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Date:      Sun, 10 Sep 2000 14:52:17 +0200
From:      Huub Reuver <h_reuver@mantell.xs4all.nl>
To:        doc@freebsd.org
Subject:   Could you add a comment with "Formatting Media ...: A Tutorial"?
Message-ID:  <20000910145216.A28364@zaphod.kasbah>

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Hello,
I just finished installing a 20GB hard drive. It was at least 10 times
formatted and I had to visit dejanews to find I was not the first.
However it took me almost an hour to find the right answer between all
the questions. It looks to me the FAQ lacks some point about dedicated
hard drives. DANGEROUSLY dedicated that is, newfs won't even finish.

The information I gathered:
-"Formatting Media for Use With FreeBSD" by Doug White
-"Re: freebsd 3.4 disklabel bug" mailing.freebsd.bugs 04/13/2000 by
Aleksandr A.BaBaylov <babolo@links.ru> 
-"Re: freebsd 3.4 disklabel bug" mailing.freebsd.bugs 04/13/2000 by 
Adam Laurie <adam@algroup.co.uk>

The error:
root@zaphod:/usr/src/sys# dmesg | grep wd 
wdc0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7 irq 14 on isa
wdc0: unit 0 (wd0): <QUANTUM FIREBALL EL5.1A>
wd0: 4892MB (10018890 sectors), 10602 cyls, 15 heads, 63 S/T, 512 B/S
wdc1 at 0x170-0x177 irq 15 on isa
wdc1: unit 0 (wd2): <ST320423A>
wd2: 19536MB (40011300 sectors), 39693 cyls, 16 heads, 63 S/T, 512 B/S
changing root device to wd0s1a
wd2s1e: hard error writing fsbn 40011299 (wd2s1 bn 40011299; cn 4233 tn 149 sn 62) (status 51<rdy,seekdone,err> error 10<no_id>)
wd2s1f: hard error writing fsbn 11299 (wd2s1 bn 40011299; cn 4233 tn 149 sn 62) (status 51<rdy,seekdone,err> error 10<no_id>)
wd2s1e: hard error writing fsbn 40011299 (wd2s1 bn 40011299; cn 4233 tn 149 sn 62) (status 51<rdy,seekdone,err> error 10<no_id>)

When using the complete disk in one partition newfs fails. Newfs fails also
when a large partition and a small partition are used, which use the same 
space. Adam stated that using a lower number of blocks would prevent the
problem. I used the same commands as he did to find the problem. In fact
I found a similar solution without reading his message.

Aleksandr proposed to look at dmesg to verify the drive settings. With my
hard drive I get: 39693*16*63=40010544 blocks, not the 40010300 as 
suggested. 40010300 blocks would imply 39693.75 cylinders.

40010544 works flawlesly with me. It seems the number of blocks is being
rounded where it should be truncated.

Could you mention the problem in your documentation?

With kind regards,
Huub


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