Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 18:01:22 +0200 From: Chris Zumbrunn <chris@czv.com> To: Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52@dial.pipex.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Stuck in bootstrapping hell - how do I troubleshoot? Message-ID: <a321c5840470646276c71827aa75bbb9@czv.com> In-Reply-To: <4268E78D.6030009@dial.pipex.com> References: <5af4153cc97abfa75d403f30eb8e9963@czv.com> <f428b0f5d245cc46f5236416ba2b145c@czv.com> <4268E78D.6030009@dial.pipex.com>
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On Apr 22, 2005, at 2:01 PM, Alex Zbyslaw wrote:
> Chris Zumbrunn wrote:
>
>>> The server is in a datacenter and I can only access it via ssh and
>>> boot either from the local disks or via network (freebsd or linux) -
>>> no serial console, so I can't see where it gets stuck during the
>>> bootstrap.
>>>
> Do you mean that you can boot the machine from an OS it picks up from
> the network?
Yes, exactly.
> I.e. you can boot some OS which is not the one of the local disk? If
> so, then boot the network FreeBSD, mount your local disks and look at
> /var/log/messages. If the machine was at least booting FreeBSD when
> it died then you should see something.
I did check that. Nothing is written to /var/log/messages during a
local boot attempt. So, the boot fails before that.
I checked the MBR by comparing the output of "dd if=/dev/ar0 bs=512
count=1" on the trouble machines with that of a machine that boots fine
- and they look identical. So, the MBR seems to be where it belongs.
I guess the boot process gets stuck either during boot1/boot2 but
before the kernel loads or there is a problem with the RAID1 setup and
the machine never even gets to the point where it would look for a MBR
on the ar0 disks.
Also, when a debian disk image is installed on the same machine, it
does boot from the local disks. So, maybe something is goofy with the
partitioning/slicing - but I can't see what that would be.
# fdisk ar0
******* Working on device /dev/ar0 *******
parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
cylinders=14945 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)
Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
cylinders=14945 heads=255 sectors/track=63 (16065 blks/cyl)
Media sector size is 512
Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
Information from DOS bootblock is:
The data for partition 1 is:
sysid 165,(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
start 63, size 240107427 (117239 Meg), flag 80 (active)
beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
end: cyl 1023/ head 254/ sector 63
The data for partition 2 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 3 is:
<UNUSED>
The data for partition 4 is:
<UNUSED>
# disklabel ar0s1
# /dev/ar0s1:
type: ESDI
disk: ar0s1
label:
flags:
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 255
sectors/cylinder: 16065
cylinders: 14945
sectors/unit: 240107427
rpm: 3600
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0 # milliseconds
track-to-track seek: 0 # milliseconds
drivedata: 0
8 partitions:
# size offset fstype [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
a: 240107427 0 4.2BSD 2048 16384 89 # (Cyl. 0 -
14945*)
c: 240107427 0 unused 0 0 # (Cyl. 0 -
14945*)
Any further ideas or hints on what else to check would be very
appreciated...
Chris
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