Re: Need help - lost access to my NetBSD partitions

[Lars Hecking <lhecking%nmrc.ie@localhost>]

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!