From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Jan 29 02:52:39 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 342CC16A4CE for ; Sat, 29 Jan 2005 02:52:39 +0000 (GMT) Received: from Shenton.org (23.ebbed1.client.atlantech.net [209.190.235.35]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 7A4AC43D55 for ; Sat, 29 Jan 2005 02:52:37 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from chris@Shenton.Org) Received: (qmail 81624 invoked by uid 1001); 29 Jan 2005 02:52:35 -0000 From: Chris Shenton To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 21:52:34 -0500 Message-ID: <86acqt6j65.fsf@PECTOPAH.shenton.org> User-Agent: Gnus/5.110003 (No Gnus v0.3) Emacs/21.3 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Subject: Boot fails: Default F1? hangs. Trashed MBR? replaced FBSD mbr. X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2005 02:52:39 -0000 I rebuilt my kernel in 5.3-STABLE from CVS, installed as normal. When I rebooted, the BIOS said "No system disk, insert and reboot" or something. Ug, hosed. Then I recalled I was trying to figure out how to write to a new ATAPI CD burner, but used one of the SCSI burner utils; it failed but I suspect I had specified and hosed something in my SCSI disk which is the only disk I have, where the OS lives. I suspected I had trashed the Master Boot Record. So I booted from floppies, went to Wizard mode, did the Install FreeBSD Bootmanager. Rebooted. Now it halts at the prompt "Default: F1" and beeps when I hit any key, like RETURN, F1, etc. Since my system was running fine until the reboot, and because I installed a newly built kernel, I suspect what's on the disk is mostly good but I've trashed the low level boot stuff. That arcana is beyond my understanding. :-( I'd like to be able to recover, get it to boot, without having to reinstall from CD ISO -- without overwriting all my hairy configs (the box was a print server for the house for FreeBSD and Mac, amongst other things, and got a lot of it's /usr/local type of stuff from my main machine over NFS -- painful to re-create properly). What is it not finding when it waits at the "Default: F1" prompt? Any guru suggestions for how to recover gracefully? Thanks a bunch.