Re: help with disklabel

["Jonathan A. Kollasch" <jakllsch%kollasch.net@localhost>]

On Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 01:05:31PM -0600, Brook Milligan wrote:
> I am trying to set up the disklabel on some disks that will be RAID
> components.  Despite having created many disklabels, I'm running into
> an issue I don't understand.  Here are some of the commands:
> 
>      # dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rsd4d count=8192 bs=512
>      8192+0 records in
>      8192+0 records out
>      4194304 bytes transferred in 0.654 secs (6413308 bytes/sec)
>      # disklabel -R sd4 label      # see below for the disklabel 'label'
>      disklabel: no space in bootarea (sector 0) to create label
> 
> My intent was to remove all old labels, etc. with dd and then add a
> new label.  I have never seen the 'bootarea too small' message before.
> 
> Any help on how to label this drive is greatly appreciated.

The disklabel mentioned a drive of 1169920000 512-byte sectors
(or about 600 marketing GB), is that what dmesg reports too?

Or, the real question, is the drive over 2^31 sectors?

If it is, you won't be able to use disklabel.  You'll need to
look at dk(4) and related tools.

        Jonathan Kollasch