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To: Sean Eric Fagan <sef@kithrup.com>
Cc: bde@zeta.org.au, hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: forwarded 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 04 Sep 1996 14:28:45 PDT."
             <199609042128.OAA28324@kithrup.com> 
Date: Thu, 05 Sep 1996 14:57:19 +0200
From: Torbjorn Granlund <tege@matematik.su.se>
Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org
X-Loop: FreeBSD.org
Precedence: bulk

If the 1,1,1 geometry isn't likely to be the problem, something else caused
the disk corruption.

This recently changed with my system:
  1) I tossed out my Conner 4207 and Adaptec 2940.
  2) I installed a Fujitsu 2954SAU and an Adaptec 2940UW (using Ultra 8-bit
     SCSI between the controller and Fujitsu disk, and plain Fast SCSI
     between the controller and other devices).
  3) I put DOS on a separate (IDE) disk and installed FreeBSD 2.1.5 raw on
     the disk (no FDISK structure).  (I used to run FreeBSD 2.1 before all
     these changes.)
  4) I increased the size of /usr from 2GB to 3GB.
  5) As a mentioned earlier, sysinstall complained about the label, and
     asked me to supply a new one.  So I did, giving the geometry
     www.fujitsu.de specifies (which is different from what www.fcpa.com
     specifies.  (What I entered doesn't seem to have taken any effect.)

I used the Adaptec SCSI BIOS features to check the disk.  There were no
errors.  Also, FreeBSD hasn't complained about read and/or write errors,
timeouts, or anything else.  From the nightly cron jobs that generate mail
to root, I can tell that the corruption happened between August 31, 0200 and
September 1, 0200.  In that time span, the computer was not touched by
anyone.  (It is connected to the internet via ppp and a modem.)

Disk corruption problems are alarming, and I trust that such problems engage
the FreeBSD team.  Since I use and love FreeBSD, I am more than willing to
help isolating the cause by doing experiments you suggest with my system.

I'll now try to reinstall FreeBSD 2.1, using an FDISK structure, keeping the
/usr partition at 2GB.  If that still gives me disk corruption, and no
solution is found, my love for FreeBSD will not stop me from switching to
an OS that preserves my files...  :-(

For completeness, here is my system setup:

  ASUS P/I-P55TP4N (P167, 512KB burst cache, 64MB EDO DRAM)
  Adaptec 2940UW PCI
    Fujitsu 2954SAU 4.4GB (8-bit Ultra enabled)
    HP35480A DAT (Fast SCSI)
    Toshiba XM-3701TA CD-ROM (Fast SCSI) (last device, terminated)
  Creative SB16 PnP (OEM version)
  Digital DC21040 PCI ethernet (not connected to any net)
  Seagate Medalist 1.3GB IDE disk (carrying a large DOS partition)

Torbjorn