Re: Need help - lost access to my NetBSD partitions

["Richard E. Crislip" <rcrislip%neo.rr.com@localhost>]

Hello Lars

Is it possible your HD packed it in. I've had HDs die and they act strange
while they are doing it.


On 30-Jan-02, Lars Hecking wrote:
> 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!
> 
Regards
-- 
Cruisen                                                     _|_
              on AutoPilot with an Amiga   ---o-(  )-o---   and a CoCo
 
                                             Richard