Sysinstall and other do not detect disks

[Nathen Hinson]

Another member of this list recommended showing the output of the dmesg 
regarding my last post: Sysinstall and other do not detect disks

Thanks very much for the reply here is the output of the dmesg :

Copyright (c) 1992-2001 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
	The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD 4.4-RELEASE #0: Tue Sep 18 11:57:08 PDT 2001
     murray at builder.FreeBSD.org:/usr/src/sys/compile/GENERIC
Timecounter "i8254"  frequency 1193182 Hz
CPU: Pentium/P54C (166.19-MHz 586-class CPU)
   Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x52c  Stepping = 12
   Features=0x1bf<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,MCE,CX8>
real memory  = 50331648 (49152K bytes)
avail memory = 44437504 (43396K bytes)
Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc0480000.
Intel Pentium detected, installing workaround for F00F bug
md0: Malloc disk
npx0: <math processor> on motherboard
npx0: INT 16 interface
pcib0: <Host to PCI bridge> on motherboard
pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0
isab0: <Intel 82371SB PCI to ISA bridge> at device 1.0 on pci0
isa0: <ISA bus> on isab0
*atapci0: <Intel PIIX3 ATA controller> port 0xfff0-0xffff at device 1.1 
on pci0
*ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0
*ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0
uhci0: <Intel 82371SB (PIIX3) USB controller> port 0x5040-0x505f irq 11 
at device 1.2 on pci0
usb0: <Intel 82371SB (PIIX3) USB controller> on uhci0
usb0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0: Intel UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
pci0: <Cirrus Logic GD5446 SVGA controller> at 8.0
xl0: <3Com 3c905-TX Fast Etherlink XL> port 0x5000-0x503f irq 11 at 
device 11.0 on pci0
xl0: Ethernet address: 00:60:97:de:e4:3e
miibus0: <MII bus> on xl0
nsphy0: <DP83840 10/100 media interface> on miibus0
nsphy0:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
orm0: <Option ROM> at iomem 0xc0000-0xc7fff on isa0
fdc0: <NEC 72065B or clone> at port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2 on 
isa0
fdc0: FIFO enabled, 8 bytes threshold
fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0
atkbdc0: <Keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x60,0x64 on isa0
atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> flags 0x1 irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
psm0: failed to get data.
psm0: <PS/2 Mouse> irq 12 on atkbdc0
psm0: model Generic PS/2 mouse, device ID 0
vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on 
isa0
sc0: <System console> at flags 0x100 on isa0
sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0
sio0: type 16550A
sio1 at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa0
sio1: type 16550A
ppc0: cannot reserve I/O port range
*ad0: 1222MB <QUANTUM FIREBALL_TM1280A> [2484/16/63] at ata0-master 
WDMA2
*ad1: 4121MB <Maxtor 90432D3> [8374/16/63] at ata0-slave WDMA2
acd0: CDROM <> at ata1-master using PIO4
Mounting root from ufs:/dev/ad0s1a

( I have put stars next to the appropriate lines )

As you can see both the drive controllers and the drive themselves are 
detected correctly. The mainboard is a straight up Intel. Oh, and I 
didn't mention this in my previous post but all of this was being done 
as root. I have also included the output of the fdisk that was 
successful on /dev/ad1. Any sort of operations such as readdressing the 
0 block ( i.e. fdisk -B ) fail with the operation not permitted error 
and or if I apply the -I switch.

******* Working on device /dev/ad1 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=525 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)

parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=525 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)

Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 12,(DOS or Windows 95 with 32 bit FAT, LBA)
     start 63, size 8434062 (4118 Meg), flag 0
	beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
	end: cyl 524/ head 254/ sector 63
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
<UNUSED>

Again thanks very much for any help for attention you can apply to this.

Sincerely

Nathen Hinson
Systems Analyst
On - Site Support
User Services
Information Technology Services
University of Texas at Austin