DL360 G3 w/ AMD64 Cant boot from CD

Jeremy Chadwick koitsu at FreeBSD.org
Tue Nov 4 08:41:36 PST 2008


On Tue, Nov 04, 2008 at 11:18:36AM -0500, Kevin wrote:
> > > I tried 7.1-BETA2 , but unfortunately the same problem happened. I
> > tried
> > > (for the sake of argument) Debian debian-40r5-amd64 , and it wouldn't
> > boot
> > > either -- it said "Your CPU does not support long mode, please use a
> > 32bit
> > > distribution".
> > 
> > This means your processor does not support 64-bit mode.
> > 
> > > How would I support over 4GB of ram with only i386 distributions?
> > 
> > There is only one option: use PAE mode, which has drawbacks.  You can
> > read about what PAE is on Wikipedia.
> > 
> > Note that not all drivers are PAE mode compatible on FreeBSD.  You
> > should be able to install i386 FreeBSD with success, then rebuild your
> > kernel with PAE enabled.  Look at /sys/i386/conf/PAE for an example
> > configuration -- you'll see all of the drivers you have to disable for
> > PAE to work successfully.  If your system uses any of these drivers,
> > PAE
> > mode will not work for you, in which case you should upgrade your
> > hardware.
> > 
> > --
> > | 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 |
> 
> 
> Is my issue related to non-supporting of 64bit mode (2x Dual Xeons in the
> DL360 G3) , or perhaps due to a boot loader bug?
> 
> I found this PR :
> 
> 91492 freebsd- amd64    feedback  serious   medium   current-us [boot] BTX
> halted

There have been a number of recent reports of "BTX halted" on all sorts
of hardware.  So far each problem has been unique; there doesn't appear
to be a "thing" that explains it for everyone.

> In any case , the latest 6.4/7.1 Snapshot produced the same BTX Halt error.
> I'll just use i386 w/ PAE for now I suppose. I haven't tested AMD64 with
> DL360 G4's or DL360 G5's , but I'd appreciate if anyone has tested those
> generations w/ FreeBSD AMD64 , to let me know if the problem persists in
> some form.

John Baldwin will have to correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure
the FreeBSD bootstraps operate in pure i386 real mode up until
boot2/loader.  John, can you confirm?

-- 
| 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 |



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