PC-BSD hangs at boot

[xdxexf]

10/24/06

This is the second time that I have received the following message on a reboot

Manual root filesystem specification:
<fstype>:<device> mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
eg. ufs:da0s1a
? List valid disk boot devices
<empty line> Abort manual input

mountroot>

The system is hung at that point and I need to restart the pc in order to do anything. I get the same error on every reboot.

Without finding how to fix the problem I will be on my third reinstall of PC-BSD.

The install goes nicely, the reboot after the install comes up nicely. And I can have a few other reboots and all is working OK then I get the problem listed above.

This is the first time I have used any *BSD operating systems and from what I have read is a notch above Linux. I have been using Suse Linux v10 for about a year now and my primary goal is to get off of Windows as much as possible.

I appreciate any directions for what the problem could be.
A memory test showed nothing wrong.
I can boot into the W2K and WXP which are on the same hard drive as the PC-BSD install with no problems.

Thank you for any help

[TerryP]

I'd look at your /etc/fstab file and make sure it works.

If your Keyboard is working at the prompt press ? for a list of valid disk boot devices and look for the one that ends in a1 such as

ad0s1

or simular. After boot open a run dialog fromt he K-Menu and type

kdesu kwrite /etc/fstab

enter password and see what the file is like, if possible I'd leave the box on or write down which device it is. If you can't use the keyboard at that prompt you'll have to do it from the Install CDs utilites-> rescue shell and mount the file system onto /mnt and recover via CLI.

The only times I've had to deal with that prompt during a boot has been when I screwed up /etc/fstab badly or it got corrupted.

[Charles]

I've had this bug with a previous beta release of 1.3, I don't have this problem anymore, but anyway, you shouldn't have this bug either, so I filed a bug report :wink:

[xdxexf]

10/30/06

After letting the problem sit for a couple of days I decided to get a FreeBSD LiveCD and see what I could.

After many searches to learn how to setup the system to mount the ad0s1a filesystem to see the information that was on my hard drive. I finally got it mounted. I wanted to see the /etc/fstab file.

The reason I whated to see what was in it was that I noticed (a little closer) that what I typed as the display contained an error in the syntax. I am referring to the line that had -- da0s1 -- it was typed correctly as that was how it was printed on the screen. But is incorrect as it should have read "ad0s1" so I wanted to see how it read in the /etc/fstab file.

What I found was that my /etc/fstab file contained NOTHING; it was empty, not even a cdrom filesystem line.

As I mentioned this was the second time after installing PC-BSD that I got that error. So I can state to you TerryP you where correct to have me check the fstab file. And thank you Charles for writing it up as a bug I would not have done so as I do/did not have any information as to what the problem was. Now I know the problem. But the second questiion comes as to. What causes the /etc/fstab file to be erased/purged???

To answer your directions to type in a ? for more information. The PC does not respond to any keyboard input. The three finger salute does nothing, the only thing I can do is press the reset switch to get the system moving again. I will check some other things here also should I have another hang after an install.

Since I do not know the BSD syntax for entering the information of my hard drive partioning into fstab, and deciding it would be better and faster for now to do another reinstall I did so. After the reinstall the first thing I did was copy /etc/fstab to /etc/fstab_bkup_after_install and secondly was backup the whole PC-BSD partition.

Should I have another hang like before I will see what is wong as best possible. If the fstab file is empty again I will have something to restore from.

I will try and monitor what I did before a reboot (a system update ....) and should I then get another error that my system is corrupt I can then come back with hopefully more information as to what might be causing the fstab file to becone empty.

Again thank you for your replys as I have some direction on what to look for and how to do it. (I copied your directions Terry). Should I get another hang like this again I hope to have more information for a solution to the problem.

I ask this question seeking your opinions. How would you rate PC-BSD compared to FreeBSD or NETBSD or another flavor of BSD?? I know PC-BSD has a FreeBSD foundation. Since I want to find a better replacement for Windows. Would I be better off going, to say, FreeBSD and using and learning it instead of PC-BSD??

Again thank you.