Getting useful diagnostics from geom(8) and friends

[Garrett Cooper]

On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 3:57 PM, Rick C. Petty
<rick-freebsd2009 at kiwi-computer.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 03:47:50PM -0700, Garrett Cooper wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I didn't run #4 (don't want gptboot on the appliance), but all of the
>> >> steps failed.
>> >
>> > Then how do you boot into FreeBSD?  You need to install the boot blocks or
>> > the loader(8) won't boot.
>>
>> We netboot :).
>
> PXE then?
>
> I'm curious why are you using the MBR strategy and not the GPT strategy?
> If you're PXE-booting, why have an MBR at all?
>
>> >> fdisk doesn't like these Western Digital drives for some whacky reason
>> >> when I specify fdisk -BIq /dev/ad4, etc... and only after I go in and
>> >
>> > What exactly do you mean by "doesn't like"?
>>
>> Sorry... should have included that detail... it's an on-and-off issue
>> where sometimes the drives do properly slice themselves and sometimes
>> they don't. Not sure why it's so twitchy...
>>
>> %fdisk -BIq /dev/ad4
>> ******* Working on device /dev/ad4 *******
>> fdisk: invalid fdisk partition table found
>> %ls /dev/ad4*
>> /dev/ad4      /dev/ad4s1
>
> Is this the error case or the good case?  It looks good to me.  The error
> is because an invalid fdisk partition table existed prior to creating the
> one-slice-for-entire-disk MBR:
>
> % truncate -s 1m test
> % mdconfig -af test
> md1
> % ls /dev/md1*
> /dev/md1
> % fdisk -BIq /dev/md1
> ******* Working on device /dev/md1 *******
> fdisk: invalid fdisk partition table found
> % ls /dev/md1*
> /dev/md1   /dev/md1s1
> % fdisk -BIq /dev/md1
> ******* Working on device /dev/md1 *******

Sorry.. yes, this was the positive case.
Thanks,
-Garrett