Common installation errors?

[Eric Dynamic]

I'm trying to install 10.3 amd64.
When I get to the "allocate disk space" and say "auto (guided)" using a
Seagate 250 GB disk that
was previously used for Ubuntu, each choice GPT, BSD, MBR fails with the
same error message
something like "bad geom: ada0".
Either a different disk will work, or I need to step back to 10.1, so I
try a Seagate 80 GB disk (also
with an Ubuntu system using the whole disk) and this time despite some
complaint that flies by,
the disk space allocation works and I can proceed with the install.

I cannot find any reference to "bad geom: <device name>" in a few
cursory searches, but the place
to discuss such an error message is in the installation manual, which is
currently written mostly
as if most steps will not go wrong. Surely whatever complaint the system
had about "bad geom"
was something trivial, or hopefully correctable, since presumably BSD
supports 250 GB .. 3 or 5 TB
disks by now; 10.1 supported install on a 1 TB drive.

May I suggest adding documentation for such common "gotchas" to the
installation manual? Then
the installation manual is a one-stop shop.

Meanwhile, if anyone can tell me what "bad geom: ada0" meant, I'd
appreciate it, thanks.

-ecsd (Eric Dynamic)
Berkeley

[Damien Fleuriot]

Post by Eric Dynamic
I'm trying to install 10.3 amd64.
When I get to the "allocate disk space" and say "auto (guided)" using a
Seagate 250 GB disk that
was previously used for Ubuntu, each choice GPT, BSD, MBR fails with the
same error message
something like "bad geom: ada0".
Either a different disk will work, or I need to step back to 10.1, so I
try a Seagate 80 GB disk (also
with an Ubuntu system using the whole disk) and this time despite some
complaint that flies by,
the disk space allocation works and I can proceed with the install.
I cannot find any reference to "bad geom: <device name>" in a few cursory
searches, but the place
to discuss such an error message is in the installation manual, which is
currently written mostly
as if most steps will not go wrong. Surely whatever complaint the system
had about "bad geom"
was something trivial, or hopefully correctable, since presumably BSD
supports 250 GB .. 3 or 5 TB
disks by now; 10.1 supported install on a 1 TB drive.
May I suggest adding documentation for such common "gotchas" to the
installation manual? Then
the installation manual is a one-stop shop.
Meanwhile, if anyone can tell me what "bad geom: ada0" meant, I'd
appreciate it, thanks.
-ecsd (Eric Dynamic)
Berkeley

I would assume it means gpart didn't like your drive or its existing
partitions.



Would you, perchance, be able to drop to a shell and issue the following ?
# gpart show


Here is example output from one of my firewalls :
***@pf1-gs:~ # gpart show
=> 34 142081981 mfid0 GPT (68G)
34 128 1 freebsd-boot (64K)
162 4194304 2 freebsd-swap (2.0G)
4194466 137887549 3 freebsd-ufs (66G)


You may then remove existing partitions (DATA DESTROYED) :
gpart delete -i <partition_number> <drivename>

For example :
gpart delete -i 3 ada0

Once you have removed all partitions, you can destroy the existing GEOM :
gpart destroy ada0



I understand this doesn't fix the installer issue, but at least it should
let you move forward :)