Date: Fri, 20 May 2016 12:38:29 +0200 From: Damien Fleuriot <ml@my.gd> To: Eric Dynamic <ecsd@transbay.net> Cc: "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Common installation errors? Message-ID: <CAE63ME7B3B57wMZojqgXH%2Bz5v1-jKw7p2br8x4XskAqg1tPOQg@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <573E3A02.8000808@transbay.net> References: <573E3A02.8000808@transbay.net>
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On 20 May 2016 at 00:11, Eric Dynamic <ecsd@transbay.net> wrote:
> I'm trying to install 10.3 amd64.
> When I get to the "allocate disk space" and say "auto (guided)" using a
> Seagate 250 GB disk that
> was previously used for Ubuntu, each choice GPT, BSD, MBR fails with the
> same error message
> something like "bad geom: ada0".
> Either a different disk will work, or I need to step back to 10.1, so I
> try a Seagate 80 GB disk (also
> with an Ubuntu system using the whole disk) and this time despite some
> complaint that flies by,
> the disk space allocation works and I can proceed with the install.
>
> I cannot find any reference to "bad geom: <device name>" in a few cursory
> searches, but the place
> to discuss such an error message is in the installation manual, which is
> currently written mostly
> as if most steps will not go wrong. Surely whatever complaint the system
> had about "bad geom"
> was something trivial, or hopefully correctable, since presumably BSD
> supports 250 GB .. 3 or 5 TB
> disks by now; 10.1 supported install on a 1 TB drive.
>
> May I suggest adding documentation for such common "gotchas" to the
> installation manual? Then
> the installation manual is a one-stop shop.
>
> Meanwhile, if anyone can tell me what "bad geom: ada0" meant, I'd
> appreciate it, thanks.
>
> -ecsd (Eric Dynamic)
> Berkeley
>
I would assume it means gpart didn't like your drive or its existing
partitions.
Would you, perchance, be able to drop to a shell and issue the following ?
# gpart show
Here is example output from one of my firewalls :
root@pf1-gs:~ # gpart show
=> 34 142081981 mfid0 GPT (68G)
34 128 1 freebsd-boot (64K)
162 4194304 2 freebsd-swap (2.0G)
4194466 137887549 3 freebsd-ufs (66G)
You may then remove existing partitions (DATA DESTROYED) :
gpart delete -i <partition_number> <drivename>
For example :
gpart delete -i 3 ada0
Once you have removed all partitions, you can destroy the existing GEOM :
gpart destroy ada0
I understand this doesn't fix the installer issue, but at least it should
let you move forward :)
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