Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2003 11:12:12 -0500 (EST) From: "Daniel Goepp" <freebsd@goepp.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Set boot loader to boot off CD manually Message-ID: <63948.24.62.116.53.1070986332.squirrel@goepp.com>
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Hi all,
I was banging my head against the wall too long yesterday, so I have
broken down, and have to ask. Any help on this matter is greatly
appreciated.
Here is what I'm trying to do. I have two computers, both running 4.8,
clean, minimal installs. They have two serial cables connected to each
other to act as serial consoles, and -Dh has been added to /boot.config,
along with ttys having been updated. The console bit works great. What I
want to be able to do, is completely rebuild one of the machines remotely.
So I log into one, serial over to the other, and reboot it. Then, when
the loader comes up, I stop it, and break to the "ok" prompt. I unload
the kernel that was starting to load, and at this point, want to boot off
CD, to rebuild the system, as though I had gone into the BIOS, and set the
CD as the first boot device. However, I don't have remote access to the
BIOS, so I can't do this.
Here is some information about the systems, and what I have tried so far:
They are identical computers, that I built myself, very default machines.
IDE everything.
atapci0: <SiS 5591 ATA100 controller> port 0xff00-0xff0f at device 2.5 on
pci0
ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0
ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0
ata1-slave: ATAPI identify retries exceeded
ad0: 38166MB <ST340016A> [77545/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA100
acd0: CDROM <FX54++W> at ata1-master PIO4
I have tried all combinations of load that I can think of. And I have
tried setting loaddev and root_disk_unit to all sorts of things. Here is
the output from a lsdev:
cd @ 0xff5c
disk @ 0xef68
disk0: BIOS drive A:
disk1: BIOS drive C:
disk1s1a: FFS
disk1s1b: swap
disk1s1e: FFS
disk1s1f: FFS
disk1s1g: FFS
pxe @ 0xd6d8
I have also tried just doing an ls on the device, by setting currdev to
all sorts of things...like cd9660:cd, just 'cd' and the BIOS physical
addresses in the form X:acd(Y,Z) [0-4]:acd([0-4],[a-c])
No joy.
I have also tried booting with the -C option, and here is the tail end of
that attempt:
acd0: CDROM <FX54++W> at ata1-master PIO4
Mounting root from cd9660:cd0a
no such device 'cd'
setrootbyname failed
iso_mountroot: can't find rootvp
Root mount failed: 6
Mounting root from cd9660:acd0a
cd9660: RockRidge Extension
init: not found in path
/sbin/init:/sbin/oinit:/sbin/init.bak:/stand/sysinstall
panic: no init
No joy.
I'm trying to think what other information might be useful. As I see it,
the problem is, that once a version of FreeBSD has been installed, and the
loader loads off the HD, it doesn't want to have anything to do with the
CD any more...
I realize I have other options, like PXE or FTP, or having an "install
partition", to hold an install of BSD, just to install to the other
partition. I really don't want to go down these roads right now, since I
want to be able to have someone pop in a new CD, to switch around versions
of BSD running on these boxes.
Help anyone!?
Thanks!
-dg
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