no boot/loader

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 8 Aug 2008 17:00:54 -0700 (PDT), acmeinc <akme.inc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Check things?  Which things should I be checking for?   And where should I be
> checking them, to be more specific, which optoin should I choose within
> sysinstall to check the things?  

Be sure to write your settings. In the partition editor, make
sure your desired FreeBSD slice is marked "active" and ensure
you have selected to install the standard MBR loader. (If you
want to be able to boot into more than one OS, you need to
install the boot manager.) Afterwards, when creating the
partitions within the slice, I assume you've done everything
correctly, else no installation success would be able to
happen.



> I am reading on another forum the installation is incorrect and to try
> again, however I have tried many times.

There seems to be something you've missed, but at this point,
I can't guess what it could be.



> Do you think the minimun install is
> not enough to allow for bootup?

It is, if done correctly.

To boot, a correct modification of the boot record is essential.
As it has been mentioned, there are some BIOS variants that
prohibit any modification of these hard disk areas. But that
does not seem to be the problem. The message you gave seems to
indicat that something is already in the boot area, but the
loader itself cannot be run. The loader is placed into your
FreeBSD slice (partition), it resides in /boot; if started,
the loader invokes the kernel from /boot/kernel, but that's
to be happing after you could solve the problem in question.

This is what yould happen, summarized:

1. BIOS runs loader found in MBR (standard loader)
2. Standard loader runs /boot/loader
3. /boot/loader runs /boot/kernel/kernel (GENERIC)
4. Kernel initializes system, runs rc script
5. rc script controls system startup
6. System is up and running

While number 1 is connected to the hard disk "infront of" any
partitions, numbers 2 and 3 depend on the FreeBSD's slice and
its partitions (usually /dev/ad0s1a). If the required content
of this partition is not present, the error you mentioned is
completely understandable.


-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...