Cant boot 9-RELEASE on Intel L440GX+ based system

[jb]

Sergey Listopad <psychosensor <at> gmail.com> writes:

> ... 
> As you can see, bootstrap process stuck much earlier kernel
> booting/root mounting. It stuck on loader stage (loader can't do
> something. But what exactly?)
> 
> I've been able to boot system manually (so system on HDD is workable),
> by skipping loader stage (boot kernel directly from boot block prompt)
>       >> FreeBSD/i386 BOOT
>      Default: 0:ad(0p2)/boot/loader
>      boot:/boot/kernel/kernel
> 
> and then
> mountroot> ufs:/dev/da0p2

Some remarks that may be helpful.

fdisk(8)
...
     In order for the BIOS to boot the kernel, certain conventions must be
     adhered to.  Sector 0 of the disk must contain boot code, a slice table,
     and a magic number.  BIOS slices can be used to break the disk up into
     several pieces.  The BIOS brings in sector 0 and verifies the magic num-
     ber.  The sector 0 boot code then searches the slice table to determine
     which slice is marked ``active''.  This boot code then brings in the
     bootstrap from the active slice and, if marked bootable, runs it. ...

boot0cfg(8)  -- boot manager installation/configuration utility
 
To see the first 512 bytes of your first harddisk:
# dd if=/dev/ada0 count=1 | hexdump -C

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/boot-blocks.html
 
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-trouble.html
... here is this weird BIOS, IDE, SCSI disk numbering stuff ...

jb