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Date:      Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:15:47 -0800
From:      Garrett Cooper <yanegomi@gmail.com>
To:        Devin Teske <devin.teske@fisglobal.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Parallels v4 regression (aka ada(4) oddity) in RELENG_9
Message-ID:  <CAGH67wRhT30j2Ask-9pQOQcTihFD5AsOdGXbwPTW6DbPrGc4zw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <009501ccd9f9$cad088d0$60719a70$@fisglobal.com>
References:  <009501ccd9f9$cad088d0$60719a70$@fisglobal.com>

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On Mon, Jan 23, 2012 at 10:06 AM, Devin Teske <devin.teske@fisglobal.com> wrote:
> I have a Parallels virtual machine and it runs FreeBSD 4 through 8 just
> swimmingly.
>
> However, in RELENG_9 I notice something different. My once "ad0" is now showing
> up as "ada0". However, something even stranger is that devfs is providing both
> ad0 family devices AND ada0 family devices.
>
> What's worse is that I can't seem to partition the disk with MBR+disklabel
> scheme.
>
> My procedure goes something like this:
>
> 1. Boot from RELENG_9 LiveCD
> 2. Execute: sysctl -n kern.disks
> 3. Notice two items: cd0 ada0
> 4. Look in /dev
> 5. Notice several items: ad0 ad0p1 ad0p2 ad0p3 ada0 ada0p1 ada0p2 ada0p3
> 6. Wipe partition table by executing: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ada0 bs=512k
> count=256
> 7. Look in /dev
> 8. Notice less items now: ad0 ada0
> 9. Execute: sysctl -n kern.disks
> 10. Notice nothing changed: cd0 ada0
> 11. Write out standard "whole disk" MBR "slice"
> 12. Look in /dev
> 13. Notice that nothing changed: ad0 ada0
> NOTE: Where is ad0s1 or ada0s1?
> 14. Use fdisk to make sure everything was written successfully
> 15. Notice everything looks good (slice 1 is of type FreeBSD, slice 2, 3, and 4
> are unused)
> 16. Reboot
> 17. Boot back into RELENG_9 LiveCD
> 18. Look in /dev
> 19. Notice that the old devices are back!: ad0 ad0p1 ad0p2 ad0p3 ada0 ada0p1
> ada0p2 ada0p3
> 20. Use fstab to look at MBR partition table
> 21. Notice that things look good (with respect to fdisk'ing): slice 1 is
> FreeBSD, 2, 3, and 4 are still unused
> 22. Notice /dev still doesn't have ad0s1 or ada0s1
> 23. Use gpart to look at ada0
> 24. Notice "GPT [CORRUPT]"
>
> ...
>
> OK!?!?
>
> ...
>
> Use same exact RELENG_9 LiveCD on either a physical machine or VMware Virtual
> machine.
>
> SUCCESS!!
>
> Go back to Parallels 4
>
> FAILURE!!
>
> Go back to RELENG_8 LiveCD with Parallels 4
>
> SUCCESS!!
>
> What's going on here? I think ada(4) is my problem. Can someone please provide
> feedback? Willing to dig further and provide any/all feedback to help fix this
> regression.

    The 'bug' is in gpart/geom and the 'issue' is present in prior
versions of FreeBSD. The backup partition is now more of a thorn in
everyone's side than previous versions. gpart delete'ing all the
partitions, then doing gpart destroy is probably what you want (there
isn't a simple one-liner that would do this).
Thanks,
-Garrett



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