No controller detected when boot FreeBSD 7.0

[vardyh]

Matthew Seaman wrote:
> vardyh wrote:
>> Matthew Seaman wrote:
>>> vardyh wrote:
>>>> Hi all.
>>>> I'm a newbie to FreeBSD. I added
>>>>    'console="comconsole"'
>>>> to /boot/loader.conf and I got
>>>>    'hptrr: no controller detected.'
>>>> on the next boot. I didn't change anything else except for the 
>>>> 'console=xxx'.
>>>> And I had had no problem before that. Could anyone tell me why?
>>>> I will very appreciate for your help :>
>
>>> This is just the driver for the HighPoint Rocket Raid controller being
>>> a bit too verbose.  It's detected that you don't have anything 
>>> compatible
>>> with hptrr(4) and (unlike the usual behaviour of most Raid Controller
>>> drivers (or drivers for any sort of hardware really)) it considers 
>>> this fact to be of such vital importance that it really had to print 
>>> out
>>> something on the console.  Needless to say such behaviour has 
>>> already been quashed in 7-STABLE and will not appear in 7.1-RELEASE.
>>>
>>> In other words, it's harmless and you can just ignore it. I suspect 
>>> that this output wasn't actually triggered by your changing
>>> the console setting -- there's no conceivable way changing one should
>>> affect the other -- but that changing the way the boot messages are 
>>> displayed has managed to draw your attention to it. You probably had 
>>> it before but never noticed.
>
>> But, actually it claimed that no controller detected and asked me to
>> specify the root filesystem manually, which wrote:
>>
>> Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ad0s1a
>> Manul root filesystem specification:
>>  <fstype>:<device> Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
>>                                     eg. ufs:da0s1a
>>  ?                              List valid disk boot devices
>>  <empty line>           Abort manual input
>>
>> I tried ufs:/dev/ad0s1a, which was the real root filesystem registered
>> in my /etc/fstab, but it still could not be mounted. And the same
>> direction came out again to asked me to point out the root fs.
>>
>> I tried '?' also, but it seems that no disk devices were found... The
>> kernel told me "List of GEOM managed disk devices:", and nothing but the
>> same old direction followed.
>
> Ah.  This is a different problem, unrelated to the 'no controller
> detected' message.  Unless you actually /do/ have a controller driven
> by hptrr(4)?
>
> Basically your problem is that /dev/ad0 has disappeared -- and as that's
> where the boot code expected to mount the root filesystem from, it
> threw a big spanner in the works.
>
> Now, ad0 can disappear for a number of reasons:
>
>    * the disk has died
>
>    * the disk was unplugged and then not plugged back in again
>      properly
>
>    * the disk was plugged into a different connector internally
>      (it could appear as one of ad1, ad2 or ad3 in this case)
>
>    * you changed some BIOS settings and now the system is presenting
>      the disk as a SATA device (it could appear as ad4 or ad6 in
>      this case)
>
>    * you changed some BIOS settings and now the system has tried to
>      generate some sort of RAID from the attached drives -- this could
>      appear as ar0, or it could prevent FreeBSD seeing the drive(s) at
>      all or it could have just shredded the contents of your disk and 
>      left you up a gum tree.  (Normally you would have had to click 
>      through several dire warning messages in the last case, so this 
>      eventuality shouldn't have been particularly surprising to you)
>
> Check all the connectors.  Check the disk is properly seated, especially
> if it's a hotswap device.  Try booting up the installation media or a 
> Freesbie disk or any sort of LiveCD and see what hardware the kernel 
> discovers at boot time.  If you have been changing BIOS settings, try 
> changing them back to what they were originally. 
>     Cheers,
>
>     Matthew
>
But it's weird that I didn't change any of the mentioned above. After I 
removed the 'console=Xxx' from loader.conf, it booted successfully. It 
seemed that the console option was the only matter. But I can't figure 
out how THAT option affected the adN device when booting up.