bin/164399: 9.0 installer failures

[Jin Guojun]

--- On Sat, 2/4/12, Devin Teske <devin.teske at fisglobal.com> wrote:

snapped ...

>    In FreeBSD 9, FDISK partition tables can be read and written using the "fdisk" utility, BUT...

 

>    If the disk has a GPT partition table, the device-nodes in /dev associated

with the FDISK partition table ***will not be created*** until you destroy the GPT scheme (using "gpart destroy").



>    This correctly implies that you cannot simultaneously use GPT 
and FDISK within FreeBSD 9 on the same disk, it's one or the other.



I assume this implies a bug for 9.0 installer because 6.4-R has not such problem.

If so, hopefully it can be fixed in 8.3 and 9.1 in next release; 
otherwise, new FreeBSD cannot co-exist with other OS on the same disk 
drive.



>>     PS: The 9.0 seems preparing installation and partitioning the disk like 

>>     Linux. This is no longer a BSD style :-(

>

>    You're not alone. Many of us dislike the "everything on one big root" too.

It's not safe (e.g., filling "/tmp" fills boot partition), and it's not BSD style.

>

>    If you'd like to install FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE with the old style 
partitioning, please try my custom installer that uses the old 
sysinstall(8) (versus new bsdinstall(8)) installer:

>

>    http://druidbsd.sf.net/

>

>    Instructions here:

>

>    http://druidbsd.sf.net/freebsd_druid.shtml

>

>    NOTE: However, since you've written GPT layout to disk, you'll 
have to clear that before you can use sysinstall(8). No bother, just 
boot into the installer and then press Alt+F4 to go to the "holo shell" 
where you type first "rescue" (hit ENTER) and then "gpart destroy 
DISKNAME" (where DISKNAME is something like "ada0" -- use "sysctl 
kern.disks" to list disks available).



Unfortunately, gaprt destroy does not work. "ls -l" shows that /dev/ad0 
is a symlike to /dev/ada0, howevr, "gpart destroy ada0" returns Invalid 
argument error:



gpart: arg0 'ada0': Invalid argument



and "gpart destroy /dev/ada0" returns the same error. 

"gpart list -a" and "gpart show" does not output any thing. Installer sees ada0 as an entire disk. 

This looks like a GPT utility tool problem, doesn't it?