gpart and it's EBR confusion

[Robert Simmons]

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 3:46 PM,  <rank1seeker at gmail.com> wrote:
> 9.0 R i386
>
> EBR scheme never installed
>
> md0s3 has BSD labels scheme
> ----
> # gpart destroy -F md0s3
> md0s3 destroyed
>
> # gpart create -s BSD md0s3
> gpart: geom 'md0s3': File exists
>
> # gpart show -p md0s3
> =>      0  1023120  md0s3  EBR  (499M) [CORRUPT]
>        0  1023120         - free -  (499M)
> ----
>
>
> During one of above tasks, on main console kernel outputs:
> --
> GEOM: md0s3: invalid entries in the EBR ignored.

I've had a similar problem, but with "gpart destroy" and a GPT
partition.  If I create a GPT partition on a disk then for some reason
begin an install process again by rebooting and starting from the
beginning of bsdinstall I am unable to destroy the old partition
scheme.  I encountered this with sysinstall and 8.0-8.2 as well.  The
workaround that I found is to use "dd" rather than "gpart destroy".
Just dd the drive or part of drive in question from /dev/zero or
/dev/random and everything is a clean slate.