5.4 Installation Problems on Dell GX280 - Fatal trap 12

[SHands]

I've had a nightmare trying to get 5.4 (also tried 5.3) to work on a
Dell GX280 - which had exactly the same problem. In the end, I ended up
using a serial link to get the install done and then got inetd setup so
that I could troubleshoot over the network.

This didn't help long term as the keyboard didn't work once I'd
restarted after finishing the install. I stumbled on this script which
seemed to do the trick:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2003-October/022771
.html

I used telnet to get at rc.conf - but there probably are other better
ways.

It seems a shame that Dell (and other manufacturers) are phasing out old
'legacy' hardware like the good ol' PS/2 ports. It's just a good job
that they didn't kill the serial port on this particular machine! (yet)

Hope this helps,
Stuart


-----Original Message-----
From: John Vaughan [mailto:jjvaughan at gmail.com] 
Sent: 21 June 2005 22:10
To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
Subject: 5.4 Installation Problems on Dell GX280 - Fatal trap 12

I am trying to install FreeBSD 5.4 on a Dell GX280 and am getting a
Fatal trap 12 supervisor write, page not present error.  From what
I've read, this is an ACPI problem which I could disable if I had a
PS2 port, but the GX280 doesn't have them.  Has anyone gotten 5.4 to
run properly on a GX280 using option 7 to boot with usb keyboard?

-John