Re: i386 bootloader regression?

[David Laight <david%l8s.co.uk@localhost>]

On Mon, Feb 07, 2011 at 06:22:24PM -0600, David Young wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 07, 2011 at 10:02:48AM -0600, David Young wrote:
> > I've updated the NetBSD installation on one of my Soekris 45xx units.
> > Now it is in an infinite reboot cycle:
> > 
> > NetBSD/x86 ffsv1 Primary Bootstrap
> > r:-(
> > 
> > *reboots here*
> > 
> > Has something changed in the i386 bootloaders that would cause that?
> > Where is the key for interpreting "r:-("?  ISTR each of those characters
> > marks the bootloader's progress somehow.
> 
> Turns out that the 'r:-(' come from comBIOS.  I think that 'r' means
> that the BIOS failed to (r)ead a sector.  I disabled GPT support on
> Jonathan Kollasch's suggestion: the 'r' went away, but the system still
> rebooted.
> 
> I switched from the new /boot file to the one that I used to use on this
> box, and the system boots.  Perhaps the new /boot file, at 70780 bytes,
> is too big?  It's the only /boot file I see that is greater than 64kB.

Hmmm... possibly the pbr code reads /boot with a single bios disk read?
This will fail rather if any attempt is made to read >64k.

        David

-- 
David Laight: david%l8s.co.uk@localhost