Install bug - 4.9 stable - post install circular reboot

[ian j hart]

On Tuesday 17 April 2018 2:10 pm, Kevin Berrien wrote:

Please don't cross post, it's confusing.

> I can confirm an issue posted Dec 3rd, freebsd-stable maillist, titled
> "4.9 install buglet".
>
> I experience this bug running the install (various configurations) 100%
> of the time.  After install, after system reboot, the boot loader comes
> up with F1: FreeBSD, and reboots continually forever.  To test, I made 3
> installs without issue using 4.8.  So first, I'd like to confirm the bug
> report, and ask the following.
>
> In his "buglet" post, Ian noted the following work around.
>
> > Work around.  Force write in label screen (or rewrite MBR
> > and label post reboot)
>
> Looking at fdisk, and the label utility I see nothing option along these
> lines.  Could someone explain to me what/how to do this?
>
> Has anyone else seen this apparently prevalent issue?

Clearly this is not prevalent. If the majority of installs showed this problem 
there would be more than one previous post, or at least a reply. Or to put it 
another way. If it's prevalent, why ask if anyone else has seen it? Perhaps 
you meant something else.

There must be something specific to the hardware and/or the installation 
method that causes this to happen to us (only). This is why I called it a 
buglet rather than a bug.

> Is a fix likely, or do these kind of things just slip by?  

If a sysinstall developer reproduces it then it will probably get fixed. Other 
than that the normal open source methodology suggests that those who have the 
problem, fix the problem. ie Me or thee. I'm going to decline as the work 
around is truely trivial and this will be a b*st*rd to find.

> I did not expect this from a 'stable' release.

A release only gets the testing "we" give it. Due to time constraints I didn't 
test this hardware with this release. Mea culpa.

I suspect most pre-release testing follows defaults quite closely. This is why 
I listed the partition/boot information, as it's not typical.

Can you tell us what motherboard you have and what you did in the fdisk and 
boot manager screens? Common choices might give a clue.

>
> Unfortunately, I'm making my second attempt at evaluating FreeBSD (last
> time I used an active box - and got frustrated with bad ports, MySQL/BSD
> issues, and needed to get the box online, so I installed something that
> worked).

Never evaluate anything when you "need it to work". You're setting your self 
up to fail. Not only that but you do FreeBSD a disservice.

> I'm interested in BSD's lean-ness, and other aspects, as
> opposed to other "nix'es".  Needless to say, testing again using 4.9
> this time hasn't been very impressive.

Well  you've managed to find a trivial work around for a very obscure bug. I'd 
say that was quite impressive.
 
Never give up, never surrender.

-- 
ian j hart

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20031016