Re: fdisk(8) no longer capable of altering geometry

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:19:52 +0100
Dario Freni <saturnero_at_freesbie.org> wrote:

> My little follow-up to this issue. This bug is quite critical on 
> products using bsdinstaller such as FreeSBIE or pfSense. I heard
> rumours  that PC-BSD also encounter this problem and had to workaround
> it by  sysinstall.
> 
> Can somebody please take a look at it?
> 
> Thanks,
> Dario

Hi Dario,

The reasons I haven't a filed a PR yet are

a) I've been busy with the real world (school has taken up all my time)

b) I've received no firsthand reports of anyone duplicating these
results, despite repeated requests.  All I have is personal experience,
plus BSD Installer bug reports that suggest that this "must be" the
problem.  But I'd like an independent confirmation of the bug itself,
before filing a PR.

So, I'll ask once again:

Does ANYONE else see the same behaviour that I am seeing?  Namely:

- As root, run "fdisk -u ad1" (or on whatever disk you like)
- Tell fdisk(8) "yes, I'd like to change our idea of what the BIOS
  thinks (of the geometry of this disk)"
- Give fdisk(8) any new geometry values you like
- Be happy with this choice
- Choose to write the new partition table
- Get a "GEOM not found" error (optional)
- Run "fdisk ad1" again and observe that the geometry hasn't changed

I see this on CURRENT as of late last night.

-Chris