11-STABLE system unbootable after update

Scott Bennett bennett at sdf.org
Sat May 18 13:03:46 UTC 2019


     I have been running 11.2-STABLE for a while at r345498.  Last weekend it crashed,
so I took the opportunity to install the most recent build I had lying around, r347182.
I created a new boot environment and installed the r347182 kernel into it, shut the
system down, and rebooted.  The new kernel came up and appeared to be working okay, so
I continued with the mergemaster -p -F, make installworld, and mergemaster -F, then
shut it down again, and rebooted.  It asked for the GELI key for the boot pool, which
I then entered.  The spinning slash cursor appeared and may have changed for one frame
or so, and then I got a message beginning with "BTX" and followed by several lines of
hexadecimal, and then it stopped.  I tried it again just to be sure, and the result was
exactly the same.
     Does anyone know whether the PMBR boot block or the loader in the freebsd-boot
partition changed between r345498 and r347182?  I found no warning in /usr/src/UPDATING
about installworld potentially leaving a wasted system, so I don't have a clear idea
of what went wrong, much less whether I missed some instruction somewhere about source
updates.  If anyone can lend me a clue here, I would greatlyappreciate it.  I only had
one working machine, and now it is only working in a "rescue" mode by booting from a
DVD.  (Probably needless to say, but I will burn new DVDs with up-to-date stuff as soon
as my system is working the way it is supposed to again.)
     This motherboard is nearly 11 years old and does not boot from USB (in spite of
the BIOS menus say), so at the moment I am logged into SDF by running a long out-of-date
TrueOS installer DVD, which happens to be a pain to get to boot all the way, but I've
figured how to make it do it rather than get stuck with a logo on the screen that never
goes away.  Unfortunately, it includes no software to burn a CD or DVD, so I cannot
make a new bootable disk for the time being.  I will check email much later today or
this evening.
     Thanks in advance for any helpful ideas!


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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