FreeBSD 7.x hang-on-boot on Dell 1950

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 11:47 PM, Zaphod Beeblebrox <zbeeble at gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 9:09 PM, Zaphod Beeblebrox <zbeeble at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 9:44 PM, Jeremy Chadwick <
>> freebsd at jdc.parodius.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> > This 1950 may predate that a bit, but I'm not sure how to nail it down
>>> > exactly, other than by it's hardware components.  Anyways, 7.0 does the
>>> same
>>> > thing --- still wedged.
>>>
>>> I haven't seen anyone recommend this as a test method yet -- disabling
>>> fdc prior to the kernel booting via the loader prompt:
>>>
>>> - Press 6 at the menu,
>>> - At the loader prompt, type:
>>>
>>>  set hint.fdc.0.disabled="1"
>>>  boot -v   (or without -v; your choice)
>>>
>>> You shouldn't need to set hint.fd.0.disabled="1", since fd0 would
>>> normally bind to fdc0; disable the latter and you disable the lesser.
>>>
>>> The intention here is to rule out the device attachment failures from
>>> fdc as the source of the deadlock.
>>>
>>
>> Entertainingly, it does not.  Aparently that hint doesn't stop the code
>> from trying to attach fdc0 when acpi says so.  I suppose I need to know the
>> console command to disable acpi and fdc.
>>
>> but it still wedges at "device_attach: fdc0 attach returned 6" with the
>> above.
>>
>>
> OK.  With both floppy and acpi disabled, it dies calling "start_init"
> several times, the last being /stand/sysinstal (which should work).  I don't
> see it "starting" the other CPUs.  It hangs hard... no keyboard working (ie:
> no caps lock).
>
> OK... I finally figured out what makes this Dell boot.  The system as I got
it has 2 dual core (Xeon) processors.

If I remove one processor (so now it has one dual-core processor), Then the
system boots !?!

... so there's something wrong with how FreeBSD is going multiprocessor
(works with RedHat, it would appear)