Help with Booting

Erich Dollansky erichfreebsdlist at ovitrap.com
Sat Apr 23 09:20:26 UTC 2011


Hi,

I only can tell what I do when a machine does not boot from the installation media: I plug the disk into another machine, install the generic kernel, edit /etc and put it back.

If this does not work, it will be hard.

Erich

On Saturday 23 April 2011 14:25:13 Doug Hardie wrote:
> 
> On 22 April 2011, at 23:46, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Saturday 23 April 2011 12:57:32 Doug Hardie wrote:
> >> 
> >> On 22 April 2011, at 21:28, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> >> 
> >>> It looks to me that not even the loader loads. Is this true?
> >>> 
> >> I am not sure.  The last message is the timestamp from the original distribution build.  Then is a line with just the '/' character that should spin a bit.  It doesn't.  
> >> 
> >> By playing around a bit I got it a bit farther.  I took one of the raid disks and mounted it in a different system.  I did an install on it but without changing the label other than to use all the disk.  Then I put it back in the production system and booted.  It appears to retain the RAID characteristics, but all I get is a '-' at the top left of the screen.  I then plugged in the memstick image and booted from that.  Right after the last DOS window I pressed F10 which took me to a FreeBSD boot  line with the default pointing to ad0.  I used 0:ad(4,a)/boot/loader and it went on to the same point as before, but then a bit farther.  I now see:
> >> 
> > this is all to weird for me. Could you install a disk not using the raid hardware?
> > 
> > It would then exclude the motherboard as the cause.
> > 
> > Erich
> 
> No. That didn't work either.  I had been using the machine on amd64 but I had to install with the drive on another system.  I couldn't get it to boot of CD or memstick.  However, the memstick I used then was dead today so I bought a new one hoping that was the problem.  Unfortunately this stick is good, but it still won't boot off it.
> 
> 
> > 
> > 
> >> Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf
> >> /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8ffac1 |
> >> 
> >> The '|' normally spins a couple of times and moves on to the next section.  However, its hung there now.
> >> 
> >> 
> >>> 
> >>> On Saturday 23 April 2011 05:38:41 Doug Hardie wrote:
> >>>> I have an AMD based system that is driving me nuts.  I am trying to install 8.2 on it but can't get past the first boot.  I had a system up and running on it before, but I had to remove a drive and do the install on another computer.  That worked, but now I need to use the built in RAID hardware.  As best as I can tell I am going to have to install on the the actual hardware.  Motherboard is an Arima NM46X.  The machine appears to be about 6 years old.
> >>>> 
> >>>> I have tried to boot the install disk, the live filesystem disk, and the memstick image for FreeBSD 7.0 through 8.2.  All of them do exactly the same thing:
> >>>> 
> >>>> Bootstart starts.
> >>>> 
> >>>> BTX loader lists the drives and memory
> >>>> 
> >>>> FreeBSD bootstrap loader version 1.1 starts.  I get the build date and then a new line with just a '/' on it.  It never begins to spin.  No additional I/O occurs with the boot device.
> >>>> 
> >>>> The memstick and CDs are good.  They boot just fine on another computer, just not this one.  I have had to work around CD issues in the past, but I thought the memstick would work if the BIOS would recognize it and boot from it.  It recognizes it and tries to boot.  I need some ideas here as the RAID is essential for this application.  Thanks,
> >>>> 
> >>>> 
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
> >>>> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> >>>> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
> >>>> 
> >>>> 
> >>> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> > 
> 
> 
> 


More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list