*BSD News Article 61566


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From: gbernard@dbc.com (Greg Bernard)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: kernel recompile "no one wants to mount my root for me"
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 1996 21:44:51 GMT
Organization: CCnet Communications (510-988-7140 guest)
Lines: 46
Message-ID: <4f5u6o$js3@ccnet2.ccnet.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 199.217.9.49
X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.0.82

Hi all,

All the following is on a Pentium, 32M RAM, FreeBSD 2.0.5 loaded on
the second disk drive.

Over the weekend, I recompiled my kernel to take out all the devices
that my machine does not use, got the kernel to compile, reinstalled,
and...

First off, when I tried to recompile the kernel and comment out the
sections for the 'controller scbus0' and 'controller matcd0', I got
the message:

kern_sysctl.o: unreferenced '_hw_float' referenced from text segment

I was narrowing down on *exactly* what caused it, but I didn't figure
it out before I 'lost' my system, so, does anyone know what causes
this?

Anyways, after I got a kernel to compile cleanly, I finished the
procedure by doing a 'make install' which cycled the root kernels for
me.  When I rebooted, I had to do a -c to disable the devices I could
not compile out, but when I quit config, after checking the devices, I
got the message 'no one wants to mount my root for me'.  Yet I did not
change the line out of config file (copy of GENERIC) that specifies
where the kernel should reside, so it says ... 'on wd0'.

Worse yet, I tried to reboot and specified 'hd(1,a)/kernel.old' to
reboot it back, and alas, got the same message.  (I saved the old old
kernel to kernel.ok but forgot to try that :-()

Any ideas of what I did wrong?  Any ideas of how to correct it?  Any
ideas how to at least boot what is on the disk now to get me back to
FreeBSD?  And/or any ideas of how to boot config to allow me to at
least poke around the system and re-enable it somehow?

Sorry there are no logs/printouts from this, but when you loose the
entire system, it is kind of hard to get any output at all.
TIA.

gb

Greg Bernard                             Data Broadcasting Corp.
gbernard@dbc.com                         1900 S. Norfolk St.   
All opionions, if I had any, are my own. San Mateo, CA  94404