Problems setting up gmirror of live system

[Brent Hostetler]

On 1/6/06, Eric Anderson <anderson at centtech.com> wrote:
> Brent Hostetler wrote:
>
> >How do I resolve this issue? Is this just on config file issue or
> >something with MBR?
> >
> >Since when done, the machine will be using the onboard ide, two ide
> >pci cards and a serial ide pci card will I be having issues with the
> >drive order getting screwy???
> >
> >
>
>
> You might just have to reload the mbr.  Read man boot0cfg for more details..
>
> Eric

Well,

I have discovered that I am very confused on how FreeBSD handles its
boot stages... Now I have managed to hose the drive to the point that
it will not boot with drives on either controller.

I did did a boot0cfg -B on both drives and then moved them to the new
controller and rebooted. I get to the first two stages fine:

     >> FreeBSD/i386 BOOT
     Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/loader
     boot:

I can issue the following:

boot: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/?

and see the listing of the files including loader.

However, once the loader tries to go my machine hangs with the following:

BTX loader 1.00 BTX version 1.01
Consoles: internal video/keyboard
BIOS drive A: is disk0
BIOS drive C: is disk1
BIOS 640kb/490432kB available memory

FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 1.1
(root at x64.samsco.home, Thu Nov 3 07:33:10 UTC 2005)
-

And the machine goes no further...

At this point I have pulled one of the mirrored disks so hopefuly in
the process of learning whats going on I keep one valid drive.

I can boot with fixit CDROM and mount the drive and see all the data
is fine and dandy, just cant boot.. Seems there is a config issue with
the loader??

Any help would be appreciated! Im pulling my hair out reading the man
pages trying to figure this out...

Thanks,
Brent

-----
Misc Info.

Fixit# fdisk -s ad0
/dev/ad0: 4961616 cyl 1 hd 63 sec
Part            Start            Size Type Flags
    1:                63   83885697 0xa5 0x80
    2:     83886201 228695607 0xa5 0x00

Fixit#  boot0cfg -v ad0
#      flag     start chs    type         end chs         offset      
      size
1     0x80     0:  1: 1       0xa5       275: 15:63           63       83885697
2     0x00  276   7: 1      0xa5       852L 15:63   83886201    228695607

version=1.0  drive=0x80  mask=0xf  ticks=182
options=packet,update,nosetdrv
default_selection=F1 (Slice 1)

Fixit# mount /dev/ad0s1a /mnt
Fixit# cd /mnt/boot
Fixit# ls
beastie.4th      boot2             kernel/        loader.rc     screen.4th
boot                cdboot           loader*        mbr            support.4th
boot0              defaults/         loader.4th    modules/
boot0sio          device.hints    loader.conf  pxeboot
boot1               frames.4th     loader.help  reboot.core
Fixit# cat loader.conf
geom_mirror_load="YES"