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Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 14:22:27 -0500
From: "Jeffrey M. Metcalf" <Jeffrey_M._Metcalf@ccMail.bms.com>
Subject: Strange problem with default boot device
Cc: FreeBSD Questions <questions@freebsd.org>
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Hello,

Since my upgrade to FreeBSD-2.1.5, I have been getting a weird problem
at boot time.  Under 2.1.5, whenever I boot the installation floppy,
I get the following line:

[43:]fd(43,a)/kernel

as the default boot device.  Since there is no fd(43), I get a
spontaneous reboot and am forced to type fd(0) each time to boot the
floppy successfully.  This strange disease has infected booting from my
wd(0) device as well.  Whenever I try to boot from wd(0), I get the
same line as above:

[43:]fd(43,a)/kernel

Here, of course, I am forced to type wd(0) at the boot prompt to avoid
a spontaneous reboot.

Now here's the interesting part.  I recently upgraded (over PPP ftp) my
system to the 2.2-RELEASE.  When booting from the new boot floppy, I get
what I expect as the default boot device

fd(0,a)/kernel

and all goes well, but I still get

[43:]fd(43,a)/kernel

and the spontaneous reboot problem when attempting to boot 2.2 from wd0.
Of course, I chose the upgrade option under the new sysinstall and all
my filesystems were NOT rebuilt from scratch.  My guess is that the
new installation did not overwrite my booter with a new copy.  Does
anybody suspect that if I were to go through the upgrade process again
(only bin distribution?), and set NEWFS to Y for ONLY the / fs, that
my problem will disappear?  Is the booter actually on the root fs???
If so, are there any other concerns that I need to know about with 
recreating the root filesystem from scratch aside from having to 
recreate some /dev entries, restore /etc, and reset some symbolic links?
Should I expect my system to behave strangely with respect to my 
preexisting packages/ports?  (Note /var is its own fs.)  Also, is bin 
the only distribution I might potentially need to completely restore the 
/ fs?  Aside from various packages and ports, I have the following 
dists installed on my system:  

bin
manpages
src (sys only)  
info
dict
proflibs  (what exactly is this anyway?)
compat21
xf86

Thanks,

JM

-- 
Respond to: Jeffrey_M._Metcalf@ccmail.bms.com
        or: metcalf@snet.net

http://ruddles.stat.uconn.edu/~jeff