7.1-BETA2 installation on ASUS P4S8X fails BIG MEDIUM ERROR

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Tue, Nov 04, 2008 at 08:13:34AM -1000, Al Plant wrote:
> Julien Cigar wrote:
>> I've this problem too on almost all my machines. The only solution I've
>> found is to disable DMA (atapi_dma), but then performances are very poor
>> (and I'm still unable to burn a CD/DVD)
>>
>> On Tue, 2008-11-04 at 16:03 +0100, Christoph Kukulies wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> don't know whether it's the CDROM drive (a Creative 52x mx) or the  
>>> motherboard (ASUS P4S8X) or what.
>>> Anyway, I tried to install a recent version of FreeBSD (7.1-BETA2) 
>>> and the installation
>>> hangs right in the boot process of the installation CD disc1.
>>>
>>> I see
>>>
>>> acd0: FAILURE - READ BIG MEDIUM ERROR asc=0x11 ascq=0x00
>>> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 60 seconds for xpt_config
>>> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 120 seconds for xpt_config
>>> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 180 seconds for xpt_config
>>>
>>> and so on.
>>>
>>> Any clues?
>>>
>>> --
>>> Christoph Kukulies
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> freebsd-questions at freebsd.org mailing list
>>> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
>>> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
> ############
>
> Aloha,
>
> I have had similiar happen on 7 and 8 Freebsd installs recently.
>
> If you install using safe mode it will work. Then in /boot/loader.conf
>
> #boot/loader.conf
> hw.ata.ata-dma=0
> hw.ata.atapi_dma=0

There is no hw.ata.ata-dma tunable.  I think you mean hw.ata.ata_dma
(note: underscore, not hyphen).  If you really are using hw.ata.ata-dma,
it does nothing.  :-)

Also folks, please remember that "ATA DMA" is for hard disks, and
"ATAPI DMA" is for ATAPI devices (CD/DVD drives).  

Error messages from xpt_* functions are from by the ATAPI-to-CAM
emulation layer (think: SCSI emulation for ATAPI devices), but are
likely signs of underlying compatibility problems between the CD/DVD
drive and FreeBSD, and not the fault of atapicam(4).

I'm not sure if there's a loader hint to disable xpt.

> The error that comes up when you burn a CD seems to be bogus as I have  
> used the CD's with out error for installing on other boxes.

The "READ BIG MEDIUM ERROR" often indicates that the CD/DVD drive does
not support a specific read operation mode; some CD/DVD manufacturers
don't implement this command for various reasons.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |