i386/134984: Boot from i386 DVD on Lenovo R500 fails

[Anders Thulin]

>Number:         134984
>Category:       i386
>Synopsis:       Boot from i386 DVD on Lenovo R500 fails
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-i386
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Wed May 27 12:10:00 UTC 2009
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Anders Thulin
>Release:        7.2 RELEASE i386
>Organization:
-
>Environment:
not applicable
>Description:
Simple boot from 7.2 i386 DVD fails on a Thinkpad Lenovo R500 (product code 2732-6FG). Shortly after the Boot Loader Menu, the boot hangs after a single line '/boot/kernel/acpi.ko ... ' is printed. (By 'hang' I mean that the twirling character stops for at least 30 seconds. At least one default and no ACPI boot hung for five minutes.)

Boot with ACPI disabled (boot loader menu selection) also hangs, this time without the line mentioned.  Other relevant boot choices also hang.
(I expected this to be an ACPI issue, but I may be wrong. Checked recent Lenovo BIOS upgrades but nothing that looks like a possible cause. Will try BIOS upgrade next anyhow.)

Booting from an USB-attached CD also hangs. Booting from same DVD on another computer (Thinkpad R51) works fine.

Tweaking various BIOS parameters (SATA AHCI compatibility, Core multiprocessor disabled) produce no obvious changes. 

No obvious hardware support problem, as far as I can judge from the compatibility list, at least not anything that should hit this early. (Not 100% certain that network is supported - BroadComm NetLink, but I would not expect it to hang on boot.)

Tried this also with 7.2 amd64 (not sure if Core 2 Duo is supported, though -- the compatibility list seems a bit ambiguous), and also 7.1 i386 and amd64. No joy.

Does not seem to be a basic HW problem -- Linux distrs boot fine (Fedora, Ubuntu), and no memory problems found with with latest version of MemTest.  

I find others have reported similar problems on the 'net with this hardware, but I have found no indication of resolution. Haven't found any mention of Lenovo R500 in PR database.


>How-To-Repeat:
See above -- boot from 7.2 i386 DVD on a Lenovo Thinkpad R500.
>Fix:


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