Problems booting 9.1-STABLE on Netra X1

[Marius Strobl]

On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 10:19:20PM -0500, Chris Ross wrote:
>   So, as discussed in an earlier thread, I am looking to install FreeBSD on a Sun Netra X1.
> Given that I don't currently have any USB loadable media, or any confidence that it will work,
> I started working on setting up a netboot.  I have it netbooting via a loader and kernel via
> tftp.  However, there seems to be a problem
> 
>   After getting through some/most of autoconf, it says:
> 
> Power Failure Detected: Shutting down NOW.
> 
>   At which point, it goes silent.  The console doesn't respond to input, including a break
> (which would normally drop back to OBP).
> 
>   Does anyone have any idea what might be going on here?  Some miscommunication
> about the clock or power management systems in this hardware?
> 
>   Thanks.  Boot output below, and any more details available if needed, and specific
> guidance to get the details is appreciated.  :-)

This means that the machine is generating a power failure interrupt,
which causes FreeBSD to initiate a graceful shutdown rather than
waiting for the power to supply to suddenly die, which could cause
data loss.
In general, it's very model specific whether Sun hooked up that
interrupt to anything and to what. F.e., in U5/U10 it's just
connected to the power button rather than a circuit that monitors
the power supply. I don't know for certain what it is connected to
in X1. However, given that these latter use an ACPI-style power
button and were intended as servers, it's quite likely that their
power failure interrupt actually is connected to a power supply
monitoring circuit.
You could hack psycho(4) to just not register the power failure
interrupt handler. Whether you really want to use that machine in
this configuration (it could be either the power supply actually
starting to fail or also just the monitoring circuit being broken)
is something you have to decide on your own.

Marius