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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!metro!metro!asstdc.scgt.oz.au!nsw.news.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.erols.net!news1.erols.com!news From: Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: cannot mount root Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 20:01:47 +0000 Organization: Erol's Internet Services Lines: 49 Message-ID: <3235C92B.68EF@www.play-hookey.com> References: <k0zloejmf7x.fsf@bolivar.cs.uiowa.edu> Reply-To: kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com NNTP-Posting-Host: kenjb05.play-hookey.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win16; U) Larry Kingery wrote: > > 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? > This involves a fair amount of speculation, based on a few experiences I've had with large (1 to 2 GB) IDE drives, but it may help. Make sure you enable LBA mode in your ROM BIOS, for the IDE interface. The Install procedure inherently assumes an LBA geometry (64 logical heads, and 1/4 the number of physical cylinders). If I try to specify the actual physical geometry, FreeBSD installs but the Boot Manager refuses to start it. In at least one case where I changed motherboards and did not enable LBA mode, a working installation would not start. I suspect this will be necessary for any drive with > 1023 cylinders. -- Ken Are you interested in | byte-sized education | http://www.play-hookey.com over the Internet? |