format slice

[Freek Nossin]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Alejandro Pulver [mailto:alejandro at varnet.biz]
> Sent: zondag 13 maart 2005 15:53
> To: Freek Nossin
> Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org; 'Jerry McAllister'
> Subject: Re: format slice
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Sorry I did not noticed it before, but your first slice must be of type
> 165 (or 0xa5 in hex), that is the type of FreeBSD slices.
> 
> > > The data for partition 1 is:
> > > sysid 0 (0000),(unused)
> > >     start 63, size 20820177 (10166 Meg), flag 0
> > >         beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
> > >         end: cyl 174/ head 15/ sector 63
> > > The data for partition 2 is:
> > > sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
> > >     start 20820240, size 19201392 (9375 Meg), flag 80 (active)
> > >         beg: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63;
> > >         end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63
> 
> It appeares as "unused". So try changing the type.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Ale

Finally it worked!

Thanks for helping me (but if I may? Still one question left... ). 

The slice was indeed unused. When I tried sysinstall just after the reboot,
and again it didn't worked I falsely assumed doing it from the command
prompt would also be of no use. I was wrong, following your advice, starting
fdisk (this time with -i, instead of -u, just to figure out if there was any
difference, still don't know that yet though ;-) ). And changing the type
created a freebsd slice. Then I used bsdlabel and there it was! /dev/ad0s1a
was in my list of devices. 

There is one little thing that worries me. On someone's advice I installed
testdisk (sysutils/testdisk). This tool tests your disk (duh! I mean slices
and partitions, so actually my disklayout). 

Disk /dev/ad0 - CHS 39704 16 63 - 19541 MB
Check current partition structure
     Partition                  Start        End    Size in sectors
 1 P FreeBSD                  0   1  1 20654  15 63   20820177
 2 * FreeBSD              20655   0  1 39703  15 63   19201392

Bad starting head


The "bad starting head" warning worries me. But with these tools you never
know if the tool is correct, or indeed my disklayout. If I didn't just wrote
my "Bios Partition table" a couple of times, I wouldn't have worried at all,
but now I did, it *might* be possible that I actually did something wrong. 
My fdisk output is as follows (These numbers come even visit me in my dreams
these days... ;-) ):

bash-2.05b$ sudo fdisk
******* Working on device /dev/ad0 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=39704 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=39704 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)

Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
    start 63, size 20820177 (10166 Meg), flag 0
        beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
        end: cyl 174/ head 15/ sector 63
The data for partition 2 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
    start 20820240, size 19201392 (9375 Meg), flag 80 (active)
        beg: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63;
        end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
<UNUSED>

Does anybody see a "bad starting head"??? 

Thanks again for helping me so far (Alejandro, and Jerry)

Freek