From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Oct 23 18:28:23 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-31-203-60.mmcable.com [65.31.203.60]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 8D85937B401 for ; Tue, 23 Oct 2001 18:28:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: (qmail 28631 invoked by uid 100); 24 Oct 2001 01:28:10 -0000 From: Mike Meyer MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15318.6441.831579.586816@guru.mired.org> Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 20:28:09 -0500 To: Michael Grant Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: reinstalling boot loader In-Reply-To: <33811952@toto.iv> X-Mailer: VM 6.90 under 21.1 (patch 14) "Cuyahoga Valley" XEmacs Lucid X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG% *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\ Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Michael Grant types: > Somehow I managed to mung my bootloader. I'm not quite sure what > exactly I did, but just after I did it, I got the classic message: > > disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter > not found any [active partition] in hdd > > I managed to boot the backup drive and fooled with fdisk and set the > active partition again. After multiple tries, we managed to get it to > boot into the boot prompt. It was then loading 0:da(0,a)/kernel which > failed. Then the guy working with me tried loading 1:da(0,a)/kernel > and it booted. But it doesn't want to boot unassisted anymore. > > Can I use "disklabel -B" to fix things? There appear to be two ways > to run this command, "disklabel -B da0" and "disklabel -B da0s1", > depending on whether I am running "dangerously dedicated". How can I > find out if I'm running that way or not? I am using the entire disk > for FreeBSD. My partitions look like this: fdisk or boot0cfg can also be used, but if it's trying to load the kernel from boot0, you are past that point. If you are really booting "1:da(0", then the BIOS is mapping what should be scsi drive 0 to BIOS drive 1 instead of BIOS drive 0. That needs to be fixed. > Is the fact that I'm using "da0s1" prove that I'm not running "dangerously > dedicated"? No. DD disks have a fake partition table so that da0s1 works properly. The way to check is to use fdisk on the device. DD disks have one slice that starts at sector 0. Standard DOS sliced disks never use the first track on the disk. I always mount DD disk partitions sans the slice number, just so it's obvious which is which. http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Q: How do you make the gods laugh? A: Tell them your plans. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message