format slice

[Alejandro Pulver]

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 21:09:33 +0100
"Freek Nossin" <freeknossin at tiscali.nl> wrote:

> Hello, formatting is almost complete... 
> 
> My new problem is that bsdlabel didn't create a new partition after
> bsdlabel-e ad0s1. Below is an extensive output of some commands, but
> you might want to skip to the last alinea ;). 
> 
> I used fdisk to create a new slice. I copied the exact format of the
> previous slice (on which the windows installation resided), so I
> didn't have to worry about the "overlapping slices". I got this nice
> output:
> 
> pcwin451# fdisk
> ******* Working on device /dev/ad0 *******
> parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
> cylinders=39704 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)
> 
> Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
> parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
> cylinders=39704 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 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 0 (0000),(unused)
>     start 63, size 20820177 (10166 Meg), flag 0
>         beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
>         end: cyl 174/ head 15/ sector 63
> The data for partition 2 is:
> sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
>     start 20820240, size 19201392 (9375 Meg), flag 80 (active)
>         beg: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63;
>         end: cyl 1023/ head 15/ sector 63
> The data for partition 3 is:
> <UNUSED>
> The data for partition 4 is:
> <UNUSED>
> 
> Part 1 is the new slice which I want to use. 
> Then I used bsdlabel to create a label on ad0s1 by typing: 
> 
> #bsdlabel -w ad0s1
> 
> And following the handbook, my next command was:
> 
> #bsdlabel -e ad0s1
> 
> Now I wrote in the text editor (I admit, after 4 tries and a lot of
> reading...):
> 
> # /dev/ad0s1:
> 8 partitions:
> #        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
>   c: 20820177        0    unused        0     0         # "raw" part,
>   don't e: 20820177        0    4.2BSD     2048 16384 32776
> 
> 
> now I wanted to use newfs to create a file system on ad0s1e, but it
> could not. My problem is illustrated by my ls output:
> 
> pcwin451# ls /dev/ad*
> /dev/ad0        /dev/ad0s2      /dev/ad0s2b     /dev/ad0s2d
> /dev/ad0s1      /dev/ad0s2a     /dev/ad0s2c     /dev/ad0s2e
> 
> bsdlabel -e didn't create a new partition, although the output of
> bsdlabel ad0s1 is:
> 
> pcwin451# disklabel ad0s1
> # /dev/ad0s1:
> 8 partitions:
> #        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
>   c: 20820177        0    unused        0     0         # "raw" part,
>   don't
> edit
>   e: 20820161       16    4.2BSD     2048 16384 32776
> 
> How can this be? (and how do I fix it...?)
> 
> Thanks for your help already so far
> 
> Freek
>

Hello,

In my second disk I have free space between two slices so I tried the
procedure by myself.

When I did a 'bsdlabel -w /dev/adXsY' (without editing them) I ended
with a partition labeled 'a', and it instantly appeared in '/dev/'. Then
I did what you have done ('bsdlabel -e <slice>') and it also appeared in
'/dev'.

I do not know about this, but maybe this helps:

1) Try with only 'bsdlabel -w <slice>'. The partition should appear as
'a'.

2) If the partition does not appear in '/dev/' then you can reinitialize
the ATA channel (0 or 1, I think your disk is in 0) your disk is in,
with 'atacontrol reinit <channel>'. For a list of ATA channels
with the devices do 'atacontrol list'.

***WARNING***: do ***NOT*** 'detach' and 'attach' the channel your
device your running hard disk (that contain the FreeBSD you are
running) is connected to (but you can safely 'reinit' it). A 'detach'
removes the disk and slices/partitions from the kernel and powers down
the devices in that channel, so FreeBSD will stall when it tries to
read/write on its partitions ('/', '/usr', etc.). I could detach and
atach it once (in less than 5 seconds), but the other time it crashed
my machine (I had to rewrite this mail three times, because I was
experimenting with 'atacontrol'). It is more safe to reboot the machine.

Best Regards,
Ale