From owner-freebsd-hackers Sat Mar 23 15:21:09 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id PAA18619 for hackers-outgoing; Sat, 23 Mar 1996 15:21:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de [141.76.1.11]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id PAA18608 for ; Sat, 23 Mar 1996 15:21:04 -0800 (PST) Received: from sax.sax.de by irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (8.6.12/8.6.12-s1) with ESMTP id AAA02133; Sun, 24 Mar 1996 00:20:45 +0100 Received: by sax.sax.de (8.6.11/8.6.12-s1) with UUCP id AAA20385; Sun, 24 Mar 1996 00:20:44 +0100 Received: (from j@localhost) by uriah.heep.sax.de (8.7.4/8.6.9) id AAA26090; Sun, 24 Mar 1996 00:05:37 +0100 (MET) From: J Wunsch Message-Id: <199603232305.AAA26090@uriah.heep.sax.de> Subject: Re: IDE install To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers) Date: Sun, 24 Mar 1996 00:05:37 +0100 (MET) Cc: randy@zyzzyva.com (Randy Terbush) Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) In-Reply-To: <199603231742.LAA12548@sierra.zyzzyva.com> from "Randy Terbush" at Mar 23, 96 11:42:50 am X-Phone: +49-351-2012 669 X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24 ME8a] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk As Randy Terbush wrote: > I attempted to install a new set of boot blocks to FORCE_COMCONSOLE > with 'disklabel -B wd0' after recompiling the boot code from > FreeBSD-stable. The result nuked my partition table and MBR on > the drive forcing me to reinstall. Well, instead of reinstalling, you could have asked. :) Yes, the old disklabel(8) nuked the fdisk table when installing a new bootstrap. (I have fixed this since.) However, you don't actually need the fdisk table at all, and you might probably have noticed that your system was still able to boot into single-user. Anyway, sysinstall has been creating an /etc/fstab file with the `sliced' notion of all non-root partitions, e.g. /dev/sd0a / ufs ... ^^^^___________________________ non-sliced root f/s /dev/sd0s1b swap swawp ... /dev/sd0s1e /usr ufs ... ^^__________________________ sliced naming convention *This* was what caused it to stumple across the invalid fdisk table. (Slices [aka. ``fdisk partitions''] are only available with a valid fdisk table.) Removing the `s1' substrings from within single-user mode would have saved you. Note that ed(1) is available on the root file system. Btw., the non-sliced naming is called ``compatibility slice'', and it always refers to the first fdisk slice with an 0xa5 signature, or to the entire disk for a non-sliced disk. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)