Re: syspatch -> no partition found ; any simple fix?
Heylas again,
On Thu, 29 Oct 2020 21:40:05 -0700, Greg Thomas wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 8:42 PM Amelia A Lewis wrote:
[snip]
>
> If you were just running syspatch I'd be worried that a hardware failure
> showed up on reboot. I'm way out of practice for troubleshooting OpenBSD
> but booting the installer from a USB drive or CD, dropping to a shell and
> checking your disk info will answer the hardware question for you.
On Fri, 30 Oct 2020 09:21:23 - (UTC), Stuart Henderson wrote:
> "No active partition" sounds like no MBR partition is marked as active.
>
> I would boot the installer, shell, "fdisk sd0" and see how it looks, or
> possonly the MBR partition table is not written correctly or has been
> somehow overwritten.
>
Thanks to both of you; I followed up by cracking the case (partly
because the only drive the BIOS had in its boot order was the Toshiba,
and I was pretty sure the boot volume was on an Crucial SSD). With a
little fiddling (changing boot order (when it let me), switching
uefi+legacy to legacy only (and even uefi only, but the only drive that
has gpt is the big data drive (the Toshiba), which doesn't have
anything bootable).
What seems to have happened, weirdly enough, is that my SSDs have gone
from sd in 6.7 and before (at least 6.6) to wd in 6.8. I've got my
daily output from 29 Oct (I keep most recent daily output emails, in
case i need them), which lists everything as sd (sd0 [ssd, boot volume]
and sd2 [toshiba data drive]). Now everything but the boot volume is
disconnected, and it's not sd0, it's wd0. Which might explain its
disappearance ... no, wrong level.
I just brought it up using 'boot /bsd.sp', which bypasses the kernel
crash (which I didn't mention before because I hadn't seen it before):
apparently, when bsd.mp crashes, it drops into ddb, and something
happens that registers in bios: the disk stops being available to the
bios. Variations on unplugging and replugging it, and fiddling with
boot order and 'csm' options will make it find the bootloader again.
Since the behavior is rather strikingly weird (though prolly
irreproducible by sane mortals), I'm gonna open a bug report, on the
chance that I've triggered something that folks there might recognize.
Amy!
--
Amelia A. Lewisamyzing {at} talsever.org
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that
have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are
mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
-- Edsger Dijkstra
Re: syspatch -> no partition found ; any simple fix?
On 2020-10-30, Amelia A Lewis wrote: > It won't start the boot, but displays "No active partition". Checking > online, this message seems to indicate a failed upgrade, with the > bootloader load incomplete, and (because I was distracted, and running > three updates in a state of fatigue), it's actually likely that what I > did was to Ctrl-B D out of tmux before it returned from kernel > relinking, and then hit doas reboot unthinkingly. Anyway, that's my > guess. If rebooting during relinking does cause some problem I don't think it would manifest itself like that. (I've done this multiple times - there's no indication that relinking is still taking place and can take surprisingly long on systems with poor disk io - and *touch wood* when issuing rdboot it has been ok so far - though I have been less lucky with power failures during relinking). "No active partition" sounds like no MBR partition is marked as active. I would boot the installer, shell, "fdisk sd0" and see how it looks, or possonly the MBR partition table is not written correctly or has been somehow overwritten. There should be an OpenBSD partition (and maybe some EFI partition if you use that, I don't use EFI enough to remember..) and one should be flagged with a * indicating that it's active. If the partition is there but without a *, edit with "fdisk -e sd0' and use the "flag" command to set the relevant partition active, e.g. "flag 3". If some partition information is shown but it doesn't look like it does on a working OpenBSD system then maybe someone has an idea if you post it here. If *no* partition is listed there and you are sure that you used a default "use whole disk for openbsd" when installing then fdisk -i sd0 (if you used MBR) or fdisk -gi sd0 (if GPT) may help. This writes a new default MBR partition table with OpenBSD spanning the whole disk but leaves other information (including the OpenBSD "disklabel" partition table) intact. > Is there a straightforward way to install kernel and bootloader without > requiring a system reinstall? Can I 'upgrade' with an install cd or usb > stick from (broken) 6.8+sp3 to 6.8, and then syspatch it up to date? An 'upgrade' install to the same version would do that but would not mark the MBR partition as active. I don't think it will fix this problem. > I'm trying to avoid full reinstall because that seems likely to wipe > out existing configuration. I figure my fallback is create install > stick/cd (from the other local 6.8, which was successfully updated), > boot from that, pull backups of all the configuration so I don't have > to reconfigure all the services (and double-check sizes and locations > of disk slices on the boot drive, and store that somewhere safe, then > reinstall and copy stuff back (it's all backed up, in fact, but it's > not backed up recently enough for confidence). So ... faster way to fix > my screwup, when I've probably borked my kernel and the bootloader, > somehow? If you need to recover files then I would try doing an install to a USB stick and boot from that, to give a more full environment than the install kernel with which to investigate/copy files/etc. Alternatively move the drive to a working machine as an additional drive and see if you can mount from there. That is a couple of steps on though. Check fdisk first.
Re: syspatch -> no partition found ; any simple fix?
On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 8:42 PM Amelia A Lewis wrote: > Heylas, > > So, I ran 6.8 syspatch (patches 002 and 003 together) for three systems > today (yesterday by the time anyone sees this, most likely). Two came > right back up as expected. The third didn't, but as it's local, I could > > . Or if it is entirely impossible that "No active partition" could be the > result of kernel relinking borkage, and it's obvious to someone that > something else (hardware failure showing up on a reboot?) happened, I'd > welcome clues. Thanks. > If you were just running syspatch I'd be worried that a hardware failure showed up on reboot. I'm way out of practice for troubleshooting OpenBSD but booting the installer from a USB drive or CD, dropping to a shell and checking your disk info will answer the hardware question for you.
syspatch -> no partition found ; any simple fix?
Heylas,
So, I ran 6.8 syspatch (patches 002 and 003 together) for three systems
today (yesterday by the time anyone sees this, most likely). Two came
right back up as expected. The third didn't, but as it's local, I could
go retry at the console (all three were actually patched and rebooted
via ssh).
It won't start the boot, but displays "No active partition". Checking
online, this message seems to indicate a failed upgrade, with the
bootloader load incomplete, and (because I was distracted, and running
three updates in a state of fatigue), it's actually likely that what I
did was to Ctrl-B D out of tmux before it returned from kernel
relinking, and then hit doas reboot unthinkingly. Anyway, that's my
guess.
Is there a straightforward way to install kernel and bootloader without
requiring a system reinstall? Can I 'upgrade' with an install cd or usb
stick from (broken) 6.8+sp3 to 6.8, and then syspatch it up to date?
I'm trying to avoid full reinstall because that seems likely to wipe
out existing configuration. I figure my fallback is create install
stick/cd (from the other local 6.8, which was successfully updated),
boot from that, pull backups of all the configuration so I don't have
to reconfigure all the services (and double-check sizes and locations
of disk slices on the boot drive, and store that somewhere safe, then
reinstall and copy stuff back (it's all backed up, in fact, but it's
not backed up recently enough for confidence). So ... faster way to fix
my screwup, when I've probably borked my kernel and the bootloader,
somehow?
Or if it is entirely impossible that "No active partition" could be the
result of kernel relinking borkage, and it's obvious to someone that
something else (hardware failure showing up on a reboot?) happened, I'd
welcome clues. Thanks.
Amy!
--
Amelia A. Lewisamyzing {at} talsever.org
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman, but an advanced old
woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
-- Sir Impey Biggs [Dorothy L. Sayers, "Clouds of
Witness"]
