partition tables in PC-BSD installer

[ctilbury]

I just installed PC-BSD for the first time in a couple of years. V9 is nice. It has come a long way.

I am using GAG and I also have windows 7 as well as ubuntu 11.10 on a 1T disk. I used gparted 0.11.0 to rearrange the partitions to make room and I installed the OSes in this order: windoz, linux, and pc-bsd. I want to install PC-BSD to a 330G partition. It all works fine, but setting up the partitions seem weird.

When you use the first screen to create a partition to install to, it will not let you enter 6 digits in the partition size. It only lets you enter up to 5 digits. You can use the roller buttons to go above that by setting it to 99999 and then going from there. Its a long wait to get to 330G from there. There does not seem to be a way to make a partition that actually works. Even if I made a 99M partition, it did not seem to install correctly. If I went to the "advanced" partition screen, it allows me to create the file systems, but then it fails.

This is real easy to reproduce. Use a HD that has enough room for 2 partitions where one of them is bigger that 100G. Install another OS so that there is 100G left for PC-BSD. Try to install PC-BSD in the remaining space.

The bottom line appears to be that creating a partition with the installer that is not 100% of the disk appears to be broken. I finally got it installed bu using gparted to create the BSD partition and then the installer created the slices just fine.

Thanks!
Chuck Tilbury

[ctilbury]

OOPS! read the stickey posts first! Sorry about the spam.