# Mountroot error FreeBSD 5.1



## andrewraharjo (Sep 13, 2011)

Hey everyone, I'm currently new here and I have some a big problem with my FreeBSD 5.1 IBM xSeries server.

Here's what I've got;

1) Yesterday, I changed my two server disks and changed with the new ones.
2) When I tried to enter my server with my new disk - OS on the disk is Fedora -, there was nothing on it, so I decided to put back my old BSD disk back again into my IBM server.
3) I got my two old disks into same slot on IBM server which was my 5.1 FreeBSD.

The Problem starts here;

4) When it boots up my machine, it displayed GRUB, so I changed the direction of my old disk, then I got into my old FreeBSD 5.1

5) I booted up my machine with single user mode - *boot -s* - but when it tried to mount my SCSCI disks it showed mountroot.

I'm really in a panic right now, about what should I do? I tried to read the FreeBSD manual and do `mountroot> ufs:da1s1a` for my disk, but it displayed that no root is there.

So friends, please tell me what should I do? I really need your help.

Regards


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## wblock@ (Sep 13, 2011)

Drive numbers can be dynamic.  What used to be da1 may now be da0.  It won't do any harm to try other values at the mountroot> prompt.  If you find the right one, it will boot to single user.  Then remount / read/write and mount the other filesystems, edit /etc/fstab and it'll be fixed.  Labels (filesystem, device, or GPT) avoid the problem entirely.  I don't know if they're supported in FreeBSD 5.1, though.

RAID would complicate this.  Are the disks SATA, SCSI, SAS?


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## andrewraharjo (Sep 14, 2011)

Hey, thanks wblock for your concern about my problem...

I want to correct my Free BSD version- it's not 5.1 but 7.0-sorry about my mistake..

Okay about drive numbers can be dynamic, yeah, I currently sure about that. Someone told me that BSD will search the drive arrays for boot manager..and yes, yesterday, my BSD could boot up with single user mode, but weirdo again, I can't write fstab or something else there..so weird huh ? 

the disks are SCSI


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## andrewraharjo (Sep 14, 2011)

Here's my server boot screen capture


```
da0:<IBM-ESXS DTN036C3UCDY10FN>Fixed Direct Access SCSI-3 Device
da0: 320.000MB/s transfers (160.000MHz, offset 127,16 bit)
da0: Command Queueing Enabled
da0: 34715MB (71096640 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 4425C)
da1 at mpt0 bus 0 target 2 lun 0
da1:<IBM-ESXS DTN036C3UCDY10FN>Fixed Direct Access SCSI-3 Device
da1: 320.000MB/s transfers (160.000MHz, offset 127,16 bit)
da1: Command Queueing Enabled
da1: 34715MB (71096640 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 4425C)
ses0 at mpt0 bus 0 target 8 lun 0
ses0: <IBM 02R0962a S320 1 1> Fixed processor SCSCI-2 device
ses0: 3.300MB/s transfers
ses0: SAF-TE Compliant Device
SMP: AP CPU #2 Launched!
SMP: AP CPU #1 Launched!
SMP: AP CPU #3 Launched!

Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/da0s1a

Manual root filesystem specification:
<fstype>:<device> Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
eg. ufs:da0s1a
?

mountroot>
```

*then I tried to put*


```
mountroot> ufs:da1s1a
....
#df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used    Avail    Capacity mounted on
da1s1a      1015260   493540  440500    53%      /
devfs           2       2       0         100%   /dev
```

So weird here, why I can't mount da1s0a? it said that not configured, Why does this thing happen? Any solution?


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## wblock@ (Sep 14, 2011)

andrewraharjo said:
			
		

> ```
> mountroot> ufs:da1s1a
> ....
> #df
> ...



Slice numbers start at 1.  If you're asking why da0s1a won't mount, it could be any of a bunch of things.  The simplest is that the two disks were reversed.  The one that used to be da0 is now da1.


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## da1 (Sep 14, 2011)

wblock said:
			
		

> The one that used to be da0 is now da1.



I was always "da1" thank you very much .

Back on-topic. One thing you could do is type "?" (the question mark) at the mountroot> prompt to get a list of bootable devices.
Another thing, is booting from a DVD into the live mode, mounting the hdd's, checking their names and correcting fstab as needed. Make sure to load any kernel modules you have (ex. atapicam changes the name of the device - if I remember correctly).

Not sure if it makes a difference or not but shouldn't the path to the hdd be absolute under mountroot> ?


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