When using sysinstall's partition editor to create partitions the editor sometimes gets confused if they are created out of order (for example b,a,d). I installed FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE on vmware for some testing today and had the following problems when creating partitions: I first used the auto defaults option to see if it would give something sane, it didn't(well, rather sane but not good enough). Then I started deleting the partitions, swap first, then created a smaller swap, then deleted /usr, /var and /tmp, then /, then created a new / and then tried to create a new /usr, which didn't work. It said "Unable to create the partition. Too big?". I am sure it wasn't too big as I managed to create an equally big partition after deleting the newer / and swap partitions and creating them in order (first /, then swap). I have run into this problem earlier, deleting the already existing partitions helped that time too. How-To-Repeat: Probably as described above.
CC-ed to the security officer since there is a real possibility that the FreeBSD installer does delete a lot of data on hard disks. | | When using sysinstall's partition editor to create partitions the | editor sometimes gets confused if they are created out of order (for | example b,a,d). I installed FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE on vmware for some | testing today and had the following problems when creating partitions: | | I first used the auto defaults option to see if it would give | something sane, it didn't(well, rather sane but not good enough). Then | I started deleting the partitions, swap first, then created a smaller | swap, then deleted /usr, /var and /tmp, then /, then created a new / | and then tried to create a new /usr, which didn't work. It said | "Unable to create the partition. Too big?". I am sure it wasn't too | big as I managed to create an equally big partition after deleting the | newer / and swap partitions and creating them in order (first /, then | swap). I have run into this problem earlier, deleting the already | existing partitions helped that time too. | A Sysinstall (FreeBSD installer) bug trashed 1-2 partitions at the end of a hard disk, for me. This bug seems so serious that all installations of FreeBSD are very appropriate for being stopped so long as the bug is not removed. I never found out what caused that. I am not sure if checking with Partition Magic before using the FreeBSD installer would get past a test of adequate safety, that could let the project's staff recommend that as a workaround for the bug(s) in sysinstall. Using Partition Magic can reduce the chance of data loss. But disordered partions are acceptable to Windows 2000. Disordering the primary partition is something that a new user of FreeBSD would be sometimes likely to do since that can get the operating system booting again. Another bug that ought not have got through is this one (for the FreeBSD 5.1 installer): "error mounting /dev/ad0s1 on /dist" The FreeBSD installer (v5) gives that useless error when it never got to load the msdosfs driver from the option not insisted upon, drivers floppy. The code printing that message gets only a Boolean indication of what the problem was!. When Windows NT first came out, it had a format program that would erase hard disk data. Craig Carey, New Zealand
Responsible Changed From-To: freebsd-bugs->qa Assign to qa group
Responsible Changed From-To: freebsd-bugs->brucec Take. I've seen this bug recently.
This looks like a bug in chunk.c from libdisk. The space freed up isn't accounted properly in Delete_Chunk2 if there's not an unused partition following the deleted partition. -- Bruce Cran
Responsible Changed From-To: brucec->freebsd-sysinstall Back to the pool.
sysinstall has been replaced by bsdinstall in FreeBSD 9.x. Closing.