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Path: sserve!euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yarrina.connect.com.au!warrane.connect.com.au!godzilla.zeta.org.au!not-for-mail From: bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: no magic? Date: 7 Aug 1995 15:09:43 +1000 Organization: Kralizec Dialup Unix Sydney - +61-2-837-1183, v.32bis v.42bis Lines: 23 Message-ID: <40476n$eoc@godzilla.zeta.org.au> References: <3vujfr$91s@hydra.msgi.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: godzilla.zeta.org.au In article <3vujfr$91s@hydra.msgi.com>, Coranth Gryphon <gryphon@msgi.com> wrote: >Hi. I just added a second IDE HD to my FreeBSD 2.0.5R system. >I did the disklabel, and the newfs. Seems like everything is >ok, but on startup I get the following: > > wd1: invalid primary partition table: no magic This means that the disk doesn't have a partition table on it. This is normal for FreeBSD-2.0.5 disks that have never had fdisk or `disklabel -B' run on them. >Is this a problem waiting to spring? Is there a simple solution? If you run `disklabel -B', then the bootblock will probably be written over the partition table area and will probably have the magic number 0xAA55 at the end of it. Then the partition table will be considered as valid. Whether it is equivalent to not having a label depends on what garbage is in the partition table area of the boot block. The garbage in the standard FreeBSD boot block is interpreted as being a valid partition table containing a single partition spanning the whole disk. -- Bruce Evans bde@zeta.org.au