From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Sep 8 14:54:39 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 57D8C16A4BF for ; Mon, 8 Sep 2003 14:54:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dfmm.org (walter.dfmm.org [209.151.233.240]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B1A8243FDD for ; Mon, 8 Sep 2003 14:54:38 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from freebsd-current@dfmm.org) Received: (qmail 24296 invoked by uid 1000); 8 Sep 2003 21:54:38 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 8 Sep 2003 21:54:38 -0000 Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2003 14:54:37 -0700 (PDT) From: Jason Stone X-X-Sender: jason@walter To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <20030908203049.5FF375D04@ptavv.es.net> Message-ID: <20030908143810.V55021@walter> References: <20030908203049.5FF375D04@ptavv.es.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: Re: re-fdisk'ing a partition - permission denied? X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 08 Sep 2003 21:54:39 -0000 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 > You have hit one of the main issues still to be resolved in GEOM. (I > don't know that phk thinks it's a problem to be resolved or a feature to > be documented.) > > In any case, since GEOM was added you can no longer slice or label an > active device. Ah - is that to say that, in general, you can't mess with the disk's MBR? I was also running into this. The situation that I have is that I have a bunch of colocated machines that are set in the bios to try booting a hard disk, and then, failing that, pxe netboot. I keep a pxeboot server there in the colo with an up-to-date binary release, and when I want to upgrade a machine, I just overwrite the mbr with zeros and reboot. The bios will then netboot, and the release is scripted to be noninteractive, to wipe the disks and re-install and then reboot the system when it's done. If I can't touch the mbr on the running system, then I won't be able to work this way anymore. Is there some other alternative? If I were running linux, I could write to /dev/nvram to update the bios cmos settings from the running system - does freebsd have a similar way to access the bios cmos settings? -Jason -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Freud himself was a bit of a cold fish, and one cannot avoid the suspicion that he was insufficiently fondled when he was an infant. -- Ashley Montagu -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (FreeBSD) Comment: See https://private.idealab.com/public/jason/jason.gpg iD8DBQE/XPqeswXMWWtptckRAiZPAJwLRGlbcIPCEJGgnJzeCG2sZtXvxACfWMhz tBO8PAjJu6OOZrNP4S3zIps= =9wdb -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----