GELI full disk, booting from thumb drive - can't get to /usr?

bob at vesterman.com bob at vesterman.com
Sat Mar 14 21:24:19 PDT 2009


I've been trying to set up a system (7.0 Release) with full-disk
encryption, using GELI, and booting from a thumb drive.  When booting, it
gets as far as asking me for the passphrases of the various encrypted
disks; when I give them, GELI indicates that it successfully attached to
each, but after I've entered the last of them, the system puts out a bunch
of messages (most of which quickly scroll off my screen) looking like it's
trying to continue booting, but having problems.

Those that are left when it finally stops scrolling seem to indicate that
it can't get to /usr.  Here is what remains on my screen when it stops
scrolling:

eval: /usr/sbin/sendmail: not found
/etc/rc: WARNING: run_rc_command: cannot run /usr/sbin/cron
Local package initialization:
dirname: not found
Starting background file system checks in 60 seconds.
logger: not found

After that is a blank line, then a line with the date and time, and then a
bunch of lines like the following:

Mar 14 22:39:06 init: can't exec getty '/usr/libexec/getty' for port
/dev/ttyv4: No such file or directory

The only difference between the "getty" lines is the ttyv* they show.

Thereafter, once every thirty seconds, another eight copies of the "getty"
line show.  This happens indefinitely thereafter (I let it go for an hour
or so).

If I start up Fixit from a LiveFS CD, geli attach and mount what should be
/usr as something like "/myusr", I can see that all of the things I expect
to be there really are there (including, for example, libexec/getty).

Does anyone have any idea why this would be happening, or any idea on how
to troubleshoot it? The fact that I can't get to getty makes it...
difficult.

Here is my fstab, which is the same in /boot/etc of my thumb drive and
/boot/etc of the thing on the hard drive that should get mounted as root
(again, I can confirm this by mounting it as /myslash via a LiveFS CD):

/dev/ad10.elia   /       ufs     rw         1 1
/dev/ad10.elib   none    swap    sw         0 0
/dev/ad10.elid   /var    ufs     rw         2 2
/dev/ad10.elie   /tmp    ufs     rw         2 2
/dev/ad10.elif   /usr    ufs     rw         2 2
/dev/ad11.elib   none    swap    sw         0 0
/dev/ad11.elif   /disk2  ufs     rw         2 0
/dev/ad13.elib   none    swap    sw         0 0
/dev/ad13.elif   /disk3  ufs     rw         2 2
/dev/acd0        /cdrom  cd9660  ro,noauto  0 0

Thanks in advance for any help.



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