8.0-RELEASE-i386-memstick fixit - No USB devices found!

[Ian Smith]

In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 286, Issue 12, Message 7
On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 06:51:50 -0800 Randi Harper <randi at freebsd.org> wrote:
 > On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 5:00 AM, Derek (freebsd lists) <482254ac at razorfever.net> wrote:
 > > Hi,
 > >
 > > Just wondering if anyone else out there has successfully gotten the
 > > 8.0-RELEASE-i386-memstick fixit prompt up.
 > >
 > > It boots fine, and sysinstall comes up, but I continually get "No USB
 > > devices found!" when I go to the fixit/USB option.
 > >
 > > When I switch to the debug tty, I see da0, and all my device parameters.
 > >
 > > I've even created a second USB stick, and stuck it in and tried.
 > >
 > > No joy.
 > >
 > > Anyways, has anyone successfully gotten the 8.0-RELEASE-i386-memstick fixit
 > > prompt up?
 > >
 > > Thanks!
 > > - Derek
 > 
 > That's really weird. I can't say that I've seen this problem. It
 > sounds like you're trying to load the livefs - can you bring up a
 > normal fixit shell prompt and see what entries you have in /dev for
 > da0*? There should be a da0a. Due to sysinstall weirdness, adding this
 > USB support was somewhat of a hack, as it doesn't look for da0 - it
 > looks for da0a. :P

Hi Randi,

I had the same problem, rather more substantially, installing 8.0 from 
the memstick.img.  This thread and to you seems to be where I should 
report what I remember of the process, only later finding all this.

I made the memstick.img by dd as per the release page on my Thinkpad 
T23.  It only sports USB 1.0 ports, and while I was confident of the dd 
(which took ~25m at ~600kB/s), I didn't really expect a 2002 laptop to 
boot from the image, but on seeing the USB stick show up in its BIOS and 
promoting it in the disk boot order, it did!  Never underestimate IBM ..

I was being very careful, as I wanted to install 8.0 on ad0s4, hopefully 
not damaging my 7.0-R on ad0s2, still having memories of a 3.3-R install 
in similar circumstances that went horribly wrong, 8? years ago :)

So .. booted into sysinstall, fdisk and label ad0s4, leave boot0 as was, 
committed that much after two earlier attempts failed due to the below, 
quit to reboot, checked the labelling, redid the mount points, all ok.

Picked pretty much all distributions from custom install, then of course 
had to select media.  Picked USB - and got about what Derek did, no USB 
disk found.

Very long story short: googled for ages and found a forum thread about 
this very problem, in which someone suggested Options / Rescan Devices 
then trying again.  The OP there said it didn't work for him, but it 
sure did for me!  After knowing that, the install went pretty smoothly, 
modulo not getting fc-10 to install by FTP, but that's another issue..

And just now, prompted by this thread I tried selecting Fixit, to again 
get what Derek did.  And again, Options / Rescan Devices fixed it for 
me.  Maybe it will for Derek and/or maybe provide another clue?  Maybe 
sysinstall could try a device rescan itself in that circumstance?

While I'm at it .. selecting 'Holographic Shell', while in that state at 
least, brings up a shell that (perhaps due to stick not being mounted?) 
has no ls command, making navigation difficult :)  pwd works, set works, 
but no ls.  Later (from debug msgs on vty1) I saw that I'd been perhaps 
in /stand and only much later found that find worked and served as ls ..

One more thing, while I remember .. seeing the USB stick is here ad0a, 
isn't that the old 'dangerously dedicated mode' now dropped from 8.0?

And to be a real pest with questions, where in CVS do I find the script 
or whatever makes memstick.img in the first place?

cheers, Ian