Boot fails: Default F1? hangs. Trashed MBR? replaced FBSD mbr.

From: Chris Shenton (chris_at_shenton.org)
Date: 01/29/05

  • Next message: Chris Shenton: "Re: Boot fails: Default F1? hangs. Trashed MBR? replaced FBSD mbr." 
    To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 21:52:34 -0500

    I rebuilt my kernel in 5.3-STABLE from CVS, installed as normal. When I
    rebooted, the BIOS said "No system disk, insert and reboot" or
    something. Ug, hosed.

    Then I recalled I was trying to figure out how to write to a new ATAPI
    CD burner, but used one of the SCSI burner utils; it failed but I
    suspect I had specified and hosed something in my SCSI disk which is
    the only disk I have, where the OS lives. I suspected I had trashed
    the Master Boot Record.

    So I booted from floppies, went to Wizard mode, did the Install
    FreeBSD Bootmanager. Rebooted. Now it halts at the prompt "Default:
    F1" and beeps when I hit any key, like RETURN, F1, etc.

    Since my system was running fine until the reboot, and because I
    installed a newly built kernel, I suspect what's on the disk is mostly
    good but I've trashed the low level boot stuff. That arcana is beyond
    my understanding. :-(

    I'd like to be able to recover, get it to boot, without having to
    reinstall from CD ISO -- without overwriting all my hairy configs (the
    box was a print server for the house for FreeBSD and Mac, amongst other
    things, and got a lot of it's /usr/local type of stuff from my main
    machine over NFS -- painful to re-create properly).

    What is it not finding when it waits at the "Default: F1" prompt? Any
    guru suggestions for how to recover gracefully?

    Thanks a bunch.

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  • Next message: Chris Shenton: "Re: Boot fails: Default F1? hangs. Trashed MBR? replaced FBSD mbr."

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