From nobody Wed Sep 11 21:11:26 2024 X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@mlmmj.nyi.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2610:1c1:1:606c::19:1]) by mlmmj.nyi.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4X3tYB3W9Yz5Vywv for ; Wed, 11 Sep 2024 21:11:42 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bennett@sdf.org) Received: from mx.sdf.org (mx.sdf.org [205.166.94.24]) (using TLSv1.3 with cipher TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (256/256 bits) key-exchange X25519 server-signature RSA-PSS (4096 bits) server-digest SHA256 client-signature ECDSA (P-256) client-digest SHA256) (Client CN "mx.sdf.org", Issuer "E5" (verified OK)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 4X3tYB0qvHz4jd8 for ; Wed, 11 Sep 2024 21:11:41 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bennett@sdf.org) Authentication-Results: mx1.freebsd.org; none Received: from sdf.org (IDENT:bennett@rie.sdf.org [205.166.94.4]) by mx.sdf.org (8.18.1/8.14.3) with ESMTPS id 48BLBTTJ015595 (using TLSv1.3 with cipher TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (256 bits) verified NO); Wed, 11 Sep 2024 21:11:30 GMT DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=simple/simple; d=sdf.org; s=sdf.org; t=1726089091; bh=rkwCDuICLpU0XXJ4W9OSebNOdanqLXjr5FjAQrVVIQ8=; h=From:Date:To:Subject:Cc:References:In-Reply-To; b=cCCAgwFaMLcA9ic3T6255463FPIDbqStmyC6J6FFDk7XZCb9bVjh33DRgzAiudoGw e6oF+kYzoE2cJYIuoauPfVL0HVJww284FV6rNcdbTJipmB6NRKGAyTxQT9wrtlKWuo FOcdhvpY8WkQ4Z8yNghm53SYOj8oISNfnrqRyKyU= Received: (from bennett@localhost) by sdf.org (8.18.1/8.12.8/Submit) id 48BLBQ7x005508; Wed, 11 Sep 2024 16:11:26 -0500 (CDT) From: Scott Bennett Message-Id: <202409112111.48BLBQ7x005508@sdf.org> Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2024 16:11:26 -0500 To: ronald-lists@klop.ws Subject: Re: 13.3R's installworld killed system--please help! Cc: ax61@disroot.org, marklmi@yahoo.com, freebsd-stable@freebsd.org References: <1841841708.2531.1726075709651@localhost> In-Reply-To: <1841841708.2531.1726075709651@localhost> User-Agent: Heirloom mailx 12.5 6/20/10 List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Archive: https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-stable List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spamd-Bar: ---- X-Rspamd-Pre-Result: action=no action; module=replies; Message is reply to one we originated X-Spamd-Result: default: False [-4.00 / 15.00]; REPLY(-4.00)[]; ASN(0.00)[asn:14361, ipnet:205.166.94.0/24, country:US] X-Rspamd-Queue-Id: 4X3tYB0qvHz4jd8 Ronald Klop wrote: > How big is your pool? Could it be that installworld installed files above > 2TB or some other old BIOS limit so it is unable to read it. I hadn't thought of that, but according to the partition map backups, the "system" pool is just a hair smaller than 344 GB. Each of the drives is a bit smaller than 1 TB. > > Sorry if I talk about something that was already discussed. I don?t have the full thread anymore. > No, it wasn't discussed, so thank you for the input. My tower system is still unbootable after all this time. I'm down to grasping at straws. A family member is checking the machines at work to see whether any still have a usable disk burner in case I need to trash the contents of one of the boot drives by booting an installer disk. This would be a most unpleasant option entailing a huge amount of work and very likely the purchase of another storage device I can't afford at the moment. I'm also considering running the standalone installer from a thumb drive on the laptop with a boot drive from the tower attached via the USB docking station. This would also result in that abominable amount of work. Neither this nor the first option is good, but the boot code the standalone installer installs has worked fine on the laptop's SSD to load 13.3-RELEASE many times so far, whereas installworld made the system unbootable in a still unknown manner. A third option is to run the installer from a thumb drive on the laptop in rescue mode to reinstall boot code onto a tower boot drive. If that fails, I've considered downloading the last available image of 12.4-RELEASE and putting that onto a thumb drive, attaching the tower's boot drives to the laptop, running the 12.4-RELEASE standalone installer from the thumb drive in rescue mode to install *its* boot code onto the tower's drives, importing the "system" pool long enough to do a "zfs rollback" of everything to the final snapshot I made immediately before running installkernel, and putting those drives back into the tower to try it out. Lastly, would be using the 12.4-RELEASE-p2 installer to go through all the equivalent work and hassle and potential storage device expense by reinstalling 12.4-RELEASE-p2 from scratch and starting over just to get back to an approximation of where my system was before I ran installkernel from my source build of 13.3-RELEASE-p1. :-( But at least that should give me a running system again. While I've been typing this reply, the aforementioned family member has reported that her machine at work does have a disk burner. I doubt it has been used in a long time, so I don't yet know whether it still works. I wonder when the last release was that the BIOS-based boot code was actually tested on a machine that uses BIOS-based booting. This leads to another nasty thought, namely, I don't recall when the last time was that I installed the boot code onto the boot drives before I got into the current mess. It might not have been since I first switched to a ZFS install to begin using a root-on-ZFS system many years ago, in which case my wondering about when the developers last tested a BIOS boot becomes somewhat frightening in that I would have potentially many installer images archived at freebsd.org to try out. My pools are all up to date as of 12.4-RELEASE, so the older releases' boot code versions might not be able to work with the "system" pool in its current state either. Oh, well. Once again, if anyone seeing this note has any other ideas or more options to try, please share them. Scott Bennett