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Date:      Sat, 10 Feb 2001 00:49:22 -0700 (MST)
From:      Charlie Sorsby <crs@swcp.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Sigh...
Message-ID:  <200102100749.AAA00237@quail.swcp.com>

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I give up...

Is there a know problem with FreeBSD 3.4?

I've been running 2.1.5 for a long time because I really hate
trying to fix everything that gets screwed up when a new version is
installed.  I finally decided that I'd better update.

I installed 3.4 from the Walnut Creek CDROM distribution.  To
permit me to try to set up 3.4 as I had 2.1.5 set up, I've kept
2.1.5--i.e. so I can boot to either.  I'm sending this from 2.1.5.

I had booted to 3.4 and was trying (as I have been) to get ppp to
work.  I also tried to install several versions of mahjongg.

When I went to boot back to 2.1.5 (no success either with ppp or
with either of two versions of mahjongg) I found one of the boot
selector messages (I guess) that claimed I had no boot loader:

>> FreeBSD/i386 BOOT
Default: 0:da(0,a) /boot/loader
boot:
No /boot/loader

If I leave it alone, it just sits there; if I enter <ENTER>, it
repeates the same message.

Thinking that the boot manager had somehow gotten munged, I tried
re-installing only that but found there's no option in the
installation software for that.  Now, I find that (a) when I boot
to 3.4 (see below) it claims I'm an unknown user but if I try to
use adduser to add myself it says that crs is already a user (or
words to that effect).  Even stranger, if I try to log in as
another user (hes), it says the same thing: crs Unknown user.
Note: It doesn't say hes unknown user; it says crs unknown user.
But if I try to log in as still another user, mes, it logs me in
successfully.

But back to the boot loader problem:

I've found that a hardware reset will allow me to boot back to
2.1.5 even though the boot loader complaint still exists.  I.e.
instead of hanging indefinitely athe the "No /boot/loader" message,
it proceeds (after a while) to boot.  I didn't discover this until
after I'd tried to re-install the boot manager and munged something
in 3.4.  I suppose that I'll have to re-install from scratch but
doubt that that will solve my "No /boot/loader" problem.

What now?

Thanks for any help.

Charlie Sorsby
	crs@swcp.com



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