freebsd stable - Jan 2010 - bin/115406: [patch] gpt(8) GPT MBR hangs award BIOS on boot

I have a few questions about this PR:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=115406&cat=bin

1) Is this bug now officially fixed as of 8.0-RELEASE? Ie, can I
expect to set up a completely GPT-based system using an Intel
D945GCLF2 board and not have the installation crap out on me later?

2) The very last entry into the PR states the following:
"The problem has been addressed in gart(8) and gpt(8) is obsolete, so
no follow-up is to be expected at this time. Close the PR to reflect
this."

What exactly is "gart" and where do I find it's manpage,
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi comes up with nothing? Also, does
this mean that GPT is _NOT_ in fact fixed regarding this bug?

Thanks.

- Sincerely,
Dan Naumov

On Mon, Jan 11, 2010 at 06:15:45PM +0200, Dan Naumov
wrote:
> I have a few questions about this PR:
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=115406&cat=bin
> 
> 1) Is this bug now officially fixed as of 8.0-RELEASE? Ie, can I
> expect to set up a completely GPT-based system using an Intel
> D945GCLF2 board and not have the installation crap out on me later?
> 
> 2) The very last entry into the PR states the following:
> "The problem has been addressed in gart(8) and gpt(8) is obsolete, so
> no follow-up is to be expected at this time. Close the PR to reflect
> this."
> 
> What exactly is "gart" and where do I find it's manpage,
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi comes up with nothing? Also, does
> this mean that GPT is _NOT_ in fact fixed regarding this bug?
It's a typo -- it should have read gpart(8).

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                   jdc@parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

Dan Naumov wrote:
> What exactly is "gart" and where do I find it's manpage,
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi comes up with nothing? Also, does
> this mean that GPT is _NOT_ in fact fixed regarding this bug?
That's gpart(8).  With a 'p'.  gpart has had significant amounts of
work put into it for 8.0 release, and a lot of people are using it for
eg. ZFS-root based systems, so it will probably work for you.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                   7 Priory Courtyard
                                                  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey     Ramsgate
                                                  Kent, CT11 9PW

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> 1) Is this bug now officially fixed as of 8.0-RELEASE? Ie, can I
> expect to set up a completely GPT-based system using an Intel
> D945GCLF2 board and not have the installation crap out on me later?
>
> 2) The very last entry into the PR states the following:
> "The problem has been addressed in gart(8) and gpt(8) is obsolete, so
> no follow-up is to be expected at this time. Close the PR to reflect
> this."
Hello list. Referring to PR:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=115406&cat=bin

I have now been battling with trying to setup a FreeBSD 8.0 system
using GPT on an Intel D945GCLF2 board for over 24 hours and it looks
to me that the problem is not resolved. If I do a traditional
installation using sysinstall / MBR, everything works. But if I use
GPT and do a manual installation and do everything right, the way it's
supposed to be done, the BIOS refuses to boot off the disk. I have
verified that I am doing everything right by employing the exact same
installation method with GPT inside a VMWare Player virtual machine
and there, everything works as expected and I have also been testing
this with an installation script in both cases to ensure that this is
definately no user error :)

Reading the original PR, it can be seen that a (supposed) fix to gpart
was committed to stable/8 back in Aug 27, is it possible that this
somehow didn't make it into 8.0-RELEASE or is this a question of the
fix being there but not actually solving the problem?

Reading the discussion on the forums at
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=4680 I am seeing that a
7.2-RELEASE user had solved his exact same problem by editing the
actual PMBR (resulting in "bootable" flag (0x80) being set and the
start of the partition has being set to the beginning of the disk
(0x010100).) and applying it to his disk with DD. Can anyone point me
towards an explanation regarding how to edit and apply my own PMBR to
my disk to see if it helps?

Thanks.


Sincerely,
Dan Naumov