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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!natinst.com!hrd769.brooks.af.mil!hrd769.brooks.af.mil!not-for-mail From: burgess@hrd769.brooks.af.mil (Dave Burgess) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: [NetBSD] Problem with disklabel'ing a 2nd drive Date: 1 Jul 1993 13:23:53 -0500 Organization: Armstrong Laboratory, Brooks AFB, TX Lines: 74 Message-ID: <20va47$8au@hrd769.brooks.af.mil> References: <scott.741401514@pita> <20t5te$17k@stimpy.css.itd.umich.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: hrd769.brooks.af.mil In article <20t5te$17k@stimpy.css.itd.umich.edu> altitude@css.itd.umich.edu (Galactus) writes: >Scott Burris (scott@pita.cns.ucla.edu) wrote: >: >I've been trying to get a second drive going on our machine here and >: >disklabel is giving me the worst time. > >: Same here. I've tried disklabelling a second drive in systems with >: each of the following: > >: 2 IDE drives >: 1 IDE, 1 SCSI >: 2 SCSI > >: and have never gotten it to work. > >Ok, I've had similar problems. I don't know if this is a FAQ or not. But it >damn well should be. Many of the disklabel problems are caused buy bad files >in /usr/mdec. In particular, /usr/mdec/bootwd, and /usr/mdec/bootsd. I got a >response that had to do with these files are corrupted, and have data in them >where there is supposed to be zero bytes. ( i dunno exactly. If you want the >response i got, just mail me...I'll forward it.) Anyway...You can get good >copies of these files from one of the distribution floppies (i think >install1). OR...if you like, you can ftp them from recycle.snre.umich.edu >(anon of course). > >Hope that this helps....alex... Here is an excerpt from FAQ Section 2. Let's see. Section 2. (Common installation questions) [lots of stuff deleted] 2.5.4 How do I disklabel my second hard drive? The obvious answer is to use 'disklabel -w -r /dev/rwd1d'. Unfortunately, this does not always put a real disklabel on the drive. The symptom is that the drive labels and can be used until the system is reset, at which point the system tries to read the label from the disk. It was never actually written to the disk, so the operation fails. There are also reports that the /usr/mdec files are corrupted in some of the distributions. If you have tried everything else, you can either load the files from one of the many archive sites that keep the /usr/mdec files around, or you can recompile them yourself. Mark Weaver (mhw@cs.brown.edu) provides us with an illuminating answer to this preplexing problem. I had the same problem and there is a simple solution. I'm not sure why this works, but it does. Instead of specifying the entire device path name (ie /dev/rsd0c), only specify the two letters of the device type and the unit number (ie "sd0"). Disklabel figures out the rest, and it works. For instance, the following line works for me: disklabel -w -r sd0 <drivetype> assuming of course that the boot block files are in /usr/mdec/ and the <drivetype> is in the /etc/disktab. Yup, it seems to be there. It is available for anonymous FTP from hrd769.brooks.af.mil. Please feel free to grab it. Several sections of the FAQ are being worked on (right Marc?) and others are woefully short on hard information. I am still soliciting pieces for the FAQ. -- ------ TSgt Dave Burgess NCOIC AL/Management Information Systems Office Brooks AFB, TX