dear m0n0wallers,

sometime back, there was a discussion about some of you facing a problem
where m0n0wall stops booting with the following error:

**************************************************************************
* FATAL ERROR                                                            *
* The device that contains the config file (config.xml) could not be     *
* found. m0n0wall cannot continue booting.                               *
**************************************************************************

along the way, many solutions were tried, and some thought that it had to
do with the type/brand of CF card being used. today, i faced the same
problem, and linked it to the fact that the CF card device was not being
mounted at boot time due to a failure. the error i kept getting was that
the IDE device (/dev/ad2 in my case) was not fscked properly with
incorrect superblocks. now, i knew this isnt so, since the CF card and
fscked fine when connected to my notebook.

the problem lies in how some BIOSes interpret the sector addressing system
on IDE disks. i remember facing a similar problem on earlier versions of
FreeBSD (the early 2.X releases) on older hardware. most IDE disks today
have grown intelligent and handled this sector addressing mismatch real
well, so much so that most people think it's gone away. however, CF cards
dont have this intelligence, thus the problem surfaces.

the solution is to go to the BIOS of your box and use CHS sector
addressing, instead of Auto or LBA addressing. specifying this explicitly
on your device's BIOS would cure this problem, and allow you to use any CF
card from any manufacturer.

my earlier problem of not getting the bootup console messages on a NSC
Geode GX1-S still remain (inspite of the Geode patches), but i've worked
around this by using a serial console and specifying 'set
console=comconsole' as the first line in m0n0wall's /boot/loader.rc.

i'm also the original backporter of picobsd to the then -STABLE, 2.2.5 of
FreeBSD, and i plan on using m0n0wall in a range of router/AP boxes i'd be
building for an ISP here in Malaysia. you'd be seeing me contributing code
back to the m0n0wall project, as well as images for a number of SBCs
available on the market. i will get in touch with Manuel on methods of
syncing our code together.

till then, enjoy m0n0walling. :)

Regards,                           /\_/\   "All dogs go to heaven."
dinesh at alphaque dot com                (0 0)    http://www.alphaque.com/
+==========================----oOO--(_)--OOo----==========================+
| for a in past present future; do                                        |
|   for b in clients employers associates relatives neighbours pets; do   |
|   echo "The opinions here in no way reflect the opinions of my $a $b."  |
| done; done                                                              |
+=========================================================================+