Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:22:31 -0700 From: Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org> To: Bullet 446 <bullet446@googlemail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Zero-Fill format before installation Message-ID: <20081028122231.GB49298@icarus.home.lan> In-Reply-To: <786a1e4f0810280321w7aa8894fnb736fa4c83d3ef5e@mail.gmail.com> References: <786a1e4f0810280321w7aa8894fnb736fa4c83d3ef5e@mail.gmail.com>
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On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 10:21:00AM +0000, Bullet 446 wrote: > I have a remote machine with KVM access that I'd like to format and > reinstall FreeBSD 7.0. I've succeded in formatting /dev/ad6 but not the main > drive, /dev/ad4. > Is it possbile to zero-fill format during the installation instead of simply > deleting and recreating partitions? > > I've tried booting into single user mode without any success: > # umount -a > umount: /cdrom: not a file system root directory > umount: /var: not a file system root directory > umount: /usr: not a file system root directory > umount: /tmp: not a file system root directory > # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 > dd: /dev/ad4: Operation not permitted You need to tell GEOM to allow you to overwrite the MBR at the start of the disk. sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 then do the dd again. I STRONGLY recommend you add "bs=64k" to that dd statement, or else it's going to take a million years. :-) -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
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