Boot loader doesn't see ATA disk after successful install

[Joel]

On Tue, 10 May 2005 13:31:10 -0700 (PDT)
Brian O'Shea <b_oshea at yahoo.com> wrote

> Hello all,
> 
> I recently installed FreeBSD 5.4-RC4 on an i386 (I know, just before
> 5.4-RELEASE was posted...I should have waited!). 

Don't know why.

> The install was
> successful, however after it completed and the system rebooted, the
> boot loader could not find the root filesystem.  This system also has
> a SCSI disk (disk2) which has an older release of FreeBSD installed.
> That is the FFS and swap partitions that you see in the lsdev output
> below. 

Does that mean it boots the system on the SCSI disk?

BIOS boot order issues?

Can the BIOS see the ATA controller for booting? Many cheap (especially
non-raid) controllers are not directly bootable from the BIOS, in which
case you have to set the bootloader up to find them after the bootloader
takes over. (That's the bootloader on the disk that the BIOS boots to,
of course, which might end up being a disk on the SCSI controller.)

> The IDE disk onto which I installed 5.4-RC4 is disk1 (as can
> be seen by the currdev setting; see below).  Note that it sees the
> disk, but not the partitions that I created on it.
> 
> OK lsdev
> cd devices:
> disk devices:
>     disk0:   BIOS drive A:
>     disk1:   BIOS drive C:
>     disk2:   BIOS drive D:
>         disk2s1a: FFS
>         disk2s1b: swap
>         disk2s1d: FFS
>         disk2s1e: FFS
>         disk2s1f: FFS
>         disk2s1g: FFS
> pxe devices:
> OK show currdev
> disk1s1a:
> OK ls
> open '/' failed: no such file dor directory
> OK
> 
> Not OK!  :-/

forth is good fun. ;-)

> Any idea what I could have done wrong? 

If you can boot from the SCSI, check the dmesg there to see whether the
ATA controller is recognized by the older system. That wouldn't give an
absolute answer, but might yield a clue.

> When I created the slice on
> disk1, sysinstall warned me that the geometry was incorrect.  Instead
> it used some other values that it considered to be more sane.  I have
> gone through the install twice, both with the same results.  The
> second time I looked up what the BIOS thought the geometry was, and
> specified that to sysinstall. 

I hear that it's usually best to just let freeBSD's formatting utilities
do what they think they should and not try to meddle with that. 

> In both cases I created one slice on
> the disk containing all available space, and created partitions for
> the filesystems and swap device.  I also installed the boot loader in
> the MBR.
> 
> Any advice kindly appreciated.  Please let me know if there is any
> more information that you need about my system and I will do my best
> to provide it.
> 
> Regards,
> -brian


--
Joel Rees   <rees at ddcom.co.jp>
digitcom, inc.   株式会社デジコム
Kobe, Japan   +81-78-672-8800
** <http://www.ddcom.co.jp> **