On Thu, Nov 06, 2025 at 02:33:20PM -0700, Luke A. Call wrote: > Hi. I am upgrading my test (& backup) laptop from 7.7 to 7.8, and > running sysupgrade rebooted it, but after I entered the FDE key, it > checks hardware or something for a bit then I think I see "panic" > flash on the screen, and it reboots, even from single-user > mode. Unfortunately that doesn't let me provide a dmesg. It is an > old dell inspiron.
Based on the information you've provided, my first guess is that it's not finding the root filesystem. Since you're using FDE and the physical disk is recognised as wd0, (and there are no other physical disks), your softraid cryto device would be sd0. > So I tried running upgrade from a CD with cd78.iso on it. After the > prompt to choose a keyboard, it asks which disk is the root disk. > Typing "?" for details says "wd0: ....", which I believe is correct, but > entering wd0 at the prompt gives "wd0 is not a valid root disk", or for > other variations besides wd0, it says "no such disk"). On your system: wd0 is a valid physical disk. It is not the volume that holds the root filesystem. sd0 should appear once the softraid crypto volume, which resides on wd0, is attached. For some reason this doesn't seem to be happening. It might provide useful information if you can boot in to bsd.rd from OpenBSD 7.8-release, (booting from the CD), drop to a shell, and manually try to attach the softraid volume with bioctl. Knowing whether that succeeds would narrow down the possibilities a bit.
