Very Computer

My strategy to move on the FreeBSD 3.1 is to add a second EIDE drive
and devote one slice to FreeBSD (and the other to Linux). I have
partitioned the new FreeBSD slice and installed 3.1 on it. Here's
what my fstab looks like:

# Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump  
Pass#
/dev/wd2s1b             none            swap    sw              0      
0
/dev/wd2s1a             /               ufs     rw              1      
1
/dev/wd2s1f             /usr            ufs     rw              2      
2
/dev/wd2s1g             /usr/local              ufs     rw            
2       2
/dev/wd2s1e             /var            ufs     rw              2      
2
/dev/wcd0c              /cdrom  cd9660  ro,noauto       0       0
proc                    /proc           procfs  rw              0      
0

Note that the root file system is on /dev/wd2s1a. (This is viewed from
the
running 2.6 system; I've mounted the root file system on /mnt.)

On booting, booteasy gives me the choice of F1 (dos), F2 (old bsd) and
F5.
When I select F5 I have the choice of F1 (new bsd) or F2 (linux). When I
select new bsd I see the usual boot messages until I get to the bit
about fixing the pentium bug. Then comes:

changing root device to wd1s1a
changing root device to wd1a

followed by a panic and a reboot.

It appears that booteasy is booting from the kernel on the new bsd root
file system, but the kernel built by the installation thinks the root
file system is on wd1s1a INSTEAD OF wd2s1a. And yet the installation
built a correct fstab. How can I fix this?

-- al

Quote:>It appears that booteasy is booting from the kernel on the new bsd root
>file system, but the kernel built by the installation thinks the root
>file system is on wd1s1a INSTEAD OF wd2s1a. And yet the installation
>built a correct fstab. How can I fix this?

config  kernel root on wd2
(or if you prefer, "root on wd2s1a")

According to the boot(8) manual page, the configured default shouldn't
actually be used unless you specify "-r" to the initial boot loader, so see
if you're doing that for some reason in /boot.config . If you're not and it
still happens, it may be a bug.

You can also specify -a at the boot prompt (or in boot.config) to be manually
prompted for the root device, but this is obviously non-optimal.

--

If you can't play with words, what good are they?

# My strategy to move on the FreeBSD 3.1 is to add a second EIDE drive
# and devote one slice to FreeBSD (and the other to Linux). I have
# partitioned the new FreeBSD slice and installed 3.1 on it. Here's
# what my fstab looks like:

...
# changing root device to wd1s1a
# changing root device to wd1a

# followed by a panic and a reboot.

I've had a similar problem with a box having 1 IDE and 2 SCSI
disks. Some probe code apparently gets confused (due to BIOS
braindamage, I'm told) and can't reliably determine the root
disk device. This is why the new boot code allows you to

  set root_disk_unit=0  (or 1, 2, ...)

before you

  boot

(Hit the "any key" when the 10sec countdown runs to get at the
prompt to set root_disk_unit.) You may want to look at a few files near
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/boot/i386/loader/help.i386
or man loader for more info.

Once you booted succesfully, you can make the setting permanent
by putting 'set root_disk_unit=0' in /boot/loader.rc.

Tell me if this was your problem. You are user #4 with this
question and it seems it's becoming a FAQ.

Regards,

    Jens
--
Jens Schweikhardt  http://www.shuttle.de/schweikh/
SIGSIG -- signature too long (core dumped)

Hi,

as there seems to be a thread about FreeBSD 3.1 boot, I allow myself
to post about an annoying and mysterious thing that happen on my
computer at boot time.  During the boot, just after echoing

"switching root device to wd0s1a"

the hard disk "goes mad", that is I hear the same noise as it does
when I run "fdisk" (or "probing devices" in install), and the mounting
of the filesystem takes about 30 seconds which is, as everybody told
me, abnormal.

(I have "root on wd0" in the kernel config file, but putting "wd0s1a"
does not solve the problem, it just disable echoing the message). Note
that I have only an IDE HD ; this is not an IDE/SCSI problem.

I ran the booting in "verbose" mode and got no error message. All
the slices/partitions (from wd0s1a to wd0s1h) are declared "clean" and
checking is said to be skipped, but the time it takes to mount them
makes me think that there is something running frantically somewhere.

I first thought that there was some problem with "fdisk -p" in
"/etc/rc", so I commented out the line, but the slowdown remains.  I
disabled "Dump" and "Pass" fields in /etc/fstab: still the same.  The
answer is may be in the fact that it says that it mounts
"/dev/rwd0s1x" (and not "/dev/wd0s1x", notice the "r"), but it may be
perfectly normal, I don't know the difference.

I have absolutely no clue on what may cause this "hard disk frantic
noise", but this very slow boot that results drives me mad.

If someone as an idea, I thank him in advance,

Regards,

sL
--
Please excuse my french, err..., it's my mother tongue.