Strange GPT Behaviour

[tehgooch]

System Specs:

• CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 5700+
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3
• RAM: 4GB Kingston DDR2-667
• RAID: 3Ware 9650SE 8-Port Hardware RAID Card
• HDDs:
  • 8x1TB SATA HDDs in RAID6
  • 2x4GB CF Cards in a CF->SATA adapter

I am using this for a file / general purpose server as I am a huge digital packrat. I am using the mirrored CF cards to store the keyfile for my GELI encrypted RAID array. I had the RAID card from a previous project and decided to use it for this, it cost a lot and I didn't want to just leave it lying around unused. I am kind of leery about ZFS as it sounds like it would be a huge pain to upgrade the disks at a later date, so I decided to stick with UFS. Also, I didn't like the prospect of typing in 8 passwords every time I wanted to reboot the server. At first I thought that GELI was the culprit, but after detaching the GELI volume and trying to create GPT partitions the same issue came up.

The Problem:
I can't create more than 4 GPT partitions on my huge array of 8 disks without getting a kernel panic. I initially started on FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE (I could create 5 partitions before a page fault on 8.1), however I noticed 8.2-RELEASE was out and found the same issue. I have tested the RAM on this machine and it passes several runs of memtest86+.

How to Reproduce Issue:

1. Boot from the FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE dvd1 media and start the fixit shell
2. Create a GPT scheme on the disk.
   

   gpart create -s gpt da0

3. Make four partitions (5G is the size I was using for /, partitions were of various sizes)
   

   gpart add -i 1 -s 5G -t freebsd-ufs da0
   ...
   gpart add -i 4 -s 5G -t freebsd-ufs da0

4. Now try to make a fifth and you will get a page fault!
   

   gpart add -i 5 -s 5G -t freebsd-ufs da0

I have no idea what is wrong. I've played around with FreeBSD a lot in the last few months and managed to fix most of my issues with some google-fu, but this one has me stumped and I can't find anything on google.

 

[tehgooch]

Found the issue! Unfortunately it was sort of a PEBKAC. I forgot I was using the -l flag when I was trying it on the server. I forgot to put that in my example. I was just giving them the names of their mountpoint so it would be easy for me to remember later. I did it without the partition labels and everything is working. Although it is a little strange that just adding labels to the partitions would cause this. I've got another issue, but that is for another thread. I'm kind of unfamiliar with this board and couldn't figure out how to mark this as solved.