How to replace a partition table

[George Robbins]

In article <1990Mar1.180652.13910 at cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> puglia at cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (Paul Puglia) writes:
> since 1.2.
> 
> The installation worked fine on one system, I was able to create the 
> special files and newfs the partitions I wanted filesystems on. On the other
> system when I went to newfs the first filesystem, I got an error message
> saying that there was no partition table in the superblock!! And when 
> I went to check the what the partition table was with chpt I got an
> error message saying that there was no superblock at all.  Every chpt option


Well, doing a newfs of the a or c partition creates a superblock w/parition
table.  If there's already something that "looks like" a super-block then
it might refrain from doing this.

I case of doubt the simple thing to do is just trash the beginning of the
drive which should force the newfs to recreate both superblock and parition
table - "dd if=/etc/termcap of=/dev/r??a" (where ?? = drive name) is usually
pretty effective.

I wouldn't be too surprised though if it turns out there is actually some
kind of controller or drive related problem - wrong switch settings or wrong
geometry.  Diagnostics aren't to be trusted...

-- 
George Robbins - now working for,     uucp:   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr
but no way officially representing:   domain: grr at cbmvax.commodore.com
Commodore, Engineering Department     phone:  215-431-9349 (only by moonlite)