Solaris 10 x86 boot problem

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

Had a working system. Booted up fine but now it goes into grub,
attempts to boot, displays sun copyright lines and then reboots and
loops around.

Grub entries are:-
findroot (rootfs0,0,a)
kernel /platform/i86pc/multiboot
module /platform/i86pc/boot-archive

Also, got an entry in grub for failsafe solaris boot and this boots up
ok:-
findroot (rootfs0,0,a)
kernel /boot/multiboot kernel/unix -s
module /boot/x86.miniroot-safe

Its on a laptop and I've got a feeling the user may have been powering
off without shutting down properly and that this has corrupt
something.

Anyway, is there a command to fixboot or something?

Or would I be better off booting from sol10 cd and doing an inplace
upgrade?

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Have you tried booting from CD/DVD and running fsck on your disk? All
partitions, of course; If the boot partition is fsck'ed up you have to
expect that the rest of the disk may be in less than perfect shape.

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

On Dec 10, 2:55 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber...@comcast.net>
wrote:

> expect that the rest of the disk may be in less than perfect shape.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

No. I'll try that.

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

Also, I recently changed the boot order in the BIOS (to remove CD boot
as the first choice). Would this affect anything that grub was trying
to do?

[hume.sp...@bofh.ca]

In comp.unix.solaris BertieB...@gmail.com <bertieb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Also, I recently changed the boot order in the BIOS (to remove CD boot
> as the first choice). Would this affect anything that grub was trying

That shouldn't matter.

Also, if your failsafe boot option works okay, it shouldn't be necessary to
boot from DVD/CD. Just boot from failsafe, and do your checks from
maintenance mode.

--
Brandon Hume - hume -> BOFH.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Ca/

[Nicolas GIMMILLARO]

Possible, but not sure

I had the same problem (grub shows menu, sun copyright visible and then
reboot) one time when I changed my scsi controller or when I changed its
position in the PCI slots.

I don't know if you have the same kind of problem with the change of the
boot order ... but if it can help , to fix my problem, I had to do
theses things :

- Boot with failsafe choice in grub

Solaris searchs installed instance on the disk, and asks if it must be
mounted r/w on /a (answer : y)

- Write on a paper the path (/dev/dsk/cXtYdZsN) of the root slice
mounted on /a (the path is shown in the previous question about mounting
the instance in /a)

- Find its "hardware" path ( /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@0/....) with a
"ls -al" in /dev/dsk (and not in /a/dev/dsk)

- Look in /a/etc/vfstab to see if /usr is on another slice, and mount it
in /a/usr if needed

- Run a chrooted shell in /a ( chroot /a /bin/ksh --login )

In the chrooted shell, run :

devfsadm -C

and then

devfsadm

- Check in bootenv.rc (must be in /platform/i86pc/boot or something like
that) that bootpath matches the "hardware" path of the /a mounted slice,
and fix it if needed

- Exit the chrooted shell

- Reboot with /a mounted (the shutdown process will update the
boot-archive on /a)

Hope it can help ...
Nicolas

[Ian Collins]

BertieB...@gmail.com wrote:
> Had a working system. Booted up fine but now it goes into grub,
> attempts to boot, displays sun copyright lines and then reboots and
> loops around.
>
> Grub entries are:-
> findroot (rootfs0,0,a)
> kernel /platform/i86pc/multiboot
> module /platform/i86pc/boot-archive
>
> Also, got an entry in grub for failsafe solaris boot and this boots up
> ok:-
> findroot (rootfs0,0,a)
> kernel /boot/multiboot kernel/unix -s
> module /boot/x86.miniroot-safe
>
> Its on a laptop and I've got a feeling the user may have been powering
> off without shutting down properly and that this has corrupt
> something.
>
> Anyway, is there a command to fixboot or something?

Edit the grub entry to enter kmdb on boot. See

http://blogs.sun.com/dmick/entry/diagnosing_kernel_hangs_panics_with

--
Ian Collins

[cindy]

On Dec 10, 7:43 am, "BertieBigBol...@gmail.com"

Which Solaris release is this? Sounds to me like your boot archives
need to be updated, depending on the Solaris release. You might
review the bootadm update-archive command, described here:

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-1985/gglaj?a=view

Or, do a google search of bootadm update to see other examples
that might apply to your scenario.

Cindy

Cindy

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

> Cindy- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

Cindy,

Thanks. Already tried that.

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

On Dec 10, 4:20 pm, hume.spamfil...@bofh.ca wrote:

> In comp.unix.solaris BertieBigBol...@gmail.com <bertiebigbol...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Also, I recently changed the boot order in the BIOS (to remove CD boot
> > as the first choice). Would this affect anything that grub was trying
>
> That shouldn't matter.
>
> Also, if your failsafe boot option works okay, it shouldn't be necessary to
> boot from DVD/CD.  Just boot from failsafe, and do your checks from
> maintenance mode.
>
> --
> Brandon Hume    - hume -> BOFH.Ca,http://WWW.BOFH.Ca/

fsck reports no problems....

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

On Dec 10, 6:39 pm, Ian Collins <ian-n...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Ian Collins- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

I'll give this a try...

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

On Dec 10, 8:46 pm, cindy <cindy.swearin...@sun.com> wrote:

> Cindy- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

sol 10 x86

[Paul Floyd]

On Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:39:11 -0800 (PST), BertieB...@gmail.com
<bertieb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> sol 10 x86

And precisely which version of Solaris 10? The first release was almost
5 years ago, and the 'current' version is the 8th update. Update 1 added
grub, and update 6 added ZFS boot. Both of these change significantly
booting.

A bientot
Paul
--
Paul Floyd http://paulf.free.fr

[cindy]

On Dec 11, 2:39 am, "BertieBigBol...@gmail.com"

Bertie,

If this is a Solaris 10 10/08 system with a UFS root, for example,
then your grub entries
look reasonable to me.

Maybe the problem is with the disk. I would boot from an s10 CD and
use format to
review the disk label to see if it is still intact.

Cindy

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

>
> If this is a Solaris 10 10/08 system with a UFS root, for example,
> then your grub entries
> look reasonable to me.
>
> Maybe the problem is with the disk. I would boot from an s10 CD and
> use format to
> review the disk label to see if it is still intact.
>

> Cindy- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Its Sol 10 05/09. I still seem to be able to access all my files if I
boot from failsafe.

Its just if I try to boot normally, it does the SunOs release 5
banner, then resets the machine and goes back into grub.

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

OK. So from what I understand so far:-

1. findroot (rootfs0,0,a) command is fine because failsafe boot uses
the same command and this works. So it can find the disk.

2. module /platform/i86pc/boot_archive must be OK because I've rebuilt
the boot archive with the bootadm command.

Therefore, this leaves the actual kernel? kernel /platform/i86pc/
multiboot

Could this be corrupt or something? Is there any way to rebuild this?

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

On Dec 10, 6:39 pm, Ian Collins <ian-n...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> Ian Collins- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

OK. Got it to enter kmdb.

All I get is :-
Loading kmdb...

welcome to kmdb
[0]> ?

Any ideas what next?

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

Ah. Got some info now.

Got into kmdb and ran :-

prom_debug/W 1
:c

and this seems to attempt to boot.

At the end, there was a message which seems to be pertinent:-

Cannot mount root on /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,2/ide@0/cmdk@0,0:a fstype ufs
panic[cpu0]/thread=fffffffffbc26480: vfs_mountroot: cannot mount root

Hmmm. So for some reason the kernel cant see the root disk. I know its
there because failsafe can see it?
Any ideas?

Rebuild the kernel? ????

[hume.sp...@bofh.ca]

In comp.unix.solaris BertieB...@gmail.com <bertieb...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Cannot mount root on /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,2/ide@0/cmdk@0,0:a fstype ufs
> panic[cpu0]/thread=fffffffffbc26480: vfs_mountroot: cannot mount root
>
> Hmmm. So for some reason the kernel cant see the root disk. I know its
> there because failsafe can see it?

I wouldn't assume that. When the failsafe boots, it runs off the ramdisk.
Does it offer to mount the hard disk root on /a?

If you boot failsafe, and then pop into a shell, is /a mounted? What
device is it attached to?

What happens if you do a regular boot, adding '-r' to the grub flags? It's
possible your /dev tree is damaged.

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

On Dec 15, 6:29 pm, hume.spamfil...@bofh.ca wrote:

Yes. root filesystem mount on /a and everything seems to be there.

Already tried reboot -- -r and reboot -- -ra with no luck.

[hume.sp...@bofh.ca]

BertieB...@gmail.com <bertieb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes. root filesystem mount on /a and everything seems to be there.
>
> Already tried reboot -- -r and reboot -- -ra with no luck.

That's interesting. When you boot failsafe, and drop to a shell, try
chrooting to the mounted broken root. Use the command:

chroot /a /sbin/sh

When it's done, you'll be running /sbin/sh inside the root. / will refer
to /a and so on.

Check /etc/vfstab and make sure it refers to the proper devices. You can
also try "fsck -n -m /" and see how it behaves (keep in mind that you're
running fsck on a mounted, live filesystem...)

Are you using ZFS at all?

[Nicolas GIMMILLARO]

See my post on 12/10/09 18:11

Have to try to see if bootpath in bootenv.rc (it is actually be set to
/pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,2/ide@0/cmdk@0,0:a ) matchs the hardware path on
which the failsafe os has booted ?

[bertieb...@gmail.com]

On Dec 17, 8:38 am, Nicolas GIMMILLARO <nicolas.gimmill...@wmi.fr>
wrote:

> which the failsafe os has booted ?- Hide quoted text -

>
> - Show quoted text -

Which post was that?