FreeBSD boot loader halts

[youshi10 at u.washington.edu]

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007, Simon Chang wrote:

>> My FBSD 6.2 freezes at random after printing Default: F1 I haven't
>> noticed this issue in the past with older versions of FreeBSD.
>> Since this is a random issue, it's very hard to pin point the culprit
>> by process of elimination (disabling APCI, etc...) After several
>> ctrl+alt+delete reboots, the system does boot. Once booted I can
>> run makeworld for a week without any issues. Perhaps a disk issue?
>> I'm booting off a MegaRAID controller. Though I cannot crash
>> the system using intensive IO after it boots. After it boots, it seems
>> to be rock solid, so I'm lost here.
>> 
>> Can boot loader be put into verbose mode and have it output
>> debugging info?
>
> I don't know if there is a "debug" mode for the boot loader, but if
> the problem is happening at random then I would want to investigate
> hardware failures/malfunctions.  At any rate, no fully operational
> machine should need "several ctrl+alt+delete reboots" for it to start
> working.
>
> Perhaps the problem happens when the BIOS is attempting to probe drive
> controllers?  Have you tried to stress-test the system by doing a
> "make buildworld"?
>
> SC

This particular issue happened to me with the FreeBSD bootloader and grub on an ancient Pentium Pro machine I was using recently. I was able to correct the problem by using GAG (gag.sf.net) instead of the other bootloaders.

-Garrett