*BSD News Article 19617


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From: burgess@hrd769.brooks.af.mil (Dave Burgess)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: Re: disklabeling problems
Date: 17 Aug 1993 16:43:06 -0500
Organization: Armstrong Laboratory, Brooks AFB, TX
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <24rjdo$o7@hrd769.brooks.af.mil>
References: <24qp4r$2la@manuel.anu.edu.au> <1993Aug17.210012.27417@news.weeg.uiowa.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hrd769.brooks.af.mil

In article <1993Aug17.210012.27417@news.weeg.uiowa.edu> jboggs@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu (John D. Boggs) writes:
>Hey, Titus, if you get a useful response could you forward it on to me?  I
>posted a question about the *exact*same*problem* and have gotten exactly
>zilch in the way of answers.
>
>I'm beginning to realize that the idea of support through the net is a bunch
>of crap.  People, don't believe it when that's given as a strong point of
>either Linux or *BSD.  At least 50% of my questions go absolutely unanswered
>(those those that *do* get answered are done so with quality).


OK, I'll rise to the bait.

One of the causes of this particular problem comes from incorrect/bad
bootstrap files in the /usr/mdec directory.  When these are written to
the disk, the area that is supposed to be all zeroes (so it doesn't
overwrite the partition table) is not.

Another is an invalid/incorrect setup.  Using the entire drive without
leaving at least 16 blocks at the beginning of the label will sometimes
cause this.

Section 2.5.4 of the FAQ, which is available by anonymous FTP from
hrd769.brooks.af.mil:~/pub/FAQ describes this problem, or one similar to
it.
-- 
------
TSgt Dave Burgess
NCOIC AL/Management Information Systems Office
Brooks AFB, TX