FreeBSD 6.1 hangs at mountroot> during bootup

[Derek Ragona]

Some kvm's can be problematic, you may want to just plug a keyboard into 
the server for now.

You can boot the CD and at a shell prompt run fdisk.  You can give it the 
argument for the other drive to see that drive's partition table.

         -Derek



At 03:30 AM 9/21/2006, Mike Peirson wrote:
>Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>>On Thursday, 21 September 2006 at  7:43:44 +0300, Odhiambo Washington wrote:
>>>* On 20/09/06 16:47 -0700, Mike Peirson wrote:
>>>>Hi all,
>>>>First off, I'm new to FreeBSD and this mailinglist so I hope I am in the
>>>>right place. Anyways, right now I am having some problems with FreeBSD
>>>>booting up. I have tried to install 3 times now and keep getting the
>>>>same error. When I try to boot into FreeBSD, this eventually comes up:
>>>>
>>>>         Manual root filesystem specification:
>>>>                   <fstype>:<device> Mount <device> using filesystem
>>>><fstype>
>>>>                                        eg. ufs:da0s1a
>>>>                   ?                 List valid disk boot devices
>>>>                   <empty line>      abort manual input
>>>>                 Mountroot>
>>>>
>>>>This seems to be a prompt where I need to specify the location of the
>>>>root partition, but the problem here is that it hangs or freezes and I
>>>>cannot input any text.
>>>Any further details about your hardware specs in general?
>>This is a keyboard problem.  The background is that the boot process
>>uses a different keyboard driver from the final kernel, and that it's
>>much more finicky than the kernel version.  It seems to have got worse
>>in the last few years.  I've found that a USB keyboard will do better,
>>but YMMV.
>>
>>>>At first I thought it may be a result of FreeBSD not properly
>>>>recognizing my HDD's geometry but I manually fixed that and it
>>>>still is giving me this same issue. If anyone has had a similar
>>>>problem or knows how to fix this I would greatly appreciate any
>>>>help. I looked through the Handbook and googled this but I haven't
>>>>found a solution yet.
>>The background for the *message* (not the apparent freeze) is that
>>your root file system can't be found.  This happens typically when you
>>change the device name.  For example, my situation is that I'm doing
>>development with a SATA disk drive and moving it from system to
>>system.  On my machine the root file system shows up as /dev/ad4s1a;
>>on the other machine it's /dev/ad0s1a.
>>It's probably worth putting in a PR about this problem.
>>Greg
>>--
>>See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
>
>About the keyboard.. I have it running through a KVM switch, would this 
>also cause any problems? I booted into safemode and noticed that the 
>problem with inputting text was nonexistant. I am not sure why it  can't 
>find my root filesystem. I haven't changed the device name or moved 
>anything around at all. BTW, is there any way I can get into FreeBSD 
>(maybe via the install disc?) to get a detailed printout of my FreeBSD 
>slice? Posting that on here may be of some use.
>--
>Michael Peirson
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