port-sgimips/46958: sgimips ip32: hard drive parameters incorrect (way too small - no room to install)

[sharpzq4300%gmail.com@localhost]

>Number:         46958
>Category:       port-sgimips
>Synopsis:       sgimips ip32: hard drive parameters incorrect (way too small - 
>no room to install)
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       high
>Responsible:    port-sgimips-maintainer
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Sat Sep 15 16:30:01 +0000 2012
>Originator:     Adam
>Release:        NetBSD-5.1.2 sgimips
>Organization:
none
>Environment:
uname: not found
(This is the minimal system in RAM intended for installing)
(ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-5.1.2/sgimips/binary/kernel/netbsd-INSTALL32_IP3x.gz)
>Description:
I am intending to install NetBSD on an SGI O2, MIPS32, R5000, 200MHz, 128MB RAM.

The system hardware works, as I am able to boot IRIX use the GUI or ssh into 
the system.

I am doing a network boot, using a PXE/TFTP server based on a ubuntu system.  
That is properly configured because I have used it to boot an i386 machine with 
pxelinux.0.

To make the boot server work with the O2, I had to set:

* (Disable "Path Maximum Transfer Unit", otherwise SGI Prom won't find the 
kernel)
#echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_no_pmtu_disc
* (Set the port range usable by the SGI PROM)
#echo "2048 32767" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range

Following successful boot into the install system, I noticed very strange 
numbers in the partitioner.  I was not able to allocate more then 28MB to the 
drive, which led to a full filesystem and a failed install.


>How-To-Repeat:
I followed the manual at: 
ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/NetBSD-5.1.2/sgimips/INSTALL.html 

As a note, I am totally new to BSDs, but I am experienced with Linux.  So I 
don't fully understand what I needed to set up with regard to the partitions a 
and c.

but the installer only allowed me to do one thing: shrink down from the default 
size and leave room for nothing else.

---------------------------------------------------------
You can now change the sizes ... The default is to allocate all the space to 
the root file system...

Free space will be added to the partition marked with a '+'.

     MB     Cylinders   Sectors   Filesystem
>   184(28)       202   378144  + /
      0             0        0    swap
      0             0        0    tmp (mfs)
      0             0        0    /usr
      0             0        0    /var
      0             0        0    /home
Add a user defined partition
Change input units (sectors/cylinders/MB)
Reduce partition sizes by 156MB (320112 Sectors)
---------------------------------------------------------


So I reduced the root to 28 MB.

---------------------------------------------------------
You can now change the sizes ... The default is to allocate all the space to 
the root file system...

Free space will be added to the partition marked with a '+'.

     MB     Cylinders   Sectors   Filesystem
>    28            31    58032  + /
      0             0        0    swap
      0             0        0    tmp (mfs)
      0             0        0    /usr
      0             0        0    /var
      0             0        0    /home
Add a user defined partition
Change input units (sectors/cylinders/MB)
Accept partition sizes. Free space 0MB, 13 free partitions.
---------------------------------------------------------

Having no idea why I could only allocate 28MB out of 36000MB, I accepted and 
carried forward.

---------------------------------------------------------
We now have your BSD-disklabel partitions as:
This is your last chance to change them.

Start MB End MB Size FS type  Newfs  Mount  Mount point
a:     4    31    28 FFSv1    Yes    Yes    /
b:     0     0     0 unused
c:     0    31    32 Whole disk
d:     0     3     4 Boot partition
Show all unused partitions
Change input units (sectors/cylinders/MB)
Partition sizes ok
---------------------------------------------------------

-Here I tried to increase the size of a: since I read that the root partition 
should take up the majority of the hard drive, (as with Linux).

---------------------------------------------------------
The current values for partition 'a' are,
Select the field you wish to change:

             MB  cylinders    sectors
FStype       FFSv1
start:           4          5       9360
size:           28         31      58032
end:            32         36      67392
newfs:         Yes
avg file size:   4 fragments
block size:   8192 bytes
fragment size:1024 bytes
mount:         Yes
mount options:
Change input units (sectors/cylinders/MB)
Restore original values
Partition sizes ok
------------------------------------------------------------

For the size field, I selected 30000MB, to use up the space.  I got this error 
message:
|=================================================================|
|with this value, the partition end is beyond the end of the disk.|
|Your partition size has been truncated to 28MB                   |
|=================================================================|

So much for that idea.  Something is telling the installer my hard drive is 
really really small.

So I accepted the sizes. The installer successfully runs "/usr/mdec/sgivol -f 
-w boot /usr/mdec/ip3xboot sd0"

It also successfully runs newfs, and fsck, according to a message.  Then I 
selected the "Progress bar" display of the unpacking, and then selected d:NFS, 
for the source of the files.

I get maybe the first two files transfer properly, then I get hundreds or 
thousands of errors flying by on my screen, all of them saying things like:

"/targetroot: write failed, file system is full."
"uid 0, pid 405, command tar, on /targetroot: file system full"

So this is just a result of the earlier problem with the limited space for 
partitioning.

The problem seems to be related to detection of the size of the drive.  I don't 
know if for some reason 36GB has gone over a limit, but I don't want to use a 
smaller 9gb drive which contains the IRIX system.

I can report that I successfully used IRIX to make a filesystem span the entire 
36GB and I could copy files to it.  So this is not a hardware limitation.
>Fix:
All I can say is that the drive size needs to be detected correctly so there is 
room to finish the install.