Return to BSD News archive
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.cs.su.oz.au!metro!physiol.su.OZ.AU!john From: john@physiol.su.OZ.AU (John Mackin) Subject: disk initialization [FreeBSD] Message-ID: <1994Sep25.125013.16033@physiol.su.OZ.AU> Organization: The Land of Summer's Twilight Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 12:50:13 GMT Lines: 30 Many thanks, as always, to the whole FreeBSD team. 1.1.5.1 is working great, and I look forward to seeing 2.0. My question is this: can someone please give a precise, step-by-step description of how to take a newly-attached disk drive to the state where it is accessible through the driver. I just can't figure out how to do it. I know the install floppies do it, and they work (and that's the ONLY way I have ever been able to do it!!), but the scripts on there are (to me, anyway) completely indecipherable (due to the fdisk.script complexities and the amazing control flow). For concreteness: Let's say we have the system installed and running on wd0, an MFM drive. We acquire a new drive, low-level format it under DOS (i.e. it contains NOTHING, no DOS partition table, nothing), take the system down, attach the drive as wd1 and reboot. The kernel has been told to look for wd1 and finds it correctly. Now precisely what commands, in what order, do I use to make the disk usable? Assume I have already constructed a correct disktab entry called "newdisk". Whatever I try ends in some kind of error or other (and doesn't succeed). E-Mail replies greatly appreciated; I'll summarise. Thanks a lot!! -- John Mackin <john@physiol.su.oz.au> Knox's box is a 286. Fox in Socks does hacks and tricks Knox's box is hard to fix. To fix poor Knox's box for kicks.