Problem with /boot/loader

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 02:34:44PM -0400, Kelly Black wrote:
> >On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 7:38 AM, Kelly Black <kjblack at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> 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:
> >[snip]
> >> 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.
> >
> >What do you have in /etc/make.conf?  I recall there being a point in
> >time where incorrect CFLAGS options could build a broken loader.
> >
> >Try renaming /etc/make.conf (or just commenting out all
> >CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS options) and rebuilding either just the loader or the
> >whole world, and see if that makes a difference.
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Thank you for the reply.  I put my make.conf file back to its default
> when I first did the upgrade to avoid other kinds of problems:
> 
> make.conf
> # added by use.perl 2008-04-07 11:54:35
> PERL_VER=5.8.8
> PERL_VERSION=5.8.8
> 
> And it still produced the loader that does not load.

Kelly,

A couple things:

I'm wondering if you're getting bit by changes made to loader(8) by John
Baldwin last year.  Those changes were positive and increased
compatibility with systems greatly, but there were a couple reports of
users whose systems preferred the old "method" used.  Those changes are
documented here; and yes, I realise you don't get a screen full of
continual register dumps, but different people saw different behaviour:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/Commonly_reported_issues

Also see these mailing list threads:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2007-October/078755.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2007-November/038214.html

Secondly, you said you migrated from "6_rel to 7_rel".  Do you mean
7.0-RELEASE, or are you referring to the RELENG_7 tag?  What tag are you
following when doing csup/cvsup?

CC'ing John as well.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |