Booting problem

[Babu Kartik]

Dear Sir,
Please be kind enough to provide solution to the following problem.

I have an old, assembled desk top loaded with win7 ultimate. It has got 80
GB hard disk and 1 GB RAM. Earlier there was XP. That time CD drive was not
working at all. Subsequently I upgraded to win7. After few days suddenly I
discovered that CD drive was working. I could burn files also through this
drive. Though booting was not possible from CD. After few days suddenly,
system stopped loading win7. I wanted to re install win7, but was not
possible without the option of booting from CD. Whenever I tried to boot,
one welcome screen and another screen came after one beep each and then it
halts with a blank screen. I prepared a bootable USB drive with XP with an
intention to install XP and thereafter upgrade to win7 (instructions for XP
alone was available in the internet). After preparing the USB, I checked it
in another system to see if it was working. In the BIOS there is no option
to boot from USB. So I disabled all three boot options (Floppy, CD, HDD)
and enabled “other” boot option and tried to boot from USB. Out of my
nearly ten attempts, only twice, USB drive was displayed in the boot menu
as a boot option, though it did not boot from it. Presently system does not
boot either from HDD or from CD or from USB.(Floppy drive is not active
since the relative cable is missing). My question is:-

1.Why should the boot menu display the USB drive only twice? Only
in case of a loose connection such things can happen. I believe there is no
question of any loose connection here. So either it should display all the
time or it should not display at all. There is no specific option in the
BIOS for booting from USB. If that means system does not support USB
booting, then it should not have come in the boot menu at all. Fact that it
appeared in the boot menu, means system   supports booting from USB.

2.   Why does not the system boot? I have a feeling that perhaps there
is a component which is responsible for detecting drives or booting  in
general  was failing slowly because of which CD drive was not working (when
XP was there) and there after it was not booting from CD and again there
after it stopped booting altogether from all the drives. Can there be a
problem with mother board?

3.   Someone told me that, in case of RAM failure, system will not
start the boot process at all. Here since boot process goes few steps
producing two screens and two beeps, perhaps it is trying to boot but why
unable to detect the drives.

4.   There are two separate cables for hard disk and CD drive. CD drive
is primary and hard disk secondary. When I exchange the cables, it is
reflected in the BIOS that is CD drive becomes secondary and vice versa.
That means BIOS is recognizing the drives.

5.   I tried with different boot order in the BIOS as well as by making
the BIOS setting as default.

6.   I tried the installation CD, so there is no question of whether
the CD is bootable or not. Similarly if MBR is corrupt, it should give
problem only for HDD booting and not for others like CD and USB. Then where
is the problem?

7.   Why doesn’t any error message displayed during boot process?
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Error messages when booting up machine and starting KDE

[Carmel]

I have observed these messages being written to the system log when
initially booting up the machine and then starting KDE.

Oct  6 08:16:09 scorpio dbus[5896]: [system] Activating service 
name='org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit' (using servicehelper)
Oct  6 08:16:09 scorpio dbus[5896]: [system] Activating service 
name='org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1' (using servicehelper)
Oct  6 08:16:09 scorpio dbus[5896]: [system] Successfully activated service 
'org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1'
Oct  6 08:16:09 scorpio dbus[5896]: [system] Successfully activated service 
'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit'
Oct  6 08:16:09 scorpio console-kit-daemon[5917]: WARNING: kvm_getenvv failed: 
Oct  6 08:17:32 scorpio console-kit-daemon[5917]: WARNING: Error waiting for 
native console 1 activation: Device not configured
Oct  6 08:18:13 scorpio dbus[5896]: [system] Activating service 
name='org.freedesktop.UPower' (using servicehelper)
Oct  6 08:18:13 scorpio dbus[5896]: [system] Successfully activated service 
'org.freedesktop.UPower'
Oct  6 08:18:14 scorpio dbus[5896]: [system] Activating service 
name='org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' (using servicehelper)
Oct  6 08:18:14 scorpio org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper: QDBusConnection: 
system D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may 
misbehave.
Oct  6 08:18:14 scorpio dbus[5896]: [system] Successfully activated service 
'org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper'
Oct  6 08:18:20 scorpio kernel: pid 6286 (kwin_opengl_test), uid 1001: exited 
on signal 11 (core dumped)
Oct  6 08:18:40 scorpio dbus[5896]: [system] Activating service 
name='org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' (using servicehelper)
Oct  6 08:18:40 scorpio org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper: QDBusConnection: 
system D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may 
misbehave.
Oct  6 08:18:40 scorpio dbus[5896]: [system] Successfully activated service 
'org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper'
Oct  6 08:18:46 scorpio dbus[5896]: [system] Failed to activate service 
'org.freedesktop.Avahi': timed out
Oct  6 08:18:55 scorpio pulseaudio[6346]: module.c: module-detect is 
deprecated: Please use module-udev-detect instead of module-detect!
Oct  6 08:18:55 scorpio pulseaudio[6346]: oss-util.c: '/dev/dsp0' doesn't 
support full duplex
Oct  6 08:18:55 scorpio pulseaudio[6346]: oss-util.c: '/dev/dsp1' doesn't 
support full duplex
Oct  6 08:18:55 scorpio pulseaudio[6346]: oss-util.c: '/dev/dsp2' doesn't 
support full duplex
Oct  6 08:18:55 scorpio pulseaudio[6346]: oss-util.c: '/dev/dsp3' doesn't 
support full duplex
Oct  6 08:18:55 scorpio pulseaudio[6346]: oss-util.c: '/dev/dsp6' doesn't 
support full duplex
Oct  6 08:18:56 scorpio pulseaudio[6352]: pid.c: Daemon already running.

I am particularly interested in the two "WARNING" messages (5 & 6); the
"core dump" (item 12); the "timed out" (item 16) and the last one,
although that one appears to be harmless. Is there something I should
be doing to correct these apparent problems?

-- 
Carmel ✌
carmel...@hotmail.com

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Odd behavior while booting off Install media for 9.1...

[aurfalien]

... sometimes I get a normal boot procedure were I can proceed to install.

Other times I get the mountroot prompt and upon pressing enter, the system 
reboots.

This seems random with the same hardware setup.  I literally have to stare at 
the screen for it to finally push through to the install procedure.

I'm clearly new to freeBSD and was wondering what is going on here?

I'm happily installing now as I managed to find time and stare at the screen 
long enough but would like some insight n this if possible.

- aurf
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Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Julian H. Stacey]

Warren Block wrote:
> Decided to ignore the CD and just copy the files to a simulated MS-DOS 
> drive.  Got to the point of copying distributions, process documented 
> here: http://wonkity.com/~wblock/freebsd-1.0/freebsd1.txt

I had a quick scan 
BTW here's another URL for the same image:
http://phk.freebsd.dk/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/


> So far, it's giving me a new appreciation for modern installers.
> 
> Julian, you are listed in the SUPPORT.TXT file.  Congratulations!

Thanks Warren, Scarey - Twenty years - Wow !
Illustrious company in that file: Rod G, Gary C.II, Jordan H. 

Cheers,
Julian
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Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Warren Block]

Decided to ignore the CD and just copy the files to a simulated MS-DOS 
drive.  Got to the point of copying distributions, process documented 
here: http://wonkity.com/~wblock/freebsd-1.0/freebsd1.txt


So far, it's giving me a new appreciation for modern installers.

Julian, you are listed in the SUPPORT.TXT file.  Congratulations!
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Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Warren Block]

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013, ill...@gmail.com wrote:


On 27 June 2013 11:11, ill...@gmail.com  wrote:


On 27 June 2013 10:46, Julian H. Stacey  wrote:


Warren Block wrote:

Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/

emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory,
but reports "no cdrom found".

I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found
a working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and
reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or
as a secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference.
Chipset too new, maybe.

Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?


I recall FreeBSD CDROM images have had 2 different types of boot
sequences, I think it matched evolving generations of BIOS support.
The change was some years back.  Maybe qemu only supports the newer of the 2
CD boot methods.



Is there perhaps a way to emulate a SCSI CD drive?
Those tend to work no matter what.



Aha, from install.txt:

| CD-ROM drives:
|  Mitsumi CDROM drive with Mitsumi Controller
|  Most SCSI CD-ROM drives on a supported SCSI controller

So I suppose no IDE.


The cdins_ah.flp image says it supports IDE, but I bet you're right, 
that's only for disks.  qemu can emulate a SCSI CD-ROM, I think.

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Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Warren Block]

On Thu, 27 Jun 2013, Julian H. Stacey wrote:


Warren Block wrote:

Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/

emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory,
but reports "no cdrom found".

I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found
a working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and
reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or
as a secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference.
Chipset too new, maybe.

Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?


I recall FreeBSD CDROM images have had 2 different types of boot
sequences, I think it matched evolving generations of BIOS support.
The change was some years back.  Maybe qemu only supports the newer of the 2
CD boot methods.


On the P4 system, the CD would boot but hang.  None of the other systems 
would boot from the CD, so I think you're right.


Just tried a Celeron 600 system, with the same results.  Whatever 
hardware the IDE/Adaptec floppy is expecting is not quite what it finds. 
The CD light does not even blink when it tries to "find the cdrom". 
UDMA disabled, 40-wire IDE cable, manually master/slave or different 
bus, none have made a difference.


On the positive side, the floppy boots reliably.
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Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

That CD-ROM should not be the ones found now , but Sound-Blaster CD-ROM
which is different from
the present day CD-ROM . Sound-Blaster CD-ROM should be attached to
Sound-Blaster card , not to
IDE port .


Regular CD-ROM ( attached to IDE port ) started by later versions of
FreeBSD .


Thank you very much .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk



On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 10:28 AM, Warren Block  wrote:

> Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
> http://ftp-archive.freebsd.**org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-**
> releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/**FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/
>
> emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory, but
> reports "no cdrom found".
>
> I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found a
> working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and
> reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or as a
> secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference. Chipset
> too new, maybe.
>
> Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?
>
> Here is the qemu invocation I tried:
>
> qemu -m 16 -cpu pentium -hda fbsd1.img -fda /mnt/cdinstal/cdins_ah.flp
> -cdrom FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE.iso -boot a -enable-kqemu
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>
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Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[ill...@gmail.com]

On 27 June 2013 11:11, ill...@gmail.com  wrote:
>
> On 27 June 2013 10:46, Julian H. Stacey  wrote:
>>
>> Warren Block wrote:
>> > Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
>> > http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/
>> >
>> > emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory,
>> > but reports "no cdrom found".
>> >
>> > I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found
>> > a working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and
>> > reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or
>> > as a secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference.
>> > Chipset too new, maybe.
>> >
>> > Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?
>>
>> I recall FreeBSD CDROM images have had 2 different types of boot
>> sequences, I think it matched evolving generations of BIOS support.
>> The change was some years back.  Maybe qemu only supports the newer of the 2
>> CD boot methods.
>>
>
> Is there perhaps a way to emulate a SCSI CD drive?
> Those tend to work no matter what.
>

Aha, from install.txt:

| CD-ROM drives:
|  Mitsumi CDROM drive with Mitsumi Controller
|  Most SCSI CD-ROM drives on a supported SCSI controller

So I suppose no IDE.

--
--
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Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[ill...@gmail.com]

On 27 June 2013 10:46, Julian H. Stacey  wrote:

> Warren Block wrote:
> > Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
> >
> http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/
> >
> > emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory,
> > but reports "no cdrom found".
> >
> > I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found
> > a working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and
> > reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or
> > as a secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference.
> > Chipset too new, maybe.
> >
> > Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?
>
> I recall FreeBSD CDROM images have had 2 different types of boot
> sequences, I think it matched evolving generations of BIOS support.
> The change was some years back.  Maybe qemu only supports the newer of the
> 2
> CD boot methods.
>
>
Is there perhaps a way to emulate a SCSI CD drive?
Those tend to work no matter what.

-- 
--
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Re: Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Julian H. Stacey]

Warren Block wrote:
> Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
> http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/
> 
> emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory, 
> but reports "no cdrom found".
> 
> I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found 
> a working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and 
> reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or 
> as a secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference. 
> Chipset too new, maybe.
> 
> Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?

I recall FreeBSD CDROM images have had 2 different types of boot
sequences, I think it matched evolving generations of BIOS support.
The change was some years back.  Maybe qemu only supports the newer of the 2
CD boot methods.

Cheers,
Julian
-- 
Julian Stacey, BSD Unix Linux C Sys Eng Consultant, Munich http://berklix.com
 Reply below not above, like a play script.  Indent old text with "> ".
 Send plain text.  No quoted-printable, HTML, base64, multipart/alternative.
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Booting FreeBSD 1.0

[Warren Block]

Yes, 1.0, from November 1993.  The install CD is here:
http://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/old-releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE/

emulators/qemu boots from the floppy image in the cdinstal directory, 
but reports "no cdrom found".


I managed to find a Pentium 4 system with a working floppy drive, found 
a working disk, made the boot floppy, and then booted it.  It boots and 
reports the same thing.  Putting the CD drive on a separate IDE bus or 
as a secondary on the same bus as the hard drive makes no difference. 
Chipset too new, maybe.


Any ideas short of "find an original Pentium system that still works"?

Here is the qemu invocation I tried:

qemu -m 16 -cpu pentium -hda fbsd1.img -fda /mnt/cdinstal/cdins_ah.flp -cdrom 
FreeBSD-1.0-RELEASE.iso -boot a -enable-kqemu
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Re: Booting from an aribrary disk in ZFS RAIDZ on 8.x

[Doug Poland]

On Thu, Mar 07, 2013 at 03:11:29PM +1030, Shane Ambler wrote:
> On 06/03/2013 14:54, Doug Poland wrote:
> >On Wed, Mar 06, 2013 at 01:26:07PM +1030, Shane Ambler wrote:
> >>On 06/03/2013 05:14, Doug Poland wrote:
> 
> >>>I have 6 disks in a RAIDZ configuration.  All disks were sliced the
> >>>same with gpart (da(n)p1,p2,p3) with bootcode written to index 1,
> >>>swap on index 2 and freebsd-zfs on index 3.
> >>>
> >>>Given this configuration, I should be able to boot from any of the
> >>>6 disks in the RAIDZ.  If this is a true statement, how do I make
> >>>that happen from the loader prompt?
> >>
> >>You don't boot from an individual disk you boot from a zpool - all
> >>disks are linked together making one zpool "disk".
> >>
> >Something has to pick a physical device from which to boot, does it
> >not?.  All the HP Smart Array 6i controller knows is I have 6 RAID 0
> >disks to present to the OS.
> 
> I meant to add if the bootcode is installed on each disk then pointing
> the bios to any individual disk as the primary boot device will lead
> to the boot process loading the zpool. Installing it on each disk
> gives the redundancy to match the raid in the zpool. If you only have
> one disk with bootcode and it is the one that needs replacing then you
> can't boot. Then having 100 disks in a pool with bootcode would be
> overkill, but the consistency may be easier to maintain.
> 
So in my case, the HP SmartArray doesn't allow me to choose an
individual boot disk.  So it's up to the controller to keep trying to
boot from the next configured disk.  I believe I'm going to craft a
test to prove this out.

> >I've had issues with this RAID controller in the past where it won't
> >present the new disk to the OS.  I've had to reboot, go into the
> >RAID config and tell it it's a single RAID 0 device (stupid, I
> >know).
> 
> When you think about it, as a raid controller it shouldn't make
> assumptions as to how to use the new disk, should it add it to an
> existing raid set, replace a missing drive or show it as a new single
> drive? Being able to specify per socket as permanently jbod could be
> useful feature though.
> 
One would think.  I've been testing this on a similarly configured
machine and the controller eventually presents a new drive to the OS.
It takes a couple of minutes, but appears to work on this test box.

> >The roll of /boot/zfs/zpool.cache is a mystery to me.  I belive it
> >somehow tells ZFS what devices are in use.  What if a disk goes
> >offline or is removed?
> >
> 
> As I understand it the zpool.cache contains the zpools mounted by the
> system. After reboot it then re-imports each zpool in the cache. I
> believe a recent commit enabled the vfs.root.mountfrom zpool to be
> imported even if there was no cache available.
> 
> From what I have heard and seen the data about the zpool it belongs to
> and the role the disk plays in the zpool is stored on each disk and
> duplicated at the beginning and end of the disk. In my early
> experiments after starting clean even after gparting and zeroing out
> the start of the disks, zpool still says it belongs to a pool.
> 
If that's the case, I wonder about the wisdom of re-using a drive from
my test configuration?  My plan has been to prove this out on test and
use the same disk from test and insert it into production.  One would
think ZFS is smart enough to recognize a "different" drive has been
inserted, even if it has the same gpart structure and came from a pool
with the same name.

Thanks for your help.

-- 
Regards,
Doug
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Re: Booting from an aribrary disk in ZFS RAIDZ on 8.x

[Shane Ambler]

On 06/03/2013 14:54, Doug Poland wrote:

On Wed, Mar 06, 2013 at 01:26:07PM +1030, Shane Ambler wrote:

On 06/03/2013 05:14, Doug Poland wrote:



I have 6 disks in a RAIDZ configuration.  All disks were sliced
the same with gpart (da(n)p1,p2,p3) with bootcode written to
index 1, swap on index 2 and freebsd-zfs on index 3.

Given this configuration, I should be able to boot from any of
the 6 disks in the RAIDZ.  If this is a true statement, how do I
make that happen from the loader prompt?


You don't boot from an individual disk you boot from a zpool - all
 disks are linked together making one zpool "disk".


Something has to pick a physical device from which to boot, does it
not?.  All the HP Smart Array 6i controller knows is I have 6 RAID 0
 disks to present to the OS.


I meant to add if the bootcode is installed on each disk then pointing
the bios to any individual disk as the primary boot device will lead to
the boot process loading the zpool. Installing it on each disk gives the
redundancy to match the raid in the zpool. If you only have one disk
with bootcode and it is the one that needs replacing then you can't
boot. Then having 100 disks in a pool with bootcode would be overkill,
but the consistency may be easier to maintain.


I'm guessing that you ask as your machine isn't booting. You
probably need to boot from a cd and do adjustments.


Not exactly, I have a failing disk in slot 0, which corresponds to
da0 in my device list (AKA gpt/disk0).  I want to make sure I can
boot if I pull this disk and replace it.


If the zpool redundancy is sufficient for the zpool to work without the
drive it shouldn't make any difference as to how the disk "disappears"
only that the data is accessible/rebuildable.


I've had issues with this RAID controller in the past where it won't
present the new disk to the OS.  I've had to reboot, go into the
RAID config and tell it it's a single RAID 0 device (stupid, I
know).


When you think about it, as a raid controller it shouldn't make
assumptions as to how to use the new disk, should it add it to an
existing raid set, replace a missing drive or show it as a new single
drive? Being able to specify per socket as permanently jbod could be
useful feature though.


The roll of /boot/zfs/zpool.cache is a mystery to me.  I belive it
somehow tells ZFS what devices are in use.  What if a disk goes
offline or is removed?



As I understand it the zpool.cache contains the zpools mounted by the
system. After reboot it then re-imports each zpool in the cache. I
believe a recent commit enabled the vfs.root.mountfrom zpool to be
imported even if there was no cache available.

From what I have heard and seen the data about the zpool it belongs to
and the role the disk plays in the zpool is stored on each disk and
duplicated at the beginning and end of the disk. In my early experiments
after starting clean even after gparting and zeroing out the start of
the disks, zpool still says it belongs to a pool.

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Re: Booting from an aribrary disk in ZFS RAIDZ on 8.x

[Paul Kraus]

On Mar 5, 2013, at 1:44 PM, Doug Poland  wrote:

> I'm running ZFS filesystem ver 3, storage pool ver 14, on 8-STABLE
> amd64. The kernel build is rather dated from around Feb 2010.
> 
> I have 6 disks in a RAIDZ configuration.  All disks were sliced
> the same with gpart (da(n)p1,p2,p3) with bootcode written to index 1,
> swap on index 2 and freebsd-zfs on index 3.
> 
> Given this configuration, I should be able to boot from any of the 6
> disks in the RAIDZ.  If this is a true statement, how do I make that
> happen from the loader prompt?

Boot in terms of root FS or in terms of boot loader ? 

The boot loader would be set in your BIOS (which physical drive you read for 
that).

/ comes from the zpool/zfs dataset once the boot loader loads enough code 
to find and mount the filesystem. That comes from all the drives in the zpool.

--
Paul Kraus
Deputy Technical Director, LoneStarCon 3
Sound Coordinator, Schenectady Light Opera Company

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Re: Booting from an aribrary disk in ZFS RAIDZ on 8.x

[Shane Ambler]

On 06/03/2013 05:14, Doug Poland wrote:

Hello,

I'm running ZFS filesystem ver 3, storage pool ver 14, on 8-STABLE
amd64. The kernel build is rather dated from around Feb 2010.


You probably want to update that sometime.


I have 6 disks in a RAIDZ configuration.  All disks were sliced
the same with gpart (da(n)p1,p2,p3) with bootcode written to index 1,
swap on index 2 and freebsd-zfs on index 3.

Given this configuration, I should be able to boot from any of the 6
disks in the RAIDZ.  If this is a true statement, how do I make that
happen from the loader prompt?


You don't boot from an individual disk you boot from a zpool - all disks 
are linked together making one zpool "disk".



At the loader prompt when I type show, I get the following relevant
variables:

currdev="zfs0"
loaddev="disk1a:"
vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:rpool"


zfs:rpool is the "disk" you boot from.

I'm guessing that you ask as your machine isn't booting.
You probably need to boot from a cd and do adjustments.

You have zfs_load=yes in /boot/loader.conf ?
You have vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:rpool" in /boot/loader.conf ?
You have zfs_enable=yes in /etc/rc.conf ?
You have zpool set bootfs=rpool rpool or similar?

I think it has been resolved recently but you used to have to copy the 
zpool.cache into /boot


Did you set the mountpoint when installing and not change it back?

I had issues with setting up with a mountpoint / and changing it to 
legacy. Setting the mountpoint as you want before setup then use altroot 
to mount it for install is the way to go.


If you search wiki.freebsd.org for zfs you can find several examples 
that may provide hints to what you missed.


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Booting from an aribrary disk in ZFS RAIDZ on 8.x

[Doug Poland]

Hello,

I'm running ZFS filesystem ver 3, storage pool ver 14, on 8-STABLE
amd64. The kernel build is rather dated from around Feb 2010.

I have 6 disks in a RAIDZ configuration.  All disks were sliced
the same with gpart (da(n)p1,p2,p3) with bootcode written to index 1,
swap on index 2 and freebsd-zfs on index 3.

Given this configuration, I should be able to boot from any of the 6
disks in the RAIDZ.  If this is a true statement, how do I make that
happen from the loader prompt?

At the loader prompt when I type show, I get the following relevant
variables:

currdev="zfs0"
loaddev="disk1a:"
vfs.root.mountfrom="zfs:rpool"

A peek at man loader(1) shows me two interesting variables:
root_disk_unit
rootdev

If disk0 is the legacy floppy device, presumably disk1a: maps to da0.
What variable do I set to signify boot from what I know as:

da0p1 == gpt/boot0 
da0p2 == gpt/swap0 
da0p3 == gpt/disk0
...
snip
...
da5p1 == gpt/boot5 
da5p2 == gpt/swap5 
da5p3 == gpt/disk5

Thanks very much in advance.  BTW, is it bad form to cross-post to
forums.freebsd.org?

-- 
Regards,
Doug
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Re: Booting issue with 9.1-RELEASE and net4801

[Gary Aitken]

On 02/04/13 11:54, Alberto Mijares wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> I'm finally playing with my net4801 and nanobsd. SanDisk CF is recognized.
> 
> At my first try I had to disable DMA in ATA because it hanged out. Now
> it hangs when trying to mount root filesystem and mountroot> prompt
> appears. However, if a stop in loader prompt and type ls, files and
> dirs are displayed on disk0s1a.
> 
> Any suggestion?
> 
> Verbose boot log next:
> 
> OK boot -v log

> ada0 at ata0 bus 0 scbus0 target 0 lun 0
> ada0:  CFA-0 device
> ada0: Serial Number BOZ111711234413
> ada0: 16.700MB/s transfers (PIO4, PIO 512bytes)
> ada0: 3815MB (7813120 512 byte sectors: 16H 63S/T 7751C)
> ada0: Previously was known as ad0
> GEOM: new disk ada0
> GEOM_PART: partition 2 has end offset beyond last LBA: 7999487 > 7813119
> GEOM_PART: partition 3 has start offset beyond last LBA: 7999488 > 7813119
> GEOM_PART: partition 3 has end offset beyond last LBA: 8002511 > 7813119
> GEOM_PART: integrity check failed (ada0, MBR)
> uhub0: 3 ports with 3 removable, self powered
> Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ada0s1a [ro]...
> mountroot: waiting for device /dev/ada0s1a ...
> Mounting from ufs:/dev/ada0s1a failed with error 19.
> 
> Loader variables:
>   vfs.root.mountfrom=ufs:/dev/ada0s1a
>   vfs.root.mountfrom.options=ro
> 
> Manual root filesystem specification:
>   : [options]
>   Mount  using filesystem 
>   and with the specified (optional) option list.
> 
> eg. ufs:/dev/da0s1a
> zfs:tank
> cd9660:/dev/acd0 ro
>   (which is equivalent to: mount -t cd9660 -o ro /dev/acd0 /)
> 
>   ?   List valid disk boot devices
>   .   Yield 1 second (for background tasks)
>   Abort manual input
> 
> mountroot>

I believe I got this error when the root boot block is written properly,
but the first partition on the disk does not have the proper gpart boot code
in it.

Try listing the gpt partition scheme:

# gpart show -l ada1
=>   34  156301421  ada1  GPT  (74G)
 34   1024 1  gptboot  (512k)
   1058  6- free -  (3.0k)
   10644194304 2  hdd-80G-root  (2.0G)
41953684194304 3  hdd-80G-swap  (2.0G)
83896724194304 4  hdd-80G-var  (2.0G)
   125839764194304 5  hdd-80G-tmp  (2.0G)
   16778280  139523168 6  hdd-80G-usr  (66G)
  156301448  7- free -  (3.5k)

Notice in the above partition 1, labeled gptboot (a label I gave it)
That's the boot code, which can be written as follows:
  gpart bootcode -p /boot/gptboot -i 1 ada1
assuming the system you're running on has /boot/gptboot on it.

Gary
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Re: Booting issue with 9.1-RELEASE and net4801

[Alberto Mijares]

> ada0: Previously was known as ad0
> GEOM: new disk ada0
> GEOM_PART: partition 2 has end offset beyond last LBA: 7999487 > 7813119
> GEOM_PART: partition 3 has start offset beyond last LBA: 7999488 > 7813119
> GEOM_PART: partition 3 has end offset beyond last LBA: 8002511 > 7813119
> GEOM_PART: integrity check failed (ada0, MBR)


Hmmm... I think this is the problem. I'll check my nano config again.
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Booting issue with 9.1-RELEASE and net4801

[Alberto Mijares]

Hi list,

I'm finally playing with my net4801 and nanobsd. SanDisk CF is recognized.

At my first try I had to disable DMA in ATA because it hanged out. Now
it hangs when trying to mount root filesystem and mountroot> prompt
appears. However, if a stop in loader prompt and type ls, files and
dirs are displayed on disk0s1a.

Any suggestion?

Verbose boot log next:

OK boot -v log
SMAP type=01 base= len=0009fc00
SMAP type=02 base=0009fc00 len=0400
SMAP type=02 base=000f len=0001
SMAP type=01 base=0010 len=07f0
SMAP type=02 base=fff0 len=0010
Copyright (c) 1992-2012 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights
reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE #0: Mon Feb  4 12:44:44 VET 2013
root@nano:/usr/obj/nanobsd.atm1c/usr/src/sys/GENERIC i386
Preloaded elf kernel "/boot/kernel/kernel" at 0xc13d5000.
Calibrating TSC clock ... TSC clock: 266647858 Hz
CPU: Geode(TM) Integrated Processor by National Semi (586-class CPU)
  Origin = "Geode by NSC"  Id = 0x540  Family = 5  Model = 4  Stepping = 0
  Features=0x808131
real memory  = 134217728 (128 MB)
Physical memory chunk(s):
0x1000 - 0x0009efff, 647168 bytes (158 pages)
0x0010 - 0x003f, 3145728 bytes (768 pages)
0x01426000 - 0x07d6dfff, 110395392 bytes (26952 pages)
avail memory = 112066560 (106 MB)
INTR: Adding local APIC 0 as a target
bios32: Found BIOS32 Service Directory header at 0xc00f7800
bios32: Entry = 0xf7840 (c00f7840)  Rev = 0  Len = 1
pcibios: PCI BIOS entry at 0xf+0x7861
Other BIOS signatures found:
ULE: setup cpu 0
wlan: <802.11 Link Layer>
snd_unit_init() u=0x00ff8000 [512] d=0x7c00 [32] c=0x03ff [1024]
feeder_register: snd_unit=-1 snd_maxautovchans=16 latency=5
feeder_rate_min=1 fe5
kbd: new array size 4
kbd1 at kbdmux0
nfslock: pseudo-device
mem: 
module_register_init: MOD_LOAD (vesa, 0xc0dc3570, 0) error 19
io: 
null: 
random: 
hptrr: RocketRAID 17xx/2xxx SATA controller driver v1.2
ctl: CAM Target Layer loaded
ACPI Error: A valid RSDP was not found (20110527/tbxfroot-237)
ACPI: Table initialisation failed: AE_NOT_FOUND
ACPI: Try disabling either ACPI or apic support.
pci_open(1):mode 1 addr port (0x0cf8) is 0x
pci_open(1a):   mode1res=0x8000 (0x8000)
pci_cfgcheck:   device 0 [class=06] [hdr=00] is there
(id=00011078)
pcibios: BIOS version 2.01
pcib0 pcibus 0 on motherboard
pci0:  on pcib0
pci0: domain=0, physical bus=0
found-> vendor=0x1078, dev=0x0001, revid=0x00
domain=0, bus=0, slot=0, func=0
class=06-00-00, hdrtype=0x00, mfdev=0
cmdreg=0x0107, statreg=0x0280, cachelnsz=0 (dwords)
lattimer=0x00 (0 ns), mingnt=0x00 (0 ns), maxlat=0x00 (0 ns)
found-> vendor=0x100b, dev=0x0020, revid=0x00
domain=0, bus=0, slot=6, func=0
class=02-00-00, hdrtype=0x00, mfdev=0
cmdreg=0x0107, statreg=0x0290, cachelnsz=0 (dwords)
lattimer=0x3f (1890 ns), mingnt=0x0b (2750 ns), maxlat=0x34 (13000 ns)
intpin=a, irq=10
powerspec 2  supports D0 D1 D2 D3  current D0
map[10]: type I/O Port, range 32, base 0xe100, size  8,
enabled
map[14]: type Memory, range 32, base 0xa000, size 12,
enabled
found-> vendor=0x100b, dev=0x0020, revid=0x00
domain=0, bus=0, slot=7, func=0
class=02-00-00, hdrtype=0x00, mfdev=0
cmdreg=0x0107, statreg=0x0290, cachelnsz=0 (dwords)
lattimer=0x3f (1890 ns), mingnt=0x0b (2750 ns), maxlat=0x34 (13000 ns)
intpin=a, irq=10
powerspec 2  supports D0 D1 D2 D3  current D0
map[10]: type I/O Port, range 32, base 0xe200, size  8,
enabled
map[14]: type Memory, range 32, base 0xa0001000, size 12,
enabled
found-> vendor=0x100b, dev=0x0020, revid=0x00
domain=0, bus=0, slot=8, func=0
class=02-00-00, hdrtype=0x00, mfdev=0
cmdreg=0x0107, statreg=0x0290, cachelnsz=0 (dwords)
lattimer=0x3f (1890 ns), mingnt=0x0b (2750 ns), maxlat=0x34 (13000 ns)
intpin=a, irq=10
powerspec 2  supports D0 D1 D2 D3  current D0
map[10]: type I/O Port, range 32, base 0xe300, size  8,
enabled
map[14]: type Memory, range 32, base 0xa0002000, size 12,
enabled
found-> vendor=0x100b, dev=0x0510, revid=0x00
domain=0, bus=0, slot=18, func=0
class=06-01-00, hdrtype=0x00, mfdev=1
cmdreg=0x001f, statreg=0x0280, cachelnsz=8 (dwords)
lattimer=0x3f (1890 ns), mingnt=0x00 (0 ns), maxlat=0x00 (0
ns)
map[10]: type I/O Port, range 32, base 0x6100, size  6,
enabled
map[14]: type I/O Port, range 32, base 0x6200, size  6,
enabled
found-> vendor=0x100b, dev=0x0511, revid=0x00
domain=0, bus=0, slot=18, func=1
class=06-80-00, hdrtype=0x00, mfdev=0
cmdr

Re: Booting Problem

[doug]

On Wed, 30 Jan 2013, Doug Hardie wrote:



On 30 January 2013, at 05:16, Fbsd8 wrote:


Doug Hardie wrote:

On 29 January 2013, at 07:18, Mario Lobo wrote:

On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
Doug Hardie  wrote:


I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.

The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
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Can you boot a different OS (Win, Ububtu, gparted, etc ...) from the
same drive on the same machine?

Not so far.  The drive works fine on other systems.



You said in your orginal post "The bios will not boot from USB stick."
I see no reason why you would think your PC would BOOT from any USB attached 
devices.

Since you have another PC that does boot off of usb cd drive, swap hard 
drives and use that pc to load FreeBSD to the hard drive. This method will 
work for you.


Yes that works now.  But starting this weekend it will be about 100 miles 
away.  That no longer will be practical.


The CD will not be of much help then either. The problem started with the root 
partition being too small. Just repartition to make sure that does not come up 
for a while. While you have you hands of the machine you should see if you can 
figure out if it can do a pixe boot. You should also see if you can arrange for 
a serial console into the system.


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Re: Booting Problem

[Doug Hardie]

On 30 January 2013, at 05:16, Fbsd8 wrote:

> Doug Hardie wrote:
>> On 29 January 2013, at 07:18, Mario Lobo wrote:
>>> On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
>>> Doug Hardie  wrote:
>>> 
 I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
 bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
 It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
 message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
 the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
 times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
 another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.
 
 The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
 drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
 temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
 would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
 become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
 option. ___
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 "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
>>> Can you boot a different OS (Win, Ububtu, gparted, etc ...) from the
>>> same drive on the same machine?
>> Not so far.  The drive works fine on other systems.
>> 
> 
> You said in your orginal post "The bios will not boot from USB stick."
> I see no reason why you would think your PC would BOOT from any USB attached 
> devices.
> 
> Since you have another PC that does boot off of usb cd drive, swap hard 
> drives and use that pc to load FreeBSD to the hard drive. This method will 
> work for you.

Yes that works now.  But starting this weekend it will be about 100 miles away. 
 That no longer will be practical.

> 
> 
> 

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Re: Booting Problem

[Fbsd8]

Doug Hardie wrote:

On 29 January 2013, at 07:18, Mario Lobo wrote:


On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
Doug Hardie  wrote:


I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.

The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
option. ___
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Can you boot a different OS (Win, Ububtu, gparted, etc ...) from the
same drive on the same machine?


Not so far.  The drive works fine on other systems.




You said in your orginal post "The bios will not boot from USB stick."
I see no reason why you would think your PC would BOOT from any USB 
attached devices.


Since you have another PC that does boot off of usb cd drive, swap hard 
drives and use that pc to load FreeBSD to the hard drive. This method 
will work for you.



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Re: Booting Problem

[Joshua Isom]

On 1/29/2013 10:25 PM, d...@safeport.com wrote:


What is the system you are using? What external devices does it have
built-in support for? In the absence of any data - how about trying an
external hard drive?

Why not remove the hard drive, use another system to put FreeBSD on the
drive, and put it back. From that point on you should be able to use the
network to upgrade.



I had to do something like this to try out PC-BSD years ago.  I had one 
computer that wouldn't boot the install CD.  I moved the hard drive to a 
computer that would boot the install CD.  The catch was the computer 
that could boot the install CD wouldn't boot PC-BSD from the hard drive. 
 Sometimes you just find hardware that doesn't behave.  I'd also double 
check your BIOS settings for USB emulation.  Most external CD drives are 
just an IDE or SATA drive with an adapter.  If you take it apart, you 
can put the drive into the computer and see if skipping the USB helps it 
to boot.  It's also a nice way to find a cheap drive.

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Re: Booting Problem

[Doug Hardie]

On 29 January 2013, at 20:25, d...@safeport.com wrote:

> 
> On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Doug Hardie wrote:
> 
>> On 29 January 2013, at 07:18, Mario Lobo wrote:
>> 
>>> On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
>>> Doug Hardie  wrote:
>>> 
 I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
 bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
 It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
 message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
 the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
 times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
 another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.
 
 The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
 drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
 temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
 would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
 become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
 option.
> 
> What is the system you are using? What external devices does it have built-in 
> support for? In the absence of any data - how about trying an external hard 
> drive?

9.1 release - Generic.  Basically the disk1.  Don't have an extra external 
drive.

> 
> Why not remove the hard drive, use another system to put FreeBSD on the 
> drive, and put it back. From that point on you should be able to use the 
> network to upgrade.

I have done that before and it does work.  However,  with the various changes 
to the system, the root partition I had previously built that way for 8.2 is 
just not large enough for 9.1.  Also, I wanted to go to a single partition (the 
9.1 default).  Probably freebsd-update will take me through major releases 
after this, but I was hoping for a better solution so I could avoid having to 
transport the machine a long way twice to be able to update it.


> 
> 

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Re: Booting Problem

[doug]

On Tue, 29 Jan 2013, Doug Hardie wrote:


On 29 January 2013, at 07:18, Mario Lobo wrote:


On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
Doug Hardie  wrote:


I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.

The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
option.


What is the system you are using? What external devices does it have built-in 
support for? In the absence of any data - how about trying an external hard 
drive?


Why not remove the hard drive, use another system to put FreeBSD on the drive, 
and put it back. From that point on you should be able to use the network to 
upgrade.


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Re: Booting Problem

[Doug Hardie]

On 29 January 2013, at 07:18, Mario Lobo wrote:

> On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
> Doug Hardie  wrote:
> 
>> I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
>> bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
>> It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
>> message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
>> the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
>> times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
>> another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.
>> 
>> The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
>> drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
>> temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
>> would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
>> become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
>> option. ___
>> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
>> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To
>> unsubscribe, send any mail to
>> "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
> 
> Can you boot a different OS (Win, Ububtu, gparted, etc ...) from the
> same drive on the same machine?

Not so far.  The drive works fine on other systems.

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Re: Booting Problem

[Mario Lobo]

On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:16:14 -0800
Doug Hardie  wrote:

> I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The
> bios will not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.
> It starts the boot process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader
> message with revision 1.1.  Then it puts out the machine, date, time
> the CD was created and starts the spinner.  It spins around about 2
> times and stops.  The system continues to read from the drive for
> another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.
> 
> The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external
> drive on another machine.  While I could remove the drive and
> temporarily mount in in the working machine and build it there, I
> would like to find a way to successfully boot from CD.  This will
> become a remote machine and taking it apart later is not a viable
> option. ___
> freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To
> unsubscribe, send any mail to
> "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"

Can you boot a different OS (Win, Ububtu, gparted, etc ...) from the
same drive on the same machine?

-- 
Mario Lobo
http://www.mallavoodoo.com.br
FreeBSD since 2.2.8 [not Pro-Audio YET!!] (99% winblows FREE)
 
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Booting Problem

[Doug Hardie]

I have a relatively old machine that I am trying to boot 9.1 on.  The bios will 
not boot from USB stick.  I am using an external CD drive.  It starts the boot 
process fine and gets to the Bootstrap loader message with revision 1.1.  Then 
it puts out the machine, date, time the CD was created and starts the spinner.  
It spins around about 2 times and stops.  The system continues to read from the 
drive for another couple minutes.  Then everything stops.  Nothing more happens.

The CD is good.  I can boot it just fine using the same external drive on 
another machine.  While I could remove the drive and temporarily mount in in 
the working machine and build it there, I would like to find a way to 
successfully boot from CD.  This will become a remote machine and taking it 
apart later is not a viable option.
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Re: gPXE booting FreeBSD?

[Rick Miller]

On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 10:55 AM, Rick Miller  wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Does anyone have any experience booting FreeBSD via gPXE and have
> pointers to relevant documentation and/or blog posts?

Thanks for all your replies.  Our current direction appears to be one
of modifying the FreeBSD bootonly ISO to perform installs and load it
from gPXE as follows...

The menu will appear something like (from memory, syntax may be wrong):

kernel memdisk
imgargs memdisk raw iso
initrd http path to the ISO

Once we have it tested and implemented, I'll likely blog the subject
at http://blog.hostileadmin.com/

-- 
Take care
Rick Miller
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Re: gPXE booting FreeBSD?

[Helmut Schneider]

Rick Miller wrote:

> Does anyone have any experience booting FreeBSD via gPXE and have
> pointers to relevant documentation and/or blog posts?

I use mfsBSD (http://mfsbsd.vx.sk/) and pxelinux.

DEFAULT boot/menu.c32

PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 0

MENU TITLE network boot menu - FreeBSD

LABEL ^1 - mfsBSD 8.2 i386 (user=root pass=mfsroot)
KERNEL boot/memdisk
APPEND raw initrd=FreeBSD/8.2/i386/mfsboot.img

LABEL ^2 - mfsBSD 8.2 i386 mini (user=root pass=mfsroot)
KERNEL boot/memdisk
APPEND raw initrd=FreeBSD/8.2/i386/mfsboot_mini.img

LABEL ^3 - mfsBSD 8.2 amd64 (user=root pass=mfsroot)
KERNEL boot/memdisk
APPEND raw initrd=FreeBSD/8.2/amd64/mfsboot.img

LABEL ^4 - mfsBSD 8.2 amd64 mini (user=root pass=mfsroot)
KERNEL boot/memdisk
APPEND raw initrd=FreeBSD/8.2/amd64/mfsboot_mini.img

LABEL back
KERNEL boot/menu.c32
APPEND pxelinux.cfg/default

HTH, Helmut

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Re: gPXE booting FreeBSD?

[Warren Block]

On Tue, 4 Dec 2012, Rick Miller wrote:


Does anyone have any experience booting FreeBSD via gPXE and have
pointers to relevant documentation and/or blog posts?


gpxelinux.0 is what I've used in my PXE article.  The latest version I 
tried was from SYSLINUX 4.04.  gPXE is loaded as a secondary boot loader 
because it is more versatile than the typical TFTP-only loaders.  In 
other words, the client PXE boots and loads gPXE.


http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/pxe.html

This is set up to boot into a menu.  I have not tried direct booting 
without the menu.

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Re: gPXE booting FreeBSD?

[Rick Miller]

Hi Dan,

On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 11:44 AM, Daniel Feenberg  wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 4 Dec 2012, Rick Miller wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Does anyone have any experience booting FreeBSD via gPXE and have
>> pointers to relevant documentation and/or blog posts?
>>
>
> In the last paragraph of our description of PXE booting FreeBSD:
>
>   http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/FreeBSD-diskless.html
>
> we report that "gpxelinux did not work for us. (It hangs once a menu item is
> selected, or if more than one choice is available)." Have you tried and
> gotten better/worse/similar results? Our trial was about a year ago, it
> would be worth trying again.

Thanks for the reply and link.  We've not tried booting FreeBSD from gPXE yet.

Our goal is to PXE boot clients into a non-interactive FreeBSD
installation.  We do this now utilizing pxegrub from Grub2 to pass
environment/kernel variables to stage 2 as documented at
http://blog.hostileadmin.com/2012/05/04/pxe-booting-into-a-freebsd-installation/

Where $kernel_path is the FreeBSD kernel and $initrd_path is the
mfsroot from the release build.  The rest of the environment variables
are dynamically derived based on data stored in a database for each
host.

We want to replace pxegrub with gPXE with the hope that we can still
pass the environment/kernel variables to stage 2.

-- 
Take care
Rick Miller
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Re: gPXE booting FreeBSD?

[FBSD UG]

Hey Rick,


I've managed to setup an gPXE boot where a
diskless client booted OpenSUSE over AoE
from a FreeBSD server. Not exactly what you
want, yet the setup is mostly the same for all
OS's... 

My main source of info came from this site:
http://etherboot.org/wiki/howtos


greets

Arno Beekman



On 4 dec 2012, at 16:55, Rick Miller wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> Does anyone have any experience booting FreeBSD via gPXE and have
> pointers to relevant documentation and/or blog posts?
> 
> -- 
> Take care
> Rick Miller
> ___
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Re: gPXE booting FreeBSD?

[Daniel Feenberg]

On Tue, 4 Dec 2012, Rick Miller wrote:


Hi All,

Does anyone have any experience booting FreeBSD via gPXE and have
pointers to relevant documentation and/or blog posts?



In the last paragraph of our description of PXE booting FreeBSD:

  http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/FreeBSD-diskless.html

we report that "gpxelinux did not work for us. (It hangs once a menu item 
is selected, or if more than one choice is available)." Have you tried and 
gotten better/worse/similar results? Our trial was about a year ago, it 
would be worth trying again.


dan feenberg
NBER


--
Take care
Rick Miller
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gPXE booting FreeBSD?

[Rick Miller]

Hi All,

Does anyone have any experience booting FreeBSD via gPXE and have
pointers to relevant documentation and/or blog posts?

-- 
Take care
Rick Miller
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Re: gpt booting (Was: Re: boot problem after freebsd-update from 9.1-RC2 to 9.1-RC3)

[Warren Block]

On Wed, 21 Nov 2012, Arthur Chance wrote:


On 11/21/12 05:11, Warren Block wrote:

gptboot looks for the first UFS partition.  Maybe /boot/boot can be
modified to do that also.


It's a little more complicated than that Warren.

AIUI gptboot first looks (in partition order) for partitions with both the 
bootme and bootonce attributes set. If it doesn't find any, or if they all 
failed to boot it then tries booting partitions with just the bootme 
attribute. It only boots the first UFS partition if no partitions have the 
bootme attribute set, and IIRC that is for compatibility with the 8.x gptboot 
which didn't know the boot* attributes.


Confusingly, there's no manual page for gptboot to document this. It's sort 
of implicit in the gpart manual page, in the section on ATTRIBUTES for GPT, 
but the best way to understand it is to read the code for gptfind in


/usr/src/sys/boot/common/gpt.c


Well, yes.  The point is that gptboot doesn't just assume that p2, say, 
is where the bootable UFS partition must be.


I've also noted the lack of a gptboot man page, and it's on my long list 
of Things That Should Be Done.  There was a thread on -doc:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-doc/2012-June/020060.html

Help would be greatly appreciated.
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gpt booting (Was: Re: boot problem after freebsd-update from 9.1-RC2 to 9.1-RC3)

[Arthur Chance]

On 11/21/12 05:11, Warren Block wrote:

gptboot looks for the first UFS partition.  Maybe /boot/boot can be
modified to do that also.


It's a little more complicated than that Warren.

AIUI gptboot first looks (in partition order) for partitions with both 
the bootme and bootonce attributes set. If it doesn't find any, or if 
they all failed to boot it then tries booting partitions with just the 
bootme attribute. It only boots the first UFS partition if no partitions 
have the bootme attribute set, and IIRC that is for compatibility with 
the 8.x gptboot which didn't know the boot* attributes.


Confusingly, there's no manual page for gptboot to document this. It's 
sort of implicit in the gpart manual page, in the section on ATTRIBUTES 
for GPT, but the best way to understand it is to read the code for 
gptfind in


/usr/src/sys/boot/common/gpt.c


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Re: Booting 2nd(!) FreeBSD installation sitting on same disk

[Andre Albsmeier]

On Sat, 03-Nov-2012 at 23:34:48 +0100, jb wrote:
> Andre Albsmeier  siemens.com> writes:
> 
> > ... 
> > However, when pressing F3, the system of slice 2(!) is  
> > loaded. This is due to the fact that boot1 always loads
> > the first active FreeBSD slice ;-(.
> > ... 
> > Is there no chance to actually honour the fact that F3 was
> > pressed and boot from slice 3 without updating the MBR before?
> 
> I do not know the story of active slice in FreeBSD, but I know that neither
> Windows nor Linux require active partitions (in their jargon) to boot from any
> more.

If course FreeBSD doesn't rely on being started from an active
slice. Otherwise playing with currdev in loader wouldn't work.
It is just boot1 which causes the problem since it always searches
the MBR partition (slice) table for the first active FreeBSD slice
and if it doesn't find one it starts over again and searches for
any FreeBSD slice.

The problem is that boot1 doesn't get the information which F-key
was pressed in boot0 directly. It does only in case you allow a
write-back of the MBR using -o update with boot0cfg.

I made an ugly hack for this by patching boot1 code of slice 3
in a way that it actually searches for IN(!)active partitions in
its first pass:

--- sys/boot/i386/boot2/boot1.S.ORI 2012-09-23 22:07:16.0 +0200
+++ sys/boot/i386/boot2/boot1.S 2012-11-05 07:16:29.0 +0100
@@ -151,7 +151,11 @@
jne main.3  # No
jcxz main.5 # If second pass
testb $0x80,(%si)   # Active?
+#ifdef AA_SKIP_ACTIVE_BSDSLICE
+   jz main.5   # No
+#else
jnz main.5  # Yes
+#endif
 main.3:add $0x10,%si   # Next entry
incb %dh# Partition
cmpb $0x1+PRT_NUM,%dh   # In table?


Since this code only sits in boot1 of slice 3 it just applies to
slice 3.

The proper fix would be to pass the information about the key pressed
in boot0 to boot1 directly via registers of by whatever means...

-Andre
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Re: Booting 2nd(!) FreeBSD installation sitting on same disk

[Andre Albsmeier]

On Sat, 03-Nov-2012 at 18:46:04 +0100, Mehmet Erol Sanliturk wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 9:54 AM, Andre Albsmeier 
> mailto:andre.albsme...@siemens.com>> wrote:
> For various reasons I have to use this disk layout:
> 
> One harddisk with MBR and 3 slices on a i386 box:
> 
> Slice 1: Windows XP :-(
> Slice 2: FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE V1
> Slice 3: FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE V2
> 
> The MBR is configured as:
> 
> options=packet,noupdate,nosetdrv
> default_selection=F2 (Slice 2)
> 
> When booting, I can choose between:
> 
> F1 Win
> F2 FreeBSD
> F3 FreeBSD
> 
> However, when pressing F3, the system of slice 2(!) is
> loaded. This is due to the fact that boot1 always loads
> the first active FreeBSD slice ;-(.
> 
> I have two possibilities to actually boot slice 3:
> 
> 1. Playing with currdev when loader(8) is loaded (or
>using loader.conf of slice 2).
> 
> 2. Using boot0cfg to allow updating the MBR.
> 
> 1. is not really fexible and 2. means that the system
> remembers which slice was booted last (something I do
> not want).
> 
> Is there no chance to actually honour the fact that F3 was
> pressed and boot from slice 3 without updating the MBR before?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -Andre
> 
> 
> There is the following port for managing boot selections :
> 
> ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/amd64/packages-9.0-release/Latest/grub2.tbz
> 
> http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/grub2/

Well, I actually wanted to stick to FreeBSD's boot stuff...

-Andre
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Re: Booting 2nd(!) FreeBSD installation sitting on same disk

[jb]

jb  gmail.com> writes:

> ... 
> I do not know the story of active slice in FreeBSD, but I know that neither
> Windows nor Linux require active partitions (in their jargon) to boot from any
> more.
> Perhaps it is time to review this requirement in FreeBSD and drop it if
> possible.
> Opinions are welcome.
> If there are no counterarguments, we will create a PR# to start the process.

I forgot to mention that in such case a new boot option would be introduced to
set a default boot item in a boot manager's menu.
jb
 


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Re: Booting 2nd(!) FreeBSD installation sitting on same disk

[jb]

Andre Albsmeier  siemens.com> writes:

> ... 
> However, when pressing F3, the system of slice 2(!) is  
> loaded. This is due to the fact that boot1 always loads
> the first active FreeBSD slice ;-(.
> ... 
> Is there no chance to actually honour the fact that F3 was
> pressed and boot from slice 3 without updating the MBR before?

I do not know the story of active slice in FreeBSD, but I know that neither
Windows nor Linux require active partitions (in their jargon) to boot from any
more.
Perhaps it is time to review this requirement in FreeBSD and drop it if
possible.
Opinions are welcome.
If there are no counterarguments, we will create a PR# to start the process.
jb


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Re: Booting 2nd(!) FreeBSD installation sitting on same disk

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 9:54 AM, Andre Albsmeier  wrote:

> For various reasons I have to use this disk layout:
>
> One harddisk with MBR and 3 slices on a i386 box:
>
> Slice 1: Windows XP :-(
> Slice 2: FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE V1
> Slice 3: FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE V2
>
> The MBR is configured as:
>
> options=packet,noupdate,nosetdrv
> default_selection=F2 (Slice 2)
>
> When booting, I can choose between:
>
> F1 Win
> F2 FreeBSD
> F3 FreeBSD
>
> However, when pressing F3, the system of slice 2(!) is
> loaded. This is due to the fact that boot1 always loads
> the first active FreeBSD slice ;-(.
>
> I have two possibilities to actually boot slice 3:
>
> 1. Playing with currdev when loader(8) is loaded (or
>using loader.conf of slice 2).
>
> 2. Using boot0cfg to allow updating the MBR.
>
> 1. is not really fexible and 2. means that the system
> remembers which slice was booted last (something I do
> not want).
>
> Is there no chance to actually honour the fact that F3 was
> pressed and boot from slice 3 without updating the MBR before?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Andre
>
>
There is the following port for managing boot selections :

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/amd64/packages-9.0-release/Latest/grub2.tbz

http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/grub2/


I do NOT know whether it may be useful for you or not .


Thank you very much .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk
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Booting 2nd(!) FreeBSD installation sitting on same disk

[Andre Albsmeier]

For various reasons I have to use this disk layout:

One harddisk with MBR and 3 slices on a i386 box:

Slice 1: Windows XP :-(
Slice 2: FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE V1
Slice 3: FreeBSD 7.4-STABLE V2

The MBR is configured as:

options=packet,noupdate,nosetdrv
default_selection=F2 (Slice 2)

When booting, I can choose between:

F1 Win
F2 FreeBSD
F3 FreeBSD

However, when pressing F3, the system of slice 2(!) is  
loaded. This is due to the fact that boot1 always loads
the first active FreeBSD slice ;-(.

I have two possibilities to actually boot slice 3:

1. Playing with currdev when loader(8) is loaded (or
   using loader.conf of slice 2).

2. Using boot0cfg to allow updating the MBR.
 
1. is not really fexible and 2. means that the system
remembers which slice was booted last (something I do
not want).
 
Is there no chance to actually honour the fact that F3 was
pressed and boot from slice 3 without updating the MBR before?
 
Thanks,
 
-Andre

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Booting from ZFS with serial console

[Brian McCann]

Hi all.  I am in desperate need of some help with ZFS (maybe GPT) and
serial consoles.  I use 19200 for my console speed for everything, so I
recompiled the boot blocks using "BOOT_COMCONSOLE_SPEED="19200" " in
/etc/make.conf.  I then ran this to install new blocks to my two drives in
the mirror pair:

gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ad4
gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ad6

If the keyboard is plugged in when the machine starts up, all is good.
 With the keyboard unplugged, I get a small error "dump" followed by "BTX
Halted".

I tried this with the files from the install DVD, and the same thing
happens..."BTX Halted" without a keyboard plugged in.

In both cases, /boot.config has : "-P -S19200".  I tried changing it to
"-Dh -S19200", and I get the "BTX Halted" on every boot now.

Can someone please shed some light on why it's crashing like this?  I'm
fairly confident this behavior is a bug and not "by design"...but I can't
believe that this bug would not be noticed up until now.

Thanks!
--Brian

-- 
_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_-=-_
Brian McCann

"I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of
people waiting to abuse me."
-- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"
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Re: booting a CD-ROM

[Michael Powell]

gs_stol...@juno.com wrote:

>   I have an old  FreeBSD  system that I haven't used for a long time
>   and I have forgotten the passwords.  This machine has  FreeBSD-4.3 
>   and  FreeBSD-4.7  on it, and also  MS'  Windows98 .  I tried getting
>   onto that system by booting with a  CD-ROM  which started going and
>   gave me the following messages:
> boot from  ATAPI  CD-ROM
> CD Loader 1.2
> Building the boot loader arguments
> Relocating the loader and the BTX
>   The system then did not output for a liitle over 5 minutes and then
>   typed:
> Starting the
> and after this I waited for over 5 minutes but the system did not type
> anything else.  Then I tried  booting that  CD-ROM  on another system
> where it booted successfully and the program on it ( FreesBIE version 2)
> ran and I could communicate with it.  I suspect a problem with the  boot
> loader on the first system.
>  Where can I get a new boot loader for that system?Since I want to
>  get a modern  FreeBSD  (version 9.1 or higher), I expect that will
>  include a new multi-system loader on it that I can use on the old
>  system if I can load just that.  How can I load just the boot loader?
>   Also, what is the structure of the  password  files (is this on the 
>  web  with a per system-version note so if it has been changed over
>  time, I can find those I need) on those systems, and how can I find
>  and clear out the password for  root  so I can get in and set its
>  password and then the other passwords?
> Thanks in advance for your help.

You did not specify which/what version of FreeBSD CD-ROM you were 
attempting this with. IIRC way back then bootable CDs used a 
floppy-emulation mechanism. If the hardware and its' BIOS is that old 
a modern day boot CD won't work as it is not emulating a floppy disk 
any longer.

Your best bet would be to locate a FreeBSD version 4.7 disk and try 
that. A long time ago there used to be included 2 floppy images that 
could be written out to floppy disks, thus creating bootable floppies. 
In lieu of not being able to boot from CD-ROM if there is a 1.44MB 
floppy drive in the box you may be able to boot off the floppies.

I'm a little rusty with dim memories, but essentially you want to boot 
into single user mode. I think it used to be you'd break into the loader
by hitting the space bar during the the little "twirlie" period when a '/' 
is spinning in the upper left corner of your screen. 

You would need some basic familiarity with vi such as how to do a basic 
edit and then save the file. Essentially what vipw does is open the password 
file using vi as the editor. You could then null out the root password by 
replacing the crypto string in the second field with a * character. When you 
save the file using vi commands and exit you will see a message about the 
password database being updated.

This is actually a FAQ:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/admin.html#FORGOT-ROOT-PW

Note the instructions for mounting / read-write, and the mount -a. The 
vipw lives in /usr/sbin, so /usr needs to be mounted in order to use it.

-Mike



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Re: booting a CD-ROM

[Xavier FreeBSD questions]

On Tue, Apr 03, 2012 at 05:46:20AM -0400, Thomas Mueller wrote:

Hi Thomas,

> >   I have an old  FreeBSD  system that I haven't used for a long
time and I have forgotten the passwords.  This machine has  FreeBSD-4.3
and  FreeBSD-4.7
> > on it, and also  MS'  Windows98 .  I tried getting onto that system by
booting with a  CD-ROM  which started going and gave me the following
messages:
> > boot from  ATAPI  CD-ROM
> > CD Loader 1.2
> > Building the boot loader arguments
> > Relocating the loader and the BTX
> >   The system then did not output for a liitle over 5 minutes and
then typed:
> > Starting the
> > and after this I waited for over 5 minutes but the system did not type
anything else.  Then I tried  booting that  CD-ROM  on another system where
it booted
> > successfully and the program on it ( FreesBIE version 2) ran and I
could communicate with it.  I suspect a problem with the  boot loader on
the first system.
> >  Where can I get a new boot loader for that system?Since I want
to get a modern  FreeBSD  (version 9.1 or higher), I expect that will
include a new
> > multi-system loader on it that I can use on the old system if I can
load just that.  How can I load just the boot loader?  Also, what is the
structure of the
> > password  files (is this on the  web  with a per system-version note so
if it has been changed over time, I can find those I need) on those
systems, and how
> > can I find and clear out the password for  root  so I can get in and
set its password and then the other passwords?
> > Thanks in advance for your help.
>
> You'll have to wait some months for FreeBSD >= 9.1.  Current release is
9.0.

I'm impatient ...

>
> I believe FreeBSD has a multisystem boot loader, BootEasy/boot0.  You can
also look to GRUB:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/grub

Another option is Boot-Repair-Disk (
http://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair-cd/home/Home/ ). This tool is easy
and intuitive.

See you.
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Re: booting a CD-ROM

[Thomas Mueller]

>   I have an old  FreeBSD  system that I haven't used for a long time and 
> I have forgotten the passwords.  This machine has  FreeBSD-4.3  and  
> FreeBSD-4.7
> on it, and also  MS'  Windows98 .  I tried getting onto that system by 
> booting with a  CD-ROM  which started going and gave me the following 
> messages:
> boot from  ATAPI  CD-ROM
> CD Loader 1.2
> Building the boot loader arguments
> Relocating the loader and the BTX
>   The system then did not output for a liitle over 5 minutes and then 
> typed:
> Starting the
> and after this I waited for over 5 minutes but the system did not type 
> anything else.  Then I tried  booting that  CD-ROM  on another system where 
> it booted
> successfully and the program on it ( FreesBIE version 2) ran and I could 
> communicate with it.  I suspect a problem with the  boot loader on the first 
> system.
>  Where can I get a new boot loader for that system?Since I want to 
> get a modern  FreeBSD  (version 9.1 or higher), I expect that will include a 
> new
> multi-system loader on it that I can use on the old system if I can load just 
> that.  How can I load just the boot loader?  Also, what is the structure of 
> the
> password  files (is this on the  web  with a per system-version note so if it 
> has been changed over time, I can find those I need) on those systems, and how
> can I find and clear out the password for  root  so I can get in and set its 
> password and then the other passwords?
> Thanks in advance for your help.

You'll have to wait some months for FreeBSD >= 9.1.  Current release is 9.0.

I believe FreeBSD has a multisystem boot loader, BootEasy/boot0.  You can also 
look to GRUB:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub 

I believe this is also included in FreeBSD ports collection.

If you run Linux, you can install LILO, which is capable of booting FreeBSD.

I believe the password files, /etc/master.passwd, are encrypted, so you can't 
get the password directly from that.

You would run the command passwd as root.

Tom
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booting a CD-ROM

[gs_stol...@juno.com]

  I have an old  FreeBSD  system that I haven't used for a long time and I 
have forgotten the passwords.  This machine has  FreeBSD-4.3  and  FreeBSD-4.7  
on it, and also  MS'  Windows98 .  I tried getting onto that system by booting 
with a  CD-ROM  which started going and gave me the following messages:
boot from  ATAPI  CD-ROM
CD Loader 1.2
Building the boot loader arguments
Relocating the loader and the BTX
  The system then did not output for a liitle over 5 minutes and then typed:
Starting the
and after this I waited for over 5 minutes but the system did not type anything 
else.  Then I tried  booting that  CD-ROM  on another system where it booted 
successfully and the program on it ( FreesBIE version 2) ran and I could 
communicate with it.  I suspect a problem with the  boot loader on the first 
system.
 Where can I get a new boot loader for that system?Since I want to get 
a modern  FreeBSD  (version 9.1 or higher), I expect that will include a new 
multi-system loader on it that I can use on the old system if I can load just 
that.  How can I load just the boot loader?  Also, what is the structure of the 
 password  files (is this on the  web  with a per system-version note so if it 
has been changed over time, I can find those I need) on those systems, and how 
can I find and clear out the password for  root  so I can get in and set its 
password and then the other passwords?
Thanks in advance for your help.


Refinance for 2.00%/3.092% APR
Loans under 729K usually qualify for US GOV backed refinance programs
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4f7aba00def6ce8088est02duc
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which media type I must use when booting ISO from grub

[Коньков Евгений]

HI

I want to install freebse and boot it from grub as:

title FreeBSD 8.0 (USB)
map --mem (hd0,0)/iso/FreeBSD8.iso (hd32)
map --hook
chainloader  (hd32)
boot

Which media type I must use when choosing 'media type' in menu?

as one way to solve problem is extract 8.2-RELEASE and packages
directories to root of FlashDrive.

but how to skip coping files from .iso?

-- 
С уважением,
 Коньков  mailto:kes-...@yandex.ru

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Re: Dual Booting Linux with FreeBSD 9.0 - Grub in MBR

[Kaya Saman]

On 01/28/2012 08:54 AM, Bas Smeelen wrote:

On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:32:10 +
Kaya Saman  wrote:


Hi,

am just wondering if anyone has successfully managed to boot FreeBSD
9.0 and Linux.

I run Fedora 16 x64 with Grub installed in my MBR.

FBSD9 installed as the new disk scheme GPT. I think (I manually
partitioned as my disk is quite crowded).

Anyway I found this:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2011-October/234858.html

and at the moment I have this in my Grub config:

menuentry 'FreeBSD 9.0'  {
  set root=(ada0,1,a)
  kfreebsd /boot/loader
  boot
}

But unfortunately no boot :-(


I have tried using (hd0,0), (hd0,1,a), (hd0,0,a), and (hd0,a) but
unfortunately nothing is working.


The Grub version is 2.


Can anyone help me?


Hi

I have the following partition layout
P1 linux swap
P2 FreeBSD
P3 linux
P4 extended which holds 2 more linux partitions

FreeBSD 9 installed on P2 and the FreeBSD bootloader on P2

In /etc/grub.d/40_custom I have put the following:

menuentry "FreeBSD" {
  set root=(hd0,2)
  chainloader +1
  }

Then run update-grub as root.

The (hd0,2) entry means first harddisk (this laptop only has one) and
the second partition, which holds the FreeBSD bootloader that gets
loaded with the enry chainloader +1.

This works for me. Hope it helps.

I think with the way you have the setup now, a module must be loaded
first in the grub config. Insmod ufs or similair.


Disclaimer: http://www.ose.nl/email


Thanks for the response!!

Actually I got this working but eventually was up for nearly 24 hours 
which meant I was too tired to post back here :-)



My Grub is just weird! Which is why I couldn't work things out. For 
anyone running Fedora 16 or alike this may help; I have this partition 
layout:


1. FreeBSD UFS2
4. Extended Partition
5. Linux / Ext4
2 Linux Swap
3 Linux JFS


Don't ask why 4,5 partitions but Fedora installer took over and left me 
with no control otherwise Fedora should have been on 2.



Now the Grub entry is as follows:


menuentry 'FreeBSD 9.0'  {
insmod part_msdos
set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
chainloader +1
}


I have no idea why my version of grub is sooo different from everyone 
elses as finding many dualboot bsd/linux combos with Grub entries being 
more like yours, Bas, this is certainly puzzling.



Anyhow the situation is solved :-)



Regards,


Kaya
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Re: Dual Booting Linux with FreeBSD 9.0 - Grub in MBR

[Bas Smeelen]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:32:10 +
Kaya Saman  wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> am just wondering if anyone has successfully managed to boot FreeBSD
> 9.0 and Linux.
> 
> I run Fedora 16 x64 with Grub installed in my MBR.
> 
> FBSD9 installed as the new disk scheme GPT. I think (I manually 
> partitioned as my disk is quite crowded).
> 
> Anyway I found this:
> 
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2011-October/234858.html
> 
> and at the moment I have this in my Grub config:
> 
> menuentry 'FreeBSD 9.0'  {
>  set root=(ada0,1,a)
>  kfreebsd /boot/loader
>  boot
> }
> 
> But unfortunately no boot :-(
> 
> 
> I have tried using (hd0,0), (hd0,1,a), (hd0,0,a), and (hd0,a) but 
> unfortunately nothing is working.
> 
> 
> The Grub version is 2.
> 
> 
> Can anyone help me?
> 

Hi

I have the following partition layout
P1 linux swap
P2 FreeBSD 
P3 linux
P4 extended which holds 2 more linux partitions

FreeBSD 9 installed on P2 and the FreeBSD bootloader on P2

In /etc/grub.d/40_custom I have put the following:

menuentry "FreeBSD" {
 set root=(hd0,2)
 chainloader +1
 }

Then run update-grub as root.

The (hd0,2) entry means first harddisk (this laptop only has one) and
the second partition, which holds the FreeBSD bootloader that gets
loaded with the enry chainloader +1.

This works for me. Hope it helps.

I think with the way you have the setup now, a module must be loaded
first in the grub config. Insmod ufs or similair.


Disclaimer: http://www.ose.nl/email

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Dual Booting Linux with FreeBSD 9.0 - Grub in MBR

[Kaya Saman]

Hi,

am just wondering if anyone has successfully managed to boot FreeBSD 9.0 
and Linux.


I run Fedora 16 x64 with Grub installed in my MBR.

FBSD9 installed as the new disk scheme GPT. I think (I manually 
partitioned as my disk is quite crowded).


Anyway I found this:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2011-October/234858.html

and at the moment I have this in my Grub config:

menuentry 'FreeBSD 9.0'  {
set root=(ada0,1,a)
kfreebsd /boot/loader
boot
}

But unfortunately no boot :-(


I have tried using (hd0,0), (hd0,1,a), (hd0,0,a), and (hd0,a) but 
unfortunately nothing is working.



The Grub version is 2.


Can anyone help me?


Thanks


Kaya
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gmirror failure booting 9.0 kernel upgrading from 8.2

[Artem Kajalainen]

> > I'm trying to upgrade a brand new server from 8.2 to 9.0 via source.  I've 
> > done this upgrade twice so far, once on a vmware test system, and once on a 
> > Sun X4100m2, both with success.
> >
> > On this system, which is a Supermicro motherboard, I have gmirror boot 
> > disk.  The other two did not (hardware RAID on the Sun).
> >
> > The boot fails as follows.  The gmirror is not degraded.  The part that 
> > concerns me is this:
> >
> > GEOM_PART: integrity check failed (mirror/gm0, MBR)
> >
> > This is loading a custom kernel, which pulls in geom_mirror as a module.
> >
> > I think the issue is that I have to convince gmirror to use ada0 and ada1 
> > instead of ad4 and ad6 as the component devices.  How does one accomplish 
> > this if one cannot boot?  The server is remote, so plugging in the memstick 
> > image will be tricky :)

I think you have the same issue ->
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-geom/2011-October/005071.html
I had the same problem. I destroyed mirror, made gpt partitions on one
disk, dumped fs from 8.2, installed 9.0 on this disk, booted from this
disk and made new mirror :-)
ad->ada is not a problem for gmirror.

---
With Best Regards / Ystävällisin terveisin
Artem Kajalainen
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gmirror failure booting 9.0 kernel upgrading from 8.2

[Vick Khera]

I'm trying to upgrade a brand new server from 8.2 to 9.0 via source.  I've done 
this upgrade twice so far, once on a vmware test system, and once on a Sun 
X4100m2, both with success.

On this system, which is a Supermicro motherboard, I have gmirror boot disk.  
The other two did not (hardware RAID on the Sun).

The boot fails as follows.  The gmirror is not degraded.  The part that 
concerns me is this:

 GEOM_PART: integrity check failed (mirror/gm0, MBR)

This is loading a custom kernel, which pulls in geom_mirror as a module.

I think the issue is that I have to convince gmirror to use ada0 and ada1 
instead of ad4 and ad6 as the component devices.  How does one accomplish this 
if one cannot boot?  The server is remote, so plugging in the memstick image 
will be tricky :)




KDB: debugger backends: ddb
KDB: current backend: ddb
Copyright (c) 1992-2012 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE #0: Tue Jan 17 14:49:58 EST 2012

vi...@lorax.kcilink.com:/u/lorax1/usr9/obj.amd64/u/lorax1/usr9/src/sys/KCI64 
amd64
CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E31220 @ 3.10GHz (3093.04-MHz K8-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x206a7  Family = 6  Model = 2a  Stepping = 7
  
Features=0xbfebfbff
  
Features2=0x15bae3ff
  AMD Features=0x28100800
  AMD Features2=0x1
  TSC: P-state invariant, performance statistics
real memory  = 8589934592 (8192 MB)
avail memory = 8229543936 (7848 MB)
Event timer "LAPIC" quality 600
ACPI APIC Table: 
FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor System Detected: 4 CPUs
FreeBSD/SMP: 1 package(s) x 4 core(s)
 cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID:  0
 cpu1 (AP): APIC ID:  2
 cpu2 (AP): APIC ID:  4
 cpu3 (AP): APIC ID:  6
ioapic0  irqs 0-23 on motherboard
kbd1 at kbdmux0
acpi0:  on motherboard
acpi0: Power Button (fixed)
Timecounter "ACPI-fast" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 900
acpi_timer0: <24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz> port 0x408-0x40b on acpi0
cpu0:  on acpi0
cpu1:  on acpi0
cpu2:  on acpi0
cpu3:  on acpi0
pcib0:  port 0xcf8-0xcff on acpi0
pci0:  on pcib0
pci0:  at device 22.0 (no driver attached)
pci0:  at device 22.1 (no driver attached)
ehci0:  mem 0xfbd03000-0xfbd033ff irq 16 at 
device 26.0 on pci0
usbus0: EHCI version 1.0
usbus0:  on ehci0
pcib1:  irq 16 at device 28.0 on pci0
pci1:  on pcib1
pcib2:  irq 16 at device 28.4 on pci0
pci2:  on pcib2
em0:  port 0xe000-0xe01f mem 
0xfbc0-0xfbc1,0xfbc2-0xfbc23fff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci2
em0: Using MSIX interrupts with 3 vectors
em0: Ethernet address: 00:25:90:51:a3:aa
pcib3:  irq 17 at device 28.5 on pci0
pci3:  on pcib3
em1:  port 0xd000-0xd01f mem 
0xfbb0-0xfbb1,0xfbb2-0xfbb23fff irq 17 at device 0.0 on pci3
em1: Using MSIX interrupts with 3 vectors
em1: Ethernet address: 00:25:90:51:a3:ab
pcib4:  irq 18 at device 28.6 on pci0
pci4:  on pcib4
em2:  port 0xc000-0xc01f mem 
0xfba0-0xfba1,0xfba2-0xfba23fff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci4
em2: Using MSIX interrupts with 3 vectors
em2: Ethernet address: 00:25:90:51:a3:ac
pcib5:  irq 19 at device 28.7 on pci0
pci5:  on pcib5
em3:  port 0xb000-0xb01f mem 
0xfb90-0xfb91,0xfb92-0xfb923fff irq 19 at device 0.0 on pci5
em3: Using MSIX interrupts with 3 vectors
em3: Ethernet address: 00:25:90:51:a3:ad
ehci1:  mem 0xfbd02000-0xfbd023ff irq 23 at 
device 29.0 on pci0
usbus1: EHCI version 1.0
usbus1:  on ehci1
pcib6:  at device 30.0 on pci0
pci6:  on pcib6
vgapci0:  mem 
0xfa00-0xfaff,0xfb80-0xfb803fff,0xfb00-0xfb7f irq 23 at 
device 3.0 on pci6
isab0:  at device 31.0 on pci0
isa0:  on isab0
ahci0:  port 
0xf050-0xf057,0xf040-0xf043,0xf030-0xf037,0xf020-0xf023,0xf000-0xf01f mem 
0xfbd01000-0xfbd017ff irq 19 at device 31.2 on pci0
ahci0: AHCI v1.30 with 6 6Gbps ports, Port Multiplier not supported
ahcich0:  at channel 0 on ahci0
ahcich1:  at channel 1 on ahci0
ahcich2:  at channel 2 on ahci0
ahcich3:  at channel 3 on ahci0
ahcich4:  at channel 4 on ahci0
ahcich5:  at channel 5 on ahci0
pci0:  at device 31.3 (no driver attached)
acpi_button0:  on acpi0
hpet0:  iomem 0xfed0-0xfed003ff on acpi0
Timecounter "HPET" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 950
Event timer "HPET" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 550
Event timer "HPET1" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 440
Event timer "HPET2" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 440
Event timer "HPET3" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 440
Event timer "HPET4" frequency 14318180 Hz quality 440
attimer0:  port 0x40-0x43 irq 0 on acpi0
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
Event timer "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 100
atrtc0:  port 0x70-0x71 irq 8 on acpi0
Event timer "RTC" frequency 32768 Hz quality 0
atkbdc0:  port 0x60,0x64 irq 1 on acpi0
atkbd0:  irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
atkbd0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
uart0: <16550 or compatible> port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on acpi0
uart0: console (115200,n,8,1)
uart2: <16550 or compat

Re: booting

[Jonathan Vomacka]

On Dec 17, 2011 9:04 AM, "Maxime-Etienne de Gier" 
wrote:
>
> I am really interested in Freebsd or PC-BSD but unfortunately every time
> when I download an ISO of either of them and try to boot up (from the
> DVD-ROM) my machine will not boot up (Laptop PackardBell).
> Any insight?  Thanks and much regard.
>
>
> Maxime.
>
>
> --
> Maxime-Etienne de Gier 
>
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Any errors? What is the experience when you try to boot? We can not map a
problem to an entire manufacturer since the only mentioned was that it was
a Packard bell.

I know this might sound like a stupid question, but did you verify the
md5sum of the download before you burned the iso?.  please give us detailed
information so we can help you out.
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Re: booting

[gpeel]

On Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:10:37 +0200, Rares Aioanei wrote
> On 12/17/2011 04:04 PM, Maxime-Etienne de Gier wrote:
> > I am really interested in Freebsd or PC-BSD but unfortunately every time
> > when I download an ISO of either of them and try to boot up (from the
> > DVD-ROM) my machine will not boot up (Laptop PackardBell).
> > Any insight?  Thanks and much regard.
> >
> >
> > Maxime.
> >
> >
> What errors do you get, if any? Is the BIOS set accordingly?
> 
> -- 
> Rares Aioanei
> 
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Are you burning the ISO image corectly i.e. making a bootable CD/DVD or are 
you just copying the ISO file to the DVD? If the latter, you need to get a 
ISO image burner (software) and burn it properly.

-Grant
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Re: booting

[Bill Tillman]

 



From: Maxime-Etienne de Gier 
To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org 
Sent: Saturday, December 17, 2011 9:04 AM
Subject: booting


I am really interested in Freebsd or PC-BSD but unfortunately every time
when I download an ISO of either of them and try to boot up (from the
DVD-ROM) my machine will not boot up (Laptop PackardBell).
Any insight?  Thanks and much regard.


Maxime.


-- 
Maxime-Etienne de Gier 

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We have to start with the basics here:

1. You say you download the iso but you don't indicate that your burn the iso 
to DVD. Sorry, don't mean to cast any doubts on your ability but we get lots of 
posts from new users who simply copy the iso file to a DVD and then expect it 
to boot. The iso file must be translated by a program like Nero, or burncd in 
order to make it bootable.

2. What exactly are the error messages you are seeing on the screen at the time 
it attempts to boot?
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Re: booting

[Rares Aioanei]

On 12/17/2011 04:04 PM, Maxime-Etienne de Gier wrote:

I am really interested in Freebsd or PC-BSD but unfortunately every time
when I download an ISO of either of them and try to boot up (from the
DVD-ROM) my machine will not boot up (Laptop PackardBell).
Any insight?  Thanks and much regard.


Maxime.



What errors do you get, if any? Is the BIOS set accordingly?

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booting

[Maxime-Etienne de Gier]

I am really interested in Freebsd or PC-BSD but unfortunately every time
when I download an ISO of either of them and try to boot up (from the
DVD-ROM) my machine will not boot up (Laptop PackardBell).
Any insight?  Thanks and much regard.


Maxime.


-- 
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Re: Hardware booting problem

[Derek Ragona]

At 03:34 AM 9/15/2011, Doug Hardie wrote:
I encountered a situation today that I do not understand.  This is a very 
old i386 PC that does not have a usable CD drive.  The existing drive uses 
a very funky SCSI connector that I have nothing for.  The system disk is 
SCSI and there was one additional PATA drive used for additional 
storage.  The PATA drive failed.  It won't even stick around in /dev for 
more than a couple minutes after boot and there are lots of messages about 
bad sectors.  The data is completely backed up and the that drive is over 
5 years old.


I removed the old drive and installed a new one.  System will not 
boot.  It hangs in the BIOS.  Never gets around to installing the SCSI 
BIOS.  My first guess was there was no boot sector on the SCSI 
drive.  That seems unusual since my other systems boot off the SCSI drives 
just fine.  This one used to also before I added the PATA drive.  However, 
if I put the dead drive back in along with the new one, then it 
boots.  This also implies that the boot sector was only on the PATA 
drive.  But the PATA drive is for all intents and purposes dead.  So how 
is it booting?  Is there any way to look into the SCSI drive and see if 
there is a boot sector there?


This is more a curiosity item as there are additional failures starting to 
occur in that computer.  We are going to replace it.  Its around 10 years old.


Depending on your SCSI card BIOS, some allow you to set which LUN it 
boots.  You may want to explore the SCSI settings, and try to set the new 
drive as the first boot device, then try removing the old drive.


-Derek

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Hardware booting problem

[Doug Hardie]

I encountered a situation today that I do not understand.  This is a very old 
i386 PC that does not have a usable CD drive.  The existing drive uses a very 
funky SCSI connector that I have nothing for.  The system disk is SCSI and 
there was one additional PATA drive used for additional storage.  The PATA 
drive failed.  It won't even stick around in /dev for more than a couple 
minutes after boot and there are lots of messages about bad sectors.  The data 
is completely backed up and the that drive is over 5 years old.

I removed the old drive and installed a new one.  System will not boot.  It 
hangs in the BIOS.  Never gets around to installing the SCSI BIOS.  My first 
guess was there was no boot sector on the SCSI drive.  That seems unusual since 
my other systems boot off the SCSI drives just fine.  This one used to also 
before I added the PATA drive.  However, if I put the dead drive back in along 
with the new one, then it boots.  This also implies that the boot sector was 
only on the PATA drive.  But the PATA drive is for all intents and purposes 
dead.  So how is it booting?  Is there any way to look into the SCSI drive and 
see if there is a boot sector there?

This is more a curiosity item as there are additional failures starting to 
occur in that computer.  We are going to replace it.  Its around 10 years old.

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Re: Help with Booting

[Doug Hardie]

On 23 April 2011, at 12:45, Michael L. Squires wrote:

> I haven't seen a verbose dmesg output booting from a non-RAID hard drive.
> 
> I have 7.4-STABLE working on several multi-CPU Opteron systems, but they are 
> all Tyan motherboards.  Are Rioworks/Arima still in business?

I believe so.  Their web page is there, but mostly in Chinese.

> 
> Rather than use the on-board controllers I've just bought some of the LSI 
> 300-8X PCI-X RAID controllers which are cheap and work very well with SATA 2 
> drives (and FreeBSD).  The Adaptec 2610 series are even cheaper, but they
> are only SATA 1.

These boxes have no additional room for expansion cards.  They have 4 
apparently hot-swappable drives in the 
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Re: Help with Booting

[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

On Sunday 24 April 2011 00:37:52 Doug Hardie wrote:
> 
> On 23 April 2011, at 03:04, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> 
> > On Saturday 23 April 2011 16:30:39 Doug Hardie wrote:
> >> 
> >> On 23 April 2011, at 02:20, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> >>> 
> >>> I only can tell what I do when a machine does not boot from the 
> >>> installation media: I plug the disk into another machine, install the 
> >>> generic kernel, edit /etc and put it back.
> >>> 
> >>> If this does not work, it will be hard.
> >> 
> >> That works, but then I end up without having RAID activated.  I am trying 
> >> to get the hardware RAID working.
> >> 
> > but your system runs then. Isn't it possible then to build a custom kernel 
> > which supports the specific RAID hardware on this machine and install the 
> > new kernel there.
> > 
> > Oh, could it be that the loader is not able to start from the RAID 
> > hardware? Is it possible that even a custom kernel will need an extra boot 
> > medium to start with?
> 
> Thats what I was hoping to be able to do.  However, I can't get it to boot 
> without the RAID either.  I have tried numerous tests of formatting the 
> drives on the RAID, then moving them to another system and installing the 
> software.  They still won't boot.  The RAID appears to be using a very 
> unusual bootstrap.  I get the message "OS not found"  continuously on the 
> screen regardless of how I build the system.  Somehow I am going to need to 
> be able to boot from CD or memstick to get this working.

is the other system identical to your system? If you move disks from one RAID 
controller to another RAID controller, the success depends on many more factors 
than just the proper plugs.

Isn't there a way to boot the machine without RAID?

Erich
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Re: Help with Booting

[Michael L. Squires]

I haven't seen a verbose dmesg output booting from a non-RAID hard drive.

I have 7.4-STABLE working on several multi-CPU Opteron systems, but they 
are all Tyan motherboards.  Are Rioworks/Arima still in business?


Rather than use the on-board controllers I've just bought some of the LSI 
300-8X PCI-X RAID controllers which are cheap and work very well with SATA 
2 drives (and FreeBSD).  The Adaptec 2610 series are even cheaper, but they

are only SATA 1.

Mike Squires
Tyan S2885
Tyan S4881
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Re: Help with Booting

[Doug Hardie]

On 23 April 2011, at 03:04, Erich Dollansky wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On Saturday 23 April 2011 16:30:39 Doug Hardie wrote:
>> 
>> On 23 April 2011, at 02:20, Erich Dollansky wrote:
>>> 
>>> I only can tell what I do when a machine does not boot from the 
>>> installation media: I plug the disk into another machine, install the 
>>> generic kernel, edit /etc and put it back.
>>> 
>>> If this does not work, it will be hard.
>> 
>> That works, but then I end up without having RAID activated.  I am trying to 
>> get the hardware RAID working.
>> 
> but your system runs then. Isn't it possible then to build a custom kernel 
> which supports the specific RAID hardware on this machine and install the new 
> kernel there.
> 
> Oh, could it be that the loader is not able to start from the RAID hardware? 
> Is it possible that even a custom kernel will need an extra boot medium to 
> start with?

Thats what I was hoping to be able to do.  However, I can't get it to boot 
without the RAID either.  I have tried numerous tests of formatting the drives 
on the RAID, then moving them to another system and installing the software.  
They still won't boot.  The RAID appears to be using a very unusual bootstrap.  
I get the message "OS not found"  continuously on the screen regardless of how 
I build the system.  Somehow I am going to need to be able to boot from CD or 
memstick to get this working.

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Re: Help with Booting

[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

On Saturday 23 April 2011 16:30:39 Doug Hardie wrote:
> 
> On 23 April 2011, at 02:20, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> > 
> > I only can tell what I do when a machine does not boot from the 
> > installation media: I plug the disk into another machine, install the 
> > generic kernel, edit /etc and put it back.
> > 
> > If this does not work, it will be hard.
> 
> That works, but then I end up without having RAID activated.  I am trying to 
> get the hardware RAID working.
> 
but your system runs then. Isn't it possible then to build a custom kernel 
which supports the specific RAID hardware on this machine and install the new 
kernel there.

Oh, could it be that the loader is not able to start from the RAID hardware? Is 
it possible that even a custom kernel will need an extra boot medium to start 
with?

Erich
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Re: Help with Booting

[Doug Hardie]

On 23 April 2011, at 02:20, Erich Dollansky wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I only can tell what I do when a machine does not boot from the installation 
> media: I plug the disk into another machine, install the generic kernel, edit 
> /etc and put it back.
> 
> If this does not work, it will be hard.

That works, but then I end up without having RAID activated.  I am trying to 
get the hardware RAID working.

> 
> Erich
> 
> On Saturday 23 April 2011 14:25:13 Doug Hardie wrote:
>> 
>> On 22 April 2011, at 23:46, Erich Dollansky wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> On Saturday 23 April 2011 12:57:32 Doug Hardie wrote:
 
 On 22 April 2011, at 21:28, Erich Dollansky wrote:
 
> It looks to me that not even the loader loads. Is this true?
> 
 I am not sure.  The last message is the timestamp from the original 
 distribution build.  Then is a line with just the '/' character that 
 should spin a bit.  It doesn't.  
 
 By playing around a bit I got it a bit farther.  I took one of the raid 
 disks and mounted it in a different system.  I did an install on it but 
 without changing the label other than to use all the disk.  Then I put it 
 back in the production system and booted.  It appears to retain the RAID 
 characteristics, but all I get is a '-' at the top left of the screen.  I 
 then plugged in the memstick image and booted from that.  Right after the 
 last DOS window I pressed F10 which took me to a FreeBSD boot  line with 
 the default pointing to ad0.  I used 0:ad(4,a)/boot/loader and it went on 
 to the same point as before, but then a bit farther.  I now see:
 
>>> this is all to weird for me. Could you install a disk not using the raid 
>>> hardware?
>>> 
>>> It would then exclude the motherboard as the cause.
>>> 
>>> Erich
>> 
>> No. That didn't work either.  I had been using the machine on amd64 but I 
>> had to install with the drive on another system.  I couldn't get it to boot 
>> of CD or memstick.  However, the memstick I used then was dead today so I 
>> bought a new one hoping that was the problem.  Unfortunately this stick is 
>> good, but it still won't boot off it.
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
 Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf
 /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8ffac1 |
 
 The '|' normally spins a couple of times and moves on to the next section. 
  However, its hung there now.
 
 
> 
> On Saturday 23 April 2011 05:38:41 Doug Hardie wrote:
>> I have an AMD based system that is driving me nuts.  I am trying to 
>> install 8.2 on it but can't get past the first boot.  I had a system up 
>> and running on it before, but I had to remove a drive and do the install 
>> on another computer.  That worked, but now I need to use the built in 
>> RAID hardware.  As best as I can tell I am going to have to install on 
>> the the actual hardware.  Motherboard is an Arima NM46X.  The machine 
>> appears to be about 6 years old.
>> 
>> I have tried to boot the install disk, the live filesystem disk, and the 
>> memstick image for FreeBSD 7.0 through 8.2.  All of them do exactly the 
>> same thing:
>> 
>> Bootstart starts.
>> 
>> BTX loader lists the drives and memory
>> 
>> FreeBSD bootstrap loader version 1.1 starts.  I get the build date and 
>> then a new line with just a '/' on it.  It never begins to spin.  No 
>> additional I/O occurs with the boot device.
>> 
>> The memstick and CDs are good.  They boot just fine on another computer, 
>> just not this one.  I have had to work around CD issues in the past, but 
>> I thought the memstick would work if the BIOS would recognize it and 
>> boot from it.  It recognizes it and tries to boot.  I need some ideas 
>> here as the RAID is essential for this application.  Thanks,
>> 
>> 
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>> 
> 
 
 
 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 

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Re: Help with Booting

[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

I only can tell what I do when a machine does not boot from the installation 
media: I plug the disk into another machine, install the generic kernel, edit 
/etc and put it back.

If this does not work, it will be hard.

Erich

On Saturday 23 April 2011 14:25:13 Doug Hardie wrote:
> 
> On 22 April 2011, at 23:46, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On Saturday 23 April 2011 12:57:32 Doug Hardie wrote:
> >> 
> >> On 22 April 2011, at 21:28, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> >> 
> >>> It looks to me that not even the loader loads. Is this true?
> >>> 
> >> I am not sure.  The last message is the timestamp from the original 
> >> distribution build.  Then is a line with just the '/' character that 
> >> should spin a bit.  It doesn't.  
> >> 
> >> By playing around a bit I got it a bit farther.  I took one of the raid 
> >> disks and mounted it in a different system.  I did an install on it but 
> >> without changing the label other than to use all the disk.  Then I put it 
> >> back in the production system and booted.  It appears to retain the RAID 
> >> characteristics, but all I get is a '-' at the top left of the screen.  I 
> >> then plugged in the memstick image and booted from that.  Right after the 
> >> last DOS window I pressed F10 which took me to a FreeBSD boot  line with 
> >> the default pointing to ad0.  I used 0:ad(4,a)/boot/loader and it went on 
> >> to the same point as before, but then a bit farther.  I now see:
> >> 
> > this is all to weird for me. Could you install a disk not using the raid 
> > hardware?
> > 
> > It would then exclude the motherboard as the cause.
> > 
> > Erich
> 
> No. That didn't work either.  I had been using the machine on amd64 but I had 
> to install with the drive on another system.  I couldn't get it to boot of CD 
> or memstick.  However, the memstick I used then was dead today so I bought a 
> new one hoping that was the problem.  Unfortunately this stick is good, but 
> it still won't boot off it.
> 
> 
> > 
> > 
> >> Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf
> >> /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8ffac1 |
> >> 
> >> The '|' normally spins a couple of times and moves on to the next section. 
> >>  However, its hung there now.
> >> 
> >> 
> >>> 
> >>> On Saturday 23 April 2011 05:38:41 Doug Hardie wrote:
>  I have an AMD based system that is driving me nuts.  I am trying to 
>  install 8.2 on it but can't get past the first boot.  I had a system up 
>  and running on it before, but I had to remove a drive and do the install 
>  on another computer.  That worked, but now I need to use the built in 
>  RAID hardware.  As best as I can tell I am going to have to install on 
>  the the actual hardware.  Motherboard is an Arima NM46X.  The machine 
>  appears to be about 6 years old.
>  
>  I have tried to boot the install disk, the live filesystem disk, and the 
>  memstick image for FreeBSD 7.0 through 8.2.  All of them do exactly the 
>  same thing:
>  
>  Bootstart starts.
>  
>  BTX loader lists the drives and memory
>  
>  FreeBSD bootstrap loader version 1.1 starts.  I get the build date and 
>  then a new line with just a '/' on it.  It never begins to spin.  No 
>  additional I/O occurs with the boot device.
>  
>  The memstick and CDs are good.  They boot just fine on another computer, 
>  just not this one.  I have had to work around CD issues in the past, but 
>  I thought the memstick would work if the BIOS would recognize it and 
>  boot from it.  It recognizes it and tries to boot.  I need some ideas 
>  here as the RAID is essential for this application.  Thanks,
>  
>  
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> >>> 
> >> 
> >> 
> >> 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: Help with Booting

[Doug Hardie]

On 22 April 2011, at 23:46, Erich Dollansky wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> On Saturday 23 April 2011 12:57:32 Doug Hardie wrote:
>> 
>> On 22 April 2011, at 21:28, Erich Dollansky wrote:
>> 
>>> It looks to me that not even the loader loads. Is this true?
>>> 
>> I am not sure.  The last message is the timestamp from the original 
>> distribution build.  Then is a line with just the '/' character that should 
>> spin a bit.  It doesn't.  
>> 
>> By playing around a bit I got it a bit farther.  I took one of the raid 
>> disks and mounted it in a different system.  I did an install on it but 
>> without changing the label other than to use all the disk.  Then I put it 
>> back in the production system and booted.  It appears to retain the RAID 
>> characteristics, but all I get is a '-' at the top left of the screen.  I 
>> then plugged in the memstick image and booted from that.  Right after the 
>> last DOS window I pressed F10 which took me to a FreeBSD boot  line with the 
>> default pointing to ad0.  I used 0:ad(4,a)/boot/loader and it went on to the 
>> same point as before, but then a bit farther.  I now see:
>> 
> this is all to weird for me. Could you install a disk not using the raid 
> hardware?
> 
> It would then exclude the motherboard as the cause.
> 
> Erich

No. That didn't work either.  I had been using the machine on amd64 but I had 
to install with the drive on another system.  I couldn't get it to boot of CD 
or memstick.  However, the memstick I used then was dead today so I bought a 
new one hoping that was the problem.  Unfortunately this stick is good, but it 
still won't boot off it.


> 
> 
>> Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf
>> /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8ffac1 |
>> 
>> The '|' normally spins a couple of times and moves on to the next section.  
>> However, its hung there now.
>> 
>> 
>>> 
>>> On Saturday 23 April 2011 05:38:41 Doug Hardie wrote:
 I have an AMD based system that is driving me nuts.  I am trying to 
 install 8.2 on it but can't get past the first boot.  I had a system up 
 and running on it before, but I had to remove a drive and do the install 
 on another computer.  That worked, but now I need to use the built in RAID 
 hardware.  As best as I can tell I am going to have to install on the the 
 actual hardware.  Motherboard is an Arima NM46X.  The machine appears to 
 be about 6 years old.
 
 I have tried to boot the install disk, the live filesystem disk, and the 
 memstick image for FreeBSD 7.0 through 8.2.  All of them do exactly the 
 same thing:
 
 Bootstart starts.
 
 BTX loader lists the drives and memory
 
 FreeBSD bootstrap loader version 1.1 starts.  I get the build date and 
 then a new line with just a '/' on it.  It never begins to spin.  No 
 additional I/O occurs with the boot device.
 
 The memstick and CDs are good.  They boot just fine on another computer, 
 just not this one.  I have had to work around CD issues in the past, but I 
 thought the memstick would work if the BIOS would recognize it and boot 
 from it.  It recognizes it and tries to boot.  I need some ideas here as 
 the RAID is essential for this application.  Thanks,
 
 
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>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 

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Re: Help with Booting

[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

On Saturday 23 April 2011 12:57:32 Doug Hardie wrote:
> 
> On 22 April 2011, at 21:28, Erich Dollansky wrote:
> 
> > It looks to me that not even the loader loads. Is this true?
> > 
> I am not sure.  The last message is the timestamp from the original 
> distribution build.  Then is a line with just the '/' character that should 
> spin a bit.  It doesn't.  
> 
> By playing around a bit I got it a bit farther.  I took one of the raid disks 
> and mounted it in a different system.  I did an install on it but without 
> changing the label other than to use all the disk.  Then I put it back in the 
> production system and booted.  It appears to retain the RAID characteristics, 
> but all I get is a '-' at the top left of the screen.  I then plugged in the 
> memstick image and booted from that.  Right after the last DOS window I 
> pressed F10 which took me to a FreeBSD boot  line with the default pointing 
> to ad0.  I used 0:ad(4,a)/boot/loader and it went on to the same point as 
> before, but then a bit farther.  I now see:
> 
this is all to weird for me. Could you install a disk not using the raid 
hardware?

It would then exclude the motherboard as the cause.

Erich


> Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf
> /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8ffac1 |
> 
> The '|' normally spins a couple of times and moves on to the next section.  
> However, its hung there now.
> 
> 
> > 
> > On Saturday 23 April 2011 05:38:41 Doug Hardie wrote:
> >> I have an AMD based system that is driving me nuts.  I am trying to 
> >> install 8.2 on it but can't get past the first boot.  I had a system up 
> >> and running on it before, but I had to remove a drive and do the install 
> >> on another computer.  That worked, but now I need to use the built in RAID 
> >> hardware.  As best as I can tell I am going to have to install on the the 
> >> actual hardware.  Motherboard is an Arima NM46X.  The machine appears to 
> >> be about 6 years old.
> >> 
> >> I have tried to boot the install disk, the live filesystem disk, and the 
> >> memstick image for FreeBSD 7.0 through 8.2.  All of them do exactly the 
> >> same thing:
> >> 
> >> Bootstart starts.
> >> 
> >> BTX loader lists the drives and memory
> >> 
> >> FreeBSD bootstrap loader version 1.1 starts.  I get the build date and 
> >> then a new line with just a '/' on it.  It never begins to spin.  No 
> >> additional I/O occurs with the boot device.
> >> 
> >> The memstick and CDs are good.  They boot just fine on another computer, 
> >> just not this one.  I have had to work around CD issues in the past, but I 
> >> thought the memstick would work if the BIOS would recognize it and boot 
> >> from it.  It recognizes it and tries to boot.  I need some ideas here as 
> >> the RAID is essential for this application.  Thanks,
> >> 
> >> 
> >> ___
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> >> 
> >> 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
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Re: Help with Booting

[Doug Hardie]

On 22 April 2011, at 21:28, Erich Dollansky wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> does the loader start?
> 
> It looks to me that not even the loader loads. Is this true?
> 
> Erich

I am not sure.  The last message is the timestamp from the original 
distribution build.  Then is a line with just the '/' character that should 
spin a bit.  It doesn't.  

By playing around a bit I got it a bit farther.  I took one of the raid disks 
and mounted it in a different system.  I did an install on it but without 
changing the label other than to use all the disk.  Then I put it back in the 
production system and booted.  It appears to retain the RAID characteristics, 
but all I get is a '-' at the top left of the screen.  I then plugged in the 
memstick image and booted from that.  Right after the last DOS window I pressed 
F10 which took me to a FreeBSD boot  line with the default pointing to ad0.  I 
used 0:ad(4,a)/boot/loader and it went on to the same point as before, but then 
a bit farther.  I now see:

Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf
/boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8ffac1 |

The '|' normally spins a couple of times and moves on to the next section.  
However, its hung there now.


> 
> On Saturday 23 April 2011 05:38:41 Doug Hardie wrote:
>> I have an AMD based system that is driving me nuts.  I am trying to install 
>> 8.2 on it but can't get past the first boot.  I had a system up and running 
>> on it before, but I had to remove a drive and do the install on another 
>> computer.  That worked, but now I need to use the built in RAID hardware.  
>> As best as I can tell I am going to have to install on the the actual 
>> hardware.  Motherboard is an Arima NM46X.  The machine appears to be about 6 
>> years old.
>> 
>> I have tried to boot the install disk, the live filesystem disk, and the 
>> memstick image for FreeBSD 7.0 through 8.2.  All of them do exactly the same 
>> thing:
>> 
>> Bootstart starts.
>> 
>> BTX loader lists the drives and memory
>> 
>> FreeBSD bootstrap loader version 1.1 starts.  I get the build date and then 
>> a new line with just a '/' on it.  It never begins to spin.  No additional 
>> I/O occurs with the boot device.
>> 
>> The memstick and CDs are good.  They boot just fine on another computer, 
>> just not this one.  I have had to work around CD issues in the past, but I 
>> thought the memstick would work if the BIOS would recognize it and boot from 
>> it.  It recognizes it and tries to boot.  I need some ideas here as the RAID 
>> is essential for this application.  Thanks,
>> 
>> 
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> 

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Re: Help with Booting

[Erich Dollansky]

Hi,

does the loader start?

It looks to me that not even the loader loads. Is this true?

Erich

On Saturday 23 April 2011 05:38:41 Doug Hardie wrote:
> I have an AMD based system that is driving me nuts.  I am trying to install 
> 8.2 on it but can't get past the first boot.  I had a system up and running 
> on it before, but I had to remove a drive and do the install on another 
> computer.  That worked, but now I need to use the built in RAID hardware.  As 
> best as I can tell I am going to have to install on the the actual hardware.  
> Motherboard is an Arima NM46X.  The machine appears to be about 6 years old.
> 
> I have tried to boot the install disk, the live filesystem disk, and the 
> memstick image for FreeBSD 7.0 through 8.2.  All of them do exactly the same 
> thing:
> 
> Bootstart starts.
> 
> BTX loader lists the drives and memory
> 
> FreeBSD bootstrap loader version 1.1 starts.  I get the build date and then a 
> new line with just a '/' on it.  It never begins to spin.  No additional I/O 
> occurs with the boot device.
> 
> The memstick and CDs are good.  They boot just fine on another computer, just 
> not this one.  I have had to work around CD issues in the past, but I thought 
> the memstick would work if the BIOS would recognize it and boot from it.  It 
> recognizes it and tries to boot.  I need some ideas here as the RAID is 
> essential for this application.  Thanks,
> 
> 
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Re: Help with Booting

[Doug Hardie]

On 22 April 2011, at 16:37, Michael Ross wrote:

> Am 23.04.2011, 00:38 Uhr, schrieb Doug Hardie :
> 
>> I have an AMD based system that is driving me nuts.  I am trying to install 
>> 8.2 on it but can't get past the first boot.  I had a system up and running 
>> on it before, but I had to remove a drive and do the install on another 
>> computer.  That worked, but now I need to use the built in RAID hardware.  
>> As best as I can tell I am going to have to install on the the actual 
>> hardware.  Motherboard is an Arima NM46X.  The machine appears to be about 6 
>> years old.
>> 
>> I have tried to boot the install disk, the live filesystem disk, and the 
>> memstick image for FreeBSD 7.0 through 8.2.  All of them do exactly the same 
>> thing:
>> 
>> Bootstart starts.
>> 
>> BTX loader lists the drives and memory
>> 
>> FreeBSD bootstrap loader version 1.1 starts.  I get the build date and then 
>> a new line with just a '/' on it.  It never begins to spin.  No additional 
>> I/O occurs with the boot device.
>> 
>> The memstick and CDs are good.  They boot just fine on another computer, 
>> just not this one.  I have had to work around CD issues in the past, but I 
>> thought the memstick would work if the BIOS would recognize it and boot from 
>> it.  It recognizes it and tries to boot.  I need some ideas here as the RAID 
>> is essential for this application.  Thanks,
>> 
> 
> Architecture mismatch, trying to boot a amd64 on an i386 machine?

That machine runs amd64 just fine.  I have to build the disk on another 
computer.  This one will not boot any of the CDs from 6.0 and on.  I have only 
tried the 8.2 memstick version.  All of the CDs and memstick boot just fine on 
a different computer.  I suspect its something with the BIOS but no ideas where 
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Re: Help with Booting

[Michael Ross]

Am 23.04.2011, 00:38 Uhr, schrieb Doug Hardie :

I have an AMD based system that is driving me nuts.  I am trying to  
install 8.2 on it but can't get past the first boot.  I had a system up  
and running on it before, but I had to remove a drive and do the install  
on another computer.  That worked, but now I need to use the built in  
RAID hardware.  As best as I can tell I am going to have to install on  
the the actual hardware.  Motherboard is an Arima NM46X.  The machine  
appears to be about 6 years old.


I have tried to boot the install disk, the live filesystem disk, and the  
memstick image for FreeBSD 7.0 through 8.2.  All of them do exactly the  
same thing:


Bootstart starts.

BTX loader lists the drives and memory

FreeBSD bootstrap loader version 1.1 starts.  I get the build date and  
then a new line with just a '/' on it.  It never begins to spin.  No  
additional I/O occurs with the boot device.


The memstick and CDs are good.  They boot just fine on another computer,  
just not this one.  I have had to work around CD issues in the past, but  
I thought the memstick would work if the BIOS would recognize it and  
boot from it.  It recognizes it and tries to boot.  I need some ideas  
here as the RAID is essential for this application.  Thanks,




Architecture mismatch, trying to boot a amd64 on an i386 machine?



Michael
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Help with Booting

[Doug Hardie]

I have an AMD based system that is driving me nuts.  I am trying to install 8.2 
on it but can't get past the first boot.  I had a system up and running on it 
before, but I had to remove a drive and do the install on another computer.  
That worked, but now I need to use the built in RAID hardware.  As best as I 
can tell I am going to have to install on the the actual hardware.  Motherboard 
is an Arima NM46X.  The machine appears to be about 6 years old.

I have tried to boot the install disk, the live filesystem disk, and the 
memstick image for FreeBSD 7.0 through 8.2.  All of them do exactly the same 
thing:

Bootstart starts.

BTX loader lists the drives and memory

FreeBSD bootstrap loader version 1.1 starts.  I get the build date and then a 
new line with just a '/' on it.  It never begins to spin.  No additional I/O 
occurs with the boot device.

The memstick and CDs are good.  They boot just fine on another computer, just 
not this one.  I have had to work around CD issues in the past, but I thought 
the memstick would work if the BIOS would recognize it and boot from it.  It 
recognizes it and tries to boot.  I need some ideas here as the RAID is 
essential for this application.  Thanks,


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Hangs and "BTX halted" when booting mfsBSD image

[Mark Kane]

Hi everyone,

One of our remote servers was not able to have FreeBSD installed by the
datacenter and I would like to correct that by using the mfsBSD image
method to install remotely. I've been trying to test this locally in a
virtual machine to make sure everything will go smoothly before doing
it on the actual server.

I created the mfsBSD image using the 8.2-RELEASE i386 ISO and wrote it
to the boot drive using dd as mentioned in the documentation which went
well with no errors, however the virtual machine hangs upon booting. It
gets as far as showing the FreeBSD boot loader menu and counting down,
but it just hangs after that. If I leave it running while hung a "BTX
halted" error will eventually come up (after about 20 minutes when
using 8.2; 8.1 immediately gives the BTX halted error).

I've tried this in all the major emulators (qemu, VirtualBox, and
VMWare) to hopefully rule out any one of them causing an issue.

Booting the created mfsBSD image directly works with no issues, it's
just after writing it over the Linux install using dd that it does not
boot properly. 

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

-Mark
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Re: Booting from firmware RAID

[ameiji]

On Wed,16-03-2011 [16:25:54], Ilya Kazakevich wrote:
> Thank you.
> 
> I configured boot0 to my ar0 and tried to boot from it. It freezes.
> I use RAID10 and Intel-ICH7.
> 
> Looks like I've faced with some other troubles..
> 
> Ilya.
> 
> On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 4:05 PM, mcoyles
> wrote:
> 
> > >This is probably more PC-specific than freebsd-specific question. I have
> > >intel firmware raid. OS needs drivers to work with it. FreeBSD sees it as
> > >ar0, so it has drivers.
> > >But I want my OS to be installed on this drive and boot from it. It is not
> > >good idea, but I really want to do it:)
> > >Is it possible?
> > >
> > >boot0 and boot1 both work with HDD via BIOS interrupts and CHS, right? So,
> > >how do they know how to access RAID? They has no drivers.
> > >Or BIOS supports interrupts to access RAID with out of drivers? If so --
> > >what for drivers are needed? To access drive via ATA interface?
> >
> > Bios support interrupts and can thus boot from firmware raid.
> > Under windows drivers typically just give you full speed / management
> > features
> >
> > -
> > Marci
> >
> >

Hi, here what man atacontrol says:

  Although the ATA driver allows for creating an ATA RAID on
   disks with any controller, there are restrictions.  It is only
   possible to boot on an array if it is either located on a
   real RAID controller like the Promise or Highpoint controllers, 
or if the RAID declared is of RAID1 or SPAN type; in
   case of a SPAN, the partition to boot must reside on the first
   disk in the SPAN.

Not sure if it's your case though.


--
A complex system that works is invariably found to have
evolved from a simple system that works.






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Re: Booting from firmware RAID

[Ilya Kazakevich]

My boot0 freezes. I found discussion where guy told that extipl works fine
but boot0 not because extipl uses LBA instead of CHS and some raids do not
support CHS.
It is new to me that BIOS allows LBA but I will try extipl now.

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 5:11 PM, b. f.  wrote:

> > This is probably more PC-specific than freebsd-specific question. I have
> > intel firmware raid. OS needs drivers to work with it. FreeBSD sees it as
> > ar0, so it has drivers.
> > But I want my OS to be installed on this drive and boot from it. It is
> not
> > good idea, but I really want to do it:)
> > Is it possible?
> >
> > boot0 and boot1 both work with HDD via BIOS interrupts and CHS, right?
> So,
> > how do they know how to access RAID? They has no drivers.
> > Or BIOS supports interrupts to access RAID with out of drivers? If so --
> > what for drivers are needed? To access drive via ATA interface?
> >
> > Is it possible to boot freebsd from "firmware raid"?
>
> Sometimes: it depends on the firmware, and your bios.  I had a add-in
> PCIe SATA RAID controller based on a Marvell SE9128 chipset, and using
> a Marvell firmware.  The bios and the FreeBSD 9-CURRENT bootloader
> were able to boot from a JBOD drive attached to the controller, up
> until the point where the ahci driver tried to take control of the
> drive.  Then the Marvell firmware presented a fictitious configuration
> to the ahci driver and returned invalid device signatures, so the boot
> process failed.  On the same machine, however, I was able to boot
> without problems from a JBOD drive attached to a PCI-X SATA RAID
> controller based on the Silicon Image SiI3124 chipset, using a Silicon
> Image firmware.
>
> b.
>
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Re: Booting from firmware RAID

[b. f.]

> This is probably more PC-specific than freebsd-specific question. I have
> intel firmware raid. OS needs drivers to work with it. FreeBSD sees it as
> ar0, so it has drivers.
> But I want my OS to be installed on this drive and boot from it. It is not
> good idea, but I really want to do it:)
> Is it possible?
>
> boot0 and boot1 both work with HDD via BIOS interrupts and CHS, right? So,
> how do they know how to access RAID? They has no drivers.
> Or BIOS supports interrupts to access RAID with out of drivers? If so --
> what for drivers are needed? To access drive via ATA interface?
>
> Is it possible to boot freebsd from "firmware raid"?

Sometimes: it depends on the firmware, and your bios.  I had a add-in
PCIe SATA RAID controller based on a Marvell SE9128 chipset, and using
a Marvell firmware.  The bios and the FreeBSD 9-CURRENT bootloader
were able to boot from a JBOD drive attached to the controller, up
until the point where the ahci driver tried to take control of the
drive.  Then the Marvell firmware presented a fictitious configuration
to the ahci driver and returned invalid device signatures, so the boot
process failed.  On the same machine, however, I was able to boot
without problems from a JBOD drive attached to a PCI-X SATA RAID
controller based on the Silicon Image SiI3124 chipset, using a Silicon
Image firmware.

b.
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Re: Booting from firmware RAID

[Ilya Kazakevich]

Thank you.

I configured boot0 to my ar0 and tried to boot from it. It freezes.
I use RAID10 and Intel-ICH7.

Looks like I've faced with some other troubles..

Ilya.

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 4:05 PM, mcoyles
wrote:

> >This is probably more PC-specific than freebsd-specific question. I have
> >intel firmware raid. OS needs drivers to work with it. FreeBSD sees it as
> >ar0, so it has drivers.
> >But I want my OS to be installed on this drive and boot from it. It is not
> >good idea, but I really want to do it:)
> >Is it possible?
> >
> >boot0 and boot1 both work with HDD via BIOS interrupts and CHS, right? So,
> >how do they know how to access RAID? They has no drivers.
> >Or BIOS supports interrupts to access RAID with out of drivers? If so --
> >what for drivers are needed? To access drive via ATA interface?
>
> Bios support interrupts and can thus boot from firmware raid.
> Under windows drivers typically just give you full speed / management
> features
>
> -
> Marci
>
>
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Booting from firmware RAID

[Ilya Kazakevich]

Hello,

This is probably more PC-specific than freebsd-specific question. I have
intel firmware raid. OS needs drivers to work with it. FreeBSD sees it as
ar0, so it has drivers.
But I want my OS to be installed on this drive and boot from it. It is not
good idea, but I really want to do it:)
Is it possible?

boot0 and boot1 both work with HDD via BIOS interrupts and CHS, right? So,
how do they know how to access RAID? They has no drivers.
Or BIOS supports interrupts to access RAID with out of drivers? If so --
what for drivers are needed? To access drive via ATA interface?

Is it possible to boot freebsd from "firmware raid"?

Ilya.
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Re: Server not booting

[perryh]

Doug Hardie  wrote:

> The motherboard doesn't recognize a USB stick for booting
> unfortunately.  The motherboard manual is dated 2006 so
> I think its just too old for that.

This

http://www.plop.at/

can be loaded off just about any device the system _can_ boot from,
and stands a good chance of booting from a USB stick.  (Works for me
on an old Dell, loaded from floppy and booting a FreeBSD memstick
image.)
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Re: Server not booting

[Mark Felder]

On Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:10:32 -0600, Daniel Staal  wrote:


Arima NM46X with dual AMD Opteron processors.


My dual Opteron S2895 board does this as well. Latest BIOS and everything.  
I can get it to boot off of a flash drive but I can't get it to boot off a  
CDROM. FreeBSD just disagrees with it. I've never tried a USB CDROM,  
though.



Regards,



Mark
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Re: Server not booting

[Daniel Staal]

On Tue, March 8, 2011 3:16 am, Doug Hardie wrote:
> I have been tasked with bringing up a "new" server.  It appears to be
> fairly old equipment though.  I do know it was previously used.  Its a
> Arima NM46X with dual AMD Opteron processors.  The unit appears to be
> working since it has some form of Linux installed on the disks and that
> boots and seems to run.  However, I have tried booting from CD 8.2 and
> 8.0. using Disk 1 and Repair disks (AMD64 and i386).  They all die just
> after the first stage loader.  I get the system version line and then the
> spinner stops dead.  The CD is an external USB unit and its left running.
> The motherboard doesn't recognize a USB stick for booting unfortunately.
> The motherboard manual is dated 2006 so I think its just too old for that.
>  Any ideas on how this can be
> corrected?

The CD being USB and not being able to boot off of a USB stick might well
be related.  It's possible it can't boot from a USB drive at all.

My first thought on that is to check the BIOS settings: It's hard to
believe a 64-bit box is incapable of booting off USB at all, but it's easy
to believe that it's set to not be able to.

Otherwise, I'd try looking at what other options you might have.  Even
opening up the box and temporarily attaching a SATA CD drive might be
worth a try.

Daniel T. Staal

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Server not booting

[Doug Hardie]

I have been tasked with bringing up a "new" server.  It appears to be fairly 
old equipment though.  I do know it was previously used.  Its a Arima NM46X 
with dual AMD Opteron processors.  The unit appears to be working since it has 
some form of Linux installed on the disks and that boots and seems to run.  
However, I have tried booting from CD 8.2 and 8.0. using Disk 1 and Repair 
disks (AMD64 and i386).  They all die just after the first stage loader.  I get 
the system version line and then the spinner stops dead.  The CD is an external 
USB unit and its left running.  The motherboard doesn't recognize a USB stick 
for booting unfortunately.  The motherboard manual is dated 2006 so I think its 
just too old for that.  Any ideas on how this can be 
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Re: booting a kernel directly from stage 1/2

[Dan Nelson]

In the last episode (Feb 19), Alexander Best said:
> On Sat Feb 19 11, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> > On 19/02/2011 02:47, Alexander Best wrote:
> > > but that won't work. i get some numbers and then it says:
> > > btx halted or something like that.
> > 
> > Can't you boot into fixit mode from installation media?  That should
> > allow you to repair the boot blocks and make your system bootable again.
> 
> sorry if i wasn't clear enough. my system works perfectly normal. all i
> want is to avoid running through the booting stage 3 (i.e.  running
> /boot/loader), because i want to speed up the boot time.

I don't think that's been possible for a long time.  /boot/loader shouldn't
add more than a fraction of a second if you set its timeout to 0.

-- 
Dan Nelson
dnel...@allantgroup.com
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Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD

[perryh]

Robert Bonomi  wrote:

> A non-ZFS boot drive results in immediate, _guaranteed_,
> down-time for replacement if/when it fails.

Not if it is gmirrored and hot-pluggable.
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Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD

[David Brodbeck]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 1:52 PM, Daniel Staal  wrote:
> I see the advantage, and that it offers higher levels of resiliency and if
> properly handled should cause no problems.  I just hate relying on humans to
> remember things and follow directions.  That's what computers are for.
> Repairing a failed disk in a ZFS boot pool requires a human to remember to
> look for directions in an unusual place, and then follow them correctly.

That's why I generally prefer to boot off hardware RAID 1 in
situations where reliability is critical.  There are too many fiddly
unknown factors in booting off software RAID.  Even if you do
everything else right, the BIOS may refuse to look beyond the failed
drive and boot off the good one.  I save the software RAID for data
spindles (which I tend to keep separate from the boot/OS spindles,
anyway.)

2-port 3ware cards are relatively inexpensive, and well supported by
every OS I've used except Solaris.  If you're going for RAID 1 you
don't need expensive battery-backed cache.
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Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD

[Daniel Staal]

--As of February 19, 2011 2:12:20 PM -0600, Robert Bonomi is alleged to 
have said:



A non-ZFS boot drive results in immediate, _guaranteed_, down-time for
replacement if/when it fails.

A ZFS boot drive lets you replace the drive and *schedule* the down-time
(for a 'test' re-boot, to make *sure* everything works) at a convenient
time.


--As for the rest, it is mine.

No it doesn't.  It only extends the next scheduled downtime until you deal 
with it.  ;)  (Or, in a hot-swap environment with sufficient monitoring, 
means you need to deal with it before the next scheduled downtime.)


Or, from what it sounds like, you could have a redundant/backup boot disk. 
I'm planning on using a $5 USB drive as my boot disk.  Triple redundancy 
would cost $15.  I paid more for lunch today.  (Hmm.  I'll have to test to 
see if that setup works, although given the rest of this discussion I don't 
see why it shouldn't...)


I see the advantage, and that it offers higher levels of resiliency and if 
properly handled should cause no problems.  I just hate relying on humans 
to remember things and follow directions.  That's what computers are for. 
Repairing a failed disk in a ZFS boot pool requires a human to remember to 
look for directions in an unusual place, and then follow them correctly. 
If they don't, nothing happens immediately, but there is the possibility of 
failure at some later unspecified time.  (Meanwhile if they look for 
directions in the *usual* place, they get a simple and straightforward set 
of instructions that will appear to work.)


*If* that failure occurs, that downtime will be longer than the downtime 
you would save from a dozen boxes being handled using the correct ZFS 
procedure, as everyone tears their hair out going 'Why doesn't it work?!? 
It worked just fine a moment ago!' until someone remembers this quirk.


I don't like quirky computers.  That's why I'm not a Windows admin.  ;)

Daniel T. Staal

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Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD

[Matthew Seaman]

On 19/02/2011 15:35, Daniel Staal wrote:
> I'm still not clear on whether a ZFS-only system will boot with a failed
> drive in the root ZFS pool.

If it's a mirror, raidz or similar pool type with resilience, then yes,
it certainly will boot with a failed drive.  Been there, done that.

Cheers,

Matthew

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Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD

[Robert Bonomi]

> Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2011 10:35:35 -0500
> From: Daniel Staal 
> Subject: Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD
>
  [[..  sneck  ..]]
>
> Basically, if a ZFS boot drive fails, you are likely to get the following 
> scenario:
> 1) 'What do I need to do to replace a disk in the ZFS pool?'
> 2) 'Oh, that's easy.'  Replaces disk.
> 3) System fails to boot at some later point.
> 4) 'Oh, right, you need to do this *as well* on the *boot* pool...'
>
> Where if a UFS boot drive fails on an otherwise ZFS system, you'll get:
> 1) 'What's this drive?'
> 2) 'Oh, so how do I set that up again?'
> 3) Set up replacement boot drive.
>
> The first situation hides that it's a special case, where the second one 
> doesn't.

"For any foolproof system, there exists a _sufficiently-determined_ fool
 capable of breaking it" applies.

> To avoid the first scenario you need to make sure your sysadmins are 
> following *local* (and probably out-of-band) docs, and aware of potential 
> problems.  And awake.  ;)  The scenario in the second situation presents 
> it's problem as a unified package, and you can rely on normal levels of 
> alertness to be able to handle it correctly.  (The sysadmin will realize 
> it needs to be set up as a boot device because it's the boot device.  ;)  
> It may be complicated, but it's *obviously* complicated.)
>
> I'm still not clear on whether a ZFS-only system will boot with a failed 
> drive in the root ZFS pool.  Once booted, of course a decent ZFS setup 
> should be able to recover from the failed drive.  But the question is if 
> the FreeBSD boot process will handle the redundancy or not.  At this 
> point I'm actually guessing it will, which of course only exasperates the 
> above surprise problem: 'The easy ZFS disk replacement procedure *did* 
> work in the past, why did it cause a problem now?'  (And conceivably it 
> could cause *major* data problems at that point, as ZFS will *grow* a 
> pool quite easily, but *shrinking* one is a problem.)

A non-ZFS boot drive results in immediate, _guaranteed_, down-time for
replacement if/when it fails.

A ZFS boot drive lets you replace the drive and *schedule* the down-time
(for a 'test' re-boot, to make *sure* everything works) at a convenient
time.

Failure to schedule the required down time is a management failure, not
a methodology issue.  One has located the requisite "sufficiently-
determined" fool, and the results thereof are to be expected.



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Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD

[Andy Tornquist]

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On 2/18/11, Daniel Staal  wrote:
>
> I've been reading over the ZFS-only-boot instructions linked here:
> <http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFS> (and further linked from there) and have one
> worry:
>
> Let's say I install a FreeBSD system using a ZFS-only filesystem into a
> box with hotswapable hard drives, configured with some redundancy.  Time
> passes, one of the drives fails, and it is replaced and rebuilt using the
> ZFS tools.  (Possibly on auto, or possibly by just doing a 'zpool
> replace'.)
>
> Is that box still bootable?  (It's still running, but could it *boot*?)
>
> Extend further: If *all* the original drives are replaced (not at the same
> time, obviously) and rebuilt/resilvered using the ZFS utilities, is the
> box still bootable?
>
> If not, what's the minimum needed to support booting from another disk,
> and using the ZFS filesystem for everything else?
>
> Daniel T. Staal
>
> ---
> This email copyright the author.  Unless otherwise noted, you
> are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use
> the contents for non-commercial purposes.  This copyright will
> expire 5 years after the author's death, or in 30 years,
> whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of
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Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD

[krad]

On 19 February 2011 15:35, Daniel Staal  wrote:
> --As of February 19, 2011 2:44:38 PM +, Matthew Seaman is alleged to
> have said:
>
>> Umm... a sufficiently forgetful sysadmin can break *anything*.  This
>> isn't really a fair test: forgetting to write the boot blocks onto a
>> disk could similarly render a UFS based system unbootable.   That's why
>> scripting this sort of stuff is a really good idea.   Any new sysadmin
>> should of course be referred to the copious and accurate documentation
>> detailing exactly the steps needed to replace a drive...
>>
>> ZFS is definitely advantageous in this respect, because the sysadmin has
>> to do fewer steps to repair a failed drive, so there's less opportunity
>> for anything to be missed out or got wrong.
>>
>> The best solution in this respect is one where you can simply unplug the
>> dead drive and plug in the replacement.  You can do that with many
>> hardware RAID systems, but you're going to have to pay a premium price
>> for them.  Also, you loose out on the general day-to-day benefits of
>> using ZFS.
>
> --As for the rest, it is mine.
>
> True, best case is hardware RAID for this specific problem.  What I'm
> looking at here is basically reducing the surprise: A ZFS pool being used as
> the boot drive has the 'surprising' behavior that if you replace a drive
> using the instructions from the man pages or a naive Google search, you will
> have a drive that *appears* to work, until some point later where you
> attempt to reboot your system.  (At which point you will need to start
> over.)  To avoid this you need to read local documentation and/or remember
> that there is something beyond the man pages needs to be done.
>
> With a normal UFS/etc. filesystem the standard failure recovery systems will
> point out that this is a boot drive, and handle as necessary.  It will
> either work or not, it will never *appear* to work, and then fail at some
> future point from a current error.  It might be more steps to repair a
> specific drive, but all the steps are handled together.
>
> Basically, if a ZFS boot drive fails, you are likely to get the following
> scenario:
> 1) 'What do I need to do to replace a disk in the ZFS pool?'
> 2) 'Oh, that's easy.'  Replaces disk.
> 3) System fails to boot at some later point.
> 4) 'Oh, right, you need to do this *as well* on the *boot* pool...'
>
> Where if a UFS boot drive fails on an otherwise ZFS system, you'll get:
> 1) 'What's this drive?'
> 2) 'Oh, so how do I set that up again?'
> 3) Set up replacement boot drive.
>
> The first situation hides that it's a special case, where the second one
> doesn't.
>
> To avoid the first scenario you need to make sure your sysadmins are
> following *local* (and probably out-of-band) docs, and aware of potential
> problems.  And awake.  ;)  The scenario in the second situation presents
> it's problem as a unified package, and you can rely on normal levels of
> alertness to be able to handle it correctly.  (The sysadmin will realize it
> needs to be set up as a boot device because it's the boot device.  ;)  It
> may be complicated, but it's *obviously* complicated.)
>
> I'm still not clear on whether a ZFS-only system will boot with a failed
> drive in the root ZFS pool.  Once booted, of course a decent ZFS setup
> should be able to recover from the failed drive.  But the question is if the
> FreeBSD boot process will handle the redundancy or not.  At this point I'm
> actually guessing it will, which of course only exasperates the above
> surprise problem: 'The easy ZFS disk replacement procedure *did* work in the
> past, why did it cause a problem now?'  (And conceivably it could cause
> *major* data problems at that point, as ZFS will *grow* a pool quite easily,
> but *shrinking* one is a problem.)
>
> Daniel T. Staal
>
> ---
> This email copyright the author.  Unless otherwise noted, you
> are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use
> the contents for non-commercial purposes.  This copyright will
> expire 5 year s after the author's death, or in 30 years,
> whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of
> local copyright law.
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>

on slightly different note, make sure you align your partitions so the
zfs partitions 1st sector is divisible by 8, eg 1st sector 2048. Also
when you create the zpool, use the gnop -s 4096 trick to make sure the
pool has ashift=12. You may not be using advanced format drives yet,
but when you do in the future you will be glad you started out like
this.
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Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD

[Daniel Staal]

--As of February 19, 2011 2:44:38 PM +, Matthew Seaman is alleged to 
have said:



Umm... a sufficiently forgetful sysadmin can break *anything*.  This
isn't really a fair test: forgetting to write the boot blocks onto a
disk could similarly render a UFS based system unbootable.   That's why
scripting this sort of stuff is a really good idea.   Any new sysadmin
should of course be referred to the copious and accurate documentation
detailing exactly the steps needed to replace a drive...

ZFS is definitely advantageous in this respect, because the sysadmin has
to do fewer steps to repair a failed drive, so there's less opportunity
for anything to be missed out or got wrong.

The best solution in this respect is one where you can simply unplug the
dead drive and plug in the replacement.  You can do that with many
hardware RAID systems, but you're going to have to pay a premium price
for them.  Also, you loose out on the general day-to-day benefits of
using ZFS.


--As for the rest, it is mine.

True, best case is hardware RAID for this specific problem.  What I'm 
looking at here is basically reducing the surprise: A ZFS pool being used 
as the boot drive has the 'surprising' behavior that if you replace a drive 
using the instructions from the man pages or a naive Google search, you 
will have a drive that *appears* to work, until some point later where you 
attempt to reboot your system.  (At which point you will need to start 
over.)  To avoid this you need to read local documentation and/or remember 
that there is something beyond the man pages needs to be done.


With a normal UFS/etc. filesystem the standard failure recovery systems 
will point out that this is a boot drive, and handle as necessary.  It will 
either work or not, it will never *appear* to work, and then fail at some 
future point from a current error.  It might be more steps to repair a 
specific drive, but all the steps are handled together.


Basically, if a ZFS boot drive fails, you are likely to get the following 
scenario:

1) 'What do I need to do to replace a disk in the ZFS pool?'
2) 'Oh, that's easy.'  Replaces disk.
3) System fails to boot at some later point.
4) 'Oh, right, you need to do this *as well* on the *boot* pool...'

Where if a UFS boot drive fails on an otherwise ZFS system, you'll get:
1) 'What's this drive?'
2) 'Oh, so how do I set that up again?'
3) Set up replacement boot drive.

The first situation hides that it's a special case, where the second one 
doesn't.


To avoid the first scenario you need to make sure your sysadmins are 
following *local* (and probably out-of-band) docs, and aware of potential 
problems.  And awake.  ;)  The scenario in the second situation presents 
it's problem as a unified package, and you can rely on normal levels of 
alertness to be able to handle it correctly.  (The sysadmin will realize it 
needs to be set up as a boot device because it's the boot device.  ;)  It 
may be complicated, but it's *obviously* complicated.)


I'm still not clear on whether a ZFS-only system will boot with a failed 
drive in the root ZFS pool.  Once booted, of course a decent ZFS setup 
should be able to recover from the failed drive.  But the question is if 
the FreeBSD boot process will handle the redundancy or not.  At this point 
I'm actually guessing it will, which of course only exasperates the above 
surprise problem: 'The easy ZFS disk replacement procedure *did* work in 
the past, why did it cause a problem now?'  (And conceivably it could cause 
*major* data problems at that point, as ZFS will *grow* a pool quite 
easily, but *shrinking* one is a problem.)


Daniel T. Staal

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Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD

[Matthew Seaman]

On 19/02/2011 13:18, Daniel Staal wrote:
>> Why wouldn't it be?  The configuration in the Wiki article sets aside a
>> small freebsd-boot partition on each drive, and the instructions tell
>> you to install boot blocks as part of that partitioning process.  You
>> would have to repeat those steps when you install your replacement drive
>> before you added the new disk into your zpool.
>>
>> So long as the BIOS can read the bootcode from one or other drives, and
>> can then access /boot/zfs/zpool.cache to learn about what zpools you
>> have, then the system should boot.
> 
> So, assuming a forgetful sysadmin (or someone who is new didn't know
> about the setup in the first place) is that a yes or a no for the
> one-drive replaced case?

Umm... a sufficiently forgetful sysadmin can break *anything*.  This
isn't really a fair test: forgetting to write the boot blocks onto a
disk could similarly render a UFS based system unbootable.   That's why
scripting this sort of stuff is a really good idea.   Any new sysadmin
should of course be referred to the copious and accurate documentation
detailing exactly the steps needed to replace a drive...

ZFS is definitely advantageous in this respect, because the sysadmin has
to do fewer steps to repair a failed drive, so there's less opportunity
for anything to be missed out or got wrong.

The best solution in this respect is one where you can simply unplug the
dead drive and plug in the replacement.  You can do that with many
hardware RAID systems, but you're going to have to pay a premium price
for them.  Also, you loose out on the general day-to-day benefits of
using ZFS.

> It definitely is a 'no' for the all-drives replaced case, as I
> suspected: You would need to have repeated the partitioning manually. 
> (And not letting ZFS handle it.)

Oh, assuming your sysadmins consistently fail to replace the drives
correctly, then depending on your BIOS you can be in deep do-do as far
as rebooting goes rather sooner than that.

> If a single disk failure in the zpool can render the machine
> unbootable, it's better yet to have a dedicated bootloader drive

If a single disk failure renders your system unbootable, then you're
doing it wrong.  ZFS-root systems should certainly reboot if zfs can
still assemble the root pool -- so with one disk failed for RAIDZ1, or
two for RAIDZ2 or up to half the drives for mirror.

If this failure to correctly replace broken drives is going to be a
significant problem in your environment, then I guess you're going to
have to define appropriate processes.  You might say that in the event
of a hard drive being replaced, it is mandatory to book some planned
downtime at the next convenient point, and do a test reboot + apply any
remedial work needed.  If your system design is such that you can't take
any one machine down for maintenance, even with advance warning then
you've got more important problems to solve before you worry about using
ZFS or not.

Cheers,

Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.   7 Priory Courtyard
  Flat 3
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Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD

[Daniel Staal]

--As of February 19, 2011 12:01:37 PM +, Matthew Seaman is alleged to 
have said:



Let's say I install a FreeBSD system using a ZFS-only filesystem into a
box with hotswapable hard drives, configured with some redundancy.  Time
passes, one of the drives fails, and it is replaced and rebuilt using the
ZFS tools.  (Possibly on auto, or possibly by just doing a 'zpool
replace'.)

Is that box still bootable?  (It's still running, but could it *boot*?)


Why wouldn't it be?  The configuration in the Wiki article sets aside a
small freebsd-boot partition on each drive, and the instructions tell
you to install boot blocks as part of that partitioning process.  You
would have to repeat those steps when you install your replacement drive
before you added the new disk into your zpool.

So long as the BIOS can read the bootcode from one or other drives, and
can then access /boot/zfs/zpool.cache to learn about what zpools you
have, then the system should boot.


So, assuming a forgetful sysadmin (or someone who is new didn't know about 
the setup in the first place) is that a yes or a no for the one-drive 
replaced case?


It definitely is a 'no' for the all-drives replaced case, as I suspected: 
You would need to have repeated the partitioning manually.  (And not 
letting ZFS handle it.)



If not, what's the minimum needed to support booting from another disk,
and using the ZFS filesystem for everything else?


This situation is described in the Boot ZFS system from UFS article
here: http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/UFSBoot

I use this sort of setup for one system where the zpool has too many
drives in it for the BIOS to cope with; works very well booting from a
USB key.


Thanks; I wasn't sure if that procedure would work if the bootloader was on 
a different physical disk than the rest of the filesystem.  Nice to hear 
from someone who's tried it that it works.  ;)



In fact, while the partitioning layout described in the
http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS articles is great for holding the OS
and making it bootable, for using ZFS to manage serious quantities of
disk storage, other strategies might be better.  It would probably be a
good idea to have two zpools: one for the bulk of the space built from
whole disks (ie. without using gpart or similar partitioning), in
addition to your bootable zroot pool.  Quite apart from wringing the
maximum usable space out of your available disks, this also makes it
much easier to replace failed disks or use hot spares.


If a single disk failure in the zpool can render the machine unbootable, 
it's better yet to have a dedicated bootloader drive: It increases the mean 
time between failures of your boot device (and therefore your machine), and 
it reduces the 'gotcha' value.  In a hot-swap environment booting directly 
off of ZFS you could fail a reboot a month (or more...) after the disk 
replacement, and finding your problem then will be a headache until someone 
remembers this setup tidbit.


If the 'fail to boot' only happens once *all* the original drives have been 
replaced the mean time between failures is better in the ZFS situation, but 
the 'gotcha' value becomes absolutely huge: Since you can replace one (or 
two, or more) disks without issue, the problem will likely take years to 
develop.


Ah well, price of the bleeding edge.  ;)

Daniel T. Staal

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Re: booting a kernel directly from stage 1/2

[Alexander Best]

On Sat Feb 19 11, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> On 19/02/2011 02:47, Alexander Best wrote:
> > but that won't work. i get some numbers and then it says:
> > btx halted or something like that.
> 
> Can't you boot into fixit mode from installation media?  That should
> allow you to repair the boot blocks and make your system bootable again.

sorry if i wasn't clear enough. my system works perfectly normal. all i want
is to avoid running through the booting stage 3 (i.e. running /boot/loader),
because i want to speed up the boot time.

cheers.
alex

> 
>   Cheers,
> 
>   Matthew
> 
> -- 
> Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.   7 Priory Courtyard
>   Flat 3
> PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
> JID: matt...@infracaninophile.co.uk   Kent, CT11 9PW
> 



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Re: booting a kernel directly from stage 1/2

[Matthew Seaman]

On 19/02/2011 02:47, Alexander Best wrote:
> but that won't work. i get some numbers and then it says:
> btx halted or something like that.

Can't you boot into fixit mode from installation media?  That should
allow you to repair the boot blocks and make your system bootable again.

Cheers,

Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.   7 Priory Courtyard
  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
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Re: ZFS-only booting on FreeBSD

[Matthew Seaman]

On 18/02/2011 15:59, Daniel Staal wrote:
> 
> I've been reading over the ZFS-only-boot instructions linked here:
> <http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFS> (and further linked from there) and have one
> worry:
> 
> Let's say I install a FreeBSD system using a ZFS-only filesystem into a
> box with hotswapable hard drives, configured with some redundancy.  Time
> passes, one of the drives fails, and it is replaced and rebuilt using the
> ZFS tools.  (Possibly on auto, or possibly by just doing a 'zpool
> replace'.)
> 
> Is that box still bootable?  (It's still running, but could it *boot*?)

Why wouldn't it be?  The configuration in the Wiki article sets aside a
small freebsd-boot partition on each drive, and the instructions tell
you to install boot blocks as part of that partitioning process.  You
would have to repeat those steps when you install your replacement drive
before you added the new disk into your zpool.

So long as the BIOS can read the bootcode from one or other drives, and
can then access /boot/zfs/zpool.cache to learn about what zpools you
have, then the system should boot.

> Extend further: If *all* the original drives are replaced (not at the same
> time, obviously) and rebuilt/resilvered using the ZFS utilities, is the
> box still bootable?

Yes, this will still work.  You can even replace all the drives
one-by-one with bigger ones, and it will still work and be bootable (and
give you more space without *requiring* the system be rebooted).

> If not, what's the minimum needed to support booting from another disk,
> and using the ZFS filesystem for everything else?

This situation is described in the Boot ZFS system from UFS article
here: http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/UFSBoot

I use this sort of setup for one system where the zpool has too many
drives in it for the BIOS to cope with; works very well booting from a
USB key.

In fact, while the partitioning layout described in the
http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS articles is great for holding the OS
and making it bootable, for using ZFS to manage serious quantities of
disk storage, other strategies might be better.  It would probably be a
good idea to have two zpools: one for the bulk of the space built from
whole disks (ie. without using gpart or similar partitioning), in
addition to your bootable zroot pool.  Quite apart from wringing the
maximum usable space out of your available disks, this also makes it
much easier to replace failed disks or use hot spares.

Cheers,

Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.   7 Priory Courtyard
  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey Ramsgate
JID: matt...@infracaninophile.co.uk   Kent, CT11 9PW



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