On 3/7/07, David Burgess <apt dot get at gmail dot com> wrote:
> So I'm setting up a shiny new monowall today and it's the first time
> I've tried booting from a USB stick and the first thing on the display
> monitor after the post is "invalid slice", followed by some
> "/boot/kernel"-type messages and then a "boot:" prompt. I'm not sure
> what to type at this point and am hoping to get this thing to boot
> without me having to type anything at all, really.
>
> The phrase "invalid slice" doesn't turn up a single result when
> searching the list archive, although searching "invalid slice freebsd"
> gets a bunch of hits that talk about partitioning and bootloaders and
> such.
>
> Obviously (to me, if not to you as a result of this brief post) the
> system is attempting to boot from the usb stick, and reading the image
> at least in part, but no dice.
>
> I flashed this usb stick using the current (as of today)
> physdiskwrite.exe and generic-pc-1.3b2.img.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> db
>

Here's some more, for the detail-hungry.

After the POST, this is what I see on the screen:

Invalid slice
Invalid slice
No /boot/loader

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

FreeBSD/i386 boot
Default: 0:ad(0ka)/boot/kernel/kernel
boot: _

I wrote the generic-pc-1.3b2.img to a fresh USB flash drive using both
physdiskwrite and dd. The md5sum on the .img was good. I tried
mounting the fs in linux:

# mount -r -t ufs /dev/sda4 /media/cdrom0/
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda4,
       missing codepage or other error
       In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
       dmesg | tail  or so

# dmesg | tail -n 1
[17180998.192000] ufs_read_super: bad magic number

# fdisk /dev/sda
This disk has both DOS and BSD magic.
Give the 'b' command to go to BSD mode.

Command (m for help): b
Partition /dev/sda4  has invalid starting sector 0.

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sda: 257 MB, 257474560 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 31 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda4   *           1           4       25000   a5  FreeBSD
Partition 4 has different physical/logical endings:
     phys=(1023, 254, 63) logical=(3, 28, 41)


I'm very unfamiliar with most things FreeBSD, so I don't have much
hope of interpreting the above. Any idea why this won't boot? What I
might do to get it to boot?

db