Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop [solved]

[Chris Brennan]

On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 9:58 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:
>
> fdisk -s ad4
> bsdlabel ad4s1



[r...@blackdragon /usr/src]# fdisk -s ad4; bsdlabel ad4s1
/dev/ad4: 1453521 cyl 16 hd 63 sec
PartStartSize Type Flags
   1:  63  1465149105 0xa5 0x80
# /dev/ad4s1:
8 partitions:
#size   offsetfstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  a:  2097152   164.2BSD0 0 0
  b: 16777216  2097168  swap
  c: 14651491050unused0 0 # "raw" part,
don't edit
  d:  2097152 188743844.2BSD0 0 0
  e: 20971520 209715364.2BSD0 0 0
  f: 1423206049 419430564.2BSD0 0 0
[r...@blackdragon /usr/src]#
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop [solved]

[Ian Smith]

On Thu, 6 Jan 2011 21:41:11 -0500, Chris Brennan wrote:
 > On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Bruce Cran  wrote:
 > 
 > > http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/ZFSBootPartition has a good guide for
 > > installing the base manually (you can ignore the gpart and zfs
 > > commands if you want). I found I had to copy the base and kernel
 > > directories from the install ISO to a UFS-formatted USB stick first
 > > though since the LiveFS CD doesn't have the distributions.
 > >
 > > --
 > > Bruce Cran
 > >
 > 
 > Bruce, your a lifesaver! +1 for you and your wiki page. +1 for Warren's page
 > (
 > http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html#_the_old_standard_way_tt_fdisk_8_tt_and_tt_bsdlabel_8_tt)
 > and +5 for Ian and his incredible patience. Hodgepodging Warren's and
 > Bruce's pages together got me a working base. Laptop is now installed w/o
 > the assistance of a boot cd or the usb hard-drive I was using.

That's great news Chris, congratulations for perseverance.  It could be 
argued that it shouldn't be this hard, but I don't need any argument ..

 > I did have to grab a DVD of 8.1 and burn it to a DVDRW, just so I could get
 > access to /dist/8.1-*. That being said, I think I am going to look at
 > setting up that same external hd w/ a full 8.2-R root when it's ready, so I
 > have a full, local tree to utilize for weird installs like this (I don't
 > know why I never did that before)

Excellent idea.

Just for curiousity's sake, after all that what do you wind up with for:

 # fdisk -s ad4
 # bsdlabel ad4s1

?, Ian
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 11:48 PM, Warren Block  wrote:

>  destroy -F is supposed to mean "Forced destroying of the partition table
> even if it is not empty."  But compare to this thread on the forum earlier
> today: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=20731
>
> Maybe -F isn't quite as brutal as it needs to be.
>
>
I still can't find any documentation on this in the manpages? HA! I just
finished skimming the above thread, -F is indeed new and not in 8.1. I am
going to set up a local mirror of 7.x, 8.x and HEAD over the next week and
if I remember, I'll be sure to check it out and see if it does infact exist
in 8.2.


>  So my question is this now, once gpart has touched a disk, does it have
>> the partition-aids now?
>>
>
> GPT does seem to be tenacious, and I'm wondering if maybe there's something
> left in RAM that's written back to the disk on shutdown.
>
>
Sneaky ... but possibly not likely since I more then once pulled the plug
and didn't give it time to actually write anything. Either way, between your
link and Bruce's, all is well.


>
>  Moving on, I then continued the standard process listed by your link,
>> bsdlabel'd my layout and saved it, when I do an 'ls -lsga /dev | grep ad4' I
>> see that I have partitions a,b,d,e,f
>> and I was able to newfs each one of them
>>
>> Next question, from this point (at the fixit prompt) can I preform a
>> manual install of just base? if I can get the system installed at this point
>> then all should be good when I reboot.
>>
>
> I would just boot the install CD, enter q and the fdisk screen, enter the
> mountpoints and q at the label screen, and let it do the rest.


See, I did that the first time and it all came to a screaming halt. That's
when I started to get creative with Ian. I'm going to take a stab in the
dark and blame Seagate for kludging the disk on me. Either way, a manual
fdisk and bsdlabel did the trick, it's got to be something in sysinstall not
liking what ever was written there by gpart...
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Warren Block]

On Thu, 6 Jan 2011, Chris Brennan wrote:


On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 4:27 PM, Warren Block  wrote:
  On Fri, 7 Jan 2011, Ian Smith wrote:

Manual fdisk & bsdlabel & newfs would confirm that or otherwise, 
but Chris will have to hunt up mans, docs and howtos on doing that himself, they're out 
there.


Aha! http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html

May/may not be helpful, but the price is right.  Feedback welcome.


Can I bow at your feet?!? This gave me just enough of a clue to go back and 
arbitraility pass 'gpart delete -i 1 ad4' which actually deleted a partition! I 
then zeroed the first 73 and
the last 33 blocks of the drive. fdisk still complained about 'Class not found' 
which I googled and found to be an artifact of gpart(8).


destroy -F is supposed to mean "Forced destroying of the partition table 
even if it is not empty."  But compare to this thread on the forum 
earlier today: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=20731


Maybe -F isn't quite as brutal as it needs to be.


So my question is this now, once gpart has touched a disk, does it have the 
partition-aids now?


GPT does seem to be tenacious, and I'm wondering if maybe there's 
something left in RAM that's written back to the disk on shutdown.



Moving on, I then continued the standard process listed by your link, 
bsdlabel'd my layout and saved it, when I do an 'ls -lsga /dev | grep ad4' I 
see that I have partitions a,b,d,e,f
and I was able to newfs each one of them

Next question, from this point (at the fixit prompt) can I preform a manual 
install of just base? if I can get the system installed at this point then all 
should be good when I reboot.


I would just boot the install CD, enter q and the fdisk screen, enter 
the mountpoints and q at the label screen, and let it do the rest.___
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop [solved]

[Chris Brennan]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 6:04 PM, Bruce Cran  wrote:

> http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/ZFSBootPartition has a good guide for
> installing the base manually (you can ignore the gpart and zfs
> commands if you want). I found I had to copy the base and kernel
> directories from the install ISO to a UFS-formatted USB stick first
> though since the LiveFS CD doesn't have the distributions.
>
> --
> Bruce Cran
>

Bruce, your a lifesaver! +1 for you and your wiki page. +1 for Warren's page
(
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html#_the_old_standard_way_tt_fdisk_8_tt_and_tt_bsdlabel_8_tt)
and +5 for Ian and his incredible patience. Hodgepodging Warren's and
Bruce's pages together got me a working base. Laptop is now installed w/o
the assistance of a boot cd or the usb hard-drive I was using.

I did have to grab a DVD of 8.1 and burn it to a DVDRW, just so I could get
access to /dist/8.1-*. That being said, I think I am going to look at
setting up that same external hd w/ a full 8.2-R root when it's ready, so I
have a full, local tree to utilize for weird installs like this (I don't
know why I never did that before)
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Bruce Cran]

On Thu, 6 Jan 2011 17:54:32 -0500
Chris Brennan  wrote:

> Next question, from this point (at the fixit prompt) can I preform a
> manual install of just base? if I can get the system installed at
> this point then all should be good when I reboot.

http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/ZFSBootPartition has a good guide for
installing the base manually (you can ignore the gpart and zfs
commands if you want). I found I had to copy the base and kernel
directories from the install ISO to a UFS-formatted USB stick first
though since the LiveFS CD doesn't have the distributions.

-- 
Bruce Cran
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 4:27 PM, Warren Block  wrote:

> On Fri, 7 Jan 2011, Ian Smith wrote:
>
>  Manual fdisk & bsdlabel & newfs would confirm that or otherwise, but Chris
>> will have to hunt up mans, docs and howtos on doing that himself, they're
>> out there.
>>
>
> Aha! 
> http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html
>
> May/may not be helpful, but the price is right.  Feedback welcome.
>

Can I bow at your feet?!? This gave me just enough of a clue to go back and
arbitraility pass 'gpart delete -i 1 ad4' which actually deleted a
partition! I then zeroed the first 73 and the last 33 blocks of the drive.
fdisk still complained about 'Class not found' which I googled and found to
be an artifact of gpart(8).

So my question is this now, once gpart has touched a disk, does it have the
partition-aids now?

Moving on, I then continued the standard process listed by your link,
bsdlabel'd my layout and saved it, when I do an 'ls -lsga /dev | grep ad4' I
see that I have partitions a,b,d,e,f and I was able to newfs each one of
them

Next question, from this point (at the fixit prompt) can I preform a manual
install of just base? if I can get the system installed at this point then
all should be good when I reboot.
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

>
>   > If you google the error message in the OP, the first result is:
>>  >
>>  > http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=1675
>>
>>
> I read this, while that PR Reporter claims the same error message, the
> conditions in which s/he gets it _are not_ the same conditions in which I am
> getting this.
>


Thread poster* sorry for that one
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 2:32 PM, Adam Vande More wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:
>
>> Adam, I think you may have missed a lot from the earlier messages in
>> this thread.  Admittedly it's long and likely tedious, but trying to
>> help somebody get the OS installed is about as basic as it gets for me;
>> I'd be hugely relieved if someone with more / better clues took it on.
>>
>
> Actually, I've been following every post since the thread's inception.
> Despite your listing of generally good advice, the most obvious cause theis
> error msg(of an admitted newbie) was not explicitly ruled out.  I'm simply
> saying you should start there.
>

...


>
>
>> Chris has this issue with one disk only, so I'm not sure what you mean?
>>
>
> Earlier in the thread, the OP stated he tried to install on a Micro SD card
> and got the exact same result.
>
>
Ney, I was having general issues w/ my card-reader and slow write speeds,
that has been solved.
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 8:11 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:

>  Adam, I think you may have missed a lot from the earlier messages in
> this thread.  Admittedly it's long and likely tedious, but trying to
> help somebody get the OS installed is about as basic as it gets for me;
> I'd be hugely relieved if someone with more / better clues took it on.
>
> We didn't get to try W)rite from the fdisk and label screens until long
> after all attempts at letting sysinstall deal with things had failed to
> even slice the disk, bombing on this error every time.  Chris' disk is
> brand new, nothing installed.  W)riting from sysinstall succeeded at
> least in creating ad4s1 in the MBR and writing the bootblocks to that
> slice.  I made it very clear this is not something to do without due
> care; in the circumstances there was absolutely nothing to be lost.
>
> And then the GPT issue, of which I was totally ignorant.  Fixed.
>
>
I agree, you seem to be lumping me into a generalization based on the
errormsg.


>   > If you google the error message in the OP, the first result is:
>  >
>  > http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=1675
>
>
I read this, while that PR Reporter claims the same error message, the
conditions in which s/he gets it _are not_ the same conditions in which I am
getting this.
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

GMail threadding don't fail me now!

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 4:54 AM, Adam Vande More wrote:

> This is a pretty easy problem to replicate if you are pressing W, and that
> "issue" has existed for quite some time.  If you press W then Q at
> sysinstall fdisk then attempt to force write disklabel screens you will get
> the error.  Just setup the slices and partitions as you want and let
> sysinstall handle the writing of information.  There is a big warning box
> that says not to use force write except under certain conditions and this is
> not one of them.
>
> If you google the error message in the OP, the first result is:
>
> http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=1675
>
>
>
pressing 'W' was a last resort option, by no means was I starting off that
way.


>  Failing that, I can't see other than a hardware issue, unless somehow
>> sysinstall is broken and you may do better manually running fdisk and
>> bsdlabel and newfs per Handbook and manuals?
>>
>
>  This doesn't say hardware error to me at all, at least not a disk hardware
> issue.  The message was present across two disks, and if there truly is a
> problem writing to the media a complete zeroing of the drive would be
> apparent then.
>
>
No, only one disk.


> While we're getting people to look at sysinstall and the auto resizing, it
> would be nice to get the "Unable to create the partition.  Too big?" issue
> resolved.  You can trigger this by auto-sizing the partitions, deleting a
> couple and recreating one that a different size than one autosize
> suggested.  Then create the second partion using the auto-populated value in
> partition size box.  Typically run into this when making / a little bigger
> on amd64 installs by borrowing some space from /usr.  It's very tedious to
> slowly decrease the size of the second partition in your attempts to create
> it if you're trying to utilize the whole drive.
>
>
> --
> Adam Vande More
>
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Warren Block]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2011, Ian Smith wrote:

Manual fdisk & bsdlabel & newfs would confirm that or otherwise, but 
Chris will have to hunt up mans, docs and howtos on doing that 
himself, they're out there.


Aha! http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html

May/may not be helpful, but the price is right.  Feedback welcome.
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Adam Vande More]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 1:51 PM, Adam Vande More wrote:

> I see now the SD Card was not the install target, but regarding the the
> original point to OP was able to preform other normal operations on the card
> eg different FS.
>
> I don't really think the OP was pressing W initially which is why I didn't
> say anything earlier, just saying it's worth a check.
>

There is also this issue here which looks to be quite similar.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=135040&cat=

You can try to upgrade your BIOS and reduced physical memory or use the
suggested loader.conf setting(or boot prompt)


-- 
Adam Vande More
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Adam Vande More]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 1:32 PM, Adam Vande More wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:
>
>> Adam, I think you may have missed a lot from the earlier messages in
>> this thread.  Admittedly it's long and likely tedious, but trying to
>> help somebody get the OS installed is about as basic as it gets for me;
>> I'd be hugely relieved if someone with more / better clues took it on.
>>
>
> Actually, I've been following every post since the thread's inception.
> Despite your listing of generally good advice, the most obvious cause theis
> error msg(of an admitted newbie) was not explicitly ruled out.  I'm simply
> saying you should start there.
>
>
>> Chris has this issue with one disk only, so I'm not sure what you mean?
>>
>
> Earlier in the thread, the OP stated he tried to install on a Micro SD card
> and got the exact same result.
>

I see now the SD Card was not the install target, but regarding the the
original point to OP was able to preform other normal operations on the card
eg different FS.

I don't really think the OP was pressing W initially which is why I didn't
say anything earlier, just saying it's worth a check.

-- 
Adam Vande More
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Adam Vande More]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:

> Adam, I think you may have missed a lot from the earlier messages in
> this thread.  Admittedly it's long and likely tedious, but trying to
> help somebody get the OS installed is about as basic as it gets for me;
> I'd be hugely relieved if someone with more / better clues took it on.
>

Actually, I've been following every post since the thread's inception.
Despite your listing of generally good advice, the most obvious cause theis
error msg(of an admitted newbie) was not explicitly ruled out.  I'm simply
saying you should start there.


> Chris has this issue with one disk only, so I'm not sure what you mean?
>

Earlier in the thread, the OP stated he tried to install on a Micro SD card
and got the exact same result.

-- 
Adam Vande More
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Ian Smith]

On Thu, 6 Jan 2011, Adam Vande More wrote:
 > On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 3:06 AM, Ian Smith  wrote
 > 
 > > Your dd of the first 71 sectors looked right, MBR looks ok, sectors 1-62
 > > are zeroes, boot1 and boot2 from sector 63-70 seem normal, after you
 > > used 'W' to write anyway; can't say for sure that the bsdlabel is ok,
 > > but see no reason to suppose otherwise.  What says 'bsdlabel ad4s1'
 > > while you've still got one?
 > >
 > 
 > This is a pretty easy problem to replicate if you are pressing W, and that
 > "issue" has existed for quite some time.  If you press W then Q at
 > sysinstall fdisk then attempt to force write disklabel screens you will get
 > the error.  Just setup the slices and partitions as you want and let
 > sysinstall handle the writing of information.  There is a big warning box
 > that says not to use force write except under certain conditions and this is
 > not one of them.

Adam, I think you may have missed a lot from the earlier messages in 
this thread.  Admittedly it's long and likely tedious, but trying to 
help somebody get the OS installed is about as basic as it gets for me; 
I'd be hugely relieved if someone with more / better clues took it on.

We didn't get to try W)rite from the fdisk and label screens until long 
after all attempts at letting sysinstall deal with things had failed to 
even slice the disk, bombing on this error every time.  Chris' disk is 
brand new, nothing installed.  W)riting from sysinstall succeeded at 
least in creating ad4s1 in the MBR and writing the bootblocks to that 
slice.  I made it very clear this is not something to do without due 
care; in the circumstances there was absolutely nothing to be lost.

And then the GPT issue, of which I was totally ignorant.  Fixed.

 > If you google the error message in the OP, the first result is:
 > 
 > http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=1675

I can't see anything there that informs any solution to this issue, that 
doesn't cover everything Chris has tried.  If you can, please elaborate?

 > Failing that, I can't see other than a hardware issue, unless somehow
 > > sysinstall is broken and you may do better manually running fdisk and
 > > bsdlabel and newfs per Handbook and manuals?
 > >
 > 
 >  This doesn't say hardware error to me at all, at least not a disk hardware
 > issue.  The message was present across two disks, and if there truly is a
 > problem writing to the media a complete zeroing of the drive would be
 > apparent then.

Chris has this issue with one disk only, so I'm not sure what you mean?

If it's not hardware related (or HP firmware, as Mike suggested), maybe 
it is an issue with sysinstall.  Manual fdisk & bsdlabel & newfs would 
confirm that or otherwise, but Chris will have to hunt up mans, docs and 
howtos on doing that himself, they're out there.  On the other hand it's 
useful learning, and nothing he tries can make matters any worse.

[ I can't comment on auto-allocated partitions, the last time I thought 
that was even vaguely a useful idea was my first install of 2.2.6 :^]

If you have any spare magic dust to sprinkle on this, please do so.

cheers, Ian
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Ian Smith]

On Thu, 6 Jan 2011 09:11:55 +, Bruce Cran wrote:
 > On Thu, 6 Jan 2011 20:06:42 +1100 (EST)
 > Ian Smith  wrote:
 > 
 > > Just be sure NOT to use the 'A' option for auto-partitioning again;
 > > I'm sure I saw some problem with that on 8.1, not sure if it's fixed
 > > on 8.2 (Bruce?) so I suggest allocating the BSD partitioning you
 > > really want.
 > 
 > I've not fixed anything related to that.

Oh, I must have dreamed it all; found nothing in local -stable archives, 
went hunting on sysinstall cvsweb but found anything there, don't know 
how to search svn yet; life's too short.  Thanks for teaching some GPT.

Sorry, Ian
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Adam Vande More]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 3:06 AM, Ian Smith  wrote

> Your dd of the first 71 sectors looked right, MBR looks ok, sectors 1-62
> are zeroes, boot1 and boot2 from sector 63-70 seem normal, after you
> used 'W' to write anyway; can't say for sure that the bsdlabel is ok,
> but see no reason to suppose otherwise.  What says 'bsdlabel ad4s1'
> while you've still got one?
>

This is a pretty easy problem to replicate if you are pressing W, and that
"issue" has existed for quite some time.  If you press W then Q at
sysinstall fdisk then attempt to force write disklabel screens you will get
the error.  Just setup the slices and partitions as you want and let
sysinstall handle the writing of information.  There is a big warning box
that says not to use force write except under certain conditions and this is
not one of them.

If you google the error message in the OP, the first result is:

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=1675

Failing that, I can't see other than a hardware issue, unless somehow
> sysinstall is broken and you may do better manually running fdisk and
> bsdlabel and newfs per Handbook and manuals?
>

 This doesn't say hardware error to me at all, at least not a disk hardware
issue.  The message was present across two disks, and if there truly is a
problem writing to the media a complete zeroing of the drive would be
apparent then.

While we're getting people to look at sysinstall and the auto resizing, it
would be nice to get the "Unable to create the partition.  Too big?" issue
resolved.  You can trigger this by auto-sizing the partitions, deleting a
couple and recreating one that a different size than one autosize
suggested.  Then create the second partion using the auto-populated value in
partition size box.  Typically run into this when making / a little bigger
on amd64 installs by borrowing some space from /usr.  It's very tedious to
slowly decrease the size of the second partition in your attempts to create
it if you're trying to utilize the whole drive.


-- 
Adam Vande More
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Bruce Cran]

On Thu, 6 Jan 2011 20:06:42 +1100 (EST)
Ian Smith  wrote:

> Just be sure NOT to use the 'A' option for auto-partitioning again;
> I'm sure I saw some problem with that on 8.1, not sure if it's fixed
> on 8.2 (Bruce?) so I suggest allocating the BSD partitioning you
> really want.

I've not fixed anything related to that.

-- 
Bruce Cran
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Ian Smith]

On Wed, 5 Jan 2011, Chris Brennan wrote:
 > On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:44 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:
 > >
 > > Saw Chris' later message that -F isn't there for him, but here's what
 > > should be, on the data, the sure-fire way to clobber that last sector:
 > >
 > >  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 oseek=1465149167
 > >
 > > which command SHOULD report just 512 bytes written (we're sure it can't
 > > write past the end of the disk with no count specified), after which:
 > >
 > >  dd if=/dev/ad4 iseek=1465149167 | hd
 > >
 > > SHOULD show zeroes from  to 01ff (ie next block 0200)
 > > If not, there really must be some hardware issue with writing?
 > >
 > > Hopefully getting there!

 > Fixit# sysctrl kern.geom.debugflags=16
 > kern.geom.debugflags: 0 -> 16
 > Fixit# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 oseek=1465149167
 > dd: /dev/ad4: end of device
 > 2+0 records in
 > 1+0 records out
 > 512 bytes transferred in 0.011 secs (51195 bytes/sec)

So that's right.

 > Fixit# dd if=/dev/ad4 iseek=1465149167 | hd
 > 1+0 records in
 > 1+0 records out
 >   00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
 > ||
 > 512 bytes transferred om 0.009863 secs (51912 bytes/sec)
 > *
 > 0200

And that's right - the GPT secondary header is now gone.

 > restarting and back to sysinstall from BETA1 is nice dice ... same original
 > error ... can I just zero the whole drive?

Sure you can - but I'd be (happy to be) surprised at this point if it's 
going to do much good.  If nothing else it's a full surface write test, 
and you could check afterwards that it's all been zeroed, hd showing 
just a few lines (as above) over the whole disk (dd if=/dev/ad4 | hd)

We seem to have ruled out the remnants of a GPT problem, having Bruce 
and Warren to thank for pointing it out; it's bound to catch others.

Your dd of the first 71 sectors looked right, MBR looks ok, sectors 1-62 
are zeroes, boot1 and boot2 from sector 63-70 seem normal, after you 
used 'W' to write anyway; can't say for sure that the bsdlabel is ok, 
but see no reason to suppose otherwise.  What says 'bsdlabel ad4s1' 
while you've still got one?

Just be sure NOT to use the 'A' option for auto-partitioning again; I'm 
sure I saw some problem with that on 8.1, not sure if it's fixed on 8.2 
(Bruce?) so I suggest allocating the BSD partitioning you really want.

Failing that, I can't see other than a hardware issue, unless somehow 
sysinstall is broken and you may do better manually running fdisk and 
bsdlabel and newfs per Handbook and manuals?  If that worked you could 
still use sysinstall, skip fdisk and labelling steps and install the 
distributions, ports tree, doc packages and other sysinstall goodies.

If it still persisted after that I'd subscribe and report the issue to 
freebsd-stable in as much detail as needed for some more fresh eyes.

cheers, Ian
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 12:44 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:

>
> Saw Chris' later message that -F isn't there for him, but here's what
> should be, on the data, the sure-fire way to clobber that last sector:
>
>  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 oseek=1465149167
>
> which command SHOULD report just 512 bytes written (we're sure it can't
> write past the end of the disk with no count specified), after which:
>
>  dd if=/dev/ad4 iseek=1465149167 | hd
>
> SHOULD show zeroes from  to 01ff (ie next block 0200)
> If not, there really must be some hardware issue with writing?
>
> Hopefully getting there!
>
> cheers, Ian
>

[..]
Fixit# sysctrl kern.geom.debugflags=16
kern.geom.debugflags: 0 -> 16
Fixit# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 oseek=1465149167
dd: /dev/ad4: end of device
2+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes transferred in 0.011 secs (51195 bytes/sec)
Fixit# dd if=/dev/ad4 iseek=1465149167 | hd
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
||
512 bytes transferred om 0.009863 secs (51912 bytes/sec)
*
0200
Fixit#
[..]

restarting and back to sysinstall from BETA1 is nice dice ... same original
error ... can I just zero the whole drive?
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Ian Smith]

On Tue, 4 Jan 2011, Warren Block wrote:
 > On Tue, 4 Jan 2011, Chris Brennan wrote:
 > 
 > > On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 3:56 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:
 > > 
 > > > On Mon, 3 Jan 2011 16:31:17 -0500, Chris Brennan wrote:
 > > > [.. trimming ccs, selectively quoting and de-gmailing a bit ..]
 > > > 
 > > 
 > > Trimmings! Oh nevermind. I don't know what possessed me to  go and look
 > > at the debug window. But I do and I see the following.
 > > 
 > > GEOM: ad4: the primary GPT table is corrupt or invalid.
 > > GEOM: ad4: using the secondary instead -- recovery strongly advised.
 > > 
 > > This is even after zero the beginning and the end of the drive 
 > > Something is hinky!

Indeed.  Well Chris attached the following to his prior email, which 
made it to the list being text, dmesg didn't, application/octet-stream: 
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20110104/c370dd77/dmesg-0001.obj

But confirming the GEOM messages shown above, here's the 'smoking gun':

  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ||
*
4000  45 46 49 20 50 41 52 54  00 00 01 00 5c 00 00 00  |EFI PART\...|
4010  2b b3 b7 fa 00 00 00 00  ef 66 54 57 00 00 00 00  |+fTW|
4020  01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  22 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |"...|
4030  ce 66 54 57 00 00 00 00  45 51 13 4c 0e 0e e0 11  |.fTWEQ.L|
4040  95 6e 00 1d 72 5b f5 d6  cf 66 54 57 00 00 00 00  |.n..r[...fTW|
4050  80 00 00 00 80 00 00 00  86 d2 54 ab 00 00 00 00  |..T.|
4060  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ||
*
4200

So that is really the last 33 sectors of the disk (0x4200 = 16896d, / 
512 = 33) and the last sector does indeed have the 'GPT EFI' signature 
(ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table), so the seek 
and count looks right, matching the read command I'd suggested:

 >  dd if=/dev/ad4 iseek=1465149135 count=33 | hd

Seems odd that it hasn't been zeroed, but all the sectors before it are 
(ie there's just the header, no actual 128-byte partition entries if I'm 
interpreting this correctly), so maybe there's still some off-by-one in 
counting from the end of the disk for writing, not knowing the actual dd 
command used .. you're not wrong that negative offsets can be tricky!

 > Today I also found that zeroing the beginning and end of the drive didn't
 > seem to be enough.  I had the start of a huffy email about how hard it was to
 > calculate the end of a drive in blocks, and how dd didn't have a negative
 > oseek to seek backwards from the end.  But then I checked gpart(8)... and it
 > turns out that
 > 
 > # gpart destroy -F da0
 > 
 > works.  Be very careful that you've got the right drive there, of course.

Saw Chris' later message that -F isn't there for him, but here's what 
should be, on the data, the sure-fire way to clobber that last sector:

 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 oseek=1465149167

which command SHOULD report just 512 bytes written (we're sure it can't 
write past the end of the disk with no count specified), after which:

 dd if=/dev/ad4 iseek=1465149167 | hd

SHOULD show zeroes from  to 01ff (ie next block 0200)
If not, there really must be some hardware issue with writing?

Hopefully getting there!

cheers, Ian
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 8:44 PM, Warren Block  wrote:

> On Tue, 4 Jan 2011, Chris Brennan wrote:
>
>  On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 3:56 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:
>>
>>  On Mon, 3 Jan 2011 16:31:17 -0500, Chris Brennan wrote:
>>> [.. trimming ccs, selectively quoting and de-gmailing a bit ..]
>>>
>>>
>> Trimmings! Oh nevermind. I don't know what possessed me to  go and look
>> at the debug window. But I do and I see the following.
>>
>> GEOM: ad4: the primary GPT table is corrupt or invalid.
>> GEOM: ad4: using the secondary instead -- recovery strongly advised.
>>
>> This is even after zero the beginning and the end of the drive 
>> Something is hinky!
>>
>
> Today I also found that zeroing the beginning and end of the drive didn't
> seem to be enough.  I had the start of a huffy email about how hard it was
> to calculate the end of a drive in blocks, and how dd didn't have a negative
> oseek to seek backwards from the end.  But then I checked gpart(8)... and it
> turns out that
>
> # gpart destroy -F da0
>
> works.  Be very careful that you've got the right drive there, of course.
>

Fixit# gpart destroy -F /dev/node# says

gpart: illegal option -- F

it would appear that the gpart on the 8.1-RELEASE and 8.2BETA1 images do not
contain this switch and I get pattern not found when I search 'man 8 gpart'
... there is a '-f flags' but no mention of '-F'

C-
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Warren Block]

On Tue, 4 Jan 2011, Chris Brennan wrote:


On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 3:56 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:


On Mon, 3 Jan 2011 16:31:17 -0500, Chris Brennan wrote:
[.. trimming ccs, selectively quoting and de-gmailing a bit ..]



Trimmings! Oh nevermind. I don't know what possessed me to  go and look
at the debug window. But I do and I see the following.

GEOM: ad4: the primary GPT table is corrupt or invalid.
GEOM: ad4: using the secondary instead -- recovery strongly advised.

This is even after zero the beginning and the end of the drive 
Something is hinky!


Today I also found that zeroing the beginning and end of the drive 
didn't seem to be enough.  I had the start of a huffy email about how 
hard it was to calculate the end of a drive in blocks, and how dd didn't 
have a negative oseek to seek backwards from the end.  But then I 
checked gpart(8)... and it turns out that


# gpart destroy -F da0

works.  Be very careful that you've got the right drive there, of 
course.

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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 3:56 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:

> On Mon, 3 Jan 2011 16:31:17 -0500, Chris Brennan wrote:
> [.. trimming ccs, selectively quoting and de-gmailing a bit ..]
>

Trimmings! Oh nevermind. I don't know what possessed me to  go and look
at the debug window. But I do and I see the following.

GEOM: ad4: the primary GPT table is corrupt or invalid.
GEOM: ad4: using the secondary instead -- recovery strongly advised.

This is even after zero the beginning and the end of the drive 
Something is hinky!
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Ian Smith]

On Mon, 3 Jan 2011 16:31:17 -0500, Chris Brennan wrote:
[.. trimming ccs, selectively quoting and de-gmailing a bit ..]

 > On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 1:39 AM, Michael Powell 
 > wrote:
 > > No. I used the of=/dev/ad4 as described above. However, I think you've hit
 > > the nail on the head on one aspect. I believe that 6.2 disk was originally
 > > set up as "dangerously dedicated". It was so long ago and I had forgotten
 > > all about it, but this does dovetail with what your are getting at.
 > 
 > That may be so for you, but nothing less then FreeBSD8.1 or a Gentoo 
 > LiveCD has touched this drive. Gentoo only yo prove to myself that a 
 > sucessful ext4 filesystem could be created. GPT/GEOM wasn't used, I 
 > used all standard disk-creation methods as described in the gentoo 
 > handbook. I also used Gentoo's gpart utilities to independatly verify 
 > that any artifacts of GPT/GEOM were removed (which they were).

Ok.  It may still be useful to see what if anything remains in the areas 
that GPT uses .. see below.

 > > was attempting to do a fresh 'minimal' install of 8.0-Release to the old 
 > > 6.2
 > > disk pulled off a shelf prior to doing restore(s) of a dump from just the
 > > day before. It was only done because it could be done immediately, and a
 > > newer, larger, better replacement procured after the fact.
 > 
 > This is actually something I fear in reinstalling my other FreeBSD 
 > system, which is currently 7.3, which has been upgraded successfully 
 > from 6.1. But ports has gotten out of hand and I'm rather tired of 
 > trying to fix each port, one at a time when there are prolly hundreds 
 > currently installed.

For sure.  I'm going to wait till 7.4-RELEASE, then reinstall all of the 
ports on my now 7.4-PRERELEASE system from the set of ports (and esp. 
packages) resulting from the ports freeze .. that way there's much less 
chance of inconsistencies and mangled dependencies that often occur when 
trying to upgrade a lot of ports/packages installed some time ago ..

 > > Exact copy of error from my notes here:
 > 
 > > "Unable to find device node for /dev/ad4s1b in /dev! The creation of
 > > filesystems will be aborted." Then pressing "OK" brings this: "Couldn't 
 > > make
 > > filesystems properly. Aborting."
 > 
 > Yes, this is exactly the same error I get. While that is the same, I 
 > think there is an underlying issue here that is causing my issue that 
 > doesn't exactly pertain to 'dangerously dedicated'.

Sure.

 > > This from sysinstall and occurs after fdisk, labeling, at the point when
 > > sysinstall then tries to write out the config to the disk and newfs.
 > 
 > Yerp, sysinstalls pukes at newfs/swap creation, when it can't find 
 > /dev/ad4s1b (which is swap)
 > 
 > > Or any other form of 'garbage'. I'd use the 8.1 LiveFS CD myself just as a
 > > personal preference - but either approach should do the job.
 > 
 > Well, the garbage I reported was because of a typo on my part.
 > 
 > > Yes - I agree. Would also be nice to examine it afterward with a hex editor
 > > to actually see *if* all writes were zero.  Any 'ones' sprinkled in there,
 > > especially in the region of the disk we are talking about would indicate
 > > corruption. And my wild guess if this is the situation it may possibly
 > > indicate some form of subtle hardware incompatibility most likely a clash 
 > > of
 > > firmwares, e.g. controller and disk(s).  Some form of non-standard
 > > controller implementation, especially wrt to its firmware being buggy.
 > 
 > If someone provides the command for this, I will happily run it and 
 > see if the output is all zero's...

Ok, let's eg look at the first and last 'tracks' of 63 sectors.  If you 
have somewhere you can copy these to (like a USB stick) then you can do 
that and examine them on another box with hexdump(1) | less(1).  If not, 
as they're expected to be mostly zeroes, you can do it directly:

 dd if=/dev/ad4 count=71 | hd | less

Not sure if Fixit provides hd &/or less, though they appear in /usr/bin?

That shows you the boot sector ie MBR, plus anything in sectors 1-62, 
plus the first 4KB of what will be ad4s1, ie the s1 boot blocks (if 
they've been ever written there yet and haven't been since cleared)

According to your earlier report, your disk has:
 cylinders=1453521 heads=16 sectors/tracks=63 (1008 blks/cyl)
and using that (standard) geometry, reformatted a bit:
 Offset   Size(ST)  End Name  PTypeDescSubtype Flags
 0 6362   -12 unused  0
63 14651491051465149167ad4s18freebsd165

Check: 1453521 * 16 * 63 = 1465149168 sectors, numbered 0..1465149167

So since iseek=0 starts at sector 0, then iseek=1465149167 starts at the 
last sector, right?  So:

 dd if=/dev/ad4 iseek=1465149104 count=63 | hd

shows the last 63 sectors (last track) of the drive.  If this isn't all 
zeroes (which is worth knowing, and recording) then make it so with:

 dd if=/dev/zero of

Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

I was not around the computer yesterday to reply to these in a timely matter
and replying to each one just got confusing since gmail appends all of my
replies to the bottom of the thread and not after the person I replied to. I
got the reply header to each person and went that route

| Reply header, who said what.
| > Their reply
|
| My Reply

On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 1:39 AM, Michael Powell 
wrote:
> No. I used the of=/dev/ad4 as described above. However, I think you've hit
> the nail on the head on one aspect. I believe that 6.2 disk was originally
> set up as "dangerously dedicated". It was so long ago and I had forgotten
> all about it, but this does dovetail with what your are getting at.

That may be so for you, but nothing less then FreeBSD8.1 or a Gentoo LiveCD
has
touched this drive. Gentoo only yo prove to myself that a sucessful ext4
filesystem could be created. GPT/GEOM wasn't used, I used all standard
disk-creation methods as described in the gentoo handbook. I also used
Gentoo's
gpart utilities to independatly verify that any artifacts of GPT/GEOM were
removed (which they were).

> The machine that disk went into had been upgraded completely through the
7.x
> series and on to 8.0-Release before it's disk went up in smoke(literally).
I
> was attempting to do a fresh 'minimal' install of 8.0-Release to the old
6.2
> disk pulled off a shelf prior to doing restore(s) of a dump from just the
> day before. It was only done because it could be done immediately, and a
> newer, larger, better replacement procured after the fact.

This is actually something I fear in reinstalling my other FreeBSD system,
which
is currently 7.3, which has been upgraded successfully from 6.1. But ports
has
gotten out of hand and I'm rather tired of trying to fix each port, one at a

time when there are prolly hundreds currently installed.

> Exact copy of error from my notes here:

> "Unable to find device node for /dev/ad4s1b in /dev! The creation of
> filesystems will be aborted." Then pressing "OK" brings this: "Couldn't
make
> filesystems properly. Aborting."

Yes, this is exactly the same error I get. While that is the same, I think
there
is an underlying issue here that is causing my issue that doesn't exactly
pertain
to 'dangerously dedicated'.

> This from sysinstall and occurs after fdisk, labeling, at the point when
> sysinstall then tries to write out the config to the disk and newfs.

Yerp, sysinstalls pukes at newfs/swap creation, when it can't find
/dev/ad4s1b
(which is swap)

> Or any other form of 'garbage'. I'd use the 8.1 LiveFS CD myself just as a
> personal preference - but either approach should do the job.

Well, the garbage I reported was because of a typo on my part.

> Yes - I agree. Would also be nice to examine it afterward with a hex
editor
> to actually see *if* all writes were zero.  Any 'ones' sprinkled in there,
> especially in the region of the disk we are talking about would indicate
> corruption. And my wild guess if this is the situation it may possibly
> indicate some form of subtle hardware incompatibility most likely a clash
of
> firmwares, e.g. controller and disk(s).  Some form of non-standard
> controller implementation, especially wrt to its firmware being buggy.

If someone provides the command for this, I will happily run it and see if
the
output is all zero's...

> In the OEM world of the likes of HP, DELL, etc, when this happens a lot of
> times they kludge together a work around driver that you can get from
their
> tech support. It masks the hardware/firmware problem in software, and is
> almost always a Windows-centric thing.

*shudder* that's all, just *shudder*

> Bad thing here is the old: "but it worked in 7.x, only fails with 8.x...".
> Whenever I see _that_ I think "developer involvement/smarter people than
me
> required...".

Well, the irony here, the failing drive is *ALSO* 8.1, I can slap that back
in
and fire it up, it still boots and works, I just didn't want to take the
risk
of the drive's cheese sliding off it's cracker.

> I use knode and gmane. I also know that (IIRC) you're supposed to reply by
> email and CC: the list. There is a set of configs which allow one to
> configure knode to do just this, however, the last two times I've tried it
> knode crashed horribly. That was a couple of small revisions of KDE ago,
so
> I should soon revisit this myself and see if the bug has ever gotten any
> love.

GMail's (Google for Domains) threadding is a bit awkwards to get used to at
first but works out rather nicely once you get used to it.

On Sun, Jan 2, 2011 at 2:19 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:
> On /dev/ad4, oseek=0 zeroes sector 0, the MBR including DOS partition
> (FreeBSD slice) table, so that would kill all the slice data, so sure,
> ad4s1 won't exist.  oseek=1 just zeroes an unused sector as we've seen.

> What you _can_ do from that state is:

> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 oseek=63 count=8

> which will remove the first 4K of (what will be) slice 1, in case
> there'

Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Ian Smith]

On Mon, 3 Jan 2011, Ian Smith wrote:

 >  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da4 skip=N
 > 
 > where N is the known total number of sectors minus 34, should do it?

Argh .. that should be seek=N, not skip.  Up way too late ..

cheers, Ian
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Ian Smith]

On Sun, 2 Jan 2011 10:22:55 +, Bruce Cran wrote:
 > On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 01:13:57 -0500
 > Chris Brennan  wrote:
 > 
 > > No worries on missing it, I'm not sure that helped, I farted around
 > > with it again earlier today with little more in the way of success.
 > > What I tried was to just set up '/' and swamp and it still prompted
 > > me about not being able to find /dev/ad4s1b.
 > 
 > See my post later in the thread: this most likely has nothing to do
 > with the partition layout but the fact that FreeBSD is finding an old
 > partition scheme.

Even dodgier than waiting to quote a message from a digest that hasn't 
arrived yet is hand-indenting a paste from pipermail :) but I'll hang 
this off your thread, thanks Bruce ..

 > > On Sun, 02 Jan 2011 01:39:13 -0500
 > > Michael Powell  wrote:
 >
 > > "Unable to find device node for /dev/ad4s1b in /dev! The creation of 
 > > filesystems will be aborted." Then pressing "OK" brings this:
 > > "Couldn't make filesystems properly. Aborting."
 > > 
 > > This from sysinstall and occurs after fdisk, labeling, at the point
 > > when sysinstall then tries to write out the config to the disk and
 > > newfs.
 >
 > This can happen if you've had it partitioned using GPT at some point 
 > - in that case you need to use dd to zero the first _and_ last 
 > sectors of the disk.

Although it's a brand new disk, quoting Chris' original message after 
skipping the shutdown when too hot issue:

 > gonna let it cool down and try the smart tests again. Incidentally, I 
 > was able to boot a gentoo disc and set up an ext4 filesystem on the 
 > same disk and it worked fine, so I don't understand why freebsd can't 
 > preform a newfs on the drive.

Hmm, should we bet against a gentoo install using GPT these days?

Finding out about the actual disk layout in gpt(8), gpart(8) etc proving 
fruitless and finding nothing in Handbook, FAQ or wiki, I resorted to 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table for hopefully correct 
information.  I hadn't even known that sectors 1-33 were used for the 
GPT (making Mike's zeroing of sector 1 sensible even on sliced disks), 
nor that the last 33 sectors were for its backup table, thanks.  So:

 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da4 skip=N

where N is the known total number of sectors minus 34, should do it?

If not, we can't rule out Mike's concerns about BIOS incompatibility 
or such, but this sure sounds like the next thing Chris should try.

cheers, Ian
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Bruce Cran]

On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 01:13:57 -0500
Chris Brennan  wrote:

> No worries on missing it, I'm not sure that helped, I farted around
> with it again earlier today with little more in the way of success.
> What I tried was to just set up '/' and swamp and it still prompted
> me about not being able to find /dev/ad4s1b.

See my post later in the thread: this most likely has nothing to do
with the partition layout but the fact that FreeBSD is finding an old
partition scheme.

-- 
Bruce Cran
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Bruce Cran]

On Sun, 02 Jan 2011 01:39:13 -0500
Michael Powell  wrote:

> "Unable to find device node for /dev/ad4s1b in /dev! The creation of 
> filesystems will be aborted." Then pressing "OK" brings this:
> "Couldn't make filesystems properly. Aborting."
> 
> This from sysinstall and occurs after fdisk, labeling, at the point
> when sysinstall then tries to write out the config to the disk and
> newfs.

This can happen if you've had it partitioned using GPT at some point -
in that case you need to use dd to zero the first _and_ last sectors of
the disk.

-- 
Bruce Cran
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Ian Smith]

On Sun, 2 Jan 2011 01:15:35 -0500, Chris Brennan wrote:
 > On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 10:20 PM, Ian Smith  wrote:
[..]
 > >  The bsdlabel lives in sector 1 (counting from 0) of the slice concerned,
 > > specifically the first 0x114 (276d) bytes, in the second sector of the
 > > boot blocks.  As noted above, in unsliced disks such as memstick.img
 > > that's sector 1 of the entire disk, but in ordinary sliced disks it's in
 > > sector 1 of the _slice_, so if you'd used (here using Chris' ad4)
 > >
 > >  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4s1 oseek=1 bs=512 count=1
 > >
 > >
 > I would happily run this, but ad4s1 doesn't exist, and hasn't (that I know
 > of), I did do oseek=0 and oseek=1 on /dev/ad4 tho and that didn't change
 > anything, it still says it can't find /dev/ad4s1b (swap obviously)

On /dev/ad4, oseek=0 zeroes sector 0, the MBR including DOS partition 
(FreeBSD slice) table, so that would kill all the slice data, so sure, 
ad4s1 won't exist.  oseek=1 just zeroes an unused sector as we've seen.

What you _can_ do from that state is:

 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 oseek=63 count=8

which will remove the first 4K of (what will be) slice 1, in case 
there's a misconfigured bsdlabel there, for later.  I'm not convinced 
this is likely your problem, but it can't hurt before slice 1 exists (by 
virtue of having an entry in the MBR, when it should show up in /dev)

 > > At 6.x (and 7.x, I think) it could have been 'dangerously dedicated' ie
 > > unsliced .. which option has been removed in 8.x _except_ regarding the
 > > memstick.img (appearing as /dev/daXa) .. not half confusing, eh?
 > >
 > >
 > I actually noticed this today, I had issues writing 8.2BETA1 to a 2GB
 > MicroSD card, so I used a 2.5" external hard-drive and from the fixit prompt
 > I noticed that it wrote a 1gb partition for the BETA1 image and left the
 > rest of the desk untouched (ann 59gb of it).

Do you mean you dd'd the memstick.img to the external USB drive?  And 
that booted ok?  And sysinstall found it ok, as /dev/ad0a?  Details!

 > >  sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16
 > >  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4s1 bs=512 count=8
 > >
 > > will remove slice 1's boot blocks entirely, including the bsdlabel.

Given you've shown previously that s1 starts at sector 63, so will:

 sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16
 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 oseek=63 count=8

 > > [excuse broken threading, but unless cc'd I have to reply to the digest]
 > 
 > I've been trying to keep you in my replies

Getting yours fine; that was re my reply to Mike's message.

 > but your down-under, so I don't get your replies till after 1am my 
 > time... Anywho, it's late and I need to be up in 8hrs, hopefully this 

Yeah North America is so yesterday from here (well, 16 hours for you :)

 > can be figured out ... I would hate for the disk to be defective in 
 > some way.

Of course that's not impossible, but you did say you'd installed some 
linux on it ok?  Clutching at straws, is there anything in your BIOS 
regarding different SATA modes you can play with? (No SATA disks here)

Something else you could try is W)riting the slice table + MBR out from 
the fdisk menu, then quit sysinstall and reboot.  You can do the same 
after labelling but before newfs'ing .. not generally recommended, but 
safe enough on a blank disk.

If you do the latter, you'll have to reenter your mount points later, so 
make a note of the order and size of partitions that you specified.

Hopefully somebody else has a take on all this, I'm out of ideas ..

cheers, Ian
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Michael Powell]

Ian Smith wrote:

> In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 343, Issue 10, Message: 23
> On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 19:37:10 -0500 Michael Powell 
> wrote:
[snip]
>  > >  > 
>  > >  > > Try zeroing out the mbr:
>  > >  > >
>  > >  > > 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. This will zero out any old
>  > >  > > MBR.
>  > > 
>  > > Er, no, Mike.  The MBR is in sector 0 of the disk; that would zero
>  > > out
>  > > sector 1 as oseek=1 skips over sector 0.  What's in sector 1 depends
>  > > on
>  > > how/whether the disk is sliced.  In a 'dangerously dedicated'
>  > > (unsliced) disk like a memory stick perhaps, this would usually be
>  > > /boot/boot1 and
>  > > include the bsdlabel.  In a sliced disk, sectors 1 to 62 are
>  > > typically unused, the first slice usually starting at sector 63.
>  > > 
>  > > t23% fdisk -s ad0
>  > > /dev/ad0: 232581 cyl 16 hd 63 sec
>  > > PartStartSize Type Flags
>  > >1:  63 8385867 0x0b 0x00
>  > >2: 8385930   125821080 0xa5 0x80
>  > >3:   13420701033543342 0xa5 0x00
>  > >4:   16775073066685815 0xa5 0x00
>  > > 
>  > > If you really want to zero out sector 0, leave out the oseek (or use
>  > > oseek=0) - but you're better off using 'fdisk -Bi' to init a new
>  > > disk.
>  > > 
>  > 
>  > Yes - true enough. Was thinking partition table and typed 'mbr'.
> 
> Well, what's commonly called 'the partition table' is bytes 0x1be-1ff of
> the MBR, so I was confused by your writing to sector 1 rather than 0,
> but have a new theory to test, seeing Chris isn't making any progress;
> this maybe a victim of the old 'slice vs partition' terminology issue.
[snip]
> 
> The bsdlabel lives in sector 1 (counting from 0) of the slice concerned,
> specifically the first 0x114 (276d) bytes, in the second sector of the
> boot blocks.  As noted above, in unsliced disks such as memstick.img
> that's sector 1 of the entire disk, but in ordinary sliced disks it's in
> sector 1 of the _slice_, so if you'd used (here using Chris' ad4)
> 
>  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4s1 oseek=1 bs=512 count=1
> 
> - rather than of=/dev/ad4 - then you would indeed be zeroing out the
> label, ie the 'partition table' in FreeBSD-speak.  Is that perhaps what
> you had to do to that 6.2 disk, which I suppose was a sliced disk?

No. I used the of=/dev/ad4 as described above. However, I think you've hit 
the nail on the head on one aspect. I believe that 6.2 disk was originally 
set up as "dangerously dedicated". It was so long ago and I had forgotten 
all about it, but this does dovetail with what your are getting at.

The machine that disk went into had been upgraded completely through the 7.x 
series and on to 8.0-Release before it's disk went up in smoke(literally). I 
was attempting to do a fresh 'minimal' install of 8.0-Release to the old 6.2 
disk pulled off a shelf prior to doing restore(s) of a dump from just the 
day before. It was only done because it could be done immediately, and a 
newer, larger, better replacement procured after the fact.

Exact copy of error from my notes here:

"Unable to find device node for /dev/ad4s1b in /dev! The creation of 
filesystems will be aborted." Then pressing "OK" brings this: "Couldn't make 
filesystems properly. Aborting."

This from sysinstall and occurs after fdisk, labeling, at the point when  
sysinstall then tries to write out the config to the disk and newfs.

 
> At 6.x (and 7.x, I think) it could have been 'dangerously dedicated' ie
> unsliced .. which option has been removed in 8.x _except_ regarding the
> memstick.img (appearing as /dev/daXa) .. not half confusing, eh?
> 
> In any case, it'd be a cheap trick for Chris to try from Fixit, and
> though it seems unlikely there'd be anything 'leftover' from an earlier
> install, maybe earlier failure/s have left a broken bsdlabel there?

Or any other form of 'garbage'. I'd use the 8.1 LiveFS CD myself just as a 
personal preference - but either approach should do the job.
 
> So at this still-uninstalled stage it couldn't hurt to zero that sector,
> or even the first 4KB of ad4s1 .. which is /boot/boot1 plus /boot/boot2
> (which equals /boot/boot !) before the label section gets written.  ie:
> 
>  sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16
>  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4s1 bs=512 count=8
> 
> will remove slice 1's boot blocks entirely, including the bsdlabel.
> 

Yes - I agree. Would also be nice to examine it afterward with a hex editor 
to actually see *if* all writes were zero.  Any 'ones' sprinkled in there, 
especially in the region of the disk we are talking about would indicate 
corruption. And my wild guess if this is the situation it may possibly 
indicate some form of subtle hardware incompatibility most likely a clash of 
firmwares, e.g. controller and disk(s).  Some form of non-st

Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 10:20 PM, Ian Smith  wrote:

> Well, what's commonly called 'the partition table' is bytes 0x1be-1ff of
> the MBR, so I was confused by your writing to sector 1 rather than 0,
> but have a new theory to test, seeing Chris isn't making any progress;
> this maybe a victim of the old 'slice vs partition' terminology issue.
>
>
I think I was able to figure this part out, his meaning at least.


>  The bsdlabel lives in sector 1 (counting from 0) of the slice concerned,
> specifically the first 0x114 (276d) bytes, in the second sector of the
> boot blocks.  As noted above, in unsliced disks such as memstick.img
> that's sector 1 of the entire disk, but in ordinary sliced disks it's in
> sector 1 of the _slice_, so if you'd used (here using Chris' ad4)
>
>  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4s1 oseek=1 bs=512 count=1
>
>
I would happily run this, but ad4s1 doesn't exist, and hasn't (that I know
of), I did do oseek=0 and oseek=1 on /dev/ad4 tho and that didn't change
anything, it still says it can't find /dev/ad4s1b (swap obviously)


> - rather than of=/dev/ad4 - then you would indeed be zeroing out the
> label, ie the 'partition table' in FreeBSD-speak.  Is that perhaps what
> you had to do to that 6.2 disk, which I suppose was a sliced disk?
>
> At 6.x (and 7.x, I think) it could have been 'dangerously dedicated' ie
> unsliced .. which option has been removed in 8.x _except_ regarding the
> memstick.img (appearing as /dev/daXa) .. not half confusing, eh?
>
>
I actually noticed this today, I had issues writing 8.2BETA1 to a 2GB
MicroSD card, so I used a 2.5" external hard-drive and from the fixit prompt
I noticed that it wrote a 1gb partition for the BETA1 image and left the
rest of the desk untouched (ann 59gb of it).


> In any case, it'd be a cheap trick for Chris to try from Fixit, and
> though it seems unlikely there'd be anything 'leftover' from an earlier
> install, maybe earlier failure/s have left a broken bsdlabel there?
>
> So at this still-uninstalled stage it couldn't hurt to zero that sector,
> or even the first 4KB of ad4s1 .. which is /boot/boot1 plus /boot/boot2
> (which equals /boot/boot !) before the label section gets written.  ie:
>
>  sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16
>  dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4s1 bs=512 count=8
>
> will remove slice 1's boot blocks entirely, including the bsdlabel.
>
> cheers, Ian
>
> [excuse broken threading, but unless cc'd I have to reply to the digest]
>

I've been trying to keep you in my replies but your down-under, so I don't
get your replies till after 1am my time... Anywho, it's late and I need to
be up in 8hrs, hopefully this can be figured out ... I would hate for the
disk to be defective in some way.
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 11:25 AM, Chris Brennan  wrote:

> I have a 2GB MicroSD card that I am going to toss 8.2BETA1 on, hopefully
> later today and see where that gets me.
>

2GB MicroSD card was a bust, use a 60GB hard-drive and wrote the image to
that, it booted it just fine, but the install failed w/ the exact same
error. Could this be the new drive? *shudder* Defective in some way?
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 343, Issue 10, Message: 23
On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 19:37:10 -0500 Michael Powell  
wrote:
 > Ian Smith wrote:
 > 
 > > In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 343, Issue 5, Message: 10
 > > On Tue, 28 Dec 2010 11:02:45 -0500 Chris Brennan 
 > > wrote:
 > >  > On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 2:23 AM, Michael Powell
 > >  > wrote:
 > >  > 
 > >  > > Try zeroing out the mbr:
 > >  > >
 > >  > > 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. This will zero out any old MBR.
 > > 
 > > Er, no, Mike.  The MBR is in sector 0 of the disk; that would zero out
 > > sector 1 as oseek=1 skips over sector 0.  What's in sector 1 depends on
 > > how/whether the disk is sliced.  In a 'dangerously dedicated' (unsliced)
 > > disk like a memory stick perhaps, this would usually be /boot/boot1 and
 > > include the bsdlabel.  In a sliced disk, sectors 1 to 62 are typically
 > > unused, the first slice usually starting at sector 63.
 > > 
 > > t23% fdisk -s ad0
 > > /dev/ad0: 232581 cyl 16 hd 63 sec
 > > PartStartSize Type Flags
 > >1:  63 8385867 0x0b 0x00
 > >2: 8385930   125821080 0xa5 0x80
 > >3:   13420701033543342 0xa5 0x00
 > >4:   16775073066685815 0xa5 0x00
 > > 
 > > If you really want to zero out sector 0, leave out the oseek (or use
 > > oseek=0) - but you're better off using 'fdisk -Bi' to init a new disk.
 > > 
 > 
 > Yes - true enough. Was thinking partition table and typed 'mbr'. 

Well, what's commonly called 'the partition table' is bytes 0x1be-1ff of 
the MBR, so I was confused by your writing to sector 1 rather than 0, 
but have a new theory to test, seeing Chris isn't making any progress; 
this maybe a victim of the old 'slice vs partition' terminology issue.

 > In my case, a temporary replacement disk had FreeBSD 6.2 on it. Something 
 > changed wrt to disklabeling on the way to 8-Release and the old 6.2 being 
 > present created a situation where that region on the disk was invisible to 
 > the new labeling and wouldn't write out. A new install of 8-Release 
 > (sysinstall) would error out with the same message as Chris when it came to 
 > the point of writing out to the disk. For me, the above 2 commands fixed my 
 > situation. Even though his error is the same, I think his problem may be  
 > different from mine.

The bsdlabel lives in sector 1 (counting from 0) of the slice concerned, 
specifically the first 0x114 (276d) bytes, in the second sector of the 
boot blocks.  As noted above, in unsliced disks such as memstick.img 
that's sector 1 of the entire disk, but in ordinary sliced disks it's in 
sector 1 of the _slice_, so if you'd used (here using Chris' ad4)

 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4s1 oseek=1 bs=512 count=1

- rather than of=/dev/ad4 - then you would indeed be zeroing out the 
label, ie the 'partition table' in FreeBSD-speak.  Is that perhaps what 
you had to do to that 6.2 disk, which I suppose was a sliced disk?

At 6.x (and 7.x, I think) it could have been 'dangerously dedicated' ie 
unsliced .. which option has been removed in 8.x _except_ regarding the 
memstick.img (appearing as /dev/daXa) .. not half confusing, eh?

In any case, it'd be a cheap trick for Chris to try from Fixit, and 
though it seems unlikely there'd be anything 'leftover' from an earlier 
install, maybe earlier failure/s have left a broken bsdlabel there?

So at this still-uninstalled stage it couldn't hurt to zero that sector, 
or even the first 4KB of ad4s1 .. which is /boot/boot1 plus /boot/boot2 
(which equals /boot/boot !) before the label section gets written.  ie:

 sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16
 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4s1 bs=512 count=8

will remove slice 1's boot blocks entirely, including the bsdlabel.

cheers, Ian

[excuse broken threading, but unless cc'd I have to reply to the digest]
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

>
> Yes - true enough. Was thinking partition table and typed 'mbr'.
>
>
It's all good, I got the cmd right in the end, but alas, it helped me not!


>  > Mmm .. it's not clear from Chris' original message exactly what he did.
>
>
I clarified that in a subsequent reply with considerably more detail :D


>  In my case, a temporary replacement disk had FreeBSD 6.2 on it. Something
> changed wrt to disklabeling on the way to 8-Release and the old 6.2 being
> present created a situation where that region on the disk was invisible to
> the new labeling and wouldn't write out. A new install of 8-Release
> (sysinstall) would error out with the same message as Chris when it came to
> the point of writing out to the disk. For me, the above 2 commands fixed my
> situation. Even though his error is the same, I think his problem may be
> different from mine.
>
> -Mike
>

I have a 2GB MicroSD card that I am going to toss 8.2BETA1 on, hopefully
later today and see where that gets me.
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Michael Powell]

Ian Smith wrote:

> In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 343, Issue 5, Message: 10
> On Tue, 28 Dec 2010 11:02:45 -0500 Chris Brennan 
> wrote:
>  > On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 2:23 AM, Michael Powell
>  > wrote:
>  > 
>  > > Try zeroing out the mbr:
>  > >
>  > > 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. This will zero out any old MBR.
> 
> Er, no, Mike.  The MBR is in sector 0 of the disk; that would zero out
> sector 1 as oseek=1 skips over sector 0.  What's in sector 1 depends on
> how/whether the disk is sliced.  In a 'dangerously dedicated' (unsliced)
> disk like a memory stick perhaps, this would usually be /boot/boot1 and
> include the bsdlabel.  In a sliced disk, sectors 1 to 62 are typically
> unused, the first slice usually starting at sector 63.
> 
> t23% fdisk -s ad0
> /dev/ad0: 232581 cyl 16 hd 63 sec
> PartStartSize Type Flags
>1:  63 8385867 0x0b 0x00
>2: 8385930   125821080 0xa5 0x80
>3:   13420701033543342 0xa5 0x00
>4:   16775073066685815 0xa5 0x00
> 
> If you really want to zero out sector 0, leave out the oseek (or use
> oseek=0) - but you're better off using 'fdisk -Bi' to init a new disk.
> 

Yes - true enough. Was thinking partition table and typed 'mbr'. 

> Mmm .. it's not clear from Chris' original message exactly what he did.

In my case, a temporary replacement disk had FreeBSD 6.2 on it. Something 
changed wrt to disklabeling on the way to 8-Release and the old 6.2 being 
present created a situation where that region on the disk was invisible to 
the new labeling and wouldn't write out. A new install of 8-Release 
(sysinstall) would error out with the same message as Chris when it came to 
the point of writing out to the disk. For me, the above 2 commands fixed my 
situation. Even though his error is the same, I think his problem may be  
different from mine.

-Mike
 
[snip]


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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 9:19 PM, Ian Smith  wrote:

> Goodo.  I'll try chopping a bit too ..
>

Cleaning out my cruft, leaving only yours :D


>  Assuming that's 'oseek=0', which is the default anyway.
>

yes, a typo in my e-mail only, I got the cmd right in the installer.


> Fair enough.  'what BIOS thinks' here is fine on modern disks/boxes, but
> the issue here is what a new(ish) user might conceive of as 'modern'!
>

I'm left to assume that I have a modern system w/ a modern hard-drive (duh
lol)


>  Yes, you should go with this.  'modern BIOS versions' here refers to
> anything later than (roughly) the mid-90s!  An 'old machine' in this
> context - remembering sysinstall was originally written then - was one
> not using LBA (logical block addressing), when 8GB was a fairly big HD
> at least for IDE, when the 'big guys' were mostly using SCSI disks.
>
> That message is actually a lot less scary than it was until a couple of
> years ago, when it used to cause much more angst and regular posts, see:
>
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/usr.sbin/sysinstall/disks.c.diff?r1=1.160;r2=1.161;f=h
>

I think it's fair to say, this is still causing some angst. :( I will check
out your link when my brain is far less foggy then it is right now. I'm a
bit woozy you could say, nyquil works fast on an empty stomach!


> You don't say what alternative geometry you entered here, if any .. but
> really this whole thing needs to go away.  Maybe it needs some heuristic
> to see if it could _even possibly_ be an ancient HD needing alternative
> geometry?  In any case, anything after 2000 is definitely 'modern'.
>

Indeed, I didn't, because I wasn't given a choice by sysinstall, it made the
choice for me.


> Copying this to Bruce Cran, who's been hacking on sysinstall lately.
>

Left Bruce in the CC, hopefully he'll offer some useful advice. :D *crosses
fingers*


> Ok, I've been hunting for a commit message I noticed relatively recently
> and can't find just now, but I think it was to the effect that Bruce had
> fixed some breakage when choosing 'A' for auto-partitioning, which you
> indicated having chosen above.
>

It would appear that the layout changes with each new major revision of
FBSD, I have different defaults on the old Sony VAIO on the floor next to me
that is running 7.3/i386.


> Indeed you have, and sorry I missed recalling this issue till now.
>
> Bruce may have something to add, but if I'm not mistaken you may just
> need to NOT use 'A' with your 8.1 install media, but to enter values
> manually.  Alternatively, this may be a good time to grab an 8.2-BETA1
> disc1 or memstick image where this is likely fixed, but in any case, if
> I had a FreeBSD slice with even half of ~700GB I'd be very much more
> generous with / and /tmp, and /var if you'll be using eg big databases.
>
> HTH, Ian
>

No worries on missing it, I'm not sure that helped, I farted around with it
again earlier today with little more in the way of success. What I tried was
to just set up '/' and swamp and it still prompted me about not being able
to find /dev/ad4s1b. I will grab an 8.2B1 image tomorrow when I get up and
try that, see if it fairs better. Right now, I must sleep, this side of the
world is now just after 1am!

C-
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Ian Smith]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2010 11:17:48 -0500, Chris Brennan wrote:
 > On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 12:24 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:
 > 
 > > I don't expect this to be anything like that.  Please show a) how many
 > > slices you allocated and how big this FreeBSD slice is and b) how you
 > > partitioned the FreeBSD slice into (and sizes of) / /var/ /usr [/tmp?]
 > > and especially swap.
 > >
 > > I wouldn't allocate any less than 1GB for your root (/) partition esp.
 > > if building custom kernel/s; maybe that's fixed in sysinstall for 8.2?

 > I cleaned out the thread, leaving only your last bit of questions here.

Goodo.  I'll try chopping a bit too ..

 > I did apparently screw up the 'dd' cmd, I retyped it correctly, below is my
 > (very carefully) retyped recreation of the Fixit prompt;
 > 
 > [..]
 > Fixit# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 oseek-0 bs=512 count=1

Assuming that's 'oseek=0', which is the default anyway.

 > 1+0 records in
 > 1+0 records out
 > 512 bytes transferred ub 0.044723 secs (11448 bytes/sec)
 > Fixit# fdisk -Bi /dev/ad4
 > *** Working on device /dev/ad4 ***
 > parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
 > cylinders=1453521 heads=16 sectors/tracks=63 (1008 blks/cyl)
 > 
 > Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
 > parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
 > cylinders=1453521 heads=16 sectors/tracks=63 (1008 blks/cyl)
 > 
 > Do you want to change our idea of what BIOS thinks ? [n]
 > [..]
 > 
 > This is where I stopped, admittedly, I do not know how to use FreeBSD's
 > fdisk. For the sake of brevity and to move along, I'll break fdisk here and
 > move back to sysinstall and provide what information I can this way.

Fair enough.  'what BIOS thinks' here is fine on modern disks/boxes, but 
the issue here is what a new(ish) user might conceive of as 'modern'!

 > >From sysinstalls menu, I choose 'Standard', next is the usual message about
 > fdisk partitioning schemes. After this, I get a 'User Confirmation Request',
 > which is very similar to the warning I received above. It says
 > 
 > [..]
 > WARNING: It is safe to use a geometry of 1453521/16/63 for ad4 on computers
 > with modern BIOS versions. If this disk is to be uised on an old machine it
 > is recommended that it does not have more then 65535 cylinders, more then
 > 255 heads, or more then 63 sectors per track.
 > 
 > Would you like to keep using the current geometry?
 > 
 >  
 > [..]
 > 
 > This is where I have two choices
 > 
 > Choice 1 (YES) produces the following in fdisk when choosing 'a' to use the
 > whole disk.
 > 
 > [..]
 > OffsetSize(ST)EndNamePTypeDescSubtype
 > Flags
 > 06362-12unused0
 > 6314651491051465149167ad4s18freebsd165
 > [..]

Yes, you should go with this.  'modern BIOS versions' here refers to 
anything later than (roughly) the mid-90s!  An 'old machine' in this 
context - remembering sysinstall was originally written then - was one 
not using LBA (logical block addressing), when 8GB was a fairly big HD 
at least for IDE, when the 'big guys' were mostly using SCSI disks.

That message is actually a lot less scary than it was until a couple of 
years ago, when it used to cause much more angst and regular posts, see:

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/usr.sbin/sysinstall/disks.c.diff?r1=1.160;r2=1.161;f=h

 > Choice 2 (NO) produces the following in fdisk when choosing 'a' to use the
 > whole disk.
 > [..]
 > If you are not sure about this, please consult the Hardware Guide in the
 > Documentation submenu or use the {G}eometry command to change it. Remember:
 > You need to eneter whatever your BIOS thinks the geometry is! For IDE, it's
 > what you were told in the BIOS setup. For SCSI, It's the translation mode
 > your controller is using. Do NOT use a ''physical geometry''.
 > 
 > [..]
 > 
 > [..]
 > OffsetSize(ST)EndNamePTypeDescSubtype
 > Flags
 > 06362-12unused0
 > 6314651440021465144064ad4s18freebsd165
 > 146514406551031465149167-12unused0
 > [..]
 > 
 > Decidedly, the end result is approximately 698GB for the usable partition,
 > the second choice giving me a padding on both sides of the freebsd slice.

You don't say what alternative geometry you entered here, if any .. but 
really this whole thing needs to go away.  Maybe it needs some heuristic 
to see if it could _even possibly_ be an ancient HD needing alternative 
geometry?  In any case, anything after 2000 is definitely 'modern'. 

Copying this to Bruce Cran, who's been hacking on sysinstall lately.

 > Moving on now, I choose the following
 > 
 > Standard MBR
 > 
 > Disklebel Editor
 > 
 > [..]
 > PartMountSizenewfs
 > --
 > ad4s1a/512MBUFS2   Y
 > ad4s1bswap4096MBSWAP
 > ad4s1d/var4973MBUFS2+S Y
 > ad4s1e/tmp512

Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 12:24 AM, Ian Smith  wrote:

> I don't expect this to be anything like that.  Please show a) how many
> slices you allocated and how big this FreeBSD slice is and b) how you
> partitioned the FreeBSD slice into (and sizes of) / /var/ /usr [/tmp?]
> and especially swap.
>
> I wouldn't allocate any less than 1GB for your root (/) partition esp.
> if building custom kernel/s; maybe that's fixed in sysinstall for 8.2?
>
> cheers, Ian  (please cc me on any reply; I take -questions as a digest)
>

I cleaned out the thread, leaving only your last bit of questions here.

I did apparently screw up the 'dd' cmd, I retyped it correctly, below is my
(very carefully) retyped recreation of the Fixit prompt;

[..]
Fixit# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 oseek-0 bs=512 count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes transferred ub 0.044723 secs (11448 bytes/sec)
Fixit# fdisk -Bi /dev/ad4
*** Working on device /dev/ad4 ***
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=1453521 heads=16 sectors/tracks=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=1453521 heads=16 sectors/tracks=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Do you want to change our idea of what BIOS thinks ? [n]
[..]

This is where I stopped, admittedly, I do not know how to use FreeBSD's
fdisk. For the sake of brevity and to move along, I'll break fdisk here and
move back to sysinstall and provide what information I can this way.

>From sysinstalls menu, I choose 'Standard', next is the usual message about
fdisk partitioning schemes. After this, I get a 'User Confirmation Request',
which is very similar to the warning I received above. It says

[..]
WARNING: It is safe to use a geometry of 1453521/16/63 for ad4 on computers
with modern BIOS versions. If this disk is to be uised on an old machine it
is recommended that it does not have more then 65535 cylinders, more then
255 heads, or more then 63 sectors per track.

Would you like to keep using the current geometry?

 
[..]

This is where I have two choices

Choice 1 (YES) produces the following in fdisk when choosing 'a' to use the
whole disk.

[..]
OffsetSize(ST)EndNamePTypeDescSubtype
Flags
06362-12unused0
6314651491051465149167ad4s18freebsd165
[..]

Choice 2 (NO) produces the following in fdisk when choosing 'a' to use the
whole disk.
[..]
If you are not sure about this, please consult the Hardware Guide in the
Documentation submenu or use the {G}eometry command to change it. Remember:
You need to eneter whatever your BIOS thinks the geometry is! For IDE, it's
what you were told in the BIOS setup. For SCSI, It's the translation mode
your controller is using. Do NOT use a ''physical geometry''.

[..]

[..]
OffsetSize(ST)EndNamePTypeDescSubtype
Flags
06362-12unused0
6314651440021465144064ad4s18freebsd165
146514406551031465149167-12unused0
[..]

Decidedly, the end result is approximately 698GB for the usable partition,
the second choice giving me a padding on both sides of the freebsd slice.

Moving on now, I choose the following

Standard MBR

Disklebel Editor

[..]
PartMountSizenewfs
--
ad4s1a/512MBUFS2   Y
ad4s1bswap4096MBSWAP
ad4s1d/var4973MBUFS2+S Y
ad4s1e/tmp512MBUFS2+S Y
ad4s1f/usr688GBUFS2+S Y
[..]

Decidedly not my first choice for 8.1/amd64, but I can fix that layout
later, once I know how to get the system installed correctly.

'Q' to quick and continue, I choose 'Minimal' then 'CD/DVD' as my
installation media. I got the usual 'Last Chance' warning and then bam, I
get

[..]
Unable to find device node for /dev/ad4s1b in /dev!
The creation of filesystems will be aborted.

Couldn't make filesystems properly. Aborting.

Installation completed with some errors. You may wish to scroll through the
debugging messages on VTY1 with the scroll-lock feature. You can also choose
"No" at the next prompt and go back into the installation menus to retry
whichever operations have failed.

[..]

And this is where I am left. Hopefully, I've been explicit enough this time
:D Again, if I've missed something, please let me know and I shall provide
it.
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 343, Issue 5, Message: 10
On Tue, 28 Dec 2010 11:02:45 -0500 Chris Brennan  wrote:
 > On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 2:23 AM, Michael Powell 
 > wrote:
 > 
 > > Try zeroing out the mbr:
 > >
 > > 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. This will zero out any old MBR.

Er, no, Mike.  The MBR is in sector 0 of the disk; that would zero out 
sector 1 as oseek=1 skips over sector 0.  What's in sector 1 depends on 
how/whether the disk is sliced.  In a 'dangerously dedicated' (unsliced) 
disk like a memory stick perhaps, this would usually be /boot/boot1 and
include the bsdlabel.  In a sliced disk, sectors 1 to 62 are typically 
unused, the first slice usually starting at sector 63.

t23% fdisk -s ad0
/dev/ad0: 232581 cyl 16 hd 63 sec
PartStartSize Type Flags
   1:  63 8385867 0x0b 0x00
   2: 8385930   125821080 0xa5 0x80
   3:   13420701033543342 0xa5 0x00
   4:   16775073066685815 0xa5 0x00

If you really want to zero out sector 0, leave out the oseek (or use 
oseek=0) - but you're better off using 'fdisk -Bi' to init a new disk.

 > > I have seen this exact error before, and this is what took care of it.
 > >
 > > -Mike

Mmm .. it's not clear from Chris' original message exactly what he did.

 > Mike,
 > 
 > Thanks for that little tip, I tried it this morning and it hung for about 30
 > second w/ no cd/hd activity, then it resumed w/ a beep, it printed some
 > garbage on the console, the only ledgeable was the following
 > 
 > [..]
 > Invalid partition tableError loading operating systemMissing
 > operating system1+0 records in
 > 1+0 records out
 > 512 bytes transferred in 2.712151 secs (189 bytes/sec)
 > [..]

This doesn't make sense.  Rather than 'I tried it' please show the exact 
command/s you are issuing.  Given it's a new disk you can afford to make 
mistakes, but once you have anything valuable on a disk you need to take 
extreme care with dd(1), it's so easy to fatfinger something wrong.

eg, what you show above would indicate just what you'd get by running:

dd if=/dev/ad4 count=1

ie, using 'if=' not 'of=', with of=/dev/stdout implied, ie to console.

If you do want to look at one or more raw sectors, it's very much safer 
piping dd's stdout to hd (hexdump), as the delays and beep you mention 
are consistent with piping raw bytes out to the console .. often this 
can blow your console settings away (I've done it too many times :)

If you initialise a disk with the default MBR (or it came that way) then 
that's usually what's in /boot/mbr - or /boot/boot0 if you've chosen the 
FreeBSD boot manager, or something else if using (say) grub.

t23% dd if=/boot/mbr | hd
  fc 31 c0 8e c0 8e d8 8e  d0 bc 00 7c be 1a 7c bf  |.1.|..|.|
0010  1a 06 b9 e6 01 f3 a4 e9  00 8a 31 f6 bb be 07 b1  |..1.|
0020  04 38 2f 74 08 7f 75 85  f6 75 71 89 de 80 c3 10  |.8/t..u..uq.|
0030  e2 ef 85 f6 75 02 cd 18  80 fa 80 72 0b 8a 36 75  |u..r..6u|
0040  04 80 c6 80 38 f2 72 02  8a 14 89 e7 8a 74 01 8b  |8.r..t..|
0050  4c 02 bb 00 7c f6 06 bd  07 80 74 2d 51 53 bb aa  |L...|.t-QS..|
0060  55 b4 41 cd 13 72 20 81  fb 55 aa 75 1a f6 c1 01  |U.A..r ..U.u|
0070  74 15 5b 66 6a 00 66 ff  74 08 06 53 6a 01 6a 10  |t.[fj.f.t..Sj.j.|
0080  89 e6 b8 00 42 eb 05 5b  59 b8 01 02 cd 13 89 fc  |B..[Y...|
0090  72 0f 81 bf fe 01 55 aa  75 0c ff e3 be b9 06 eb  |r.U.u...|
00a0  11 be d1 06 eb 0c be f0  06 eb 07 bb 07 00 b4 0e  ||
00b0  cd 10 ac 84 c0 75 f4 eb  fe 49 6e 76 61 6c 69 64  |.u...Invalid|
00c0  20 70 61 72 74 69 74 69  6f 6e 20 74 61 62 6c 65  | partition table|
00d0  00 45 72 72 6f 72 20 6c  6f 61 64 69 6e 67 20 6f  |.Error loading o|
00e0  70 65 72 61 74 69 6e 67  20 73 79 73 74 65 6d 00  |perating system.|
00f0  4d 69 73 73 69 6e 67 20  6f 70 65 72 61 74 69 6e  |Missing operatin|
0100  67 20 73 79 73 74 65 6d  00 90 90 90 90 90 90 90  |g system|
0110  90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90  90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90  ||
*
01b0  90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90  90 90 90 90 90 80 00 00  ||
01c0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ||
*
01f0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa  |..U.|
0200
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes transferred in 0.079548 secs (6436 bytes/sec)

Look familiar? :)  That's what 'dd if=/dev/ad4 count=1 | hd' would show 
on a disk with default MBR, except there'd be the slice data in the MBR 
section of the boot sector, starting at 0x1be, ending with 'sig' 55aa.

 > Restarting the install process, again accepting defaults, I am again

Again, please be more explicit.  Defaults for what?  One slice covering 
the whole disk might be assumed for

Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Paul Wootton]

  On 12/28/10 16:02, Chris Brennan wrote:

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. This will zero out any old MBR.

[..]
Invalid partition tableError loading operating systemMissing
operating system1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes transferred in 2.712151 secs (189 bytes/sec)
[..]


Hi Chris,

Are you sure that you got the command right when DDing

If you saw "Invalid partition tableError loading operating 
systemMissingoperating system", that suggests to me that you had the 
equivalent of


dd if=/dev/ad4 oseek=1 bs=512 count=1

Here is what I get is I run that DD command on a Windows HDD
"demophon# dd if=/dev/ada2 bs=512 count=1
3Àм|ûPPü¾¿W¹åó¤Ë½¾±8n| uÅâôÍ▒õÆIt8,tö µ´ð¬þ}Uªt
 ~tÈ ·ë©üWõË¿VÍr#Á$?ÞüC÷ãÑÖ±ÒîB÷â9V
w#r9s¸»|NVÍsQOtN2äVÍëäV`»ªU´AÍr6ûUªu0öÁt+a`jjÿv
ÿjh|jj´BôÍaasOt
   2äVÍëÖaùÃInvalid partition tableError loading operating 
systemMissing operating system,Dcéêþÿÿ?Á¥P   Uª1+0 records in

1+0 records out
512 bytes transferred in 0.363712 secs (1408 bytes/sec)
demophon# "


Paul
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[perryh]

Chris Brennan  wrote:

> ... could this be the fact that this is a really large
> drive and the bios is 'freaking' out (for lack of a better
> term) and not properly presenting the disk to the system? ...
> The disk is a different spindle-speed then the old one.
>
> [..]
> 250G -> 5400RPM
> 750G -> 7200RPM
> [..]

The RPM is unlikely to be a factor, but the BIOS could well be
having trouble with the size / geometry.  It might help to let
sysinstall use different dimensions "for compatibility with older
BIOS."
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 2:23 AM, Michael Powell wrote:

> Try zeroing out the mbr:
>
> 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. This will zero out any old MBR.
>
> I have seen this exact error before, and this is what took care of it.
>
> -Mike
>

Mike,

Thanks for that little tip, I tried it this morning and it hung for about 30
second w/ no cd/hd activity, then it resumed w/ a beep, it printed some
garbage on the console, the only ledgeable was the following

[..]
Invalid partition tableError loading operating systemMissing
operating system1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes transferred in 2.712151 secs (189 bytes/sec)
[..]

Restarting the install process, again accepting defaults, I am again
presented with

[..]
'Unable to find device node for /dev/ad4s1b in dev!
The creation of filesystems will be aborted.'

[..]

My question is this now, could this be the fact that this is a really large
drive and the bios is 'freaking' out (for lack of a better term) and not
properly presenting the disk to the system? While I don't think this is
something to consider, something in the back of my head suggests it is. The
disk is a different spindle-speed then the old one.

[..]
250G -> 5400RPM
750G -> 7200RPM
[..]

maybe a (stab in the dark here) bus translation issue, disk is giving the
bus too much information? *shrug I dunno, I'm babeling now and I don't have
an obnoxious fish in my ear :(.
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Re: a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Michael Powell]

Chris Brennan wrote:

> I've got an HP Business Class laptop (dv2700) and the original 250G SATAII
> drive is going bad. So I bought a new drive, got a great deal on an SATAII
> 750G drive for it, bios sees the drive fine. The old drive had
> FBSD8.2/amd64 installed and it ran fine. I wanted to reinstall to make
> some partition changes anyway so when I tossed in any install medium I get
> the following error
> 
> 'Unable to find device node for /dev/ad4s1b in dev! The creation of
> filesystems will be aborted.'
> 
> I didn't select anything crazy and accepted defaults for everything. I
> figured out the advanced bios option and am in the bios now letting the
> bios' smart features run there tests (and it just shut down on me, this
> happens in the winter when the heat is on :( ). Anyway, gonna let it cool
> down and try the smart tests again. Incidentally, I was able to boot a
> gentoo disc and set up an ext4 filesystem on the same disk and it worked
> fine, so I don't understand why freebsd can't preform a newfs on the
> drive. ___


Try zeroing out the mbr:

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. This will zero out any old MBR.

I have seen this exact error before, and this is what took care of it.

-Mike



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a new hard-drive in a 2y/o laptop

[Chris Brennan]

I've got an HP Business Class laptop (dv2700) and the original 250G SATAII
drive is going bad. So I bought a new drive, got a great deal on an SATAII
750G drive for it, bios sees the drive fine. The old drive had FBSD8.2/amd64
installed and it ran fine. I wanted to reinstall to make some partition
changes anyway so when I tossed in any install medium I get the following
error

'Unable to find device node for /dev/ad4s1b in dev! The creation of
filesystems will be aborted.'

I didn't select anything crazy and accepted defaults for everything. I
figured out the advanced bios option and am in the bios now letting the
bios' smart features run there tests (and it just shut down on me, this
happens in the winter when the heat is on :( ). Anyway, gonna let it cool
down and try the smart tests again. Incidentally, I was able to boot a
gentoo disc and set up an ext4 filesystem on the same disk and it worked
fine, so I don't understand why freebsd can't preform a newfs on the drive.
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