Re: moving a disk
PJ wrote: I am trying to move a 7.2 installation to another computer where it is to be the only OS acting as a server for the lan. On bootup I get the message: Using drive 0, partition 3. And there it hangs. I have tried to rewrite the mbr but that did absolutely nothing. fik ad0 returns: partitions 1,2,3 are UNUSED Parrtition 4 give the cylinder, heads, sectors, blocks stuff The disk did boot up on another box... What should I do? And what information do I need to supply or look for to solve this. I'd rathernot go through another installation even if this is farly elementary. Oh, yes... all my former problems were definitely software related as I have checked and double, triple checked my HDDs and cannot find any problems therewith. here is what I have found in looking at the disk when it's mounted on another FBSD system through an USB interface: it is mounted on /dev/ad0 fdisk ad0 --- returns partitions 1,2,3 as UNUSED; partition 4 is marked for sysid 166 OpenBSD (this seems to be left over from an installation that was never completed) fdisk ad0s4 --- returns same, except partition 4 is: sysid 165 (FreeBSD,NetBSD/386BSD) I also note that the other functioning FBSD 7.2 has partitions 2-4 as UNUSED and partition 1 has the cylinder parameters. I get the impression that I should use the disklabel editor to change all that but am not familiar with it and am not sure how to use it. Here is what bsdlabel shows: # /dev/ad0s4: #this is the one that does not boot 8 partitions: #size offsetfstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg] a: 2097152 634.2BSD 2048 16384 28552 b: 2097152 2097215 swap c: 12594897 63unused0 0 # raw part, don't edit d: 2097152 41943674.2BSD 2048 16384 28552 e: 2097152 62915194.2BSD 2048 16384 28552 f: 4204544 83886714.2BSD 2048 16384 28552 partition c: partition extens past end of unit disklabel: partition c doesn't start at 0! disklabel An incorrect partition c may cause problems for standard system utilities # /dev/ad4s1: #this one boots 8 partitions: #size offsetfstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg] a: 419430404.2BSD 2048 16384 28552 b: 6291456 4194304 swap c: 1563014250unused0 0 # raw part, don't edit d: 6291456 104857604.2BSD 2048 16384 28552 e: 4194304 167772164.2BSD 2048 16384 28552 f: 69206016 209715204.2BSD 2048 16384 28552 g: 66123889 901775364.2BSD 2048 16384 28552 Is there a way to fix this thingy? ___ 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: moving a disk
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 11:50:28AM -0400, PJ wrote: PJ wrote: I am trying to move a 7.2 installation to another computer where it is to be the only OS acting as a server for the lan. On bootup I get the message: Using drive 0, partition 3. And there it hangs. Probably because the boot code can't find the 3rd stage loader... It is strange that it is trying partition 3 instead of partition 4. Did you prepare the disk as explained in the handbook (§16.3 Adding Disks)? I get the impression that you didn't. And that can have caused the problem. Try booting again, and press any key to interrupt the boot process to get to the boot prompt. You should see something like: FreeBSD/i386 BOOT Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/loader boot: At this boot prompt, type 0:ad(0,4,a)/boot/loaderENTER This will try to boot from the 4th partition. See boot(8). N.B. the boot manpage uses the term 'slice' for partitions. By default the boot code looks for either the active slice or the first slice with the freebsd type. I have tried to rewrite the mbr but that did absolutely nothing. That is not surprising, The mbr is only part of the boot process. The problem seems to be that it cannot locate the rest... Read the chapter The FreeBSD Booting Process from the FreeBSD Handbook. And see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record This will provide insight into how FreeBSD actually boots. It is a bit of a convoluted process due to historical restrictions of the PC architecture. Reading the manual pages for fdisk(8), boot(8) and loader(8) might also prove enlightening. fik ad0 returns: partitions 1,2,3 are UNUSED Parrtition 4 give the cylinder, heads, sectors, blocks stuff Why did you install on partition 4? Normally one would use parition 1. What should I do? And what information do I need to supply or look for to solve this. See below. I'd rathernot go through another installation even if this is farly elementary. With any luck you don't have to. Oh, yes... all my former problems were definitely software related as I have checked and double, triple checked my HDDs and cannot find any problems therewith. here is what I have found in looking at the disk when it's mounted on another FBSD system through an USB interface: it is mounted on /dev/ad0 fdisk ad0 --- returns partitions 1,2,3 as UNUSED; partition 4 is marked for sysid 166 OpenBSD (this seems to be left over from an installation that was never completed) It should be type 165 for FreeBSD! _Or_ partition 4 should be marked as active (flag 80). Is it? If not you can use the -a flag of fdisk to update the active partition. I think you should use something like 'fdisk -u -a -4 ad0'. Look at the fdisk manual page to see what this does. I'm not sure if this is the right invocation. I have never dealt with this problem. Setting the active partition _should_ be enough. If that doesn't work, you're in trouble. As far as I know there is no easy way to just change the partition type, without starting over. In theory you can set the type by fiddling some bits in the partition table, but that is probably harder than it sounds. Maybe sysinstall can do it, but I haven't tried. Next time you want to install FreeBSD on a disk, read §16.3 Adding Disks of the FreeBSD handbook first, and follow the steps laid out there! That would create and active a single partition which would almost certainly have avoided this problem. I also note that the other functioning FBSD 7.2 has partitions 2-4 as UNUSED and partition 1 has the cylinder parameters. I get the impression that I should use the disklabel editor to change all that but am not familiar with it and am not sure how to use it. No. The disklabel works at a lower level. Historically PC harddisks can be divided into 4 partitions (This is what fdisk does). So the disk ad0 can have partitions 1--4: ad0s1--ad0s4. In older FreeBSD literature these are called slices, hence the 's' in the partition name. FreeBSD can subdivide a partition in labeled sections. These sections are labeled with a letter, so partition ad0s1 can be divided (in 7.x) into labeled pieces a--g: ad0s1a--ad0s1g. This is what the bsdlabel(8) program does. And it is usually on these subdivisions that filesystems are created with newfs(8). Is there a way to fix this thingy? Make sure that partition 4 is the active partition. That should fix it. Roland -- R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) pgpi0YwFf2svf.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: moving a disk
Roland Smith wrote: On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 11:50:28AM -0400, PJ wrote: PJ wrote: I am trying to move a 7.2 installation to another computer where it is to be the only OS acting as a server for the lan. On bootup I get the message: Using drive 0, partition 3. And there it hangs. Probably because the boot code can't find the 3rd stage loader... It is strange that it is trying partition 3 instead of partition 4. Did you prepare the disk as explained in the handbook (�16.3 Adding Disks)? I get the impression that you didn't. And that can have caused the problem. Try booting again, and press any key to interrupt the boot process to get to the boot prompt. You should see something like: FreeBSD/i386 BOOT Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/loader boot: At this boot prompt, type 0:ad(0,4,a)/boot/loaderENTER This will try to boot from the 4th partition. See boot(8). N.B. the boot manpage uses the term 'slice' for partitions. By default the boot code looks for either the active slice or the first slice with the freebsd type. I have tried to rewrite the mbr but that did absolutely nothing. That is not surprising, The mbr is only part of the boot process. The problem seems to be that it cannot locate the rest... Read the chapter The FreeBSD Booting Process from the FreeBSD Handbook. And see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record This will provide insight into how FreeBSD actually boots. It is a bit of a convoluted process due to historical restrictions of the PC architecture. Reading the manual pages for fdisk(8), boot(8) and loader(8) might also prove enlightening. fik ad0 returns: partitions 1,2,3 are UNUSED Parrtition 4 give the cylinder, heads, sectors, blocks stuff Why did you install on partition 4? Normally one would use parition 1. What should I do? And what information do I need to supply or look for to solve this. See below. I'd rathernot go through another installation even if this is farly elementary. With any luck you don't have to. Oh, yes... all my former problems were definitely software related as I have checked and double, triple checked my HDDs and cannot find any problems therewith. here is what I have found in looking at the disk when it's mounted on another FBSD system through an USB interface: it is mounted on /dev/ad0 fdisk ad0 --- returns partitions 1,2,3 as UNUSED; partition 4 is marked for sysid 166 OpenBSD (this seems to be left over from an installation that was never completed) It should be type 165 for FreeBSD! _Or_ partition 4 should be marked as active (flag 80). Is it? If not you can use the -a flag of fdisk to update the active partition. I think you should use something like 'fdisk -u -a -4 ad0'. Look at the fdisk manual page to see what this does. I'm not sure if this is the right invocation. I have never dealt with this problem. Setting the active partition _should_ be enough. If that doesn't work, you're in trouble. As far as I know there is no easy way to just change the partition type, without starting over. In theory you can set the type by fiddling some bits in the partition table, but that is probably harder than it sounds. Maybe sysinstall can do it, but I haven't tried. Next time you want to install FreeBSD on a disk, read �16.3 Adding Disks of the FreeBSD handbook first, and follow the steps laid out there! That would create and active a single partition which would almost certainly have avoided this problem. I also note that the other functioning FBSD 7.2 has partitions 2-4 as UNUSED and partition 1 has the cylinder parameters. I get the impression that I should use the disklabel editor to change all that but am not familiar with it and am not sure how to use it. No. The disklabel works at a lower level. Historically PC harddisks can be divided into 4 partitions (This is what fdisk does). So the disk ad0 can have partitions 1--4: ad0s1--ad0s4. In older FreeBSD literature these are called slices, hence the 's' in the partition name. FreeBSD can subdivide a partition in labeled sections. These sections are labeled with a letter, so partition ad0s1 can be divided (in 7.x) into labeled pieces a--g: ad0s1a--ad0s1g. This is what the bsdlabel(8) program does. And it is usually on these subdivisions that filesystems are created with newfs(8). Is there a way to fix this thingy? Make sure that partition 4 is the active partition. That should fix it. Hi Roland, I'm going to keep this email as a valued reminder of what to do and not to do. I'm afraid I was a bit impatient and messed up the already messed up disk... frankly, I don't recall whatever happened to the thing in the first place. I did install a good working 7.2 with samba, mysawl, php and that's about it. It booted fine and I just left it alone not being sure of what I would do with
Re: moving a disk
On 8/24/09, Roland Smith rsm...@xs4all.nl wrote: On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 11:50:28AM -0400, PJ wrote: PJ wrote: I am trying to move a 7.2 installation to another computer where it is to be the only OS acting as a server for the lan. On bootup I get the message: Using drive 0, partition 3. And there it hangs. Probably because the boot code can't find the 3rd stage loader... It is strange that it is trying partition 3 instead of partition 4. 0-based. OpenBSD when set to install and use all of a disk, sets it to the last primary partition (1-based = 4, 0-based = 3). Did you prepare the disk as explained in the handbook (§16.3 Adding Disks)? I get the impression that you didn't. And that can have caused the problem. Try booting again, and press any key to interrupt the boot process to get to the boot prompt. You should see something like: FreeBSD/i386 BOOT Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/loader boot: At this boot prompt, type 0:ad(0,4,a)/boot/loaderENTER This will try to boot from the 4th partition. See boot(8). N.B. the boot manpage uses the term 'slice' for partitions. By default the boot code looks for either the active slice or the first slice with the freebsd type. This drive still is likely having OpenBSD bootblocks in the MBR and track. I don't expect OpenBSD to boot FreeBSD. I have tried to rewrite the mbr but that did absolutely nothing. That is not surprising, The mbr is only part of the boot process. The problem seems to be that it cannot locate the rest... Read the chapter The FreeBSD Booting Process from the FreeBSD Handbook. And see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record This will provide insight into how FreeBSD actually boots. It is a bit of a convoluted process due to historical restrictions of the PC architecture. Reading the manual pages for fdisk(8), boot(8) and loader(8) might also prove enlightening. fik ad0 returns: partitions 1,2,3 are UNUSED Parrtition 4 give the cylinder, heads, sectors, blocks stuff Why did you install on partition 4? Normally one would use parition 1. and sysinstall would use (0-based = 0, 1-based = 1) the first partition too. What should I do? And what information do I need to supply or look for to solve this. See below. I'd rathernot go through another installation even if this is farly elementary. With any luck you don't have to. Oh, yes... all my former problems were definitely software related as I have checked and double, triple checked my HDDs and cannot find any problems therewith. here is what I have found in looking at the disk when it's mounted on another FBSD system through an USB interface: it is mounted on /dev/ad0 fdisk ad0 --- returns partitions 1,2,3 as UNUSED; partition 4 is marked for sysid 166 OpenBSD (this seems to be left over from an installation that was never completed) It should be type 165 for FreeBSD! _Or_ partition 4 should be marked as active (flag 80). Is it? If not you can use the -a flag of fdisk to update the active partition. I think you should use something like 'fdisk -u -a -4 ad0'. Look at the fdisk manual page to see what this does. I'm not sure if this is the right invocation. I have never dealt with this problem. Setting the active partition _should_ be enough. If that doesn't work, you're in trouble. As far as I know there is no easy way to just change the partition type, without starting over. In theory you can set the type by fiddling some bits in the partition table, but that is probably harder than it sounds. Maybe sysinstall can do it, but I haven't tried. Next time you want to install FreeBSD on a disk, read §16.3 Adding Disks of the FreeBSD handbook first, and follow the steps laid out there! That would create and active a single partition which would almost certainly have avoided this problem. I also note that the other functioning FBSD 7.2 has partitions 2-4 as UNUSED and partition 1 has the cylinder parameters. I get the impression that I should use the disklabel editor to change all that but am not familiar with it and am not sure how to use it. No. The disklabel works at a lower level. Historically PC harddisks can be divided into 4 partitions (This is what fdisk does). So the disk ad0 can have partitions 1--4: ad0s1--ad0s4. In older FreeBSD literature these are called slices, hence the 's' in the partition name. FreeBSD can subdivide a partition in labeled sections. These sections are labeled with a letter, so partition ad0s1 can be divided (in 7.x) into labeled pieces a--g: ad0s1a--ad0s1g. This is what the bsdlabel(8) program does. And it is usually on these subdivisions that filesystems are created with newfs(8). Is there a way to fix this thingy? Make sure that partition 4 is the active partition. That should fix it. Roland -- R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed
Re: moving a disk
On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 02:33:25PM -0400, PJ wrote: I'm afraid I was a bit impatient Patience is a virtue. Installing stuff can take hours, and a split-second can suffice to screw it all up. Been there done that. :-) and messed up the already messed up disk... frankly, I don't recall whatever happened to the thing in the first place. Can I give you a tip? If you are doing something new or hairy, keep a laptop or even a paper notebook handy and make notes of what you do. Write down the commands that you use and any error messages that you get. My favorite technique is to open emacs (preferably on another machine), start a terminal/ssh session inside an emacs buffer and then do my thing. This gives me a complete record of what I've done. Save these session (with some added explanations) to a file and you'll know what to do next time, or at least you can explain to others what you've been doing. anyway, I'm just practicing another minimal install... it's not as bad as I had thought... I'm getting it all together now. There is an extremely easy way to get all ports that you need onto a new machine, provided that you have a (base) machine of (a) the same FreeBSD major version of (b) the same hardware architecture and (c) up-to-date installed ports available. On the base machine, make dump(8)s of the filesystem(s) containing /usr/local, /var/db/ports and /var/db/pkg and save them to files. Transfer those dump files to an external harddisk or DVD. Using restore(8) interactively on the new machine, restore these three directories to their respective filesystems and you've got all ports up and running save for some editing of /etc/rc.conf. Thanks much, I'm beginning to understand a bit more... this boot stuff sure is complicated... Yep. PC booting is a throwback to an earlier era when 640 kB RAM was all there was and 512 bytes seemed big enough for boot code, because you were writing in machine language or assembly anyway. If you want a real hair-raising story about the time that assemblers were luxuries, google 'the story of Mel' and be amazed (or horrified). It predates PCs, but I think it shows the mind-set of the begin time of (personal) computing. Roland -- R.F.Smith http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/ [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated] pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914 B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725) pgp1sVY5UbbCi.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: moving a disk
Roland Smith wrote: On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 02:33:25PM -0400, PJ wrote: I'm afraid I was a bit impatient Patience is a virtue. Installing stuff can take hours, and a split-second can suffice to screw it all up. Been there done that. :-) and messed up the already messed up disk... frankly, I don't recall whatever happened to the thing in the first place. Can I give you a tip? If you are doing something new or hairy, keep a laptop or even a paper notebook handy and make notes of what you do. Write down the commands that you use and any error messages that you get. My favorite technique is to open emacs (preferably on another machine), start a terminal/ssh session inside an emacs buffer and then do my thing. This gives me a complete record of what I've done. Save these session (with some added explanations) to a file and you'll know what to do next time, or at least you can explain to others what you've been doing. anyway, I'm just practicing another minimal install... it's not as bad as I had thought... I'm getting it all together now. There is an extremely easy way to get all ports that you need onto a new machine, provided that you have a (base) machine of (a) the same FreeBSD major version of (b) the same hardware architecture and (c) up-to-date installed ports available. On the base machine, make dump(8)s of the filesystem(s) containing /usr/local, /var/db/ports and /var/db/pkg and save them to files. Transfer those dump files to an external harddisk or DVD. Using restore(8) interactively on the new machine, restore these three directories to their respective filesystems and you've got all ports up and running save for some editing of /etc/rc.conf. I'm not that organized, yet... ;-) but I have saved my rc.conf, smb.conf, httpd.conf. httpd-vhosts.conf 7 a number of other handy configuration files that I copy to new installations and tweak, if necessary; even the certificates for ssl work fine... so, now I think I'll follow your suggestion and keep a record and do the copy stuff - it also saves bandwidth so you don' t have to download all the distfiles... but I don't do any hairy stuff :-( just trying to K.I.S.S - and this will make it even simpler. Thanks again... learned again... Thanks much, I'm beginning to understand a bit more... this boot stuff sure is complicated... Yep. PC booting is a throwback to an earlier era when 640 kB RAM was all there was and 512 bytes seemed big enough for boot code, because you were writing in machine language or assembly anyway. If you want a real hair-raising story about the time that assemblers were luxuries, google 'the story of Mel' and be amazed (or horrified). It predates PCs, but I think it shows the mind-set of the begin time of (personal) computing. Roland ___ 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
