Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 14:43:40 -0500 (CDT) From: Kim Scarborough <kjs@enteract.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Boot error: "loader(8) metadata missing" Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0205291415160.68903-100000@shell-2.enteract.com>
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I'm running 4.5-STABLE, last CVSUPped on April 24th, on a box that I usually do not have console access to. It's been running with no problems for almost a year. Two days ago, I suddenly lost ssh access to the box. It still was up and running, and apache was serving up web pages, but ssh connection attempts would immediately disconnect. Port 25 was still open (the box was running postfix), but it wouldn't respond to anything on it. I waited a little bit to see if things would go back to normal, but they didn't. I forced a hard reboot at the remote APC, and it didn't come back. This morning, I got on console and saw what was happening when it tried to boot. After power-up, it would say "No /boot/loader", then, after a few minutes, it would try to boot anyway. The boot would give an error of "loader(8) metadata missing!" and then proceed through the regular boot process up to "WARNING: / was not properly dismounted", and then hang. I went to boot off floppies so I could use the fixit floppy, but the kernel floppy had bad sectors. (I *hate* floppies.) So I had to leave. I'm going back tomorrow, and I was wondering if people could tell me things to do or check once I get down there, as I've not run into this sort of thing before. A search for that metadata error only gives FreeBSD PR #37451 <http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=37451>,, but I'm not convinced that's the same thing that's happening to me (although the description of the boot problems is the same). Namely, his system always was like that after going to a particular -STABLE, whereas mine just started happening suddenly. Also, I'm not sure if that error message is indicative of the main problem, or just of a symptom. So I guess my questions are 1) What should I look at first when I finally manage to get in the box with the floppies; and 2) Do you have any idea what this could be? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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