# FreeBSD starter - Messed up boot



## robergto (May 1, 2015)

Hi there!

I'm new to the forum, as well as FreeBSD and UNIX systems. Trying to learn the hard way about this, no graphical environment yet installed. So there I go, and make a disk and install FreeBSD in a fresh disk, with the 'auto' partitioning and no problems. Thing is I got another disk, and willing to learn, did it myself. I followed(not at all properly I suppose) the instructions at freebsd.org concerning the install process and the different partitions needed to a happy installation. 

Thing is that the system won't boot up, at least not like it did when I followed the short path to make the partitions.

I'd like to post a complete screen of the result of booting up, but cannot, for it is in a different computer. So, I guess it might be an important message:

```
Mounting local file systems:mount: /swap: No such file or directory
WARNING: /olg was not properly dismounted
Mounting /etc/fstab filesystems failed, startup aborted
ERROR: ABORTING BOOT (sending SIGTERM to parent)!
```
/olg is an extra partition which I made just for testing purposes, in last place when attempting to install.

Any ideas? I've been trying to understand the thing, and peeked through quite a few of this posts, but I seem not to catch up. I know that a clean install would be a fast solution, but I'd really like to understand the system, how it mounts partitions and stuff (like taking away the /olg and increase the /usr).

Thanks in advance, my regards to everyone and congrats for understanding this, I think it's marvellous to be able to use a system like FreeBSD, with no graphical stuff =D

See you!


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## asteriskRoss (May 1, 2015)

Hi robergto. Welcome to FreeBSD and the forums   Can you post the contents of your /etc/fstab file?  You can get it by booting to the FreeBSD installation media and selecting "Live CD", then logging in as root with no password.  You will need to mount your root (/) partition with something like `mount /dev/ada0p3 /mnt`, where you should use whatever disk and partition you chose in place of ada0p3.  The contents of the file can then be seen with `less /mnt/etc/fstab`.

The fstab(5) man page would be worth reading.  If I were to guess, I would say you may have set a mountpoint of /swap for your swap partition when it should be none.


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## SirDice (May 1, 2015)

If possible boot to single user mode. Then for UFS systems:

```
fsck -y
mount -u /
mount -a
```
For ZFS: 

```
zfs set readonly=off zroot
zfs mount -a
```
Then edit /etc/fstab and fix the error.


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## robergto (May 2, 2015)

Hi again! Thanks a lot for your help and welcoming me to the forum 
Say, I guess I had no idea at all when prepared the disk for installation. The fstab was at all strange, completely different from the one in the man pages which you kindly suggested to read. I therefore sadly had to remove the complete filesystem, and install again using auto-unix(he he), and leave the understanding of this matter for a distant future. I had not created, for instance, the freebsd-boot. The swap was nothing but air, a black hole =D
Hope some day I can understand it and create partitions KNOWING what I'm doing. I could not even create the boot one manually, for I wrote 512K in the size stuff, and it went to 504. And after that, I tried the root, and wrote / in the mountpoint, and the invalid argument message box appeared =S And so, I went 'auto'.-
Regards, and thanks again!


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## asteriskRoss (May 2, 2015)

If you're keen to learn, have a look at your working system.  gpart(8) is the utility for manipulating partitions.  You can see your partitions by running `gpart show`.  If you installed FreeBSD using the UFS filesystem, then you can look at /etc/fstab to see how those partitions are configured.  For a default installation I expect you will only see the root (/) filesystem and your swap listed in /etc/fstab.  If you chose ZFS, things are a bit different as it doesn't use fstab(5) by default.  The chapter on ZFS in the FreeBSD handbook is a good introduction to ZFS.

More widely, the handbook is a generally excellent resource for getting to grips with FreeBSD.  You mentioned you're new to UNIX-like systems so the chapter on UNIX basics will definitely be worth your time.

_Edited to fix formatting tags_


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