HELP upgrade 10.3 to 11.2, now it won't boot!

[Rick Miller]

On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 9:24 PM Rick Miller <vrwmiller at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Sep 11, 2018 at 8:27 PM William Dudley <wfdudley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I started the upgrade from 10.3 to 11.2.
>>
>> I followed all the instructions and all "looked OK" until I got to
>> the reboot.
>>
>> Now the system won't boot.
>>
>> copied from a photo of the screen:
>>
>> Mounting from ufs:/dev/ad01e failed with error 19.
>>
>> (something)dev variables:
>> (something)ufs.root.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/ad0s1e
>> (something)ufs.root.mountfrom.options=rw
>>
>> (something)ual root filesystem specification:
>> <fstype>:<device> [options]
>>       Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
>>       and with the specified (optional) option list.
>>
>> e.g. ufs:/dev/da0s1a
>>        zfs:tank
>>        cd9660:/dev/cd0 r0
>>
>> and obviously, more stuff intended to be helpful printed below that.
>>
>
> Ugh! This error is the bane of my existence! AFAIK, mountroot() error 19
> means the root filesystem cannot be found. vfs.root.mountroot, which is
> expected to contain the root filesystem, is derived from /etc/fstab unless
> explicitly defined in loader(8)*. Theoretically, you can boot to whatever
> root filesystem you may have by defining vfs.root.mountfrom at this prompt.
>
> Entering '?' at this prompt outputs a list of geom managed disk devices.
> The root filesystem is expected to be on one of these.
>
> It's unclear how the upgrade was attempted (e.g. freebsd-update(8) or
> source update). I've observed this error most when PXE booting bootonly
> media, never during an OS upgrade.
>
> You may be able to resolve it by booting the system to external media and
> mounting the disk with the root filesystem and modifying /etc/fstab.
>
> * https://twitter.com/hostileadmin/status/1035887403821686784
>

Or boot to single user at the beastie menu and attempt the same.

--
Rick