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Date:      Sat, 3 Jun 2000 19:16:18 -0700
From:      "Bharat Mediratta" <bharat@sinia.com>
To:        <freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   RE: 3.4-STABLE -> 4.0-RELEASE upgrade: unable to mount root partition 
Message-ID:  <NDBBKDIKOLJOLALGCEBCOEJKCLAA.bharat@sinia.com>
In-Reply-To: <200006031747.KAA09577@mass.cdrom.com>

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I finally got an answer to this problem.  Since this problem prevented
me from upgrading my machine for over a week and it's not documented
anywhere, let me explain the problem and the solution.  (thanks to
David Babler dbabler@Rigel.orionsys.com for the info below)

When I installed FreeBSD 3.4-STABLE on my machine there was no 
indication that bad144 (bad sector forwarding) was not a good idea.
Support for bad144 went away in 4.0, so if you are using it in 3.4 
this will get in the way of upgrading.  After you reinstall the
kernel and reboot it will not let you remounte your root partition
and will give you an error message like this:

	wd0: bad sector table not supported
	wd0s1: bad sector table not supported

So here are some common questions and answers:

Q:	How do I tell if my drive has bad144 on it, BEFORE I
	try to upgrade to FreeBSD 4.0 and have it fail on me?

A:	Use the disklabel utility.  'disklabel -r wd0' (replace
	wd0 with your drive device) will give you the contents of
	your disk label.  For example:

		# /dev/rwd0c:
		type: ESDI
		disk: wd0s1
		label: 
		flags: badsect		<--- NOTE!
		bytes/sector: 512
		sectors/track: 63

Q:	How do I remove bad144?

A:	The easiest way to do this is to use disklabel.  You can
	dump the current label out to disk and then reload it, or
	you can just edit it in place with 'disklabel -e -r wd0'.
	All you have to do is remove 'badsect' from the flags line
	and you're all set.  This won't affect any of your data.
	bad144 is probably still taking up some space on your disk	
	but it is no longer in effect.

I hope this helps somebody avoid the week of annoying research
I had to do to get a fix for this problem.

-Bharat

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Mike Smith
> Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2000 10:47 AM
> To: Bharat Mediratta
> Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
> Subject: Re: 3.4-STABLE -> 4.0-RELEASE upgrade: unable to mount root
> partition 
> 
> 
> > > > Mounting root from ufs:wd0s1a
> > > > wd0: bad sector table not supported
> > > > wd0s1: bad sector table not supported
> ...
> > 	a) 	how to tell if your drive has bad144 on it
> 
> See error messages above.
> 
> > 	b)	how to remove bad144 without reformatting your drive
> 
> There are no tools to do this.
> 
> -- 
> \\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\  Mike Smith
> \\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself,  \\  msmith@freebsd.org
> \\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime.             \\  msmith@cdrom.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
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