I dd'd FreeBSD-10.3-RELEASE-i386-memstick.img to a 4GB flash drive,
and booted it into single-user mode where it appeared as da0. Then,
to resize the GPT to the media (to make space for another partition):
# gpart show da0
# gpart recover da0
# gpart show da0
which appeared to work: the second "gpart show" showed a larger
free space following the partitions than the first, and that
resizing survived a reboot. However, when I tried to create a
4th partition in that free space:
# gpart show da0 # showed 3 partitions and about 3GB of free space
# gpart add -t freebsd-ufs da0 # reported "da0p4 added" (or similar)
# gpart show da0 # showed 4 partitions including the new one, and
# no free space -- as expected
# shutdown -r now
a "gpart show da0" after the reboot showed 3 partitions and about
3GB of free space, the same as before the "gpart add" operation.
In other words, the new partition did not survive the reboot.
I tried several variations, e.g. specifying "-f x" on the "gpart
add" command (followed by a separate "gpart commit"), and I could
never get the new partition to survive a reboot; but labels applied
to the 3 pre-existing partitions using "gpart modify -l" did survive.
Did I do something wrong, or have I stumbled over some obscure bug
in the 10.3 gpart(8)? How do I create a partition, that will survive
reboot, in the free space at the end of the i386 10.3 memstick?