boot sector f*ed

[Ruben de Groot]

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 03:12:27PM -0400, PJ typed:
> Ruben de Groot wrote:
> > Hi PJ,
> >
> > On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 09:53:06AM -0400, PJ typed:
> >   
> >> I apologize for the lengthy explanation below, but perhaps it will give
> >> some insight on what is see from this end:
> >>     
> >
> > You probably won't get much helpfull response. When troubleshooting, it's
> > allways best to try to break down the problem in tiny bits and solve them
> > one by one, asking specific questions when you get stuck.
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >   
> >> to be in a position to do what is required. For one thing, I do not know
> >> how I can save testing output to an external file when I am working on a
> >> temporary shell on the problem machine. Perhaps you could indicate what
> >> I should be doing or where to look for information.
> >>     
> >
> > What kind of "temporary shell"? You mean the fixit console or livecd? You can
> > allways redirect the output to some file in /tmp for example and then scp
> > it to another computer. Or mount_nfs or even mount_smbfs a windows share and 
> > save the output there.
> >
> >   
> >> And in checking the disks with fdisk, fsck, and even running that weird
> >> regenerate progam... I wasn't able to come up with anything
> >> significant... that is, the configuration of the disks seemed to be ok,
> >> the boot sector was ok as it was able to boot but the when the system
> >> was being mounted something went wrong... and looking back, I vaguely
> >> recall something about a "soft update" or something like that which
> >> seems to indicate some stumbling block in the software and not hardware.
> >>     
> >
> > soft updates inconsistencies perhaps? They can be caused by faulty hardware.
> > Or by power failure.  What did you do about them? In such a situation the
> > system will drop you into single user mode where you can do an fsck. 
> >
> >   
> >> All that I am seeing is that there is either a problem with the bios
> >> (which I even reinstalled and that changed nothing in the functioning)
> >> or something is going on with the OS.
> >>     
> >
> > How exactly did you see this? And you reinstalled the BIOS ???
> >
> >   
> >> I now have set up another instance of 7.2 on a different disk on the
> >> 2.4ghz machine and I already find something strange... after installing
> >> the minimum configuration, I installed the packages - samba3.3.3,
> >> cvsup-without-gui, and smartmontools. I tried to run smartctl and cvsup
> >> but nothing worked. The path variable was correct but the shell just
> >> would not pick up on it. I had to start the programs from their directories.
> >> That just doesn't make sense.
> >>     
> >
> > It does if your shell is csh (the default shell for root). You must issue
> > the "rehash" command to re-read everything in your path after installing new
> > software.
> >
> > Ruben
> >   
> Thanks Ruben,
> Frankly, I don't know an;ymore what I'm doing nor what is going on... it
> used to be so easy to set up FBSD even if it took a lot of time to
> compile... but it seems to be getting less and less intuitive and user
> friendly.
> How can I break thinkgs up into little bits and pieces without just
> smashing the whole show to bits and pieces ;-)
> There are so many problems, I have not idea where to begin.

I did a little bit of that for you. You could start by answering the specific
questions I asked you above right below where I asked them instead of 
trying to answer all in just one paragraph and failing that.

> Oh, yes, csh ? I always set up bash and it never gave me such problems.
> Did the same just now and again, no problems with the shell.
> Right now I'm just fixing up a new set up of 7.2 on another disk and
> we'll see what that does. Then I will re-setup the files I had recoverd,
> see if they work and then do a last and final install of everything and
> see if that works. And if there is a problem then, then I will know for
> sure that it is not a hardware problem. In using computers, in general,
> over the past 20 plus years I have only had maybe 6 crashes... mostly
> Winbloz and about 3 with FBSD - and only 1 was because of defective
> hardware (a disk)... the rest was power outs and 1 erroneous shutdown...
> not bad ... and I never lost irreplaceable files. :-)   Took some time
> to recover them, but recover did as recover should.
> Oh, well, before I give it all up, I'm giving it one final shot.
> PJ