boot problem (stage 2 boot?)

[Gary W. Swearingen]

Sean <rsh.lists at comcast.net> writes:

> Just installed on a new system and I am unable to boot.

You might get better help if you include details like what you installed.

> 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:

Of course, standard 5.x kernel is in /boot/kernel/kernel

> 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?

I suppose you've tried
    0:ad(3,a)/kernel
but maybe not:
    0:ad(3,a)/boot/loader

but I doubt if either will work because it's supposed to be done
automatically.  But if you got to the "boot:" prompt, you shouldn't
need to worry about the boot manager (i.e., the MBR).  It looks like
the system is reading the boot records at the start of some FreeBSD
primary partition (presumably, the 4th) and it should then try to run
/boot/loader.  Some disk geometry problem?