On 12/07/17 14:21, Mike Scott wrote:
> I'm having problems getting freebsd to run off an external hard drive
> instead of the pi's SD card..
...
> The system starts to boot, but the loader gives expected messages about
> umass0 followed by da0, then stops with
>
> "mounting from /dev/da0p2 failed with error 19"
>
> (device does not support operation??) and waits for a manual entry of
> the root device.
...


OK, I'll answer my own query. I finally hit on the right set of
buzz-words for the search engine, and found the answer at
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/30254/


The usb disk is slow enough to need extra boot delay before / is
mounted. So I've put into loader.conf
kern.cam.boot_delay="10000"

and all is well.

(Footnote: the loader.conf files /must/ be root-owned, or they are
silently ignored during boot. Took ages to find that somehow loader.conf
was owned by my non-root persona. Wierd. But all's well now.)



--
Mike Scott (unet2  [deletethis] scottsonline.org.uk)
Harlow Essex
"The only way is Brexit" -- anon.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05