Stuck in bootstrapping hell - how do I troubleshoot?

[Chris Zumbrunn]

On Apr 23, 2005, at 1:16 PM, Alex Zbyslaw wrote:

> Chris Zumbrunn wrote:
>
>> Yes, I'm just waiting until someone has to go by there anyway in the 
>> next days. No big deal, but it's not urgent enough to justify the 
>> trip just for that. In the meantime, it is annoying to know that 
>> ultimately I just have this problem because I'm doing something 
>> wrong!  ...where am I screwing up the setup?  :-)
>
> The only other thing to occur to me was that the machine might 
> actually be booting, but getting stuck somewhere maybe probing 
> devices.  I'm no expert on the bootup procedure, but I would doubt 
> that /var/log/messages was being updated during device probes.  The 
> stuff is probably buffered somewhere and then written.  One final 
> thing I might try in your position is to copy a GENERIC kernel to the 
> disk and see what happens when you reboot.  Or even try a very pared 
> down kernel with nothing but disks, ethernet card and whatever else is 
> mandatory.  I guess also compare the stuff in /boot with the machine 
> that works.

Like everything else on the disks, /boot has been rsync'ed several 
times from the machine that works. So, /boot should be identical. But 
this reminded me to verify that /boot on the remote boot network disk 
image is ok, since that is where "disklabel -B -b /boot/boot1 -s 
/boot/boot2 ar0s1" took the boot1 and boot2 data from.

The kernel is GENERIC and was also rsync'ed from the machine that 
works. But I'll try with one from another source, just in case...

/czv