arithmetic is the problem with FreeBSD and gpart. I always create multiple slices. I need all my PRIMARIES and EXTENDED so I can use and test any OS with anything in VirtualBox when I feel like it, using an single machine. You get 6 slices with PcBSD and 7 with FreeBSD, meaning 1 and 2 pass the /usr slice. Anyway, last year I had to leave a fine balance between 517MB - 1000MB of free-space when ever I created my OWN slices with PcBSD-8.2. That was the beginning of it all. Than FBSD made changes to the installer trying to use PcBSD gpart idea (or is it visa-vera), who knows.
Notice my FreeBSD install in my 2nd post. I did not order this but FreeBSD claim the whole drive but not 542.10MB. WHY??? Because it will not work if the whole disk with gpart or who ever. I claim the whole disk with FREEBSD-9.0-RELEASE in a test, just hours ago and IT DID NOT WORK. I'm doing my **FINAL** set-up now. I tested all possible ways and now I know what to do. This time, thanks to
wblock I made all 7 slices using MBR and I claim 79-GB of the 80-GB hard drive. After install and doing a test run, I'll do [sda] to clone the ENTIRE hdd:
USE LINUX FOR ALL OF THIS or LET A LIVE BSD CD GIVE YOU PURE HELL!!!
COPY A PARTITION:
I use the second one for dos 4GB limitation. Never over look the dot, dash, space, etc.
Code:
dd if=/dev/sda2 ibs=4096 | gzip > /b/pcbsd-82.gz
......................................................
dd if=/dev/sda | gzip -c | split -b 3999m - /b/freebsd-90-full-partition.gz.
While all of that is now going on, after backing up my life work, I dd my baby, my other machine 500GB hard drive, wiped CLEAN!!!
WIPE A HARD-DRIVE:
Code:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M conv=notrunc,noerror
Than I move my favorite OS (fbsd-9.0) to my baby PRIMARY-1. This been FreeBSD home from day-1.
RESTORE A PARTITION:
Code:
gunzip -dc /b/pcbsd-82.gz | dd of=/dev/sda2
......................................................
cat /b/freebsd-90-full-partition.gz.* | gzip -dc | dd of=/dev/sda bs-1M
Now all I got to do is add my other partitions, dd-saved as PcBSD, Win-Vista, Win-7[32], Win-7[64] and soon Windows-8 and I hope they did not do the same thing that FreeBSD got twisted up in. Yes it is a math problem, they best to dump gPart or loss out to LINUX completely and I hope they don't sell-out to Google like MySQL did.
Good Luck Everybody
