System Fails to Boot (Deadlock?)

[John Baldwin]

On Tuesday, July 12, 2011 6:10:05 pm Brandon Falk wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> My machine somehow fails to boot into FreeBSD (off the cd, since it 
> fails to boot, I can't install it in the first place). It goes through 
> and ends up stopping deadlock style. No printouts of errors (besides a 
> ppc problem, which is not fatal) and no crash/oops/panic. It just... 
> stops and locks up. I know my motherboards PCI system has failed, as 
> well as lan (getting a new one tomorrow), which is probably what is 
> causing the problem. The thing is that Windows 7 and Linux happen to 
> boot just fine on my machine, so although my system has a failing 
> motherboard and may cause errors, I still feel like it shouldn't be 
> causing this much of an issue on boot. I tried verbose logging and got 
> no more information anyways. It will be nearly impossible to diagnose 
> this error so I'm looking for tips on where to look.

How far does it get when it locks?  Is it able to load /boot/loader off
of the CD ok?  Is it getting into the kernel far enough to output stuff to the 
console?  Is it getting into sysinstall and hanging at some sysinstall screen?

Also, is this host on the network and able to PXE?  It's a lot easier to test 
custom kernels if needed using PXE than CDs (no need to burn a new CD each 
time, etc.).

-- 
John Baldwin