From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Dec 7 03:59:33 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D9D7F16A41F for ; Wed, 7 Dec 2005 03:59:33 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from brian@hyperreal.org) Received: from hyperreal.org (taz3.hyperreal.org [209.237.226.90]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 8378143D68 for ; Wed, 7 Dec 2005 03:59:33 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from brian@hyperreal.org) Received: (qmail 33052 invoked from network); 7 Dec 2005 03:59:37 -0000 Received: from localhost.hyperreal.org (HELO paz.hyperreal.org) (127.0.0.1) by localhost.hyperreal.org with SMTP; 7 Dec 2005 03:59:37 -0000 Received: (qmail 62738 invoked by uid 1001); 7 Dec 2005 03:59:34 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 7 Dec 2005 03:59:34 -0000 Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 19:59:34 -0800 (PST) From: Brian Behlendorf To: questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20051206194822.N46094@paz.hyperreal.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed X-Spam-Rating: localhost.hyperreal.org 1.6.2 0/1000/N Cc: Subject: "Unable to find device node" errors at install X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2005 03:59:34 -0000 I ran into this familiar problem tonight while trying to do a fresh install of 6.0 - the one where during the install process you can successfully create a slice, but then fail to create the partitions. The error when one attempts to write out the partition table is "Unable to find device node /dev/da0s1b in /dev!" After successfully installing Ubuntu on the same box (and having run FreeBSD 4.x on it for years) I figured out it wasn't a hardware or even disk geometry problem. The problem must lie in devfs or in the initialization of the miniroot environment. After the successful disklabel (one big partition type 165) I skipped the partition editor and started a fixit shell. /dev/md0 was mounted as /. I don't know if that's how it is during a partition edit, but I noticed that the only da0 devices in /dev were da0s1a and da0s1c. I don't know enough "mknod" magic or whatever is used to create additional device handles in /dev these days; as a naive installer I shouldn't have to. I went back to the partition editor, created one big partition, da0s1a, and didn't bother creating a swap or secondary partition. The write succeeded, and I could proceed to install FreeBSD 6.0. Since none of the previous attempts at addressing this problem seemed to come up with a clear answer, I thought I would add this information to the fray; it's not a question to be answered but it might help someone who hits this problem again. Or it might even lead to a fix by someone who understands how the installation scripts are supposed to work. Brian