*BSD News Article 62738


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From: Guido Laubner <laubner@ctron.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Disklabel lost
Date: Mon, 04 Mar 1996 09:43:18 +0000
Organization: Cabletron Systems Inc.
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Hi folks,
got two little problems with my newly installed FreeBSD 2.1

My System is : 486-DX66 (Intel), Asus SP3G Mainboard (NCR SCSI =

Controller on board), 40MB RAM, 2 x Conner 1060S (SCSI Disk, 1013MB),
TOSHIBA 3501 CDROM (SCSI), SPEA Mercury P64 Graphics

Problem 1:
When installing FreeBSD 2.1 (from CDROM, Walnut Creek), I was asked
to create a partition table. I wanted to dedicate disk #2 to FreeBSD 2.1
(Disk #1 contained : MSDOS "Slice" 300 MB, a NETBSD slice and a free =

slice, I don=B4t know the sizes of the netbsd and free slices).
Now, in the dialog to create a partitions in slices, there=B4s not enough
room to hold all i got with the "A"-command, so i decided to delete all
partitions on sd0 (=3D=3DDisk #1). Unfortunatley this seems to wreck the
disklabel on sd0 for the netbsd slice. Also it wrecked the MBR for sd0
since it seems to be problem with geometry translation. FreeBSD
installed fine, but after rebooting when i was asked for what i want to =

run (F?) only F5 for disk2, which is FreeBSD, worked.
Using Norton Utilities is found that the MBR on disk #1 was messy (size =

of partitions still ok, but Cylinder/Sector numbers for Start+End was
wrong). I managed to get MSDOS working again. But no way to set up the
Netbsd and free partitions correctly again (since i don=B4t know the
size of them exactly). I found the disklabel of the (old) Netbsd slice =

using Norton Utilities right after the end of the MSDOS partition. But i =

don=B4t know enough to interpret whats in there.
I=B4m pretty sure that the installtion only messed up this disklabel (does =

it write any bootcode?), so, hopefully, the superblocks and filesystems =

from netbsd are still ok. Actually i could live with getting the data =

off the /usr and /home filesystems (Yes, i know i should have done a =

backup). Does anybody have an idea to get it back ?

Problem 2:
Sometimes, like 3 out of 4, when i "halt" or "shutdown -h now" FreeBSD =

2.1 the systems hangs before or after printing "Rebooting". It makes it =

always up to "syncing disks...". When this happens i must press reset to =

reboot the computer, and i comes up with "CMOS checksum incorrect".
So i do load the defaults and modify them as needed (new date/time etc.)
The system then comes up fine and is running ok, til next shutdown or =

halt. I=B4m stilling running the kernel that i got from the installation,
may this be a problem ? Any ideas ?

Since i don=B4t have access to news very often, would you please reply by
email ?

Email is : laubner@ctron.com   =


Thank you !

Cheers
Guido