From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Sep 18 20:30:10 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 1AFE4411 for ; Thu, 18 Sep 2014 20:30:10 +0000 (UTC) Received: from ln.servalan.com (ln.servalan.com [IPv6:2600:3c00::f03c:91ff:fe96:62f5]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id E7951F09 for ; Thu, 18 Sep 2014 20:30:09 +0000 (UTC) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=servalan.com; s=rsadkim; h=Content-Type:MIME-Version:Message-ID:In-Reply-To:Date:References:Subject:To:From; bh=wUEpn21eEfzszB0hB3uIgaWa4P9eTM9JtVktmNiJ9IM=; b=GgQFdmPSycgxhwwUY9v7da49Cx29Lxdpmgyenmm/NrJpi5jx7wcMuRB1g5RtYbsmjBD/UiaoduBHqPHLFl40cqkCamEZwCj8seBvx+E4qD3zDeSZjlRyG5btWL46JJhYaYhKwwSLlhZD9p6eU524cmvw+ji08TKltQ3UjXMl2Vk=; Received: from uucp by ln.servalan.com with local-rmail (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1XUiLA-0002zq-TT for freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org; Thu, 18 Sep 2014 15:30:08 -0500 Received: from rmtodd by servalan.servalan.com with local (Exim 4.84 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1XUiBW-0000oh-NP; Thu, 18 Sep 2014 15:20:10 -0500 From: Richard Todd To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: "Invalid partition table" on 10-stable. References: <1411013471.25791.52.camel@jill.exit.com> <541AB164.80707@beastielabs.net> Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 15:19:57 -0500 In-Reply-To: <541AB164.80707@beastielabs.net> (Hans Ottevanger's message of "Thu, 18 Sep 2014 12:18:12 +0200") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Mailman-Approved-At: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 20:37:57 +0000 X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 20:30:10 -0000 Hans Ottevanger writes: > Hi, > > I have a similar situation with my oldish Q6600 based systems using an > INTEL DP965LT main-board. After a fresh installation of FreeBSD 10 or > higher (using a GPT scheme) I consistently get the message: > > No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key > > when rebooting the new installation for the first time. > > In my situation I can get the installation working by booting single > user from an older FreeBSD install CD (9.2R in my case) and reinstall > the MBR as follows: > > /sbin/gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr ada0 > > Probably gpart changed the way it installs the MBR, but I think it is > very board (or maybe BIOS) specific: other systems do not have the > issue. I have a DP965LT system, and yes the BIOS is a bit finicky about the contents of the MBR; I had issues before (pre-GPT days in FreeBSD) with it not wanting to boot which turned out to be it insisting there had to be one and only one "active" partition in the MBR. It's currently running with a GPT PMBR boot record, set up sometime when it was running 9.x I think. This is what fdisk shows for the MBR on that machine: 3 blo-rakane /usr/home/rmtodd[ 3:15PM] Z# fdisk /dev/ada0 ******* Working on device /dev/ada0 ******* parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are: cylinders=484521 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl) Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1 parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are: cylinders=484521 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 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 238 (0xee),(EFI GPT) start 1, size 488397167 (238475 Meg), flag 80 (active) beg: cyl 0/ head 0/ sector 2; end: cyl 1023/ head 255/ sector 63 The data for partition 2 is: The data for partition 3 is: The data for partition 4 is: Note the "active" flag present on the GPT fake-MBR-partition.