mount root error while booting bootonly.iso

[Rick Miller]

Hi all,

The FreeBSD 10.0 bootonly ISO is sporadically unable to boot on the DL360p
G8 running BIOS P-71 8/20/2012.  I initially thought this was due to
customizations being developed into the ISO until a stock ISO from
ftp.freebsd.org was tested and also exhibited the same behavior suggesting
there may be a more low level problem afoot.  Oddly enough, the ISO booted
on the first attempt on two different chassis' while two subsequent
attempts failed as described in the screenshots below.  On a third attempt,
both DL360s did boot the ISO and I was able to perform an OS installation.
 It is worth noting here that the ISO is being mounted on the chassis via
the "virtual media" feature of the iLO.

Hoping that someone has experience with FreeBSD 10.0 on the DL360p G8
and/or seen anything similar and know a workaround/fix?  Is it more likely
behavior caused by the environment or a bug? In addition to the snapshots,
I captured dmesg output from a successful boot which is linked to below.

I checked/tested the following:

* Ensure /etc/fstab contains an entry suitable for booting the ISO
* Ensured AHCI was disabled on the storage controller
* Setting vfs.root.mountfrom and vfs.root.mountfrom.options as appropriate

I have considered updating the firmware provided a newer version exists,
but have yet to do so.

### Snapshots & dmesg output

The first snapshot shows the initial cam probe error, while the second
snapshot shows a number of retries.  It stops after 5 failed retries.

http://www.hostileadmin.com/images/mountroot_error_warning.png
http://www.hostileadmin.com/images/mountroot_error_out.png
http://www.hostileadmin.com/logs/dmesg.out

Thanks!

-- 
Take care
Rick Miller