boot problem (stage 2 boot?)

[Glenn Dawson]

At 06:04 AM 8/27/2005, Sean wrote:
>Just installed on a new system and I am unable to boot.
>
>Currently when that system boots it comes up with what looks like 
>the following example from the handbook
>
> >> FreeBSD/i386 BOOT
>Default: 0:ad(0,a)/kernel
>boot:
>
>from my reading this is a boot2 stage
>
>booting from cd and going into Fixit it fdisk shows partition 1, 2, 
>and 3 unused, and Freebsd is on partition 4.
>I thought it should be on partition 1?

How did you arrange the file systems when you installed.  Did you use 
the defaults, or your own layout?

The defaults would have given you 5 partitions inside of the first 
slice.  For example:
ad0s1a - /
ad0s1b - swap
ad0s1d - /var
ad0s1e - /tmp
ad0s1f - /usr

Did you not use the 'a' partition for your root file system?  Second 
stage boot code only knows how to find third stage on the 'a' partition.

More details on your installation would help in trying to figure out 
what the problem is.

-Glenn


>Note: on install I choose the Standard boot manager.
>
>I have tried playing with fdisk and disklabel to try to cure this 
>problem, but continually get the example shown above.
>With none of the above efforts working I have tried changing the 
>boot manager and no luck, both by reinstalling and just by using 
>sysinstall to modify the boot manager.I did get F1 FreeBSD when 
>trying the FreeBSD boot manager option, but it still did not start the system.
>
>
>Thanks
>Sean
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