FreeBSD 6.1 hangs at mountroot> during bootup

[Mike Peirson]

Jerry McAllister wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 20, 2006 at 04:47:19PM -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>
>>
> 
> Hmmm.   this looks like there is no boot sector available.  I haven't
> seen messages before just exactly like this, but sort of.
> 
> Maybe it would help if you described the sequence of things you
> did or tried, such as for the install.
> 
> Which version did you install?
> Did you initiate the install (boot) from a CD?  If not, what?
> Did you choose to use the FreeBSD MBR?
> Did you create a FreeBSD slice in sysinstall?
> Did you mark that slice as bootable?
> Did you create partitions within that FreeBSD slice?
> Did you choose which things to install?
> Did it appear to load things properly?
> 
> After installation finished and you got the congradulations message,
> what did you do?
> 
> ////jerry
> 
>> 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. 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.
>> -- 
>> Michael Peirson
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> 

Hi Jerry,

I started the install from the standard 2 disc set and it is FreeBSD 
6.1-release. I used the FreeBSD MBR. I created a FreeBSD slice using up 
all of the HDD in sysinstall. I did not mark the slice as bootable.. I 
tried to use that option but it told me that it didn't apply. I created 
several partitions inside the FreeBSD slice. /, swap, /var, /tmp, /usr, 
/home, /etc. I did a standard install and chose the Developer set of 
packages (I don't need X because I plan to run a server). I also went 
through and added extra programs off of the disc. Everything appeared to 
load properly. I rebooted after I  finished with the install and it 
began to boot up fine but then I got that mountroot> message.
-- 
Michael Peirson