GPT partition gets erased on boot

[Bob Bishop]

Hi,

> On 13 Nov 2017, at 04:59, Walter Parker <walterp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm setting up an old Sunfire X4140 system with 4 SAS drives plugged into
> the SUN STK controller. Each drive is configured as a separate device.
> 
> I ran the FreeBSD 11.1 installer and picked guided ZFS install where I
> selected RAID10 (2 2way mirrors) using aacd0, aacd1, aacd2, and aacd3. It
> installed the system and rebooted.
> 
> When the new system came up, zpool status complained that aacd0p3 was
> unavailable. Looking at /dev, I noticed that the only dev file was aacd0
> (aacd0p* were all missing). Using gpart on aacd0 it said there was no geom.
> I was able to run gpart create to recreate the drive geom and then gpart
> add to readd all of the partitions. After recreating aacd0p3, I was even
> able to run zpool replace -f zroot /dev/aacd0p3 and the pool resilvered and
> stopped complaining.
> 
> On the next boot, aacd0 was missing all of its partitions.
> 
> What would cause the partitions on a ZFS drive to disappear?

At a guess, the controller is writing its metadata to the disk and trampling on the gpart data.

> Thank you,
> 
> 
> Walter
> 
> -- 
> The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of
> zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.   -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
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--
Bob Bishop
rb at gid.co.uk