Re: Problem with /boot/loader

Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:53:44 +0200
From: Volker <volker@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@xxxxxxxxxxx

On 12/23/-58 20:59, Kelly Black wrote:
Hello,

I have a problem with loader. I recently upgraded from 6_rel to 7_rel.
Now when I install world there is a problem booting.

Here is what I do:
cd /usr/src
make buildworld
make buildkernel KERNCONF=BLACK
make installkernel KERNCONF=BLACK

At this point I can reboot and all is good. After boot I install the new world:

cd /usr/src
mergemaster -p
reboot into single user mode
cd /usr/src
make installworld
mergemaster

Now when I reboot there is a problem. I get an error that the system
cannot boot. Part of it looks like this:
Can't work out which disk we are booting from.
Guessed BIOS device 0xffffffff not found by probes, defaulting to disk0:

If I boot from a live disk and replace /boot/loader with
/boot/loader.old it boots up fine and everything looks good. A new
world and a new kernel. I would be grateful for any help or any
pointers.

Sincerely,
Kel

PS I do not do anything special with my loader config files:

$ cat loader.conf
...

Kelly,

the /boot/loader.conf file does not come into play at that stage. Early
in the loader code, loader needs to figure out, which disk (BIOS device)
has been booted from. Until loader knows which device was booted up,
it's unable to access any files (even loader.conf) on your boot device.

As I've never seen such a problem while upgrading any system, I suspect
your problem must be settings specific. Can you show me your kernel
config or are you using a plain vanilla GENERIC? Which arch are we
talking about?

As I'm currently investigating another boot problem (but earlier in the
boot chain), I'll check boot logic in the source code and may check for
your issue, too, at that time, so it's just one effort. But please stay
patient for some days, as I'm currently too busy.

We just got hit by this. The loader never loads and nothing boots. But a
system admin discovered that the problem disappeared if the /boot.conf
file was deleted. It just contained '-P'.

Once this file was removed, the system just booted up as expected. When
he changed it to -D or -h, the boot still locked up.
--
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman@xxxxxx Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4 EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751

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