On 05/03/14 20:22, Kenneth Westerback wrote:
On 3 May 2014 10:13, Andreas Bartelt <o...@bartula.de> wrote:
On 05/03/14 15:01, Kenneth Westerback wrote:
On 3 May 2014 08:49, Andreas Bartelt <o...@bartula.de> wrote:
On 05/03/14 14:10, Kenneth Westerback wrote:
On 3 May 2014 06:27, Martijn Rijkeboer <mart...@bunix.org> wrote:
So marking a partition as 'Active/Bootable', (the 00 -> 80 change)
causes your system to hang. Apparently Linux does this when you
'Label' it. The OpenBSD installer does it for you when you
select 'Whole disk'. Nothing obviously to do with the disklabel. You
could test this by manually
setting the 'Active' flag on the working Linux MBR. Or, conversely
unsetting the flag with fdisk
after the OpenBSD install but before rebooting. In either case does it
get further before noticing that it can't boot?
I did some testing with the following results:
1. Partition disk with Linux gparted and use cfdisk to set partition
type to A6 and OpenBSD disklabel to set disklabel.
(partition: 0; start: 2048; size: 1953519616)
- Bootflag off, no disklabel -> boot
- Bootflag on, no disklabel -> boot
- Bootflag off, with disklabel -> freeze
- Bootflag on, with disklabel -> freeze
2. Partition disk with OpenBSD fdisk + disklabel (installer start +
size).
(partition: 3, start: 64; size: 1953520001)
- Bootflag off, no disklabel -> freeze
- Bootflag on, no disklabel -> freeze
- Bootflag off, with disklabel -> freeze
- Bootflag on, with diskalbel -> freeze
3. Partition disk with OpenBSD fdisk + disklabel (linux start + size).
(partition: 3: start: 2048; size: 1953519616)
- Bootflag off, no disklabel -> boot
- Bootflag on, no disklabel -> boot
- Bootflag off, with disklabel -> freeze
- Bootflag on, with disklabel -> freeze
4. Partition disk with OpenBSD fdisk with type 83 (installer start +
size).
(partition: 3, start: 64; size: 1953520001)
- Bootflag off -> freeze
- Bootflag on -> freeze
It looks like the motherboard doesn't like the partition to start at 64
and
it also doesn't like disklabels.
Any suggestions on what to try next or should I just buy a different
motherboard?
Kind regards,
Martijn Rijkeboer
Looking around I found that one of my machines has a gigabyte
GA-Z87-D3HP board, and I scrounged up a 1TB WD 10EARS disk. The disk
was from another machine and had a working OpenBSD system. Lo and
behold, plugged it into the GA-Z87-D3HP board and the system hung in
the POST. Put the disk back on the other system, dd'ed /dev/zero over
the disklabel, moved it back and the system booted.
How extremely interesting. And weird.
.... Ken
such problems also seem to occur on some ASUS boards -- but only when
SATA
drives are used. OpenBSD did boot fine from a USB stick:
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=137862502730004&w=2
Best Regards
Andreas
Indeed. Experiments here show that plugging in a pci <-> sata card to
avoid the Intel SATA chip makes the disk work fine.
Disks smaller than 1TB also work. So I'm guessing it's something
magical about 4K-sector disks presenting themselves as 512-byte sector
disks that is the source of problems. I'm still a bit fogged as to how
a disklabel triggers the problem.
I also saw these problems with a Chronos MKNSSDCR120GB SSD drive. I don't
know which sector size these drives use internally...
Actually, I didn't get any of my drives to work with OpenBSD on this
mainboard. I don't know if it helps -- I've also unsuccessfully tested a
320GB WD3200AAKS from 08/2010.
Best Regards
Andreas
OK, I got it booting. In a fairly useless config, but ...
Booting from a -current amd64 cd55.iso cd-rom, I (E)dited the MBR so
that the OpenBSD 'A6' partition started on sector 2048, and was 500MB
in size.
I accepted the auto configured disklabel (i.e. all space in 'a') and
installed w/o X, Compiler or games sets.
Removing the CD and rebooting got me to the usual login prompt.
I'm going to experiment some more, but I'm now suspicious that the old
'512MB' limit is coming into play somehow.
So for those following along, try a tiny OpenBSD MBR partition
starting at sector 2048 and see what happens. And of course if it
works, how big can your partition be before it stops working.
I've just tried this -- starting the A6 partition (partition 3) at
sector 2048 prevented POST from freezing. However, the system didn't
boot in my case.
Afterwards, I did the same manual partitioning setup (A6, partition 3,
500m, flagged as bootable), but with starting sector 64 instead, which
resulted in POST freezing again.
Best Regards
Andreas
