[9fans] disappearing partitions understood

[9fans] disappearing partitions understood

[plan9fans]

Hi,

For the archives (as others asked as well as me).

If you forget to fdisk your partitions and only prep them
then the kernel will know about the partitions (prep
writes them to /dev/sd??/ctl), and venti will run fine.

On reboot 9load doesn't try to reload /dev/sd??/ctl because
they haven't been fdisk'ed and thus look like blank disks,
your reference to '#S/sd06/arenas0' points to a non-existant
partition, venti cannot come up, the kernel prints an error
and then stackdumps pushing the error off the screen.

I couldn't find an RS232 cable with a crossover at home
to use the serial console and see the error message.

Thanks and kudos to whoever left #define parttrace in
/sys/src/boot/pc/devsd.c, twas very obvious with this turned on.

All comes down to RTFM-MC (more carefully) on my behalf.

I now have Venti.

-Steve