Re: I get continuous reboot after 15.0 upgrade

On Tue, 27 Jan 2026 08:56:22 -0800, Carl Johnson stated

> Daniel Tameling <tamelingdaniel@gmail.com> writes:
> 
> > On Sun, Jan 25, 2026 at 11:23:38AM -0800, Carl Johnson wrote:  
> >> I was just tring to upgrade from 14.3-RELEASE-p6 to 15.0-RELEASE,
> >> but I am just getting continuous reboots now.  The system is an
> >> amd64 based system running with zfs on root.  I first upgraded to
> >> 14.3-RELEASE-p7 as directed, and then did the upgrade to
> >> 15.0-RELEASE.  I didn't see any errors and everything seemed fine
> >> until I rebooted.  I don't see any unusual messages in the
> >> startup, but then it reboots after saying that it is starting
> >> local daemons.  Since I have zfs on root, I was able to boot from
> >> a 14.3-RELEASE-p7 boot environment, but I can't run 15.0.
> >> 
> >> Does anybody have any suggestions on how to debug this since I
> >> don't see anything useful in the log files?  
> >
> > Boot the system in single user mode, mount the filesystem writable
> > and comment out everything unnecessary in /etc/rc.conf. Same for
> > @reboot items in your crontab and unnecessary filesystems in
> > /etc/fstab. Then try booting again. If it works, you can slowly
> > reverse what you did to find the culprit. If it still doesn't boot,
> > you have got a real problem.  
> 
> Thanks for the suggestions, but it will probably be a couple of days
> before I try that again.  Unfortunately, I will have to start again
> since I removed the BE that wouldn't boot up.  I had tested that it
> would boot up in single user mode, but I had only tried removing a
> couple of things from /etc/rc.conf.  I will try your suggestions
> before I try the next time.
> 
> Thanks for your help.

I experienced a comparable issue and determined that the following
method was effective.

To address spontaneous reboots, boot into single-user mode, mount the
system, and rename the rc.conf file. Rename the rc.conf file to
rc.conf-bak and reboot the system. If the system remains stable, the
issue likely originates from that file. Restore rc.conf-bak to rc.conf,
then comment out each line in the file. Review rc.conf systematically,
enabling one service or option at a time and rebooting after each
change. Although this process may be time-consuming, identifying the
cause will facilitate a straightforward resolution.

Good Luck!

-- 
Jerry