Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 06:28:08 -0700 From: "Stephen Wersan" <wersans-f@iwvisp.com> To: <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: "Doug White" <dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu> Subject: Help Needed Message-ID: <199805291124.4784400@iwvisp.com>
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The messages between the lines are part of an e-mail exchange I had this
past
week with Doug White at the University of Oregon
(dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu). His replies appear after the message. My
query
continues after this reply.
=======================================================
MY MESSAGES TO DOUG WHITE:
First Message
I installed FreeBSD last week. I believe that I encountered no problems
along the way and that I received no distress or error messages. Since I
was already using System Commander (Deluxe) to choose between the existing
OSes on my machine (MSDOS and WINNT4), I did not install the FreeBSD
booteasy boot manager, choosing instead the "none" option in order to leave
System Commander in place. Sure enough, on the first post-FreeBSD boot,
System Commander had recognized the presence of FreeBSD and had installed
it in the main boot menu. The problem is that FreeBSD won't boot.
I suspect, without any proof, that the problem has something to do with a
bad fit between System Commander and the FreeBSD booting process. If you
have any ideas or suggestions on how to investigate and solve this problem,
I would be most grateful.
Second Message
A lot of messages are posted to the screen during the FreeBSD boot process
-- is there some way to capture this output in order to later print it out
for inspection by FreeBSD experts such as yourselves?
I did notice the following message amongst the flood of messages (close
paraphrase, not exact quote):
lpt1 not probed because of I/O conflict with lpt0 at 0x378
The last two lines before quitting with reboot-in-15-seconds message:
changing root device to st1s1a
panic: cannot mount root
=======================================================
DOUG WHITE'S REPLIES:
To Message 1
This is because SysCommander gratuitously changes the SysID bytes in the
partition table to activate the high-order bit on the last selected
partition. The FreeBSD bootblocks (and probably NetBSD & OpenBSD too fall
over when they can't find which slice they're booting off of since they're
looking for sysid 0xA5 and it's been changed to 0xB6.
You'll have to ask SysCommander tech support about it, but I think there is
an option on the ALT-F10 setup menu to disable that behavior.
To Message 2
> A lot of messages are posted to the screen during the FreeBSD boot
process
> -- is there some way to capture this output in order to later print it
out
> for inspection by FreeBSD experts such as yourselves?
`dmesg'
> The last two lines before quitting with reboot-in-15-seconds message:
>
> changing root device to st1s1a
> panic: cannot mount root
Trying to boot off of tape eh? v I love that typo.
> changing root device to st1s1a
You need my cant mount root boilerplate, that or wire down your SCSI IDs.
See LINT.
If you get the message:
panic: Cannot mount root
At the end of the probe sequence you should either:
1. Have the line:
config kernel root on wd2
in your kernel config,
OR:
2. Rename the second disk to wd1 in the kernel config (comment out the
original wd1 line and change the wd2 line to read wd1, leaving all other
parameters unchanged).
=======================================================
MY QUERY:
1) 'dmesg' -- wouldn't I have had to successfully booted before this
command became available?
2) I have looked at material (approx. p.265 of the book) about wiring down
SCSI IDs, and it indicates that the proper IDs for hard disks are 0-3, and
5-6 for tapes. The jumpers on my two SCSI disks are set at 6 for the first
and 5 for the second. Should I change these jumpers? Would changing these
jumpers have any adverse effect on the other OSes (DOS and WINNT4) on the
first disk? Would the current settings of these jumper account for White's
remark about booting off of tape? Would the reversed ordering of the
jumpers (disk 1 at 6 and disk 2 at 5) have anything to do with the reversal
of disk identifications during the disk partitioning portion of the FreeBSD
installation process? (Disk 1 was referred to as sd1 and disk 2 as sd0.
This confusion almost resulted in a disaster!)
3) What is this "cant mount root boilerplate"?
4) How can I look at LINT or perform any of White's other recommended
kernel config actions until I have successfully booted? Am I missing
something here? If so, what?
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