Date: Sun, 28 Jul 1996 20:23:51 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug White <dwhite@riley-net170-164.uoregon.edu> To: Ian Kallen <spidaman@well.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: adding disks and the disklabel question Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.94.960728201436.605A-100000@gdi.uoregon.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960728194301.12520A-100000@well>
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On Sun, 28 Jul 1996, Ian Kallen wrote:
> > I mailed my procedure a dozen times:
> >
> > disklabel -Brw sd1 auto
>
> <really? that'll do it? let's see...>
> root:ns1: {31} disklabel -Brw sd1 auto
> write: Read-only file system
Did you dismount it first?
This is the section from disklabel(8):
For a virgin disk that is not known to disktab(5), disktype can bespec-
ified as ``auto''. In this case, the driver is requested to produce a
virgin label for the disk. This might or might not be successful, de-
pending on whether the driver for the disk is able to get the required
data without reading anything from the disk at all. It will likely suc-
ceed for all SCSI disks, most IDE disks, and vnode devices. Writing a
label to the disk is the only supported operation, and the disk itself
must be provided as the canonical name, i.e. not as a full path name.
Maybe single user mode? Your first command should have succeeded.
Try dropping the B, it specifies to install the boot code (which you don't
need on a second disk).
> > This creates ``dangerously dedicated'' drives (thus no `fdisk'
> > required), as long as this is fine with you, the above is perhaps the
> > easiest way.
>
> I would be most pleased to see this "easiest way" succeed. If you are
> getting different results than the ones I pasted in above, I sure would
> like to know why...
Did you note the first paragraph here? That disk will be _dedicated_ to
FreeBSD. It can't have anything on it. I'd use dd and /dev/zero to
overwrite the first few clusters to completely erase the disk. BE
CAREFUL, you can thrash the wrong disk this way..
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rsd1 bs=1k count=512
I take no responsibility for what happens after executing this command :)
> sysinstall seems to want to make mods to my existing boot drive -- it all
> seems geared for installation not supplementing disks and file systems.
That is true.
> > This is a quickie. I have the long explanation of this from Seppo if you
> > are interested.
> >
> > If I had a disk to make, I'd write a tutorial.
>
> I'd be happy to document for the benefit of others how to make this work
> if I could do so myself. Although the machines I'm using are in
> production (thus I don't have a lot of latitude for experimentation) --
> I'm open to doing whatever it takes to document this more fully and have
> it added to handbook and/or FAQ (short of frying my disks ;).
Please!
If you have a postscript viewer/printer, grab this:
ftp://freefall.freebsd.org/pub/incoming/disks.ps.gz
This is the added chapter to "Installing...FreeBSD" that details the long
long way to adding disks, as well as anything and everything you'd want to
know about hard drives. It details the fdisk/disktab/disklabel/long way.
:)
Doug White | University of Oregon
Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major
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