Common installation errors?

[Allan Jude]

On 2016-05-19 18:11, Eric Dynamic wrote:
> I'm trying to install 10.3 amd64.
> When I get to the "allocate disk space" and say "auto (guided)" using a
> Seagate 250 GB disk that
> was previously used for Ubuntu, each choice GPT, BSD, MBR fails with the
> same error message
> something like "bad geom: ada0".
> Either a different disk will work, or I need to step back to 10.1, so I
> try a Seagate 80 GB disk (also
> with an Ubuntu system using the whole disk) and this time despite some
> complaint that flies by,
> the disk space allocation works and I can proceed with the install.
> 
> I cannot find any reference to "bad geom: <device name>" in a few
> cursory searches, but the place
> to discuss such an error message is in the installation manual, which is
> currently written mostly
> as if most steps will not go wrong. Surely whatever complaint the system
> had about "bad geom"
> was something trivial, or hopefully correctable, since presumably BSD
> supports 250 GB .. 3 or 5 TB
> disks by now; 10.1 supported install on a 1 TB drive.
> 
> May I suggest adding documentation for such common "gotchas" to the
> installation manual? Then
> the installation manual is a one-stop shop.
> 
> Meanwhile, if anyone can tell me what "bad geom: ada0" meant, I'd
> appreciate it, thanks.
> 
> -ecsd (Eric Dynamic)
> Berkeley
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If you switch to the shell console (control+alt+f4), you should be able
to destroy the old partition table: gpart destroy -F ada0

And then create a new one. I am not sure what is wrong with the old one.
If you would like to try to figure it out:
gpart show ada0
gpart backup ada0

And provide those for us to look at.


-- 
Allan Jude