Unable to mount the root fs on stable/8 r264339, GENERIC kernel, with MBR, FreeBSD slice, and UFS volume labels

[Trond Endrestøl]

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 23:09-0600, Warren Block wrote:

> On Fri, 11 Apr 2014, Chris H wrote:
> > > 
> > > There I first wiped the harddrive clean, by booting from the
> > > 8.0-RELEASE dvd1, ran dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=128M, before I
> > > installed 8.0-RELEASE. I then transferred an up-to-date working copy
> > > of stable/8 to the spare system. Next, I compiled world and the
> > > GENERIC kernel, without any hassle. I performed make installkernel and
> > > rebooted.
> > > 
> > > The boot loader managed its way through the maze, read /etc/fstab and
> > > found the entry for the root filesystem. The new GENERIC kernel,
> > > however, simply can't understand what to do with:
> > > 
> > > vfs.root.mountfrom="ufs:/dev/ufs/root"
> > > vfs.root.mountfrom.options="rw"
> > > 
> > > as presented by the boot loader. Mind you, the boot loader hasn't been
> > > replaced yet. Maybe that's the whole issue, however weird it sounds.
> > > /boot/loader.conf is empty btw.
> > > 
> > > I'm doing a similar attempt in VirtualBox at home as I write this.
> > > There I began with 8.4-RELEASE, and are currently compiling stable/8
> > > r264351.
> > > 
> > > I'll later try in VBox, 8.4-R -> stable/8 with GPT + UFS, using GPT
> > > labels, just to rule out UFS labels.
> > Looks to me like you're suffering a mix of MBR + GPT. It /appears/ to
> > be expecting one of them, but getting the other. Did you install the
> > bootcode, or update it? Was it consistent with your choice of
> > schemes (GPT v MBR)? Well. Looks like you're on the right track. As
> > far as I can see. Good luck. :)
> 
> My first guess would be missing bootcode in the BSDlabel slice.  But I may
> have missed that when I missed earlier parts of this thread.

How? Why? The system has booted FreeBSD stable/8 for the last five 
years using MBR, slice, and UFS labels. Why should it stop all of a 
sudden?

> In general, use GPT unless there is some reason to avoid it. 
> http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html shows both 
> GPT and MBR/BSDlabel setup.

I was hoping to avoid reinstalling the system, but if I do, and the 
firmware permits it, I'd go for GPT, no doubt.

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