Error on install yet live cd works fine.

Wuebit

@KOM:

Did you see this when your searched the forums?

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=25112.0

No I didn't find this one on my (so far 5 hours searching)
Thanks ill have a look

Hi I did what jimp said

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=8k count=16

fdisk -I ad0

but the fdisk part gives me this error

fdisk: invalid fdisk partition table found.

KOM

If you have existing GPT partitions then you will have to zero out either the entire disk or at least the beginning and end.

Run fdisk by itself and see your sector count (let's call it sector_count). It will be shown on a line that looks like this:

# fdisk
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5), (FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
start 63, size 83875302 (40954 Meg), flag 80 (active)

size is the same as sector_count

Now run the dd commands like this:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=1M count=2

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=1M skip=(sector_count - 2)

To use the fdisk example above, to wipe the end of the disk try:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=1M skip=83875300

Wuebit

@KOM:

If you have existing GPT partitions then you will have to zero out either the entire disk or at least the beginning and end.

Run fdisk by itself and see your sector count (let's call it sector_count). It will be shown on a line that looks like this:

# fdisk
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165 (0xa5), (FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
start 63, size 83875302 (40954 Meg), flag 80 (active)

size is the same as sector_count

Now run the dd commands like this:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=1M count=2

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=1M skip=(sector_count - 2)

To use the fdisk example above, to wipe the end of the disk try:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=1M skip=83875300

Many many thanks
I'm stuck on the very first part
just "fdisk" gives me this
fdisk: mounted root fs resource doesn't match expectations (regexec returned 1)

KOM

Well, you can do one of four things:

Wipe the entire disk. This can take some time if the disk is big.
Use the gpart command from pfSense Shell to list and remove any GPT partitions
Download a partition manager like GParted (http://gparted.org/) and boot from it to wipe your disk
Based on the size of your disk, take an educated guess as to how many sectors it has (use my example above where a 40 GB hard disk has 83875302 sectors), and then tailor your dd command to use skip=(guessed_sectors - 2)

I'd go with #2

Wuebit

@KOM:

Well, you can do one of four things:

Wipe the entire disk. This can take some time if the disk is big.

Use the gpart command from pfSense Shell to list and remove any GPT partitions

Download a partition manager like GParted (http://gparted.org/) and boot from it to wipe your disk

Based on the size of your disk, take an educated guess as to how many sectors it has (use my example above where a 40 GB hard disk has 83875302 sectors), and then tailor your dd command to use skip=(guessed_sectors - 2)

I'd go with #2

its 320GB (an old laptop hdd)
I'm mega new to linux based commands so would 2 be hard for me?

Wuebit

edit that I guess one of them commands worked it installed perfect this time! cheers for all the help!

KOM

Go to pfSense Shell, run gpart and follow the help to figure out how to list any GPT partitions and remove them.

Doing a dd on an entire 320 GB disk will take awhile.

You could try the following:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=1M count=2

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=1M skip=671002414

KOM

Glad to hear you got it working.

Wuebit

@KOM:

Glad to hear you got it working.

Thanks for the help KOM next step is to see if I can get a wifi running :) using this router!

kejianshi

So…. I wonder if wiping the drive would help (-;