PfSense 1.2.2 fails installing - partition error.
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Before anyone flames me to RTFM, I spent the last 4 hours researching and could not find a solution. I have a 320GB SATA HDD. Running pfSense LiveCD 1.2.2 and it loads fine - no errors (except it complaining about the GPT partition table entry is invalid on my main HDD).
"GEOM: ad4: the primary GPT table is corrupt or invalid.
GEOM: ad4: using the secondary instead – recovery strongly advised."So I choose option 99. Then no matter what I try next it always fails when trying to create the slices:
,-<<< Executing
/sbin/fdisk ad4' | ******* Working on device /dev/ad4 ******* | parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are: | cylinders=620181 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl) | | Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1 | parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are: | cylinders=620181 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl) | | Media sector size is 512 | Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1 | Information from DOS bootblock is: | The data for partition 1 is: | sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) | start 63, size 625142385 (305245 Meg), flag 80 (active) | beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1; | end: cyl 660/ head 15/ sector 63 | The data for partition 2 is: | <unused>| The data for partition 3 is: | <unused>| The data for partition 4 is: | <unused>->>> Exit status: 0
,-<<< Executing/bin/echo 'g c620181 h16 s63' >/tmp/new.fdisk'->>> Exit status: 0
,-<<< Executing/bin/echo 'p 1 165 63 625142385' >>/tmp/new.fdisk'->>> Exit status: 0
,-<<< Executing/bin/echo 'a 1' >>/tmp/new.fdisk'->>> Exit status: 0
,-<<< Executing/bin/cat /tmp/new.fdisk' | g c620181 h16 s63 | p 1 165 63 625142385 | a 1->>> Exit status: 0
,-<<< Executing/sbin/fdisk -v -f /tmp/new.fdisk ad4' | ******* Working on device /dev/ad4 ******* | fdisk: WARNING line 1: number of cylinders (620181) may be out-of-range | (must be within 1-1024 for normal BIOS operation, unless the entire disk | is dedicated to FreeBSD) | parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are: | cylinders=620181 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl) | | Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1 | parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are: | cylinders=620181 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl) | | Information from DOS bootblock is: | 1: sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) | start 63, size 625142385 (305245 Meg), flag 80 (active) | beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1; | end: cyl 660/ head 15/ sector 63 | 2: <unused>| 3: <unused>| 4: <unused>**| fdisk: Class not found**->>> Exit status: 0
,-<<< Executing/sbin/fdisk ad4' | ******* Working on device /dev/ad4 ******* | parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are: | cylinders=620181 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl) | | Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1 | parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are: | cylinders=620181 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl) | | Media sector size is 512 | Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1 | Information from DOS bootblock is: | The data for partition 1 is: | sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD) | start 63, size 625142385 (305245 Meg), flag 80 (active) | beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1; | end: cyl 660/ head 15/ sector 63 | The data for partition 2 is: | <unused>| The data for partition 3 is: | <unused>| The data for partition 4 is: | <unused>->>> Exit status: 0
**,-<<< Executing/sbin/bsdlabel -B -r -w ad4s1 auto' | bsdlabel: /dev/ad4s1: No such file or directory**->>> Exit status: 1</unused></unused></unused></unused></unused></unused></unused></unused></unused>The important parts are highlighted I think…
I am using the stock LiveCD - what can I do to fix this? I even downloaded a bootable FreeBSD version, ran the installer until it started installing files (after it successfully created all the disk labels), and then tried to skip the partitioning in pfSense install - but this seems impossible as at some stage it always asks me that it will wipe all data on the main slice - do I want to proceed. No chance to skip.
So what can I do?
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Ok I solved it. Seems like my hard disk had some remnants left over from an earlier OpenBSD install, and after that an IPCop install. So this messed up the partition tables and hence the reason I got the warning about the broken GPT.
I used dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad4 and wrote zero blocks to the beginning couple of gigs and end couple of gigs of the disk. This cleared the error and now pfsense installed just fine.
HTH someone else.