The FreeBSD 7.4-BETA1 CD wont boot properly on this machine

Jeremy Chadwick freebsd at jdc.parodius.com
Mon Dec 20 00:30:12 UTC 2010


On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 08:55:23PM +0100, Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:
> Hi,
> I am trying to install FreeBSD 7.4-BETA1 / amd64 on this[1] machine.
> The machine doesn't have a CD drive built-in, so I am using a Plextor
> PX-608CU external DVD writer which connects via usb as the CD drive to
> install from. I use the FreeBSD-7.4-BETA1-amd64-disc1.iso, which is burned
> to a CD.
> After powering on the machine, I press F8, get a nice little bootmenu,
> select the Plextor drive, and off we go. The kernel boots, and
> everything is great.
> But, after detecting the hard drive (ad4, ok it's really a SSD) and the
> cd drive, it just spits out messages like these:
> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 60 seconds for xpt_config
> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 120 seconds for xpt_config
> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 180 seconds for xpt_config
> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 240 seconds for xpt_config
> 
> and after spitting out one more message  (the one for 300 seconds), it just
> sits there. Booting with verbose doesn't give men any more messages related 
> to this. I've tried the -bootonly CD too - it has the same problem.
> Yes, the sha256 checksums on the files verifies a-ok, the CD's can be mounted
>  in FreeBSD, etc.
> I even mad a usb memory stick image of the -disc1 and booted the machine from that,
> and it has the same problem (the run_interrupt... messages).
> 
> Kicker: the machine boots nicely from a FreeBSD 8.1-release (amd64) CD.
> Also tried with a OpenBSD 4.8 (amd64) install CD, yep - it also boots nicely.
> 
> So, any hints on how to get FreeBSD 7.4-BETA1 onto this machine?
> 
> References:
> 1) http://sites.google.com/site/tingox/asus_v7-p7h55e

This has, historically, been caused by problems with certain firewire
chipsets.  The workaround has been to disable firewire in the BIOS.
I've experienced this on a Shuttle system, and others have on different
motherboards as well:

http://old.nabble.com/run_interrupt_driven_hooks:-still-waiting-after-300-seconds-for-xpt_config-td23492390.html
http://old.nabble.com/-Fwd%3A-run_interrupt_driven_hooks%3A-still-waiting...-for-xpt_config--td23641548.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2009-July/009079.html

However, that motherboard doesn't seem to support firewire (but Asus has
been known to forget mentioning features on their site before).

My advice would be to start disabling certain features in the BIOS
anyway, and see if you can track down which one is responsible.

Otherwise, run 8.x.

-- 
| 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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