Other camcontrol recognises device but gpart doesn't

balanga · Monday at 9:15 PM

How can I find some information about a device that camcontrol recognises but gpart doesn't?

root@W520:~ # cam
<INTEL SSDSA2BW160G3L 4PC1LE04> at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,ada0)
<HGST HTS721010A9E630 JB0OA3J0> at scbus1 target 0 lun 0 (pass1,ada1)
<VendorCo ProductCode 2.00> at scbus4 target 0 lun 0 (da0,pass2)

dmesg:-

ugen1.2: <USB Disk 2.0> at usbus1
umass0 on uhub0
umass0: <USB Disk 2.0, class 0/0, rev 2.00/2.00, addr 1> on usbus1
umass0: SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x0
umass0:4:0: Attached to scbus4
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus4 target 0 lun 0
da0: <VendorCo ProductCode 2.00> Removable Direct Access SPC-2 SCSI device
da0: Serial Number 6360941157943159573
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 2000000MB (4096000000 512 byte sectors)
da0: quirks=0x2<NO_6_BYTE>
(da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CACHE PAGE TOO SHORT data len 3 desc len 0
(da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Mode page 8 missing, disabling SYNCHRONIZE CACHE

When attempting to boot from it I get:-

exF
Remove disk or other media
Press any key to restart

JordanG · Monday at 10:50 PM

gpart(8) only shows information about partition tables, more specifically only partition tables that FreeBSD recognizes. If the disk doesn't have a partition table or has one that FreeBSD doesn't recognize, you won't see it in the output of gpart(8).

Which disk is the problelmatic one, what do you believe is there on that disk and why do you try to boot from it?

balanga · Monday at 11:10 PM

JordanG said:
gpart(8) only shows information about partition tables, more specifically only partition tables that FreeBSD recognizes. If the disk doesn't have a partition table or has one that FreeBSD doesn't recognize, you won't see it in the output of gpart(8).

Which disk is the problelmatic one, what do you believe is there on that disk and why do you try to boot from it?

/dev/da0 is the problematic device which stopped working some time ago. I think the data it reports about itself is incorrect
(ie 2000000MB (4096000000 512 byte sectors))

da0: <VendorCo ProductCode 2.00> Removable Direct Access SPC-2 SCSI device
da0: Serial Number 6360941157943159573
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 2000000MB (4096000000 512 byte sectors)
da0: quirks=0x2<NO_6_BYTE>

It does attempt to boot. I was thinking off dding some mbr to it to see what happens.

atax1a · Monday at 11:15 PM

file -s /dev/da0 will check the magic number on the drive and might be informative.

also is it really reporting VendorCo ProductCode? because that could be a dodgy USB adapter.

balanga · Wednesday at 1:53 PM

atax1a said:
file -s /dev/da0 will check the magic number on the drive and might be informative.

also is it really reporting VendorCo ProductCode? because that could be a dodgy USB adapter.

"VendorCo ProductCode 2.00" typically appears in BIOS/UEFI boot menus or disk utilities when a generic or non-standard USB drive is detected, indicating it's a common placeholder for uninitialized or fake flash drives, often seen with cheap USB sticks, but can sometimes be a normal identifier for specific drives during a Windows install or when a system needs a specific UEFI boot setting. It often signals a potential issue with the drive not reporting proper identifiers or being a fake capacity drive, which you might need to address by reformatting or checking the drive's actual health.

Sounds like a dodgy unit. I guess deleting everything on it with dd won't do any harm. But how to do that?

balanga · Thursday at 2:38 AM

Does sound right?

 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1M status=progress

sync

balanga · Thursday at 7:08 PM

balanga said:
Does sound right?

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1M status=progress sync

I left this running for many hours but had to reboot, but afterwards I tried to create a partition on it and it works (for now), but I'm sure the device is flaky and not to be relied upon.

Here's what it shows:
gpart show da0

=>
40 4095999920 da0 GPT (1.9T) [CORRUPT]
40 20971520 1 freebsd-ufs (10G)
20971560 4075028400 - free - (1.9)

dmesg:-

ugen1.2: <USB Disk 2.0> at usbus1
umass0 on uhub1
umass0: <USB Disk 2.0, class 0/0, rev 2.00/2.00, addr 1> on usbus1
umass0: SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x0
umass0:4:0: Attached to scbus4
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus4 target 0 lun 0
da0: <VendorCo ProductCode 2.00> Removable Direct Access SPC-2 SCSI device
da0: Serial Number 6360941157943159573
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 2000000MB (4096000000 512 byte sectors)
da0: quirks=0x2<NO_6_BYTE>
(da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): CACHE PAGE TOO SHORT data len 3 desc len 0
(da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Mode page 8 missing, disabling SYNCHRONIZE CACHE
GEOM: da0: the secondary GPT table is corrupt or invalid.
GEOM: da0: using the primary only -- recovery suggested.

How do I do a recovery?

atax1a · Thursday at 7:16 PM

that's normal when your dd didn't reach the end of the device. per the dmesg, the GPT partition table format keeps a second copy at the end of the device. gpart recover da0 fixes that by copying the one at the start of the disk.