*BSD News Article 77911


Return to BSD News archive

Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!serv.hinet.net!news.cc.nctu.edu.tw!spring.edu.tw!howland.erols.net!math.ohio-state.edu!news.physics.uiowa.edu!news.uiowa.edu!news
From: kingery@cs.uiowa.edu (Larry Kingery)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: cannot mount root
Date: 09 Sep 1996 18:38:26 -0500
Organization: The University of Iowa
Lines: 39
Sender: kingery@bolivar.cs.uiowa.edu
Message-ID: <k0zloejmf7x.fsf@bolivar.cs.uiowa.edu>
Reply-To: kingery@cs.uiowa.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: bolivar.cs.uiowa.edu
X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.1


I recently installed FreeBSD-2.1.5 on the first partition of my second
IDE drive, with the 'standard' boot manager option.  I plan to boot 
from lilo (the linux boot loader).
 
Unfortunately, when I boot I only get to the mounting of the root
filesystem, where I get the 'panic: unable to mount root' message.

I read here that this can be a problem with disklabel, and to check 
the configuration info (which I did, it is correct).

One thing I've noticed which seems to correspond to another suggestion
I've seen is that every time I run the install disk, I have to reenter
2 valuable pieces of info: I have to make the root partition bootable,
and I have to set it to mount and enter the mountpoint (/).  This
leads me to believe that this info is not being written to disk, which
would be a pretty good reason for not being able to mount the root.
 
I read through man disklabel which leads me to /etc/disktab, which
doesn't contain an entry for my drive(s).  Not surprising, since the
install utility informs me that commit finished with errors and so
/etc files were not updated.
 
What were these "errors" you ask:  beats me.  The only thing that pops
up is a message 'informing' me that I didn't install anything and that
I don't have a /usr partition.  I flip through vpty1 and there is
nothing that resembles an error message.

Can anyone provide a bit of assistance here?

Thanks,
Larry
-- 
________________________________________________________________
Larry Kingery			kingery@cs.uiowa.edu
Dept of Computer Science	http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~kingery
University of Iowa,		
Iowa City, IA, USA		Dole/Kemp '96
----------------------------------------------------------------