gmirror load problem

[Lapo Nustrini]

I'm trying to create a geom mirror using /dev/da0 and /dev/da1 on a  
live system.
The system is running FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE
Its a dual Xeon setup with hot swappable scsi drives.

The standard way I've achieved this in the past is by wiping out da1  
and labeling da1 with:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da1 bs=512 count=79
# gmirror label -v -n -b round-robin gm0 /dev/da1
# gmirror load

Then using fdisk to create a single dedicated partition on the disk,  
before moving on to recreating the file structure using bsdlabel, etc...

# fdisk -v -B -I /dev/mirror/gm0
etc...


I've done the above on 4 other similar servers in the past with no  
problems.
This time however "gmirror load" returns a "Command 'load' not  
available" error.
I thought gmirror must be already loaded but I can't unload gmirror  
or see a /dev/mirror directory on the system.

The only gmirror commands which don't error out are:  gmirror label  
and gmirror help.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what I should be looking for to  
figure out what is preventing gmirror from loading?

Thanks,

Lapo Nustrini