Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Julian H. Stacey]

Warren Block wrote:
> Decided to ignore the CD and just copy the files to a simulated MS-DOS 
> drive.  Got to the point of copying distributions, process documented 
> here: http://wonkity.com/~wblock/freebsd-1.0/freebsd1.txt

I had a quick scan 
BTW here's another URL for the same image:
http://phk.freebsd.dk/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/


> So far, it's giving me a new appreciation for modern installers.
> 
> Julian, you are listed in the SUPPORT.TXT file.  Congratulations!

Thanks Warren, Scarey - Twenty years - Wow !
Illustrious company in that file: Rod G, Gary C.II, Jordan H. 

Cheers,
Julian
-- 
Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultant, Munich http://berklix.com
 Reply below not above, like a play script.  Indent old text with "> ".
 Send plain text.  No quoted-printable, HTML, base64, multipart/alternative.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Warren Block]

Decided to ignore the CD and just copy the files to a simulated MS-DOS 
drive.  Got to the point of copying distributions, process documented 
here: http://wonkity.com/~wblock/freebsd-1.0/freebsd1.txt


So far, it's giving me a new appreciation for modern installers.

Julian, you are listed in the SUPPORT.TXT file.  Congratulations!
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Warren Block]

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013, ill...@gmail.com wrote:


On 27 June 2013 11:11, ill...@gmail.com  wrote:


On 27 June 2013 10:46, Julian H. Stacey  wrote:


Warren Block wrote:

Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/

emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory,
but reports "no cdrom found".

I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found
a working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and
reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or
as a secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference.
Chipset too new, maybe.

Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?


I recall FreeBSD CDROM images have had 2 different types of boot
sequences, I think it matched evolving generations of BIOS support.
The change was some years back.  Maybe qemu only supports the newer of the 2
CD boot methods.



Is there perhaps a way to emulate a SCSI CD drive?
Those tend to work no matter what.



Aha, from install.txt:

| CD-ROM drives:
|  Mitsumi CDROM drive with Mitsumi Controller
|  Most SCSI CD-ROM drives on a supported SCSI controller

So I suppose no IDE.


The cdins_ah.flp image says it supports IDE, but I bet you're right, 
that's only for disks.  qemu can emulate a SCSI CD-ROM, I think.

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Warren Block]

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013, Julian H. Stacey wrote:


Warren Block wrote:

Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/

emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory,
but reports "no cdrom found".

I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found
a working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and
reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or
as a secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference.
Chipset too new, maybe.

Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?


I recall FreeBSD CDROM images have had 2 different types of boot
sequences, I think it matched evolving generations of BIOS support.
The change was some years back.  Maybe qemu only supports the newer of the 2
CD boot methods.


On the P4 system, the CD would boot but hang.  None of the other systems 
would boot from the CD, so I think you're right.


Just tried a Celeron 600 system, with the same results.  Whatever 
hardware the IDE/Adaptec floppy is expecting is not quite what it finds. 
The CD light does not even blink when it tries to "find the cdrom". 
UDMA disabled, 40-wire IDE cable, manually master/slave or different 
bus, none have made a difference.


On the positive side, the floppy boots reliably.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

That CD-ROM should not be the ones found now , but Sound-Blaster CD-ROM
which is different from
the present day CD-ROM . Sound-Blaster CD-ROM should be attached to
Sound-Blaster card , not to
IDE port .


Regular CD-ROM ( attached to IDE port ) started by later versions of
FreeBSD .


Thank you very much .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk



On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 10:28 AM, Warren Block  wrote:

> Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
> http://ftp-archive.freebsd.**org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-**
> releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/**FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/
>
> emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory, but
> reports "no cdrom found".
>
> I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found a
> working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and
> reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or as a
> secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference. Chipset
> too new, maybe.
>
> Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?
>
> Here is the qemu invocation I tried:
>
> qemu -m 16 -cpu pentium -hda fbsd1.img -fda /mnt/cdinstal/cdins_ah.flp
> -cdrom FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE.iso -boot a -enable-kqemu
> __**_
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/**mailman/listinfo/freebsd-**questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-**
> unsubscr...@freebsd.org "
>
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[ill...@gmail.com]

On 27 June 2013 11:11, ill...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
> On 27 June 2013 10:46, Julian H. Stacey  wrote:
>>
>> Warren Block wrote:
>> > Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
>> > http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/
>> >
>> > emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory,
>> > but reports "no cdrom found".
>> >
>> > I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found
>> > a working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and
>> > reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or
>> > as a secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference.
>> > Chipset too new, maybe.
>> >
>> > Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?
>>
>> I recall FreeBSD CDROM images have had 2 different types of boot
>> sequences, I think it matched evolving generations of BIOS support.
>> The change was some years back.  Maybe qemu only supports the newer of the 2
>> CD boot methods.
>>
>
> Is there perhaps a way to emulate a SCSI CD drive?
> Those tend to work no matter what.
>

Aha, from install.txt:

| CD-ROM drives:
|  Mitsumi CDROM drive with Mitsumi Controller
|  Most SCSI CD-ROM drives on a supported SCSI controller

So I suppose no IDE.

--
--
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[ill...@gmail.com]

On 27 June 2013 10:46, Julian H. Stacey  wrote:

> Warren Block wrote:
> > Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
> >
> http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/
> >
> > emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory,
> > but reports "no cdrom found".
> >
> > I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found
> > a working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and
> > reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or
> > as a secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference.
> > Chipset too new, maybe.
> >
> > Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?
>
> I recall FreeBSD CDROM images have had 2 different types of boot
> sequences, I think it matched evolving generations of BIOS support.
> The change was some years back.  Maybe qemu only supports the newer of the
> 2
> CD boot methods.
>
>
Is there perhaps a way to emulate a SCSI CD drive?
Those tend to work no matter what.

-- 
--
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Julian H. Stacey]

Warren Block wrote:
> Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
> http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/
> 
> emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory, 
> but reports "no cdrom found".
> 
> I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found 
> a working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and 
> reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or 
> as a secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference. 
> Chipset too new, maybe.
> 
> Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?

I recall FreeBSD CDROM images have had 2 different types of boot
sequences, I think it matched evolving generations of BIOS support.
The change was some years back.  Maybe qemu only supports the newer of the 2
CD boot methods.

Cheers,
Julian
-- 
Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultant, Munich http://berklix.com
 Reply below not above, like a play script.  Indent old text with "> ".
 Send plain text.  No quoted-printable, HTML, base64, multipart/alternative.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from an aribrary disk in ZFS RAIDZ on 8.x

[Doug Poland]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 03:11:29PM +1030, Shane Ambler wrote:
> On 06/03/2013 14:54, Doug Poland wrote:
> >On Wed, Mar 06, 2013 at 01:26:07PM +1030, Shane Ambler wrote:
> >>On 06/03/2013 05:14, Doug Poland wrote:
> 
> >>>I have 6 disks in a RAIDZ configuration.  All disks were sliced the
> >>>same with gpart (da(n)p1,p2,p3) with bootcode written to index 1,
> >>>swap on index 2 and freebsd-zfs on index 3.
> >>>
> >>>Given this configuration, I should be able to boot from any of the
> >>>6 disks in the RAIDZ.  If this is a true statement, how do I make
> >>>that happen from the loader prompt?
> >>
> >>You don't boot from an individual disk you boot from a zpool - all
> >>disks are linked together making one zpool "disk".
> >>
> >Something has to pick a physical device from which to boot, does it
> >not?.  All the HP Smart Array 6i controller knows is I have 6 RAID 0
> >disks to present to the OS.
> 
> I meant to add if the bootcode is installed on each disk then pointing
> the bios to any individual disk as the primary boot device will lead
> to the boot process loading the zpool. Installing it on each disk
> gives the redundancy to match the raid in the zpool. If you only have
> one disk with bootcode and it is the one that needs replacing then you
> can't boot. Then having 100 disks in a pool with bootcode would be
> overkill, but the consistency may be easier to maintain.
> 
So in my case, the HP SmartArray doesn't allow me to choose an
individual boot disk.  So it's up to the controller to keep trying to
boot from the next configured disk.  I believe I'm going to craft a
test to prove this out.

> >I've had issues with this RAID controller in the past where it won't
> >present the new disk to the OS.  I've had to reboot, go into the
> >RAID config and tell it it's a single RAID 0 device (stupid, I
> >know).
> 
> When you think about it, as a raid controller it shouldn't make
> assumptions as to how to use the new disk, should it add it to an
> existing raid set, replace a missing drive or show it as a new single
> drive? Being able to specify per socket as permanently jbod could be
> useful feature though.
> 
One would think.  I've been testing this on a similarly configured
machine and the controller eventually presents a new drive to the OS.
It takes a couple of minutes, but appears to work on this test box.

> >The roll of /boot/zfs/zpool.cache is a mystery to me.  I belive it
> >somehow tells ZFS what devices are in use.  What if a disk goes
> >offline or is removed?
> >
> 
> As I understand it the zpool.cache contains the zpools mounted by the
> system. After reboot it then re-imports each zpool in the cache. I
> believe a recent commit enabled the vfs.root.mountfrom zpool to be
> imported even if there was no cache available.
> 
> From what I have heard and seen the data about the zpool it belongs to
> and the role the disk plays in the zpool is stored on each disk and
> duplicated at the beginning and end of the disk. In my early
> experiments after starting clean even after gparting and zeroing out
> the start of the disks, zpool still says it belongs to a pool.
> 
If that's the case, I wonder about the wisdom of re-using a drive from
my test configuration?  My plan has been to prove this out on test and
use the same disk from test and insert it into production.  One would
think ZFS is smart enough to recognize a "different" drive has been
inserted, even if it has the same gpart structure and came from a pool
with the same name.

Thanks for your help.

-- 
Regards,
Doug
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from an aribrary disk in ZFS RAIDZ on 8.x

[Shane Ambler]

On 06/03/2013 14:54, Doug Poland wrote:

On Wed, Mar 06, 2013 at 01:26:07PM +1030, Shane Ambler wrote:

On 06/03/2013 05:14, Doug Poland wrote:



I have 6 disks in a RAIDZ configuration.  All disks were sliced
the same with gpart (da(n)p1,p2,p3) with bootcode written to
index 1, swap on index 2 and freebsd-zfs on index 3.

Given this configuration, I should be able to boot from any of
the 6 disks in the RAIDZ.  If this is a true statement, how do I
make that happen from the loader prompt?


You don't boot from an individual disk you boot from a zpool - all
 disks are linked together making one zpool "disk".


Something has to pick a physical device from which to boot, does it
not?.  All the HP Smart Array 6i controller knows is I have 6 RAID 0
 disks to present to the OS.


I meant to add if the bootcode is installed on each disk then pointing
the bios to any individual disk as the primary boot device will lead to
the boot process loading the zpool. Installing it on each disk gives the
redundancy to match the raid in the zpool. If you only have one disk
with bootcode and it is the one that needs replacing then you can't
boot. Then having 100 disks in a pool with bootcode would be overkill,
but the consistency may be easier to maintain.


I'm guessing that you ask as your machine isn't booting. You
probably need to boot from a cd and do adjustments.


Not exactly, I have a failing disk in slot 0, which corresponds to
da0 in my device list (AKA gpt/disk0).  I want to make sure I can
boot if I pull this disk and replace it.


If the zpool redundancy is sufficient for the zpool to work without the
drive it shouldn't make any difference as to how the disk "disappears"
only that the data is accessible/rebuildable.


I've had issues with this RAID controller in the past where it won't
present the new disk to the OS.  I've had to reboot, go into the
RAID config and tell it it's a single RAID 0 device (stupid, I
know).


When you think about it, as a raid controller it shouldn't make
assumptions as to how to use the new disk, should it add it to an
existing raid set, replace a missing drive or show it as a new single
drive? Being able to specify per socket as permanently jbod could be
useful feature though.


The roll of /boot/zfs/zpool.cache is a mystery to me.  I belive it
somehow tells ZFS what devices are in use.  What if a disk goes
offline or is removed?



As I understand it the zpool.cache contains the zpools mounted by the
system. After reboot it then re-imports each zpool in the cache. I
believe a recent commit enabled the vfs.root.mountfrom zpool to be
imported even if there was no cache available.

From what I have heard and seen the data about the zpool it belongs to
and the role the disk plays in the zpool is stored on each disk and
duplicated at the beginning and end of the disk. In my early experiments
after starting clean even after gparting and zeroing out the start of
the disks, zpool still says it belongs to a pool.

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from an aribrary disk in ZFS RAIDZ on 8.x

[Paul Kraus]

On Mar 5, 2013, at 1:44 PM, Doug Poland  wrote:

> I'm running ZFS filesystem ver 3, storage pool ver 14, on 8-STABLE
> amd64. The kernel build is rather dated from around Feb 2010.
> 
> I have 6 disks in a RAIDZ configuration.  All disks were sliced
> the same with gpart (da(n)p1,p2,p3) with bootcode written to index 1,
> swap on index 2 and freebsd-zfs on index 3.
> 
> Given this configuration, I should be able to boot from any of the 6
> disks in the RAIDZ.  If this is a true statement, how do I make that
> happen from the loader prompt?

Boot in terms of root FS or in terms of boot loader ? 

The boot loader would be set in your BIOS (which physical drive you read for 
that).

/ comes from the zpool/zfs dataset once the boot loader loads enough code 
to find and mount the filesystem. That comes from all the drives in the zpool.

--
Paul Kraus
Deputy Technical Director, LoneStarCon 3
Sound Coordinator, Schenectady Light Opera Company

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from an aribrary disk in ZFS RAIDZ on 8.x

[Shane Ambler]

On 06/03/2013 05:14, Doug Poland wrote:

Hello,

I'm running ZFS filesystem ver 3, storage pool ver 14, on 8-STABLE
amd64. The kernel build is rather dated from around Feb 2010.


You probably want to update that sometime.


I have 6 disks in a RAIDZ configuration.  All disks were sliced
the same with gpart (da(n)p1,p2,p3) with bootcode written to index 1,
swap on index 2 and freebsd-zfs on index 3.

Given this configuration, I should be able to boot from any of the 6
disks in the RAIDZ.  If this is a true statement, how do I make that
happen from the loader prompt?


You don't boot from an individual disk you boot from a zpool - all disks 
are linked together making one zpool "disk".



At the loader prompt when I type show, I get the following relevant
variables:

currdev="zfs0"
loaddev="disk1a:"
vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:rpool"


zfs:rpool is the "disk" you boot from.

I'm guessing that you ask as your machine isn't booting.
You probably need to boot from a cd and do adjustments.

You have zfs_load=yes in /boot/loader.conf ?
You have vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:rpool" in /boot/loader.conf ?
You have zfs_enable=yes in /etc/rc.conf ?
You have zpool set bootfs=rpool rpool or similar?

I think it has been resolved recently but you used to have to copy the 
zpool.cache into /boot


Did you set the mountpoint when installing and not change it back?

I had issues with setting up with a mountpoint / and changing it to 
legacy. Setting the mountpoint as you want before setup then use altroot 
to mount it for install is the way to go.


If you search wiki.freebsd.org for zfs you can find several examples 
that may provide hints to what you missed.


___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting issue with 9.1-RELEASE and net4801

[Gary Aitken]

On 02/04/13 11:54, Alberto Mijares wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> I'm finally playing with my net4801 and nanobsd. SanDisk CF is recognized.
> 
> At my first try I had to disable DMA in ATA because it hanged out. Now
> it hangs when trying to mount root filesystem and mountroot> prompt
> appears. However, if a stop in loader prompt and type ls, files and
> dirs are displayed on disk0s1a.
> 
> Any suggestion?
> 
> Verbose boot log next:
> 
> OK boot -v log

> ada0 at ata0 bus 0 scbus0 target 0 lun 0
> ada0:  CFA-0 device
> ada0: Serial Number BOZ111711234413
> ada0: 16.700MB/s transfers (PIO4, PIO 512bytes)
> ada0: 3815MB (7813120 512 byte sectors: 16H 63S/T 7751C)
> ada0: Previously was known as ad0
> GEOM: new disk ada0
> GEOM_PART: partition 2 has end offset beyond last LBA: 7999487 > 7813119
> GEOM_PART: partition 3 has start offset beyond last LBA: 7999488 > 7813119
> GEOM_PART: partition 3 has end offset beyond last LBA: 8002511 > 7813119
> GEOM_PART: integrity check failed (ada0, MBR)
> uhub0: 3 ports with 3 removable, self powered
> Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ada0s1a [ro]...
> mountroot: waiting for device /dev/ada0s1a ...
> Mounting from ufs:/dev/ada0s1a failed with error 19.
> 
> Loader variables:
>   vfs.root.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/ada0s1a
>   vfs.root.mountfrom.options=ro
> 
> Manual root filesystem specification:
>   : [options]
>   Mount  using filesystem 
>   and with the specified (optional) option list.
> 
> eg. ufs:/dev/da0s1a
> zfs:tank
> cd9660:/dev/acd0 ro
>   (which is equivalent to: mount -t cd9660 -o ro /dev/acd0 /)
> 
>   ?   List valid disk boot devices
>   .   Yield 1 second (for background tasks)
>   Abort manual input
> 
> mountroot>

I believe I got this error when the root boot block is written properly,
but the first partition on the disk does not have the proper gpart boot code
in it.

Try listing the gpt partition scheme:

# gpart show -l ada1
=>   34  156301421  ada1  GPT  (74G)
 34   1024 1  gptboot  (512k)
   1058  6- free -  (3.0k)
   10644194304 2  hdd-80G-root  (2.0G)
41953684194304 3  hdd-80G-swap  (2.0G)
83896724194304 4  hdd-80G-var  (2.0G)
   125839764194304 5  hdd-80G-tmp  (2.0G)
   16778280  139523168 6  hdd-80G-usr  (66G)
  156301448  7- free -  (3.5k)

Notice in the above partition 1, labeled gptboot (a label I gave it)
That's the boot code, which can be written as follows:
  gpart bootcode -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 ada1
assuming the system you're running on has /boot/gptboot on it.

Gary
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting issue with 9.1-RELEASE and net4801

[Alberto Mijares]

> ada0: Previously was known as ad0
> GEOM: new disk ada0
> GEOM_PART: partition 2 has end offset beyond last LBA: 7999487 > 7813119
> GEOM_PART: partition 3 has start offset beyond last LBA: 7999488 > 7813119
> GEOM_PART: partition 3 has end offset beyond last LBA: 8002511 > 7813119
> GEOM_PART: integrity check failed (ada0, MBR)


Hmmm... I think this is the problem. I'll check my nano config again.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Problem

[doug]

On Wed, 30 Jan 2013, Doug Hardie wrote:



On 30 January 2013, at 05:16, Fbsd8 wrote:


Doug Hardie wrote:

On 29 January 2013, at 07:18, Mario Lobo wrote:

On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
Doug Hardie  wrote:


I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.

The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
option. ___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To
unsubscribe, send any mail to
"freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Can you boot a different OS (Win, Ububtu, gparted, etc ...) from the
same drive on the same machine?

Not so far.  The drive works fine on other systems.



You said in your orginal post "The bios will not boot from USB stick."
I see no reason why you would think your PC would BOOT from any USB attached 
devices.

Since you have another PC that does boot off of usb cd drive, swap hard 
drives and use that pc to load FreeBSD to the hard drive. This method will 
work for you.


Yes that works now.  But starting this weekend it will be about 100 miles 
away.  That no longer will be practical.


The CD will not be of much help then either. The problem started with the root 
partition being too small. Just repartition to make sure that does not come up 
for a while. While you have you hands of the machine you should see if you can 
figure out if it can do a pixe boot. You should also see if you can arrange for 
a serial console into the system.


___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Problem

[Doug Hardie]

On 30 January 2013, at 05:16, Fbsd8 wrote:

> Doug Hardie wrote:
>> On 29 January 2013, at 07:18, Mario Lobo wrote:
>>> On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
>>> Doug Hardie  wrote:
>>> 
 I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
 bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
 It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
 message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
 the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
 times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
 another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.
 
 The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
 drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
 temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
 would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
 become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
 option. ___
 freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
 http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To
 unsubscribe, send any mail to
 "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
>>> Can you boot a different OS (Win, Ububtu, gparted, etc ...) from the
>>> same drive on the same machine?
>> Not so far.  The drive works fine on other systems.
>> 
> 
> You said in your orginal post "The bios will not boot from USB stick."
> I see no reason why you would think your PC would BOOT from any USB attached 
> devices.
> 
> Since you have another PC that does boot off of usb cd drive, swap hard 
> drives and use that pc to load FreeBSD to the hard drive. This method will 
> work for you.

Yes that works now.  But starting this weekend it will be about 100 miles away. 
 That no longer will be practical.

> 
> 
> 

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Problem

[Fbsd8]

Doug Hardie wrote:

On 29 January 2013, at 07:18, Mario Lobo wrote:


On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
Doug Hardie  wrote:


I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.

The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
option. ___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To
unsubscribe, send any mail to
"freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Can you boot a different OS (Win, Ububtu, gparted, etc ...) from the
same drive on the same machine?


Not so far.  The drive works fine on other systems.




You said in your orginal post "The bios will not boot from USB stick."
I see no reason why you would think your PC would BOOT from any USB 
attached devices.


Since you have another PC that does boot off of usb cd drive, swap hard 
drives and use that pc to load FreeBSD to the hard drive. This method 
will work for you.



___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Problem

[Joshua Isom]

On 1/29/2013 10:25 PM, d...@safeport.com wrote:


What is the system you are using? What external devices does it have
built-in support for? In the absence of any data - how about trying an
external hard drive?

Why not remove the hard drive, use another system to put FreeBSD on the
drive, and put it back. From that point on you should be able to use the
network to upgrade.



I had to do something like this to try out PC-BSD years ago.  I had one 
computer that wouldn't boot the install CD.  I moved the hard drive to a 
computer that would boot the install CD.  The catch was the computer 
that could boot the install CD wouldn't boot PC-BSD from the hard drive. 
 Sometimes you just find hardware that doesn't behave.  I'd also double 
check your BIOS settings for USB emulation.  Most external CD drives are 
just an IDE or SATA drive with an adapter.  If you take it apart, you 
can put the drive into the computer and see if skipping the USB helps it 
to boot.  It's also a nice way to find a cheap drive.

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Problem

[Doug Hardie]

On 29 January 2013, at 20:25, d...@safeport.com wrote:

> 
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Doug Hardie wrote:
> 
>> On 29 January 2013, at 07:18, Mario Lobo wrote:
>> 
>>> On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
>>> Doug Hardie  wrote:
>>> 
 I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
 bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
 It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
 message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
 the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
 times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
 another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.
 
 The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
 drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
 temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
 would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
 become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
 option.
> 
> What is the system you are using? What external devices does it have built-in 
> support for? In the absence of any data - how about trying an external hard 
> drive?

9.1 release - Generic.  Basically the disk1.  Don't have an extra external 
drive.

> 
> Why not remove the hard drive, use another system to put FreeBSD on the 
> drive, and put it back. From that point on you should be able to use the 
> network to upgrade.

I have done that before and it does work.  However,  with the various changes 
to the system, the root partition I had previously built that way for 8.2 is 
just not large enough for 9.1.  Also, I wanted to go to a single partition (the 
9.1 default).  Probably freebsd-update will take me through major releases 
after this, but I was hoping for a better solution so I could avoid having to 
transport the machine a long way twice to be able to update it.


> 
> 

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Problem

[doug]

On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Doug Hardie wrote:


On 29 January 2013, at 07:18, Mario Lobo wrote:


On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
Doug Hardie  wrote:


I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.

The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
option.


What is the system you are using? What external devices does it have built-in 
support for? In the absence of any data - how about trying an external hard 
drive?


Why not remove the hard drive, use another system to put FreeBSD on the drive, 
and put it back. From that point on you should be able to use the network to 
upgrade.


___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Problem

[Doug Hardie]

On 29 January 2013, at 07:18, Mario Lobo wrote:

> On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
> Doug Hardie  wrote:
> 
>> I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
>> bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
>> It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
>> message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
>> the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
>> times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
>> another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.
>> 
>> The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
>> drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
>> temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
>> would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
>> become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
>> option. ___
>> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
>> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To
>> unsubscribe, send any mail to
>> "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
> 
> Can you boot a different OS (Win, Ububtu, gparted, etc ...) from the
> same drive on the same machine?

Not so far.  The drive works fine on other systems.

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Problem

[Mario Lobo]

On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
Doug Hardie  wrote:

> I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
> bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
> It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
> message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
> the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
> times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
> another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.
> 
> The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
> drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
> temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
> would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
> become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
> option. ___
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To
> unsubscribe, send any mail to
> "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Can you boot a different OS (Win, Ububtu, gparted, etc ...) from the
same drive on the same machine?

-- 
Mario Lobo
http://www.mallavoodoo.com.br
FreeBSD since 2.2.8 [not Pro-Audio YET!!] (99% winblows FREE)
 
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting 2nd(!) FreeBSD installation sitting on same disk

[Andre Albsmeier]

On Sat, 03-Nov-2012 at 23:34:48 +0100, jb wrote:
> Andre Albsmeier  siemens.com> writes:
> 
> > ... 
> > However, when pressing F3, the system of slice 2(!) is  
> > loaded. This is due to the fact that boot1 always loads
> > the first active FreeBSD slice ;-(.
> > ... 
> > Is there no chance to actually honour the fact that F3 was
> > pressed and boot from slice 3 without updating the MBR before?
> 
> I do not know the story of active slice in FreeBSD, but I know that neither
> Windows nor Linux require active partitions (in their jargon) to boot from any
> more.

If course FreeBSD doesn't rely on being started from an active
slice. Otherwise playing with currdev in loader wouldn't work.
It is just boot1 which causes the problem since it always searches
the MBR partition (slice) table for the first active FreeBSD slice
and if it doesn't find one it starts over again and searches for
any FreeBSD slice.

The problem is that boot1 doesn't get the information which F-key
was pressed in boot0 directly. It does only in case you allow a
write-back of the MBR using -o update with boot0cfg.

I made an ugly hack for this by patching boot1 code of slice 3
in a way that it actually searches for IN(!)active partitions in
its first pass:

--- sys/boot/i386/boot2/boot1.S.ORI 2012-09-23 22:07:16.0 +0200
+++ sys/boot/i386/boot2/boot1.S 2012-11-05 07:16:29.0 +0100
@@ -151,7 +151,11 @@
jne main.3  # No
jcxz main.5 # If second pass
testb $0x80,(%si)   # Active?
+#ifdef AA_SKIP_ACTIVE_BSDSLICE
+   jz main.5   # No
+#else
jnz main.5  # Yes
+#endif
 main.3:add $0x10,%si   # Next entry
incb %dh# Partition
cmpb $0x1+PRT_NUM,%dh   # In table?


Since this code only sits in boot1 of slice 3 it just applies to
slice 3.

The proper fix would be to pass the information about the key pressed
in boot0 to boot1 directly via registers of by whatever means...

-Andre
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting 2nd(!) FreeBSD installation sitting on same disk

[Andre Albsmeier]

On Sat, 03-Nov-2012 at 18:46:04 +0100, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 9:54 AM, Andre Albsmeier 
> mailto:andre.albsme...@siemens.com>> wrote:
> For various reasons I have to use this disk layout:
> 
> One harddisk with MBR and 3 slices on a i386 box:
> 
> Slice 1: Windows XP :-(
> Slice 2: FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE V1
> Slice 3: FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE V2
> 
> The MBR is configured as:
> 
> options=packet,noupdate,nosetdrv
> default_selection=F2 (Slice 2)
> 
> When booting, I can choose between:
> 
> F1 Win
> F2 FreeBSD
> F3 FreeBSD
> 
> However, when pressing F3, the system of slice 2(!) is
> loaded. This is due to the fact that boot1 always loads
> the first active FreeBSD slice ;-(.
> 
> I have two possibilities to actually boot slice 3:
> 
> 1. Playing with currdev when loader(8) is loaded (or
>using loader.conf of slice 2).
> 
> 2. Using boot0cfg to allow updating the MBR.
> 
> 1. is not really fexible and 2. means that the system
> remembers which slice was booted last (something I do
> not want).
> 
> Is there no chance to actually honour the fact that F3 was
> pressed and boot from slice 3 without updating the MBR before?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -Andre
> 
> 
> There is the following port for managing boot selections :
> 
> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/amd64/packages-9.0-release/Latest/grub2.tbz
> 
> http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/grub2/

Well, I actually wanted to stick to FreeBSD's boot stuff...

-Andre
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting 2nd(!) FreeBSD installation sitting on same disk

[jb]

jb  gmail.com> writes:

> ... 
> I do not know the story of active slice in FreeBSD, but I know that neither
> Windows nor Linux require active partitions (in their jargon) to boot from any
> more.
> Perhaps it is time to review this requirement in FreeBSD and drop it if
> possible.
> Opinions are welcome.
> If there are no counterarguments, we will create a PR# to start the process.

I forgot to mention that in such case a new boot option would be introduced to
set a default boot item in a boot manager's menu.
jb
 


___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting 2nd(!) FreeBSD installation sitting on same disk

[jb]

Andre Albsmeier  siemens.com> writes:

> ... 
> However, when pressing F3, the system of slice 2(!) is  
> loaded. This is due to the fact that boot1 always loads
> the first active FreeBSD slice ;-(.
> ... 
> Is there no chance to actually honour the fact that F3 was
> pressed and boot from slice 3 without updating the MBR before?

I do not know the story of active slice in FreeBSD, but I know that neither
Windows nor Linux require active partitions (in their jargon) to boot from any
more.
Perhaps it is time to review this requirement in FreeBSD and drop it if
possible.
Opinions are welcome.
If there are no counterarguments, we will create a PR# to start the process.
jb


___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting 2nd(!) FreeBSD installation sitting on same disk

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 9:54 AM, Andre Albsmeier  wrote:

> For various reasons I have to use this disk layout:
>
> One harddisk with MBR and 3 slices on a i386 box:
>
> Slice 1: Windows XP :-(
> Slice 2: FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE V1
> Slice 3: FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE V2
>
> The MBR is configured as:
>
> options=packet,noupdate,nosetdrv
> default_selection=F2 (Slice 2)
>
> When booting, I can choose between:
>
> F1 Win
> F2 FreeBSD
> F3 FreeBSD
>
> However, when pressing F3, the system of slice 2(!) is
> loaded. This is due to the fact that boot1 always loads
> the first active FreeBSD slice ;-(.
>
> I have two possibilities to actually boot slice 3:
>
> 1. Playing with currdev when loader(8) is loaded (or
>using loader.conf of slice 2).
>
> 2. Using boot0cfg to allow updating the MBR.
>
> 1. is not really fexible and 2. means that the system
> remembers which slice was booted last (something I do
> not want).
>
> Is there no chance to actually honour the fact that F3 was
> pressed and boot from slice 3 without updating the MBR before?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Andre
>
>
There is the following port for managing boot selections :

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/amd64/packages-9.0-release/Latest/grub2.tbz

http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/grub2/


I do NOT know whether it may be useful for you or not .


Thank you very much .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting a CD-ROM

[Michael Powell]

gs_stol...@juno.com wrote:

>   I have an old  FreeBSD  system that I haven't used for a long time
>   and I have forgotten the passwords.  This machine has  FreeBSD-4.3 
>   and  FreeBSD-4.7  on it, and also  MS'  Windows98 .  I tried getting
>   onto that system by booting with a  CD-ROM  which started going and
>   gave me the following messages:
> boot from  ATAPI  CD-ROM
> CD Loader 1.2
> Building the boot loader arguments
> Relocating the loader and the BTX
>   The system then did not output for a liitle over 5 minutes and then
>   typed:
> Starting the
> and after this I waited for over 5 minutes but the system did not type
> anything else.  Then I tried  booting that  CD-ROM  on another system
> where it booted successfully and the program on it ( FreesBIE version 2)
> ran and I could communicate with it.  I suspect a problem with the  boot
> loader on the first system.
>  Where can I get a new boot loader for that system?Since I want to
>  get a modern  FreeBSD  (version 9.1 or higher), I expect that will
>  include a new multi-system loader on it that I can use on the old
>  system if I can load just that.  How can I load just the boot loader?
>   Also, what is the structure of the  password  files (is this on the 
>  web  with a per system-version note so if it has been changed over
>  time, I can find those I need) on those systems, and how can I find
>  and clear out the password for  root  so I can get in and set its
>  password and then the other passwords?
> Thanks in advance for your help.

You did not specify which/what version of FreeBSD CD-ROM you were 
attempting this with. IIRC way back then bootable CDs used a 
floppy-emulation mechanism. If the hardware and its' BIOS is that old 
a modern day boot CD won't work as it is not emulating a floppy disk 
any longer.

Your best bet would be to locate a FreeBSD version 4.7 disk and try 
that. A long time ago there used to be included 2 floppy images that 
could be written out to floppy disks, thus creating bootable floppies. 
In lieu of not being able to boot from CD-ROM if there is a 1.44MB 
floppy drive in the box you may be able to boot off the floppies.

I'm a little rusty with dim memories, but essentially you want to boot 
into single user mode. I think it used to be you'd break into the loader
by hitting the space bar during the the little "twirlie" period when a '/' 
is spinning in the upper left corner of your screen. 

You would need some basic familiarity with vi such as how to do a basic 
edit and then save the file. Essentially what vipw does is open the password 
file using vi as the editor. You could then null out the root password by 
replacing the crypto string in the second field with a * character. When you 
save the file using vi commands and exit you will see a message about the 
password database being updated.

This is actually a FAQ:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/admin.html#FORGOT-ROOT-PW

Note the instructions for mounting / read-write, and the mount -a. The 
vipw lives in /usr/sbin, so /usr needs to be mounted in order to use it.

-Mike



___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting a CD-ROM

[Xavier FreeBSD questions]

On Tue, Apr 03, 2012 at 05:46:20AM -0400, Thomas Mueller wrote:

Hi Thomas,

> >   I have an old  FreeBSD  system that I haven't used for a long
time and I have forgotten the passwords.  This machine has  FreeBSD-4.3
and  FreeBSD-4.7
> > on it, and also  MS'  Windows98 .  I tried getting onto that system by
booting with a  CD-ROM  which started going and gave me the following
messages:
> > boot from  ATAPI  CD-ROM
> > CD Loader 1.2
> > Building the boot loader arguments
> > Relocating the loader and the BTX
> >   The system then did not output for a liitle over 5 minutes and
then typed:
> > Starting the
> > and after this I waited for over 5 minutes but the system did not type
anything else.  Then I tried  booting that  CD-ROM  on another system where
it booted
> > successfully and the program on it ( FreesBIE version 2) ran and I
could communicate with it.  I suspect a problem with the  boot loader on
the first system.
> >  Where can I get a new boot loader for that system?Since I want
to get a modern  FreeBSD  (version 9.1 or higher), I expect that will
include a new
> > multi-system loader on it that I can use on the old system if I can
load just that.  How can I load just the boot loader?  Also, what is the
structure of the
> > password  files (is this on the  web  with a per system-version note so
if it has been changed over time, I can find those I need) on those
systems, and how
> > can I find and clear out the password for  root  so I can get in and
set its password and then the other passwords?
> > Thanks in advance for your help.
>
> You'll have to wait some months for FreeBSD >= 9.1.  Current release is
9.0.

I'm impatient ...

>
> I believe FreeBSD has a multisystem boot loader, BootEasy/boot0.  You can
also look to GRUB:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/grub

Another option is Boot-Repair-Disk (
http://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair-cd/home/Home/ ). This tool is easy
and intuitive.

See you.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting a CD-ROM

[Thomas Mueller]

>   I have an old  FreeBSD  system that I haven't used for a long time and 
> I have forgotten the passwords.  This machine has  FreeBSD-4.3  and  
> FreeBSD-4.7
> on it, and also  MS'  Windows98 .  I tried getting onto that system by 
> booting with a  CD-ROM  which started going and gave me the following 
> messages:
> boot from  ATAPI  CD-ROM
> CD Loader 1.2
> Building the boot loader arguments
> Relocating the loader and the BTX
>   The system then did not output for a liitle over 5 minutes and then 
> typed:
> Starting the
> and after this I waited for over 5 minutes but the system did not type 
> anything else.  Then I tried  booting that  CD-ROM  on another system where 
> it booted
> successfully and the program on it ( FreesBIE version 2) ran and I could 
> communicate with it.  I suspect a problem with the  boot loader on the first 
> system.
>  Where can I get a new boot loader for that system?Since I want to 
> get a modern  FreeBSD  (version 9.1 or higher), I expect that will include a 
> new
> multi-system loader on it that I can use on the old system if I can load just 
> that.  How can I load just the boot loader?  Also, what is the structure of 
> the
> password  files (is this on the  web  with a per system-version note so if it 
> has been changed over time, I can find those I need) on those systems, and how
> can I find and clear out the password for  root  so I can get in and set its 
> password and then the other passwords?
> Thanks in advance for your help.

You'll have to wait some months for FreeBSD >= 9.1.  Current release is 9.0.

I believe FreeBSD has a multisystem boot loader, BootEasy/boot0.  You can also 
look to GRUB:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub 

I believe this is also included in FreeBSD ports collection.

If you run Linux, you can install LILO, which is capable of booting FreeBSD.

I believe the password files, /etc/master.passwd, are encrypted, so you can't 
get the password directly from that.

You would run the command passwd as root.

Tom
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting

[Jonathan Vomacka]

On Dec 17, 2011 9:04 AM, "Maxime-Etienne de Gier" 
wrote:
>
> I am really interested in Freebsd or PC-BSD but unfortunately every time
> when I download an ISO of either of them and try to boot up (from the
> DVD-ROM) my machine will not boot up (Laptop PackardBell).
> Any insight?  Thanks and much regard.
>
>
> Maxime.
>
>
> --
> Maxime-Etienne de Gier 
>
> ___
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "
freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Any errors? What is the experience when you try to boot? We can not map a
problem to an entire manufacturer since the only mentioned was that it was
a Packard bell.

I know this might sound like a stupid question, but did you verify the
md5sum of the download before you burned the iso?.  please give us detailed
information so we can help you out.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting

[gpeel]

On Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:10:37 +0200, Rares Aioanei wrote
> On 12/17/2011 04:04 PM, Maxime-Etienne de Gier wrote:
> > I am really interested in Freebsd or PC-BSD but unfortunately every time
> > when I download an ISO of either of them and try to boot up (from the
> > DVD-ROM) my machine will not boot up (Laptop PackardBell).
> > Any insight?  Thanks and much regard.
> >
> >
> > Maxime.
> >
> >
> What errors do you get, if any? Is the BIOS set accordingly?
> 
> -- 
> Rares Aioanei
> 
> ___
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-
unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Are you burning the ISO image corectly i.e. making a bootable CD/DVD or are 
you just copying the ISO file to the DVD? If the latter, you need to get a 
ISO image burner (software) and burn it properly.

-Grant
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting

[Bill Tillman]

 



From: Maxime-Etienne de Gier 
To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org 
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2011 9:04 AM
Subject: booting


I am really interested in Freebsd or PC-BSD but unfortunately every time
when I download an ISO of either of them and try to boot up (from the
DVD-ROM) my machine will not boot up (Laptop PackardBell).
Any insight?  Thanks and much regard.


Maxime.


-- 
Maxime-Etienne de Gier 

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

We have to start with the basics here:

1. You say you download the iso but you don't indicate that your burn the iso 
to DVD. Sorry, don't mean to cast any doubts on your ability but we get lots of 
posts from new users who simply copy the iso file to a DVD and then expect it 
to boot. The iso file must be translated by a program like Nero, or burncd in 
order to make it bootable.

2. What exactly are the error messages you are seeing on the screen at the time 
it attempts to boot?
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting

[Rares Aioanei]

On 12/17/2011 04:04 PM, Maxime-Etienne de Gier wrote:

I am really interested in Freebsd or PC-BSD but unfortunately every time
when I download an ISO of either of them and try to boot up (from the
DVD-ROM) my machine will not boot up (Laptop PackardBell).
Any insight?  Thanks and much regard.


Maxime.



What errors do you get, if any? Is the BIOS set accordingly?

--
Rares Aioanei

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from firmware RAID

[ameiji]

On Wed,16-03-2011 [16:25:54], Ilya Kazakevich wrote:
> Thank you.
> 
> I configured boot0 to my ar0 and tried to boot from it. It freezes.
> I use RAID10 and Intel-ICH7.
> 
> Looks like I've faced with some other troubles..
> 
> Ilya.
> 
> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 4:05 PM, mcoyles
> wrote:
> 
> > >This is probably more PC-specific than freebsd-specific question. I have
> > >intel firmware raid. OS needs drivers to work with it. FreeBSD sees it as
> > >ar0, so it has drivers.
> > >But I want my OS to be installed on this drive and boot from it. It is not
> > >good idea, but I really want to do it:)
> > >Is it possible?
> > >
> > >boot0 and boot1 both work with HDD via BIOS interrupts and CHS, right? So,
> > >how do they know how to access RAID? They has no drivers.
> > >Or BIOS supports interrupts to access RAID with out of drivers? If so --
> > >what for drivers are needed? To access drive via ATA interface?
> >
> > Bios support interrupts and can thus boot from firmware raid.
> > Under windows drivers typically just give you full speed / management
> > features
> >
> > -
> > Marci
> >
> >

Hi, here what man atacontrol says:

  Although the ATA driver allows for creating an ATA RAID on
   disks with any controller, there are restrictions.  It is only
   possible to boot on an array if it is either located on a
   real RAID controller like the Promise or Highpoint controllers, 
or if the RAID declared is of RAID1 or SPAN type; in
   case of a SPAN, the partition to boot must reside on the first
   disk in the SPAN.

Not sure if it's your case though.


--
A complex system that works is invariably found to have
evolved from a simple system that works.






___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from firmware RAID

[Ilya Kazakevich]

My boot0 freezes. I found discussion where guy told that extipl works fine
but boot0 not because extipl uses LBA instead of CHS and some raids do not
support CHS.
It is new to me that BIOS allows LBA but I will try extipl now.

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 5:11 PM, b. f.  wrote:

> > This is probably more PC-specific than freebsd-specific question. I have
> > intel firmware raid. OS needs drivers to work with it. FreeBSD sees it as
> > ar0, so it has drivers.
> > But I want my OS to be installed on this drive and boot from it. It is
> not
> > good idea, but I really want to do it:)
> > Is it possible?
> >
> > boot0 and boot1 both work with HDD via BIOS interrupts and CHS, right?
> So,
> > how do they know how to access RAID? They has no drivers.
> > Or BIOS supports interrupts to access RAID with out of drivers? If so --
> > what for drivers are needed? To access drive via ATA interface?
> >
> > Is it possible to boot freebsd from "firmware raid"?
>
> Sometimes: it depends on the firmware, and your bios.  I had a add-in
> PCIe SATA RAID controller based on a Marvell SE9128 chipset, and using
> a Marvell firmware.  The bios and the FreeBSD 9-CURRENT bootloader
> were able to boot from a JBOD drive attached to the controller, up
> until the point where the ahci driver tried to take control of the
> drive.  Then the Marvell firmware presented a fictitious configuration
> to the ahci driver and returned invalid device signatures, so the boot
> process failed.  On the same machine, however, I was able to boot
> without problems from a JBOD drive attached to a PCI-X SATA RAID
> controller based on the Silicon Image SiI3124 chipset, using a Silicon
> Image firmware.
>
> b.
>
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from firmware RAID

[b. f.]

> This is probably more PC-specific than freebsd-specific question. I have
> intel firmware raid. OS needs drivers to work with it. FreeBSD sees it as
> ar0, so it has drivers.
> But I want my OS to be installed on this drive and boot from it. It is not
> good idea, but I really want to do it:)
> Is it possible?
>
> boot0 and boot1 both work with HDD via BIOS interrupts and CHS, right? So,
> how do they know how to access RAID? They has no drivers.
> Or BIOS supports interrupts to access RAID with out of drivers? If so --
> what for drivers are needed? To access drive via ATA interface?
>
> Is it possible to boot freebsd from "firmware raid"?

Sometimes: it depends on the firmware, and your bios.  I had a add-in
PCIe SATA RAID controller based on a Marvell SE9128 chipset, and using
a Marvell firmware.  The bios and the FreeBSD 9-CURRENT bootloader
were able to boot from a JBOD drive attached to the controller, up
until the point where the ahci driver tried to take control of the
drive.  Then the Marvell firmware presented a fictitious configuration
to the ahci driver and returned invalid device signatures, so the boot
process failed.  On the same machine, however, I was able to boot
without problems from a JBOD drive attached to a PCI-X SATA RAID
controller based on the Silicon Image SiI3124 chipset, using a Silicon
Image firmware.

b.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from firmware RAID

[Ilya Kazakevich]

Thank you.

I configured boot0 to my ar0 and tried to boot from it. It freezes.
I use RAID10 and Intel-ICH7.

Looks like I've faced with some other troubles..

Ilya.

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 4:05 PM, mcoyles
wrote:

> >This is probably more PC-specific than freebsd-specific question. I have
> >intel firmware raid. OS needs drivers to work with it. FreeBSD sees it as
> >ar0, so it has drivers.
> >But I want my OS to be installed on this drive and boot from it. It is not
> >good idea, but I really want to do it:)
> >Is it possible?
> >
> >boot0 and boot1 both work with HDD via BIOS interrupts and CHS, right? So,
> >how do they know how to access RAID? They has no drivers.
> >Or BIOS supports interrupts to access RAID with out of drivers? If so --
> >what for drivers are needed? To access drive via ATA interface?
>
> Bios support interrupts and can thus boot from firmware raid.
> Under windows drivers typically just give you full speed / management
> features
>
> -
> Marci
>
>
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting a kernel directly from stage 1/2

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Feb 19), Alexander Best said:
> On Sat Feb 19 11, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> > On 19/02/2011 02:47, Alexander Best wrote:
> > > but that won't work. i get some numbers and then it says:
> > > btx halted or something like that.
> > 
> > Can't you boot into fixit mode from installation media?  That should
> > allow you to repair the boot blocks and make your system bootable again.
> 
> sorry if i wasn't clear enough. my system works perfectly normal. all i
> want is to avoid running through the booting stage 3 (i.e.  running
> /boot/loader), because i want to speed up the boot time.

I don't think that's been possible for a long time.  /boot/loader shouldn't
add more than a fraction of a second if you set its timeout to 0.

-- 
Dan Nelson
dnel...@allantgroup.com
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting a kernel directly from stage 1/2

[Alexander Best]

On Sat Feb 19 11, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> On 19/02/2011 02:47, Alexander Best wrote:
> > but that won't work. i get some numbers and then it says:
> > btx halted or something like that.
> 
> Can't you boot into fixit mode from installation media?  That should
> allow you to repair the boot blocks and make your system bootable again.

sorry if i wasn't clear enough. my system works perfectly normal. all i want
is to avoid running through the booting stage 3 (i.e. running /boot/loader),
because i want to speed up the boot time.

cheers.
alex

> 
>   Cheers,
> 
>   Matthew
> 
> -- 
> Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.   7 Priory Courtyard
>   Flat 3
> PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
> JID: matt...@infracaninophile.co.uk   Kent, CT11 9PW
> 



-- 
a13x
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting a kernel directly from stage 1/2

[Matthew Seaman]

On 19/02/2011 02:47, Alexander Best wrote:
> but that won't work. i get some numbers and then it says:
> btx halted or something like that.

Can't you boot into fixit mode from installation media?  That should
allow you to repair the boot blocks and make your system bootable again.

Cheers,

Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.   7 Priory Courtyard
  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
JID: matt...@infracaninophile.co.uk   Kent, CT11 9PW



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Booting up FreeBSD 8.0

[Matthias Apitz]

El día Wednesday, September 29, 2010 a las 01:07:26PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar 
escribió:

> > I have just installed FreeBSD 8.0 and after I login it stops at $ like its
> > waiting for me to put some type of information in or something. So what do I
> > put after the dollar sign???
> 
> it means you have to sent some dollars to FreeBSD fundation.

The OP could key in exactly this chars:

PS1=RTFM

and then press a few times Return to see the efect. He/She could also
read
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html
to see where to go now from here.

HIH

matthias

-- 
Matthias Apitz
t +49-89-61308 351 - f +49-89-61308 399 - m +49-170-4527211
e  - w http://www.unixarea.de/
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting up FreeBSD 8.0

[Wojciech Puchar]

I have just installed FreeBSD 8.0 and after I login it stops at $ like its
waiting for me to put some type of information in or something. So what do I
put after the dollar sign???


it means you have to sent some dollars to FreeBSD fundation.

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting up FreeBSD 8.0

[Chuck Swiger]

On Sep 28, 2010, at 10:52 AM, William Lang wrote:
> I have just installed FreeBSD 8.0 and after I login it stops at $ like its
> waiting for me to put some type of information in or something. So what do I
> put after the dollar sign???

You're at a Unix shell prompt.  I suspect the resources here will be helpful:

  http://www.freebsd.org/projects/newbies.html
  http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/new-users/article.html

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting up FreeBSD 8.0

[Steven Friedrich]

On Tuesday 28 September 2010 1:52:56 pm William Lang wrote:
> I have just installed FreeBSD 8.0 and after I login it stops at $ like its
> waiting for me to put some type of information in or something. So what do
> I put after the dollar sign???
> 
> ___
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to
> "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

You haven't indicated what your level of expertise is with unix in general, 
what other software you have installed, or what your goals are.

Have you added additional user IDs to the system or just root?

If you're logged in as root, I wouldn't rn X from that account, though it may 
be sfe these days, I don't kow. I'd create another userID, perhaps admin, and 
assign it to group wheel. This group wil allow you to su root when you need 
the authority. If you're logged in as a non-root user, such as admin (which 
doesn't exist unless yo add it), then try startx.

-- 
System Name:   laptop2.StevenFriedrich.org
Hardware:  2.80GHz Intel Pentium 4 (HTT) with 2 GB memory
OS version:FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE i386 (6.9 MB kernel)
manager(s):kde4-4.5.1 
X windows: xorg-7.5X.Org X Server 1.7.5
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from floppy to install 8.1

[Thomas Mueller]

> > I once net-installed FreeBSD using a boot CD from an earlier
> > version; I think it was a disk one rather than boot-only ...
> > If you use boot floppies, use only the two (or is it three?)
> > needed to boot the install system.

> If I've understood the 7.3 set correctly it's now up to five:  the
> initial boot, plus 3 for the kernel and one for the mfsroot image.

I just browsed ftp.freebsd.org, not to download anything: I see the number of
boot floppies is up to five for 7.3, and there is also a fixit.flp (i386).
For amd64, there are four floppies for the kernel, making six needed to boot,
but no fixit.flp

For FreeBSD 8.1 i386 and amd64, I could find no boot floppies.  Maybe they
could see the number of floppies was becoming too unreasonable, added to the
great unreliability of old floppies.

I see that the sets are still broken into 1392 KB chunks as base.aa, base.ab
and so on, wonder why they chose 1392 KB rather than 1440 KB.  Maybe to allow
for bad sectors revealed when formatting floppies?

> > You could look into PLoP (http://www.plop.at/) boot manager: may
> > be able to boot CD or USB even when BIOS does not support booting
> > from CD or USB ...

> THANK YOU!!  It does indeed boot the machine from the 8.1-RELEASE
> USB memstick, solving the problem entirely.  This deserves to be
> better known.

Glad to know it worked for you, and convinces me that my successful boot of
NetBSD 4.0.1 from a USB stick was no fluke.


Tom
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from floppy to install 8.1

[perryh]

"Thomas Mueller"  wrote:

> > Should I be able to do a network install of 8.1 using a 7.3 boot
> > floppy set?  (I'm not planning to set up zfs, at least initially.)
...
> I once net-installed FreeBSD using a boot CD from an earlier
> version; I think it was a disk one rather than boot-only ...
> If you use boot floppies, use only the two (or is it three?)
> needed to boot the install system.

If I've understood the 7.3 set correctly it's now up to five:  the
initial boot, plus 3 for the kernel and one for the mfsroot image.

> I never used zfs, don't have big enough hard drive or enough RAM
> to justify zfs.

Ditto, at least as to RAM (512MB, which I tend to think of as
_huge_ -- after all, "no one should ever need more than 640KB" :)
I still have a couple of _hard drives_ that are only 10MB each
sitting around somewhere.

> You could look into PLoP (http://www.plop.at/) boot manager: may
> be able to boot CD or USB even when BIOS does not support booting
> from CD or USB ...

THANK YOU!!  It does indeed boot the machine from the 8.1-RELEASE
USB memstick, solving the problem entirely.  This deserves to be
better known.

> If I were in your situation, my first choice would be net install,
> assuming you have cable or DSL; dialup would be awful slow.

Even dialup would be faster (or at least a lot easier) than
installing the whole system from floppies.  By "boot floppy set"
I was referring to just the boot, kernel, and mfsroot needed to
get started.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from floppy to install 8.1

[krad]

On 29 July 2010 10:17, Roland Smith  wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 12:50:12AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
> > I'm trying to solve a chicken-egg problem.
> 
> > Is there a reasonable way to build the proper boot/loader file for
> > an 8.1 boot floppy using a 6.x or 7.x system?
>
> Install 8.1 in an emulator like qemu or virtualbox to create the floppy
> images?
>
> Roland
> --
> R.F.Smith   
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
> [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated]
> pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914  B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725)
>

as long as the version of the os supports the file system you want and the
disk layout eg gpt you in theory can install any version of bsd from any
other version of bsd. After all the main os install is just and extract of
some tar balls. The only issue I can see might be the boot loader. But then
you could chroot into the installed os and use the boot loader from there. I
have definately installed a higher version of bsd than berfore but the
versions numbers escape me
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting install DVD while hard drive is in RAID mode

[Andrew Gould]

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 10:08 AM, Diego Arias  wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 9:56 AM, Andrew Gould 
> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 9:01 AM, Diego Arias  wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 8:58 AM, Andrew Gould
>> > 
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> I purchased an HP Pavilion p6510f.  I cannot boot either FreeBSD 8.1
>> >> (amd64) or OpenSUSE 11.3 Gnome Live CD unless I change the hard drive
>> >> mode from RAID to IDE.  Unfortunately, that damages my Windows 7
>> >> installation.  (The computer is currently being restored to factory
>> >> state.)
>> >>
>> >> Is there an option I can pass to the kernel to bootup the FreeBSD
>> >> installation DVD while the hard drive is in RAID mode?
>> >>
>> >> Thanks,
>> >>
>> >> Andrew
>> >
>> > Do you have a RAID?
>> >
>>
>> I don't have a RAID that I know of.  The computer came with Windows 7
>> Home Premium 64 and the hard drive set to RAID in the BIOS.
>>
>> The computer contains only one hard drive and one DVD writer.  The
>> hard drive has 3 partitions:  a small partition, the OS partition and
>> the recovery partition.
>
> Do you try restoring with IDE instead of RAID?
>

I don't think that will work.  I've read online that you have to
reinstall Windows to change modes.  Restoring maintains the old
Windows configuration.

I've been told that *Ubuntu live CD's can boot on computers with RAID
mode on.  That's why I was hoping that there was a kernel option I
could use at bootup.

Andrew
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting install DVD while hard drive is in RAID mode

[Diego Arias]

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 8:58 AM, Andrew Gould wrote:

> I purchased an HP Pavilion p6510f.  I cannot boot either FreeBSD 8.1
> (amd64) or OpenSUSE 11.3 Gnome Live CD unless I change the hard drive
> mode from RAID to IDE.  Unfortunately, that damages my Windows 7
> installation.  (The computer is currently being restored to factory
> state.)
>
> Is there an option I can pass to the kernel to bootup the FreeBSD
> installation DVD while the hard drive is in RAID mode?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Andrew
> ___
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "
> freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
>

Do you have a RAID?

-- 
mmm, interesante.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from floppy to install 8.1

[Roland Smith]

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 12:50:12AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote:
> I'm trying to solve a chicken-egg problem.

> Is there a reasonable way to build the proper boot/loader file for
> an 8.1 boot floppy using a 6.x or 7.x system?

Install 8.1 in an emulator like qemu or virtualbox to create the floppy images?

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
[plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated]
pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914  B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725)


pgpdF7IcU2Wrp.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: Booting from floppy to install 8.1

[Thomas Mueller]

> Should I be able to do a network install of 8.1 using a 7.3 boot
> floppy set?  (I'm not planning to set up zfs, at least initially.)

> If not, are the 7.3 and 8.1 boot/loader files similar enough that
> the boot/loader from a 7.3 boot floppy "should" work when all else
> in the floppy set is from 8.1?

> Is there a reasonable way to build the proper boot/loader file for
> an 8.1 boot floppy using a 6.x or 7.x system?

I once net-installed FreeBSD using a boot CD from an earlier version; I think 
it was a disk one rather than boot-only.  You have to specify the version to 
install as 8.1-RELEASE exactly as the ftp servers do; exactly as you would do 
with freebsd-update.  If you use boot floppies, use only the two (or is it 
three?) needed to boot the install system.

I never used zfs, don't have big enough hard drive or enough RAM to justify zfs.

You could look into PLoP (http://www.plop.at/) boot manager: may be able to 
boot CD or USB even when BIOS does not support booting from CD or USB.  My 
computer BIOS supports booting from CD but not USB; however NetBSD 4.0.1 
installed on a USB stick booted from PLoP.  There are various ways of 
running/installing PLoP, including installing on a floppy.  You might possibly 
then be able to boot from CD or ATAPI Iomega Zip-250.

If I were in your situation, my first choice would be net install, assuming you 
have cable or DSL; dialup would be awful slow.

I have problems finding errorfree floppies: might be able to find two or three 
to boot, if I'm lucky, but no way could I find enough good floppies to 
accommodate all those .aa, .ab, .ac ... files.


Tom
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting FreeBSD from Compact Flash

[Aiza]

Graham Bentley wrote:

OK I confess that this is associated with FreeNAS however
it seems rather quiet over there on the support forums and I
know there are some knowledgeable BSD people on this
list who may be willing to help on this ...

Compact Flash: Kingston 4GB 45x Elite Pro [CF/4GB-S]
Target Mainboard: VIA EPIA-V1
* I D/L'ed FreeNAS-i386-embedded-0.7.2.5252.img
* I checksumed it with md5sum for WindowsXPP - it matched
* I used physdiskwrite v0.5.2 to write the image to CF on my desktop PC
* I hoooked up the CF to the target mainboard and booted the kernel
Now this is where things go awry  I end up at this prompt ;

mountroot>

I can see the Kinston is ID as ad0 a few lines above at ata0-master.
If I enter ? I get a list of boot devices as follows ; ad0c ad0a ad0
If I enter; mountroot> ufs:/dev/ad0a I get a 'panic: no init' message
and a reboot ; no other choice of boot device gives any such result.
CF boots perfectly hooked up to my desktop PC. On Via Mainboard
I have tried switching off all IDE 'modes' to zero etc but still no joy.
I tried using the verbose boot option and notice that following the CF
card being ID'ed I get the following ;

ad0 VIA check1 failed
ad0 Adaptec check1 failed
ad0 LSI (v3) check1 failed
ad0 LSI (v2) check1 failed
ado FreeBSD check1 failed

Would I be right in thinking that its chipset support for this baord is 
whats

preventing access to the root of the OS/FS?

And if it is, is it possible to add module support somehow?

Thanks in advance of any help :)



Maybe this will be helpful

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=11715
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting multiple choice, and pause to read bootup info

[J. Porter Clark]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 12:09:20PM -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
> 
> _NOT_ directly.  But, you can use the loader(8) directive 'init_script' to
> specify a script that runs 'before anything else'.  Either have your menu
> item execute that word, to set an 'environment' specified by the file, or
> have a separate menu run _from_ that script.
> 
> The idea is 'find a hook', then do whatever it takes to use the hook you 
> found. :)

Indeed!  Seems I had missed the init_script feature; that looks
like the easiest solution.  Thanks!

-- 
J. Porter Clark  
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting multiple choice, and pause to read bootup info

[J. Porter Clark]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 04:00:21AM -0500, Robert Bonomi wrote:
> >
> > 1. I'd like to be able to expand the list of choices in the
> > boot menu (the menu with single user mode, safe mode, etc.) to
> > include booting in any of several different environments, e.g.,
> > home wired, home wireless, work wired, work wireless.  Hacking
> > the FORTH code isn't entirely out of the question, but before
> > I even try it, I need to know how I could tell the system to
> > switch among different rc.conf files (if that's even possible)
> > from the loader.  Offhand, I don't see a mechanism for doing so.
> > Cleverer ideas welcome.
> 
> There's no 'built in' mechanism.
> 
> There's no "easy" way.
> 
> Closest thing -to- an 'easy way' is to set an environment variable
> _very_early_ in the boot process, and then use it to 'conditionalize'
> (how -that- for an ugly word? :) the setting of various stuff in rc.conf
> e.g.:
> case $USER_ENV in
>   home) USE_LDAP="no"
> ;;
>   work) USE_LDAP="yes"
> ;;
>   esac

I wasn't aware that setting an environment variable inside the
loader would propagate into the rc.conf environment.  Is this
so?

> > 2. Usually, when the system boots, there are several lines
> > showing the kernel and various modules loading, possibly with
> > diagnostics.  Is there a way to pause after that stage, so that
> > those lines can be read?  Or is there any way to retrieve them
> > after the system has booted?
> 
> I havven't tried it on FBSD, in a long time, but most PC "BSDs" will pause 
> the boot screen if you hit [CTL-S], or the PAUSE key.
> 
> Alternatively, does dmesg(8), used 'reasonably soon' after booting,  give
> you what you want?
> 
> Note: a typical installation will have syslogd putting _most_ of those 
> messsages in the system log file, too.

Y'all are way off base here: it's not the lines from the kernel
itself booting, it's the lines *before* that, where the loader
is loading the kernel and various modules.  Occasionally, I
see error messages here, but they vanish pretty quickly on my
machines, too fast to be caught reliably with CTL-S, SCROLL
LOCK, etc.  I could set up a serial console, but it seems like a
lot of work just to see these messages.

-- 
J. Porter Clark  
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting multiple choice, and pause to read bootup info

[George Davidovich]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 08:19:22PM -0500, J. Porter Clark wrote:
> 1. I'd like to be able to expand the list of choices in the
> boot menu (the menu with single user mode, safe mode, etc.) to
> include booting in any of several different environments, e.g.,
> home wired, home wireless, work wired, work wireless.  Hacking
> the FORTH code isn't entirely out of the question, but before
> I even try it, I need to know how I could tell the system to
> switch among different rc.conf files (if that's even possible)
> from the loader.  Offhand, I don't see a mechanism for doing so.
> Cleverer ideas welcome.

I did something similar for PXE scenarios but eventually decided I was
spending more time coming up with clever ideas than I would have saved
making use of any of them.  The approach I took was to write a custom
loader.rc (with an include for each of the possible options), but IIRC
everything was presented via a rudimentary menu.

For customising the existing menu, if you read through loader(8), and
then have a look at what's provided in /usr/share/examples/bootforth,
you should be able to figure things out without too much trouble.

-- 
George
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting multiple choice, and pause to read bootup info

[Eitan Adler]

> 2. Usually, when the system boots, there are several lines
> showing the kernel and various modules loading, possibly with
> diagnostics.  Is there a way to pause after that stage, so that
> those lines can be read?  Or is there any way to retrieve them
> after the system has booted?

You have found the use of the "scroll lock" key ;)
If you press it you can go up and down.

Look at /var/run/dmesg.boot for after the system has booted ;)

-- 
Eitan Adler
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting multiple choice, and pause to read bootup info

[RW]

On Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:19:22 -0500
"J. Porter Clark"  wrote:

> 1. I'd like to be able to expand the list of choices in the
> boot menu (the menu with single user mode, safe mode, etc.) to
> include booting in any of several different environments, e.g.,
> home wired, home wireless, work wired, work wireless.  Hacking
> the FORTH code isn't entirely out of the question, but before
> I even try it, I need to know how I could tell the system to
> switch among different rc.conf files (if that's even possible)
> from the loader.  Offhand, I don't see a mechanism for doing so.
> Cleverer ideas welcome.


Perhaps you could have your menu in an rc script (or even auto-detect
from one), and then have it touch a file or something to signal to
other scripts.

rc.conf is a shell script that sourced for each rc script so you could
have entries like

[ -f /tmp/home-wireless ] && enable_foo=yes 

to determine which daemons start.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting multiple choice, and pause to read bootup info

[Yuri Pankov]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 08:19:22PM -0500, J. Porter Clark wrote:
> 1. I'd like to be able to expand the list of choices in the
> boot menu (the menu with single user mode, safe mode, etc.) to
> include booting in any of several different environments, e.g.,
> home wired, home wireless, work wired, work wireless.  Hacking
> the FORTH code isn't entirely out of the question, but before
> I even try it, I need to know how I could tell the system to
> switch among different rc.conf files (if that's even possible)
> from the loader.  Offhand, I don't see a mechanism for doing so.
> Cleverer ideas welcome.
> 
> 2. Usually, when the system boots, there are several lines
> showing the kernel and various modules loading, possibly with
> diagnostics.  Is there a way to pause after that stage, so that
> those lines can be read?  Or is there any way to retrieve them
> after the system has booted?

You are probably looking for /var/run/dmesg.boot.

> 
> -- 
> J. Porter Clark  


Yuri
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Xserve on 8.0

[Chris]

I felt I should finalize this before the thread goes to archives.

My original post was to find out if there was a way to get FreeBSD
to boot and run natively on the Intel XServe. It's a no go.

rEFIt, while part of a solution, can't make up for the complete lack
of BIOS support, EFI boot is only the beginning of the problem.

Rui Paulo stated that kernel changes to FreeBSD will be required
before it will be realistic to run. Watching his FreeBSD progress  
reports

is probably the best source of status.

On Jun 6, 2010, at 10:23 AM, Chris Rees wrote:


On 6 June 2010 17:50, Chris  wrote:


On Jun 6, 2010, at 4:09 AM, Adam Vande More wrote:


On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:48 AM, Chris  wrote:

EFI is the issue. I was hoping there is new information such as
an installation with EFI configuration files to permit the boot.
There are instructions available on creating such an installation
for linux variants. They don't seem to apply to FreeBSD or I haven't
the knowledge to create such an installation.


Well if you want to run BSD on it, I suggest NetBSD.  They use  
rEFIt for

it.
http://wiki.netbsd.se/How_to_install_NetBSD_on_an_Apple_Macbook_w/core2duo

I would say there is even some reasonable hope it that it would  
work well.

 I'm no expert thought so you could try asking over there.



Adam and Chris, Thank you, you both are on the solution if it works.

rEFIt at refit.sourceforge.net was one of the solutions that looked
promising, only with FreeBSD. I will try this.

Anyone interested, feel free to contact me off-list on progress or
especially
if interested in cooperative discovery on whether this will work or  
not.


Thanks again for the responses.


I would recommend keeping discussion on-list, if you don't mind,
because the Archives are incredibly useful to people trying to solve
similar problems.

We all learn from watching discussions on these lists, that's why
we're subscribed!

Of course, if you consider it confidential feel free to go off-list,
it's your call.

Chris
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org 
"




___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Xserve on 8.0

[Chris Rees]

On 6 June 2010 17:50, Chris  wrote:
>
> On Jun 6, 2010, at 4:09 AM, Adam Vande More wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:48 AM, Chris  wrote:
>>
>> EFI is the issue. I was hoping there is new information such as
>> an installation with EFI configuration files to permit the boot.
>> There are instructions available on creating such an installation
>> for linux variants. They don't seem to apply to FreeBSD or I haven't
>> the knowledge to create such an installation.
>>
>>
>> Well if you want to run BSD on it, I suggest NetBSD.  They use rEFIt for
>> it.
>> http://wiki.netbsd.se/How_to_install_NetBSD_on_an_Apple_Macbook_w/core2duo
>>
>> I would say there is even some reasonable hope it that it would work well.
>>  I'm no expert thought so you could try asking over there.
>>
>
> Adam and Chris, Thank you, you both are on the solution if it works.
>
> rEFIt at refit.sourceforge.net was one of the solutions that looked
> promising, only with FreeBSD. I will try this.
>
> Anyone interested, feel free to contact me off-list on progress or
> especially
> if interested in cooperative discovery on whether this will work or not.
>
> Thanks again for the responses.

I would recommend keeping discussion on-list, if you don't mind,
because the Archives are incredibly useful to people trying to solve
similar problems.

We all learn from watching discussions on these lists, that's why
we're subscribed!

Of course, if you consider it confidential feel free to go off-list,
it's your call.

Chris
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Xserve on 8.0

[Chris]

On Jun 6, 2010, at 4:09 AM, Adam Vande More wrote:


On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:48 AM, Chris  wrote:

EFI is the issue. I was hoping there is new information such as
an installation with EFI configuration files to permit the boot.
There are instructions available on creating such an installation
for linux variants. They don't seem to apply to FreeBSD or I haven't
the knowledge to create such an installation.


Well if you want to run BSD on it, I suggest NetBSD.  They use rEFIt  
for it.

http://wiki.netbsd.se/How_to_install_NetBSD_on_an_Apple_Macbook_w/core2duo

I would say there is even some reasonable hope it that it would work  
well.  I'm no expert thought so you could try asking over there.




Adam and Chris, Thank you, you both are on the solution if it works.

rEFIt at refit.sourceforge.net was one of the solutions that looked
promising, only with FreeBSD. I will try this.

Anyone interested, feel free to contact me off-list on progress or  
especially

if interested in cooperative discovery on whether this will work or not.

Thanks again for the responses.


--
Adam Vande More


___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Xserve on 8.0

[Chris Rees]

On 6 June 2010 12:09, Adam Vande More  wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:48 AM, Chris  wrote:
>
>>
>>>  Thanks for the response.
>>
>> That would be a great solution, I read that Apple doesn't permit
>> it to be installed on the XServe. That comes from an Apple article
>> in their support pages dated November 19, 2008. Firmware update
>> is required and none exists according to the note. I am researching
>> if that is still true but haven't turned anything up yet.
>>
>> EFI is the issue. I was hoping there is new information such as
>> an installation with EFI configuration files to permit the boot.
>> There are instructions available on creating such an installation
>> for linux variants. They don't seem to apply to FreeBSD or I haven't
>> the knowledge to create such an installation.
>>
>>
> Well if you want to run BSD on it, I suggest NetBSD.  They use rEFIt for it.
> http://wiki.netbsd.se/How_to_install_NetBSD_on_an_Apple_Macbook_w/core2duo
>
> I would say there is even some reasonable hope it that it would work well.
> I'm no expert thought so you could try asking over there.
>
> --
> Adam Vande More

Pretty good idea actually, I tried it on my Macbook once and it worked
pretty well. I suggest you try the CD version
http://refit.sourceforge.net/doc/c1s1_install.html before committing
to anything though!

Chris
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Xserve on 8.0

[Adam Vande More]

On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 7:48 AM, Chris  wrote:

>
>>  Thanks for the response.
>
> That would be a great solution, I read that Apple doesn't permit
> it to be installed on the XServe. That comes from an Apple article
> in their support pages dated November 19, 2008. Firmware update
> is required and none exists according to the note. I am researching
> if that is still true but haven't turned anything up yet.
>
> EFI is the issue. I was hoping there is new information such as
> an installation with EFI configuration files to permit the boot.
> There are instructions available on creating such an installation
> for linux variants. They don't seem to apply to FreeBSD or I haven't
> the knowledge to create such an installation.
>
>
Well if you want to run BSD on it, I suggest NetBSD.  They use rEFIt for it.
http://wiki.netbsd.se/How_to_install_NetBSD_on_an_Apple_Macbook_w/core2duo

I would say there is even some reasonable hope it that it would work well.
I'm no expert thought so you could try asking over there.

-- 
Adam Vande More
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Xserve on 8.0

[Chris]

On Jun 5, 2010, at 12:54 AM, Chris Rees wrote:

Perhaps you need to install Boot Camp. The booting procedure is EFI,  
maybe that's playing havoc.




Thanks for the response.

That would be a great solution, I read that Apple doesn't permit
it to be installed on the XServe. That comes from an Apple article
in their support pages dated November 19, 2008. Firmware update
is required and none exists according to the note. I am researching
if that is still true but haven't turned anything up yet.

EFI is the issue. I was hoping there is new information such as
an installation with EFI configuration files to permit the boot.
There are instructions available on creating such an installation
for linux variants. They don't seem to apply to FreeBSD or I haven't
the knowledge to create such an installation.


On 5 Jun 2010 03:37, "Chris"  wrote:

I have two new Xserves (last years units, 2.8 quad cores). After
fighting with OSX for two months, I decided to see if I could install
FreeBSD since that is what we have always run on our 10 servers
since the 90s (and those two months would have been over in two
days had we had FreeBSD from the start). I decided to give it a try
tonight after a particularly low ebb in the frustration over trying  
to make
OSX, NOT do user friendly enterprise things, but just configure  
normal

simple applications that we take for granted can be configured and
stay configured on FreeBSD.

I'm wondering if there is someone on the list who may have  
information

on this. I used the "boot from CD" procedure that apple provides
at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2778?viewlocale=en_US and it will
not boot the 8.0 ISO. I configured one normal intel box using this CD
so I think it's a good disk, and I verified that the Xserve would  
read
it as a data disk. But I can't get it to boot on the xserve.  
Bootloader

issue?

It pops the disk out and puts the gray folder with a question mark to
tell me to give it a disk it can read. I tried the i386 8.0 CD and  
had the

same results.

I have read where people are installing the PPC version on xserves.
Is it possible the amd64 version is not somehow bootable in a modern
xserve? Any ideas? Would it be appropriate to ask this on the amd64
list?

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org 
"




___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting Xserve on 8.0

[Chris Rees]

Perhaps you need to install Boot Camp. The booting procedure is EFI, maybe
that's playing havoc.

On 5 Jun 2010 03:37, "Chris"  wrote:

I have two new Xserves (last years units, 2.8 quad cores). After
fighting with OSX for two months, I decided to see if I could install
FreeBSD since that is what we have always run on our 10 servers
since the 90s (and those two months would have been over in two
days had we had FreeBSD from the start). I decided to give it a try
tonight after a particularly low ebb in the frustration over trying to make
OSX, NOT do user friendly enterprise things, but just configure normal
simple applications that we take for granted can be configured and
stay configured on FreeBSD.

I'm wondering if there is someone on the list who may have information
on this. I used the "boot from CD" procedure that apple provides
at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2778?viewlocale=en_US and it will
not boot the 8.0 ISO. I configured one normal intel box using this CD
so I think it's a good disk, and I verified that the Xserve would read
it as a data disk. But I can't get it to boot on the xserve. Bootloader
issue?

It pops the disk out and puts the gray folder with a question mark to
tell me to give it a disk it can read. I tried the i386 8.0 CD and had the
same results.

I have read where people are installing the PPC version on xserves.
Is it possible the amd64 version is not somehow bootable in a modern
xserve? Any ideas? Would it be appropriate to ask this on the amd64
list?

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting??

[Chris Hill]

On Wed, 5 May 2010, Polytropon wrote:


On Wed, 5 May 2010 09:59:35 -0700, Gary Kline  wrote:

(I did try

  # cdrecord dev=1,0,0 foo.iso

on a non-empty and and empty DVD.  no joy.


I'm not sure it's safe to use cdrecord for DVDs. Anyway, I
always wqas lucky using growisofs (from port dvd+rw-tools).
This is the command:

# growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=foo.iso

You can replace /dev/dvd with the ATAPICAM device refering
to your DVD recorder, usually something like /dev/cd0. The
command

# camcontrol devlist

shows you the device name (l?ok for the SCSI ID 1,0,0 as
from your cdrecord example).




what are the magic commands to use from the cmdline to
erase my dvd?  is there a utility to erase?


In "man growisofs" I found this:

Note that DVD+RW re-formatting procedure does not
substitute for blanking.  If you want to nullify
the media, e.g. for privacy reasons, do it
explicitly with 'growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=/dev/zero'.

This should work, or try the respective cdrecord blank=
command (all or fast).


In addition to Polytropon's sage advice, I need to mention that you never 
said that these were rewritable DVDs you're working with. Not saying 
you're that dumb, but *I* am that dumb so it's the sort of thing I might 
have overlooked. Also, make sure that (assuming they are rewritable) they 
are the right kind for your drive: the "plus" and "minus" discs are not 
the same; that's DVD+RW versus DVD-RW.


--
Chris Hill   ch...@monochrome.org
** [ Busy Expunging <|> ]
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting??

[Polytropon]

On Wed, 5 May 2010 09:59:35 -0700, Gary Kline  wrote:
> (I did try 
> 
>   # cdrecord dev=1,0,0 foo.iso 
>   
> on a non-empty and and empty DVD.  no joy. 

I'm not sure it's safe to use cdrecord for DVDs. Anyway, I
always wqas lucky using growisofs (from port dvd+rw-tools).
This is the command:

# growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=foo.iso

You can replace /dev/dvd with the ATAPICAM device refering
to your DVD recorder, usually something like /dev/cd0. The
command

# camcontrol devlist

shows you the device name (löok for the SCSI ID 1,0,0 as
from your cdrecord example).



> what are the magic commands to use from the cmdline to 
> erase my dvd?  is there a utility to erase?

In "man growisofs" I found this:

Note that DVD+RW re-formatting procedure does not
substitute for blanking.  If you want to nullify
the media, e.g. for privacy reasons, do it
explicitly with 'growisofs -Z /dev/dvd=/dev/zero'.

This should work, or try the respective cdrecord blank=
command (all or fast).


-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting??

[Andrew Gould]

On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Gary Kline  wrote:
>
> well, the pcbsd iso on my dvd-rw seems to be doing something.  i
> have at least seven "junk" dvd's that k3b tells me are full.  is
> there a way of erasing these 7 discs or are they trash?
>
> (I did try
>
>  # cdrecord dev=1,0,0 foo.iso
>
> on a non-empty and and empty DVD.  no joy.   k3b knew howto do it
> right.  what are the magic commands to use from the cmdline to
> erase my dvd?  is there a utility to erase?
>
>  tia,
>
>  gary
>

Check out the following web page:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/creating-dvds.html

Andrew
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting MFS from Secondary Partition

[Jonathan McKeown]

On Saturday 06 March 2010 15:02:20 Martin McCormick wrote:
> Fbsd1 writes:
> > just dd the image to what ever drive you want
>
>   That is the goal. The challenge is to launch a script
> that detects when the boot device has been unmounted as dd will
> not work on an active file system.

Martin

it may or may not work, but there's a sysctl for the geom subsystem which 
might do what you want.

sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16

This used to be used (for all i know still can be) to allow writing metadata 
for (eg) building a gmirror on a mounted disk - it's often referred to as the 
``allow-footshooting'' flag.

That might allow you to dd your image onto the mounted disk - i'd either try 
it with a handy spare system or wait for someone more expert than i to 
comment, though.

Jonathan
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting MFS from Secondary Partition

[Martin McCormick]

Fbsd1 writes:
> just dd the image to what ever drive you want

That is the goal. The challenge is to launch a script
that detects when the boot device has been unmounted as dd will
not work on an active file system.

Memory disk images apparently survive until reboot so
there is a possibility that one can get in the write between the
umount of everything and complete shutdown.

I am truly impressed with how robust FreeBSD is as it
probably should be very hard to log in to a working system and
remotely rebuild it. I did read one of many introductory
articles about mfsbsd that tells you to just use scp to get the
image over to the target system and then, as root, use dd to
apply it to the boot device. That is not possible unless one
first boots from some other medium.

Martin McCormick
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting MFS from Secondary Partition

[Fbsd1]

Martin McCormick wrote:

Fbsd1 writes:

There is hard coded logic that is stopping you from doing what you want.
Looks like you are SOL.


Me thinks you are absolutely correct. I was only hoping
I was doing something wrong and a slight syntax change would
make it work. Thank you and thanks to Maciej Milewski 
for his suggestion.

I have one last trick up my sleve before giving up
completely on this idea. Maybe I can hijack one of the rc.x
scripts to cause it to spew a memory disk image of the mfsboot
code on to the freshly-unmounted /dev/ad0 device during a
reboot. Since the goal is to completely rebuild the system
anyway, this would be the last gasp of the present system as it
gets ready to reboot, hopefully with mfsbsd and all hard drives
dismounted.

Martin McCormick
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"



just dd the image to what ever drive you want
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting MFS from Secondary Partition

[Martin McCormick]

Fbsd1 writes:
> There is hard coded logic that is stopping you from doing what you want.
> Looks like you are SOL.

Me thinks you are absolutely correct. I was only hoping
I was doing something wrong and a slight syntax change would
make it work. Thank you and thanks to Maciej Milewski 
for his suggestion.

I have one last trick up my sleve before giving up
completely on this idea. Maybe I can hijack one of the rc.x
scripts to cause it to spew a memory disk image of the mfsboot
code on to the freshly-unmounted /dev/ad0 device during a
reboot. Since the goal is to completely rebuild the system
anyway, this would be the last gasp of the present system as it
gets ready to reboot, hopefully with mfsbsd and all hard drives
dismounted.

Martin McCormick
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting MFS from Secondary Partition

[Fbsd1]

Martin McCormick wrote:

I have hit one of these impenetrable walls in which nothing
seems to work but I know it should. I have tried several
versions of /boot.config to no avail. The idea is exactly the
same principle as described in depenguinator which is software
that lets one use grub in Linux to install FreeBSD on a working
Linux system. The idea is to steal the swap partition, put mfsboot
there, and then tell grub to boot from that partition rather than the
normal active one.

The manual for boot.config makes me think I should be
able to just put in the information describing the secondary
partition and it should cause a boot from that one but:

/boot.config: 1:ad(0,b)/boot/loader -P

FreeBSD/i386 boot
Default: 1:ad(0,b)/boot/loader
boot:
error 1 lba 0
No /boot/loader

The mfsboot image works when started from the primary
partition so I am stuck as to why boot.config is not starting
from that secondary partition.
The present boot.config is:

1:ad(0,b)/boot/loader -P

If mfsbsd was starting, shouldn't it see its boot
loader?

Is there a mfsbsd discussion list? Surely, somebody else
has hit this brick wall, also.




From what I read in this freebsd.org article
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/remote-install/index.html

There is hard coded logic that is stopping you from doing what you want.
Looks like you are SOL.

Booting mfsBSD
Now that the mfsBSD image is ready, it must be uploaded to the remote 
system running a live rescue system or pre-installed Linux® 
distribution. The most suitable tool for this task is scp:


# scp disk.img r...@192.168.0.2:.
To boot mfsBSD image properly, it must be placed on the first (bootable) 
device of the given machine. This may be accomplished using this example 
providing that sda is the first bootable disk device:


# dd if=/root/disk.img of=/dev/sda bs=1m
If all went well, the image should now be in the MBR of the first device 
and the machine can be rebooted. Watch for the machine to boot up 
properly with the ping(8) tool. Once it has came back on-line, it should 
be possible to access it over ssh(1) as user root with the configured 
password.



The mfsbsd process has new maintainer,  Martin Matuska 
Email him for help.

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting single user mode

[Aiza]

Jerry McAllister wrote:

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 10:39:57AM +0800, Aiza wrote:


Looking for conformation.
On booting into single user mode all files systems are unmounted except 
/ which is mounted read only.

Is this true?
Will dump/restore commands work?


Generally yes.   Make sure they are in your path and available to you
in whatever filesystem[s] you have mounted.  I think they normally are.
I believe dump and restore are in  /sbin  which should be part of your
root filesystem and not in its own partition.   ==Never put those things
that should be in root in their own partitions==
To check where they are use 'which'   which dump   or  which restore
will tell you where they are.

When you dump a non mounted filesystem, I think you have to use
the partition name, not the mount name.   


So, instead of
  dump 0afL /dev/nsa0 /usr 
it might be

  dump 0afL /dev/nsa0 /dev/ad0s1d
if your mount a partition /dev/ad0s1d as /usr normaly.

You don't really need to restore to an unmounted partition, though
using single user might be useful.   If you are restoring in single
user, do something like this.

  fsck -a
  mount -u /
  mount -a
  cd /usr
  restore -rf /dev/nsa0

Note: I am using /dev/nsa0 as where the dump media is.  that would
  be a tape device.  You need to adjust this for where you really
  write the dump or have the dump stored.
 
jerry




Think mistake here   dump 0afL /dev/nsa0 /usr
Whole reason for doing dump in single user mode is no snapshot so no 
need for -L flag in your example dump command.




___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting single user mode

[Jerry McAllister]

On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 10:39:57AM +0800, Aiza wrote:

> Looking for conformation.
> On booting into single user mode all files systems are unmounted except 
> / which is mounted read only.
> Is this true?
> Will dump/restore commands work?

Generally yes.   Make sure they are in your path and available to you
in whatever filesystem[s] you have mounted.  I think they normally are.
I believe dump and restore are in  /sbin  which should be part of your
root filesystem and not in its own partition.   ==Never put those things
that should be in root in their own partitions==
To check where they are use 'which'   which dump   or  which restore
will tell you where they are.

When you dump a non mounted filesystem, I think you have to use
the partition name, not the mount name.   

So, instead of
  dump 0afL /dev/nsa0 /usr 
it might be
  dump 0afL /dev/nsa0 /dev/ad0s1d
if your mount a partition /dev/ad0s1d as /usr normaly.

You don't really need to restore to an unmounted partition, though
using single user might be useful.   If you are restoring in single
user, do something like this.

  fsck -a
  mount -u /
  mount -a
  cd /usr
  restore -rf /dev/nsa0

Note: I am using /dev/nsa0 as where the dump media is.  that would
  be a tape device.  You need to adjust this for where you really
  write the dump or have the dump stored.
 
jerry


> ___
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

RE: booting off a ZFS pool consisting of multiple striped mirror vdevs

[Dan Naumov]

> I don't know, but I plan to test that scenario in a few days.
>
> Matt

Please share the results when you're done, I am really curious :)


> It *should* work... I made changes a while back that allow for multiple
> vdevs to attach to the root.  In this case you should have 3 mirror
> vdevs attached to the root, so as long as the BIOS can enumerate all of
> the drives, we should find all of the vdevs and build the tree
> correctly.  It should be simple enough to test in qemu, except that the
> BIOS in qemu is a little broken and might not id all of the drives.
>
> robert.

If booting of a stripe of 3 mirrors should work assuming no BIOS bugs,
can you explain why is booting off simple stripes (of any number of
disks) currently unsupported? I haven't tested that myself, but
everywhere I look seems to indicate that booting off a simple stripe
doesn't work or is that "everywhere" also out of date after your
changes? :)


- Sincerely,
Dan Naumov
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting off a ZFS pool consisting of multiple striped mirror vdevs

[Robert Noland]

On Mon, 2010-02-15 at 10:07 -0800, Matt Reimer wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 12:04 PM, Dan Naumov  wrote:
> 
> > Hello
> >
> > I have succesfully tested and used a "full ZFS install" of FreeBSD 8.0
> > on both single disk and mirror disk configurations using both MBR and
> > GPT partitioning. AFAIK, with the more recent -CURRENT and -STABLE it
> > is also possible to boot off a root filesystem located on raidz/raidz2
> > pools. But what about booting off pools consisting of multiple striped
> > mirror or raidz vdevs? Like this:
> >
> > Assume each disk looks like a half of a traditional ZFS mirror root
> > configuration using GPT
> >
> > 1: freebsd-boot
> > 2: freebsd-swap
> > 3: freebsd-zfs
> >
> > |disk1+disk2| + |disk3+disk4| + |disk5+disk6|
> >
> > My logic tells me that while booting off any of the 6 disks, boot0 and
> > boot1 stage should obviously work fine, but what about the boot2
> > stage? Can it properly handle booting off a root filesystem thats
> > striped across 3 mirror vdevs or is booting off a single mirror vdev
> > the best that one can do right now?
> >
> >
> I don't know, but I plan to test that scenario in a few days.

It *should* work... I made changes a while back that allow for multiple
vdevs to attach to the root.  In this case you should have 3 mirror
vdevs attached to the root, so as long as the BIOS can enumerate all of
the drives, we should find all of the vdevs and build the tree
correctly.  It should be simple enough to test in qemu, except that the
BIOS in qemu is a little broken and might not id all of the drives.

robert.

> Matt
> ___
> freebsd-sta...@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
-- 
Robert Noland 
FreeBSD

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting off a ZFS pool consisting of multiple striped mirror vdevs

[Matt Reimer]

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 12:04 PM, Dan Naumov  wrote:

> Hello
>
> I have succesfully tested and used a "full ZFS install" of FreeBSD 8.0
> on both single disk and mirror disk configurations using both MBR and
> GPT partitioning. AFAIK, with the more recent -CURRENT and -STABLE it
> is also possible to boot off a root filesystem located on raidz/raidz2
> pools. But what about booting off pools consisting of multiple striped
> mirror or raidz vdevs? Like this:
>
> Assume each disk looks like a half of a traditional ZFS mirror root
> configuration using GPT
>
> 1: freebsd-boot
> 2: freebsd-swap
> 3: freebsd-zfs
>
> |disk1+disk2| + |disk3+disk4| + |disk5+disk6|
>
> My logic tells me that while booting off any of the 6 disks, boot0 and
> boot1 stage should obviously work fine, but what about the boot2
> stage? Can it properly handle booting off a root filesystem thats
> striped across 3 mirror vdevs or is booting off a single mirror vdev
> the best that one can do right now?
>
>
I don't know, but I plan to test that scenario in a few days.

Matt
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting off GPT partitions

[John Baldwin]

On Thursday 28 January 2010 7:26:24 am Dimitry Andric wrote:
> On 2010-01-28 13:06, Robert Noland wrote:
> > John or Marcel can correct me, but I don't think that this is an issue.
> > The bootstrap is located in the pmbr in sector 0 and the GPT headers and
> > tables are in sectors 1 - 34.  The bootstrap code knows how to read the
> > GPT tables and can deal with>  2 tb lba's.
> 
> Ah yes, I see it now.  It uses EDD packets with the BIOS int 13
> interface, which apparently have a 64-bit LBA.  This should support up
> to 8 ZiB with 512-byte sectors...
> 
> OTOH, I have no idea how well most BIOSes actually implement this.
> Since many OSes simply don't support anything over 2^32 sectors, I would
> not be amazed to find much BIOSes out there that behave the same.  Or am
> I too paranoid now? :)

It should work fine.  The GPT boot code was originally written specifically to 
supporting booting from RAID volumes > 2TB.  I've tested it on mfi(4) volumes 
that large (though I didn't verify the individual LBAs of all the various bits 
read in by the bootstrap and loader were).  I know that other folks ran into 
bugs until the ZFS GPT boot code was all made 64-bit clean and that they have 
since booted > 2TB ZFS volumes ok.

-- 
John Baldwin
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting off GPT partitions

[Dimitry Andric]

On 2010-01-28 13:06, Robert Noland wrote:

John or Marcel can correct me, but I don't think that this is an issue.
The bootstrap is located in the pmbr in sector 0 and the GPT headers and
tables are in sectors 1 - 34.  The bootstrap code knows how to read the
GPT tables and can deal with>  2 tb lba's.


Ah yes, I see it now.  It uses EDD packets with the BIOS int 13
interface, which apparently have a 64-bit LBA.  This should support up
to 8 ZiB with 512-byte sectors...

OTOH, I have no idea how well most BIOSes actually implement this.
Since many OSes simply don't support anything over 2^32 sectors, I would
not be amazed to find much BIOSes out there that behave the same.  Or am
I too paranoid now? :)
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting off GPT partitions

[Robert Noland]

On Wed, 2010-01-27 at 20:23 -0600, Brooks Davis wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 12:27:54AM +0100, Dimitry Andric wrote:
> > On 2010-01-27 22:27, John Baldwin wrote:
> >> GPT was defined along with EFI, so many folks assume that you have to use 
> >> EFI
> >> to boot a GPT-labelled disk.  However, FreeBSD has its own BIOS-based
> >> bootstrap that can handle GPT-labelled disks.  I doubt the SuperMicro tech 
> >> is
> >> familiar with that case.  I thought I heard that some folks had added GPT
> >> support to grub as well.
> > 
> > However, this won't boot disks larger than 2TiB, right?  At least not
> > without BIOS support...
> 
> You won't be able to boot from a partition more than 2TiB in, but you
> should still be able to boot as long as you boot from the front part of
> the disk.

John or Marcel can correct me, but I don't think that this is an issue.
The bootstrap is located in the pmbr in sector 0 and the GPT headers and
tables are in sectors 1 - 34.  The bootstrap code knows how to read the
GPT tables and can deal with > 2 tb lba's.

So, as long as you can successfully load the bootstrap code from sector
0, all *should* be good.

robert.

> -- Brook
-- 
Robert Noland 
FreeBSD

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting off GPT partitions

[Brooks Davis]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 12:27:54AM +0100, Dimitry Andric wrote:
> On 2010-01-27 22:27, John Baldwin wrote:
>> GPT was defined along with EFI, so many folks assume that you have to use EFI
>> to boot a GPT-labelled disk.  However, FreeBSD has its own BIOS-based
>> bootstrap that can handle GPT-labelled disks.  I doubt the SuperMicro tech is
>> familiar with that case.  I thought I heard that some folks had added GPT
>> support to grub as well.
> 
> However, this won't boot disks larger than 2TiB, right?  At least not
> without BIOS support...

You won't be able to boot from a partition more than 2TiB in, but you
should still be able to boot as long as you boot from the front part of
the disk.

-- Brook


pgpaN4uYFKOox.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: booting off GPT partitions

[Dimitry Andric]

On 2010-01-27 22:27, John Baldwin wrote:

GPT was defined along with EFI, so many folks assume that you have to use EFI
to boot a GPT-labelled disk.  However, FreeBSD has its own BIOS-based
bootstrap that can handle GPT-labelled disks.  I doubt the SuperMicro tech is
familiar with that case.  I thought I heard that some folks had added GPT
support to grub as well.


However, this won't boot disks larger than 2TiB, right?  At least not
without BIOS support...
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting off GPT partitions

[John Baldwin]

On Wednesday 27 January 2010 11:45:36 am Dan Naumov wrote:
> Hey
> 
> I was under the impression that everyone and their dog is using GPT
> partitioning in FreeBSD these days, including for boot drives and that
> I was just being unlucky with my current NAS motherboard (Intel
> D945GCLF2) having supposedly shaky support for GPT boot. But right now
> I am having an email exchange with Supermicro support (whom I
> contacted since I am pondering their X7SPA-H board for a new system),
> who are telling me that booting off GPT requires UEFI BIOS, which is
> supposedly a very new thing and that for example NONE of their current
> motherboards have support for this.
> 
> Am I misunderstanding something or is the Supermicro support tech misguided?

GPT was defined along with EFI, so many folks assume that you have to use EFI
to boot a GPT-labelled disk.  However, FreeBSD has its own BIOS-based 
bootstrap that can handle GPT-labelled disks.  I doubt the SuperMicro tech is 
familiar with that case.  I thought I heard that some folks had added GPT 
support to grub as well.

-- 
John Baldwin
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting off GPT partitions

[Matt Reimer]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 8:45 AM, Dan Naumov  wrote:

> Hey
>
> I was under the impression that everyone and their dog is using GPT
> partitioning in FreeBSD these days, including for boot drives and that
> I was just being unlucky with my current NAS motherboard (Intel
> D945GCLF2) having supposedly shaky support for GPT boot. But right now
> I am having an email exchange with Supermicro support (whom I
> contacted since I am pondering their X7SPA-H board for a new system),
> who are telling me that booting off GPT requires UEFI BIOS, which is
> supposedly a very new thing and that for example NONE of their current
> motherboards have support for this.
>
> Am I misunderstanding something or is the Supermicro support tech
> misguided?
>
>
I'm booting servers with SuperMicro X8STi-F motherboards just fine using
pmbr + GPT + ZFS.

Matt
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting off GPT partitions

[Brooks Davis]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 06:45:36PM +0200, Dan Naumov wrote:
> Hey
> 
> I was under the impression that everyone and their dog is using GPT
> partitioning in FreeBSD these days, including for boot drives and that
> I was just being unlucky with my current NAS motherboard (Intel
> D945GCLF2) having supposedly shaky support for GPT boot. But right now
> I am having an email exchange with Supermicro support (whom I
> contacted since I am pondering their X7SPA-H board for a new system),
> who are telling me that booting off GPT requires UEFI BIOS, which is
> supposedly a very new thing and that for example NONE of their current
> motherboards have support for this.
> 
> Am I misunderstanding something or is the Supermicro support tech misguided?

The compatability MBR should be sufficent to let a non-GPT aware BIOS
boot from GPT.  Once you've loaded code from the boot partition, the
BIOS doesn't need to know anything about the partitions.

-- Brooks


pgpCLNbdHGH7i.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: booting off GPT partitions

[Andriy Gapon]

on 27/01/2010 18:45 Dan Naumov said the following:
> Hey
> 
> I was under the impression that everyone and their dog is using GPT
> partitioning in FreeBSD these days, including for boot drives and that
> I was just being unlucky with my current NAS motherboard (Intel
> D945GCLF2) having supposedly shaky support for GPT boot. But right now
> I am having an email exchange with Supermicro support (whom I
> contacted since I am pondering their X7SPA-H board for a new system),
> who are telling me that booting off GPT requires UEFI BIOS, which is
> supposedly a very new thing and that for example NONE of their current
> motherboards have support for this.
> 
> Am I misunderstanding something or is the Supermicro support tech misguided?

Perhaps both :-)
It depends on what booting capabilities you need from your BIOS.
With FreeBSD we currently typically don't use "pure" GPT and use Protective MBR
and install real boot code into a special boot partition.  Protective MBR looks
like a "normal" MBR to BIOS, and boot code in Protective MBR is smart to find 
the
boot partition and hand off boot process to code in it.
This way you can almost have the best of both worlds, but with some limitations
(like multibooting).  I don't know what other OSes do or expect in this area.

Obligatory wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table#Legacy_MBR_.28LBA_0.29

-- 
Andriy Gapon
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting off GPT partitions

[Vincent Hoffman]

GPT booting is I believe only natively supported using an EFI BIOS.
However if you wish to use GPT booting with FreeBSD its not too hard,
you just cant install using sysinstall.
The Examples section of the gpart manpage is what i used to configure
the disk for my home server, a zotac ion atom based board  (dont have
any production servers at work using it at the moment.) Then i just
installed using the files on the usb image.

>From what I understand gpart installs the pmbr file as a basic bootstrap
in the protective MBR present in the GPT partition scheme, this is
bootable by a standard bios and is able to understand enough GPT to look
for a freebsd boot partition, load the bootcode in that, which loads the
kernel etc.

So no they arent completely misguided, but its certainly possible to use
a GPT scheme without an EFI BIOS.
What I would like is an efi bootloader for i386 so I can get my
powerbook to run FreeBSD again as it has got an efi bios and bootcamp
wont boot freebsd for me at the moment :(

Vince


Dan Naumov wrote:
> Hey
>
> I was under the impression that everyone and their dog is using GPT
> partitioning in FreeBSD these days, including for boot drives and that
> I was just being unlucky with my current NAS motherboard (Intel
> D945GCLF2) having supposedly shaky support for GPT boot. But right now
> I am having an email exchange with Supermicro support (whom I
> contacted since I am pondering their X7SPA-H board for a new system),
> who are telling me that booting off GPT requires UEFI BIOS, which is
> supposedly a very new thing and that for example NONE of their current
> motherboards have support for this.
>
> Am I misunderstanding something or is the Supermicro support tech misguided?
>
>
> - Sincerely,
> Dan Naumov
> ___
> freebsd-sta...@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-stable-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
>   

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting off GPT partitions

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 06:45:36PM +0200, Dan Naumov wrote:
> I was under the impression that everyone and their dog is using GPT
> partitioning in FreeBSD these days, including for boot drives and that
> I was just being unlucky with my current NAS motherboard (Intel
> D945GCLF2) having supposedly shaky support for GPT boot. But right now
> I am having an email exchange with Supermicro support (whom I
> contacted since I am pondering their X7SPA-H board for a new system),
> who are telling me that booting off GPT requires UEFI BIOS, which is
> supposedly a very new thing and that for example NONE of their current
> motherboards have support for this.
> 
> Am I misunderstanding something or is the Supermicro support tech misguided?

For what it's worth, I've never encountered any production x86 system that
I've worked on (Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris 10, or OpenSolaris) which has
used GPT.

I don't know who's giving you the impression that "everyone and their
dog is using GPT".  Why is this feature a deal-breaker for you?  Why are
you giving it so much attention?

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick   j...@parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking   http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from ZFS raidz

[Anselm Strauss]

On Jan 8, 2010, at 17:12 , krad wrote:

> 2010/1/8 Anselm Strauss 
> Sorry, forgot the list ...
> 
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Anselm Strauss 
> Date: Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 4:50 PM
> Subject: Re: Booting from ZFS raidz
> To: Sergiy Suprun 
> 
> 
> I've done some experiments with the 8.0 stable branch and the head branch
> from SVN. I just recompiled /boot/loader but didn't have any luck. The
> version from the stable branch gives me the exact same error, the head
> version fails with a new error. Doesn't seem this is really ready at the
> moment. I think I'll go with a separate mirror pool for now.
> 
> Anselm
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 9:43 PM, Sergiy Suprun wrote:
> 
> > Hi.
> > Some time ago I follow instruction from this wiki
> > http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS and I had a problem like yours.
> > After some experiments I build loader from CURRENT, and boot fine from
> > raidz2 zpool. I don't know, may be now this code avialable in 8-STABLE.
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 20:25, Anselm Strauss  wrote:
> >
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I'm experimenting with a ZFS only system and booting from it in
> >> VirtualBox. Thanks to various mails and forum posts from the net I have a
> >> working scenario with booting from a ZFS mirror. However, I can't get the
> >> thing to work with raidz with the exactly same setup, except that the pool
> >> is now raidz instead of mirror and there is one more disk. I feel sure I
> >> have all the stuff with partitioning, boot loader installation, etc. right.
> >> I tested this with version 8.0-RELEASE on 64bit.
> >>
> >> Now, before I go into detailed explaining, is raidz really supported? I
> >> always get the following error after it says "FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap 
> >> loader,
> >> Revision 1.1":
> >>
> >> ZFS: i/o error - all block copies unavailable
> >> ZFS: can't read MOS object directory
> >> (repeats a lot)
> >> Can't find root filesystem - giving up
> >> can't load 'kernel'
> >>
> >> I think the "MOS" message comes from zfs_mount_root() in
> >> /usr/src/sys/boot/zfs/zfsimpl.c. I asume that is the point when 
> >> /boot/loader
> >> has been loaded and now wants to load the kernel into memory. After that
> >> error I'm in the loader prompt. When I try to load any file I always get 
> >> the
> >> same error as above.
> >>
> >> Anyone any ideas?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Anselm___
> >> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> >> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> >> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "
> >> freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
> >>
> >
> ___
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
> 
> you didnt export the pool at any point did you without reimporting it and 
> copying the zpool.cache?

I created /boot/zfs, exported the pool, imported again, copied 
/boot/zfs/zpool.cache to /zroot/boot/zfs, unmounted /zroot and then set the 
mountpoint for zroot to legacy. After the loader lists 3 disk drives I'm now 
getting the error:

FATAL: int13_harddisk: function 42. Can't use 64bits lba

Then, booting stops completely, no command prompt follows. This is with the SVN 
head branch.___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from ZFS raidz

[krad]

2010/1/8 Anselm Strauss 

> Sorry, forgot the list ...
>
> -- Forwarded message --
> From: Anselm Strauss 
> Date: Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 4:50 PM
> Subject: Re: Booting from ZFS raidz
> To: Sergiy Suprun 
>
>
> I've done some experiments with the 8.0 stable branch and the head branch
> from SVN. I just recompiled /boot/loader but didn't have any luck. The
> version from the stable branch gives me the exact same error, the head
> version fails with a new error. Doesn't seem this is really ready at the
> moment. I think I'll go with a separate mirror pool for now.
>
> Anselm
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 9:43 PM, Sergiy Suprun  >wrote:
>
> > Hi.
> > Some time ago I follow instruction from this wiki
> > http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS and I had a problem like yours.
> > After some experiments I build loader from CURRENT, and boot fine from
> > raidz2 zpool. I don't know, may be now this code avialable in 8-STABLE.
> >
> > On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 20:25, Anselm Strauss 
> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I'm experimenting with a ZFS only system and booting from it in
> >> VirtualBox. Thanks to various mails and forum posts from the net I have
> a
> >> working scenario with booting from a ZFS mirror. However, I can't get
> the
> >> thing to work with raidz with the exactly same setup, except that the
> pool
> >> is now raidz instead of mirror and there is one more disk. I feel sure I
> >> have all the stuff with partitioning, boot loader installation, etc.
> right.
> >> I tested this with version 8.0-RELEASE on 64bit.
> >>
> >> Now, before I go into detailed explaining, is raidz really supported? I
> >> always get the following error after it says "FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap
> loader,
> >> Revision 1.1":
> >>
> >> ZFS: i/o error - all block copies unavailable
> >> ZFS: can't read MOS object directory
> >> (repeats a lot)
> >> Can't find root filesystem - giving up
> >> can't load 'kernel'
> >>
> >> I think the "MOS" message comes from zfs_mount_root() in
> >> /usr/src/sys/boot/zfs/zfsimpl.c. I asume that is the point when
> /boot/loader
> >> has been loaded and now wants to load the kernel into memory. After that
> >> error I'm in the loader prompt. When I try to load any file I always get
> the
> >> same error as above.
> >>
> >> Anyone any ideas?
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Anselm___
> >> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> >> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> >> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "
> >> freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
> >>
> >
> ___
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "
> freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
>

you didnt export the pool at any point did you without reimporting it and
copying the zpool.cache?
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from ZFS raidz

[Anselm Strauss]

On Jan 6, 2010, at 21:37 , krad wrote:

> 2010/1/6 Anselm Strauss 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm experimenting with a ZFS only system and booting from it in VirtualBox. 
> Thanks to various mails and forum posts from the net I have a working 
> scenario with booting from a ZFS mirror. However, I can't get the thing to 
> work with raidz with the exactly same setup, except that the pool is now 
> raidz instead of mirror and there is one more disk. I feel sure I have all 
> the stuff with partitioning, boot loader installation, etc. right. I tested 
> this with version 8.0-RELEASE on 64bit.
> 
> Now, before I go into detailed explaining, is raidz really supported? I 
> always get the following error after it says "FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, 
> Revision 1.1":
> 
> ZFS: i/o error - all block copies unavailable
> ZFS: can't read MOS object directory
> (repeats a lot)
> Can't find root filesystem - giving up
> can't load 'kernel'
> 
> I think the "MOS" message comes from zfs_mount_root() in 
> /usr/src/sys/boot/zfs/zfsimpl.c. I asume that is the point when /boot/loader 
> has been loaded and now wants to load the kernel into memory. After that 
> error I'm in the loader prompt. When I try to load any file I always get the 
> same error as above.
> 
> Anyone any ideas?
> 
> Thanks,
> Anselm___
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
> 
> Opensolaris doesnt support booting off raidz yet so id be surprised if you 
> managed to, as i doubt all the relevent code is in the loader, and robust 
> enough yet. I have seen a few hacks mentioned in places that might get it to 
> work, bit these are unsupported and might flake out at any time.
> 
> Also why do you need a raidz for the os? It implys you might be mixing data 
> on the pool as well. This isnt best practice, and you are best off having a 
> separate pool for os and data. If you have 3+ drives, gpt it into 3 or 4 
> chunks dependent on whether you want swap on a zvol. Have and x way mirror 
> for the os and then the last and biggest gpt slice use for your raidz data. 
> Better still have the os and data on separate spindles

I was just out for maximum flexibility and easiness. Having just one pool gives 
you the most possibilities in resizing data sets. Using partitions always 
imposes some hard limits that are sometimes different to overcome when you want 
to re-layout you filesystems. I like the idea of ZFS that the boundaries 
between filesystems (or data sets) are just quotas and reservations, instead of 
low-level address borders as with partitions. But then again, as you mentioned, 
one might want to make multiple pools for best performance. At least I want to 
have the system data on a redundant volume, but you are right I could just make 
a separate mirror for that.

By the way, I also tested to boot from a degraded mirror, which worked 
perfectly well. You just have to make sure that the boot loader stages are 
installed on all drives.

Thanks,
Anselm

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from ZFS raidz

[Sergiy Suprun]

Hi.
Some time ago I follow instruction from this wiki
http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS and I had a problem like yours.
After some experiments I build loader from CURRENT, and boot fine from
raidz2 zpool. I don't know, may be now this code avialable in 8-STABLE.

On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 20:25, Anselm Strauss  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm experimenting with a ZFS only system and booting from it in VirtualBox.
> Thanks to various mails and forum posts from the net I have a working
> scenario with booting from a ZFS mirror. However, I can't get the thing to
> work with raidz with the exactly same setup, except that the pool is now
> raidz instead of mirror and there is one more disk. I feel sure I have all
> the stuff with partitioning, boot loader installation, etc. right. I tested
> this with version 8.0-RELEASE on 64bit.
>
> Now, before I go into detailed explaining, is raidz really supported? I
> always get the following error after it says "FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader,
> Revision 1.1":
>
> ZFS: i/o error - all block copies unavailable
> ZFS: can't read MOS object directory
> (repeats a lot)
> Can't find root filesystem - giving up
> can't load 'kernel'
>
> I think the "MOS" message comes from zfs_mount_root() in
> /usr/src/sys/boot/zfs/zfsimpl.c. I asume that is the point when /boot/loader
> has been loaded and now wants to load the kernel into memory. After that
> error I'm in the loader prompt. When I try to load any file I always get the
> same error as above.
>
> Anyone any ideas?
>
> Thanks,
> Anselm___
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "
> freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
>
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: Booting from ZFS raidz

[krad]

2010/1/6 Anselm Strauss 

> Hi,
>
> I'm experimenting with a ZFS only system and booting from it in VirtualBox.
> Thanks to various mails and forum posts from the net I have a working
> scenario with booting from a ZFS mirror. However, I can't get the thing to
> work with raidz with the exactly same setup, except that the pool is now
> raidz instead of mirror and there is one more disk. I feel sure I have all
> the stuff with partitioning, boot loader installation, etc. right. I tested
> this with version 8.0-RELEASE on 64bit.
>
> Now, before I go into detailed explaining, is raidz really supported? I
> always get the following error after it says "FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader,
> Revision 1.1":
>
> ZFS: i/o error - all block copies unavailable
> ZFS: can't read MOS object directory
> (repeats a lot)
> Can't find root filesystem - giving up
> can't load 'kernel'
>
> I think the "MOS" message comes from zfs_mount_root() in
> /usr/src/sys/boot/zfs/zfsimpl.c. I asume that is the point when /boot/loader
> has been loaded and now wants to load the kernel into memory. After that
> error I'm in the loader prompt. When I try to load any file I always get the
> same error as above.
>
> Anyone any ideas?
>
> Thanks,
> Anselm___
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "
> freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
>

Opensolaris doesnt support booting off raidz yet so id be surprised if you
managed to, as i doubt all the relevent code is in the loader, and robust
enough yet. I have seen a few hacks mentioned in places that might get it to
work, bit these are unsupported and might flake out at any time.

Also why do you need a raidz for the os? It implys you might be mixing data
on the pool as well. This isnt best practice, and you are best off having a
separate pool for os and data. If you have 3+ drives, gpt it into 3 or 4
chunks dependent on whether you want swap on a zvol. Have and x way mirror
for the os and then the last and biggest gpt slice use for your raidz data.
Better still have the os and data on separate spindles
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting from wrong disk

[Tim Judd]

On 10/15/09, PJ  wrote:
> While trying to learn and understand the dump-retore process, I messed
> up the ad4s1a partition and could not boot. To fix it I restored a
> dumpfile of ad12s1a which is, for all intents and purposes, the same as
> ad4s1a. I then boot from ad4 and surprise, surprise...
> #df shows we have been booted from ad12 and all partitions are ad12
> Booting from ad12s1a gives exactly the same results.
> So, how can I get ad4s1a to boot from ad4?
> I imagine it is something in the boot files... but how to fix that?


Probably because ad12's /etc/fstab tell it to mount ad12's filesystems.


rewriting mbrs and stuff probably won't help.  check your fstab.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting from wrong disk

[Polytropon]

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:08:12 -0400, PJ  wrote:
> Gag is really about the simplest you can find... it is installed on the
> main drive that is selected by bios and it works from there. I have
> found it to be quite safe and reliable. Only difficulty is sometimes to
> figure ;out what dist it is booting from but that can be worked out be
> trial and error. I've tried the rest, this is the best KISS.

The last time I did dual boot is long ago; I used FreeBSD's
boot manager for this, it worked well, so there was no need
for something else to try. :-)



> the boot... it could be seen in the onscreen mesages... and then the
> boot oviously failed...

Seems that the first boot stage finds ad12 BEFORE ad4, which
is quite strange... or is the setting hardcoded somewhere in
the boot loader?



> I noticed that but have not yet had the opportunity to look into it.

That would be a good point to start diagnostics. The most
obvious is often such a point...



> The fstab did cure the problem and showed some of the pitfalls one can
> encounter. After fixing the fstab, the boot did not complete because the
> fstab from the source disk had anextra partition (/backups) which were
> not present in the original ad4 disk. But that was easiily fixed by
> simply removing the fstab entry for that  /backups partition. Now it
> works fine.

Excellent! And you have learned something new. :-)




-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting from wrong disk

[PJ]

Polytropon wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:42:24 -0400, PJ  wrote:
>   
>> But sysinstall will overwrite all the info on the disk and that defeats
>> the whole purpose of the exercise.
>> 
>
> If you only change a slice's state and add an MBR, it won't
> do anything to the data inside the slice.
>
>
>
>   
>> What complicates matters is the use of GAG as boot manager.
>> 
>
> Hmmm... I'm not familar with that, nor have I ever heared of
> it.
>
>
>
>   
>> If I select
>> to boot from ad4 and the boot is from ad12, then there is something
>> wrong.
>> 
>
> Check /etc/fstab as suggested. Furthermore, check what GAG
> actually does - just to be sure it boots the correct device.
> I always assumed that you use the standard MBR which does,
> as I explained, simply boot the first "active" slice on the
> first disk it finds. Maybe GAG acts differently.
>
>   
Gag is really about the simplest you can find... it is installed on the
main drive that is selected by bios and it works from there. I have
found it to be quite safe and reliable. Only difficulty is sometimes to
figure ;out what dist it is booting from but that can be worked out be
trial and error. I've tried the rest, this is the best KISS.
>
>   
>> It indicates to me that the mbr is loading the wrong disk.
>> 
>
> In this case, it's good to read how booting works. MBR, and
> bootN, the FreeBSD loader and the kernel own specified points
> in this race. :-)
>
>
>
>   
>> I noticed this when trying to boot a disk on my other computer... it was
>> looking for ad12 when there was no ad12 installed.
>> 
>
> "Who" was looking for ad12? Was it at the "boot>" or the "Ok"
> prompt?
>   
the boot... it could be seen in the onscreen mesages... and then the
boot oviously failed...
>
>
>   
>> I found that strange,
>> but then I recalled thatManolis Klagias had warned about something of
>> the sort. Now, I'll have to sort that out.
>> 
>
> You have to be entirely sure that the booting process works as
> intended. The easiest way to ensure this is to first use only
> one disk at once in the system. There are different stages where
> things can get messed up, such as the loader or /etc/fstab.
> They have to match the situation.
>
> As a sidenote, GEOM supports labelling partitions so it does not
> matter anymore if, for example, a / partition is ad4s1a or ad12s1a.
> There's a section in the handbook that illustrates how to get rid
> of device names in /etc/fstab.
>   
I noticed that but have not yet had the opportunity to look into it.

The fstab did cure the problem and showed some of the pitfalls one can
encounter. After fixing the fstab, the boot did not complete because the
fstab from the source disk had anextra partition (/backups) which were
not present in the original ad4 disk. But that was easiily fixed by
simply removing the fstab entry for that  /backups partition. Now it
works fine.
>
>
>
>
>   

___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting from wrong disk

[Polytropon]

On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:42:24 -0400, PJ  wrote:
> But sysinstall will overwrite all the info on the disk and that defeats
> the whole purpose of the exercise.

If you only change a slice's state and add an MBR, it won't
do anything to the data inside the slice.



> What complicates matters is the use of GAG as boot manager.

Hmmm... I'm not familar with that, nor have I ever heared of
it.



> If I select
> to boot from ad4 and the boot is from ad12, then there is something
> wrong.

Check /etc/fstab as suggested. Furthermore, check what GAG
actually does - just to be sure it boots the correct device.
I always assumed that you use the standard MBR which does,
as I explained, simply boot the first "active" slice on the
first disk it finds. Maybe GAG acts differently.



> It indicates to me that the mbr is loading the wrong disk.

In this case, it's good to read how booting works. MBR, and
bootN, the FreeBSD loader and the kernel own specified points
in this race. :-)



> I noticed this when trying to boot a disk on my other computer... it was
> looking for ad12 when there was no ad12 installed.

"Who" was looking for ad12? Was it at the "boot>" or the "Ok"
prompt?



> I found that strange,
> but then I recalled thatManolis Klagias had warned about something of
> the sort. Now, I'll have to sort that out.

You have to be entirely sure that the booting process works as
intended. The easiest way to ensure this is to first use only
one disk at once in the system. There are different stages where
things can get messed up, such as the loader or /etc/fstab.
They have to match the situation.

As a sidenote, GEOM supports labelling partitions so it does not
matter anymore if, for example, a / partition is ad4s1a or ad12s1a.
There's a section in the handbook that illustrates how to get rid
of device names in /etc/fstab.





-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Re: booting from wrong disk

[PJ]

Polytropon wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:22:29 -0600 (MDT), Warren Block  
> wrote:
>   
>> The /etc/fstab from ad12 will point at ad12.  After restoring on ad4, 
>> did you edit fstab to now have ad4 entries?
>> 
>
> Ha! Excellent point; I missed to see this obvious thing.
> Next to booting, the /etc/fstab mechanism is very important
> to have a look at when cloning disks that will have a
> different "signature" in the target than in the source.
>
>
>   
AHA! Now, we're getting somewhere... cut's the workload. ;-)
I'll try it ASAP.
___
freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"