Device not configured

[Warren Block]

On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, David Naylor wrote:

> I booted into single user mode (running FreeBSD 8 RC2) and did:
>
> # dd if=/dev/ad8 of=/dev/ad8 bs=1024k

That command copies the hard drive... over itself.  What were you trying 
to do?

> After waiting a few hours the command completed without problem (ad8 is the
> HDD that has FreeBSD).  After that I got the following:
>
> # reboot
> reboot: device not configured
> # ls
> vnode_pager_getpages: I/O read error
> ls: device not configured

Not good.  Maybe trying to swap back in from swap that was just 
overwritten?

> Pressing the boxes power button results in the above vnode message to spam the
> screen.  The only way to reset the system was to do a hard reset (root was ro
> :-) ).

Did it come back up?

> Is this expected behaviour or something wrong with the HDD?

Not expected, exactly, but not surprising.  The hardware should be fine.

> I have been having issues with VirtualBox where doing IO (network and HDD)
> causes DMA problems resulting in the system panicing and rebooting.  Could
> this be related?

That sounds like a separate problem.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA