GELI created on a GPT labelled partition doesn't work 2nd time around...

[Karl Pielorz]

--On 28 September 2014 15:05 +0200 Pawel Jakub Dawidek <pjd at FreeBSD.org> 
wrote:

> Could you provide the output of:
>
> 	# diskinfo -v /dev/gpt/abcdef.eli

Sure, after GPTing, geli init / geli attach - the running the above gives:

"
/dev/gpt/abcdef.eli
        4096            # sectorsize
        750155304960    # mediasize in bytes (699G)
        183143385       # mediasize in sectors
        0               # stripesize
        0               # stripeoffset
        11400           # Cylinders according to firmware.
        255             # Heads according to firmware.
        63              # Sectors according to firmware.
             WD-WCAPT0430257s0s0        # Disk ident.
"

In the interim - I wrote a script which matches the drives serial numbers, 
with keys - and does a 'geli attach' on the raw disk (e.g. /dev/da0) - this 
results in da0.eli, which can then be GPT partitioned etc.

Trying to run anything 'against' /dev/gpt/abcdef.eli results in, e.g.

# gpart create -s gpt /dev/gpt/abcdef.eli
gpart: provider: Device not configured

or,

dd if=/dev/gpt/abcdef.eli of=/dev/null bs=1k count=1000
dd: /dev/gpt/abcdef.eli: Invalid argument

If I repeat the above steps without the initial GPT partition (i.e. against 
/dev/da0) - I end up with '/dev/da0.eli' - which I can then GPT fine etc.

-Karl