On Jan 2, 2013, at 2:10 PM, Matthew Seaman <m.sea...@infracaninophile.co.uk>
wrote:
> On 02/01/2013 17:49, Paul Mather wrote:
>> Yesterday, I updated my RELENG_8 ZFS-only system that has worked like a
>> champ for ages. After a successful install{kernel,world} and reboot, I
>> noticed the 20121130 entry in /usr/src/UPDATING and upgraded my ZFS pool via
>> "zfs upgrade -a". I also upgraded my boot blocks as requested, and as per
>> the "ZFS notes" section of /usr/src/UPDATING.
>>
>> Unfortunately rebooting with the upgraded pool failed. The "windmill" boot
>> spinner spins for a tiny amount of time and then stops dead. :-( I don't
>> get to the boot loader menu at all.
>>
>> I downloaded a very recent RELENG_8 snapshot
>> (FreeBSD-8.3-RELENG_8-r244923-JPSNAP-amd64-amd64-memstick.img) from
>> pub.allbsd.org and was able to boot successfully from USB using that. I
>> entered Fixit Mode and tried to write the boot blocks on the memstick image
>> onto my hard drives but the resultant system still wouldn't boot. The
>> commands I used (from Fixit Mode) are these:
>>
>> gpart bootcode -b /dist/boot/pmbr -p /dist/boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ad4
>> gpart bootcode -b /dist/boot/pmbr -p /dist/boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ad6
>>
>> (ad4 and ad6 are my two hard drives.)
>>
>> If I "load zfs" before booting the USB memstick then I can see my old pool
>> listed when I do "zfs import". I haven't tried importing the pool because
>> I'm not sure if that would make the problem worse.
>>
>> Does anyone have any advice in restoring this system to bootability? I
>> followed the standard "root on ZFS" recipe using a two drive mirror when
>> installing the system initially. Each drive uses GPT with three partitions:
>> freebsd-boot, freebsd-swap, and freebsd-zfs in that order. Like I said at
>> the start, all this worked for a long time until just now when I upgraded
>> the pool to enable "feature flags" support. :-(
>>
>> Any help is appreciated.
>
> I think you may be running into problems with zpool.cache. This has
> been fixed in current, which now has the ability to find the root zpool
> without a valid zpool.cache, but that I suspect is faint comfort for you.
It turns out it was my /boot.config that was preventing booting. The system is
usually always headless, so I have "-S115200 -Dh" as the sole line in
/boot.config to enable a 115200 baud serial console. This has been working
fine for me up until I did a {build,install} {kernel,world} on 1st January
2013. I was pretty sure my woes began after I did the "zpool upgrade -a" and
subsequently rebooted again, but now I can't be sure whether I successfully
rebooted at all after the "make installworld" and mergemaster step.
Does anyone know a sure-fire way of getting a dual console setup (high-speed
serial + VGA). The recipe I had been using had worked well for a long time. I
had "-S115200 -Dh" in /boot.config and the following entries in
/boot/loader.conf:
boot_multicons="YES"
comconsole_speed="115200"
console="comconsole,vidconsole"
Now, though, if I have "-S115200 -Dh" then the system locks up at boot.
Removing /boot.config gets me dual console, but only at 9600 baud. :-(
Cheers,
Paul.
PS: Is the BOOT_COMCONSOLE_SPEED entry in /etc/make.conf needed? I was under
the impression it has been obsolete for a while and took it out of my
/etc/make.conf file.
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