boot hangs after install 4.8

Rob Lahaye lahaye at users.sourceforge.net
Wed Jul 2 20:25:27 PDT 2003


Lowell Gilbert wrote:
> Rob Lahaye <lahaye at users.sourceforge.net> writes:
> 
>>I have just installed FreeBSD 4.8 on a PC. Only FreeBSD, no other OS.
>>The installation goes all well; I exit at the end and the PC boots.
>>Immediately after the BIOS stuff, I get the first FreeBSD prompt:
>>
>>
>>    F1  FreeBSD
>>
>>    Default: F1
>>
>>
>>What ever key I hit next, only produces a beep from the PC.
>>Nothing happens, so it seems to hang at this point.
>>
> 
> Sounds like you've got a single slice.  The bootloader isn't managing
> to find the FreeBSD boot blocks.  You may have failed to install them
> for some reason, or maybe you've put the root partition too far in to
> the disk for the BIOS to boot it.

Before installing FreeBSD, this PC was successfully running Mandrake Linux 9.0,
but this Linux distro is gone now. The BIOS settings are untouched (but how relevant
are the BIOS settings to the no-boot-from-harddisk after FreeBSD installation?).


The floppies kern.flp / mfsroot.flp boot like a charm, and this is how my FreeBSD
installation proceeds:

sysinstall Main Menu:
	Standard   Begin a standard installation (recommended)

FDISK Partition Editor (with "A = Use Entire Disk"):
	DISK Geometry:  21858 cyls/34 heads/54 sectors = 40131288 sectors (19595MB)
	Offset  Size(ST)     End     Name  PType       Desc  Subtype    Flags
	0          54         53        -      6     unused        0
	54   40131234   40131287    ad0s1      3    freebsd      165    C

Install Boot Manager for drive ad0:
	BootMgr   Install the FreeBSD Boot Manager

FreeBSD Disklabel Editor (with "A = Auto Defaults"):
	Disk: ad0   Partition name: ad0s1   Free: 0 blocks (0MB)
	Part      Mount          Size Newfs
	----      -----          ---- -----
	ad0s1a    /             128MB UFS   Y
	ad0s1b    swap          368MB SWAP
	ad0s1e    /var          256MB UFS+S Y
	ad0s1f    /tmp          256MB UFS+S Y
	ad0s1g    /usr        18586MB UFS+S Y

Choose Distributions:
	User   Average user - binaries and doc only
         ("No" to ports collection install)

Choose Installation Media:
	 FTP   Install from an FTP server (-> ftp.kr.freebsd.org)

Network interface information required:
	rl0   RealTek 8129/8139 PCI ethernet card

[Network card configured properly & installation proceeds via ftp]

Message:
	Congratulations!  You now have FreeBSD installed on your system.
	...bla..bla..bla...

[The only relevant things I do hereafter, is set the root password and reboot]

sysinstall Main Menu:
	X Exit Install
...
Waiting (max 60 seconds) for system process `vnlru' to stop...stopped
Waiting (max 60 seconds) for system process `bufdaemon' to stop...stopped
Waiting (max 60 seconds) for system process `syncer' to stop...stopped

syncing disks...
done
Uptime: 32m27s
Rebooting...


And that's it. It will never boot from harddisk. All I get from FreeBSD is:
     F1  FreeBSD
     Default: F1
and merely a beep, everytime I hit a key on the keyboard.

Any idea why that happens? What should I change in the installation procedure
above? Or are BIOS settings responsible for this?

Thanks,
Rob.



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