# FreeBSD doesn't recognize the partitions it creates during install



## stobbsm (Jan 11, 2013)

Hi, first time on the forums here, but I wish it was for better reasons. 

Running the install from a USB stick results in a pretty normal way, except that I have to set geom.debugflags to 16 before partitioning. 

I have 4 HD's, first has Ubuntu, second Windows 8, third Arch Linux, and trying to install FreeBSD 9.1 to the fourth. Partition is done automatically on ada3, and everything seems to work. 

On reboot, it's looking for a graid(8) drive, that doesn't exist, and fails to find any of the partitions it is making. 

Both Linux installs detect the BSD got partitions, and so does Windows, but it will not boot. 

Any help out there? I would really like to use this OS.


----------



## TroN-0074 (Jan 11, 2013)

Are you using GRUB2 from Ubuntu to boot all your Operating Systems?
If so, then you need to modify /etc/grub.d/40_costum

add 
	
	



```
menuentry "FreeBSD" { 
set root=(hd0,1) 
chainloader +1
}
```

Replace (hd0,1) with the partition in which you installed FreeBSD
Then you can run in a Ubuntu terminal


```
sudo update-grub
```

Good luck to you.


----------



## wblock@ (Jan 11, 2013)

stobbsm said:
			
		

> Hi, first time on the forums here, but I wish it was for better reasons.
> 
> Running the install from a USB stick results in a pretty normal way, except that I have to set geom.debugflags to 16 before partitioning.



First, don't do that.  Setting that flag is turning off a safety feature.  It is almost never needed.  The one time it is needed is if you are trying to modify a partition that is mounted, generally a mistake.



> I have 4 HD's, first has Ubuntu, second Windows 8, third Arch Linux, and trying to install FreeBSD 9.1 to the fourth. Partition is done automatically on ada3, and everything seems to work.



Okay.  Before continuing, let me just point out the many advantages of VMs.  You can run more than one at the same time, for one, they can share a hard disk, setup is unlikely to break a fragile multi-boot system, and VM software like VirtualBox is free.  But people love multi-boot (I suspect because it's more difficult, same reason people like inkjet printers), so let's continue.



> On reboot, it's looking for a graid(8) drive, that doesn't exist, and fails to find any of the partitions it is making.



What that means is at some point, the drive was part of a hardware RAID or pseudo-RAID array, and FreeBSD 9.1 has a kernel module that recognizes that.  See http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=36774 for both the quick and hacky and longer but better ways to deal with that.


----------



## stobbsm (Jan 12, 2013)

TroN-0074 said:
			
		

> Are you using GRUB2 from Ubuntu to boot all your Operating Systems?
> If so, then you need to modify /etc/grub.d/40_costum
> 
> add
> ...



I have this done already. The loader starts, but again, can't find the partitions created by the installer.

[quote wblock@]First, don't do that. Setting that flag is turning off a safety feature. It is almost never needed. The one time it is needed is if you are trying to modify a partition that is mounted, generally a mistake.[/QUOTE]
I was not able to access the drive otherwise.

This drive did used to be part of an mdadm array, but the superblocks have been zero'd before starting this adventure.

Also, I do know about VM's. It worked fine in my Ubuntu VM, under virtualbox, but I was looking for something to use as an additional desktop option to help me focus on work, instead of gaming. I'm not worried about my multi-boot setup at all, which is why I am using a seperate drive.

As a side note, when booted directly from the drive and not through Grub2, the error still persists.


----------



## wblock@ (Jan 12, 2013)

Yes, the error is that the RAID metadata is still on that drive.  It's not part of a filesystem, it's not part of a software RAID, it's data the RAID controller wrote.  To get graid(8) to stop looking at it, you can remove that metadata through the RAID controller BIOS, or with graid(8), or by connecting the drive to another controller which won't hide that data and erasing it.  Please read the graid(8) man page (that's a link) and see the thread referenced in post #3.


----------



## stobbsm (Jan 12, 2013)

Thanks for the hints! My issue seemed to be that since I, at one point, had multiple partitions, each in a mdadm raid, it saw some residue of that meta data before I learned to zero it every time. 

Thank you for all your hints! On my archlinux install I ran 
	
	



```
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdd
```
 and let it run until it was all zeros. 

Now happily building some ports and learning freebsd!


----------

