kern/123140: SMP boot causes slow KB, ATA drives not detected

[Bob Frazier]

>Number:         123140
>Category:       kern
>Synopsis:       SMP boot causes slow KB, ATA drives not detected
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Sun Apr 27 10:40:01 UTC 2008
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Bob Frazier
>Release:        FreeBSD 7.0
>Organization:
SFT Inc.
>Environment:
FreeBSD hack.SFT.local 7.0-STABLE FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE #0: Tue Apr  1 01:11:09 PDT 2008     root at hack.SFT.local:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386
>Description:
after creating a bootable SATA drive on a different machine (GENERIC kernel without modifications, SMP enabled) I was unable to successfully boot into a quad-core Intel with ASUS P5N-D motherboard (uses NVidia chipset, specifically NVidia nForce MPC51 IDE and SATA controllers).  After trying just about every possible BIOS configuration to get it to work, the only thing I was able to do was to disable SMP by the use of 'hint.apic.0.disabled' from the bootloader prompt (option 6) as referred to by an on-line mailing list post from October 2006 (dealing with the same hardware but earlier version of FBSD).  On a side note, if I use a separate PCI SATA controller card, FreeBSD 6.1 can read the drive, but has problems writing (possibly because of the PCI SATA controller - it may have different problems in FBSD).  In all cases that I tested, the on-board controller doesn't function UNLESS you disable SMP.

This problem occurs with the FreeBSD 7.0 setup CD as well.

Once SMP is disabled the system appears to function correctly as a single-CPU system.

Worth noting - when I used the PCI SATA controller and disabled the on-board controller, I got a timeout error for ATA_IDENTIFY (I think that was it) with 7.0 and 6.3 , booting from the installation CD.
>How-To-Repeat:
1.  Insert FreeBSD 7 CD (I used the 'live filesystem' version, but you should be able to reproduce it with the installation CD disk 1)

2.  Boot from CD

3.  Note that once in sysinstall, no drives are detected.

4.  Boot from CD again, this time selecting option '6' to enter the bootloader prompt

5.  enter the command "set hint.apic.0.disabled=1" at the bootloader prompt, then enter "boot' to complete system startup

6.  Note that from sysinstall the drives are detected.

>Fix:
The only known fix at this time is a workaround:  place "hint.apic.0.disabled=1" into the device.hints file so that SMP is not enabled.



>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: