BTX Loader crashes -- Help wanted

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <he67nb$adt$1 at ger.gmane.org>, you wrote:

>Ronald F. Guilmette wrote:
>
>> 
>> Who should I be talking to if the BTX loader is crashing on my
>> specific hardware configuration, and what specific info do I
>> need to be gathering for him/her in order to have hope of getting
>> the problem rectified?
>> 
>> I'd pulled stuff out of the system in question until there's
>> practically nothing left and I'm at my wit's end with this problem.
>> 
>> System:
>> AMD Athlon 64 1640B CPU
>> MSI K9VGM-V motherboard
>> 1GB 667 DDR (Kingston)
>> LG DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH22NS50 - OEM
>> floppy drive
>> 
>> That's it. I've yanked out all the non-essential cards, _and_ I've
>> even taken out the hard drive, and I'm still having BTX crashes.
>> 
>> The problem(s) occurs with FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE/i386 disk1 (CD),
>> 7.0-RELEASE/i386 disk1 (CD), 7.2-RELEASE/i386 Live Filesystem (CD), and
>> 7.2-RELEASE/amd64 Live Filesystem (CD).
>
>Try 8RC3 and see if any difference. I believe some work in this area may 
>have occurred.

I just tried it.  Alas, same result.

>I don't believe you are the first to experience this.

Well, I'm just about to file a new PR on this, but I'll refrain if
someone else has alreadyt done so.  Do you have an eisting PR number
on this?

>> Curiously, with the same motherboard (_and_ the same boot CDs), I have no
>> problems at all booting off of any of the above boot CDs, AS LONG AS I am
>> using a different (PATA) CD/DVD drive.  But I have tried two different
>> recent vintage SATA CD/DVD drives (Optiarc & the LG mentioned above) and
>> both result in the booting failures described above.
>
>You can try disabling ACPI at boot

I just tried that (at your suggesting).  Same result.  No change.
:-(

>... as well as toggling the BIOS between 
>Enhanced and Legacy mode if this option is available.

I'm not seeing anything like that in my BIOS settings.

>Probably your best 
>approach will be to use a SATA hard drive while using a PATA CD-ROM. This is 
>most likely what you will have to do if 8RC3 doesn't make any difference and 
>you just want to get the box going. 

Sheeeesh! I literally _just_ bought this new SATA DVD drive, and I went
with SATA because I believed that (a) the world is slowly but surely
switching everything over to SATA and (b) SATA has been around long enough
now that FreeBSD related bugs should have all been shaken out by now.

Please excuse my snarkiness, but... I guess I was wrong about the latter.

>If 8 does the same thing file a PR in order to bring the attention of the 
>developers. There may be one, or more, already on the subject.

Well, I did a search on the PR database for "BTX" and I'm looking at all
those PRs... some of them going back to 2004, which doesn't exactly inspire
confidence about a possible timely fix... and I don't see anything in the
subjects that quite matched up to what I'm talking about.

And ah... while we are on the subject...

If I do file a PR on this, then at long last I'll need to know the answers
to the two questions that have been in the back of my mind for ages, regarding
PRs...

   1)  What do the various severity codes mean?
   2)  What do the various proirity codes mean?

I've never filed a PR with severity "critical" or with priority "high"
because I've always figured that this may be a good way to get the
developers to view _all_ one's future (and past) PRs with a suspicious/
jaundiced eye...  you know... the-boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome.

I don't want to be labeled as a nut case or an incessant complainer, but
for _this_ issue I'm thinking that severity==critical and/or priority==high
may be appropriate.  I mean jeezzz Louise!  If one can't even install from
the distribution CDs/DVDs on perfectly good hardware...  (And it's not like
the whole SATA interface standard is exactly ``new'' or anything anymore.)

So?  Any advice?  Should I stick my neck out and label this PR either
severity==critical or priority==high ?


Regards,
rfg