From owner-freebsd-questions Fri May 29 06:26:00 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id GAA14790 for freebsd-questions-outgoing; Fri, 29 May 1998 06:26:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from iwvisp.com (ns.iwvisp.com [207.141.203.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id GAA14653 for ; Fri, 29 May 1998 06:25:51 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wersans-f@iwvisp.com) Received: from alpha ([207.141.203.84]) by iwvisp.com with ESMTP (IPAD 2.05) id 4784400 ; Fri, 29 May 1998 06:24:53 -0900 From: "Stephen Wersan" To: Cc: "Doug White" Subject: Help Needed Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 06:28:08 -0700 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Priority: 3 X-Mailer: Microsoft Internet Mail 4.70.1161 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <199805291124.4784400@iwvisp.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG The messages between the lines are part of an e-mail exchange I had this past week with Doug White at the University of Oregon (dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu). His replies appear after the message. My query continues after this reply. ======================================================= MY MESSAGES TO DOUG WHITE: First Message I installed FreeBSD last week. I believe that I encountered no problems along the way and that I received no distress or error messages. Since I was already using System Commander (Deluxe) to choose between the existing OSes on my machine (MSDOS and WINNT4), I did not install the FreeBSD booteasy boot manager, choosing instead the "none" option in order to leave System Commander in place. Sure enough, on the first post-FreeBSD boot, System Commander had recognized the presence of FreeBSD and had installed it in the main boot menu. The problem is that FreeBSD won't boot. I suspect, without any proof, that the problem has something to do with a bad fit between System Commander and the FreeBSD booting process. If you have any ideas or suggestions on how to investigate and solve this problem, I would be most grateful. Second Message A lot of messages are posted to the screen during the FreeBSD boot process -- is there some way to capture this output in order to later print it out for inspection by FreeBSD experts such as yourselves? I did notice the following message amongst the flood of messages (close paraphrase, not exact quote): lpt1 not probed because of I/O conflict with lpt0 at 0x378 The last two lines before quitting with reboot-in-15-seconds message: changing root device to st1s1a panic: cannot mount root ======================================================= DOUG WHITE'S REPLIES: To Message 1 This is because SysCommander gratuitously changes the SysID bytes in the partition table to activate the high-order bit on the last selected partition. The FreeBSD bootblocks (and probably NetBSD & OpenBSD too fall over when they can't find which slice they're booting off of since they're looking for sysid 0xA5 and it's been changed to 0xB6. You'll have to ask SysCommander tech support about it, but I think there is an option on the ALT-F10 setup menu to disable that behavior. To Message 2 > A lot of messages are posted to the screen during the FreeBSD boot process > -- is there some way to capture this output in order to later print it out > for inspection by FreeBSD experts such as yourselves? `dmesg' > The last two lines before quitting with reboot-in-15-seconds message: > > changing root device to st1s1a > panic: cannot mount root Trying to boot off of tape eh? v I love that typo. > changing root device to st1s1a You need my cant mount root boilerplate, that or wire down your SCSI IDs. See LINT. If you get the message: panic: Cannot mount root At the end of the probe sequence you should either: 1. Have the line: config kernel root on wd2 in your kernel config, OR: 2. Rename the second disk to wd1 in the kernel config (comment out the original wd1 line and change the wd2 line to read wd1, leaving all other parameters unchanged). ======================================================= MY QUERY: 1) 'dmesg' -- wouldn't I have had to successfully booted before this command became available? 2) I have looked at material (approx. p.265 of the book) about wiring down SCSI IDs, and it indicates that the proper IDs for hard disks are 0-3, and 5-6 for tapes. The jumpers on my two SCSI disks are set at 6 for the first and 5 for the second. Should I change these jumpers? Would changing these jumpers have any adverse effect on the other OSes (DOS and WINNT4) on the first disk? Would the current settings of these jumper account for White's remark about booting off of tape? Would the reversed ordering of the jumpers (disk 1 at 6 and disk 2 at 5) have anything to do with the reversal of disk identifications during the disk partitioning portion of the FreeBSD installation process? (Disk 1 was referred to as sd1 and disk 2 as sd0. This confusion almost resulted in a disaster!) 3) What is this "cant mount root boilerplate"? 4) How can I look at LINT or perform any of White's other recommended kernel config actions until I have successfully booted? Am I missing something here? If so, what? To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message