Memstick image differences between 8.x and 9.x
Hello, a while ago I downloaded a then current FreeBSD 9 current memstick image and wrote it to an USB pen drive. It didn't boot, but also showed no error. It just did not appear in the list of devices to boot from, after pressing F12 after POST on this box. I thought maybe the pen drive was bad or unbootable or something, and forgot about it. This was for playing around with ZFS, so I went with FreeBSD 8.1 back then. No problems. With FreeBSD 9.0-BETA3 I tried again on another pen drive (known to work ok), same result. It just does not appear in the list of devices to boot from when pressing F12 after POST. Are there any general structural differences between FreeBSD 8 and 9 memstick images which could be at fault here? I didn't really investigate this issue any further than described, just being curious. Regards, Thomas ___ freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: Memstick image differences between 8.x and 9.x
On Sat, Oct 08, 2011 at 04:38:09PM -0400, Glen Barber wrote: > Thomas, can you please zero out the beginning of the 1024 bytes of your > memory stick, as follows (please take care to note the actual device for > your memory stick, and change '/dev/da0' below, as appropriate): > > dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1024 count=1 > > Then re-write the memory stick per the instructions in the Handbook. > Newly added to this section of the Handbook was a note to ensure the > device is _not_ mounted (either manually, or automatically). So you want me to clear the first 1K bytes, and then write the whole image back to the pen drive, did I get this right? If so, I don't understand what we're trying to archive here, maybe you could explain? Anyway, I read it wrong the first time and did the following: I just cleared the first 1K of the stick as it was (with BETA3 image on it), and then put it in when rebooting the box and pressing F12 to get to the boot device list. Without the GPT it showed up in the list, but of course was unbootable when choosen. I then wrote back the 1K with "dd if=FreeBSD-9... of=/dev/sde bs=1024 count=1" and verified the stick to be ok with a cmp(1) of the device file vs. the image file, so the pendrive is in the fresh state it should be. When plugging it in under Linux I get the following: [232309.636200] usb 1-1.1: new high speed USB device number 5 using ehci_hcd [232309.730109] scsi9 : usb-storage 1-1.1:1.0 [232310.729101] scsi 9:0:0:0: Direct-Access Ut165USB2FlashStorage 0.00 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2 [232310.904549] sd 9:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg5 type 0 [232310.905449] sd 9:0:0:0: [sde] 3948544 512-byte logical blocks: (2.02 GB/1.88 GiB) [232310.906657] sd 9:0:0:0: [sde] Write Protect is off [232310.906663] sd 9:0:0:0: [sde] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00 [232310.907303] sd 9:0:0:0: [sde] Asking for cache data failed [232310.907308] sd 9:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through [232310.909803] sd 9:0:0:0: [sde] Asking for cache data failed [232310.909808] sd 9:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through [232311.031811] GPT:Primary header thinks Alt. header is not at the end of the disk. [232311.031825] GPT:1339319 != 3948543 [232311.031827] GPT:Alternate GPT header not at the end of the disk. [232311.031829] GPT:1339319 != 3948543 [232311.031830] GPT: Use GNU Parted to correct GPT errors. [232311.031845] sde: sde1 sde2 [232311.034154] sd 9:0:0:0: [sde] Asking for cache data failed [232311.034160] sd 9:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through [232311.034165] sd 9:0:0:0: [sde] Attached SCSI removable disk [232312.081344] ufs was compiled with read-only support, can't be mounted as read-write Notice the GPT stuff. Of course that's because there can't possibly be an alternative GPT header at the end of the disk unless it's size is the same as the image size. As suggested I fixed it with parted and tried to boot from it again. No joy. I'm starting to believe this box just doesn't know GPT and the BIOS can't handle it at all. This is an Acer AX3960 Core i7 from maybe 6 months ago. Does anyone if the other BSDs have images using GPT, so I might verify? Regards, Thomas ___ freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: Memstick image differences between 8.x and 9.x
On Sat, Oct 08, 2011 at 07:28:55PM -0600, Warren Block wrote: > On Sun, 9 Oct 2011, Matt Thyer wrote: > >On Oct 9, 2011 11:04 AM, "Nathan Whitehorn" wrote: > >> > >> On 10/08/11 19:25, Matt Thyer wrote: > >>> > >> > >There is also the interesting question of actually installing to GPT on the > >hard disk, which is the default in 9.0. Does this not work on some systems? > >If so, do we want to blacklist > >them and use a different default partition scheme? Can we identify systems > >that violate regular PC boot standards and reject GPT? Any data on any of > >these points would be appreciated. > >> > >I don't think there have been any reports of failure to boot properly > >formatted GPT yet. > > Lenovo T420S and T520, from the links above. Install GPT on the > hard drive, try to boot. > > http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=26304 > http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=26759 > http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=98078 As I used parted from Linux to fix the alternate GPT, i.e. put it not at the end of the image data but on the end of the disk, and it still did not appear in the boot device list, the Acer AX3960 should probably be on the list as well. Being a Core i7 2600k system maybe 6 months old, it's rather recent hardware, but doesn't boot from the memstick image. Regards, Thomas ___ freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: cron(8) improvement
On Wed, Nov 06, 2013 at 10:57:12AM +0200, Volodymyr Kostyrko wrote: > >> > >>Shouldn't we encourage packages to use periodic(8) when possible? > >> > > > >Yes but our default periodic configuration in /etc/crontab is only > >configured to be as granular as daily. If this is something that should > >run hourly or at very strange intervals then cron is a better choice. > > So why we shouldn't add something like: > > 0 * * * * root periodic hourly > @reboot root periodic reboot > > I already do this on some machines to take hourly and boot snapshots > with zfSnap. And I think periodic is much better place for such > tasks. While this is the way it has always been done, I'd find it somewhat lacking in the flexibility department, also you might be in for some nasty surprises First, the resolution is limited to hourly, and second, if I'm not mistaken, the jobs are run strictly sequentially. The last point be suboptimal, as the interval may vary wildly. Also, what happens when all jobs' runtime adds up to more than one hour? It's an equivalent of /etc/cron.hourly.d, but going this way we still don't have something like /etc/crond.d. Best regards Thomas ___ freebsd-current@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-current To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-current-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
