From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Apr 9 19: 8:20 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from wantadilla.lemis.com (wantadilla.lemis.com [192.109.197.80]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB2A637B423; Mon, 9 Apr 2001 19:08:10 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from grog@lemis.com) Received: by wantadilla.lemis.com (Postfix, from userid 1004) id 9FFC46ACB7; Tue, 10 Apr 2001 11:38:08 +0930 (CST) Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 11:38:08 +0930 From: Greg Lehey To: Danny Howard Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: fdisk & disklabel dont work! Message-ID: <20010410113808.K64481@wantadilla.lemis.com> References: <20010409185759.N59290@tellme.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20010409185759.N59290@tellme.com>; from dannyman@tellme.com on Mon, Apr 09, 2001 at 06:58:00PM -0700 Organization: LEMIS, PO Box 460, Echunga SA 5153, Australia Phone: +61-8-8388-8286 Fax: +61-8-8388-8725 Mobile: +61-418-838-708 WWW-Home-Page: http://www.lemis.com/~grog X-PGP-Fingerprint: 6B 7B C3 8C 61 CD 54 AF 13 24 52 F8 6D A4 95 EF Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG [redirected to -questions] On Monday, 9 April 2001 at 18:58:00 -0700, Danny Howard wrote: > Okay, so, I'm BTX booting diskless workstation on a 4.2-R system with two SCSI > drives and an Adaptec controller. > > I can very very very easily install a systerm in dangerously dedicated mode as > follows: > disklabel -r -w da0 auto > (Then write the disklabel the way I want, newfs everything, be done with it.) > > This is great, except the system will then refuse to boot. PXE boot > crashes and SCSI boot hangs, and the explanation I can find is that > the Adaptec controller is pissed off about the dangerously dedicated > mode and ends up diving by zero. That's maybe the explanation you can find, but I doubt it's correct. I have lots of dedicated installations running with Adaptec host adaptors, and it works fine. > Okay, so let's do it the right way. > > Nearly two weeks later, I'M STILL STUCK. > > I've read about MBRs and why disklabel can't label an fdisk partition, but > maybe now it can, but first you have to dd anywhere between one and 128 blocks > on the disk before the magic incantations work properly ... > > Here's what I try to do: > > fdisk -I da0 > disklabel -r -w da0s1 auto > > Okay. Any time after the very first fdisk when booting up, I get kernel > messages about how da0 and da0s1 have no disk labels, and nothing works. I > have tried zeroing out any number of sectors, various variations of fdisk, > disklabel ... dd'ing the start of a working system on to the system in > question ... nowhere! Nada! AUGHGHGHG!!!! Disklabel JUST WON'T FUNCTION!!! > (I can always read fdisk with accuracy, even if the kernel is spitting out log > messages about how there is no label. Why should fdisk da0 care if da0s1 has > a label?) > > I have tried low-level SCSI format of disks, commands on the second disk ... > not even disklabel -r -w da0 auto works any more ... always the same flavor of > errors. For example: > > # disklabel -r -w da0s1 auto > /kernel: da0: cannot find label (no disk label) > /kernel: da0: cannot find label (no disk label) > /kernel: da0s1: cannot find label (no disk label) > /kernel: da0s1: cannot find label (no disk label) > /kernel: da0: cannot find label (no disk label) > /kernel: da0: cannot find label (no disk label) > /kernel: da0s1: cannot find label (no disk label) > /kernel: da0s1: cannot find label (no disk label) > disklabel: ioctl DIOCGDINFO: Invalid argument > disklabel: auto: unknown disk type > > Anyone has any idea? Maybe there's something really subtle that I am doing > wrong? Well, you're not showing much output. The output of disklabel and fdisk with no options would be interesting, as would the exact kernel error messages you're seeing. The *relevant* parts of dmesg output (i.e. relating to the disk probes) would also be interesting. Greg -- When replying to this message, please copy the original recipients. If you don't, I may ignore the reply. For more information, see http://www.lemis.com/questions.html Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key See complete headers for address and phone numbers To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message