Re: Booting from usb hard disk

On Mon, March 23, 2009 07:36, Robert Noland wrote:
> So I have my i386 install on a usb hard disk, which I can only boot on
> one machine now.  The one machine that I can make work has a bios option
> that reads "BIOS ehci handoff".  This used to work with the old usb
> stack.  The machines that it doesn't work on, boot the kernel, but fail
> to mount root, giving me the forbidding mountroot> prompt, which is
> immediately followed by the message saying that da0 is attached.  da0 is
> however not listed in the available boot devices list.  I tried playing
> around with the timeout in vfs_mount.c, but that didn't seem to have any
> impact.  It has been suggested that this may be a "geom" timeout, but I
> don't know anything about the boot system really.

I had problem a while ago with via mini itx hardware, that was quite
close. If I try boot from usb (installed in usb hdd), I get to the point
of loader not finding my disk.

I then used a small flash disk attached to the ata (44 pin ide) channel
and formatted /boot in there. this way I get to the point of mount root
you said, and da0 not being alive soon enough to mount root. list disks
also couldn't find da0 though.

I tried current from that time, and no good.

if this is solved, I'll be happy to try whatever patch to current. (as
long as I can install it from another box/or its ata channel, as it can't
boot vanilla 7.1R)

matheus


-- 
We will call you cygnus,
The God of balance you shall be