<div dir="ltr"><div>My recent experiments with partitioning on an old Sun system (I used a SPARCstation5, but similar issues) ran into problems when the harddisk geometry wasn't configured in the ZuluSCSI. The ZuluSCSI gives geometry that doesn't work with the installer. I had to override the harddisk geometry in the ZuluSCSI config to match one that came from a 9.1 GB disk I had inserted into the machine. I also had to calculate the correct number of bytes for the image so it matched the geometry (probably would be fine if the image was bigger, but ZuluSCSI will still complain in its log). Once I had done that, the installer seemed to be happy. IIRC the issue is that one of the C/H/S values from the ZuluSCSI is larger than the installer expects and causes something to error out. I can post my notes with more of a step by step on Monday, once I'm back in the office.</div><div><br></div><div>~Daniel</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Jan 24, 2026 at 6:44\u202fAM Andrew Back via rescue <<a href="mailto:rescue@sunhelp.org">rescue@sunhelp.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">On 24/01/2026 12:50, Mouse via rescue wrote:<br>
<br>
>> This appears to go well until the installer runs newfs on the h<br>
>> partition and at which point I get errors [and the label is<br>
>> corrupted].<br>
> <br>
> What has it done before then? In particular, has it written any of the<br>
> other partitions' filesystems? If so, are they usable?<br>
<br>
The miniroot was installed to swap (b) and booted fine and I could mount <br>
root (a) without issue.<br>
<br>
> I'm also wondering if the problem is actually with the partition it<br>
> wrote just before h; it could be that that one corrupted the label and<br>
> nothing noticed until it went to newfs h. What order does it write<br>
> things in?<br>
<br>
I need to retry this to be sure. I suppose I could also try manually <br>
using newfs instead of running suninstall, and seeing at what point the <br>
table appears to get corrupted.<br>
<br>
> I massaged your layout text into readbility and had a look. I would<br>
> expect it to have written /usr and /var, at least, before doing /home,<br>
> but maybe not; as I said, it's been a long time.<br>
> <br>
>> The drive is defined as 19377c, 16h and 63s (10000392192 bytes).<br>
> <br>
> Combined with the layout you gave, I note that h is the only partition<br>
> beginning after the 8G point, which is the limit of 24-bit sector<br>
> numbers. If it writes the partitions in order, writing the end of g<br>
> could have wrapped (eg, at the 8G point) and scribbled on the beginning<br>
> of the disk, possibly including overwriting the partition table.<br>
<br>
I guess I could try a layout that fits within 8G to see if that makes a <br>
difference.<br>
<br>
Andrew<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div>