Re: GPT Question
On 11/10/2010 9:34 PM, Mark Caudill wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Firstly, hello list. This is my first post here and while I'm a long time Linux user, I'm a recent FreeBSD convert so please bear with me. Yesterday I installed an extra hard drive that used to be in a Windows 7 box. In sysinstall I ran fdisk then label to try to get the disk ready. The problem was that even though after I hit 'w' and it didn't give any errors, when I did a `ls /dev/ad*` it was still showing the old partitions, even after a reboot. I tried running fdisk manually and a few other things I found on Google but they all seemed to just be silently failing since they never showed an error but the changes never really went into effect. When I was first building out this box I had an issue partitioning the disks but the behavior was different in that it errored with messages about not being able to commit or write the changes to disk. That issue turned out to be with some GPTs on the drive which I was able to remove in Linux with parted. Anyway, I figured that there was a chance that this might be a GPT issue since this drive came form the same machine as the other. I couldn't remember what command I had run and didn't feel like pulling the drive into another machine so I just ran `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad12 bs=512` and let it run. That must have done the trick because I was then able to partition the disk in sysinstall and all is well. What I'm wondering is what really went on here? I'm not clear at all as to why FreeBSD (or some mechanism within this installation) isn't able to handle this. Or was this a GPT issue at all? I'd like to find out what was going on so that I don't chase my tail again on issues like this in the future. Thanks. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.16 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJM22Q5AAoJEB/pNtMYu8Pl8G4P/RyHfn03BxY0tSaii2J1a5gQ L7q7ZK9mrvpXCv/tGk+ieWwct01cgpf3SRoEbmjpnL4c//g54fChCdOylJDD7wpU LlxB4CsNMkV9JIT46zkw6ET6ERFYVC0sG+DxJr3JRCkRcTseQjNbNaKJuESMHsu3 OoYrjKjosz5juqkqS0Ty930KCcWRX5DYLsBH0QSHg7q+9ZNnFBuNIB0os4DyZ803 rmxg0bz4YDzTHFe7sJG1/uhN1gUGT3jGUuXUEKnKIrZQaUvdJe3xfNtq/mqHKiZG il45ljdxESt/Y9p7MyGle439YM/BtFt48+O9vcbd0Oljl+nwlFVHNPMKd91KOv/b WPd8y1wmO2X7tTUetDqjby3GlRjvpuPrzddfbpj87DqKdvJ3hqGtGRflrMeWLklg dAS5n3Q8x42vu/5CXlCWtNO2GQMYWTX7VPWmCzymzC60A3YM4UoY3GEF7PV/tChS etUVcSp3JhpepOjgVyY7SA+dO3sZhLAvulqhy/KX6E1ffkCoRMPYWdu9zYXk1F/i 6tEpEDdU7QAViCSbUnp7ZZrt/QcG5XbD0yOUy1M/bvfkGo3qd+TukTCJ8s0JDZ8x lPYF+p8pkzm9zfFeA1e90VqkkhNb/gDFzwg3grcO5hEse4OXlsXMmA5kfxjVKbFj mUO0LYyMmd0QW49J91ts =w5P4 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ 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 My understanding is, if you are using FreeBSD 8.x, sysinstall / fdisk will not write disk partitions. gpart is used now. ___ 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: GPT Question
In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 336, Issue 9, Message: 23 On Thu, 11 Nov 2010 17:45:19 -0600 Derek Funk dfu...@cox.net wrote: On 11/10/2010 9:34 PM, Mark Caudill wrote: [..] just ran `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad12 bs=512` and let it run. That must have done the trick because I was then able to partition the disk in sysinstall and all is well. What I'm wondering is what really went on here? I'm not clear at all as to why FreeBSD (or some mechanism within this installation) isn't able to handle this. Or was this a GPT issue at all? I'd like to find out what was going on so that I don't chase my tail again on issues like this in the future. Thanks. My understanding is, if you are using FreeBSD 8.x, sysinstall / fdisk will not write disk partitions. gpart is used now. Your understanding is incorrect. In 8.x you MAY use gpart now, but sysinstall (when running as init from a booted installation medium) still slices and partitions disks fine, and sysinstall - or sade(8) - (when run as a utility from a working system) will indeed write to the boot sectors including MBR, and will happily slice and partition disk/s other than the boot slice, if and only if you have previously set sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 - not called the 'foot-shooting' bit for nothing - so don't forget to set it back to 0 when you've finished. 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
GPT Question
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Firstly, hello list. This is my first post here and while I'm a long time Linux user, I'm a recent FreeBSD convert so please bear with me. Yesterday I installed an extra hard drive that used to be in a Windows 7 box. In sysinstall I ran fdisk then label to try to get the disk ready. The problem was that even though after I hit 'w' and it didn't give any errors, when I did a `ls /dev/ad*` it was still showing the old partitions, even after a reboot. I tried running fdisk manually and a few other things I found on Google but they all seemed to just be silently failing since they never showed an error but the changes never really went into effect. When I was first building out this box I had an issue partitioning the disks but the behavior was different in that it errored with messages about not being able to commit or write the changes to disk. That issue turned out to be with some GPTs on the drive which I was able to remove in Linux with parted. Anyway, I figured that there was a chance that this might be a GPT issue since this drive came form the same machine as the other. I couldn't remember what command I had run and didn't feel like pulling the drive into another machine so I just ran `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad12 bs=512` and let it run. That must have done the trick because I was then able to partition the disk in sysinstall and all is well. What I'm wondering is what really went on here? I'm not clear at all as to why FreeBSD (or some mechanism within this installation) isn't able to handle this. Or was this a GPT issue at all? I'd like to find out what was going on so that I don't chase my tail again on issues like this in the future. Thanks. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.16 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJM22Q5AAoJEB/pNtMYu8Pl8G4P/RyHfn03BxY0tSaii2J1a5gQ L7q7ZK9mrvpXCv/tGk+ieWwct01cgpf3SRoEbmjpnL4c//g54fChCdOylJDD7wpU LlxB4CsNMkV9JIT46zkw6ET6ERFYVC0sG+DxJr3JRCkRcTseQjNbNaKJuESMHsu3 OoYrjKjosz5juqkqS0Ty930KCcWRX5DYLsBH0QSHg7q+9ZNnFBuNIB0os4DyZ803 rmxg0bz4YDzTHFe7sJG1/uhN1gUGT3jGUuXUEKnKIrZQaUvdJe3xfNtq/mqHKiZG il45ljdxESt/Y9p7MyGle439YM/BtFt48+O9vcbd0Oljl+nwlFVHNPMKd91KOv/b WPd8y1wmO2X7tTUetDqjby3GlRjvpuPrzddfbpj87DqKdvJ3hqGtGRflrMeWLklg dAS5n3Q8x42vu/5CXlCWtNO2GQMYWTX7VPWmCzymzC60A3YM4UoY3GEF7PV/tChS etUVcSp3JhpepOjgVyY7SA+dO3sZhLAvulqhy/KX6E1ffkCoRMPYWdu9zYXk1F/i 6tEpEDdU7QAViCSbUnp7ZZrt/QcG5XbD0yOUy1M/bvfkGo3qd+TukTCJ8s0JDZ8x lPYF+p8pkzm9zfFeA1e90VqkkhNb/gDFzwg3grcO5hEse4OXlsXMmA5kfxjVKbFj mUO0LYyMmd0QW49J91ts =w5P4 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ 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: GPT Question
Mark Caudill wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Firstly, hello list. This is my first post here and while I'm a long time Linux user, I'm a recent FreeBSD convert so please bear with me. Yesterday I installed an extra hard drive that used to be in a Windows 7 box. In sysinstall I ran fdisk then label to try to get the disk ready. The problem was that even though after I hit 'w' and it didn't give any errors, when I did a `ls /dev/ad*` it was still showing the old partitions, even after a reboot. I tried running fdisk manually and a few other things I found on Google but they all seemed to just be silently failing since they never showed an error but the changes never really went into effect. When I was first building out this box I had an issue partitioning the disks but the behavior was different in that it errored with messages about not being able to commit or write the changes to disk. That issue turned out to be with some GPTs on the drive which I was able to remove in Linux with parted. Anyway, I figured that there was a chance that this might be a GPT issue since this drive came form the same machine as the other. I couldn't remember what command I had run and didn't feel like pulling the drive into another machine so I just ran `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad12 bs=512` and let it run. That must have done the trick because I was then able to partition the disk in sysinstall and all is well. What I'm wondering is what really went on here? I'm not clear at all as to why FreeBSD (or some mechanism within this installation) isn't able to handle this. Or was this a GPT issue at all? I'd like to find out what was going on so that I don't chase my tail again on issues like this in the future. Thanks. I don't know if this may, or may not, be strictly a GPT issue. I had a drive fail and the one I pulled out of the junk box for temporary use had FreeBSD 6.2 on it. Somewhere between 7 and 8,1 there was some kind of change where the old mbr or partition table was invisible to the new system, and hence you couldn't write out to it because as far as the new system was concerned it wasn't there. I suspect that other format incompatibilities such as what I experienced can be caused by other forms of previous mbr/partitioning data as well, and your experience would fall in this category. For me the magic incantation was to boot a LiveFS 'fixit' (the fixit shell in sysinstall works the same) and zero out the mbr. This first command gives you dangerous, mighty, and all-powerful write access: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 and next zero the mbr with this: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 where (x) is your drive number. If my theory is correct and you have seen a similar situation, these two things are the quickest and easiest way to get around it. -Mike ___ 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
