Hi, This may be a rare case, but I post this with the hope for ideas from people here.
I have experienced a strange loader(8) error. After upgrading one of my boxes from 7.1R to 7.2R, an error appeared on "boot" command of loader(8) like this: | FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 1.1 | (h...@cmaster.allbsd.org, Mon Nov 30 04:01:24 JST 2009) | Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf | /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8b6c04 | readin failed | | elf32_loadimage: read failed | /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8b6c04 | readin failed | | elf32_loadimage: read failed | Unable to load a kernel! (Actually the above error message was displayed when I upgraded it to 8.0R. The message was the same when I tried 7.2R.) Replacing the /boot/loader with 7.1R's one, 7.2R's kernel worked fine. Next, I tried to upgrade it to 8.0R. As I explained earlier, the 8.0R's loader did not work either, so I replaced it with 7.1R again. However, 7.1R loader(8) + 8.0R kernel displayed the following error and did not work: | OK load /boot/kernel/kernel | /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x8db9a4 data=0xdd134+0xa5e84 syms=[0x4+0x99390+0x4+0xd2201 | elf32_loadimage: could not read symbols - skipped! While the "load" command seemed to finish, the box got stuck just after entering "boot" command. Curious to say, I have got this symptom only on a specific box in more than ten different boxes I upgraded so far; it is based on an old motherboard Supermicro P4DPE[*]. [*] http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/E7500/P4DPE.cfm Any workaround? Booting from release CDROMs (7.2R and 8.0R) also fail. On the box "7.1R" or "7.1R's loader + 7.2R kernel" worked fine. It is possible something in changes of loader(8) between 7.1R and 7.2R is the cause, but I am still not sure what it is... -- Hiroki
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