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Date:      Mon, 6 Oct 2008 12:12:21 -0400
From:      Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@msu.edu>
To:        "Don O'Neil" <lists@lizardhill.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Can't add new 1TB disk in FreeBSD 6.1
Message-ID:  <20081006161221.GB70792@gizmo.acns.msu.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20081006160708.GA70792@gizmo.acns.msu.edu>
References:  <D3314319D28D4C51B1D721DFFE21F942@mickey> <20081005013016.GA71103@icarus.home.lan> <498C8B62AC3C4663A58D134BFE231685@mickey> <20081006160708.GA70792@gizmo.acns.msu.edu>

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On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 12:07:08PM -0400, Jerry McAllister wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 08:03:46AM -0700, Don O'Neil wrote:
> 
> > > I just swapped out an old 500G disk with a 1TB one and I'm trying to 
> > > label it and mount it...
> > > 
> > > If I run bsdlabel -w ad4, I get:
> > > 
> > > bsdlabel: Geom not found
> > > 
> > > If I run sysinstall, it tells me that it can't write to the disk.
> > > 
> > > I've tried an old 'bypass': sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16, but that 
> > > didn't help.
> > > 
> > > Can anyone help me get this new disk installed without having to boot 
> > > off a recovery CD? The server is 500 miles away from me and I don't 
> > > have direct console access.
> > > Can you provide output from dmesg, as well as "geom disk list"?
> > 
> > OK... I tried:
> > 
> > # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 bs=512 count=1000
> > dd: /dev/ad4: Operation not permitted
> > 
> > # fdisk /dev/ad4
> > ******* Working on device /dev/ad4 *******
> > parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
> > cylinders=1938021 heads=16 sectors/track=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=1938021 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)
> > 
> > fdisk: invalid fdisk partition table found
> > Media sector size is 512
> > Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
> > Information from DOS bootblock is:
> > The data for partition 1 is:
> > sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
> >     start 63, size 1953525105 (953869 Meg), flag 80 (active)
> >         beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
> >         end: cyl 612/ head 15/ sector 63
> > The data for partition 2 is:
> > <UNUSED>
> > The data for partition 3 is:
> > <UNUSED>
> > The data for partition 4 is:
> > <UNUSED>
> 
> 
> OK.   That looks pretty normal.

Well, except for not allowing the dd to the disk.  
I haven't had that happen on a disk.  (I used to see that
a lot on DAT tapes)

So, maybe, as someone else suggested, you also need:

> > OK... I tried:
> > 
> > # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 bs=512 count=1000
> > dd: /dev/ad4: Operation not permitted
> > 
> Did you "sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16" before doing this?
> > 
> What's happening here is that GEOM isn't letting you overwrite the MBR
> on the disk.  Setting kern.geom.debugflags=16 should permit that to
> happen.
> 

But, do the following too.  

> 
> Did you try doing an:     fdisk -I ad4   or  maybe  fdisk -BI ad4
> 
> It takes that to get fdisk to initialize the disk.
> (the -B puts the master boot block there.
> 
> Just doing an    fdisk ad4   only had fdisk read out stuff
> and there isn't anything there yet to read - so of course
> it is invalid.
> 
> ////jerry
> 
> 
> 
> > 
> > Geometry output:
> > 
> > Geom name: ad4
> > Providers:
> > 1. Name: ad4
> >    Mediasize: 1000204886016 (932G)
> >    Sectorsize: 512
> >    Mode: r0w0e0
> >    fwsectors: 63
> >    fwheads: 16
> > 
> > Nothing exciting coming from dmesg.
> > 
> > 
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