Re: re-transmission: Re: Prepping to install

["William A. Mahaffey III" <wam%hiwaay.net@localhost>]

On 06/24/15 09:45, William A. Mahaffey III wrote:
> On 06/21/15 08:48, William A. Mahaffey III wrote:
> > On 06/19/15 02:06, Martin Husemann wrote:
> > > On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 01:50:12AM -0453, William A. Mahaffey III 
> > > wrote:
> > > > missed it & got snared, shouldn't have happened. I *think* (& I will
> > > > know this weekend) the FreeBSD installer reminds one to 'ctrl-D' out,
> > > > rather than rebooting ....
> > > The NetBSD one also prints hints to ^D or exit (but I don't think it
> > > explicitly  mentions reboot).
> > >
> > > Martin
> >
> >
> > Well, the saga continues. I made a block of time yesterday, booted 
> > FreeBSD 9.3R from a USB disk & wiped the 2 offending HDD's (wd0 & 
> > wd1) using 'dd if=/dev/zero ....', then booted into the NetBSD 6.1.5 
> > install disk & proceeded w/ the install. I exited into /bin/sh when 
> > offered & fdisk'ed -iau0 wd[0,1] into 1 large partition, then 
> > disklabel'ed the 2 partitions using 'disklabel -R wd[0,1] 
> > <proto-file.txt>', which I attach. The file for disk1 differed only 
> > in comment & label, wd0 --> wd1 & disk0 --> disk1. I then assembled 
> > the RAID1 for root from wd[0,1]a, see next attached. I also assembled 
> > the RAID0 for /usr & /home. I departed from a RAID5 for /home & went 
> > w/ a RAID0. I followed the attached overall scheme (see README file) 
> > closely, except for different drive sizes & a RAID0 for /home (my 
> > *big* partition) instead of a RAID5 for /home/media (his *big* 
> > partition). In particular, I mounted my 3 RAID's under altroot, 
> > checked them for OK-ness, & created the fstab file in /altroot/etc to 
> > specify mount points for root, /usr & /home, as well as the 6 swap 
> > partitions. I also followed the last few instructions about setting 
> > up the boot process from the RAID1'ed root drive, copying 
> > /altroot/usr/mdec/boot files as described late in the last 
> > attachment. With everything looking OK, I exited from the shell & 
> > finished up the install, telling it to keep boot info as it was on 
> > the (RAID) disks. I rebooted, and .... got screenfuls of messages 
> > which went by too fast to read, saying something about boot media not 
> > found, install boot media & hit any key. I tried to do that on the 
> > fly, nogo, also tried CTRL-ALT-DEL w/ the install media already 
> > there, same thing. Soooooo .... I'm still in the drink. FWIW, the 
> > installer was mute on exiting back to the installer from the shell, 
> > but I did manage to avoid that foul-up this time .... Any help 
> > appreciated, any more info needed, just ask. It will be a bit tough 
> > to recover stuff from the installation, but anything else, no 
> > problema. TIA & have a happy Father's Day :-) ....
>
>
> Well, I have an update. I finally figured out how to stop the 
> scrolling text during the botched boot :-) (I don't have this sort of 
> problem often, so I am a bit slow in this area). I hit the kbd pause 
> button & see the following on the screen:
>
>
> NetBSD MBR boot
> Error No active partition
>
> NetBSD MBR boot
> Error No active partition
>
> Reboot and Select proper Boot device
> or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device ans press a key
>
> NetBSD MBR boot
>
> NetBSD/x86 ffsv2 Primary Bootstrap
> Boot failed (errno 2): Can't open /boot
>
> NetBSD MBR boot
> NetBSD MBR boot
>
> NetBSD/x86 ffsv2 Primary Bootstrap
> Boot failed (errno 2): Can't open /boot
>
> NetBSD MBR boot
> Error No active partition
>
>
>
> & so on, varying numbers of some messages, always the same order 
> AFAICT. The 3 attachments in the previous message still apply, if 
> anything else needed, please don't hesitate. TIA & have a good one.


*C'mon*, someone throw me a bone :-) !!!! I looked around in 
https://wiki.netbsd.org/how_netbsd_boots_on_x86/ & it *looks* like I am 
getting decently far into the boot process (yes, this is an x86_64/AMD64 
box/install, I looked around a bit for AMD64 boot process docs on the 
wiki & couldn't find it). Is this more pilot error ? Something w/ the 
6.1.5-AMD64 boot process on RAID1 drives ? Something else ? I followed 
the instructions to prep for the RAID1 boot as outlined below from the 
online HOWTO posted earlier in this thread:

# mount -o async /dev/raid0a /altroot
# mkdir /altroot/usr ; mount -o async /dev/raid1a /altroot/usr
# mkdir /altroot/home/; mount_ffs -o async /dev/dk0 /altroot/home

Install boot blocks - we need to do this on *both* wd0 and wd1 so the 
system can still boot in the event of a single disk failure:

# cd /altroot ; cp usr/mdec/boot .
# installboot /dev/rwd0a usr/mdec/bootxx_ffsv2
# installboot /dev/rwd1a usr/mdec/bootxx_ffsv2

Finally setup raid0 to automatically configure as the root filesystem

# raidctl -A root raid0


Everything looked OK w/ df & install proceeded & finished OK. Whassup 
here ? TIA for any pointers & have a good one.

--

	William A. Mahaffey III

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

	"The M1 Garand is without doubt the finest implement of war
	 ever devised by man."
                           -- Gen. George S. Patton Jr.