g4u-help Mailing List for g4u

Aloha,

I am not able to boot 2.5 or 2.6, I get the error message shown here -
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8xb0p58w49ayufz/g4u_error.jpg?dl=0

2.4 will boot but does not recognize the NIC.

The machine is an older Dell 7010.

I am unable to create a bootable USB drive with rufus or other tools - they
say the ISO is unsupported.

Any suggestions?

Aloha,
Matt

Error using g4u v2.6, however v2.5 works without errors.  
Startup Option 2 or 3 does not eliminate the error.   
Hardware:  HP Elite Desktop 8300 CMT
Error on startup:
========================
WARNING: 1 module failed to load
Copyright Cc) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,
2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright Cc) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
NetBSD 7.99.70 CG4U-KERNEL) #0: Mon Apr 17 18:04:20 CEST 2017
fe...@pr...:/Users/feyrer/work/NetBSD/cvs/src-g4u.v2/obj.i386/obj/sys/arch/i386/compile/G4U-KERNEL
total memory = 3475 HB
avail memory = 3404 HB
cpu_rng: RDRAND
RTC BIOS diagnostic error 0x10<memory_size>
uvm_fault(0xc0e17e80, 0xc554f000, 1) -> 0xe
fatal page fault in supervisor Mode
trap type 6 code 0 eip 0xc0fe895c cs 0x8 eflags 0x10282 cr2 0xc554f678 ilevel 0x8 esp 0xf95000
curlwp 0xc0dc8580 pi d 0 lid 1 lowest kstack 0xc0f962c0
panic: trap
The operating system has halted.
Please press any key to reboot
=========================

This may be of interest here… - Hubert


> Hi,
> 
> I have played though the „rebuilding“ steps, and got things going with a few minor changes.
> First the result:
> 
> 	ls -l `pwd`/g4u*fs
> 	-rw-r--r--  2 feyrer  staff  1474560 Mar 17 19:27 /home/feyrer/work/NetBSD/cvs/src-g4u.v3-deOliviera/src/distrib/i386/g4u/g4u1.fs
> 	-rw-r--r--  2 feyrer  staff  1474560 Mar 17 19:27 /home/feyrer/work/NetBSD/cvs/src-g4u.v3-deOliviera/src/distrib/i386/g4u/g4u2.fs
> 	-rw-r--r--  2 feyrer  staff  1474560 Mar 17 19:27 /home/feyrer/work/NetBSD/cvs/src-g4u.v3-deOliviera/src/distrib/i386/g4u/g4u3.fs
> 	-rw-r--r--  2 feyrer  staff  1474560 Mar 17 19:27 /home/feyrer/work/NetBSD/cvs/src-g4u.v3-deOliviera/src/distrib/i386/g4u/g4u4.fs
> 	ls -l `pwd`/g4u.iso
> 	-rw-r--r--  2 feyrer  staff  6567936 Mar 17 19:27 /home/feyrer/work/NetBSD/cvs/src-g4u.v3-deOliviera/src/distrib/i386/g4u/g4u.iso
> 	ls -l `pwd`/g4u-kernel.gz
> 	-rw-r—r--  1 feyrer  staff  6035680 Mar 17 19:27 /home/feyrer/work/NetBSD/cvs/src-g4u.v3-deOliviera/src/distrib/i386/g4u/g4u-kernel.gz
> 
> My build environment:
> 
> - uname -a: NetBSD vmnetbsd.promi.se 7.0_STABLE NetBSD 7.0_STABLE (GENERIC) #0: Tue Nov  8 22:19:10 CET 2016  fe...@pr...:/Users/feyrer/work/NetBSD/cvs/src-7/obj.amd64/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC amd64
> 
> 	Note that I usually cross-build from Mac OS X. No changes for g4u-build were needed, no removeing -m64 etc.
> 	Note this is on NetBSD 7.0 (stable) for amd64, not i386.
> 
> - Sources checked out as documented, with an added „-P“ to remove empty directories. If you have checked-out sources, you can get this with „cd …/src ; cvs up -P -d“. The latter will also create new directories if needed.
> 
> Now about what I had to change in sources from 20170418: There were a bunch of variables that could possibly be used uninitialized.
> God knows why this was not fixed in the sources, but the attached patch does this.
> To apply, something like the following should work:
> 
> 	cd …/src
> 	patch -p0 <…/diff-out.txt
> 
> As you have already mentioned, in g4u-build, „G4U_BUILD_KERNEL=true“ is needed.
> 
> So altogether, this doen’t look as bad as I feared.
> Let me know if this helps, then I can see into updating the build instructions. 
> 
> 
> - Hubert
> 

After a five-year period for beta-testing and updating, I have finally 
released g4u 2.6. With its origins in 1999, I'd like to say:
Happy 18th Birthday, g4u!

>>> About g4u:

g4u ("ghosting for unix") is a NetBSD-based bootfloppy/CD-ROM that allows 
easy cloning of PC harddisks to deploy a common setup on a number of PCs 
using FTP. The floppy/CD offers two functions. The first is to upload the 
compressed image of a local harddisk to a FTP server, the other is to 
restore that image via FTP, uncompress it and write it back to disk. 
Network configuration is fetched via DHCP. As the harddisk is processed as 
an image, any filesystem and operating system can be deployed using g4u. 
Easy cloning of local disks as well as partitions is also supported.

>>> The past:

When I started g4u, I had the task to install a number of lab machines 
with a dual-boot of Windows NT and NetBSD. The hype was about Microsoft's 
"Zero Administration Kit" (ZAK) then, but that did barely work for the 
Windows part - file transfers were slow, depended on the clients' hardware 
a lot (requiring fiddling with MS DOS network driver disks), and on the 
ZAK server the files for installing happened do disappear for no good 
reason every now and then. Not working well, and leaving out NetBSD (and 
everything elase), I created g4u. This gave me the (relative) pain of 
getting things working once, but with the option to easily add network 
drivers as they appeared in NetBSD (and oh they did!), plus allowed me to 
install any operating system.

>>> The present:

We've used g4u successfully in our labs then, booting from CDROM. I also 
got many donations from public and private instituations plus comanies 
from many sectors, indicating that g4u does make a difference.

In the mean time, the world has changed, and CDROMs aren't used that much 
any more. Network boot and USB sticks are today's devices of choice, 
cloning of a full disk without knowing its structure has both advantages 
but also disadvantages, and g4u's user interface is still command-line 
based with not much space for automation. For storage, FTP servers are 
nice and fast, but alternatives like SSH/SFTP, NFS, iSCSI and SMB for 
remote storage plus local storage (back to fun with filesystems, anyone? 
avoiding this was why g4u was created in the first place!) should be 
considered these days. Further aspects include integrity (checksums), 
confidentiality (encryption). This leaves a number of open points to 
address either by future releases, or by other products.

>>> The future:

At this point, my time budget for g4u is very limited. I welcome people to 
contribute to g4u - g4u is Open Source for a reason. Feel free to get back 
to me for any changes that you want to contribute!

>>> The changes:

Major changes in g4u 2.6 include:

  * Make this build with NetBSD-current sources as of 2017-04-17 (shortly
    before netbsd-8 release branch), binaries were cross-compiled from Mac
    OS X 10.10
  * Many new drivers, bugfixes and improvements from NetBSD-current (see
    beta1 and beta2 announcements)
  * Go back to keeping the disk image inside the kernel as ramdisk, do not
    load it as separate module. Less error prone, and allows to boot the
    g4u (NetBSD) kernel from a single file e.g. via PXE (Testing and
    documentation updates welcome!)
  * Actually DO provide the g4u (NetBSD) kernel with the embedded g4u disk
    image from now on, as separate file, g4u-kernel.gz
  * In addition to MD5, add SHA512 checksums

>>> The software:

Please see the g4u homepage's download section on how to get and use g4u.
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/#reqs

Enjoy!


  - Hubert

the message:

panic:trap

The operating system has halted.
Please press any key to reboot.

I used the iso in the link below:

 8. http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.6beta2.iso




-- 
Janiel Oliveira

I only need g4u once or twice a decade.

Currently, I have a couple of Lenovo laptops a Lenovo T440 running
Linuxmint 18.1 and a T520 running Linuxmint 17.2.

I've downloaded MD5 (g4u-2.5.iso) = 75aeeda141c26f6dc4e68d3b69366669 and
checked the md5sum.

I've tried installing it on a USB drive using dd, USB Image Writer, and
UNetbootin. I have not succeeded in getting the USB to boot on either
laptop. Sometimes it returns to the bios boot menu. Sometimes it complains
about a corrupt kernel.

I tried falling back to g4u 1.17. I can't get it to boot either. There is
no md5sum to compare to on the website.

Is there Secure Boot voodoo I need to deal with?


-- 
I don't remember, I don't recall
I got no memory of anything at all
    -- Peter Gabriel

Hubert,


Thank you for getting back to me.  One of your colleagues Rich got back to me with a solution on this.  With his assistance, I was able to copy my RAID array, and complete my project.


I'm not a Linux or Unix guru, but I'll see what I can do in terms of patches/updates and even NETBSD updates.  Sounds like a fun challenge.


Jesse


________________________________
From: Hubert Feyrer <hu...@fe...>
Sent: Wednesday, March 8, 2017 2:29 PM
To: Jesse Fenn
Cc: g4u...@fe...
Subject: Re: [g4u-help] Driver injection


Hi,

On Tue, 7 Mar 2017, Jesse Fenn wrote:
> Is it possible to add storage drivers to the G4U image?  Or to build a
> release of G4U with the IBM Serveraid 6i SCSI drivers?

Sure - the g4u website has instructions on how to rebuild g4u.
If you have any patches/updates, let me know.
I should really try to find time to update g4u to latest -NetBSD... help
welcome :)


  - Hubert

Hi,

On Tue, 7 Mar 2017, Jesse Fenn wrote:
> Is it possible to add storage drivers to the G4U image?  Or to build a 
> release of G4U with the IBM Serveraid 6i SCSI drivers?

Sure - the g4u website has instructions on how to rebuild g4u.
If you have any patches/updates, let me know.
I should really try to find time to update g4u to latest -NetBSD... help 
welcome :)


  - Hubert

Is it possible to add storage drivers to the G4U image?  Or to build a release of G4U with the IBM Serveraid 6i SCSI drivers?  

Sent from my iPhone

Hi Rich,

On Tue, 17 May 2016, Rich wrote:
> I misunderstood the original instructions.
> Am I now sending this to someone who can help me?
>
> Reviewing prior posts, I'm not seeing anything past October, 2015.
> Am I missing something?

You hav successfully reached the g4u-help mailing list.
There is little volume here recently, and if I or someone else can help 
you remains to be seen. But let's try! :)


> G4U V-2.5 makes my clones; never a single issue until now.
> BIOS finds keyboard, mouse, and monitor, but G4U does not.
> When finished loading/scanning, the standard menu appears, but keyboard
> has no effect.
> All peripherals (keyboard, video, mouse, audio) work fine with three
> other systems.
>
> It appears G4U is running into issues with this mobo/BIOS.
> Can do anything to make this work?
> Perhaps some BIOS change I'm unaware of?

I don't (of course) know your hardware and BIOS, but the latter is exactly 
where I would start poking: many BIOSes have some "legacy USB mode" 
setting, which seems to help for NetBSD to recognize your keyboard.

Another thing to try is - after booting - to unplug the keyboard.
Then see if there is anything printed on the screen in green (=kernel 
message) - it should. Likewise, plug the keyboard in again after that, 
more messages should be there. If not, something is very phishy.

Last idea: try different USB ports where you put the keyboard (g4u doesn't 
use the mouse). Some may behave different than others (talking from 
experience - I agree that this should not happen).

As always stuff like this is a bit difficult to debug via email ;)
Let me know if any of these helps!


  - Hubert

I misunderstood the original instructions.
Am I now sending this to someone who can help me?

Reviewing prior posts, I'm not seeing anything past October, 2015.
Am I missing something?

I've built a new machine: Asus Z97-A motherboard, Intel i5-4690K, 8G ram.
USB keyboard & mouse.
It boots and perfectly runs a clone of Fedora 20 Linux, and runs the 
Fedora 23 live DVD without issues.
I built this machine as a backup to my primary one, and to use for 
testing new installations.
One task remains: making sure I can clone drives on it.

G4U V-2.5 makes my clones; never a single issue until now.
BIOS finds keyboard, mouse, and monitor, but G4U does not.
When finished loading/scanning, the standard menu appears, but keyboard 
has no effect.
All peripherals (keyboard, video, mouse, audio) work fine with three 
other systems.

It appears G4U is running into issues with this mobo/BIOS.
Can do anything to make this work?
Perhaps some BIOS change I'm unaware of?
My only alternative is trying return/exchange all-new hardware for 
something else.
Failing there, I have $550 in hardware to create data I can't clone.
Just tried G4U V-2.6 Beta-1 with same effect.
Thank you.

Rich
Georgia, USA, Eastern time zone

Hello,

I'm probably the only one who has tried out the floppy disk images for 
g4u in years and I've discovered that only v1.17 (single) floppy image 
actually works. The others, 2.5 and 2.6beta1, do not.

For 2.5 after loading all three images/disks the following occurs during 
bootup:
...
boot device: <unknown>
root on md0a dumps on md0b
Supported file systems: mfs ffs cd9660
no file system for md0 (dev 0x1100)
cannot mount root, error = 79
root device (default md0a):    <I pressed enter>
dump device (default md0b):    <I pressed enter>
file system (default generic): <I pressed enter>
root on md0a dumps on md0b
Supported file systems: mfs ffs cd9660
no file system for md0 (dev 0x1100)
cannot mount root, error = 79
root device (default md0a):

So I have no idea how to fix g4u 2.5 floppy boot problem from here on 
out. Verified with just loading the images via virtualbox VM test guest 
after getting same results on physical floppy disks with an old laptop.

Now on to 2.6beta1, simply it's asking for a disk 4 and there is no disk 
4 image provided. Oops.. This time I checked the images via virtualbox 
instead of writing to a bunch of floppy disks first. ;-)
Please remove disk 3, insert disk 4, and press return..._


For the curious, I'm currently preparing to clone an old Compaq ProLiant 
(circa 1998-2000) server, still in business use, to be VM'd. And I'm 
uncertain that it'll boot off a CD-R disc, it however has booted off 
floppy disks in the past.

Any chance that those images could be fixed would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

     -Nathan

On 10 Jul 2015 at 10:04, Krämer Kevin wrote:

From:	Krämer Kevin <k.k...@he...>
To:	"'g4u...@fe...'" <g4u...@fe...>
Date sent:	Fri, 10 Jul 2015 10:04:20 +0000
Subject:	[g4u-help] Problem with recovering image

> 
>     Hello together,
>      
>     I got a problem virtulizing our Proliant 3000 with Unixware 7.
>     I booted the server with the g4u CD and got the following disks:
>      
>     Ld0 at cac0 unit 0: RAID5 array (70GB)
>     Ld1 at cac0 unit 1: RAID 1 array (9GB)
>      
>     I used uploaddisk command with ld0 and ld1 at the end for each logical disk.
>     After this I created a virtual machine on an ESXi 5.5 (with Unixware 7 Support) 
>     and added two IDE drives (not SCSI).
>     After using slurpdisk command to wd0 and wd1 I rebooted the virtual machine 
>     and got error loading operating system.
>     With deploying the image to two SCSI drives I got the same problem.
>      
>     I suspect that it is not supported to recovery the image from a logical disk to a 
>     IDE drive – am I right?
>      
>     Do you got any further hints for me, which I could test?
>     This machine is very important for us and I’ll try anyting to get it virtulized before 
>     the disk drives crash.
>      

Most likely the problem is that the drivers for the controller are not in the 
kernel. I had this issue years ago, when I upgraded to a new machine that 
had sata disk. I had imaged the old disks to the new disk, but it would not 
boot from the disk. Could boot from a live cd and all partitions were fine. 
Ended up have to rebuild the initrd to include the sata controller drivers. The 
live cd seemed to have all the drivers installed in the initrd, but systems later 
only include the drivers that actually exist in the machine.

Was long ago, so don't recall the exact process to add the driver, and don't 
know if the same would apply with UnixWare. 




>     Thank you in advance
>      
>     Kind regards
>      
>     Kevin
>      


+----------------------------------------------------------+
  Michael D. Setzer II -  Computer Science Instructor      
  Guam Community College  Computer Center                  
  mailto:mi...@ku...                            
  mailto:mse...@gm...
  http://www.guam.net/home/mikes
  Guam - Where America's Day Begins                        
  G4L Disk Imaging Project maintainer 
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/
+----------------------------------------------------------+

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu (Original)
Number of Seti Units Returned:  19,471
Processing time:  32 years, 290 days, 12 hours, 58 minutes
(Total Hours: 287,489)

BOINC@HOME CREDITS
ROSETTA     31754058.264764   |   SETI        56646725.676738
ABC         16613838.513356   |   EINSTEIN    65863624.825096

Hello together,

I got a problem virtulizing our Proliant 3000 with Unixware 7.
I booted the server with the g4u CD and got the following disks:

Ld0 at cac0 unit 0: RAID5 array (70GB)
Ld1 at cac0 unit 1: RAID 1 array (9GB)

I used uploaddisk command with ld0 and ld1 at the end for each logical disk.
After this I created a virtual machine on an ESXi 5.5 (with Unixware 7 Support) and added two IDE drives (not SCSI).
After using slurpdisk command to wd0 and wd1 I rebooted the virtual machine and got error loading operating system.
With deploying the image to two SCSI drives I got the same problem.

I suspect that it is not supported to recovery the image from a logical disk to a IDE drive - am I right?

Do you got any further hints for me, which I could test?
This machine is very important for us and I'll try anyting to get it virtulized before the disk drives crash.

Thank you in advance

Kind regards

Kevin

Hi,

> Am 10.07.2015 um 02:05 schrieb Henson, Girard <Gir...@Tr...>:
> Thank you for putting out this tool. Some of the folks here have used it for years to perform local disk clones just fine. However, we are running into an issue when we decided to implement the FTP transfer. We were able to capture the image successfully on to the FTP server, but when we try to write it back to the disk, the connection disconnects at seemingly random intervals. The only errors we get are a 426 error on the server and a 421 on the client if we do a CTRL + C. Is there any guidance you could provide us on how to address this? Does G4U offer some kind of logging mechanism? We’re running some tests with Wireshark but we could use all the input possible. We have tried using both IIS FTP and FileZilla.

That’s somewhat hard to tell… I’d lookup the error numbers in the RFCs to see if they help anything.

https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc959.txt <https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc959.txt> says:
         421 Service not available, closing control connection.
             This may be a reply to any command if the service knows it
             must shut down.
426 is not in there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FTP_server_return_codes <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_FTP_server_return_codes> says:

426	Connection closed; transfer aborted.

I guess these numbers are shown on g4u. 

Logs are usually kept on servers, not on clients - sure not on g4u.

So, judging by these facts, g4u somehow thinks something is wrong in the transfer, and aborts it.

Wireshark protocols and server logs may come in handy here, but this is network troubleshooting beyond the point that I can provide here right now, unfortunately.


 - Hubert

Hi there,

 

Thank you for putting out this tool. Some of the folks here have used it
for years to perform local disk clones just fine. However, we are
running into an issue when we decided to implement the FTP transfer. We
were able to capture the image successfully on to the FTP server, but
when we try to write it back to the disk, the connection disconnects at
seemingly random intervals. The only errors we get are a 426 error on
the server and a 421 on the client if we do a CTRL + C. Is there any
guidance you could provide us on how to address this? Does G4U offer
some kind of logging mechanism? We're running some tests with Wireshark
but we could use all the input possible. We have tried using both IIS
FTP and FileZilla.

 

Girard

 

Am 14.03.2014 um 12:51 schrieb Mateusz Viste:
> I was wondering about some already-incorporated scripting capabilities (because g4u is heavily command-line oriented with its own internal set of commands), so I though maybe there was some hidden feature that would allow me to say 'download a g4u script from the ftp server and execute it', but I understand there is nothing like this. I will definitely explore the dot.profile path to see where I can go from there in reasonable time. Thanks!

ftp -o - http://foo/bar.sh | sh


 - Hubert

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. I know where to start then.

I was wondering about some already-incorporated scripting capabilities 
(because g4u is heavily command-line oriented with its own internal set 
of commands), so I though maybe there was some hidden feature that would 
allow me to say 'download a g4u script from the ftp server and execute 
it', but I understand there is nothing like this. I will definitely 
explore the dot.profile path to see where I can go from there in 
reasonable time. Thanks!

best regards,
Mateusz




On 03/14/2014 11:14 AM, Hubert Feyrer wrote:
>
> Am 14.03.2014 um 10:39 schrieb Mateusz Viste:
>> Now, I don't see any scripting feature integrated into g4u, but maybe
>> I'm missing something. Where should I look? Where would I need to start?
>
> Use the source, luke - it's all scripts, what else would you need?
>
> In particular:
>   * Rebuilding from source: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/#rebuilding
>   * The script started at g4u startup is src/distrib/i386/ramdisks/ramdisk-g4u/dot.profile
>   * From there it's all /bin/sh - should be enough for what you need ;)
>
>
>> Have anyone already done similar things?
>
> Not really.
> At one point I've pondered using client-specific settings into DHCP, and then read those settings and start whatever command comes from the DHCP server (backup, restore, parameters),
> but I've never really persued this way. If you find all the details, this shouldn't be too hard.
>
> Of course adding that menue you mention would probably be even easier.
> Most interesting is probably what/where you boot g4u from  - if CD is really still an option.
> Support for USB / netboot is not where I'd love it to be today... but patches are always appreciated :)
>
>
>   - Hubert
>

Am 14.03.2014 um 10:39 schrieb Mateusz Viste:
> Now, I don't see any scripting feature integrated into g4u, but maybe 
> I'm missing something. Where should I look? Where would I need to start? 

Use the source, luke - it's all scripts, what else would you need?

In particular:
 * Rebuilding from source: http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/#rebuilding
 * The script started at g4u startup is src/distrib/i386/ramdisks/ramdisk-g4u/dot.profile
 * From there it's all /bin/sh - should be enough for what you need ;)


> Have anyone already done similar things?

Not really.
At one point I've pondered using client-specific settings into DHCP, and then read those settings and start whatever command comes from the DHCP server (backup, restore, parameters),
but I've never really persued this way. If you find all the details, this shouldn't be too hard.

Of course adding that menue you mention would probably be even easier.
Most interesting is probably what/where you boot g4u from  - if CD is really still an option.
Support for USB / netboot is not where I'd love it to be today... but patches are always appreciated :)


 - Hubert

Hello list,

I am wondering about using g4u to perform backups of a bunch of PCs. 
These backups would be performed by the users themselves, so I am 
looking after a solution that could be as much automated as possible..

I have read about g4u, and it looks like an astonishing piece of 
open-source software - however, it seems targeted to IT admins. For a 
user, entering the address of a FTP server, providing the name of his 
disk device etc is often black magic (*even* for users that are supposed 
to be professional programmers..).

Anyway, g4u looks really promising, but I'd need to find a way to 
automatize it (for eg. via some kind of custom script). The final goal 
for me would be to have such thing:
  - the user boots g4u from a CD
  - g4u boots, gets an IP over DHCP, and gets a script or config file 
from the DHCP server
  - a simple menu appears, asking to select either "1. backup" or "2. 
restore". then, for the "backup" option:
  - performs a dump of the PC's drive (configured in the script), but 
only up to X GB (let's say, first 128G)
  - pushes the dump to the FTP server (configured in config file), into 
a file that is named after the mac address of the PC
  - once done, halts the PC

Now, I don't see any scripting feature integrated into g4u, but maybe 
I'm missing something. Where should I look? Where would I need to start? 
Have anyone already done similar things?

cheers,
Mateusz

On 23/02/2014, at 2:16 am, Colin Ager <co...@ag...> wrote:

> "wd0d device fault reading fsbn 0 (wd0 bn 0; cn 0 tn 0 sn 0),retrying"
> followed by

This error message implies that nothing at all can be read from your hard drive. Nothing good is happening, regardless of partitions and bit copies.

I’m guessing that driver talking to the disk is ixpide which means that your SATA controller is probably an ATI/AMD SB700. These controllers are notoriously unreliable in IDE mode (aka native mode). Try using your BIOS to switch the controller into AHCI mode and then boot g4u. 

You may need to switch the controller out of AHCI mode when you want to boot your normal operating system because your normal operating system may be expecting that. If your normal operating system is Linux, then you might want to try leaving the controller in AHCI mode. If your normal operating system is Windows, then you must switch away from AHCI mode when booting Windows because Windows remembers how your hardware was configured when Windows was installed and it will have a melt down if you have altered how the hard disks work.

Note that IDE/native mode isn’t actually native, instead it emulates an old parallel ATA drive, which is why it’s a bit buggy.

I have an SB700 and it’s just a pain in the neck. 

If you have another computer, you could also try plugging the hard drive you want to copy into that other computer and booting g4u there.

Cheers,
Lloyd

Hi Hubert Thanks for reply. Just to clarify the situation "dmesg"
does find wd0 and correctly identify it. It only fails when it tries to 
read the partitions. The first sign of trouble is the line:

"wd0: dos partition drive fault"

Then there are several repeats of:

"wd0d device fault reading fsbn 0 (wd0 bn 0; cn 0 tn 0 sn 0),retrying"
followed by

"ixpid0: 0: 0".

It finally gives a last run without the ixped0 line and goes no further.

This drive"wd0" appears to be working normally and I want to make a 
local copy of it on a brand new disk. If g4u makes a bit by bit copy 
does it matter that it can't read the partitions? I don't want to change 
them in any way.

On a different point the only option I can access at start-up of g4u is 
"1" as the timer has already run out when I get there!

Cheers Colin Ager  Norfolk UK

Hi,

I can't make any sense out of that error - other than "broken disk".
dmesg output would of course help here.

of course you can always copy to a different local disk (wd2?), assuming the target disk is empty / can be erased,
and that disk access itself works at all...


 - Hubert



Am 18.02.2014 um 10:44 schrieb Colin Ager:

> I am trying to use g4u 2.5 to clone a sata drive. On an older machine 
> with ide disks it has no difficulty finding the disks but with the newer 
> machine the disk I want to clone as wd0 is detected plus a second disk 
> wd1 as shown by dmesg, but running the disks command gives a repeating 
> error message  that it is having problems detecting the partitions.
> 
> "wd0d device fault reading fsbn 0 (wd0 bn 0; cn 0 tn 0 sn 0),retrying"
> 
> If I try the partition check on this disk I get a similar response, but 
> if I try partition check on wd1 it works correctly. Both disks are sata 
> types but wd0 has logical volumes on it, while wd1 just has normal 
> partitions.
> 
> Is it safe to do a copydisk operation in these circumstances to a third 
> sata disk that I havn't  yet tried in place of wd1.
> 
> wd0 has Fedora16 32b on it while wd1 has win7 64.
> 
> Back in 2006 I used g4u 2.2 to clone a disk and sent a donation to you!
> 
> Cheers Colin Ager  Norfolk UK
> 
> 
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I am trying to use g4u 2.5 to clone a sata drive. On an older machine 
with ide disks it has no difficulty finding the disks but with the newer 
machine the disk I want to clone as wd0 is detected plus a second disk 
wd1 as shown by dmesg, but running the disks command gives a repeating 
error message  that it is having problems detecting the partitions.

"wd0d device fault reading fsbn 0 (wd0 bn 0; cn 0 tn 0 sn 0),retrying"

If I try the partition check on this disk I get a similar response, but 
if I try partition check on wd1 it works correctly. Both disks are sata 
types but wd0 has logical volumes on it, while wd1 just has normal 
partitions.

Is it safe to do a copydisk operation in these circumstances to a third 
sata disk that I havn't  yet tried in place of wd1.

wd0 has Fedora16 32b on it while wd1 has win7 64.

Back in 2006 I used g4u 2.2 to clone a disk and sent a donation to you!

Cheers Colin Ager  Norfolk UK

Hi,

On Sun, 27 Oct 2013, Hubert Feyrer wrote:
> Looking forward for your opinions!

Thanks for your input  - 100% of the feedback was to put the ramdisk 
back in the kernel, with no objections. As such here you go:

I have release g4u version 2.6beta1. Important changes are an update to 
recent NetBSD codebase, and moving the ramdisk from a separate file back 
into the kernel. This allows easy netbooting - at least I hope so, 
feedback is welcome here.

I'd like to push out version 2.6 within the next few weeks. Please test 
and let me know if there are any showstoppers!

See my blog or the link in the History section of the g4u homepage for 
more information:

http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/blog.html/nb_20131110_1628.html

Quick download link of the ISO:
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/g4u-2.6beta1.iso


  - Hubert