*BSD News Article 67972


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From: brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk (Brian Somers)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Panic: Cannot mount root
Date: 7 May 1996 16:55:13 +0100
Organization: Coverform Ltd.
Lines: 52
Message-ID: <4mnrp1$15m@anorak.coverform.lan>
References: <3187F9D1.676B@ibm.net>
X-NNTP-Posting-Host: awfulhak.demon.co.uk
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.2 PL2]

Jeff Genender (jgenend@ibm.net) wrote:
: Please help:

: I have a Gateway 2000 90 Mhz Pentium with 40 Meg RAM, and IDE 1 Gig 
: drive, and an Adaptec 1542 CF with 2 1 Gig Hard Drives. The Hard drives 
: are setup as follows:

: 1 Gig IDE
: ---------
: 1 Partitioned as Primary DOS
: 	runs DOS, Windows NT, Windows 95

: Adaptec 1542
: ------------

: Drive (0x81) Partitioned as extended DOS

: Drive (0x82) Partitioned as 600 MB NTFS and 405 MB FreeBSD

: I can install FreeBSD absolutely fine.  But when it goes to reboot for 
: its first boot, I will use the boot floppy and I will type 
: SD(2,a)/kernel. This will start the boot process and when it tries to 
: load the root, it says 'PANIC: Cannot mount root.'  It will then proceed 
: to reboot.  This will happen continually.  Anybody have any ideas?  
: Also, for those who do, please explain as specific as possible as I have 
: tried just about everything explained in the newsgroups, and FreeBSD web 
: pages.
: -- 
: //Jeff Genender
: //Savoir Technologies
: //jgenend@ibm.net
: //
: //"Providing Systems Solutions to Business"

I havn't mixed SCSI & IDE myself, but I believe you should be 'hd' rather
than 'sd'.

The problem is that SCSI devices are measured from 0, despite your IDE,
therefore you should be saying 'sd(1,a)'... however, if you say that to
the BIOS (which is used to find the /kernel file), it will try to use
scsi device 0.....

The 'hd' (virtual?) device overcomes this by being a combination of IDE
and SCSI disks.

If your BIOS sees the third disk (second scsi), try booting hd(2,a)/kernel.
If your BIOS doesn't see this, you'll have to put a small (~20Mb) FreeBSD
partition on one of your first two disks.

--
Brian <brian@awfulhak.demon.co.uk>
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour....