DL360 G3 w/ AMD64 Cant boot from CD

John Baldwin jhb at freebsd.org
Tue Nov 4 09:11:13 PST 2008


On Tuesday 04 November 2008 11:41:31 am Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> 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?

Yes, the BTX fault you are getting is from trying to start 64-bit mode on a 
CPU that doesn't support 32-bit mode.  The latest snapshots should have a 
fix where you get a more helpful "Your CPU doesn't do 64-bit" message.

-- 
John Baldwin


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