From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jun 27 21:04:57 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0201997E for ; Fri, 27 Jun 2014 21:04:57 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mx02.qsc.de (mx02.qsc.de [213.148.130.14]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id B3E002CE5 for ; Fri, 27 Jun 2014 21:04:56 +0000 (UTC) Received: from r56.edvax.de (port-92-195-69-249.dynamic.qsc.de [92.195.69.249]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mx02.qsc.de (Postfix) with ESMTPS id C1C8425168; Fri, 27 Jun 2014 23:04:54 +0200 (CEST) Received: from r56.edvax.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by r56.edvax.de (8.14.5/8.14.5) with SMTP id s5RL4sjU002489; Fri, 27 Jun 2014 23:04:54 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 23:04:54 +0200 From: Polytropon To: paul beard Subject: Re: what should uname -v be telling me here? Message-Id: <20140627230454.041c1baa.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: References: <44lhsi5ugm.fsf@be-well.ilk.org> <20140627223650.25210a53.freebsd@edvax.de> Reply-To: Polytropon Organization: EDVAX X-Mailer: Sylpheed 3.1.1 (GTK+ 2.24.5; i386-portbld-freebsd8.2) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: "questions@freebsd.org" , Lowell Gilbert X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 21:04:57 -0000 On Fri, 27 Jun 2014 13:57:06 -0700, paul beard wrote: > On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 1:36 PM, Polytropon wrote: > > You need to find out where /boot resides (in my case, > > it's on ad4s1a, which is mounted at /) to identify the boot > > device (or to be precise, the device the kernel has been read > > from). > > > I keep thinking this should be something you ought to be able to > discover without being on console. I realize the BIOS can't be > interrogated but if I knew that the active kernel was ad3:/boot/kernel > or ad2:/boot/kernel, it would be useful. Kind of surprised that > doesn't appear anywhere in dmesg or that it can't be read out of > somewhere. There is an entry in /var/log/messages and dmesg: % dmesg | grep "mount root" Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ad4s1a But as I said, this is where the root file system has been mounted from. It doesn't _have to be_ the same file system the kernel has been read from (or where the system has been booted from). It's possible to construct a boot chain where the BIOS starts booting from ad2, which reads the kernel from a partition on ad4, and which continues to mount root from ad6 (which is called ada0). Those disks could be identified as disk0, disk1 and disk2 to the BIOS... -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...