Subject: Re: unbootable new disk?
To: Wolfgang S. Rupprecht <wolfgang+gnus20041124T094526@dailyplanet.dontspam.wsrcc.com>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: current-users
Date: 11/24/2004 18:36:54
[ On , November 24, 2004 at 10:01:47 (-0800), Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: unbootable new disk?
>
> When I had unbootable disks under netbsd I found it useful to dd over
> the first track of the disk and start again.  For a while (and perhaps
> still???) fdisk and friends didn't correctly initialize a disk that
> looked like it might be being shared between two OS's.

Indeed -- there should probably be an option in sysinst to allow the
user to to at least the moral equivalent of formatting the disk before
installing on it, even if it is only going to do "dd if=/dev/zero
of=/dev/rwd0d count=10".

Having to tell users to drop down to a shell and do this themselves by
hand is rather inappropriate -- at least for a tool like sysinst!

-- 
						Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098                  VE3TCP            RoboHack <woods@robohack.ca>
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