system hangs on; "Probing devices, please wait (this can take a while)... "

[Bruce Cran]

On Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:59:58 +0200
Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:

> I would suggest to boot with the live system CD, e. g. of 8.0-RELEASE.
> It should not launch sysinstall automatically (you can even boot the
> CD into SUM), so you end up with a regular shell. First, check all
> the kernel's output for things that look... strange... and maybe you
> even decide to install the system without sysinstall (if THAT is
> what's causing all the trouble).

Unfortunately the LiveFS CD does run sysinstall by default - you need
to go to the Fixit menu to get the shell.

I'd suggest trying to boot with debug output enabled and seeing if that
produces any clues - I suspect not, but it's worth a go.  To do that,
press 6 when you see the boot menu to get command prompt and enter
"boot -v". You should see any debug output on the 2nd console (press F2
when sysinstall hangs).

-- 
Bruce Cran