No /boot/loader

[jtl]

I've got a Dell Optiplex with 1 drive (ad4) split into 4 slices. Slices 2 and 4 contain Windows XP (ad4s2, ad4s4), and slice 3 contains FreeBSD 7.1 (ad4s3). In the process of trying to put the 2nd XP on slice 4 and upgrade it to Vista (not done yet), I seem to have screwed up my FreeBSD slice. Now, when I boot to FreeBSD I get the error:

No /boot/loader

FreeBSD/i386 boot
Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
boot:
No /boot/kernel/kernel

FreeBSD/i386 boot
Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
boot:


If I type a "?" for help, it doesn't list /boot as an available directory.

I have booted to the FreeBSD 7.1 liveFS CD and used boot0cfg to rewrite boot0, and bsdlabel to rewrite boot1 and boot2 i.e.,

# boot0cfg -B ad4
# bsdlabel -B ad4s3

but that hasn't changed anything. Thanks very much for any help.

- Jon

 

[Waume]

No boot loader work-around FreeBSD 7.2

I had the same error message as the original poster on three separate machines when trying to install from the FreeBSD 7.2 ISO disks.

No boot loader, etc. None of the usual commands could get any of the machines to boot from the hard disk after being installed from the CD.


Here is what worked for me.

1. Download FreeBSD 6.4 disk 1 ISO instead of 7. Go through the normal install for 6.4 but select the minimum configuration. This installs fast and is less to update. Reboot the machine, 6.4 will boot from the hard disk.

2. freebsd-update -r 7.2-RELEASE fetch

3. freebsd-update install

4. reboot

5. freebsd-update install (yes, again)

6. sysintall (use OPTIONS menu, to change remove -p4 from 7.2-RELEASE) to put in whatever you normally would have installed and do whatever you normally would. You know where you are at now.

This is a round-a-bout way of getting 7.2 installed but works. Its not elegant but if you have to make progress then this did the trick for me.