Strange nanobsd issue

[Paul Schenkeveld]

On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 10:19:44AM -0500, Mike Tancsa wrote:
> At 12:10 PM 7/4/2007, Mike Tancsa wrote:
>> I ran into a rather strange problem I dont understand.  With my nanobsd 
>> image, if I comment out
>> 
>> hint.sio.0.flags="0x10"
>> or
>> hint.uart.0.flags="0x10"
>> from /boot/device.hints
>> 
>> I get the RAM disks mounted twice ?!
>> 
>> eg.
>> 
>> # df
>> Filesystem  1K-blocks  Used  Avail Capacity  Mounted on
>> /dev/ad0s1a    245239 98076 127544    43%    /
>> devfs               1     1      0   100%    /dev
>> /dev/md0         4526  1784   2380    43%    /etc
>> /dev/md1        27990   124  25628     0%    /var
>> /dev/md2         4526  1788   2376    43%    /etc
>> /dev/md3        27990   436  25316     2%    /var
>> 
>> /boot.config is empty and /boot/loader.conf has
>> 
>> hw.ata.ata_dma=0
>> hw.ata.atapi_dma=0
>> beastie_disable="YES"           # Turn the beastie boot menu on and off
>> #comconsole_speed="19200"
>> #console="nullconsole"
>> autoboot_delay="4
>> 
>> having nullconsole doesnt seem to matter any.  The device.hints 
>> modification seems to be the single thing that effects this behavior.
> 
> 
> I accidentally found a work around to this issue while playing with a 
> firewall console on a box with no serial ports. If I add to my stock 
> NANOBSD image the boot loader option
> 
> boot_multicons="YES"
> dcons_load="YES"
> 
> The double mount issue goes away....
> 
> I havent found much documentation about multicons/dcons and its 
> implications.  Apart from a bit of RAM it uses for the kernel, are there 
> any disadvantages of using it to work around the double mount issue ?
> 
>         ---Mike 

Apparently something goes wrong during /etc/rc processing if there's
no console at all.  Having a dcons_load="YES" in loader.conf creates
a console even if there's no hardware attached to it.  I think that
boot_multicons="YES" can even be omitted here.

Could you please do one more test?  Add rc_debug="YES" to rc.conf
and take boot_multicons="YES" and dcons_load="YES" out of loader.conf.
This should give you two /etc and two /var mounts again.  Then post the
output of dmesg -a as it should reveal when and probably also why these
filesystems get mounted twice.

Regards,

Paul Schenkeveld