Freeze During Boot With 6.2-RELEASE Install Disk

[alex at schnarff.com]

>> I've got a machine that I'm trying to get 6.2-RELEASE installed on, in
>> order to act as a backup/test config server for a production box I have
>> running the same version of FreeBSD. The machine previously had
>> 5.3-RELEASE on a single SCSI disk, with a 4-drive SATA RAID that wasn't
>> quite working right (according to the previous owner; I just got the
>> system a few days ago); unfortunately, the system now refuses to
>> recognize the SCSI disk, even in the Adaptec SCSI card's BIOS.
>>
>> That said, when I pop in my 6.2-RELEASE boot disk, it comes up, loads
>> devices, sees the SATA RAID...and then just hangs. I've tried booting
>> in safe mode and with verbose logging...and it won't work either way,
>> and I get no error messages.
>>
>> FWIW, I took the same boot CD and popped it into an Acer laptop I had
>> handy, and it went straight into the system setup menus, asking me to
>> choose a country; so the CD itself seems unlikely to be the culprit.
>> Additionally, I popped an OpenBSD 3.9 boot CD into the freezing
>> machine, and it came right up to an install prompt -- though it saw the
>> SATA disks as individual entities, and not a RAID.
>>
>> Does anyone have any clue what might be causing this, and/or how to
>> solve it? I'll be happy to provide additional details, I'm just not
>> sure what would be helpful right now.
>>
>
> Does the machine still boot 5.3, or does the line:
>> the system now refuses to recognize the SCSI disk,
>> even in the Adaptec SCSI card's BIOS.
> mean that the drive/controller is actually mussed up?

The controller seems to be OK...the drive itself I have no idea about, 
since I have no other SCSI systems to plug it into to check, and I 
can't get the controller to recognize it.

> If you can boot 5.3, it would be very helpful to see a dmesg
> from that.  If not, it might still be somewhat enlightening to
> see where the 6.2 bootup stops, if you can capture that.
>
> If the SCSI drive or controller really has gone south in
> some fun, horrible way, you might try physically removing
> them, as a malfunctioning controller can cause a rather
> long* pause in the disk-probing sequence.

Here's where it gets really interesting. I decided yesterday after 
poking with it for a while that it'd be worth leaving it on while I 
went and got lunch, just in case the "hang" was really a "ridiculously 
long pause." When I came back a half-hour or so later, the machine had 
finished booting into setup, so I installed on the SATA RAID, which 
went flawlessly.

That said, even booting off of that RAID, I'm getting a pause of at 
least 5 minutes when I boot, so something is either misconfigured on my 
end, or perhaps FreeBSD doesn't play nice with this particular setup. 
Dmesg below, in case anyone can comment on this (it's less critical now 
that the machine will boot, but it'd be nice to have an eventual 
answer).

> NB:  In my experience OpenBSD is much better at
> playing fast&loose with garbage hardware than
> FreeBSD.  Whether this is a good thing I would not
> hazard to guess.

Me neither. There are real pros and cons there, but this is good to know.

Anyway, dmesg:

Copyright (c) 1992-2007 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
         The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE #0: Fri Jan 12 10:40:27 UTC 2007
     root at dessler.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
ACPI APIC Table: <INTEL  D945GTP >
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.20GHz (3200.02-MHz 686-class CPU)
   Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0xf43  Stepping = 3
   
Features=0xbfebfbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,HTT,TM,PBE>
   Features2=0x649d<SSE3,RSVD2,MON,DS_CPL,EST,CNTX-ID,CX16,<b14>>
   AMD Features=0x20100000<NX,LM>
real memory  = 2137509888 (2038 MB)
avail memory = 2086703104 (1990 MB)
ioapic0: Changing APIC ID to 2
ioapic0 <Version 2.0> irqs 0-23 on motherboard
kbd1 at kbdmux0
ath_hal: 0.9.17.2 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
acpi0: <INTEL D945GTP> on motherboard
acpi0: Power Button (fixed)
Timecounter "ACPI-fast" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000
acpi_timer0: <24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz> port 0x408-0x40b on acpi0
cpu0: <ACPI CPU> on acpi0
acpi_button0: <Sleep Button> on acpi0
pcib0: <ACPI Host-PCI bridge> port 0xcf8-0xcff on acpi0
pci0: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib0
pci0: <display, VGA> at device 2.0 (no driver attached)
pcib1: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> at device 28.0 on pci0
pci1: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib1
pcib2: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> at device 28.2 on pci0
pci2: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib2
pcib3: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> at device 28.3 on pci0
pci3: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib3
pcib4: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> at device 28.4 on pci0
pci4: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib4
pcib5: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> at device 28.5 on pci0
pci5: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib5
pcib6: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> at device 30.0 on pci0
pci6: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib6
fxp0: <Intel 82550 Pro/100 Ethernet> port 0x1140-0x117f mem 
0x88022000-0x88022fff,0x88000000-0x8801ffff irq 21 at device 0.0 on pci6
miibus0: <MII bus> on fxp0
inphy0: <i82555 10/100 media interface> on miibus0
inphy0:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
fxp0: Ethernet address: 00:02:b3:d5:4d:3f
ahc0: <Adaptec 2940 Ultra SCSI adapter> port 0x1000-0x10ff mem 
0x88021000-0x88021fff irq 22 at device 1.0 on pci6
ahc0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
aic7880: Ultra Wide Channel A, SCSI Id=7, 16/253 SCBs
fxp1: <Intel 82801GB (ICH7) 10/100 Ethernet> port 0x1100-0x113f mem 
0x88020000-0x88020fff irq 20 at device 8.0 on pci6
miibus1: <MII bus> on fxp1
inphy1: <i82562ET 10/100 media interface> on miibus1
inphy1:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto
fxp1: Ethernet address: 00:13:20:6b:ed:f2
isab0: <PCI-ISA bridge> at device 31.0 on pci0
isa0: <ISA bus> on isab0
atapci0: <Intel ICH7 UDMA100 controller> port 
0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6,0x170-0x177,0x376,0x2030-0x203f irq 18 at device 31.1 
on pci0
ata0: <ATA channel 0> on atapci0
ata1: <ATA channel 1> on atapci0
atapci1: <Intel ICH7 SATA300 controller> port 
0x2048-0x204f,0x206c-0x206f,0x2040-0x2047,0x2068-0x206b,0x2020-0x202f 
mem 0x881a0000-0x881a03ff irq 19 at device 31.2 on pci0
atapci1: AHCI Version 01.10 controller with 4 ports detected
ata2: <ATA channel 0> on atapci1
ata3: <ATA channel 1> on atapci1
ata4: <ATA channel 2> on atapci1
ata5: <ATA channel 3> on atapci1
pci0: <serial bus, SMBus> at device 31.3 (no driver attached)
fdc0: <floppy drive controller> port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f0 irq 6 drq 2 on acpi0
fdc0: [FAST]
fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0
sio0: <16550A-compatible COM port> port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on acpi0
sio0: type 16550A
pmtimer0 on isa0
orm0: <ISA Option ROMs> at iomem 
0xcb000-0xcc7ff,0xcc800-0xccfff,0xcd000-0xce7ff,0xd4000-0xd4fff on isa0
atkbdc0: <Keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x60,0x64 on isa0
atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
atkbd0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
ppc0: parallel port not found.
sc0: <System console> at flags 0x100 on isa0
sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
sio1: configured irq 3 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
sio1: port may not be enabled
vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
Timecounter "TSC" frequency 3200017952 Hz quality 800
Timecounters tick every 1.000 msec
acd0: CDRW <LITE-ON CD-RW SOHR-5239S/2S03> at ata0-slave UDMA33
ad4: 238475MB <Seagate ST3250823AS 3.03> at ata2-master SATA150
ad6: 238475MB <Seagate ST3250823AS 3.03> at ata3-master SATA150
ad8: 238475MB <Seagate ST3250823AS 3.03> at ata4-master SATA150
ad10: 238475MB <Seagate ST3250823AS 3.03> at ata5-master SATA150
Waiting 5 seconds for SCSI devices to settle
sa0 at ahc0 bus 0 target 6 lun 0
sa0: <SEAGATE DAT    9SP40-000 910B> Removable Sequential Access SCSI-3 device
sa0: 40.000MB/s transfers (20.000MHz, offset 8, 16bit)
ar0: 715418MB <Intel MatrixRAID RAID5 (stripe 64 KB)> status: READY
ar0: disk0 READY using ad4 at ata2-master
ar0: disk1 READY using ad8 at ata4-master
ar0: disk2 READY using ad6 at ata3-master
ar0: disk3 READY using ad10 at ata5-master
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ar0s1a

Thanks,
Alex Kirk