"missing operating system"

[Peter Steele]

I had meant to include my partition table in the last email:

# fdisk -p da0
# /dev/da0
g c1458908 h255 s63
p 1 0xa5 63 35664237
a 1
p 2 0xa5 35664300 62862345
p 3 0xa5 98526645 1863989820

This is what I'd expect it to be. If I use the -u option I get this:

# fdisk -u da0
******* Working on device /dev/da0 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=1458908 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)

Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=1458908 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)

Do you want to change our idea of what BIOS thinks ? [n]

Should I answer yes to this query?

-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Szubrycht [mailto:matts at bmihosting.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 02, 2009 5:43 PM
To: Peter Steele
Cc: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: "missing operating system"

If you have only one OS and do not care for boot manager just to boot to BSD - try this:

1. Make sure the correct partition is 'active':
# fdisk -u /dev/da0

2. Install plain "MBR" boot code:
# fdisk -B -b /boot/mbr

3. Reboot



On Dec 2, 2009, at 5:34 PM, Peter Steele wrote:

> Okay, so I've seen this error many times and its cause has always been clear. In this case I'm stumped. I've got a 3U SuperMicro server with 16 drives hooked up to two 3Ware controllers. The drives are configured into two logical drives da0 and da1. I've installed a FreeBSD 8.0 OS on da0 but when I boot the box I'm seeing this error. I've swapped the RAID slots in the BIOS boot list to make sure the BIOS has the right entry for what I think is da0 listed first.  I can boot the system with a USB stick and have verified that the OS is installed correctly:
> 
> root@:~>
> # mount /dev/da0s1a /mnt
> root@:~>
> # ll /mnt
> total 68
> drwxr-xr-x  22 root  wheel   512 Dec  2 15:58 .
> drwxr-xr-x  24 root  wheel   512 Dec  2 15:44 ..
> -rw-r--r--   2 root  wheel   798 Nov 10 06:04 .cshrc
> -rw-r--r--   2 root  wheel   182 Dec  2 11:39 .profile
> -r--r--r--   1 root  wheel  6206 Nov 10 06:04 COPYRIGHT
> -rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel     9 Dec  1 22:31 VERSION
> drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel  1024 Nov 10 06:02 bin
> drwxr-xr-x   7 root  wheel   512 Dec  1 22:31 boot
> dr-xr-xr-x   6 root  wheel  2048 Dec  2 11:22 dev
> drwxr-xr-x  21 root  wheel  2048 Dec  2 11:39 etc
> drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   512 Dec  1 22:31 home
> drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel  1536 Nov 10 06:03 lib
> drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   512 Nov 10 06:02 libexec
> drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   512 Nov 10 06:02 media
> drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   512 Dec  2 11:39 mnt
> drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel   512 Dec  1 22:31 opt
> dr-xr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   512 Nov 10 06:02 proc
> drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel  8192 Nov 10 06:03 rescue
> drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   512 Dec  1 22:31 root
> drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel  5632 Nov 10 06:03 sbin
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel    11 Nov 10 06:04 sys -> usr/src/sys
> drwxr-xr-x  11 root  wheel   512 Nov 10 06:36 tmp
> drwxr-xr-x  11 root  wheel   512 Nov 10 06:36 usr
> drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   512 Dec  2 11:37 var
> 
> What's more puzzling to me is that I have another identical system that was purchased a few weeks ago and I have successfully installed the OS on that box without seeing this error. I'm thinking there might be some kind of BIOS setting that is different between the two boxes but I'm not really sure if that explains what's going on.
> 
> Does anyone have any suggestions what I could do to troubleshoot this problem?
> 
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