kern/146446: FreeBSD 8.0 installation hangs at an early stage complaining of interrupt problem

[Jeffrey L. Johnson]

>Number:         146446
>Category:       kern
>Synopsis:       FreeBSD 8.0  installation hangs at an early stage complaining of interrupt problem
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Mon May 10 02:10:01 UTC 2010
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Jeffrey L. Johnson
>Release:        FreeBSD 8.0 DVD
>Organization:
none
>Environment:
Tyan 2462 motherboard with 2 ea 32b AMD Athlon MP 1.2 MHz CPUs and 1GB of RAM (i386)
>Description:
Dear FreeBSD maintainers:

I want to switch to FreeBSD 8.0 as my primary OS, but installation crashes uniformly.  As my system is a rather plain desktop configuration, my problem may possibly affect many potential FreeBSD users.

My system is based on a Tyan 2462 motherboard from 2002 with 2 each 32b AMD Athlon MP 1.2 MHz CPUs and 1GB of RAM.  I run Solaris on one HDD and Windows XP on another.  I am attempting to install FreeBSD 8.0 from DVD on a third drive.  The following is a brief description of my hardware:

Attached hardware:
USB:
H-P DeskJet 845c
Plustek Optic Film 7200i film-strip/slide scanner
Epson Perfection 1250 flatbed scanner

HDDs:
Seagate 160GB ATI
Seagate 200GB ATI
Seagate 80GB SCSI - not operational, apparent configuration problem
Western Digital 80GB 7200 RPM (target of FreeBSD installation)

floppy drive

Video adapters:
Installed
ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Pro (AGP)
ATI Rage XL built into the motherboard
On hand:
Nvidia GeForce4 MX 4000 (PCI)
Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 (AGP)

PCI:
4-port USB
Creative Sound Blaster Live 5.1 audio

Early in the install process (Sysinstall menu is never reached), a menu appears, headed by "Welcome to FreeBSD!".  The default choice is "Boot FreeBSD."   No matter which choice I make, the result is the same: splash screen messages go by, including those related to hardware detection.  Then the message  "run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after [120,180,240,...] seconds  for xpt_config" flashes by once per minute.  Then the following message appears and stays for the remainder of the minute: 
"<<<Dump Card State Ends>>>   
(probe[0,1,...]:ahc0:0:[1,2...]:0): SCB 0x[f8,...] - timed out
sg[0] - Addr {0x25444a0,...] : Length 36
(probe [0,1,...] :ahc):0:[1,2...]): SCB 248: Immediate reset. Flags =0x620/Other SCB Timeout.
(probe [0,1,...] :ahc):0:[1,2...]): no longer in timeout, status = 25b/No other SCB worth waiting for.
ahc0: Issued channel A Bus reset. 12SCBs aborted
Infinite interrupt loop, INTSTAT = 0ahc0: Timedout SCBs already complete. Interrupts may not be functioning."
(The cyclical increments denoted by the progressions [m,n...] are actually somewhat irregular.) 

Even after several hours, Free BSD installation never gets beyond this point (before I ever come to making choices for disk drives and slices.)    Other FreeBSD and PC-BSD 8.0 install CDs all fail in the same manner.

8.0 successfully installed on the same system a couple months ago, but that installation was removed.  At the time I was using the following video adapters: Nvidia GeForce4 MX 4000 (PCI) and Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 (AGP), whereas now I am using an ATI All-in-Wonder 128 Pro (AGP) and the ATI Rage XL built into the motherboard.  Some configuration settings may have been changed in the system setup ROM (accessible at boot-time), but I haven't found the culprit.

Suggestions on how to proceed would be much appreciated.

>How-To-Repeat:
Attempt OS install on same hardware with any v. 8.0 Free/PC-BSD CD/DVD.

>Fix:
Possibly switch back to the Nvidia AGP video adapter from the ATI AGP video adapter

>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: