Installing FreeBSD 6.0 on IBM BladeCenter HS20 - IT WORKS!

[Tom Samplonius]

On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, Guy Helmer wrote:

> Tom Samplonius wrote:
>> Axel,
>> 
>>  Hi, I was reading your post in regards to installing FreeBSD on the 
>> BladeCenter that you made to freebsd-stable.  I've also been trying 
>> installing FreeBSD on the BladeCenter.  During my installs, it hangs during 
>> the SCSI disk probes (Waiting for SCSI disks to settle).  That should only 
>> take 5 seconds, but it sits there for a long time.  I have some questions:
>> 
>> 1. Disabling acpi.  What happens for you if acpi is not disabled?  I never 
>> tried this, and I'm not sure if this fixes anything or not.  What did it do 
>> for you?
>> 
>> 2. Keyboard.  Have you tried BETA4?  I think the new kbdmux stuff will mean 
>> that the keyboard does not need to be disabled.
>> 3.  ispfw.  I tried both with and without the firmware.  I didn't make any 
>> difference.  It would still hang.  What kind of storage are you installing 
>> onto?  I'm working with an IBM DS400 (aka T600).
>
> If these are the same blades as the Intel SBX82 blades, then the code that 
> drains the keyboard interface at boot time will cause the system to hang if 
> the ps/2 keyboard (atkbdc?) isn't disabled.  Devon H. O'Dell just sent me a 
> list of his PRs yesterday (via the freebsd-amd64 list) that resolve this 
> problem and several others:

   IBM HS20 (dual Xeon) blades are basically the same as the Intel SBX82.


>   I've implemented a fix for this utilizing ACPI reboots. Please
>   apply kern/94939 and tell me if shutdown(8) with -r or
>   reboot(8) works for you. My suspicion is that it will.

   That could be a problem, if the HS20 FreeBSD install receipe is to disable 
ACPI, since they won't have ACPI either.  I'm going to retry an HS20 install 
soon, and see if disabling ACPI fixes the "Waiting for SCSI disks to settle" 
hang that I get right now.

   The problem that I'm getting has some similarites to the ips0 SCSI problem 
(discussed on freebsd-scsi)  which appears like it could be interrupt storm 
caused by miss-routed and/or mis-initialized interrupts caused by a ACPI issue. 
In which case the isp and bge drivers on a HS20 could having the same problem.


>   Also, you may be interested in kern/94822, as FreeBSD won't
>   hang on start-up attaching atkbd(4). If you're working on
>   Intel SBX82 blades, specifically, kern/94833 and bin/94815 may
>   also be interesting to you.

   I don't have this problem actually.  I guess if the atkbd is disabled, there 
is also no issue?


> Maybe these would be helpful for you, also.
>
> Guy
>
> -- 
> Guy Helmer, Ph.D.
> Principal System Architect
> Palisade Systems, Inc.
>
>



Tom Samplonius
VP of Technology
Uniserve