Can't label anything from within sysinstall

[John Baldwin]

On Thursday 19 May 2005 04:05 pm, Ulrich Spoerlein wrote:
> Hello folks,
>
> I have access to an Alpha 164SX now and tried to install 5.4 RELEASE
> onto it. I hooked up an IDE drive and the install is booted from a SCSI
> CDROM hooked up to an Adaptec 2940UW controller.
>
> Everything is coming up fine, however, choosing a standard install
> represents me with the disk label editor and there are no disks from
> which I can choose.
>
> I did hook up a very old SCSI disk and was presented with a choice
> between ad0 and da0, but the label editor was just as empty.
>
> Just like this
>                          FreeBSD Disklabel Editor
>
> Part      Mount          Size Newfs   Part      Mount          Size Newfs
> ----      -----          ---- -----   ----      -----          ---- -----
>
>
> The following commands are valid here (upper or lower case):
> C = Create        D = Delete   M = Mount pt.
> N = Newfs Opts    Q = Finish   S = Toggle SoftUpdates   Z = Custom Newfs
> T = Toggle Newfs  U = Undo     A = Auto Defaults        R = Delete+Merge
>
> Use F1 or ? to get more help, arrow keys to select.
>
> pressing some buttons then resulted in a signal 11 when I hit 'R'
>
>        qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq Message qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq
>        A signal 11 was caught - I'm saving what I can and shutting
>        down.  If you can reproduce the problem, please turn Debug on
>        in the Options menu for the extra information it provides
>        in debugging problems like this.
>        qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq(100%)qq
>                                 [  OK  ]
>
> running bsdlabel from the fixit shell worked just as it is supposed to,
> but I had to
> export EDITOR=/dist/rescue/vi
> and the '*' special keyword works perfectly for offset, but not for
> size. It will give a partition extends past end of unit error.
>
> However, I can't set any mountpoints and I don't want to install by
> hand. So, what's up with sysinstall? Horribly broken?
>
> Ulrich Spörlein

Use 'bsdlabel auto' from the fixit to stick an initial label on the disk, then 
reboot and sysinstall will be able to work with your disk.

-- 
John Baldwin <jhb at FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve"  =  http://www.FreeBSD.org