panic: no BIOS SMAP info from loader

[Bob Johnson]

On 11/5/07, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Monday 05 November 2007 11:48:07 am Bob Johnson wrote:
> > On 11/5/07, Bob Johnson <fbsdlists at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > My web searches on this indicated that when HP first introduced these
> > > systems, they had the same problem with Linux. HP provided a patch
> > > that allows recent Linux kernels to boot. Older i386 FreeBSDs also can
> > > not boot on my HP dc7700. So it appears someone has already fixed this
> > > for i386, but no one has moved it to AMD64.
> > >
> > > I don't remember which i386 versions work or don't work, but I can
> > > start booting install disks and find out.
> >
> > Hmmm. Maybe I should retract that. I cannot find an i386 install CD
> > that won't boot on it. I've tried 7.0-BETA1, 6.2-STABLEsnap200708,
> > 6.2-RC1, 6.1-RELEASE, 6.0-BETA2, 6.0-BETA1, 5.3-RC1 (hangs probing
> > ATA1), 4.5-RELEASE, and 4.3-RELEASE. But I thought I remembered being
> > unable to boot some i386 install CDs in it.
>
> Without an SMAP, FreeBSD/i386 is only going to find about 64M of RAM on the
> box though.

That's why I concluded that someone had fixed the problem in i386 but
not moved it to amd64. This system has no problem with i386. The
install disk boots without any special action on my part, the system
installs, works great (except the x.org 7.3  ati driver doesn't
support the video chipset, but VESA mode is adequate for now).

> Do you know what the patch was that HP provided for Linux?  I
> wasn't able to find it.

No, I only read some postings on Linux lists that said HP had supplied
a patch that allowed HP 64-bit boxes to run Linux if your kernel was
new enough. And the poster in that case may not have been entirely
accurate! I think the dates were around 1st Q of this year. Of course,
I can't find those postings now.

> If you disable ACPI is FreeBSD/i386 able to see all of the RAM in the box?

i386 can see it with ACPI enabled or disabled. Only amd64 has a
problem in my case. Judging by various postings, different HP systems
seem to have different details, though. At the moment I'm running i386
7.0-CURRENT-200708 snapshot on an HP dc7700 convertible (BIOS 1.10)
with ACPI enabled. It reports real memory = 3757768704 (3583 MB) and
ACPI APIC Table: <COMPAQ BROADH2O>. An amd64 install CD gets the SMAP
panic with or without ACPI.

I just read that HP has released a newer BIOS for this thing since I
was trying to install amd64. So when I get time I will try updating
the BIOS and see what happens. Before that I'll send you the files you
asked for. And then maybe again after the BIOS update ;)

- Bob