Problems with setup_harddisks

[Brian Sutherland]

On Mon, Jul 26, 2004 at 12:52:42PM +0200, Thomas Lange wrote:
> sfdisk -g -q without giving a device works for me without any
> problems. I'm using sfdisk 3.07, and vmware 4.5.2 only with a BusLogic
> SCSI disk, no IDE disk, no CD-ROM. It even works with a CD-ROM as
> /dev/hda. So, I can't see where your problem comes from.

Thanks for the info and help Thomas and others, but I finally
solved this after some digging. Anyone interested read on.

Basically, im not using the standard fai kernels. My kernels are
debian standard modified as per the fai-bootcd HOWTO for use with
fai-bootcd. So, the config included

CONFIG_DEVFS_FS=y
# CONFIG_DEVFS_MOUNT is not set

this made my /proc/partitions file look like 

major minor  #blocks  name     rio rmerge rsect ruse wio wmerge
wsect wuse running use aveq

   3     0   78150744 scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc 45678
   117627 1305836 1698570 32776 227811 2085920 5677030 -1 1639530
   5582790
   3     1      96358 scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 0 0 0 0 0
   0 0 0 0 0 0
   3     2     586372 scsi/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part2 0 0 0 0 0
   0 0 0 0 0 0


and since the devfs was not mounted, the files /dev/scsi/* did
not exist which confused sfdisk and caused it to give an
incorrect output (i.e. nothing).  

So simply unsetting CONFIG_DEVFS_FS, re-compiling the kernel
and everything works just fine and sfdisk now gives

# sfdisk -d -q
# partition table of /dev/sda
unit: sectors

/dev/sda1 : start=       63, size=   289107, Id=83, bootable
/dev/sda2 : start=   289170, size= 12289725, Id= 5
/dev/sda3 : start=        0, size=        0, Id= 0

There is a bug somewhere, im sure, I just don't know where to put
it:) Maybe with me for not using the fai-kernels package kernels
as a starting point. Also, since these settings are the debian
standard for the kernel, probably somebody else will try it.

But still, thanks for the help. 

-- 
Brian Sutherland

"There has got to be more to life than just being really,
really, really, ridiculously good-looking." -- Derek Zoolander