1

I have a freebsd box that seems to not want to boot past the boot loader.

It wont go past the initial boot loader phase and just lists the version number for the boot loader(btx loader). It hangs there. I am not a fluent freebsd admin and decent at command line, however I can tell clearly it wont get past and boot past the disk. Loaded up rescue cd, mounted the drive. Couldnt get fsck going without seg faulting

How do i get this fixed? I have a live cd.... just curious which route to take.

1 Answer 1

2

It sounds like your file system might be corrupt, and possibly your drive is near death. The lack of ability to fsck is a bit of a clue.

I'd look at backing up whatever data I could on the existing drive. You could live CD boot, and copy it to a USB-caddy disk, or install a second drive in the case, or replace the drive and put the old one in a caddy.

If you succeed in copying, without any disk errors, you could try re-installing the system on the same drive.

If it was me though, I'd buy a new drive, stick the old one in a USB caddy, and try to get whatever I could from it before it dies.

It is possible something else is causing your problems, so if you're keen you could run a memory diagnostic, and whatever other system test code you can from your live cd, especially if you're reluctant to do a re-install. All that will cost is time.

You do have backups, right? ;-)

1
  • we managed to back up the existing structure with our tools here, we then blew down a ubuntu server install since we needed to re purpose it quickly and then raided it. Hopefully the drive lasts. Thanks for the help
    – Ioudas
    Sep 1, 2009 at 15:41

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .