Loading a KLM at boot time (issues) [SOLVED]

[Patrick Mahan]

We have found the problem, it was pilot error.

Thanks to Andriy for the boot verbose suggestion it was what put
me on the correct trail.

A brief background to set the context:

The random.ko is needed to support ssh issues and because for various
reasons we could not have it compiled directly in the kernel.  As a
result, as part of the package's postinstall we append
"random_load=yes" to /boot/loader.conf, after saving a copy of that
file for restoration on pkg_delete.

Most of our test machines are rack mounted HP Proliants running Intel
Xeon processors (DL360), so they are headless on both the vidconsole
and comconsole (though we have a monitor and keyboard in the lab that
we move around as needed).

Yesterday morning, I went over to the affected box to boot it verbosely
per Andriy's suggestion.  After connecting the monitor and keyboard and
power-cycling it, I noticed that I was not getting the familiar boot
menu.  Instead, it was prompting me to hit [enter] to boot or [any]
other key for the boot loader shell.

I started investigating why I was not seeing the boot loader menu and
determined that the file '/boot/loader.rc' was missing.  It turns out
that one of the other packages that make up our total product had
copied it's own copy of 'loader.rc' to /boot without saving a copy of
the original.  Thus when the package was deleted, loader.rc was removed
and since the that package was not being added back in, we were missing
the loader.rc.  Copying in a new loader.rc from another 'pure' FreeBSD
install fixed the issue and the system properly loaded 'random.ko' at
boot.

Thanks,

Patrick

Andriy Gapon wrote:
> on 18/04/2010 04:36 Patrick Mahan said the following:
>> Nothing popped up when I tried "debugging loader.conf" in Google.
>>
>> Any suggestions?
> 
> First, double-check that you really have random.ko in your modules directories.
> Supposing you don't use nextboot.conf or haven't otherwise modified kernel and
> modules paths, those should be /boot/kernel and /boot/modules.
> 
> Make sure that you have a large enough message buffer size and boot with verbose
> messages enabled.  kernel will report pre-loaded modules at the start of boot.
> Check there for any error reports from kernel linker too.
>