booting problem after installation of new disk controller

[Casey Scott]

I recently added a new disk controller (promise ultra 133) to act as a
replacement for the motherboard's controller. I also moved everything from
the systems old hard drive to a new hard drive. All is well, except that I
can not boot any kernel other than the one specified in
/boot/defaults/loader.conf    For example, if "kernel.GENERIC" is specified
in /boot/defaults/loader.conf, it can boot that without a problem. However,
if that entry is switched to "kernel", and I can no longer interrupt the
boot, and boot kernel.GENERIC. (situation exists with any good kernel as
long as its not declared in loader.conf). At the beginning of the boot of an
alternate kernel, the system displays a message "WARNING: loader(8) metadata
is missing!". It will continue booting until it gets to the point where it
mounts root. At that point, the mount fails, and manually mounting the
correct partition (ufs:/dev/ad4s1a) fails also. When booting the kernel
specified, it does display what appears to be the metadata, the BTX info on
the A and C partitions, etc. I have already done an fdisk -B -b,
boot0cfg -B -s 1 to the new drive. The old drive, on the new controller CAN
boot alternate kernels without a problem! What have I missed??

Regards,
Casey