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From: dillon@best.com (Matt Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: sysinstall and trying to add new disks
Date: 16 Jun 1995 22:49:04 -0700
Organization: Best Internet Communications, Inc. (info@best.com)
Lines: 49
Message-ID: <3rtqd1$91d@shell1.best.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: shell1.best.com
Not to try to put a black mark on FreeBSD, but it is nearly
*impossible* to add new SCSI disks to an already configured system.
I spent 4 hours today trying to get the system to recognize a valid
partition table, and I am not a stupid person! I can access the disks
just fine with /dev/rsd1, /dev/rsd2, etc..., but FreeBSD refused to
write out parameters I tried to set with FDisk and /stand/sysinstall
complained continuously about bad geometries... but even when I set the
geometry to something it accepts (remember, these disks are never
touched by DOS), and go through the whole process of using the 'A'
option to sysinstall's fdisk portion and go through the whole disklabel
assignment process and, since it is impossible to make sysinstall
commit to disk at that point, go through an ENTIRE dummy install,
sysinstall still refused to touch the new disks. It *thought* everything
was hunky-dory but you reboot the system and it turns out the new
disks weren't touched *AT ALL*.
Hell, I even booted into dos and initialized the DOS partition tables
for the new disks with DOS FDisk, then rebooted into FreeBSD and
tried to run sysinstall to re-fdisk and partition them... no go.
I wound up having to reboot the system from floppy and reinstall
the whole damn thing from the boot disk (again with sysinstall),
INCLUDING sd0 which I had to completely redo, destroying the previous
working installation.
Now, I am not usually a complainer, but I am beginning to wonder
what the hell was in the mind of the person who wrote sysinstall
that you have to basically re-fdisk and repartition your entire
system simply to add a new never-before-used disk! All I want
to do is add a new disk. I don't want to have to guess at parameters
(which you basically have to do with 'fdisk' and 'disklabel', I
don't want to install anything on the new disks... I don't even
want it to newfs the new partitions! All I want is to get them to
the point where the system recognizes a valid partition table.
I have a suggestion: Add an option to sysinstall that allows you
to commit FDISK and PARTITION table changes immediately, without
having to go through a dummy installation (which, I have said,
doesn't even work any more with the latest sysinstall!)
Apart from that, FreeBSD is *GREAT*!
-Matt
--
Matthew Dillon VP Engineering, BEST Internet Communications, Inc.
<dillon@best.com>, <dillon@apollo.west.oic.com>
[always include a portion of the original email in any response!]