i386/100420: boot1/boot2 lba error

[helio at wyldryde.org]

>Number:         100420
>Category:       i386
>Synopsis:       boot1/boot2 lba error
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-i386
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Jul 17 03:40:09 GMT 2006
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     helio
>Release:        FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p3 i386
>Organization:
N/A
>Environment:
System: FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p3 FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE-p3 #0: Wed Jul 12 21:24:41 UTC 2006 helio at alpha.wyldryde.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC


        nVidia nForce2 UDMA133 controller,
        305245MB <Seagate ST3320620A 3.AAC> hard drive
>Description:
        during a boot drive preparation sysinstall partitions, formats
and installs the dists correctly without throwing any errors, however
during initial boot boot1 or boot2's attempts to load /boot/loader fail
with "error 4 lba #", 0 is common but sometimes will alternate between
two numbers (unfortunately I haven't written them down). GRUB also fails
with an error message on inconsistant filesystem.
        This occurs on two drives of the same line to rule out a
specific drive problem. A basic Debian install boots correctly and the
drives are perfectly usable when newfs'd directly (without an MBR or
bsdlabel). sysinstall seems to also lower the cylinder portion
considerably, to (from my foggy memory) what looks to be the max
positive value of a signed 16bit int, though I don't think it is the
source of the problem.

>How-To-Repeat:
        Install FreeBSD 6.1 or 6.0 onto a drive of model:
        Seagate ST3320620A
>Fix:

        Strangely using GAG off a livecd will bootstrap it fine, but
any other method does not, requiring another drive as the boot drive.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: