Vinum error "Can't initialize drive a: Invalid argument"

[Marc Smits]

Citeren Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at FreeBSD.org>:

> [Format recovered--see http://www.lemis.com/email/email-format.html]
> 
> Computer output wrapped.
> 
> On Friday, 19 December 2003 at 17:34:20 +0100, Marc Smits wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I am running FreeBSD-4.7-realease and want to create a striped plex
> > from 2 new 80Gb disks.
> >
> > Here's my vinum-description:
> >  drive a device /dev/ad2s1e
> >  drive b device /dev/ad3s1e
> >  volume stripe0
> >  plex org striped 256k
> >  sd length 78159m drive a
> >  sd length 78159m drive b
> >
> > When I run 'vinum create vinum.conf' The message I get is:
> >     1: drive a device /dev/ad2s1e
> >  ** 1 Can't initialize drive a: Invalid argument
> >     2: drive b device /dev/ad3s1e
> >  ** 2 Can't initialize drive b: Invalid argument
> >  0 drives:
> >  1 volumes:
> >  V stripe0               State: down     Plexes:       1 Size: 152GB
> >
> >  1 plexes:
> >  P stripe0.p0          S State: faulty   Subdisks:     2 Size: 152GB
> >
> >  2 subdisks:
> >  S stripe0.p0.s0         State: crashed  PO:        0  B Size: 76GB
> >  S stripe0.p0.s1         State: crashed  PO:      256 kB Size: 76GB
> >
> > I used sysinstall to fdisk and label the partitions.
> 
> How?  IIRC sysinstall won't create a Vinum partition for you.  You
> need to use disklabel, as described in the man page.
> 
> > What do need to do diffrent to get vinum to use the partitions?
> 
> That depends on exactly what you've done, but I think it's what I said
> above.
> 
> Greg
> --
Dear Greg,

Thanks a lot for the suggestion. It took me a while to dig through the man page,
but I finally got around it. 

For anyone who's interested (I can imagine more people run in to this), here's
the solution:

*1* Create a partition using sysinstall's fdisk and disklabel utilities.

*2* Use 'disklabel -r ad1' to print that info to a file eg:
ttyp5 13:30 #blah# [/root>disklabel -r ad1 >disklabel.ad1
# /dev/ad1c:
type: ESDI
disk: ad1s1
label: 
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 255
sectors/cylinder: 16065
cylinders: 1244
sectors/unit: 20000862
rpm: 3600
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0           # milliseconds
track-to-track seek: 0  # milliseconds
drivedata: 0 

8 partitions:
#        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  c: 20000862        0    unused        0     0         # (Cyl.    0 - 1244*)
  e: 20000862        0    4.2BSD     2048 16384    89   # (Cyl.    0 - 1244*)


*3* Edit the textfile with above info. change line with the 'e' partition:
  h: 20000862        0    vinum                         # (Cyl.    0 - 1244*)

*4* Use 'disklabel -R ad1 /root/disklabel.ad1' to write the new disklabel