Unable to boot after install, machine just reboots continuously

[Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P.]

Scott Pepperdine wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I am attempting to load FreeBSD 4.9 from CD onto a Micron Millenia XKU
>(Pentium II, 300 MHz, 390 MB RAM).  The install runs very smoothly and
>completes successfully.  But when I attempt to boot from the hard drive it
>just reboots.
>
>If I tell the install to replace the MBR then the machine just continuously
>reboots, but I suspect that it gets as far as trying to load FreeBSD before
>this happens.
>
>If I tell the install to load the boot manager, then the system finds the
>hard drive and gives me the F1 prompt, with FreeBSD listed as the only boot
>option.  When I press F1 the system reboots.
>
>There are no errors listed or other indication on the screen to tell me what
>is going on.
>
>If you can tell me what is happening, that would be great.  If not, can you
>tell me how to trouble shoot this?  Is there an image of a 'rescue disk'
>somewhere that would allow me to boot from diskette and read some log files?
>Which log files would I want to look at?  How else should I proceed?  What
>other information should I provide?
>
>I have installed FreeBSD onto one other system using these CDs and it worked
>great, so the CDs should not be the problem.
>
>I can load NT and MandrakeLinux onto this PC and they both work and boot
>from the hard drive.
>
>All help appreciated,
>
>Scott
>  
>
"All help" is good, 'cause I'm not much ... but I'll be
"first responder".

IIRC, you should be able to dl an image for a "Fixit"
floppy, which is bootable and has just enough space
for fdisk/bsdlabel/cat/ls and friends.  If you know your
way 'round Mandrake's console (heh, do they even still
have one?) you *might* be able to get some info.

 From one of the online docs:

    "FreeBSD features a ``Fixit'' option in the top menu of
    the boot floppy. To use it, you will also need either a fixit.flp
    image floppy, generated in the same fashion as the boot floppy,
    or the ``live filesystem'' CDROM; typically the second CDROM
    in a multi-disc FreeBSD distribution.
   
    To invoke fixit, simply boot the kern.flp floppy, choose the
    ``Fixit'' item and insert the fixit floppy or CDROM when asked.
    You will then be placed into a shell with a wide variety of
    commands available (in the /stand and /mnt2/stand directories)
    for checking, repairing and examining filesystems and their
    contents. Some UNIX administration experience is required
    to use the fixit option."

HTH,

Kevin Kinsey