NetBSD Problem Report #46958
From www@NetBSD.org Sat Sep 15 16:28:07 2012
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Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2012 16:28:06 +0000 (UTC)
From: sharpzq4300@gmail.com
Reply-To: sharpzq4300@gmail.com
To: gnats-bugs@NetBSD.org
Subject: sgimips ip32: hard drive parameters incorrect (way too small - no room to install)
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>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.
(Contact us)
$NetBSD: query-full-pr,v 1.39 2013/11/01 18:47:49 spz Exp $
$NetBSD: gnats_config.sh,v 1.8 2006/05/07 09:23:38 tsutsui Exp $
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