Dell PE850 and FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE - Boot Issues

[Adam Martin]

On 2006 Sep 19 , at 10:38, Jeff Cross wrote:

> Adam Martin wrote:
>>
>> On 2006 Sep 18 , at 17:39, Jeff Cross wrote:
>>
>>> Adam Martin wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 2006 Sep 18 , at 16:25, Jeff Cross wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I am trying to run FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE on a Dell PowerEdge 850 with
>>>>> some
>>>>> booting issues.  I have searched the archives and found someone
>>>>> having a
>>>>> problem with the machine "booting too fast" but my problem is a 
>>>>> little
>>>>> different.  My machine hangs up after the following line is 
>>>>> displayed
>>>>> during boot:
>>>>>
>>>>> acd0: CDROM <TEAC CD-ROM CD-224E-N/3.AB> at ata0-master UDMA33
>>
>> [ Trimmed for brevity ]
>>
>>> Thanks for the reply, Adam.  I actually tried the 
>>> verbose_logging="YES"
>>> in my /boot/loader.conf file prior to posting but it still hangs 
>>> after
>>> the CD-ROM line for some reason.
>>
>>     Hey, no problem, Jeff.  To be frank, I just signed up for 
>> Questions,
>> after Google Summer of Code, and yours is the first one I've answered.
>> Glad to see that I've started on the right foot though.
>>
>>> It appears the only way the machine will boot up properly is if I 
>>> hit 5
>>> on the boot menu.  This obviously doesn't make remote reboots very
>>> "admin friendly"!
>>
>>     I know that I setup something like this once, because I needed it 
>> to
>> always drop to command line.  I can help you emulate what's in menu
>> option 5, in a loader.4th script.  But you'll have to drop the pretty
>> menu, and logo...  If you're willing let me know.
>>
>>
>>> Thanks again for your reply!
>>
>>     Like I said, no problem.  Thanks for your enthusiastic support.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> -- 
>> ADAM David Alan Martin
>>
>> P.S.: It's still me, the same Adam.  Just figured I should use my
>> FreeBSD From: address instead of fsl.
>>
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>>
>>
> Hey, Adam.  I unplugged the CD-ROM from the mainboard and the first 
> time
> it came back up it booted up fine.  However, I immediately rebooted and
> it hung on the Timecounters tick every 1.000 msec.  So, since this is
> the line that displays before the acd0: CDROM <TEAC CD-ROM
> CD-224E-N/3.AB> at ata0-master UDMA33 line, I wonder if it is hanging 
> on
> whatever is *after* these in the boot process.
>
> ata2-slave: pio=PIO3 wdma=UNSUPPORTED udma=UNSUPPORTED cable=40 wire
> ata2-master: pio=PIO3 wdma=UNSUPPORTED udma=UNSUPPORTED cable=40 wire
> afd0: setting PIO3 on SiI 0680 chip
> device_attach: afd0 attach returned 6
> acd1: setting PIO3 on SiI 0680 chip
> acd1: <VIRTUALCDROM DRIVE/> CDROM drive at ata2 as slave
> acd1:  PIO3
> acd1: Reads:
> acd1: Writes:
> acd1: Mechanism: caddy
> acd1: Medium: CD-ROM unknown
> ata4-master: pio=PIO4 wdma=WDMA2 udma=UDMA133 cable=40 wire

	Hm... afd0... just noticed this...  I have never used ATA floppy 
drives.  Doesn't mean they're bad, but I wonder what would happen if 
you disabled this device too?


> Maybe the virtual devices is hosing it up.  I know there is a virtual
> floppy drive in here somewhere too...  I can see it in the BIOS but I
> can't figure out how to disable it.

	Is your CPU hyperthreaded?  You might want to go in the BIOS and try 
turning that off too...  (Hyperthreading on FreeBSD doesn't give you 
that much extra in performance...  And exposes a few potential hardware 
issues.)

	At this point, I'm kinda poking around in the dark as to what device 
could be causing it.  In these situations, I start with the 
bare-minimum to boot it up, and keep adding devices until it fails... 
then remove everything, and try adding the failing device first.  (This 
means physically removing cables and such.  This screens for 
interactions between devices, and devices that may fail.)

> Jeff Cross
> http://www.averageadmins.com/

	How long is it sitting and "hanging"?  How long have you left it?  I 
have one machine that needs about 3 or 5 minutes after the copyright 
line, to boot the kernel.  Of course you may have stumbled upon a 
timing bug too.  If that's the case, we should try to find as much 
information as possible, and pass this one up to the people who can 
track it down.  I can help you force the machine to boot as you 
wanted... but there may be other issues.  Hopefully someone can help 
you more than just forcing it to boot in option "5" all the time.


--
Adam David Alan Martin