MS-DOS disk, then yes, it contains a DOS partition which is formatted. In FreeBSD, we would call it a slice (slice == DOS primary partition). In this case, there is no (sub)partitioning, the _slice_ carries the MS-DOS unless you need windows 98 support partitionless USB drives works absolutely fine clear it out dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=64k count=1 format newfs_msdos /dev/da0 Same question for CDs? Not sure. A CD contains an ISO-9660 file system without an enclosing partition per se. In FreeBSD (as well as NetBSD, OpenBSD, maybe linux) CD is just block device. You may make disklabel on it, and whatever you like. In excuse of OS (windows) CD/DVD MUST BE CD9660 or UDF formatted without partitions. You may record NTFS formatted DVD, perfectly readable on FReeBSD, unreadable under windows in spite it is windows native filesystem. -- You may actually make hybrid DVD that will show whatever you want under windoze, and have real data in tar format. below the recipe: 1) prepare windows-vizible layout, all needed viruses and autorun.inf in some directory and do mkisofs -J -q .|dd of=/path/to/tempfile bs=512 skip=1 2) tar cf - /path/to/tempfile ...list of what you want to be tarred...|growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/cd0=- now use tar to read files from that DVD, while in windows it will run viruses properly. a virtual partition? As devices and real files are quite the same, you can mount a file system that is contained in a file. You typically do this when doing data recovery and forensic analysis, where your starting point is an image file of a disk, a slice or a partition. You then connect it to a virtual node (vnconfig - e. g. md0) and vnconfig is quite in old FreeBSD today it is mdconfig ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 09/07/2012 11:16, Polytropon wrote: If you're talking about an MS-DOS disk, then yes, it contains a DOS partition which is formatted. In FreeBSD, we would call it a slice (slice == DOS primary partition). In this case, there is no (sub)partitioning, the _slice_ carries the MS-DOS file system here. You know that MS-DOS does not have support for partitioning. Floppy disks aren't partitioned/sliced - they use 'dangerously dedicated' mode, containing nothing except the filesystem. The way you'd mount it would be: mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/point You can do the same with a normal USB or other disk using: newfs /dev/da0 mount /dev/da0 /mnt/point The reason it's called 'dangerously dedicated' I think is that other systems - or even the same system months/years later if you forget and run the wrong tools - won't know there's a filesystem there and it's easy to think the disk's empty. If you're on an old system and run 'gpart show da0' and don't see a partition table it's quite easy to forget to check if da0 itself contains a filesystem. When using GPT what were called slices are now partitions, and instead of 'ada0s1a' (disk 0, slice 1, partition a) you just have 'ada0p1'. A partition table supports up to 4096 entries (gpart creates one supporting 128 by default) so there's no need for the freebsd container any more - you just create freebsd-boot, freebsd-ufs, freebsd-zfs, freebsd-swap entries e.g. 'gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -s 64g da0'. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
Floppy disks aren't partitioned/sliced - they use 'dangerously dedicated' they use dangerously obsolete mode. nobody use them at all. disk's empty. If you're on an old system and run 'gpart show da0' and don't see a partition table it's quite easy to forget to check if da0 itself contains a filesystem. unless it is a normal way of using it. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 09/07/2012 13:17, Wojciech Puchar wrote: they use dangerously obsolete mode. nobody use them at all. A company I worked with were still distributing files on floppy disks as recently as 2009. They _are_ obsolete, but I suspect plenty of people still use them. unless it is a normal way of using it. That's right - I was thinking of my system where I destroyed all the data on a HDD because it didn't have a partition table. When I ran the FreeBSD installer and saw the disk was 'empty' I forgot it had a filesystem and reformatted it. Obviously people using floppy or USB disks would be more ready for there to be data on the disk without a partition table. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
A company I worked with were still distributing files on floppy disks as recently as 2009. quite funny :) They _are_ obsolete, but I suspect plenty of people still use them. unless it is a normal way of using it. That's right - I was thinking of my system where I destroyed all the data on a HDD because it didn't have a partition table. When I ran the FreeBSD only your fault, not FreeBSD. Why you connected your data disk at first place. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 09/07/2012 13:29, Wojciech Puchar wrote: only your fault, not FreeBSD. Why you connected your data disk at first place. I didn't say it was FreeBSD's fault. If I thought it was, I would have fixed it! -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 8 Jul 2012 21:00:40 +0100, Bruce Cran wrote: On 08/07/2012 16:06, Ian Smith wrote: In general they're not distinct in usage from any other type of disk. The more expensive disks of course support TRIM so you'd want to pass -t to newfs to enable it. Thanks. Next time I blow around AU$455 on a 120GB flashdrive, I'll be glad to be better informed about getting the most out of it :) At least with sysinstall|sade you can set extra newfs options such as -t, and as importantly for me, you can toggle whether or not to newfs particular partition/s, such as leaving say /home alone on an existing partitioning, which didn't seem straightforward with bsdinstall last I tried (admittedly at 9.0-BETA1) but I've not followed later updates. I might take Matthew's suggestion and try the PCBSD 9 installer; I did boot a PCBSD 8 memstick at one stage, and was surprisingly impressed - or I could use freebsd-update instead of sources to go from 7.4 to 9.1 It's the options that drive ya crazy -- Silly Symphony C.'83 cheers, Ian ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Mon, 9 Jul 2012, Bruce Cran wrote: On 09/07/2012 11:16, Polytropon wrote: If you're talking about an MS-DOS disk, then yes, it contains a DOS partition which is formatted. In FreeBSD, we would call it a slice (slice == DOS primary partition). In this case, there is no (sub)partitioning, the _slice_ carries the MS-DOS file system here. You know that MS-DOS does not have support for partitioning. Floppy disks aren't partitioned/sliced - they use 'dangerously dedicated' mode, containing nothing except the filesystem. Dangerously dedicated refers to a disk with a bsdlabel partition table and boot block. Floppies don't have even that, it's just a raw filesystem. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Mon, Jul 09, 2012 at 07:44:28AM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote: You don't. You wipe the FAT32 with fdisk and make a FreeBSD slice on it. Then you can bsdlabel it with one partition and newfs it. Or you can repeat 100 times more that you have to make fdisk and bsdlabel. you don't, and it doesn't make sense You can do many things as indicated in several posts and most of them will work if you want it that way. But, they do not answer the question as posted. Turning the USB stick into a FreeBSD type or mounting it as MSDOSFS does answer that question. I am not sure why the rabid promotion of non-slicing, but it not worth all the extra bandwidth applied to it. jerry ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
Magdeburg, Germany I have used gpart to partition a USB flash drive into FreeBSD boot partition, root partition and swap partition. making swap partition on USB pendrive is at least stupid. if you won't swap at all - wasted space. If you will it would be so slow and wear USB pendrive so quickly that you certainly don't want this. bsdlabel -w device bsdabel -e device and make a partition start from 0 to end, 4.2BSD newfs it bsdlabel -B and put everything in one partition. make heavy use of tmpfs, make sure noatime is put in fstab to limit writes to pendrive. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sat, 07 Jul 2012 17:45:17 -0400, Thomas Mueller wrote: Does a USB flash drive also work as a giant floppy, no partitions? Can you make a flash drive bootable when nonpartitioned and formatted that way? Yes, that's exactly what my advice was aiming to, but let's try to keep the terminology clean: You cannot do without partitions. A partition carries a file system. You _can_ do without slices. A slice holds one or more partitions. A slice is a DOS primary partition. Omitting it is called dedicated mode. There may be some circumstances where a dedicated disk doesn't boot. Personally I haven't met one, but it's still possible due to BIOSes expecting MS-DOS-alike structures. For the file system side, it's just a matter of having created one partition covering the whole disk, newfs and tunefs it, and install the boot code. Wojciech Puchar did already explain how this works and which tools are involved. However, there _is_ a way to make a giant floppy without a file system (as you said without partitions, and I'll take that literally): You can use tar, the universal file system that isn't a file system to write data to the USB stick. Writing stuff: # tar cf /dev/da0 /my/files Reading stuff: # tar xf /dev/da0 This works, but it may appear that no other system can read it. If you consider using it for FreeBSD only, no problem. The big advantage: You don't need to mount and umount the stick. I'm assume _that_ construct cannot be booted. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 8 Jul 2012 09:49:30 +0200 (CEST), Wojciech Puchar wrote: Magdeburg, Germany I have used gpart to partition a USB flash drive into FreeBSD boot partition, root partition and swap partition. making swap partition on USB pendrive is at least stupid. if you won't swap at all - wasted space. If you will it would be so slow and wear USB pendrive so quickly that you certainly don't want this. bsdlabel -w device bsdabel -e device and make a partition start from 0 to end, 4.2BSD newfs it bsdlabel -B and put everything in one partition. make heavy use of tmpfs, make sure noatime is put in fstab to limit writes to pendrive. An addition: You can label the a partition (e. g. /dev/da0a) or use its UFSID in /etc/fstab, so you don't depend on the exact device name, which in turn depends on the detection order of mass storage which is hard to predict. I'd like to recommend reading for details: http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html and http://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/geom-glabel.html -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sat, 7 Jul 2012 20:36:36 -0600 (MDT) Warren Block articulated: On Sat, 7 Jul 2012, Carmel wrote: This is probably a dumb question, but does gpart even work on a USB flash drive? I have not been able to figure out how to do it. I want to erase the entire drive and format it for a FreeBSD UFS2 file system. Yes, gpart will work with pretty much any storage device. If you want the drive to be bootable, it needs boot blocks. This is easier with GPT than MBR. For an 8G drive: # gpart create -s gpt da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -s 512k da0 # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -b 1M -s 7G da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-swap da0 # newfs -U /dev/da0p2 Thanks Warren, you win the prize for the most detailed answer. Polytropon gave me the easiest answer if I just want to use the drive as a simple storage device; however, if at some point I actually want to go beyond that your answer is what I would require. Interestingly enough, I searched through the man pages and FreeBSD help but never came across anything that specifically addressed flash drive. Perhaps I was just not looking hard enough. Perhaps, and I know that this will offend some purists, but a nice GUI that would do what your instructions detail above would be helpful. There is no way that I am going to remember all of those instructions in six months time. Just my 2¢. -- Carmel ✌ carmel...@hotmail.com ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 8 Jul 2012 07:41:59 -0400, Carmel wrote: Perhaps, and I know that this will offend some purists, but a nice GUI that would do what your instructions detail above would be helpful. There is no way that I am going to remember all of those instructions in six months time. Just my 2¢. Why not put the commands into a text file locally? Try _that_ with a GUI. :-) I'm almost sure KDE or Gnome offer means to initialize mass storage, but because those seem to be quite Linux-centric, it's possible FreeBSD's system tools won't be utilized. So with using the commands provided by Warren, you will be fine every time. If you practice them regularly, you will remember them, and if you do so, you'll surely write a script that allows you to automate the task so you can forget the commands again. :-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 8 Jul 2012, Carmel wrote: Yes, gpart will work with pretty much any storage device. If you want the drive to be bootable, it needs boot blocks. This is easier with GPT than MBR. For an 8G drive: # gpart create -s gpt da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -s 512k da0 # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -b 1M -s 7G da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-swap da0 # newfs -U /dev/da0p2 Thanks Warren, you win the prize for the most detailed answer. Polytropon gave me the easiest answer if I just want to use the drive as a simple storage device; however, if at some point I actually want to go beyond that your answer is what I would require. Interestingly enough, I searched through the man pages and FreeBSD help but never came across anything that specifically addressed flash drive. Perhaps I was just not looking hard enough. FreeBSD sees no significant difference between a flash drive and a disk drive. They are treated the same. Perhaps, and I know that this will offend some purists, but a nice GUI that would do what your instructions detail above would be helpful. There is no way that I am going to remember all of those instructions in six months time. Just my 2¢. bsdinstall(8) has a curses partition editor. There is probably a trick needed to use that outside of an install context. I find gpart easier.___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
Interestingly enough, I searched through the man pages and FreeBSD help but never came across anything that specifically addressed flash drive. because there is no need to. For freebsd it is just a storage device. for FreeBSD only i recommend using bsdlabel, not gpart, for multiOS using fdisk. it is simpler and boot0cfg allows you to add boot selector, so you can make multisystem pendrive, just as my triple-boot 16GB pendrive holding FreeBSD/i386, FreeBSD/amd64, lots of packages, DOS with lots of tools and windoze installers. Perhaps, and I know that this will offend some purists, but a nice GUI not about purism but (lack of) usability. GUI interfaces never helps, only hides real things and prevent understanding anything. You maybe understand it, maybe not. Most people will not. GUI interfaces are actual a PROBLEM with today software. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
with using the commands provided by Warren, you will be fine every time. If you practice them regularly, you will remember them, and if you do so, you'll surely write a script that after doing man gpart he will understand it, so remembering is easy. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 8 Jul 2012 14:16:31 +0200 (CEST), Wojciech Puchar wrote: Perhaps, and I know that this will offend some purists, but a nice GUI not about purism but (lack of) usability. GUI interfaces never helps, only hides real things and prevent understanding anything. You maybe understand it, maybe not. Most people will not. GUI interfaces are actual a PROBLEM with today software. The main problem here is that you have no efficient way of documentation. What do you want to do? Describe pictures? And as soon as the GUI changes (e. g. different toolkit version), things may change, not look the same anymore. Also GUIs seem to be limited, especially if you want to apply options that make better use of characteristics of a flash drive (compared to a regular hard disk). A GUI disk initializer would have to take _every_ possibility into mind, everything that might be specific to the OS it runs on (as for example Linux differs from FreeBSD filesystem-wise), making things much more complicated than they need to. With few routine, tasks are performed more natural using the desired CLI tools. You don't go Now I have to remember which command to format the disk, you just format the disk, which means spaking to newfs. The more often you do it, the more obvious the tools are, and they won't change in look and feel (or options). That makes them superior. I admit that they might be confusing for people who do not want to read, learn and practice. That's okay. Those should use GUI tools and live with the (limited) set of selections they are presented. As there is no real distinction between user and administrator anymore, this is something we need to live with. That being said, CLI tools offer the easier interface to the more advanced functionality and better flexibility, which is especially useful in the discussed case: initializing a USB flash drive that might need different options than what you could default to for a regular disk drive. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 08/07/2012 13:30, Polytropon wrote: With few routine, tasks are performed more natural using the desired CLI tools. You don't go Now I have to remember which command to format the disk, you just format the disk, which means spaking to newfs. The more often you do it, the more obvious the tools are, and they won't change in look and feel (or options). That makes them superior. How do you format a FAT32 partition? newfs won't work. Is it newfs_vfat, newfs_fat32, newfs_msdos etc.? And how do you specify you want FAT32 instead of FAT12 or FAT16? With a good GUI tool like diskmgmt.msc in Windows 2008 you simply right-click the partition and click New Volume to create a new partition, or Format to format it - and then follow the prompts. Of course using diskpart is faster if you know the commands and parameters, but for an ordinary user adding a new disk maybe once a year it's most likely more efficient to just use the GUI. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, 08 Jul 2012 14:27:05 +0100, Bruce Cran wrote: On 08/07/2012 13:30, Polytropon wrote: With few routine, tasks are performed more natural using the desired CLI tools. You don't go Now I have to remember which command to format the disk, you just format the disk, which means spaking to newfs. The more often you do it, the more obvious the tools are, and they won't change in look and feel (or options). That makes them superior. How do you format a FAT32 partition? newfs won't work. Is it newfs_vfat, newfs_fat32, newfs_msdos etc.? And how do you specify you want FAT32 instead of FAT12 or FAT16? In such cases, you use the _proper_ CLI tools for that job. As I said, those are typically specific to the file system one wants to use, and depending on the file system design, there may be options that are individual to those tools. For every fs-related task, there is a system-level tool that does the job. With a good GUI tool like diskmgmt.msc in Windows 2008 you simply right-click the partition and click New Volume to create a new partition, or Format to format it - and then follow the prompts. And of course you cannot create UFS partitions that way. :-) I still remember the initalize disk function from the original Amiga or Atari ST graphical interfaces. They were bound to those systems and their supported file systems. Intending to have something similar (a GUI) for UNIX and Linux would be possible, but very complicated under the hood, and it would be even more complicated to make all that power utilizable to a novice user. In that specific case, reasonable defaults would have to be provided, which typically fail in edge cases. This is where you use the power of CLI. Another advantage: It's less interactive, giving you potential for automating tasks. Follow the prompts might even be too complicated for some kinds of users. :-) Of course using diskpart is faster if you know the commands and parameters, but for an ordinary user adding a new disk maybe once a year it's most likely more efficient to just use the GUI. If the GUI takes the considerations about file system and media type (and their implications) into mind -- no problem. Sadly, I don't know of a tool yet that exactly works that way. Especially in trial error scenarios the CLI is simpler in use. For example, you compose a newfs command. Then you apply it. Not happy with the result? Recall the command from the command line history, change the parameters you want, and then try again. It's surely harder to do that within a GUI. :-) On the other hand, a proper tool would efficiently visualize the content of a disk, showing how slices and partitions are laid out and what options they have. This is a real benefit in testing scenarios where you need a quick overview of the status quo. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 422, Issue 10, Message: 29 On Sun, 8 Jul 2012 07:41:59 -0400 Carmel carmel...@hotmail.com wrote: On Sat, 7 Jul 2012 20:36:36 -0600 (MDT) Warren Block articulated: On Sat, 7 Jul 2012, Carmel wrote: This is probably a dumb question, but does gpart even work on a USB flash drive? I have not been able to figure out how to do it. I want to erase the entire drive and format it for a FreeBSD UFS2 file system. Yes, gpart will work with pretty much any storage device. If you want the drive to be bootable, it needs boot blocks. This is easier with GPT than MBR. For an 8G drive: # gpart create -s gpt da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-boot -s 512k da0 # gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-ufs -b 1M -s 7G da0 # gpart add -t freebsd-swap da0 # newfs -U /dev/da0p2 Thanks Warren, you win the prize for the most detailed answer. Polytropon gave me the easiest answer if I just want to use the drive as a simple storage device; however, if at some point I actually want to go beyond that your answer is what I would require. Interestingly enough, I searched through the man pages and FreeBSD help but never came across anything that specifically addressed flash drive. Perhaps I was just not looking hard enough. In general they're not distinct in usage from any other type of disk. Perhaps, and I know that this will offend some purists, but a nice GUI that would do what your instructions detail above would be helpful. There is no way that I am going to remember all of those instructions in six months time. Just my 2¢. Well one of the reasons I'm replying to this is to keep a copy of Warren's recipe handy :) Another is to point out that rumours of the death of MBR partitioning, especially on small disks, are premature. I know your question specified gpart, but the easiest way I know of to put UFS filesystems on flash drives is to use sade(8), incorporating the fdisk bsdlabel newfs functions from sysinstall .. it still works as well as ever, however old-fashioned or deprecated some may call it. sade's GUI at the curses level :) and does all the heavy maths for you, both for slicing the disk and partitioning the slice(s). As mentioned in boot0cfg(8), you have to set # sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 before sade (or anything) can write to any GEOM disk's boot sectors. Remember to reset it to 0 later. You might even like to put a small msdosfs slice first, so you can use some of that stick to transfer files between UFS and DOS systems. And yes you can multiboot from a memstick if you (or sade) put boot0 on it, assuming your computer supports booting from USB drives. I don't know what the gpart equivalent of boot0 is, if there is one yet? Last I heard, seemed you had to use Linux tools to multiboot GPT disks. There was some muttering about updating sade to handle GPT too .. that would be very welcome, maybe restoring some of the lost functionality from sysinstall/sade back into bsdinstall, both for GPT and MBR systems. cheers, Ian___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
I know your question specified gpart, but the easiest way I know of to put UFS filesystems on flash drives is to use sade(8), incorporating the the easiest way to put UFS filesystem on flash drives is to ... put UFS filesystem using newfs command. You DO NOT NEED any partitioning. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 08/07/2012 16:06, Ian Smith wrote: In general they're not distinct in usage from any other type of disk. The more expensive disks of course support TRIM so you'd want to pass -t to newfs to enable it. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
In general they're not distinct in usage from any other type of disk. The more expensive disks of course support TRIM so you'd want to pass -t to newfs to enable it. can you give me an example of pendrive that supports TRIM? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On 08/07/2012 21:51, Wojciech Puchar wrote: can you give me an example of pendrive that supports TRIM? LaCie FastKey (http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/usb-3.0-thumb-drive-flash-drive,review-32174-5.html). -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
seems like SSD style controller+USB 3.0 bridge. sizes suggest this. thanks. On Sun, 8 Jul 2012, Bruce Cran wrote: On 08/07/2012 21:51, Wojciech Puchar wrote: can you give me an example of pendrive that supports TRIM? LaCie FastKey (http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/usb-3.0-thumb-drive-flash-drive,review-32174-5.html). -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sat, 07 Jul 2012 17:45:17 -0400, Thomas Mueller wrote: Does a USB flash drive also work as a giant floppy, no partitions? Can you make a flash drive bootable when nonpartitioned and formatted that way? Polytropon responded: Yes, that's exactly what my advice was aiming to, but let's try to keep the terminology clean: You cannot do without partitions. A partition carries a file system. You _can_ do without slices. A slice holds one or more partitions. A slice is a DOS primary partition. Omitting it is called dedicated mode. There may be some circumstances where a dedicated disk doesn't boot. Personally I haven't met one, but it's still possible due to BIOSes expecting MS-DOS-alike structures. For the file system side, it's just a matter of having created one partition covering the whole disk, newfs and tunefs it, and install the boot code. Wojciech Puchar did already explain how this works and which tools are involved. However, there _is_ a way to make a giant floppy without a file system (as you said without partitions, and I'll take that literally): You can use tar, the universal file system that isn't a file system to write data to the USB stick. Writing stuff: # tar cf /dev/da0 /my/files Reading stuff: # tar xf /dev/da0 This works, but it may appear that no other system can read it. If you consider using it for FreeBSD only, no problem. The big advantage: You don't need to mount and umount the stick. I'm assume _that_ construct cannot be booted. You mean the non-subdivided 1.44 MB or other capacity of a floppy is called a partition? Same question for CDs? One does not usually think of something that can't be created by subdividing as a partition. Also, a file system can be contained in an image file. Or is this a virtual partition? Might # tar xf /dev/da0 work in other BSDs or even other (quasi-)Unixes including Linux, using the appropriate device name where applicable in place of da0? While that particular construst could probably not be booted, it is possible to boot from a floppy or image file that does not contain a file system. Some of the disk images on the System Rescue CD (sysresccd.org) are not viewable/mountable as file systems. Tom ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
On Sun, Jul 08, 2012 at 02:27:05PM +0100, Bruce Cran wrote: On 08/07/2012 13:30, Polytropon wrote: With few routine, tasks are performed more natural using the desired CLI tools. You don't go Now I have to remember which command to format the disk, you just format the disk, which means spaking to newfs. The more often you do it, the more obvious the tools are, and they won't change in look and feel (or options). That makes them superior. How do you format a FAT32 partition? You don't. You wipe the FAT32 with fdisk and make a FreeBSD slice on it. Then you can bsdlabel it with one partition and newfs it. Or you can use the gpart tools with I am not yet familiar. But, in any case, the FAT32 is irrelevant. You just overwrite that with the FreeBSD stuff. If you have a FAT32 on it and if you want to use it as a FAT32, then you leave the FAT32 alone and just mount the thing as type msdosfs. Make a mount point for it. I commonly use /stick Add something like the following in your /etc/fstab /dev/da2s1 /stick msdosfs rw,noauto 0 0 and then do #mount /stick on the command line. You will have to figure out the correct /dev/... address for it. Generally you dan find the info in dmesg. jerry newfs won't work. Is it newfs_vfat, newfs_fat32, newfs_msdos etc.? And how do you specify you want FAT32 instead of FAT12 or FAT16? With a good GUI tool like diskmgmt.msc in Windows 2008 you simply right-click the partition and click New Volume to create a new partition, or Format to format it - and then follow the prompts. Of course using diskpart is faster if you know the commands and parameters, but for an ordinary user adding a new disk maybe once a year it's most likely more efficient to just use the GUI. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
You don't. You wipe the FAT32 with fdisk and make a FreeBSD slice on it. Then you can bsdlabel it with one partition and newfs it. Or you can repeat 100 times more that you have to make fdisk and bsdlabel. you don't, and it doesn't make sense ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Format a USB flash drive using gpart
file system (as you said without partitions, and I'll take that literally): You can use tar, the universal file system that isn't a file system to write data to the USB stick. which is best in USB pendrive wear and speed point of view. pendrive's flash translation layers are just awful, only linear writes works well. Writing stuff: # tar cf /dev/da0 /my/files i would recomment tar -b 128 -cf /dev/da0 /my/files Might # tar xf /dev/da0 work in other BSDs or even other (quasi-)Unixes including Linux, using the appropriate device name where applicable in place of da0? yes it will run fine under linux, openbsd, netbsd, slowlaris etc. While that particular construst could probably not be booted, it is possible to boot from a floppy or image file that does not contain a file system. If you need bootable pendrive then you have to use disklabel and make filesystem. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
GUI for gpart
I have heard, although I never personally saw it, a GUI for gpart I heard that there exists one for Linux. Is there any comparable one for FreeBSD and comparable with KDE? -- Carmel ✌ carmel...@hotmail.com ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: GUI for gpart
On Sat, 7 Jul 2012 08:58:06 -0400, Carmel wrote: I have heard, although I never personally saw it, a GUI for gpart I heard that there exists one for Linux. Is there any comparable one for FreeBSD and comparable with KDE? I'd suggest to look into the PC-BSD installer and the utilities that come with that system. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: GUI for gpart
I have heard, although I never personally saw it, a GUI for gpart I heard that there exists one for Linux. Is there any comparable one for FreeBSD and comparable with KDE? no idea. If you want it with already installed system, try to compile linux software. Anyway i see no reason for such a software, click-click solutions are always inefficient relative to normal text based ones, and partitioning is not a job that end user (who want click-click interfaces at all cost) is supposed to do ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org