mountroot> - PC-BSD Forums

Munguanaweza · #1 10-23-2009, 12:50 AM

Hi,
I installed PC-BSD AMD64 on my computer. The computer has a motherboard ethernet subsystem that isn't supported by PCBSD, and the driver for that ethernet subsystem required me to recompile my Kernel. I was able to do that succesfully, with a little hitch. Now when I boot PCBSD the boot sequence gets to the point that the command mountroot> comes up. I have to type in ufs:ad6s4a at the prompt, hit enter, and the computer will boot up.

My question is, how do I configure the computer to find root during the boot sequence so I don't have to manually do it?

Munguanaweza · #2 10-23-2009, 09:10 PM

Hi,
I have made a little progress on my own. I found out that the file that contains mountroot is /etc/fstab. I changed it in terminal using

#vi /etc/fstab

then I changed the / mount point to /dev/ad6s4a and rebooted. It worked. But something else has intervened and its broken on subsequent bootup. I replaced /dev/ad6s4a with /dev/ad0s4a and could boot again up to X. But now I can't get on the internet, the kernel module doesn't exist anymore for my ethernet.

So for the inquiring minds who are, or most likely are not following this thread, I plan to eventually get the internet working again and tell how I did it and got the computer to boot in a future post.

TerryP · #3 10-23-2009, 10:41 PM

Usually fstab issues like that happen if you switch between kernels that have the ATA_STATIC_ID option and those that don't, or vice versa.

Normally, a missing LKM after a boot, would imply that ones changed running kernels.

Munguanaweza · #4 10-25-2009, 12:55 AM

Hi,
regarding changing kernels, that is the same thought that I had. I believe that the system is loading the original kernel now instead of the one that I compiled. What I don't know is how to get the computer to boot on the one that I compiled. I assume that it is still loaded in the operating system somewhere.

TerryP · #5 10-25-2009, 03:17 PM

If you followed the normal process, you should have the last installed kernel in the file /boot/kernel/kernel and standard-issue LKMs in /boot/kernel/*.ko files. When installing a new kernel, the one there is moved to /boot/kernel.old before installing the new one.

So if you've only done it once, /boot/kernel.old should be the standard PC-BSD kernel for your arch. You should also still have the files from your last kernel build in /usr/obj/* in a per IDENT named sub directory tree; so you can redo the installkernel target to reinstall it, which would also overwrite kernel.old. You should always try to keep a copy of the systems standard kernel (PC-BSDs build on PC-BSD, FreeBSDs GENERIC on FreeBSD). There may be a tarball of the standard kernels in /usr/PCBSD/; but I don't have PC-BSD in arm reach atm to check.

yonnie · #6 05-19-2012, 08:18 PM

mountroot issue after install booting first time. I realize this is an OLD topic and I could not find where this issue got resolved in this forum.

Using a KA3MVP mobo. (Debian installed on this just fine). However, after installing PC-BSD9, using entire HDD, I kept running into a command line with mountroot> as the prompt during bootup. When selecting "safe mode" during boot the system would boot all the way to the GUI login screen.

Solution: discovered that SATA connectors marked as 1 through 4 were being considered by the bios as IDE drives 2 master/slave and 3 master/slave.
SATA plugs marked as 5 and 6 were or seem to be the real SATA slots 1 & 2. Moved HDD cable to SATA plug 5 and booting to mountroot> issue went away.