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From: gbar@pool.info.sunyit.edu (Bradley A. Rogers)
Subject: Help! Can't Mount Root
Message-ID: <1995Mar16.141515.6671@pool.info.sunyit.edu>
Organization: State University of New York -- Institute of Technology
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 14:15:15 GMT
Lines: 66
I hope somebody can help me out. I'm attempting to install the Walnut
Creek FreeBSD 2.0 on my Pentium, and am running into the problem of not
being able to mount the root file system. Here are the particulars:
1) Drive 0 is a DOS drive. Drive 1 is my FreeBSD drive. Drive 1 is
a Connor 420 MB. The CMOS setup and FreeBSD both identify it as
having a geometry of: 826 cyl * 16hd * 63 sect = 407 MB, for a total
of 832608 sectors.
2) The boot manager is installed on drive 0. When I boot the machine, I
get a choice of: F1...dos
F5...disk 2
When I select F5, to boot FreeBSD, I get the message:
"bad disklabelCan't find /kernel"
I type in "hd(1,a)/kernel" and it takes off and tries to boot. BSD
seems to see all of my devices correctly. However, at the end of the
boot process I get the message:
"panic: cannot mount root", and the system reboots.
3) This is all happening during the installation process, after I have
run fdisk and disklabel. Following fdisk and disklabel (yes, I have
written the MBR, and disk label info to the disk. Both utilities report
the write as successful), I select (P) to proceed, the newfs is performed,
and a number things are written to the disk. I then remove the boot
floppy from the drive, and reboot. It is during this reboot that the
panic occurs.
4) Fdisk reports:
disk 1: Boot?=Yes, Type=FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD
Phys=(c0/h0/s1..C825/h15/S63)
Sector (0..832607)
Size=407MB, 826 Cylinders
wd1 Geometry: 826 cyl*16hd*63sect=407MB=832608 sect
5) Disklabel reports:
Part Start End Blocks MB Type Action Mountpoint
a 63 768062 768000 375 4.2BSD newfs /
b 768063 832607 64545 32 swap swap swap
c 0 832607 832608 407 unused --- <entire slice>
d 0 832607 832608 407 unused --- <entire disk>
e unused
f unused
g unused
h unused
Total size: 832608 blocks 407 MB
Space allocated: 832545 blocks 407 MB
6) I don't know if it's significant or not, but after the failed boot, if
I re-run disklabel, the mountpoint assignments have disappeared from the
a and b partitions.
7) After running fdisk and disklabel the diskspace editor reports:
Disks Total FreeBSD
0:wd0 406MB 0MB
1:wd1 407MB 407MB
Filesystems Type Size Action Mountpoint
1:wd1a ufs 375MB newfs /
2:wd1b swap 32MB swap swap
I realize that there is a lot of redundnt info here, but I'm hoping that it
may give somebody a clue. PLEASE RESPOND BY E-MAIL TO: gbar@sunyit.edu
Thanks in advance!