creating bootable disk with gpart

[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

On Tue, 29 Jan 2013 08:08:19 +0700
Erich Dollansky <erichsfreebsdlist at alogt.com> wrote:

> Hi Warren,
> 
> On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 08:41:10 -0700 (MST)
> Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 28 Jan 2013, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> > 
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > I followed http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html
> > > to create bootable disks with GPT.
> > >
> > > As you know from my former post, I tried to boot via USB from a
> > > GPT disk and failed. I inserted the disk into the notebook and
> > > bootin also failed.
> > >
> > > Irony is that inserting the MBR disk into the USB case results
> > > also in a failure but much later.
> > 
> > What failure?
> 
> it is all getting really confusing for me. When I try now your
> example, it also fails:
> 
> [X220]/home/erich (root) > gpart destroy -F da0
> da0 destroyed
> [X220]/home/erich (root) > gpart show da0
> gpart: No such geom: da0.
> [X220]/home/erich (root) > gpart create -s mbr da0
> da0 created
> [X220]/home/erich (root) > gpart show da0
> =>       63  312581745  da0  MBR  (149G)
>          63  312581745       - free -  (149G)
> 
> [X220]/home/erich (root) > gpart bootcode -b /boot/mbr da0
> bootcode written to da0
> [X220]/home/erich (root) > gpart show da0
> =>       63  312581745  da0  MBR  (149G)
>          63  312581745       - free -  (149G)
> 
> [X220]/home/erich (root) > gpart add -t freebsd da0
> da0s1 added
> [X220]/home/erich (root) > gpart show da0
> =>       63  312581745  da0  MBR  (149G)
>          63  312581745    1  freebsd  (149G)
> 
> [X220]/home/erich (root) > gpart set -a active -i 1 da0
> active set on da0s1
> [X220]/home/erich (root) > gpart show da0
> =>       63  312581745  da0  MBR  (149G)
>          63  312581745    1  freebsd  [active]  (149G)
> 
> [X220]/home/erich (root) > gpart create -s bsd da0s1
> gpart: geom 'da0s1': File exists
> [X220]/home/erich (root) > gpart show da0
> =>       63  312581745  da0  MBR  (149G)
>          63  312581745    1  freebsd  [active]  (149G)
> 
> Of course, there was a da0s1 before on the disk. Shouldn't gpart
> destroy -F da0 have destroyed it all?
> 
even using the image to install FreeBSD 9.0 from a thumbdrive gives the
same result. It seems that old partitions re-appear after a deleted
slice is created again.

I then installed FreeBSD 9.0 from that thumbdrive onto that USB disk
using a MBR schema. Of course, this booted after editing /etc/fstab.

My problem are still the re-appearin partitions. I would like to have a
script which flattens a media and creates new partitions and puts a new
file system on each partition.

There are now two options I have. Looking at the source (would be the
ideal one) or do a hack deleting partitions which might not exist.

The original problem of a GPT device not booting would still be there.

I will go back to my normal work now.

Erich