From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Dec 5 14:30:39 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id OAA17593 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 5 Dec 1997 14:30:39 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers) Received: from alpo.whistle.com (alpo.whistle.com [207.76.204.38]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id OAA17588 for ; Fri, 5 Dec 1997 14:30:35 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from julian@whistle.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by alpo.whistle.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id OAA07576; Fri, 5 Dec 1997 14:29:00 -0800 (PST) Received: from UNKNOWN(), claiming to be "current1.whistle.com" via SMTP by alpo.whistle.com, id smtpd007570; Fri Dec 5 14:28:53 1997 Date: Fri, 5 Dec 1997 14:26:29 -0800 (PST) From: Julian Elischer To: "Ron G. Minnich" cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: a strange problem with slices, 3.0-current, and disks In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Fri, 5 Dec 1997, Ron G. Minnich wrote: > For example, what doesn't work is the following: > dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rwd0 bs=512 count=128. > dd reports one block in, zero out. > The kernel prints three messages of the form: > wd0s1: type 0x6, start 63, end=4193279, size=4193217: OK > wd0s2: .... different start and end and size: OK > wd0s5: ... different start and end and size: OK so dd is not writing to the device. try: fdisk -iu /dev/rwd0 and enter 0 for every possible numerical field then: reboot disklabel -w -r /dev/rwd0 floppy3 disklabel -e -r /dev/rwd0 [edit to taste] reboot: julian > The kernel prints these messages every time I do anything to the disk. > (read, write, whatever). I also can not > dd if=/dev/rwd0 | od -xc | more > dd gets an immediate EOF! rwd0 is not functioning as it used to. maybe the drive has a 'virus protect feature'? > > fdisk can't do anything with this disk either. What appears to be > happening is that any reference to rwd0 is somehow being redirected to the > 4th partition on the disk, which is the only unused one, and which is also > zero bytes long: immediate error. > > I'm now very confused, and I hate to drop this on hackers, but: > 1) questions has resulted in only one (non-working) answer > 2) This looks like a bug, or at least a big change in How Things Work Out of curiosity: If you have time.. get my 'slice' patches from: ftp:hub.freebsd.org/pub/scsi/slice2.tar.gz and apply them to a current kernel. make a kernel with options DEVFS and SLICE (see the SLICE config file) boot it single user. mount -t devfs /devfs /mnt cd mnt then try smash the device as before. that code is a lot more direct about getting at the device and bypasses all the present BSD slice/partition confusion. > > one more question: how does the install tool do it? how does the install > tool blast the dos partitions, where is the ezboot that it loads onto the > disk, and how does it get ezboot there? The install tool does not appear > to use fdisk/disklabel, or if it does, it's using them in a way I don't get. no it uses libdisk whish is cool but not humanly usable of course you COULD just run the install floppy..... > > thanks > ron > > Ron Minnich |Java: an operating-system-independent, > rminnich@sarnoff.com |architecture-independent programming language > (609)-734-3120 |for Windows/95 and Windows/NT on the Pentium > ftp://ftp.sarnoff.com/pub/mnfs/www/docs/cluster.html > > >