From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Aug 31 18:26:18 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D6E59106566B; Fri, 31 Aug 2012 18:26:18 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from david@catwhisker.org) Received: from albert.catwhisker.org (m209-73.dsl.rawbw.com [198.144.209.73]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9A3C18FC12; Fri, 31 Aug 2012 18:26:18 +0000 (UTC) Received: from albert.catwhisker.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by albert.catwhisker.org (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id q7VIQHaS007657; Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:26:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from david@albert.catwhisker.org) Received: (from david@localhost) by albert.catwhisker.org (8.14.5/8.14.5/Submit) id q7VIQHL7007656; Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:26:17 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from david) Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 11:26:17 -0700 From: David Wolfskill To: freebsd-stable Message-ID: <20120831182617.GC2990@albert.catwhisker.org> References: <1345697446.84337.11.camel@neo.cse.buffalo.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="yLVHuoLXiP9kZBkt" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <1345697446.84337.11.camel@neo.cse.buffalo.edu> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Subject: 9.1-RC1 installer [was: FreeBSD 9.1-RC1 Available...] X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2012 18:26:18 -0000 --yLVHuoLXiP9kZBkt Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable I had occasion yesterday to install FreeBSD on a machine (an HP Compaq dx7200 Slim Tower) that had never (AFAIK) had FreeBSD installed on it. Since I don't often use the installer, I thought it might be good to try the 9.1-RC1 installer. While the exercise was ultimately successful, I needed to make use of additional hardware (including a second FreeBSD machine -- my laptop) to complete it. Had I been trying to install with just the target machine and the USB drive (memstick), as far as I can tell, I would have ended up with a brick. I like to set up machines with a minimum of 3 slices -- e.g.: albert(8.3-S)[2] df -ht ufs Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ad4s1a 1.5G 363M 1G 27% / /dev/ad4s1d 3.4G 378M 2.8G 12% /usr /dev/ad4s3d 7.8G 3.9G 3.3G 54% /var /dev/ad4s3e 96G 45G 42G 52% /common albert(8.3-S)[3]=20 While that only shows 2 of the slices, slice 2 is set up like slice 1 is; an excerpt from fstab: albert(8.3-S)[3] grep ufs /etc/fstab /dev/ad4s1a / ufs rw 1 1 /dev/ad4s1d /usr ufs ro 2 2 /dev/ad4s2a /S2 ufs rw,noauto 2 2 /dev/ad4s2d /S2/usr ufs rw,noauto 2 2 /dev/ad4s3d /var ufs rw 2 2 /dev/ad4s3e /common ufs rw 2 2 albert(8.3-S)[4]=20 When I am about to upgrade such a machine -- albert, there, generally gets updated weekly -- I "clone" the / and /usr file systems from the currently-booted slice to the other one, reboot from the copy, and upgrade it in place. If I have a problem, I can boot from the slice that it had been booted from before I started the upgrade, lick my wounds, and figure out what to do next. (Granted, it's very rare that I need to do that -- but I very much like having the ability to do so.) Accordingly, when I was to install 9.1-RC1 on the HPaq, the first slient (to the above) thing I recall noticing was that the installer was referring to "partitions" (in the context of reserving space for "other Operating Systems") which confused me a great deal: I thought those were "slices". It was fairly obvious (even to me) that the "automatic" option wouldn't suit my purposes; after a false start, I managed to use the Manual approach & set up the 3 slices; here's what "gpart show" says about it (now that it works): =3D> 63 156249937 ada0 MBR (74G) 63 20971503 1 freebsd [active] (10G) 20971566 20971503 2 freebsd (10G) 41943069 113246154 3 freebsd (54G) 155189223 1060777 - free - (518M) =3D> 0 20971503 ada0s1 BSD (10G) 0 4194304 1 freebsd-ufs (2.0G) 4194304 16777198 2 freebsd-ufs (8G) 20971502 1 - free - (512B) =3D> 0 20971503 ada0s2 BSD (10G) 0 4194304 1 freebsd-ufs (2.0G) 4194304 16777198 2 freebsd-ufs (8G) 20971502 1 - free - (512B) =3D> 0 113246154 ada0s3 BSD (54G) 0 12582912 1 freebsd-swap (6.0G) 12582912 41943040 2 freebsd-ufs (20G) 54525952 58720201 4 freebsd-ufs (28G) 113246153 1 - free - (512B) The first fairly major problem occurred once the installation was complete: I rebooted the system... or tried to. It wouldn't boot, and I couldn't even get the machine to go into BIOS "setup" mode (still can't, for that matter). I pulled the disk drive, then connected it to my laptop via one of those UCB <=3D> SATA adaptors; "gpart show" showed that slice 3 (ada0s3) was marked "active". Oops. I don't recall a point during the install where I had a chance to actually mention which slice I might want active. And absent other clues, I would have expected the slice that contained the file system that was to be mounted on / to get that honor. So using my laptop, I set slice 1 (ada0s1) as "active", then replaced the drive and tried again. No go. It seems that the boot0 code wasn't written to the disk, either. So I re-attached the drive to my laptop & ran "boot0cfg" to set to boot code -- and, while I was there, told the MBR that slice 1 would be a good place from which to boot. That finally worked. I was, however, a bit surprised to find that my script to accomplish the "cloning" didn't work without some ... exercise: it uses a "dump | restore" pipeline to read the (mounted) / and /usr & restore them (after newfs, of course) on the target slice. Well, dump wants to make a snapshot if it's reading from a FS mounted read/write, and that's apparently not (currently?) compatible with SU+J, which is the default that the installer used. (I was subsequently able to manually disable the journaling, clone the slice, and re-enable the journaling. A subsequent test verified that I could then boot from either slice 1 or slice 2, and that I could control this by running a script before rebooting.) So I got there, though I did encounter a bit of turbulence. :-} Peace, david --=20 David H. Wolfskill david@catwhisker.org Depriving a girl or boy of an opportunity for education is evil. See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key. --yLVHuoLXiP9kZBkt Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.19 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAlBBAcgACgkQmprOCmdXAD0tKgCePvgN12PUXi4OG78K4PZyuGRK 8usAoIP3K+F13EF4M/ZYSPg2BhbuwyQf =aPA4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --yLVHuoLXiP9kZBkt--