FreeBSD 6.x and HP?

[Pete]

Hey there,

I've been having a rather unusual, but very annoying issue with HP DL140 
G3 Servers and FreeBSD. I thought I might give the mailing list a try to 
see what I can find and whether anyone else has had similar issues. When 
trying to install FreeBSD 6.x AMD64, as these boxes look to have the 
Woodcrest core Xeon CPUs (5100-series), which support EMT64T, I have 
encountered the following issues.

When using FreeBSD 6.1, I can't even get as far as sysinstall. The 
server tends to hang when initializing the drives just before it enters 
into the usual setup utility. When using FreeBSD 6.2, I can get into 
sysinstall, however, I get as far as configuring the slices and starting 
the install. After this has been done it begins extracting the data into 
the root directory, the machine then hangs. I don't believe it to be a 
hardware fault within a single machine as I have tried with a total of 3 
of these machines with the same configuration.

My original thoughts were with the LSI RAID controller I have in the 
machine. However, If I use the i386 FreeBSD 6.2 CD to install, the 
installation completes fine, the server reboots and comes up normally. 
No issues with drives, etc.

I've also run a BIOS update to the latest version, which is "1.13 
(2007.05.18) A (23 May 07)" for anyone with the machines, with no avail. 
I have been unable to find any information on-line relating to this 
specific issue, the only similar issues I have encountered are kernel 
panics caused by an on-board SATA controller, which we aren't using 
here. The suggested solution to this issue was to update the BIOS as 
well, which as above, has already been tried.

If anyone could shed some light on the situation or has any ideas, it 
would be greatly appreciated.

-- Peter