FreeBSD 7.0 won't boot with gmirror?

[tomh009]

I have been working on building a new server (dual Opteron 242, running amd64 of course). I want to use gmirror to get RAID 1 across the two hot-swap SCSI drives. The instructions are easy enough, and I can create the gmirror set without problems.

But then I add this line to /boot/loader.conf:
geom_mirror_load="YES"

After that, the next boot will fail with this message immediately after gmirror is loaded:
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/mirror/gm0.journals1a

Manual root filesystem specification:
<fstype>:<device> Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
eg. ufs:da0s1a
?

This happens whether I actually have an active gmirror set (ie mirroring the entire disk) or haven't set one up yet (mirroring only slice 2 on each disk). And at this point my USB keyboard is not functional (even though it was detected earlier) so I can't even test entering something here.

Surely I am not the first one to use gmirror on 7.0-RELEASE -- what am I missing here?

[brd@]

Your /etc/fstab is missed up, it looks like you have:
/dev/mirror/gm0.journals1a
where you need:
/dev/mirror/gm0s1a
I'm not sure why the keyboard isn't working, try grabbing a PS/2 Keyboard for this single user mode work.

[tomh009]

Your /etc/fstab is missed up, it looks like you have:
/dev/mirror/gm0.journals1a
where you need:
/dev/mirror/gm0s1a
I'm not sure why the keyboard isn't working, try grabbing a PS/2 Keyboard for this single user mode work.

Sorry for the confusion on the error message (that's what I get for trying multiple times and then trying to manually post boot error messages) -- for my final test, where I only gmirrored the second slice, I actually had no gm0 filesystems at all in /etc/fstab, so no gmirror devices should have been mounted.

And doing a "gmirror load" after boot works just fine. Unfortunately that means that the gmirror-based filesystem is not available to daemons that are started automatically.

Unfortunately the server has no PS/2 ports at all so a USB keyboard is all I can use.

[tomh009]

For additional clarification, this is the error I saw in my last attempt (geom_mirror_load enabled, gmirror only on slice 2, root on native disk):

Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/da0s1a

Manual root filesystem specification:
<fstype>:<device> Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
eg. ufs:da0s1a
?


I then booted with the install CD, and used a live FS CD to remove the geom_mirror_load line from loader.config (no changes to fstab), and the system booted correctly. (And "gmirror load" worked fine once booted.)

[brd@]

Can you post the contents of /etc/fstab now that you have the machine booted?

[tomh009]

Here is the /etc/fstab (unchanged since the boot problems):

# Device Mountpoint FStype Options Dump Pass#
/dev/da0s1b none swap sw 0 0
/dev/da0s1a / ufs rw 1 1
/dev/da0s1d /usr ufs rw 2 2
#/dev/da0s2d /local ufs rw 2 2

#/dev/da1s1b none swap sw 0 0
#/dev/da1s2d /local2 ufs rw 2 2
#/dev/da1s1d /root2 ufs rw 2 2
#/dev/da1s1e /usr2 ufs rw 2 2

/dev/acd0 /cdrom cd9660 ro,noauto 0 0