Re: Similar problem to "Lost ability to boot" dated Jan 2002

[Nick Holland <nick@holland-consulting.net>]

Luis Cerdas wrote:
> 
> Hi, all:
> 
> We currently have a firewall deployed at a customer site as a filtering
> gateway.
> 
> The box only has one IDE disk (wd0) and it had been working fine for the
> last couple of months.  The box had a problem with looped email (also
> filters viruses) so the queue was cleaned, and it was rebooted.
> 
> The machine then hung right after the message "OpenBSD Boot 1.28", right
> after it displayed "fd0 hd0".
> 
> The BIOS has not been changed (still boots off the first IDE hard disk; and
> it only has one).  We reinstalled the boot blocks, but nothing worked.
> 
> It does boot if booted of the CD and the command "b wd0a:/bsd" is given.  It
> seems as though the boot block is pointing to the wrong disk, but using the
> install boot procedure, the target used was "wd0".
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated, as this is a production gateway, and
> now our customers can't reboot the box without a floppy or cd (both
> previously disabled at the bios).
> 
> TIA,
> Luis Cerdas

You didn't provide many details.  

I'm guessing you are running OpenBSD 3.0 (the Boot 1.28) and i386 (IDE
drives and users of most other platforms usually remember that is
relevant).

Would this happen to be a system with a / partition bigger than 8G? 
Or / that extends past the 8g point?  If so, check out:
    http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#LargeDrive

If this isn't it, provide some info.  Lots of info.  dmesg.  fdisk
output. disklabel output.  how you did the installboot, what the
output was.  Exactly what was on the screen when it hangs. etc.  You
have something different between your machine and our machines that
work, you need to tell us what...

Nick.
-- 
http://www.holland-consulting.net