MSI GT 627 unsuccessful installation in 7-STABLE and 8-BETA4

[Manolis Kiagias]

George Mamalakis wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> My question should maybe have be sent to some other fbsd list; if so,
> please someone instruct me where, and excuse me for my potential mistake.
>
> Now to my question:
>
> I just bought the MSI GT 627 Laptop, and I tried to install FreeBSD on
> it. First I tried with 8-BETA4 amd, then with 8-BETA4 i386, and lastly
> with 7.2 latest snapshot. All attempts have been unsuccessful, so I
> tried NetBSD 5.0.1 to see if it would install, and it did!
>
> The kernel messages I got on all FOUR attempts (even in NetBSD,
> although it worked finally) was something like that (in the beginning)
> (NetBSD excerpt, since it is the only that booted, so I could
> copy-paste it from dmesg, but FreeBSD gave the exact same Error
> messages (a few numbers differ)):
>
> Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,
>    2006, 2007, 2008, 2009
>    The NetBSD Foundation, Inc.  All rights reserved.
> Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
>    The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
>
> NetBSD 5.0.1 (GENERIC) #0: Thu Jul 30 00:08:07 UTC 2009
>       
> builds at b7.netbsd.org:/home/builds/ab/netbsd-5-0-1-RELEASE/amd64/200907292356Z-obj/home/builds/ab/netbsd-5-0-1-RELEASE/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/GENERIC
>
> total memory = 4095 MB
> avail memory = 3954 MB
> timecounter: Timecounters tick every 10.000 msec
> timecounter: Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 100
> SMBIOS rev. 2.5 @ 0x9a400 (45 entries)
> Micro-Star International GT627       (Ver 1.000)
> mainbus0 (root)
> cpu0 at mainbus0 apid 0: Intel 686-class, 2394MHz, id 0x1067a
> cpu1 at mainbus0 apid 1: Intel 686-class, 2394MHz, id 0x1067a
> cpu2 at mainbus0 apid 2: Intel 686-class, 2394MHz, id 0x1067a
> cpu3 at mainbus0 apid 3: Intel 686-class, 2394MHz, id 0x1067a
> ioapic0 at mainbus0 apid 4: pa 0xfec00000, version 20, 24 pins
> acpi0 at mainbus0: Intel ACPICA 20080321
> acpi0: X/RSDT: OemId <MSI_NB,MEGABOOK,20090407>, AslId <MSFT,00000097>
> ACPI Error (evregion-0427): No handler for Region [EC__]
> (0xffff800007e20400) [EmbeddedControl] [20080321]
> ACPI Error (exfldio-0390): Region EmbeddedControl(3) has no handler
> [20080321]
> ACPI Error (psparse-0627): Method parse/execution failed
> [\_SB_.PCI0.SBRG.EC__.BAT1._STA] (Node 0xffff800007e23760), AE_NOT_EXIST
> ACPI Error (uteval-0306): Method execution failed
> [\_SB_.PCI0.SBRG.EC__.BAT1._STA] (Node 0xffff800007e23760), AE_NOT_EXIST
> acpi0: SCI interrupting at int 9
> acpi0: fixed-feature power button present
> timecounter: Timecounter "ACPI-Fast" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000
> ACPI-Fast 24-bit timer
> ACPI Error (evregion-0427): No handler for Region [EC__]
> (0xffff800007e20400) [EmbeddedControl] [20080321]
> ACPI Error (exfldio-0390): Region EmbeddedControl(3) has no handler
> [20080321]
> ACPI Error (psparse-0627): Method parse/execution failed
> [\_SB_.PCI0.SBRG.EC__.BAT1._STA] (Node 0xffff800007e23760), AE_NOT_EXIST
> ACPI Error (uteval-0306): Method execution failed
> [\_SB_.PCI0.SBRG.EC__.BAT1._STA] (Node 0xffff800007e23760), AE_NOT_EXIST
> WMI1 (pnp0c14) at acpi0 not configured
> ....
>
> where fbsd differed, was somewhere after identifying ad4 (the disk,
> which is WDC WD5000BEVT-22ZAT0 01.01A1), where it stated:
>
> acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG MEDIUM ERROR asc=0x11 ascq=0x05
> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 60 seconds for xpt_config
> run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 120 seconds for
> xpt_config
>
> and after that it kept on repeating the last message, only increasing
> the seconds to wait, until nothing more happened.
>
> Does anyone know if this is something that will be fixed soon? I guess
> it has to do with MSI's ACPI or something like that.
>
> Thank you all for your interest.
>
> Regards,
>
> mamalos.
>
Is the laptop equipped with a firewire port?
I have a few Gigabyte 8IPE1000-G motherboards at school that exhibit the
exact same behaviour. (Using 7.X, have not tried with 8.0 yet). Although
the motherboard does not in fact have a firewire chip soldered on, the
BIOS presents a firewire device (in Windows it shows in the device
manager as a non-working, unknown problem device) and I believe this
confuses the FreeBSD boot sequence. Other people on the lists have also
suggested disabling device sbp in a custom kernel configuration file (or
even removing the entire  firewire section if you don't need it).
One possible first step would be to try disabling firewire in the BIOS
(Sadly I don't have this option at all in my case) and see if the boot
continues. If you install successfully you may then try building a
custom kernel and re-enabling the BIOS option.