sparc64/108757: cant boot if rtc stuffed, no means of recovery

[Miles Nordin]

The following reply was made to PR sparc64/108757; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Miles Nordin <carton at Ivy.NET>
To: freebsd-sparc64 at freebsd.org
Cc: freebsd-gnats-submit at FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: sparc64/108757: cant boot if rtc stuffed, no means of recovery
Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2007 14:18:57 -0500

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 >>>>> "ag" == Andrew Grillet <Andrew> writes:
 
     ag> The boot process fails because the rtc is invalid, and then
     ag> reboots endlessly.(no dump device)
 
     ag> This needs to be changed so that the user is offered the
     ag> choice of having the rtc zapped to a sane state for subsequent
     ag> resetting after reboot.
 
 possibly there is a way to do this in OpenFirmware.  I don't know
 what's wrong with your RTC in particular.  How do you know it's
 corrupt?  Did you see an error message?
 
 This is for older Suns, but you could try parts of it:
 
  http://www.squirrel.com/sun-nvram-hostid.faq.html
 
 I don't think it's a good idea to add architecture-specific user
 dialog to the bootup process.  Whatever you want the kernel to
 do---ignore the problem, work around the problem, fix the problem, do
 nothing differently but print a better error message---it should
 always do that thing, not ask questions.
 
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