Problem with /boot/loader

[John Baldwin]

On Thursday 26 June 2008 11:12:33 pm Kevin Oberman wrote:
> > Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:53:44 +0200
> > From: Volker <volker at vwsoft.com>
> > Sender: owner-freebsd-stable at freebsd.org
> > 
> > On 12/23/-58 20:59, Kelly Black wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > I have a problem with loader. I recently upgraded from 6_rel to 7_rel.
> > > Now when I install world there is a problem booting.
> > > 
> > > Here is what I do:
> > > cd /usr/src
> > > make buildworld
> > > make buildkernel KERNCONF=BLACK
> > > make installkernel KERNCONF=BLACK
> > > 
> > > At this point I can reboot and all is good. After boot I install the new 
world:
> > > 
> > > cd /usr/src
> > > mergemaster -p
> > > reboot into single user mode
> > > cd /usr/src
> > > make installworld
> > > mergemaster
> > > 
> > > Now when I reboot there is a problem. I get an error that the system
> > > cannot boot. Part of it looks like this:
> > > Can't work out which disk we are booting from.
> > > Guessed BIOS device 0xffffffff not found by probes, defaulting to disk0:
> > > 
> > > If I boot from a live disk and replace /boot/loader with
> > > /boot/loader.old it boots up fine and everything looks good. A new
> > > world and a new kernel. I would be grateful for any help or any
> > > pointers.
> > > 
> > > Sincerely,
> > > Kel
> > > 
> > > PS I do not do anything special with my loader config files:
> > > 
> > > $ cat loader.conf
> > >...
> > 
> > Kelly,
> > 
> > the /boot/loader.conf file does not come into play at that stage. Early
> > in the loader code, loader needs to figure out, which disk (BIOS device)
> > has been booted from. Until loader knows which device was booted up,
> > it's unable to access any files (even loader.conf) on your boot device.
> > 
> > As I've never seen such a problem while upgrading any system, I suspect
> > your problem must be settings specific. Can you show me your kernel
> > config or are you using a plain vanilla GENERIC? Which arch are we
> > talking about?
> > 
> > As I'm currently investigating another boot problem (but earlier in the
> > boot chain), I'll check boot logic in the source code and may check for
> > your issue, too, at that time, so it's just one effort. But please stay
> > patient for some days, as I'm currently too busy.
> 
> We just got hit by this. The loader never loads and nothing boots. But a
> system admin discovered that the problem disappeared if the /boot.conf
> file was deleted. It just contained '-P'.
> 
> Once this file was removed, the system just booted up as expected. When
> he changed it to -D or -h, the boot still locked up. 

Hmm, this is actually a bit helpful.  What if you set the equivalent variables 
in /boot/loader.conf (e.g. console=comconsole) does it still hang?

-- 
John Baldwin