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Date: Thu, 27 May 2010 17:57:15 -0500
From: "Rick C. Petty" <rick-freebsd2009@kiwi-computer.com>
To: Garrett Cooper <yanefbsd@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: Getting useful diagnostics from geom(8) and friends
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On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 03:47:50PM -0700, Garrett Cooper wrote:
> >>
> >> I didn't run #4 (don't want gptboot on the appliance), but all of the
> >> steps failed.
> >
> > Then how do you boot into FreeBSD?  You need to install the boot blocks or
> > the loader(8) won't boot.
> 
> We netboot :).

PXE then?

I'm curious why are you using the MBR strategy and not the GPT strategy?
If you're PXE-booting, why have an MBR at all?

> >> fdisk doesn't like these Western Digital drives for some whacky reason
> >> when I specify fdisk -BIq /dev/ad4, etc... and only after I go in and
> >
> > What exactly do you mean by "doesn't like"?
> 
> Sorry... should have included that detail... it's an on-and-off issue
> where sometimes the drives do properly slice themselves and sometimes
> they don't. Not sure why it's so twitchy...
> 
> %fdisk -BIq /dev/ad4
> ******* Working on device /dev/ad4 *******
> fdisk: invalid fdisk partition table found
> %ls /dev/ad4*
> /dev/ad4	/dev/ad4s1

Is this the error case or the good case?  It looks good to me.  The error
is because an invalid fdisk partition table existed prior to creating the
one-slice-for-entire-disk MBR:

% truncate -s 1m test
% mdconfig -af test
md1
% ls /dev/md1*
/dev/md1
% fdisk -BIq /dev/md1
******* Working on device /dev/md1 *******
fdisk: invalid fdisk partition table found
% ls /dev/md1*
/dev/md1   /dev/md1s1
% fdisk -BIq /dev/md1
******* Working on device /dev/md1 *******


-- Rick C. Petty