panic after 7.2 -> 8.1 upgrade

J

jtl

I have a multi-boot machine running FreeBSD 7.2 and Ubuntu 9.10, and using GRUB to manage the multi-booting. I recently upgraded FreeBSD from 7.2 to 8.1 and, although I ran into some problems updating my ports, everything seemed to be stable. I've booted into FreeBSD 8.1 and Ubuntu 9.10 several times now without a problem. This morning the machine was in FreeBSD 8.1 but was unresponsive. After a forced reboot I have not been able to boot into FreeBSD, though Ubuntu seems to be fine. I can't pause the screen while booting FreeBSD so I'm probably missing some important information, but here's what I've been able to see as things scroll by.

Prior to the GRUB loading message I now see:

Code: 
04/02/0: Error allocating I/O BAR for PCI device
04/02/0: Error allocating I/O BAR for PCI device

I haven't seen this before and only have a rough idea what it means.

GRUB brings up the list of OS's and I choose FreeBSD, but partway through boot process I see:

Code: 
GEOM: ad4: partition 3 does not start on a track boundary
GEOM: ad4: partition 3 does not end on a track boundary
GEOM: ad4: partition 4 does not match label (255h, 63s != 16h, 63s)

Other information scrolls by too fast for me to see.

Shortly after that I get number of messages like the following and then the machine pauses for 15 seconds before rebooting.

Code: 
Fatal trap 12:  page fault while in kernel mode
.
.
.
fault code = supervisor read, page not present
.
.
.
panic: page fault

I can mount the various FreeBSD partitions under Ubuntu, so at least Ubuntu doesn't have any problem with the geometry.

I'd be grateful for any help on how to resurrect FreeBSD 8.1. Thanks.

- Jon
 
Wow - it turns out that the
Code: 
04/02/0: Error allocating I/O BAR for PCI bus
message was due to a bad battery, and after replacing it I could boot into FreeBSD again. The GEOM messages are still there, but partition 3 is a non-FreeBSD partition so I'm not worried about those particular messages. Partition 4 is FreeBSD, so I am concerned that that GEOM message is still there, but fsck doesn't report any problems. I'd like to be able to resolve that issue, but at least FreeBSD 8.1 is up and running again.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about the GEOM warnings. I've seen it many times even (or especially) on "factory-formatted" media. There's no harm in following one (mis)interpretation or another of an outdated system. In the end, LBA has been in use for the past 2 decades and any C/H/S notation is like black magic. The only thing that matters is that the boot/root partition starts on the zeroth sector of the slice.

Did the page fault message too go away when you replaced the battery? Because that one is more serious.
 
Yes, the page fault did go away and I was able to boot into FreeBSD. I was able to boot into Ubuntu even with the low battery and it seems very strange to me that FreeBSD would page fault due to a low battery, but I don't know what else to conclude. Thanks for the info on GEOM - I'll happily ignore the warning since swapping the battery put me back in business.
 
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