Hard drive with GPT detected but not booting on Thinkpad.

[Tracker]

Yeah, this is why I backup at first opportunity after a scare...

Yea but this is so weird - I see the EFI partition on the "good" drive. It booted just fine 3-4 times at least - and then all of a sudden it goes back to not booting, although it is showing up on the menu as a hard drive (just like I described in my opening post).

It's like some kind of magic happening - makes no sense to me.

 

[Tracker]

Ok I _may_ have figured out what I was doing wrong - the /etc/fstab file already had a line for swap space - it was pointing to partition 2 - I somehow stupidly enough added another line to the zfs partition - so that explains why it was showing 8g of swap instead of the 7.75 gb - so that's one explanation.

Other explanation for why it wasn't booting - I think since partition 2 was mentioned in the fstab file - the swap space when being activated was overwriting the efi boot partition.

So the question is - when swap is used on the same zfs partition (I know it's crazy and wrong - was a mistake) - does that affect the data on the drive? Or does freebsd somehow intelligently use the "available" space of the drive to make that allocation?

I'm glad I stuck through with this problem - might have been my silly mistakes rather than some inexplicable error after all - hopefully it doesn't happen again - if it does - I'll just think this was magic to begin with :\

 

[astyle]

Normally, I try not to mess with /etc/fstab or other config files unless absolutely necessary to get something working... Just accept the defaults the installer gives you, and in 5 minutes you can have a brand-new, bootable FreeBSD system that you can build on.

Tuning an OS for best performance is a bit of an art. Normally, you first gotta have some visible reason to mess with sysctls, /etc/fstab, and the like. Otherwise, it may be a wiser decision to just accept the defaults, because they're likely to work fine. If default setup doesn't work for some reason, and a solution involves messing with sysctls, then by all means, go ahead, do your homework, and then adjust the sysctls until your problem is solved. Just make sure you have backups and a way to undo a mistake. Oh, and take good notes on what you did.

Pushing buttons and adjusting settings at random, just because you can - that's not a great approach to learning FreeBSD.

BTW, when you reinstall FreeBSD, I'd suggest going with ZFS, and accept the defaults - that includes just 2 GB of swap. Dunno why you'd need more - Linux wisdom dictates that more swap is generally better, but on FreeBSD, that idea is turned completely on its head. And I'm quite happy with the results I got - I have a couple rigs with 32 GB RAM, and they're capable of compiling even the big stuff like www/firefox... And yes, both rigs have just 2 GB of swap...

 

[Tracker]

Normally, I try not to mess with /etc/fstab or other config files unless absolutely necessary to get something working

Actually the instructions that T-Daemon gave - included editing /etc/fstab - the mistake I made was adding to it instead of editing it. Also, when moving hard drives or changing partitions - it's a better way to put the label of the partition in the fstab file instead of the number - learnt this the hard way with my mistake.

BTW, when you reinstall FreeBSD, I'd suggest going with ZFS, and accept the defaults - that includes just 2 GB of swap. Dunno why you'd need more - Linux wisdom dictates that more swap is generally better, but on FreeBSD, that idea is turned completely on its head.

Currently have low RAM on the machine - so been using swap - makes up for it. Sometimes when swap fills up it becomes slow and then I kill processes. Might upgrade to more RAM soon.

 

[astyle]

Actually the instructions that T-Daemon gave - included editing /etc/fstab - the mistake I made was adding to it instead of editing it. Also, when moving hard drives or changing partitions - it's a better way to put the label of the partition in the fstab file instead of the number - learnt this the hard way with my mistake.

Currently have low RAM on the machine - so been using swap - makes up for it. Sometimes when swap fills up it becomes slow and then I kill processes. Might upgrade to more RAM soon.

I think that a RAM upgrade is a safer option for most of us... if you have free slots on your machine.

My Ideapad actually doesn't have a SODIMM slot, so that forces me to look at other, risky options like a ramdisk. Software-wise, a ramdisk is simple, but it can do a number on your HDD/SSD - after all, it's RAM-style writes onto a disk not meant for random access.

 

[Tracker]

I think that a RAM upgrade is a safer option for most of us... if you have free slots on your machine.

My Ideapad actually doesn't have a SODIMM slot, so that forces me to look at other, risky options like a ramdisk. Software-wise, a ramdisk is simple, but it can do a number on your HDD/SSD - after all, it's RAM-style writes onto a disk not meant for random access.

Definitely agree - it's not ideal - but don't most SSDs come with some kind of wear levelling mechanism? I believe that should not make things so bad - although yes worse than using RAM directly of course.

Wonder if there are any estimates or guides about the wear it can cause - been using this particular disk for a couple of years like this.