# why I keep losing user info?



## beesatmsu (Apr 10, 2010)

this morning all I did was booting from one HD (ad4), and tried sysinstal a system to another HD (ad6). the new disk wont boot even though sysinstall says minimal system was installed (I was careful to select ad6 for new systems). all files seems to be intact on ad4 but...I lost all the user info (i.e. my user was no longer valid, and root password was gone too), mysql wont work, KDE4 wont work (mouse and keyboard frozen).

this happened to me 2-3 times before. once I was in single user mode to dump/restore to another disk.  another time I was synchronizing the source files for building a new kernel using cvsup...

what did I do wrong?

I was using Freebsd8.0-p2. Thanks for any info...


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## knarf (Apr 10, 2010)

If you run sysinstall from an existing installation and use it the same way as if run from an installation CD, you'll "install" into the filesystems of your existing system, no matter what disks you've chosen. If you've chosen to install 8.0-RELEASE you have downgraded your system from 8.0-RELEASE-p2 to 8.0-RELEASE.

Maybe it's possible to use sysinstall in your situation if you take care ad6's mountpoints are under /newsystem and do something like DESTDIR=/newsystem.

But I think it's a lot easier for you to boot from the installation CD/DVD and install onto ad6. This way you make sure the content of ad4 is not touched at all.


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## beesatmsu (Apr 10, 2010)

knarf, thanks. 

now that makes sense...must be a bug!

my stupid gigabyte MB wont allow me to boot from an old cd or dvd, I tried both older drives. bios sees it and freebsd sees it, but wont boot from it. (bios has no dvd option, only cdrom option)

it gets stuck at "boot loader relocated to acd0" and hang there.  the bios also cannot change booting sequence from sata (my other MBs can). tried to save $ and have only 2 sata dvds. this mb works with sata dvd. 

I will bring it to office and mirror it again Monday.


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## knarf (Apr 10, 2010)

You still have a lot of options:

1. Try installing from an USB stick using the 8.0-RELEASE-amd64-memstick.img (or i386).
2. Use sysinstall from the running system and make sure you mount ad6s1a and so on under /newsystem. In the options menu of sysinstall make sure you set "Install root" from "/" to "/newsystem".
3. Use /usr/sbin/sade to create the partitions in the sysinstall style on ad6 and use rsync to clone your current system to /newsystem.
4. Read http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/GPTZFSBoot and learn more about the boot process, the gpt partitioning scheme and a new filesystem: zfs.


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## beesatmsu (Apr 10, 2010)

complicated...but it seems to be a much better system, the zfs..not sure if I need it. 

ok, I am trying my cd again (which boots fine with the same drive, a different MB) on the gigabyte MA785GM-US2H

it says:

```
verifying dMI pool data.....
boot from cd/dvd: cd Load 1.2

building the boot loader arguements
Looking up /boot/loader...found
relocating the loader and the BTX
Starting the BTX loader

BTX laoder 1.0 BTX cersion is 1.02
Consoles: iternal video/keybaord
BIOS CD is cd0
BIOS drive A: is disk0
```

and would hang here.


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## knarf (Apr 11, 2010)

Are you sure your BIOS is set up properly? Do you see your hard disk detected during boot? BIOS drive C: is missing here.


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## beesatmsu (Apr 11, 2010)

yes, Bios says it detected 2 sata. it is a strange bios. it shows the sata on a 2nd page before booting. 

if you push delete into the bios, you only see ide drives, not satas (but there is raid setup for satas, I did not go into detail). 

anyway if I tell it to boot from HD, not cd, then it would boot fine into HD.


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