Re: PR #40571 - NetBSD Atari install fails to prepare 16GB MTRON SSD on ACARD SCSI to IDE bridge

"David Ross" <[email protected]> Sat, 7 Feb 2009 23:00:44 -0800
Newsgroups gmane.os.netbsd.ports.atari
Message-ID <[email protected]>
>  Are you able to complete exactly the same procedure (zero
>  out and then install without AHDI) on a normal SCSI disk?
Well...  It's been a long time since I zero'd my Seagate.  Other than that, 
yes.  If the detail in this mail doesn't help, I'll try zero'ing the Seagate 
first and then doing an install.  At minimum I've done this with NetBSD 
1.6.1 and it worked, but I can't say that's the case for 5 yet.

I re-zero'd the MTRON/ACARD combo (in my Adaptec SCSI controller BIOS, same 
as before).  Then I booted up NetBSD 5 (200902030000Z).  Here's the relevant 
portion of the dmesg:
http://i44.tinypic.com/ac5yl3.jpg

Here's the sd0 (Seagate) disklabel.  (This drive had not been zero'd)
http://i39.tinypic.com/2uo57kl.jpg

Here's the first part of the MTRON/ACARD disklabel:
http://i42.tinypic.com/2lc4sgw.jpg
..and the second part (I did a ctrl-c because there's no 'more' on 
sysinst):
http://i39.tinypic.com/9r0en9.jpg

So even though I zero'd the drive, the disklabel is wacky.  When I did the 
zero'ing operation it completed super fast (a few seconds).  My assumption 
was because the device is a solid state drive.  But I can imagine it's 
possible that the ACARD's implementation of the SCSI zero'ing command is 
"cheating" and not fully overwriting the disk with zeros.

David Ross
[email protected]


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Brownlee" <[email protected]>
To: "David Ross" <[email protected]>
Cc: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 1:17 PM
Subject: Re: PR #40571 - NetBSD Atari install fails to prepare 16GB MTRON 
SSD on ACARD SCSI to IDE bridge


> On Fri, 6 Feb 2009, David Ross wrote:
>
>> Not a blocker for me but worth filing a PR anyway.  I just got around to 
>> trying an install on a different HD and hit this issue.
>>
>> http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=40571
>
>  Are you able to complete exactly the same procedure (zero
>  out and then install without AHDI) on a normal SCSI disk?
>
>  Assuming so, could you boot NetBSD normally and copy out the dmesg
>  and disklabel entries from both disks when they are attached as
>  additional drives (at the same time or separately).
>
>  It *could* be the ACARD daptor reporting a strange value which
>  NetBSD is not handling well...
>
> -- 
>  David/absolute       -- www.NetBSD.org: No hype required --
>