Re: Invalid partition table after installation (GOOD NEWS!)
On Sat, 23 Jan 2010, John wrote: On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 05:34:10PM +1100, Ian Smith wrote: In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 294, Issue 12, Message 19 On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:35:21 -0600 John j...@starfire.mn.org wrote: [..] OK! Well! Good news! After a sort. I switched to BootMgr, and it came right up with 8.0! Slight downside - extra prompt during boot, and of course, it offers me all three slices, when I only need to boot from one. See boot0cfg(8); you can specify which slice/s are offered by the boot menu, from none to four, and you can specify the delay in ticks (~1/18 second). I'm not sure if 0 is a valid delay, but 1 is not very long. Is that's what's wrong with Standard MBR? Are all three FSD partitions (type 165) marked bootable and that's upsetting it? Can I change it so only one of them is marked bootable? See fdisk(8) -a switch. I expect this would clear other active flags. I haven't checked the code, but that seems to be correct. For sure setting one slice active in sysinstall's fdisk menu turns off another. [..] Anyway, it appears that there is a problem with the Standard MBR boot. I don't think I was doing anything that unnatural - I wanted quite a few file systems, so I used multiple slices, both to keep the boot slice below 1.5Gb and to be able to support all the file systems I wanted, and maybe that's what upset it. I don't know. All I know is that Standard MBR didn't work, and BootMgr does. I have checked the code :) and you are right; /boot/mbr aborts if more than one slice is set active. I'm pasting from 5.5 sources, but have checked this section vs 8.0 .. /usr/src/sys/boot/i386/mbr/mbr.s says: # Scan the partition table looking for an active entry. Note that %ch is # zero from the repeated string instruction above. We save the offset of # the active partition in %si and scan the entire table to ensure that only # one partition is marked active. # main: xorw %si,%si# No active partition movw $partbl,%bx# Partition table movb $0x4,%cl # Number of entries main.1: cmpb %ch,(%bx) # Null entry? je main.2 # Yes jg err_pt # If 0x1..0x7f testw %si,%si # Active already found? jnz err_pt # Yes movw %bx,%si# Point to active main.2: addb $0x10,%bl # Till loop main.1 # done testw %si,%si # Active found? jnz main.3 # Yes int $0x18 # BIOS: Diskless boot .. where err_pt prints 'Invalid partition table' and exits. OK - my current best theory is that if the Standard boot manager is faced with anything other than exactly 1 bootable slice (partition to it), it defaults to Invalid partition table. I'll bet anyone lunch that this is true. Any takers? Perhaps. Certainly only one should be set active at boot time, either statically or by being chosen by a boot menu. Someone owes you lunch, but I'm not sure it's me :) The question is how all three slices you setup with sysinstall wound up having their active flags set, which does seem a mystery. It's not the boot code's fault. I'll test my theory tonight and let you all know how it turns out. If this is true, then we should at least post some warnings, if not actually fix the installation process so that if you choose Standard, it helps ensure that you have one and only one bootable slice/partition! Whaddaya think? sysinstall (fdisk) lets you toggle the active flag while slicing the disk. You're supposed to have set one (and only one) active there, and you've already chosen which slice you want to install to, though I agree that selecting Standard boot sector might check for one active slice. To be fair, if you read the help (F1) in sysinstall's fdisk section, it makes the point that you should mark one slice active or select the Boot Manager, and because of other usage cases (like allocating other slices or disks post-install) sysinstall has to be very careful in assuming what you're wanting to do. That said, marking each slice that you setup as active without you having done so deliberately does seem wrong. [..] I have used dd and cat to manufacture a new boot record from /boot/mbr and the parition (slide) table I've modified, and I'm tempted to put THAT in place over this one, but I'm afraid of what that might mean - are there other changes to the structure of the disk that I need
Re: Invalid partition table after installation
John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:25:26PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 04:38:22PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: I've tried the modern BIOS geometry and the 255 head geometry. I've ensured that the first slice (boot slice) is smaller than 1.5 Gb. I've tried to figure out what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, but it doesn't seem to want to tell me. At least, I can't find it in the BIOS menu anywhere. When I boot from the CD-ROM with the 255 head geometry, though, it complains about the disk geometry, saying 16h,63s != 255h,63s or something like that - it flies by pretty fast (is there a way to go back and see that from the CD-ROM boot only boot?). I'm using the Standard boot manager, and the entire disk is devoted to FreeBSD. System BIOS version PT84510A.86A.2004.P05 Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor speed: 2.20Ghz Memory: 512Mb Disk: Primary IDE Master ST380021A (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb) Primary IDE Slave: IOMega ZIP 250 Secondary IDE Master: Sony CD-RW CRX19 (what I boot from to install) Secondary IDE Slave: DVD-ROM DDU1621 Boot sequence: 1) ATAPI CD-ROM 2) Hard Drive 3) Removable Dev. Modern BIOS geometry: 155061/16/63 for ad0 calculated geometry: 9729/255/63 for ad0 ad0s1 start=63, size=2875572 ad0s2 start=2875635, size=10217340 ad0s3 start=13092975, size=143203410 unus start=156296384, size=5103 ad0s1a / 384Mb ad0s1d /usr 1Gb ad0s2b SWAP 1Gb ad0s2d /tmp 384Mb ad0s2e /var 512Mb ad0s2f /var/mail 2Gb ad0s2g /usr/ports 1Gb ad0s3d /home/mysql 4Gb ad0s3e /home 50Gb ad0s3f /usr/src 3Gb ad0s3g /usr/obj 3Gb ad0s3h /extra 8483Mb Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( What version of FreeBSD are you running Well, yes, I suppose that would be a good bit of information! What I'm *TRYING* to run is 8.0. It seems to install successfully (of course - after doing all that), but then when I try to boot from the hard drive, I see an otherwise-blank screen that says: Invalid partition table and that's as far as it goes! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org There are reports of this sort of thing caused by 8.0 fdisk when doing a install from scratch over a hard drive that all ready has an older version of Freebsd installed on it. The solution is to force the scratching of the MBR on the disk first before running sysinstall fdisk. Boot a LiveFS CD, then at a root prompt do: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 and: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 where x equals your drive number. OK. I did exactly that. I confirmed that the second 512 bytes were zero by doing a dd if/dev/ad0 bs=512 count=2 | od -c and everything from 001000 through 002000 was zero. But I still got Invalid partition table after the installation. I guess I should set up one of my other systems as a local mirror. I've done the installation so many time already, and it looks like I'm not done yet! On the 8.0 fdisk/MBR subject. Doing dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 was the solution from another post to the list with subject 'SunFire X2100 fails'. Here is another post that gives more details http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=322687+326879+/usr/local/ www/db/text/2009/freebsd-questions/20091227.freebsd-questions It seems in 8.0 gpart was introduced and a change was made to fdisk to support its sector o mbr format. 8.0 fdisk and disklabel are now broken. Searching the list archives may shed more light on your problem. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Invalid partition table after installation
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 08:16:59PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:25:26PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 04:38:22PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: I've tried the modern BIOS geometry and the 255 head geometry. I've ensured that the first slice (boot slice) is smaller than 1.5 Gb. I've tried to figure out what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, but it doesn't seem to want to tell me. At least, I can't find it in the BIOS menu anywhere. When I boot from the CD-ROM with the 255 head geometry, though, it complains about the disk geometry, saying 16h,63s != 255h,63s or something like that - it flies by pretty fast (is there a way to go back and see that from the CD-ROM boot only boot?). I'm using the Standard boot manager, and the entire disk is devoted to FreeBSD. System BIOS version PT84510A.86A.2004.P05 Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor speed: 2.20Ghz Memory: 512Mb Disk: Primary IDE Master ST380021A (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb) Primary IDE Slave: IOMega ZIP 250 Secondary IDE Master: Sony CD-RW CRX19 (what I boot from to install) Secondary IDE Slave: DVD-ROM DDU1621 Boot sequence: 1) ATAPI CD-ROM 2) Hard Drive 3) Removable Dev. Modern BIOS geometry: 155061/16/63 for ad0 calculated geometry: 9729/255/63 for ad0 ad0s1 start=63, size=2875572 ad0s2 start=2875635, size=10217340 ad0s3 start=13092975, size=143203410 unus start=156296384, size=5103 ad0s1a / 384Mb ad0s1d /usr 1Gb ad0s2b SWAP 1Gb ad0s2d /tmp 384Mb ad0s2e /var 512Mb ad0s2f /var/mail 2Gb ad0s2g /usr/ports 1Gb ad0s3d /home/mysql 4Gb ad0s3e /home 50Gb ad0s3f /usr/src 3Gb ad0s3g /usr/obj 3Gb ad0s3h /extra 8483Mb Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( What version of FreeBSD are you running Well, yes, I suppose that would be a good bit of information! What I'm *TRYING* to run is 8.0. It seems to install successfully (of course - after doing all that), but then when I try to boot from the hard drive, I see an otherwise-blank screen that says: Invalid partition table and that's as far as it goes! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org There are reports of this sort of thing caused by 8.0 fdisk when doing a install from scratch over a hard drive that all ready has an older version of Freebsd installed on it. The solution is to force the scratching of the MBR on the disk first before running sysinstall fdisk. Boot a LiveFS CD, then at a root prompt do: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 and: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 where x equals your drive number. OK. I did exactly that. I confirmed that the second 512 bytes were zero by doing a dd if/dev/ad0 bs=512 count=2 | od -c and everything from 001000 through 002000 was zero. But I still got Invalid partition table after the installation. I guess I should set up one of my other systems as a local mirror. I've done the installation so many time already, and it looks like I'm not done yet! On the 8.0 fdisk/MBR subject. Doing dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 was the solution from another post to the list with subject 'SunFire X2100 fails'. Here is another post that gives more details http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=322687+326879+/usr/local/ www/db/text/2009/freebsd-questions/20091227.freebsd-questions It seems in 8.0 gpart was introduced and a change was made to fdisk to support its sector o mbr format. 8.0 fdisk and disklabel are now broken. Searching the list archives may shed more light on your problem. Hmmm. This seems to describe a case where fdisk fails to change the slice table. That is definitely not my case. The changes certainly get made. The next time I go to retry the installation, it has the information I gave it the previous time. I suppose it is possible that it is putting it (and reading it) in the wrong location, which is why the MBR throws up. The problem is that I have a finite (and smallish) amount of time in which to solve this. It seems like the most expedient route forward at this point may be to try to install 7.2 and see how that goes. -- John Lind j...@starfire.mn.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Invalid partition table after installation
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 06:36:14AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 08:16:59PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:25:26PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 04:38:22PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: I've tried the modern BIOS geometry and the 255 head geometry. I've ensured that the first slice (boot slice) is smaller than 1.5 Gb. I've tried to figure out what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, but it doesn't seem to want to tell me. At least, I can't find it in the BIOS menu anywhere. When I boot from the CD-ROM with the 255 head geometry, though, it complains about the disk geometry, saying 16h,63s != 255h,63s or something like that - it flies by pretty fast (is there a way to go back and see that from the CD-ROM boot only boot?). I'm using the Standard boot manager, and the entire disk is devoted to FreeBSD. System BIOS version PT84510A.86A.2004.P05 Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor speed: 2.20Ghz Memory: 512Mb Disk: Primary IDE Master ST380021A (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb) Primary IDE Slave: IOMega ZIP 250 Secondary IDE Master: Sony CD-RW CRX19 (what I boot from to install) Secondary IDE Slave: DVD-ROM DDU1621 Boot sequence: 1) ATAPI CD-ROM 2) Hard Drive 3) Removable Dev. Modern BIOS geometry: 155061/16/63 for ad0 calculated geometry: 9729/255/63 for ad0 ad0s1 start=63, size=2875572 ad0s2 start=2875635, size=10217340 ad0s3 start=13092975, size=143203410 unus start=156296384, size=5103 ad0s1a / 384Mb ad0s1d /usr 1Gb ad0s2b SWAP 1Gb ad0s2d /tmp 384Mb ad0s2e /var 512Mb ad0s2f /var/mail 2Gb ad0s2g /usr/ports 1Gb ad0s3d /home/mysql 4Gb ad0s3e /home 50Gb ad0s3f /usr/src 3Gb ad0s3g /usr/obj 3Gb ad0s3h /extra 8483Mb Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( What version of FreeBSD are you running Well, yes, I suppose that would be a good bit of information! What I'm *TRYING* to run is 8.0. It seems to install successfully (of course - after doing all that), but then when I try to boot from the hard drive, I see an otherwise-blank screen that says: Invalid partition table and that's as far as it goes! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org There are reports of this sort of thing caused by 8.0 fdisk when doing a install from scratch over a hard drive that all ready has an older version of Freebsd installed on it. The solution is to force the scratching of the MBR on the disk first before running sysinstall fdisk. Boot a LiveFS CD, then at a root prompt do: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 and: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 where x equals your drive number. OK. I did exactly that. I confirmed that the second 512 bytes were zero by doing a dd if/dev/ad0 bs=512 count=2 | od -c and everything from 001000 through 002000 was zero. But I still got Invalid partition table after the installation. I guess I should set up one of my other systems as a local mirror. I've done the installation so many time already, and it looks like I'm not done yet! On the 8.0 fdisk/MBR subject. Doing dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 was the solution from another post to the list with subject 'SunFire X2100 fails'. Here is another post that gives more details http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=322687+326879+/usr/local/ www/db/text/2009/freebsd-questions/20091227.freebsd-questions It seems in 8.0 gpart was introduced and a change was made to fdisk to support its sector o mbr format. 8.0 fdisk and disklabel are now broken. Searching the list archives may shed more light on your problem. Hmmm. This seems to describe a case where fdisk fails to change the slice table. That is definitely not my case. The changes certainly get made. The next time I go to retry the installation, it has the information I gave it the previous time. I suppose it is possible that it is putting it (and reading it) in the wrong location, which is why the MBR throws up. The problem is that I have a finite (and smallish) amount of time in which to solve this. It seems like the most expedient route forward at this point may be to try to install 7.2 and see how that goes. OK - well, I just tried with 7.2. I got exactly the same results. After what seems like a successful installation, I try to boot from the hard disk and get Invalid partition table. Should I try Boot Manager? Could that make a difference? Is it possible that this combination of BIOS, processor, disk drive, etc., just isn't going to to
Re: Invalid partition table after installation
John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 06:36:14AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 08:16:59PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:25:26PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 04:38:22PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: I've tried the modern BIOS geometry and the 255 head geometry. I've ensured that the first slice (boot slice) is smaller than 1.5 Gb. I've tried to figure out what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, but it doesn't seem to want to tell me. At least, I can't find it in the BIOS menu anywhere. When I boot from the CD-ROM with the 255 head geometry, though, it complains about the disk geometry, saying 16h,63s != 255h,63s or something like that - it flies by pretty fast (is there a way to go back and see that from the CD-ROM boot only boot?). I'm using the Standard boot manager, and the entire disk is devoted to FreeBSD. System BIOS version PT84510A.86A.2004.P05 Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor speed: 2.20Ghz Memory: 512Mb Disk: Primary IDE Master ST380021A (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb) Primary IDE Slave: IOMega ZIP 250 Secondary IDE Master: Sony CD-RW CRX19 (what I boot from to install) Secondary IDE Slave: DVD-ROM DDU1621 Boot sequence: 1) ATAPI CD-ROM 2) Hard Drive 3) Removable Dev. Modern BIOS geometry: 155061/16/63 for ad0 calculated geometry: 9729/255/63 for ad0 ad0s1 start=63, size=2875572 ad0s2 start=2875635, size=10217340 ad0s3 start=13092975, size=143203410 unus start=156296384, size=5103 ad0s1a / 384Mb ad0s1d /usr 1Gb ad0s2b SWAP 1Gb ad0s2d /tmp 384Mb ad0s2e /var 512Mb ad0s2f /var/mail 2Gb ad0s2g /usr/ports 1Gb ad0s3d /home/mysql 4Gb ad0s3e /home 50Gb ad0s3f /usr/src 3Gb ad0s3g /usr/obj 3Gb ad0s3h /extra 8483Mb Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( What version of FreeBSD are you running Well, yes, I suppose that would be a good bit of information! What I'm *TRYING* to run is 8.0. It seems to install successfully (of course - after doing all that), but then when I try to boot from the hard drive, I see an otherwise-blank screen that says: Invalid partition table and that's as far as it goes! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org There are reports of this sort of thing caused by 8.0 fdisk when doing a install from scratch over a hard drive that all ready has an older version of Freebsd installed on it. The solution is to force the scratching of the MBR on the disk first before running sysinstall fdisk. Boot a LiveFS CD, then at a root prompt do: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 and: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 where x equals your drive number. OK. I did exactly that. I confirmed that the second 512 bytes were zero by doing a dd if/dev/ad0 bs=512 count=2 | od -c and everything from 001000 through 002000 was zero. But I still got Invalid partition table after the installation. I guess I should set up one of my other systems as a local mirror. I've done the installation so many time already, and it looks like I'm not done yet! On the 8.0 fdisk/MBR subject. Doing dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 was the solution from another post to the list with subject 'SunFire X2100 fails'. Here is another post that gives more details http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=322687+326879+/usr/local/ www/db/text/2009/freebsd-questions/20091227.freebsd-questions It seems in 8.0 gpart was introduced and a change was made to fdisk to support its sector o mbr format. 8.0 fdisk and disklabel are now broken. Searching the list archives may shed more light on your problem. Hmmm. This seems to describe a case where fdisk fails to change the slice table. That is definitely not my case. The changes certainly get made. The next time I go to retry the installation, it has the information I gave it the previous time. I suppose it is possible that it is putting it (and reading it) in the wrong location, which is why the MBR throws up. The problem is that I have a finite (and smallish) amount of time in which to solve this. It seems like the most expedient route forward at this point may be to try to install 7.2 and see how that goes. OK - well, I just tried with 7.2. I got exactly the same results. After what seems like a successful installation, I try to boot from the hard disk and get Invalid partition table. Should I try Boot Manager? Could that make a difference? Is it possible that this combination of BIOS, processor, disk drive, etc., just isn't going to to do for me? I can't just keep throwing hours at this problem. Something is wrong with the MBR. Do dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 count=1 to blank out the MBR THEN Do you have a bootable win98 cd or floppy that contains the msdos fdisk pgm. If so boot that and fdisk the hard drive. If
Re: Invalid partition table after installation (GOOD NEWS!)
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 07:27:56AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 06:36:14AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 08:16:59PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:25:26PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 04:38:22PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: I've tried the modern BIOS geometry and the 255 head geometry. I've ensured that the first slice (boot slice) is smaller than 1.5 Gb. I've tried to figure out what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, but it doesn't seem to want to tell me. At least, I can't find it in the BIOS menu anywhere. When I boot from the CD-ROM with the 255 head geometry, though, it complains about the disk geometry, saying 16h,63s != 255h,63s or something like that - it flies by pretty fast (is there a way to go back and see that from the CD-ROM boot only boot?). I'm using the Standard boot manager, and the entire disk is devoted to FreeBSD. System BIOS version PT84510A.86A.2004.P05 Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor speed: 2.20Ghz Memory: 512Mb Disk: Primary IDE Master ST380021A (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb) Primary IDE Slave: IOMega ZIP 250 Secondary IDE Master: Sony CD-RW CRX19 (what I boot from to install) Secondary IDE Slave: DVD-ROM DDU1621 Boot sequence: 1) ATAPI CD-ROM 2) Hard Drive 3) Removable Dev. Modern BIOS geometry: 155061/16/63 for ad0 calculated geometry: 9729/255/63 for ad0 ad0s1 start=63, size=2875572 ad0s2 start=2875635, size=10217340 ad0s3 start=13092975, size=143203410 unus start=156296384, size=5103 ad0s1a / 384Mb ad0s1d /usr 1Gb ad0s2b SWAP 1Gb ad0s2d /tmp 384Mb ad0s2e /var 512Mb ad0s2f /var/mail 2Gb ad0s2g /usr/ports 1Gb ad0s3d /home/mysql 4Gb ad0s3e /home 50Gb ad0s3f /usr/src 3Gb ad0s3g /usr/obj 3Gb ad0s3h /extra 8483Mb Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( What version of FreeBSD are you running Well, yes, I suppose that would be a good bit of information! What I'm *TRYING* to run is 8.0. It seems to install successfully (of course - after doing all that), but then when I try to boot from the hard drive, I see an otherwise-blank screen that says: Invalid partition table and that's as far as it goes! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org There are reports of this sort of thing caused by 8.0 fdisk when doing a install from scratch over a hard drive that all ready has an older version of Freebsd installed on it. The solution is to force the scratching of the MBR on the disk first before running sysinstall fdisk. Boot a LiveFS CD, then at a root prompt do: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 and: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 where x equals your drive number. OK. I did exactly that. I confirmed that the second 512 bytes were zero by doing a dd if/dev/ad0 bs=512 count=2 | od -c and everything from 001000 through 002000 was zero. But I still got Invalid partition table after the installation. I guess I should set up one of my other systems as a local mirror. I've done the installation so many time already, and it looks like I'm not done yet! On the 8.0 fdisk/MBR subject. Doing dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 was the solution from another post to the list with subject 'SunFire X2100 fails'. Here is another post that gives more details http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=322687+326879+/usr/local/ www/db/text/2009/freebsd-questions/20091227.freebsd-questions It seems in 8.0 gpart was introduced and a change was made to fdisk to support its sector o mbr format. 8.0 fdisk and disklabel are now broken. Searching the list archives may shed more light on your problem. Hmmm. This seems to describe a case where fdisk fails to change the slice table. That is definitely not my case. The changes certainly get made. The next time I go to retry the installation, it has the information I gave it the previous time. I suppose it is possible that it is putting it (and reading it) in the wrong location, which is why the MBR throws up. The problem is that I have a finite (and smallish) amount of time in which to solve this. It seems like the most expedient route forward at this point may be to try to install 7.2 and see how that goes. OK - well, I just tried with 7.2. I got exactly the same results. After what seems like a successful installation, I try to boot from the
Re: Invalid partition table after installation (GOOD NEWS!)
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 08:09:50AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 07:27:56AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 06:36:14AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 08:16:59PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:25:26PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 04:38:22PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: I've tried the modern BIOS geometry and the 255 head geometry. I've ensured that the first slice (boot slice) is smaller than 1.5 Gb. I've tried to figure out what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, but it doesn't seem to want to tell me. At least, I can't find it in the BIOS menu anywhere. When I boot from the CD-ROM with the 255 head geometry, though, it complains about the disk geometry, saying 16h,63s != 255h,63s or something like that - it flies by pretty fast (is there a way to go back and see that from the CD-ROM boot only boot?). I'm using the Standard boot manager, and the entire disk is devoted to FreeBSD. System BIOS version PT84510A.86A.2004.P05 Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor speed: 2.20Ghz Memory: 512Mb Disk: Primary IDE Master ST380021A (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb) Primary IDE Slave: IOMega ZIP 250 Secondary IDE Master: Sony CD-RW CRX19 (what I boot from to install) Secondary IDE Slave: DVD-ROM DDU1621 Boot sequence: 1) ATAPI CD-ROM 2) Hard Drive 3) Removable Dev. Modern BIOS geometry: 155061/16/63 for ad0 calculated geometry: 9729/255/63 for ad0 ad0s1 start=63, size=2875572 ad0s2 start=2875635, size=10217340 ad0s3 start=13092975, size=143203410 unus start=156296384, size=5103 ad0s1a / 384Mb ad0s1d /usr 1Gb ad0s2b SWAP 1Gb ad0s2d /tmp 384Mb ad0s2e /var 512Mb ad0s2f /var/mail 2Gb ad0s2g /usr/ports 1Gb ad0s3d /home/mysql 4Gb ad0s3e /home 50Gb ad0s3f /usr/src 3Gb ad0s3g /usr/obj 3Gb ad0s3h /extra 8483Mb Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( What version of FreeBSD are you running Well, yes, I suppose that would be a good bit of information! What I'm *TRYING* to run is 8.0. It seems to install successfully (of course - after doing all that), but then when I try to boot from the hard drive, I see an otherwise-blank screen that says: Invalid partition table and that's as far as it goes! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org There are reports of this sort of thing caused by 8.0 fdisk when doing a install from scratch over a hard drive that all ready has an older version of Freebsd installed on it. The solution is to force the scratching of the MBR on the disk first before running sysinstall fdisk. Boot a LiveFS CD, then at a root prompt do: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 and: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 where x equals your drive number. OK. I did exactly that. I confirmed that the second 512 bytes were zero by doing a dd if/dev/ad0 bs=512 count=2 | od -c and everything from 001000 through 002000 was zero. But I still got Invalid partition table after the installation. I guess I should set up one of my other systems as a local mirror. I've done the installation so many time already, and it looks like I'm not done yet! On the 8.0 fdisk/MBR subject. Doing dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 was the solution from another post to the list with subject 'SunFire X2100 fails'. Here is another post that gives more details http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=322687+326879+/usr/local/ www/db/text/2009/freebsd-questions/20091227.freebsd-questions It seems in 8.0 gpart was introduced and a change was made to fdisk to support its sector o mbr format. 8.0 fdisk and disklabel are now broken. Searching the list archives may shed more light on your problem. Hmmm. This seems to describe a case where fdisk fails to change the slice table. That is definitely not my case. The changes certainly get made. The next time I go to retry the installation, it has the information I gave it the previous time. I suppose it is possible that it is putting it (and reading it) in the wrong location, which is why the MBR throws up. The problem is that I have a finite (and smallish) amount of time in which to solve this. It seems like the most expedient route forward at this
Re: Invalid partition table after installation (GOOD NEWS!)
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:01:02AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 08:09:50AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 07:27:56AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 06:36:14AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 08:16:59PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:25:26PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 04:38:22PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: I've tried the modern BIOS geometry and the 255 head geometry. I've ensured that the first slice (boot slice) is smaller than 1.5 Gb. I've tried to figure out what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, but it doesn't seem to want to tell me. At least, I can't find it in the BIOS menu anywhere. When I boot from the CD-ROM with the 255 head geometry, though, it complains about the disk geometry, saying 16h,63s != 255h,63s or something like that - it flies by pretty fast (is there a way to go back and see that from the CD-ROM boot only boot?). I'm using the Standard boot manager, and the entire disk is devoted to FreeBSD. System BIOS version PT84510A.86A.2004.P05 Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor speed: 2.20Ghz Memory: 512Mb Disk: Primary IDE Master ST380021A (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb) Primary IDE Slave: IOMega ZIP 250 Secondary IDE Master: Sony CD-RW CRX19 (what I boot from to install) Secondary IDE Slave: DVD-ROM DDU1621 Boot sequence: 1) ATAPI CD-ROM 2) Hard Drive 3) Removable Dev. Modern BIOS geometry: 155061/16/63 for ad0 calculated geometry: 9729/255/63 for ad0 ad0s1 start=63, size=2875572 ad0s2 start=2875635, size=10217340 ad0s3 start=13092975, size=143203410 unus start=156296384, size=5103 ad0s1a / 384Mb ad0s1d /usr 1Gb ad0s2b SWAP 1Gb ad0s2d /tmp 384Mb ad0s2e /var 512Mb ad0s2f /var/mail 2Gb ad0s2g /usr/ports 1Gb ad0s3d /home/mysql 4Gb ad0s3e /home 50Gb ad0s3f /usr/src 3Gb ad0s3g /usr/obj 3Gb ad0s3h /extra 8483Mb Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( What version of FreeBSD are you running Well, yes, I suppose that would be a good bit of information! What I'm *TRYING* to run is 8.0. It seems to install successfully (of course - after doing all that), but then when I try to boot from the hard drive, I see an otherwise-blank screen that says: Invalid partition table and that's as far as it goes! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org There are reports of this sort of thing caused by 8.0 fdisk when doing a install from scratch over a hard drive that all ready has an older version of Freebsd installed on it. The solution is to force the scratching of the MBR on the disk first before running sysinstall fdisk. Boot a LiveFS CD, then at a root prompt do: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 and: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 where x equals your drive number. OK. I did exactly that. I confirmed that the second 512 bytes were zero by doing a dd if/dev/ad0 bs=512 count=2 | od -c and everything from 001000 through 002000 was zero. But I still got Invalid partition table after the installation. I guess I should set up one of my other systems as a local mirror. I've done the installation so many time already, and it looks like I'm not done yet! On the 8.0 fdisk/MBR subject. Doing dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 was the solution from another post to the list with subject 'SunFire X2100 fails'. Here is another post that gives more details http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=322687+326879+/usr/local/ www/db/text/2009/freebsd-questions/20091227.freebsd-questions It seems in 8.0 gpart was introduced and a change was made to fdisk to support its sector o mbr format. 8.0 fdisk and disklabel are now broken. Searching the list archives may shed more light on your problem. Hmmm. This seems to describe a case where fdisk fails to change the slice table. That is definitely not my case. The changes certainly get made. The next time I go to retry the installation, it has the information I gave it the previous time. I suppose it is possible that it is putting it (and reading it) in
Re: Invalid partition table after installation (GOOD NEWS!)
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 04:35:21PM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:01:02AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 08:09:50AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 07:27:56AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 06:36:14AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 08:16:59PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:25:26PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 04:38:22PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: I've tried the modern BIOS geometry and the 255 head geometry. I've ensured that the first slice (boot slice) is smaller than 1.5 Gb. I've tried to figure out what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, but it doesn't seem to want to tell me. At least, I can't find it in the BIOS menu anywhere. When I boot from the CD-ROM with the 255 head geometry, though, it complains about the disk geometry, saying 16h,63s != 255h,63s or something like that - it flies by pretty fast (is there a way to go back and see that from the CD-ROM boot only boot?). I'm using the Standard boot manager, and the entire disk is devoted to FreeBSD. System BIOS version PT84510A.86A.2004.P05 Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor speed: 2.20Ghz Memory: 512Mb Disk: Primary IDE Master ST380021A (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb) Primary IDE Slave: IOMega ZIP 250 Secondary IDE Master: Sony CD-RW CRX19 (what I boot from to install) Secondary IDE Slave: DVD-ROM DDU1621 Boot sequence: 1) ATAPI CD-ROM 2) Hard Drive 3) Removable Dev. Modern BIOS geometry: 155061/16/63 for ad0 calculated geometry: 9729/255/63 for ad0 ad0s1 start=63, size=2875572 ad0s2 start=2875635, size=10217340 ad0s3 start=13092975, size=143203410 unus start=156296384, size=5103 ad0s1a / 384Mb ad0s1d /usr 1Gb ad0s2b SWAP 1Gb ad0s2d /tmp 384Mb ad0s2e /var 512Mb ad0s2f /var/mail 2Gb ad0s2g /usr/ports 1Gb ad0s3d /home/mysql 4Gb ad0s3e /home 50Gb ad0s3f /usr/src 3Gb ad0s3g /usr/obj 3Gb ad0s3h /extra 8483Mb Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( What version of FreeBSD are you running Well, yes, I suppose that would be a good bit of information! What I'm *TRYING* to run is 8.0. It seems to install successfully (of course - after doing all that), but then when I try to boot from the hard drive, I see an otherwise-blank screen that says: Invalid partition table and that's as far as it goes! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org There are reports of this sort of thing caused by 8.0 fdisk when doing a install from scratch over a hard drive that all ready has an older version of Freebsd installed on it. The solution is to force the scratching of the MBR on the disk first before running sysinstall fdisk. Boot a LiveFS CD, then at a root prompt do: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 and: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 where x equals your drive number. OK. I did exactly that. I confirmed that the second 512 bytes were zero by doing a dd if/dev/ad0 bs=512 count=2 | od -c and everything from 001000 through 002000 was zero. But I still got Invalid partition table after the installation. I guess I should set up one of my other systems as a local mirror. I've done the installation so many time already, and it looks like I'm not done yet! On the 8.0 fdisk/MBR subject. Doing dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 was the solution from another post to the list with subject 'SunFire X2100 fails'. Here is another post that gives more details http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=322687+326879+/usr/local/ www/db/text/2009/freebsd-questions/20091227.freebsd-questions It seems in 8.0 gpart was introduced and a change was made to fdisk to support its sector o mbr format. 8.0 fdisk and disklabel are now broken. Searching the list archives may shed more light on your problem. Hmmm. This seems to describe a case where fdisk fails to change the slice table. That is
Re: Invalid partition table after installation (GOOD NEWS!)
SNIP OK - my current best theory is that if the Standard boot manager is faced with anything other than exactly 1 bootable slice (partition to it), it defaults to Invalid partition table. I'll bet anyone lunch that this is true. Any takers? I've read before: the standard bootloader looks for the first freebsd slice, and runs it. If there's no bsdlabel partition 'a' then it will have trouble booting. I haven't followed this thread in detail. I briefly saw you had 3 slices defined, is by chance the first slice a nonsystem disk? I'll test my theory tonight and let you all know how it turns out. If this is true, then we should at least post some warnings, if not actually fix the installation process so that if you choose Standard, it helps ensure that you have one and only one bootable slice/partition! Whaddaya think? Well, better it happen to me than someone from another community who is trying us out for the first time... -- John Lind j...@starfire.mn.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Invalid partition table after installation (GOOD NEWS!)
John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 04:35:21PM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:01:02AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 08:09:50AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 07:27:56AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 06:36:14AM -0600, John wrote: On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 08:16:59PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 10:25:26PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 04:38:22PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: I've tried the modern BIOS geometry and the 255 head geometry. I've ensured that the first slice (boot slice) is smaller than 1.5 Gb. I've tried to figure out what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, but it doesn't seem to want to tell me. At least, I can't find it in the BIOS menu anywhere. When I boot from the CD-ROM with the 255 head geometry, though, it complains about the disk geometry, saying 16h,63s != 255h,63s or something like that - it flies by pretty fast (is there a way to go back and see that from the CD-ROM boot only boot?). I'm using the Standard boot manager, and the entire disk is devoted to FreeBSD. System BIOS version PT84510A.86A.2004.P05 Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor speed: 2.20Ghz Memory: 512Mb Disk: Primary IDE Master ST380021A (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb) Primary IDE Slave: IOMega ZIP 250 Secondary IDE Master: Sony CD-RW CRX19 (what I boot from to install) Secondary IDE Slave: DVD-ROM DDU1621 Boot sequence: 1) ATAPI CD-ROM 2) Hard Drive 3) Removable Dev. Modern BIOS geometry: 155061/16/63 for ad0 calculated geometry: 9729/255/63 for ad0 ad0s1 start=63, size=2875572 ad0s2 start=2875635, size=10217340 ad0s3 start=13092975, size=143203410 unus start=156296384, size=5103 ad0s1a / 384Mb ad0s1d /usr 1Gb ad0s2b SWAP 1Gb ad0s2d /tmp 384Mb ad0s2e /var 512Mb ad0s2f /var/mail 2Gb ad0s2g /usr/ports 1Gb ad0s3d /home/mysql 4Gb ad0s3e /home 50Gb ad0s3f /usr/src 3Gb ad0s3g /usr/obj 3Gb ad0s3h /extra 8483Mb Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( What version of FreeBSD are you running Well, yes, I suppose that would be a good bit of information! What I'm *TRYING* to run is 8.0. It seems to install successfully (of course - after doing all that), but then when I try to boot from the hard drive, I see an otherwise-blank screen that says: Invalid partition table and that's as far as it goes! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org There are reports of this sort of thing caused by 8.0 fdisk when doing a install from scratch over a hard drive that all ready has an older version of Freebsd installed on it. The solution is to force the scratching of the MBR on the disk first before running sysinstall fdisk. Boot a LiveFS CD, then at a root prompt do: sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16 and: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 where x equals your drive number. OK. I did exactly that. I confirmed that the second 512 bytes were zero by doing a dd if/dev/ad0 bs=512 count=2 | od -c and everything from 001000 through 002000 was zero. But I still got Invalid partition table after the installation. I guess I should set up one of my other systems as a local mirror. I've done the installation so many time already, and it looks like I'm not done yet! On the 8.0 fdisk/MBR subject. Doing dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/adx oseek=1 bs=512 count=1 was the solution from another post to the list with subject 'SunFire X2100 fails'. Here is another post that gives more details http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=322687+326879+/usr/local/ www/db/text/2009/freebsd-questions/20091227.freebsd-questions It seems in 8.0 gpart was introduced and a change was made to fdisk to support its sector o mbr format. 8.0 fdisk and disklabel are now broken. Searching the list archives may shed more light on your problem. Hmmm. This seems to describe a case where fdisk fails to change the slice table. That is definitely not my case. The changes certainly get made. The next time I go to retry the installation, it has the information I gave it the previous time. I suppose it is possible that it is putting it (and reading it) in the wrong location, which is why the MBR throws up. The problem is that I have a finite (and smallish) amount of time in which to solve this. It seems like the most expedient route forward at this point may be to try to install 7.2 and see how that goes. OK - well, I just tried with 7.2. I got exactly the same results. After what seems like a successful installation, I try to boot from the hard disk and get Invalid partition table. Should I try Boot Manager? Could that make a difference? Is it possible that this combination of BIOS, processor, disk drive, etc., just isn't going to to do for me? I can't just keep throwing hours at this problem. --
Re: Invalid partition table after installation (GOOD NEWS!)
In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 294, Issue 12, Message 19 On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:35:21 -0600 John j...@starfire.mn.org wrote: [..] OK! Well! Good news! After a sort. I switched to BootMgr, and it came right up with 8.0! Slight downside - extra prompt during boot, and of course, it offers me all three slices, when I only need to boot from one. See boot0cfg(8); you can specify which slice/s are offered by the boot menu, from none to four, and you can specify the delay in ticks (~1/18 second). I'm not sure if 0 is a valid delay, but 1 is not very long. Is that's what's wrong with Standard MBR? Are all three FSD partitions (type 165) marked bootable and that's upsetting it? Can I change it so only one of them is marked bootable? See fdisk(8) -a switch. I expect this would clear other active flags. Anyway, it appears that there is a problem with the Standard MBR boot. I don't think I was doing anything that unnatural - I wanted quite a few file systems, so I used multiple slices, both to keep the boot slice below 1.5Gb and to be able to support all the file systems I wanted, and maybe that's what upset it. I don't know. All I know is that Standard MBR didn't work, and BootMgr does. I'm willing to spend SOME time trying to debug / fix this for the good of the community and the next poor sucker who comes along behind me, but I need to move somewhat quickly. I actually plan to use this machine! OK - my current best theory is that if the Standard boot manager is faced with anything other than exactly 1 bootable slice (partition to it), it defaults to Invalid partition table. I'll bet anyone lunch that this is true. Any takers? Perhaps. Certainly only one should be set active at boot time, either statically or by being chosen by a boot menu. I'll test my theory tonight and let you all know how it turns out. If this is true, then we should at least post some warnings, if not actually fix the installation process so that if you choose Standard, it helps ensure that you have one and only one bootable slice/partition! Whaddaya think? sysinstall (fdisk) lets you toggle the active flag while slicing the disk. You're supposed to have set one (and only one) active there, and you've already chosen which slice you want to install to, though I agree that selecting Standard boot sector might check for one active slice. Well, better it happen to me than someone from another community who is trying us out for the first time... All good grist for the achives .. OK, so here's the update so far. It was, indeed, the case that all three slices (partitions) were marked as active (bootable), to wit: The data for partition 1 is: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 63, size 2883825 (1408 Meg), flag 80 (active) beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1; end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63 The data for partition 2 is: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 2883888, size 10224144 (4992 Meg), flag 80 (active) beg: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63; end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63 The data for partition 3 is: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 13108032, size 143193456 (69918 Meg), flag 80 (active) beg: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63; end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63 The data for partition 4 is: UNUSED So - I used dd to make a copy of the MBR, and wrote a C program to interpret it and clear the other two flags. Once I was satisfied with that, I used the sysctl from earlier in the thread (which I assume allows me to actually change things) and dd to put the modifed mbr back in place on sector 0. Now fdisk reports The data for partition 1 is: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 63, size 2883825 (1408 Meg), flag 80 (active) beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1; end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63 The data for partition 2 is: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 2883888, size 10224144 (4992 Meg), flag 0 beg: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63; end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63 The data for partition 3 is: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 13108032, size 143193456 (69918 Meg), flag 0 beg: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63; end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63 The data for partition 4 is: UNUSED So - there's only ONE active partition, but it still has bootmgr. Well I'm sure it was fun writing a program, but fdisk -a should do :) I have used dd and cat to manufacture a new boot record from /boot/mbr and the parition (slide) table I've modified, and I'm tempted to put THAT in place over this one, but I'm afraid of what that might mean - are there other changes to the structure of the disk that I need to make to switch from BootMgr to the Standard
Re: Invalid partition table after installation (GOOD NEWS!)
On Sat, Jan 23, 2010 at 05:34:10PM +1100, Ian Smith wrote: In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 294, Issue 12, Message 19 On Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:35:21 -0600 John j...@starfire.mn.org wrote: [..] OK! Well! Good news! After a sort. I switched to BootMgr, and it came right up with 8.0! Slight downside - extra prompt during boot, and of course, it offers me all three slices, when I only need to boot from one. See boot0cfg(8); you can specify which slice/s are offered by the boot menu, from none to four, and you can specify the delay in ticks (~1/18 second). I'm not sure if 0 is a valid delay, but 1 is not very long. Is that's what's wrong with Standard MBR? Are all three FSD partitions (type 165) marked bootable and that's upsetting it? Can I change it so only one of them is marked bootable? See fdisk(8) -a switch. I expect this would clear other active flags. Anyway, it appears that there is a problem with the Standard MBR boot. I don't think I was doing anything that unnatural - I wanted quite a few file systems, so I used multiple slices, both to keep the boot slice below 1.5Gb and to be able to support all the file systems I wanted, and maybe that's what upset it. I don't know. All I know is that Standard MBR didn't work, and BootMgr does. I'm willing to spend SOME time trying to debug / fix this for the good of the community and the next poor sucker who comes along behind me, but I need to move somewhat quickly. I actually plan to use this machine! OK - my current best theory is that if the Standard boot manager is faced with anything other than exactly 1 bootable slice (partition to it), it defaults to Invalid partition table. I'll bet anyone lunch that this is true. Any takers? Perhaps. Certainly only one should be set active at boot time, either statically or by being chosen by a boot menu. I'll test my theory tonight and let you all know how it turns out. If this is true, then we should at least post some warnings, if not actually fix the installation process so that if you choose Standard, it helps ensure that you have one and only one bootable slice/partition! Whaddaya think? sysinstall (fdisk) lets you toggle the active flag while slicing the disk. You're supposed to have set one (and only one) active there, and you've already chosen which slice you want to install to, though I agree that selecting Standard boot sector might check for one active slice. Well, better it happen to me than someone from another community who is trying us out for the first time... All good grist for the achives .. OK, so here's the update so far. It was, indeed, the case that all three slices (partitions) were marked as active (bootable), to wit: The data for partition 1 is: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 63, size 2883825 (1408 Meg), flag 80 (active) beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1; end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63 The data for partition 2 is: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 2883888, size 10224144 (4992 Meg), flag 80 (active) beg: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63; end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63 The data for partition 3 is: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 13108032, size 143193456 (69918 Meg), flag 80 (active) beg: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63; end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63 The data for partition 4 is: UNUSED So - I used dd to make a copy of the MBR, and wrote a C program to interpret it and clear the other two flags. Once I was satisfied with that, I used the sysctl from earlier in the thread (which I assume allows me to actually change things) and dd to put the modifed mbr back in place on sector 0. Now fdisk reports The data for partition 1 is: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 63, size 2883825 (1408 Meg), flag 80 (active) beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1; end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63 The data for partition 2 is: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 2883888, size 10224144 (4992 Meg), flag 0 beg: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63; end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63 The data for partition 3 is: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) start 13108032, size 143193456 (69918 Meg), flag 0 beg: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63; end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63 The data for partition 4 is: UNUSED So - there's only ONE active partition, but it still has bootmgr. Well I'm sure it was fun writing a program, but fdisk -a should do :) I have used dd and cat to manufacture a new boot record from /boot/mbr and the parition (slide) table I've modified, and I'm tempted to put THAT in place over
Invalid partition table after installation
I've tried the modern BIOS geometry and the 255 head geometry. I've ensured that the first slice (boot slice) is smaller than 1.5 Gb. I've tried to figure out what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, but it doesn't seem to want to tell me. At least, I can't find it in the BIOS menu anywhere. When I boot from the CD-ROM with the 255 head geometry, though, it complains about the disk geometry, saying 16h,63s != 255h,63s or something like that - it flies by pretty fast (is there a way to go back and see that from the CD-ROM boot only boot?). I'm using the Standard boot manager, and the entire disk is devoted to FreeBSD. System BIOS version PT84510A.86A.2004.P05 Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor speed: 2.20Ghz Memory: 512Mb Disk: Primary IDE Master ST380021A (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb) Primary IDE Slave: IOMega ZIP 250 Secondary IDE Master: Sony CD-RW CRX19 (what I boot from to install) Secondary IDE Slave: DVD-ROM DDU1621 Boot sequence: 1) ATAPI CD-ROM 2) Hard Drive 3) Removable Dev. Modern BIOS geometry: 155061/16/63 for ad0 calculated geometry: 9729/255/63 for ad0 ad0s1 start=63, size=2875572 ad0s2 start=2875635, size=10217340 ad0s3 start=13092975, size=143203410 unus start=156296384, size=5103 ad0s1a / 384Mb ad0s1d /usr 1Gb ad0s2b SWAP 1Gb ad0s2d /tmp 384Mb ad0s2e /var 512Mb ad0s2f /var/mail 2Gb ad0s2g /usr/ports 1Gb ad0s3d /home/mysql 4Gb ad0s3e /home 50Gb ad0s3f /usr/src 3Gb ad0s3g /usr/obj 3Gb ad0s3h /extra 8483Mb Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( -- John Lind j...@starfire.mn.org The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. - Winston Churchill ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Invalid partition table after installation
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:47:59 -0600 John j...@starfire.mn.org wrote: Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( Maybe it is just me, but somehow I am missing the problem / question. Andreas -- GnuPG key : 0x2A573565|http://www.gnupg.org/howtos/de/ Fingerprint: 925D 2089 0BF9 8DE5 9166 33BB F0FD CD37 2A57 3565 pgpyR5u2Qj4SG.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Invalid partition table after installation
John wrote: I've tried the modern BIOS geometry and the 255 head geometry. I've ensured that the first slice (boot slice) is smaller than 1.5 Gb. I've tried to figure out what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, but it doesn't seem to want to tell me. At least, I can't find it in the BIOS menu anywhere. When I boot from the CD-ROM with the 255 head geometry, though, it complains about the disk geometry, saying 16h,63s != 255h,63s or something like that - it flies by pretty fast (is there a way to go back and see that from the CD-ROM boot only boot?). I'm using the Standard boot manager, and the entire disk is devoted to FreeBSD. System BIOS version PT84510A.86A.2004.P05 Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor speed: 2.20Ghz Memory: 512Mb Disk: Primary IDE Master ST380021A (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb) Primary IDE Slave: IOMega ZIP 250 Secondary IDE Master: Sony CD-RW CRX19 (what I boot from to install) Secondary IDE Slave: DVD-ROM DDU1621 Boot sequence: 1) ATAPI CD-ROM 2) Hard Drive 3) Removable Dev. Modern BIOS geometry: 155061/16/63 for ad0 calculated geometry: 9729/255/63 for ad0 ad0s1 start=63, size=2875572 ad0s2 start=2875635, size=10217340 ad0s3 start=13092975, size=143203410 unus start=156296384, size=5103 ad0s1a / 384Mb ad0s1d /usr 1Gb ad0s2b SWAP 1Gb ad0s2d /tmp 384Mb ad0s2e /var 512Mb ad0s2f /var/mail 2Gb ad0s2g /usr/ports 1Gb ad0s3d /home/mysql 4Gb ad0s3e /home 50Gb ad0s3f /usr/src 3Gb ad0s3g /usr/obj 3Gb ad0s3h /extra 8483Mb Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( What version of FreeBSD are you running ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Invalid partition table after installation
On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 04:38:22PM +0800, Fbsd1 wrote: John wrote: I've tried the modern BIOS geometry and the 255 head geometry. I've ensured that the first slice (boot slice) is smaller than 1.5 Gb. I've tried to figure out what the BIOS thinks the geometry is, but it doesn't seem to want to tell me. At least, I can't find it in the BIOS menu anywhere. When I boot from the CD-ROM with the 255 head geometry, though, it complains about the disk geometry, saying 16h,63s != 255h,63s or something like that - it flies by pretty fast (is there a way to go back and see that from the CD-ROM boot only boot?). I'm using the Standard boot manager, and the entire disk is devoted to FreeBSD. System BIOS version PT84510A.86A.2004.P05 Processor Type: Intel Pentium 4 Processor speed: 2.20Ghz Memory: 512Mb Disk: Primary IDE Master ST380021A (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV 80Gb) Primary IDE Slave: IOMega ZIP 250 Secondary IDE Master: Sony CD-RW CRX19 (what I boot from to install) Secondary IDE Slave: DVD-ROM DDU1621 Boot sequence: 1) ATAPI CD-ROM 2) Hard Drive 3) Removable Dev. Modern BIOS geometry: 155061/16/63 for ad0 calculated geometry: 9729/255/63 for ad0 ad0s1 start=63, size=2875572 ad0s2 start=2875635, size=10217340 ad0s3 start=13092975, size=143203410 unus start=156296384, size=5103 ad0s1a / 384Mb ad0s1d /usr 1Gb ad0s2b SWAP 1Gb ad0s2d /tmp 384Mb ad0s2e /var 512Mb ad0s2f /var/mail 2Gb ad0s2g /usr/ports 1Gb ad0s3d /home/mysql 4Gb ad0s3e /home 50Gb ad0s3f /usr/src 3Gb ad0s3g /usr/obj 3Gb ad0s3h /extra 8483Mb Suggestions, please? I'm making zero headway right now. :( What version of FreeBSD are you running Well, yes, I suppose that would be a good bit of information! What I'm *TRYING* to run is 8.0. It seems to install successfully (of course - after doing all that), but then when I try to boot from the hard drive, I see an otherwise-blank screen that says: Invalid partition table and that's as far as it goes! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org -- John Lind j...@starfire.mn.org The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries. - Winston Churchill ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
