Subject: Re: Need help - lost access to my NetBSD partitions
To: None <port-amiga@netbsd.org>
From: Lars Hecking <lhecking@nmrc.ie>
List: port-amiga
Date: 01/30/2002 15:26:50
Gunther Nikl writes:
> On Wed, Jan 30, 2002 at 02:22:48PM +0000, Lars Hecking wrote:
> >
> > A3000 with CS MkIII, Quantum Viking II 4.5GB at SCSI id 8; Kick ROM 3.1
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Stupid question (I am not a SCSI expert): Is this a wide harddisk?
Yep. ISTR reading somewhere (maybe even the CSMkIII docs :) that it's a
good idea to use the upper 8 ids for UW disks if you have UW devices and
narrow/wide devices on the same bus. Which I have (one SCSI2 disk on the
other leg of the controller).
> I guess using "scsiconfig" was the mistake. Which program did you use
> initially to partition the disk?
Yeah, I figured that :) I probably used HDToolBox, and switched
SCSI ids later.
> > After that, I couldn't boot NetBSD anymore from the bootblock, it looks
> > like scsiconfig has f!cked up the RDB.
>
> This seems to indicate that you used a different tool to setup the disk
> in the first place...
That is clear, but why should that make a difference? I thought that
RDB is standard?
> Can't you use HDToolBox to restore the RDB? I guess using the FORCE
> option of rdbread won't do any harm. You will only loose your new
> scratch partition. Hopefully, you haven't written anything to disk
> after you played with "scsiconfig".
Nope.
HDToolbox doesn't have (direct) RDB operations. I didn't use it because
when I tried to read the disk geometry with it, it gives me completely and
obviously bogus values.
> > a newer version of FFS, and then proceeded with instructions how to create
> > a patched FFS version 44.4 from the one on the WB3.1 Install disk.
>
> You do only need this if you want to use FFS on a partition beyound or
> crossing the 4GB limit.
Currently not the case, even with that new scratch partition.
> > Important question: how do I get my software to recognise the proper disk
> > geometry again? If a low-level format is required, so be it
>
> The problem is that SCSIConfig has a different opinion than other tools
> used to partition a disk. I think if you create partitions with SCSIConfig
> and then format these with the AmigaOS format command, everything will
> work under AmigaOS. You will quite likely still have problems with NetBSD.
> However, I always thought that the warnings from the NetBSD amigaos FFS
> code are harmless...
Right. It looks like I will have to go the HDToolBox route, even if it
means loss of all data. Maybe rdbread FORCE first ...
Thanks! Much appreciated!