Are these errors during installation normal?

[sofakng]

I've been running OmniOS with ZFS (and the napp-it GUI), but I'd like to give FreeNAS a try.

However, when I boot to the FreeNAS 9.3 stable CD-ROM, during the boot I see the following two messages:

Code:

GEOM_PART: integrity check failed (cd0, MBR)
GEOM_PART: integrity check failed (iso9660/FreeNAS_INSTALL, MBR)

...and then during the actual installation, I pick my 'da0' drive to install FreeNAS and it appears to be creating partitions but I see the following:

Code:

gpart: arg0: ‘da0’: Invalid argument
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
…
da0 created
da0p1 added
da0p2 added
active set on da0

Is that normal? Should I be concerned about either message?

 

[BigDave]

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[sef]

That's all normal.

The complaint about da0 is because it didn't have a GPT partition to begin with. But that's okay, because the command is destroying it.

 

[Horia Georgescu]

That's all normal.

The complaint about da0 is because it didn't have a GPT partition to begin with. But that's okay, because the command is destroying it.

9 months after and the error is still there.... not only that, but as it goes through the partition creation copying files etc. eventually the installation fails. Returning to the install w/o rebooting is possible but new errors show up... This time gpart: geometry 'da0': File exists
Could not do anything with da0, skipping
Disk is too small (8GB ?!) to install Freenas
The Freenas installation on da0 has failed.

 

[sef]

9 months after and the error is still there.... not only that, but as it goes through the partition creation copying files etc. eventually the installation fails. Returning to the install w/o rebooting is possible but new errors show up... This time gpart: geometry 'da0': File exists
Could not do anything with da0, skipping
Disk is too small (8GB ?!) to install Freenas
The Freenas installation on da0 has failed.

Don't think I have enough information to help you there.

The "geometry 'da0': File exists' means that there is already a GPT partitioning scheme.

The message "Could not do anything with da0, skipping" means that it was unable to create partitions on it.

"Disk is too small" means that since it could not create partitions on it, the size of the freenas partition was 0.

 

[Horia Georgescu]

Hi and thanks for trying. :)
And thanks to those who made this available for free to the large community of users.

I've tried the installation procedure on two computers, neither one too new (config shared on dropbox - link below), and on both the installation failed in different stages.
I realize that the code is used by thousands of hobbyists - so a failure here and there doesn't concern anyone too much.
But in the spirit of good programing I'd suggest better exception handling.
If the human at the keyboard is giving the green light to install on a specific media, the process should go through whatever steps are necessary to accomplish that task. Error messages should have a purpose, if they can't be addressed, is difficult to know how healthy is one's installation in the long run.

Anyway - I'll think of any other possible approach to getting further into installation and testing.
Thank you
hg
Here I saved the output of lshw on an Intel dc5800 (HP desktop PC), and prtconf (illumos) for an AMD based PC, the two computers where I tried to do the installation on a 8GB and a 32GB Kingston USB datatraveler sticks. Just to show the configurations.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/cqx85byqo93e50h/AABq4HXp6mafXnOyqVGkBWM7a?dl=0