loader(8) readin failed on 7.2R and later including 8.0R

[Hiroki Sato]

Hi,

 This may be a rare case, but I post this with the hope for ideas from
 people here.

 I have experienced a strange loader(8) error.  After upgrading one of
 my boxes from 7.1R to 7.2R, an error appeared on "boot" command of
 loader(8) like this:

 | FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 1.1
 | (hrs at cmaster.allbsd.org, Mon Nov 30 04:01:24 JST 2009)
 | Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf
 | /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8b6c04
 | readin failed
 |
 | elf32_loadimage: read failed
 | /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8b6c04
 | readin failed
 |
 | elf32_loadimage: read failed
 | Unable to load a kernel!

 (Actually the above error message was displayed when I upgraded it to
 8.0R.  The message was the same when I tried 7.2R.)

 Replacing the /boot/loader with 7.1R's one, 7.2R's kernel worked
 fine.

 Next, I tried to upgrade it to 8.0R.  As I explained earlier, the
 8.0R's loader did not work either, so I replaced it with 7.1R again.
 However, 7.1R loader(8) + 8.0R kernel displayed the following error
 and did not work:

 | OK load /boot/kernel/kernel
 | /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8db9a4 data=0xdd134+0xa5e84 syms=[0x4+0x99390+0x4+0xd2201
 | elf32_loadimage: could not read symbols - skipped!

 While the "load" command seemed to finish, the box got stuck just
 after entering "boot" command.

 Curious to say, I have got this symptom only on a specific box in
 more than ten different boxes I upgraded so far; it is based on an
 old motherboard Supermicro P4DPE[*].

 [*] http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/E7500/P4DPE.cfm

 Any workaround?  Booting from release CDROMs (7.2R and 8.0R) also
 fail.  On the box "7.1R" or "7.1R's loader + 7.2R kernel" worked
 fine.  It is possible something in changes of loader(8) between 7.1R
 and 7.2R is the cause, but I am still not sure what it is...

-- Hiroki
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