no ath0 on new system with good card

[Steve Franks]

Apologies on not hitting the list.  Alyays forget to reply-all.

So, I figured I'd try to fix the safe-mode end of things on my own, and I
found a post several years old (looked like it even could have been yours)
about safemode, which doesn't show up anywhere on the freebsd site.  So I
did what it said and grep'd boot/beastie.4th for safemode, which came up
with this suprisingly total solution:

add apic.0.disabled="1" to boot/device.hints.  Not only does my system come
up in regular boot mode, but, as you suspected, the pccard works too, so all
appears well.

I'm sorry for the confusion - origonally, I was running i386/6.1 on the
system which booted normially if the serial ports (sio) were disabled.
Halfway thru the conversation, I realized I could upgrade to amd64/6.1,
which would only boot safemode, even with sio disabled.

So my final question, what in all the land is an "apic", and why isn't apic
or safemode mentioned in the handbook, manpages, or even on the freebsd
site?  Further, I'd like to write a handbook page on "freebsd and laptops",
because we're on my third one here now, and I'm starting to get the drift of
what could usefully be added to the handbook, namely a thourough discussion
of booting and device.hints.  I presume someone 'peer-reviews' handbook
submissions for correctness and format?  I recall reading somewhere about
contributing, but I get the impression you are involved enough to tell me
whether it's a bad idea or not.

Thanks again,
Steve

On 1/6/07, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida at ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
>
> Please don't top post :(
>
> It would also be nice if you copied the mailing list to any
> replies, but I don't know if I should copy this reply to the list
> too, so I am sending it privately.
>
> On 2007-01-06 19:49, Steve Franks <stevefranks at ieee.org> wrote:
> >On 1/6/07, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida at ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
> >>On 2007-01-06 10:08, Steve Franks <stevefranks at ieee.org> wrote:
> >>> I have an ath0 card working fine in one system.  I put it in
> >>> the other, kldload if_ath, but no ath0.  kldload appears
> >>> sucessful, because if you try it again, if says file already
> >>> present.  I notice my pcmcia appears to show up sucesfully
> >>> when I boot, but I get no output on tty0 when I plug in the
> >>> ath card, like you do on the other system.
> >>
> >> Are the two systems the same FreeBSD version?  If not, can you
> >> show us dmesg output from the two systems, and then "pciconf
> >> -lv" output after the card has been plugged in?
> >
> > dmesg gives the following interesting info:
> >
> > cbb0: <PCI-CardBus bridge>....
> > pccard0: <16 bit...>... on cbb
> > cbb: Unable to map IRQ...
> > device_attatch: cbb0 attatch returned 12
> >
> > nothing seems amiss in pciconf -lv (no net on that system - broadcom :(
> ,
> > although I don't see entries I'd expect for the cbb0...
> >
> > Note, I neglected to mention I the computer won't start unless
> > it's in safe mode, otherwise, it freezes after the line
> > "module_register_init: MOD_LOAD (amr_linux, 0xffffffff806205d0,
> > 0) error 6".  The line before that is "Timecounters tick every
> > 1.000 msec", and the line after (in safe-mode) is "ad0:
> > 57231MB...."
>
> The amr(4) driver is the driver for MegaRAID SCSI/ATA/SATA RAID
> controllers.  Can you try disabling this controller and see if
> the kernel boots normally in normal mode?
>
> I still don't know about thee following:
>
>     - Are the two computers the same?  (The one where the
>       PC-CARD works, and the one where it doesn't)
>
>     - What FreeBSD version is this?
>
> In "safe mode" ACPI is disabled, and this may be why your cbb0
> PCI-CardBus bridge fails to work properly.
>
>


-- 
Steve Franks, KE7BTE
Staff Engineer
La Palma Devices, LLC
http://www.lapalmadevices.com
(520) 312-0089