[j-nsp] Partition/Format new HD

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:50:51 -0400
> From: Brendan Mannella <bmannella at teraswitch.com>
> 
> Yes, but that command did not work for me until I did "request system
> snapshot partition" first. Then I did "request system partition hard-disk"
> 
> Initially I replaced the bad disk with a brand new SSD out of the box,
> booted and ran. "request system partition hard-disk" and I got the following
> error..
> 
> root at ibr1.pit> request system partition hard-disk
> mount: /dev/ad1s1e on /altconfig: incorrect super block
> ERROR: Can't access hard disk, aborting partition.
> 
> Not until I ran "request system snapshot partition" first did it work.

Yes, but it was the dd(1) that fixed the real problem. The disk was
pre-formatted for either FAT or NTFS and that resulted in a partition
table on the drive that FreeBSD (JunOS) could not work with. The dd(1)
command blanked the partition table on the drive so the 'request system
partition hard-drive' command could do the job.

I believe that the sequence of things (at the FreeBSD level) is:
Check for /dev/ad1s1
If it is not found, fdisk to create it.
bsdlabel to partition the slice

If the disk is already FAT or NTFS formatted, it will have /dev/ad1s1,
but it won't be a FreeBSD type slice, so bsdlabel will fail (as it did).
Wiping the partition table prevents this and causes fdisk to be run
before bsdlabel.

I am pretty sure that just doing the dd followed by the 'request system
partition hard-disk' would have done the job.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751