# Stuck in boot



## chikyuukko (Nov 29, 2009)

Hi everyone,

I am new to FreeBSD and this forum, but I have used GNU/Linux distros since 2003. Yesterday, after a conference in OSS Day 2009, I decided to try this system and downloaded the 8.0 DVD ISO. I checked it with MD5SUM (no problems) and Toast burnt it with no errors. 

My PC Is a Packard Bell iMedia 6710
Has this configuration

Primary Master: Seagate ST3200826A IDE HDD 200GB (NTFS WinXP)
Primary Slave: Empty
Secondary Master: PHILIPS DROM6126 DVD-ROM ATAPI
Secondary Slave: Empty
SATA1,2,3: Empty
SATA4: Hitachi 80GB HTS542580K9SA00 SATA Hard Drive (MacBook's old drive - dedicated to FreeBSD 8)

with a AMD Athlon64 Processor 3700+, nVidia GeForce 8500GT, (I think) ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Chipset (SB400 or something like this).

The point is - installation goes well, with ACPI on.
I boot from the hard disk and the boot loader lets me choose between
F1 FreeBSD
F5 Disk 1  <- If I select this, it appears another FreeBSD boot menu
F9 PXE

I choose F1 and the FreeBSD Boot menu appears.

If I choose options 1 to 5 only a backslash appears... and it's standing still, no spinning bar...
If I choose option 6 I can access the Boot loader prompt.

I tried the following (read from some tutorial online)

option 6

```
OK lsdev 
disk devices:
disk0: BIOS drive C:       (<- well, that's not right, anyway...)
    disk0s1a: FFS    (<- it should be FreeBSD File System, right?)
    disk0s1b: swap (<- I made a 4GB swap partition)
disk1: BIOS drive D:       (<- again, that's not right)
    disk1s1: NTFS/HPFS  (<- That's Win XP on 200GB HD)
    disk1s2: FAT-32        (<- Data FAT32 partition)
    disk1s3: FAT-32        (<- DOS data for old games)
pxe devices:
```

So i set the currdev variable to disk0s1a (I have to boot FreeBSD, right?)
so

```
OK set currdev=disk0s1a
```

and booted the kernel


```
OK boot /boot/kernel/kernel
```

and the bar spins for a while
printing

```
/boot/kernel/kernel text=0x88d680 data=0xdb0f4+0xa3104 syms=[0x4+0x95110+0x4+0xcc64f]
-
```
It appears an horizontal bar which stands still and I can wait for as long as I want but this bar will be still stuck there...

Does anybody have a suggestion?

Thanks in advance

SM


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## zeiz (Nov 29, 2009)

```
OK lsdev 
disk devices:
disk0: BIOS drive C:       (<- well, that's not right, anyway...)
    disk0s1a: FFS    (<- it should be FreeBSD File System, right?)
    disk0s1b: swap (<- I made a 4GB swap partition)
disk1: BIOS drive D:       (<- again, that's not right)
    disk1s1: NTFS/HPFS  (<- That's Win XP on 200GB HD)
    disk1s2: FAT-32        (<- Data FAT32 partition)
    disk1s3: FAT-32        (<- DOS data for old games)
pxe devices:
```

That's all right with drive C: that's indeed you FreeBSD install.
If you typed here all the output there must be 3 more FreeBSD partitions in it:
disk0s1d         as /var
disk0s1e         as /tmp
disk0s1f         as /usr
If you say that you created 4GB swap partition yourself you probably chose manual partitioning instead of automatic (choice A).
Are you sure you have created all the other partitions necessary?
If you are not sure, I would reinstall FreeBSD and choose automatic labeling (press A) on bsd label screen. 
Or if you want to change default to 4GB swap just check if you create other partitions on the same sysinstall screen (see Handbook)


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## chikyuukko (Nov 30, 2009)

OK I solved...
The partition scheme is not the problem, my system works correctly...
/var, /tmp, /usr are all folders on root fs.

The issue was a problem in SATA. I installed and ran the system with "SATA as IDE" BIOS setting... I don't know why it gave me problems. Anyway, I changed it to "SATA as RAID" and tried to boot the OS and everything worked fine... 

Thanks anyway
SM


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