On 2019-12-14 14:28, Alfred Morgan wrote: > I have now another machine running OpenBSD not recover from a reboot. I > thought I was having hardware issues with my two other servers (both zbox) > and now this third one (Dell) with totally different hardware is having the > same problem getting stuck at the boot> prompt. The problem goes away and > boots continue normally if I attach a USB keyboard in all three cases. I > feel like this problem started showing up around OpenBSD 6.4. Is this a > known issue?
certainly not a universal issue...(i.e., I haven't experienced it) > When there is no keyboard attached the boot> prompt shows a box with a > question mark in it looking like an unknown character. Picture showing this > on bootx64 3.46: > https://photos.app.goo.gl/7HAqQic6GArLGzaXA Well...yeah. If the boot loader echoed anything, it's behaving As Desired -- a char at the command line means "STOP ALL BOOTING, I have something special I want you to do". The boot loader is entirely depenedent upon the firmware (BIOS), the kernel isn't loaded, OpenBSD isn't running. There's not a lot that OpenBSD can do about this -- the boot loader could "eat" all chars sitting in the buffer, but that would make interrupting the boot process just a little more difficult when you DO want to stop it. However, I think there are a few things you might be able to do to solve your problem... 1) BIOS upgrade. Long shot, but maybe? 2) BIOS config option? Also a long shot, but since I'd call this a boot firmware bug, maybe some combination of USB related options would fix this? 3) a boot.conf file should fix -- simply putting "boot" in /etc/boot.conf should override anything in the keyboard buffer. Need to "control" the boot? plug in a keyboard and hold down either CTRL key, and you will be given the boot> prompt. Nick. > Here is the dmesg from my latest Dell server: > > OpenBSD 6.6 (GENERIC.MP) #3: Thu Nov 21 03:20:01 MST 2019 > r...@syspatch-66-amd64.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/amd64/compile/ > GENERIC.MP > real mem = 8487182336 (8094MB) > avail mem = 8217251840 (7836MB) > mpath0 at root > scsibus0 at mpath0: 256 targets > mainbus0 at root > bios0 at mainbus0: SMBIOS rev. 2.7 @ 0xe0000 (71 entries) > bios0: vendor Dell Inc. version "A02" date 11/14/2014 > bios0: Dell Inc. OptiPlex 3020M ...