Installation Hangs

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 11:19:40AM -0600, Warren Block wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Oct 2008, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
>> On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 09:57:22AM -0600, Warren Block wrote:
>>> On Sun, 12 Oct 2008, ton80 wrote:
>>>
>>>> I am trying to install FreeBSD.
>>>> During the install (actually at the beginning of the process) the system
>>>> hangs indefinitely.
>>>> When it gets to the select country screen...it is frozen.
>>>> During the boot process, as it is reading all the hardware, it finds the USB
>>>> controller OK then later it states there was an IO error and that the USB
>>>> controller is halted. I have a USB Keyboard and mouse...so I would say the
>>>> problem is here.
>>>> Is there any workaround I can use to get things going?
>>>
>>> Set "USB Legacy Support" to disabled in the BIOS.  If that isn't
>>> available, it might work to boot with the keyboard detached.  Connect it
>>> after the BIOS boot, at the FreeBSD bootloader prompt or maybe at the
>>> country select screen.
>>
>> I don't see how this would solve or even affect his problem.
>>
>> As I understand it, "USB Legacy Support" is intended for operating
>> systems which do not have a USB stack available to them, thus making USB
>> keyboards/mice appear as PS/2 keyboards/mice within MS-DOS and so on.  I
>> believe the way it works is that the BIOS acts as a software translation
>> layer between the USB device and PS/2 interaction.  This translation is
>> lost the instant interrupts are re-mapped or the southbridge/USB
>> controller is initialised.
>>
>> The OP is making it past boot2/loader, the kernel and all its drivers
>> are fully loaded (including the USB stack).
>
> An MSI motherboard did the same thing, only with a USB mouse.  The BIOS  
> defaulted to legacy emulation.  The mouse would be briefly enabled  
> during boot, then disabled as FreeBSD started.  I found a message  
> explaining it, disabled BIOS emulation, had no further problems, and...  
> didn't investigate further.  Now I can't find the exact post, but did  
> find a thread that is similar:
>
> http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=1607862+0+archive/2008/freebsd-questions/20080224.freebsd-questions

Ahh, right.  But now we're talking about keyboards, when before we were
talking strictly about mice.  Then I remembered that the PS/2 interface
actually handles both keyboards *and* mice during initialisation, which
means the translation/emulation layer does the same thing.

The problem in that thread is partially documented in the ukbd(4) man
page; see the paragraph starting with "If you want to use a USB keyboard
as your default".

The "hint" commands shown should do the right thing.  However, *do not*
add them to device.hints -- add them to /boot/loader.conf.  device.hints
can be overwritten when changes occur in it (I forget if installkernel
or mergemaster does this), and you will lose your changes.

You can also type the "hint" commands into the loader section prior to
booting.  The OP might want to try doing this: at the FreeBSD
Beastie/loader menu, hit 6 to go to the Loader prompt.  At the prompt,
type in:

set hint.atkbd.0.disable="1"
set hint.atkbdc.0.disable="1"
boot

And then tell us if your keyboard works during sysinstall.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |