Help with Booting

[Doug Hardie]

On 23 April 2011, at 02:20, Erich Dollansky wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I only can tell what I do when a machine does not boot from the installation media: I plug the disk into another machine, install the generic kernel, edit /etc and put it back.
> 
> If this does not work, it will be hard.

That works, but then I end up without having RAID activated.  I am trying to get the hardware RAID working.

> 
> Erich
> 
> On Saturday 23 April 2011 14:25:13 Doug Hardie wrote:
>> 
>> On 22 April 2011, at 23:46, Erich Dollansky wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> On Saturday 23 April 2011 12:57:32 Doug Hardie wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> On 22 April 2011, at 21:28, Erich Dollansky wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> It looks to me that not even the loader loads. Is this true?
>>>>> 
>>>> I am not sure.  The last message is the timestamp from the original distribution build.  Then is a line with just the '/' character that should spin a bit.  It doesn't.  
>>>> 
>>>> By playing around a bit I got it a bit farther.  I took one of the raid disks and mounted it in a different system.  I did an install on it but without changing the label other than to use all the disk.  Then I put it back in the production system and booted.  It appears to retain the RAID characteristics, but all I get is a '-' at the top left of the screen.  I then plugged in the memstick image and booted from that.  Right after the last DOS window I pressed F10 which took me to a FreeBSD boot  line with the default pointing to ad0.  I used 0:ad(4,a)/boot/loader and it went on to the same point as before, but then a bit farther.  I now see:
>>>> 
>>> this is all to weird for me. Could you install a disk not using the raid hardware?
>>> 
>>> It would then exclude the motherboard as the cause.
>>> 
>>> Erich
>> 
>> No. That didn't work either.  I had been using the machine on amd64 but I had to install with the drive on another system.  I couldn't get it to boot of CD or memstick.  However, the memstick I used then was dead today so I bought a new one hoping that was the problem.  Unfortunately this stick is good, but it still won't boot off it.
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf
>>>> /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8ffac1 |
>>>> 
>>>> The '|' normally spins a couple of times and moves on to the next section.  However, its hung there now.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Saturday 23 April 2011 05:38:41 Doug Hardie wrote:
>>>>>> I have an AMD based system that is driving me nuts.  I am trying to install 8.2 on it but can't get past the first boot.  I had a system up and running on it before, but I had to remove a drive and do the install on another computer.  That worked, but now I need to use the built in RAID hardware.  As best as I can tell I am going to have to install on the the actual hardware.  Motherboard is an Arima NM46X.  The machine appears to be about 6 years old.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I have tried to boot the install disk, the live filesystem disk, and the memstick image for FreeBSD 7.0 through 8.2.  All of them do exactly the same thing:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Bootstart starts.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> BTX loader lists the drives and memory
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> FreeBSD bootstrap loader version 1.1 starts.  I get the build date and then a new line with just a '/' on it.  It never begins to spin.  No additional I/O occurs with the boot device.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> The memstick and CDs are good.  They boot just fine on another computer, just not this one.  I have had to work around CD issues in the past, but I thought the memstick would work if the BIOS would recognize it and boot from it.  It recognizes it and tries to boot.  I need some ideas here as the RAID is essential for this application.  Thanks,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
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>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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