ISSUE: The Bootloader

Potabi Systems Development | ISSUE #4 - The Bootloader

Originally published on github.com
Authored by Kai Lyons, SEPT 10, 2021

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The image above represents an error I ran into while building Potabi on Sept-9, 2021. The build is currently supposed to be using the RE Base release b_1.0a-base, the files of which are listed below.


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For testing purposes, I grabbed the RE Base b_1.0a-base disc1.iso file, as listed in the release. I ran it in QEMU on my personal machine, where the difference in bases between here and on the FreeBSD virtual machine being used for builds should be non-existent. Since I am coming back into development a month after I last did anything, I cannot say with any certainty that this will provide anything useful, but on The Potabi Foundation YouTube Channel, I uploaded a timelapse of this build for fun, not even trying to use it to help debug anything. It shows no issue, as far as I can tell.

Is this possibly an error with the base and kernel tarfiles themselves? Most probably, no. First, they were known to be working at some point in time at least. Second, the disc1.iso is uploaded to these base releases for these kinds of specific issues. If base or kernel are ever updated, so are all of the rest of the files at the same time, especially disc1.iso.

Running disc1.iso in a virtual machine proves with near certainty that my builds with the base and kernel tarballs should absolutely not produce an error.


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Where may the issues be? Considering everything, I have located a couple possible locations for issues.

  • The ISO creation step (most likely)
  • The addition of software or rc.conf (least likely)

Figuring out what went wrong, where, and why, will be important.

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