device hint -> disable firewire or sbp driver

[Tim Judd]

On 11/21/09, David Horn <dhorn2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Tim Judd <tajudd at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 11/21/09, Chris Whitehouse <cwhiteh at onetel.com> wrote:
>>> Tim Judd wrote:
>>>> Any way via tunables, environment, sysctl or device hints that one can
>>>> disable firewire on the install medium of recent (7.2 and newer)
>>>> Install CD/DVDs?
>>>>
>>>> more than one person is having problems with kernel panics on startup
>>>> due to firewire, and I can't google my way out of this one.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Any advice from the pros?
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>>> Tim,
>>>
>>> I've got one of the affected motherboards if this is the problem you
>>> mean:
>>>
>>> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=136327
>>>
>>> The things that have worked for me are disabling firewire in the BIOS
>>> and using a GENERIC kernel or building a kernel with device sbp disabled
>>> and having firewire enabled in the BIOS.
>>
>> See though, the guys coming to FreeBSD from $another-OS gets a panic
>> from the install medium, which isn't speaking very well of our
>> quality.
>>
>> I got caught with this because the guy I was helping online had an
>> amd64-capable system, to which I don't.  I can't build a install CD or
>> kernel to help him.  I have a PCI firewire card that runs sbp, but the
>> livecd doesn't panic when i was booting from it.
>>
>>
>> I tried all sorts of disabling hints, tried to go upstream (see it's
>> dependencies and disable it's dependencies) and it still gave me a sbp
>> when the system finished booting.
>>
>>
>> Thought about asking him to run the memstick and disabling it from
>> there, but he still can't get past it booting to tweak anything.  He
>> didn't have an option to disable firewire in the BIOS, and there was
>> no bios update from Sony for his Vaio.
>>
>>
>> I got stuck, and it started to wear thin that we have such a major
>> panic on install CDs.  My mentality is to offer disk, cd and network
>> support in the kernel on the install CD/DVDs, but the generic kernel
>> that's installed has everything.
>>
>>
>> If others would like to offer suggestions, I'm still open for them.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> hint.sbp.0.disabled="1" in /boot/device.hints with GENERIC kernel -
>>> still get a panic
>>>
>>> sbp_load="YES" in /boot/loader.conf with sbp disabled in the kernel -
>>> get panic.
>>>
>>> It seems ok to kldload sbp after the system is up, ie the machine
>>> doesn't panic, but I don't have anything firewire to test with.
>>>
>>> Would it be an option to have sbp disabled by default in the install
>>> CD's? Those without the problem can put sbp_load in loader.conf, those
>>> with the problem will have to kldload it later but at least they will be
>>> able to install.
>
> As per svn and cvs:
>
> r199112 | kensmith | 2009-11-09 16:39:42 -0500 (Mon, 09 Nov 2009) | 11 lines
> Changed paths:
>    M /stable/8/sys/amd64/conf/GENERIC
>    M /stable/8/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC
>    M /stable/8/sys/ia64/conf/GENERIC
>    M /stable/8/sys/powerpc/conf/GENERIC
>    M /stable/8/sys/sparc64/conf/GENERIC
>
> Comment out the sbp(4) entry for GENERIC config files that contain it.
> There are known issues with this driver that are beyond what can be
> fixed for 8.0-RELEASE and the bugs can cause boot failure on some systems.
> It's not clear if it impacts all systems and there is interest in getting
> the problem fixed so for now just comment it out instead of remove it.
>
> Commit straight to stable/8, this is an 8.0-RELEASE issue.  Head was left
> alone so work on it can continue there.
>
> Reviewed by:    Primary misc. architecture maintainers (marcel, marius)
>
> Looks like sbp(4) is disabled on the 8.0 branch already.

And if I'm reading the SVN commit right, it went to -STABLE (aka
RELENG_8) but not head (aka ".").  It still won't fix all of FreeBSD 7
install mediums, right?  or is that "to come", maybe in 7.3?


Also, if I'm reading the commit right, 8.0-RELEASE is going to have
sbp(4) enabled in GENERIC too.  Can someone make sure I'm reading that
right?




>
> --Dave
>