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Date:      Fri, 9 Jan 2009 18:21:04 +0000
From:      Frank Shute <frank@shute.org.uk>
To:        Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Can't boot machine after upgrade
Message-ID:  <20090109182104.GA51468@orange.esperance-linux.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <20090109160557.2318101f.freebsd@edvax.de>
References:  <20090109122720.GA38699@orange.esperance-linux.co.uk> <20090109134342.5fb692f7.freebsd@edvax.de> <20090109145455.GA50881@orange.esperance-linux.co.uk> <20090109160557.2318101f.freebsd@edvax.de>

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On Fri, Jan 09, 2009 at 04:05:57PM +0100, Polytropon wrote:
>
> On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 14:54:55 +0000, Frank Shute <frank@shute.org.uk> wrote:
> > I tried booting a FreeBSD CD & going into sysinstall & then fdisk but
> > it said it couldn't find any disks.
> 
> Ah! This means something like "the disk *really* can't be accessed".
> You can easily conclude from
> 
> 	% dmesg | grep ^ad
> 
> if any disk is present, or use
> 
> 	% atacontrol list
> 
> to see what's on the HDD controller.
> 
> 
> 
> > freesbie.org is unfortunately down :(
> 
> The diagnostic means of a bootable FreeBSD installation CD should
> be sufficient at first - to eleminate or confirm the idea that the
> disk is not present.
> 
> Now, check settings in CMOS setup, check wires, eventually check
> hard disk in another system, and / or put another disk into the
> system you want to boot ("cross-checking") - the latter one not
> to install anything, but to see if the disk is recognized correctly.
> 
> 
> 
> > I'm not using GENERIC but IIRC I've only stripped out NIC's etc.
> 
> Then I think the only thing missing could be the ad driver or
> something it depends on, but that's nearly impossible to miss. :-)
> 
> 
> 
> > I booted with booting verbose and it's showing this before it jumps to
> > the mountroot> prompt:
> > 
> > ata1: SATA connect time=0ms
> > ata1: SIGNATURE: eb140101
> > ata1: ahci_reset devices=0x4<ATAPI_MASTER>
> > ata1: reinit done ..
> > ata2: reiniting channel ..
> > ata2: SATA connect time=0ms
> > ata2: SIGNATURE: 00000101
> > ata1: ahci_reset devices=0x1<ATA_MASTER>
> > ata2: reinit done ..
> > ata2: reiniting channel ..
> > 
> > *repeats*
> 
> I see you're using a SATA disk. I don't have such ones, so I'm not
> sure if they maybe require something in the kernel?
> 
> 
> 
> > ATA PseudoRAID loaded
> 
> PseudoRAID, only one disk? Hmmm... eventually check BIOS again.
> 
> 
> 
> Finally, I think the problem occurs this way: The ad0 disk can't
> be recognized, so the access to ad0s1a won't work. You should
> try to get access to ad0. Maybe some cross-checking will help,
> just in case you're having a damaged hard disk...
> 

Hi Polytropon,

Many thanks for all your help. You gave me enough to go on to
eventually get it to boot.

I changed something in the BIOS: "Use legacy IDE" or something like
that and on boot-up the disk controller fired up and my CD & 2 HDs
were detected. (Un)fortunately, my boot partition had gone from ad0s2a
to ad4s2a, in fact all FreeBSD partitions had migrated to ad4(?) and
on the Windows disk from ad2 to ad8. I mounted the root partition and
vi'd /etc/fstab. It then rebooted ok.

I hadn't rebooted the machine for 200days but I must have changed
something, somewhere.

Regards,

-- 

 Frank


 Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html




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