Just for the record, I add options GEOM_PART_BSD and GEOM_PART_MBR to my kernel config (I want to see what gpart was saying abount my disks). At boot time I get some messages as: GEOM: ad4s2: geometry does not match label. GEOM: ad4s2: media size does not match label. and more important: hald eats up cpu time and can't answer to lshal. Removing those options resolve the problem. Henri PS - I'm ready to test some patches