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Date: Sun, 23 Nov 1997 02:34:59 -0600
From: Tom Jackson <tom@my.domain>
To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: help neededFreebsd
References: <3475340A.7CDF951F@dingo.vut.edu.au>
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In-Reply-To: <3475340A.7CDF951F@dingo.vut.edu.au>; from damian on Fri, Nov 21, 1997 at 06:11:06PM +1100
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On Fri, Nov 21, 1997 at 06:11:06PM +1100, damian wrote:
> Hi ,I hoe you will be able to help me with the following problem.
> 
> I bought Free BSD 2.2.5 last week and I am unable to get it to work .I
> go through all of the setup from floppy disk and when I reboot the
> machine it goes through all of it`s paces then come up with
> "Panic:unable to mount root" then says that it is going to reboot in 15
> seconds. Please help as I am new to this softwear and I really wish to
> learn more about Unix.
> 
> Damian Gillespie
> 
> 

You left a lot to the imagination :). I figure you probably have a good
install but are not getting booted properly. Did you, per chance install
good ole FreeBSD on the second hard disk? If so and I assume you are 
getting the boot prompt or you would never get mount panic try:
`1:wd(1,a)/kernel' at this point and see if it mounts. This assumes ide
hard disk. If you instead installed fbsd on the first hard drive and have
nasty bg's system installed already and tried to put fbsd above cylinder
1024, you will have make room below this cylinder limit and reinstall. If
this doesn't help, fill in the blanks, and will go from there.

Tom