i386/132230: 7.1-RELEASE /boot/loader non-functional on Asus A7N266

[Roy Badami]

>Number:         132230
>Category:       i386
>Synopsis:       7.1-RELEASE /boot/loader non-functional on Asus A7N266
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-i386
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Sun Mar 01 19:40:01 UTC 2009
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Roy Badami
>Release:        7.1-RELEASE-p3
>Organization:
>Environment:
FreeBSD  giles.gnomon.org.uk 7.1-RELEASE-p3 FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE-p3 #0: Sun Mar  1 11:34:51 GMT 2009     roy@ giles.gnomon.org.uk:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GILES  i386

>Description:
The /boot/loader provided with FreeBSD 7.1 won't boot an Asus A7N266 motherboard.  This is a SCSI machine using an Adaptec 2940 Ultra SCSI card, although I suspect  that that's not relevent, since the two reports cited below don't mention SCSI.

Symptom is that the machine spontaneously reboots after loading the kernel but before booting it.

This was observed after upgrading from 6.3 to 7.1, and is also observed when booting from disc 1 of the 7.1 CD distribution.

As a workaround, I replaced /boot/loader with one from a 6.3 CD and this boots my 7.1 system fine.

This appears to be the same problem that has been reported here:
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?p=14825
and here:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-i386/2008-July/007103.html
but I can't find PR's for either of these so am reporting here.

Both users are seeing the FreeBSD 7 loader fail to boot an A7N266 motherboard.

(The latter mentions PR i386/113160 but this seems to be unrelated)
>How-To-Repeat:
Either 1.

Attempt to boot from a 7.1 CD on an A7N266 system

Or 2.

Take an A7N266 system running (say) 6.3 and perform a source upgrade to 7.1
>Fix:


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