Installed 5.2RC from CDROM, fails to boot in manager

[oberman at es.net (Kevin Oberman)]

> Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2004 12:55:11 -0800
> From: Clint Olsen <clint_(_at_)_0lsen_(_dot_)_net>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-current_(_at_)_freebsd_(_dot_)_org
> 
> On Jan 01, Ryan Sommers wrote:
> > 
> > When you hit a key does anything show up on the next line after the
> > bootmanagers prompt, like a - / \ | character? If not then your MBR might
> > have been corrupted. Is it a constant tone or is it just an error beep
> > when you hit a key? I don't remember if boot0 makes a beep on a bad key
> > or not.
>  
> No, it doesn't show any sort of booting character.  It beeps no matter what
> key I hit.  It just hangs there.  This is a 40G Maxtor drive I swiped out
> of my Dell machine.
> 
> I had some fun running fdisk on this thing.  Fdisk could never get the
> geometry right for this disk - but it did appear to be able to detect the
> size correctly.  It kept trying to create 3 partitions, instead of the
> usual 2 (the 0-63 partition 'hole' + the freebsd partition).
> 
> At any rate, I got the screen to appear largely like it does on the fdisk
> menu in the FreeBSD Handbook (incorrectly guessing the disk size but at
> least getting the number of partitions right).
> 
> > Is FreeBSD the only operating system you have on the system? You might
> > try chosing not to use a boot manager if it is the only OS.
> 
> Yes, it's the only system.  I have the boot manager on my 4.7 machine, so I
> didn't see any harm in using it again.  I actually want to install a second
> disk with Windows on it so I can refer to it for emergency purposes.

Try re-writing the MBR. Use the fixit disk (ISO-2) to bring up th live
system. Then enter the command: 
boot0cfg -o packet -B ad0 

There are other options you might want to use, but this should
work. (Read the man page.)
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman_(_at_)_es_(_dot_)_net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634