WOOHOO I figured it out. It was my root device.
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq8.html#Bootloader
boot -a allowed me to chose a different root device. I didn't realize that
was going on but after booting several times I realized there was a line
that said root_device wd1a
thanks to the FAQ maintainer!
On 6/2/06, John Brahy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I've got two drives in a OpenBSD 3.9 amd64 server. one that used to be the
> root drive in an old 3.8 system and a new drive that I've installed a
> fresh copy of OpenBSD 3.9.
>
> I want to boot up on just one of the drives but for some reason when I put
> the second drive in the server it tries to take over the root drive. I've
> tried switching the SATA cables between them and changing the boot option
> for boot hd0a:/bsd and hd1a:/bsd and I get the same errors.
>
> I attempted to find a way to make the secondary drive not bootable by
> booting up on my Official OpenBSD 3.9 CD and running a shell and then
> fdisking it, but I didn't find anywhere I could turn the bootable flag off.
>
> Any suggestions on what I can do?
>
> Thanks,
>
> John
