Merge branch 'master' of github.com:yulqen/yulqen.org

2 files changed, 41 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/content/blog/trouble_with_usb_drives_in_openbsd.md b/content/blog/trouble_with_usb_drives_in_openbsd.md
index bc16237..ce4f0c3 100644
--- a/content/blog/trouble_with_usb_drives_in_openbsd.md
+++ b/content/blog/trouble_with_usb_drives_in_openbsd.md
@@ -1,9 +1,9 @@
 ---
 title: "Trouble with USB drives in OpenBSD"
 date: 2022-09-13T08:31:41+01:00
-draft: true
+draft: false
 categories: ['Computing']
-tags: ['openbsd']
+tags: ['openbsd', 'linux']
 ---
 
 Coming from a Linux background, creating drives on OpenBSD is a little weird.
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@ FAT32, I thought. Great.
 
 Creating a FAT32 drive in OpenBSD is of course doable.
 
-Of course I believed that you needed to have a MBR on the drive, so I ran `fdisk -iy sd3` to create the default OpenBSD `A6` meta partition. (I go the device name from doing `sysctl hw.disknames`).
+Of course I believed that you needed to have a MBR on the drive, so I ran `fdisk -iy sd3` to create the default OpenBSD `A6` meta partition. (I got the device name from doing `sysctl hw.disknames`).
 
 Then I created a new `i` parition: `disklabel -E sd3`, `a i`, `w`, `q`.
 
@@ -28,4 +28,32 @@ Next, the file system: `newfs_msdos -F 32 /dev/sd3i`.
 
 This last command did't produce any output, it just quit after thirty seconds or so.
 From my experience, `newfs` can take time, so I wasn't concerned about the time it took, but there was a problem.
-After running `newfs` and running `disklabel -h sd3`, I saw that the `i` partition was gone.
+After running `newfs` and running `disklabel -h sd3`, I saw that the `i` partition was gone and of course as a result I was unable to mount or do anything with the disk.
+
+At that point, I tried a few things, including formatting the partition using `newfs_ext2fs`, but that seemed to hang completely without doing anything at all.
+
+Stuck.
+
+It was then that I decided to look at a FAT 32 drive I was already using for my ~/Music folder, managed using `beets`.
+I couldn't remember whether I created this drive in Linux or OpenBSD but I knew it was a FAT32 drive, mounted using `mount_msdos`.
+
+The interesting and surprising thing was that `fdisk sd2` revealed that it did *not* have a `A6` OpenBSD parition on it. Nothing.
+`disklabel -h sd2` revealed an `i` partition of type `MSDOS` which is what I would have expected.
+How was this?
+Does a USB drive not require a MBR? Surely it needs a partition table, albeit the "boot" element of Master Boot Record is probably notable.
+
+And here is demonstrated my lack of knowledge about operating systems, particularly the boot process. No shame in that - no one is really supposed to know this stuff that doesn't have a computer science degree or is a sysadmin of sorts.
+
+So I decided I need to try and replicate the situation I could see with my Music drive.
+To do this, I used `dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd3 bs=1M`, but I didn't need it all doing so I quit after ten minutes (probably just needed to zero out the beginning of the drive with `count=1` but, as I said, what do I know?).
+
+`fdisk sd3` proved that the `A6` partition was gone.
+
+I repeated the steps, creating a new `i` parition and formatted the drive.
+This time it worked.
+
+I could mount the drive on OpenBSD and on Linux, but without a partition number, which is very very weird to me: `mount /dev/sde`.
+I have no idea if what I am doing breaks some universal law or it entirely congruent with one that I have no knowledge of.
+Clearly the latter.
+
+Either way, I got my drive.
diff --git a/content/stream/2022_09_13.md b/content/stream/2022_09_13.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e801a9e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/content/stream/2022_09_13.md
@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+---
+title: "2022_09_13"
+date: 2022-09-13T09:28:53+01:00
+draft: false
+---
+
+Lovely bright day today.
+
+A *great* day to release a [hastily-written blog post](../blog/trouble_with_usb_drives_in_openbsd) on formatting USB sticks.