Hello Joachim:

Joachim Thiemann wrote:
> Hello John and Rudi,
...
> 
>>I had a strange case were the kernel figured the root fs was msdos but
>>was a correct ffs. fsck said okay. zeroing the first 4k of that
>>partition (slide) before doing the newfs of the reinstall helped.
> 
> 
> Hmm, that doesn't seem to be my issue, but I could try clearing the
> first 4 k of the drive (heck, why not! :-)
> 
That's most likly unnecessary extra work, since it deletes that slice
and you'd proabably have to re-install.
What happend in my case was that the same
slice was first formated with newfs_msdos and later became root with
ffs. Thus formating with newfs_ffs.
Installation went well, but on reboot the kernel figured incorrectly the
root fs type was msdos and consequently didn't find anything on that
slice, since it was actually ffs.

I don't think your problem has anything in common with that.

Rudi