Re: Disk Structures
- In reply to: Doug Hardie : "Re: Disk Structures"
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Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2025 02:17:22 UTC
Raspberry Pis have a weird partition system. IIRC the first partition has to be under 256MB. I did a quick google and found the below link. I should mention that you can download a Raspberry Pi imager that will let you do more customizations than is available with dd https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/ https://github.com/raspberrypi/noobs/wiki/NOOBS-partitioning-explained NOOBS partitioning explained github.com > On Dec 13, 2025, at 8:38 PM, Doug Hardie <bc979@lafn.org> wrote: > > dd if=FreeBSD-14.2-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img of=/dev/da1 bs=10M > > or 15.0 as appropriate > > When I did this with 14.0, the Pi came up just fine. Also the Pi5 did also. I am confident what I see below is correct, I just don't understand it. > > -- Doug > >> On Dec 13, 2025, at 17:25, Daniel Anderson <development@kd2ycu.com> wrote: >> >> Right but how are you getting it to the micro SD card? >> >>> On Dec 13, 2025, at 5:24 PM, Doug Hardie <bc979@lafn.org> wrote: >>> >>> The original installation was from FreeBSD-14.2-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img and I have been trying FreeBSD-15.0-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-RPI.img >>> >>> -- Doug >>> >>>> On Dec 13, 2025, at 14:09, Daniel Anderson <development@kd2ycu.com> wrote: >>>> >>>> Are you using the official Raspberry Pi images or imager? I believe there’s a few specific requirements for the partitions... >>>> >>>>> On Dec 13, 2025, at 4:54 PM, Doug Hardie <bc979@lafn.org> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> I have a couple of Raspberry Pi 5s. One of which is a production server for mail. It works just fine. However, the disk structure is quite confusing. I only noticed this because of trying to bring up another similar server. >>>>> >>>>> If I list the dev entries for mmcsd, I get the following. >>>>> >>>>> mail# ll /dev/mmcs* >>>>> crw-r----- 1 root operator 0x49 Nov 26 15:47 /dev/mmcsd0 >>>>> crw-r----- 1 root operator 0x4a Nov 26 15:47 /dev/mmcsd0s1 >>>>> crw-r----- 1 root operator 0x4b Nov 26 15:47 /dev/mmcsd0s2 >>>>> crw-r----- 1 root operator 0x4e Nov 26 15:47 /dev/mmcsd0s2a >>>>> crw-r----- 1 root operator 0x4f Nov 26 15:47 /dev/mmcsd0s2b >>>>> >>>>> This looks like the drive was partitioned using GPT. However, gpart list shows MBR. I removed the non-relevant entries: >>>>> >>>>> mail# gpart list mmcsd0 >>>>> Geom name: mmcsd0 >>>>> entries: 4 >>>>> scheme: MBR >>>>> Providers: >>>>> 1. Name: mmcsd0s1 >>>>> Mediasize: 52428800 (50M) >>>>> type: fat32lba >>>>> 2. Name: mmcsd0s2 >>>>> Mediasize: 128124452864 (119G) >>>>> type: freebsd >>>>> >>>>> There are the two partitions I expected. A boot partition, and a data partition. Looking at the df output: >>>>> >>>>> mail# df -h >>>>> Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on >>>>> /dev/ufs/rootfs 108G 9.1G 90G 9% / >>>>> devfs 1.0K 0B 1.0K 0% /dev >>>>> /dev/msdosfs/EFI 50M 25M 25M 50% /boot/efi >>>>> tmpfs 12G 85M 12G 1% /tmp >>>>> /dev/da0s2 25G 1.3G 22G 6% /mailbkup >>>>> mail# >>>>> >>>>> The entries for / and /boot/efi are not at all what I expected. The /mailbkup seems normal. How do I make sense of all this? >>>>> >>>>> I duplicated the microSD card but it doesn't boot the new machine. I believe that is caused by a hardware failure in the Pi. It does some strange rebooting before ever reading the SD card. Never the less, I should be able to mount the copied SD card on a working machine, but can't figure out how to do that. Messages shows the new disk is da1. >>>>> >>>>> mail# mount /dev/da1s2 /mnt >>>>> mount: /dev/da1s2: No such file or directory >>>>> mail# mount /dev/mmcsd1s2b /mnt >>>>> mount: /dev/mmcsd1s2b: No such file or directory >>>>> >>>>> I would like to verify that the new SD card is good. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> -- Doug >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>> >> > >