From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Nov 30 05:57:38 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 86B8A1065673 for ; Sun, 30 Nov 2008 05:57:38 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from admin@azuni.net) Received: from mail.azuni.net (ns0.azuni.net [217.25.25.3]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9F0D18FC13 for ; Sun, 30 Nov 2008 05:57:36 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from admin@azuni.net) Received: (qmail 69596 invoked by uid 1004); 30 Nov 2008 05:57:35 -0000 Received: from admin@azuni.net by mail.azuni.net by uid 89 with qmail-scanner-1.20 (clamscan: 0.65. spamassassin: 2.63. Clear:RC:1(217.25.27.27):. Processed in 0.017387 secs); 30 Nov 2008 05:57:35 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?217.25.27.27?) (admin@azuni.net@217.25.27.27) by ns0.azuni.net with AES256-SHA encrypted SMTP; 30 Nov 2008 05:57:35 -0000 Message-ID: <49322B49.80005@azuni.net> Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 09:57:29 +0400 From: admin@azuni.net Organization: UniNet User-Agent: Icedove 1.5.0.14eol (X11/20080724) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: RW Subject: Re: FreeBSD 4.8: can't load kernel after doing "cp -R /" to another disk X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 05:57:38 -0000 >> >> Hello, everyone. This is the problem: our SCSI disk with FreeBSD 4.8 >> on it has been failing recently, so I copied its root partition to a >> fresh IDE disk with cp -pR and > > You should use dump and restore to copy the root partition, see: > I'd done that before trying cp -pR, as outlined by rse@: dump -L -0 -f- /old | (cd /new && restore -r -v -f-) http://people.freebsd.org/~rse/mirror/ which isn't too different. I think I know what the problem is: I made the new single slice and FreeBSD partition on it and ran newfs -U on it using the latest FreeBSD 5.x livecd toolkit, and later 4.8 can't even mount that partition (mount /dev/ad0s1a /mnt) failing with "incorrect superblock", so I think its /boot/loader can't load the kernel because of FS issues (but strangely enough pressing "?" at the boot loader prompt lists directory entries of the root FS just fine). It turns out UFS isn't upwards compatible from releases 4.8 -> 5.5. I'll try running newfs -U from 4.8. Last time I checked many 4.8 binaries couldn't run due to disk errors, I hope newfs runs ok...