Nick,
I appreciate the divine :) intervention. My comments/investigation is below,
but in summary, I had set the BIOS to use CardBUS rather than PCIC. I did
this originally because when attempting to install FreeBSD 6.1, it would hang
unless I put the PCMCIA slot into CardBUS mode.
Boy is my face red :). I've included the log files, in case you want them,
though.
--
Michael White "To protect people from the effects of folly is to
fill the world with fools." -Herbert Spencer
On Thursday 08 June 2006 21:59, Nick Holland wrote:
> When I saw your note, I figured Something Ain't Right here. I wasn't
> the only one. Theo noticed.
>
> I'm on a mission from Theo.
>
> Michael White wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I'm attempting my first install of OpenBSD (version 3.9) on an HP
> > Omnibook 800CT (Pentium 166, 80 MB RAM, 4.3 GB HD, 3COM 3CXEM556 Carbus
> > Ethernet card), coming over from RH9.0. One peculiarity of the 800CTs is
> > that the SCSI CDROM is not bootable, so I'm down to booting with
> > floppies.
>
> whoa. SCSI. (he's right on this, btw... Symbios Logic 53C810, if the
> page I'm reading is to be believed.)
>
> > I first attempted to boot from "floppyC39.fs", since that's supposed to
> > be the image for laptops. Well, it does recognize my Ethernet card, but
> > seems to choke on the hard drive. After recognizing the Ethernet card, I
> > see the following:
> >
> > ----------------------------------------------
> > wd0(wdc0:0:0): timeout
> > type: ata
> > c_bcount: 512
> > c_skip: 0
> > wd0(wdc0:0:0): timeout
> > type: ata
> > c_bcount: 512
> > c_skip: 0
> > WARNING: preposterous time in file system
> > WARNING: file system time much less than clock time
> > ----------------------------------------------
> >
> > After that, the machine is locked up. So I boot from "floppy39.fs"
> > instead. That had no problem with the hard drive. I was able to
> > successfully partition the drive. But that image does not recognize my
> > Ethernet card, so I'm unable to retrieve any images (didn't see an option
> > for PPP).
>
> The fact that floppy38.fs didn't see your network adapter is not
> unexpected, of course.
>
> The fact that you had disk issues on floppyC39.fs is unexpected. The
> fact that they go away on floppy39.fs is all the way to Just Plain Wrong.
>
> > Even after formatting the hard drive under the "floppy39.s" floppy, the
> > "floppyC39.fs" floppy chokes on the hard drive.
> >
> > Is there any way to combine the two capabilities?
>
> Not the way you are thinking. But I have some ideas...
>
> > The only reason I'm asking is because of a comment in the FAQ
> >
> > (section 4.3):
> >
> > "Yes, there may be situations where one install disk is required to
> > support your SCSI adapter and another disk is required to support your
> > network adapter. Fortunately, this is a rare event, and can usually be
> > worked around."
>
> Worked around means combining hardware and install options in such a way
> that it is made to work...not fiddling with the boot media. Usually.
>
> > I may have access to a Xircom network card - is that supported by the
> > "floppy39.s" floppy?
>
> No, the Xircom driver is not in floppy39.fs...
> At least, not the Xircom driver I'm thinking of...they may have more
> than one. :)
>
>
> Anyway...I'm sitting here looking at the config files that make up
> floppy39.fs and floppy39C.fs (RAMDISK and RAMDISKC, for those who want
> to follow along), and their diffs.
>
> First, I see that the SCSI controller that is probably in your laptop is
> supported by the siop(4) driver, which is on floppy39.fs. SO..the
> suggestion of dropping the file set on a CD and installing from that is
> probably workable.
Possibly, but I couldn't figure out how to manually mount the CDROM. There's
an ISO disk in there, but running the "mount" command said that the device
hadn't been created (don't remember the exact error).
> But that's not what Theo sent me to ask. We are interested in the
> reason for the problem more than a quick-and-dirty work-around.
> Besides, it is entirely possible the problem will be back with us when
> the full kernel loads.
>
> So..back to the diff... It sounds like there is something hurting the
> disk support on this thing. So...we can try turning some drivers off,
> and see if that gets floppyC booting properly. You do this using User
> Kernel Configuration, a.k.a., UKC:
>
> http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#BootConfig
>
> Here is a list of things to try disabling ("disable bla" at the ukc>
> prompt):
> uhci*
> ohci*
> wdc*
> Those you can do all at once.
OK, I did all those while in CardBUS mode. No impact. Those WARNINGs come &
go, though - might have been me poking around with the BIOS setting.
This is when I decided to put the PCMCIA slot back into PCIC mode. I got
around to testing pciide and pcic (which reminded me of the PCIC mode), but
neither of those made a difference.
> hmmmm... those were the only easy (a.k.a., mostly harmless) ones.
>
> Well...if those don't improve things, let's try breaking some things:
> pciide* (your disk performance now sucks)
> pcic* (that might kill your PCcard slot)
> cbb* (if the above didn't, this will)
> Do these one-at-a-time.
>
> I'm not really sure what is going on... You may have an issue with the
> PCcard/Cardbus support...which means your NIC may show up in the dmesg,
> but it may be just as non-functional as it is with floppy39.fs.
> Disabling pciide will cause a huge performance hit, but "slow" beats
> "not working at all".
I'm pretty sure it's working. The log says that the ethernet functionality is
enabled. Plus the little green LED is on :). And after I put the PCMCIA
slot into CardBUS mode, it was able to DHCP to get an address.
> Might be interesting to see what happens if you boot without the NIC
> installed in the machine. yeah, useless for your problem, but
> interesting for troubleshooting.
That's attached as noNic.log. That's with a boot from floppyC39.fs, BTW.
Pretty much the same thing as with the card. This log is while it was in
CardBUS mode.
> I'd love to see is a serial console capture of the output of the boot on
> this thing, from both the floppy39 and floppyC39 disks...but if you
> aren't fluent in serial, hooking one up for your first OpenBSD install
> might be a lot to ask for. Ah, heck, if I don't ask, I won't get, right?
> :)
>
> http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#getdmesg
Piece of cake. I've attached both files (floppy39.log & floppyC39.log) while
in CardBUS mode. I had a serial cable/NULL modem hanging around from a
Vectrex project.
> You can probably at least get the dmesg from floppy39.fs to a floppy
> disk using the process there, but if you can get both by using a serial
> cable, all the better...
>
> Nick.
Again, sorry for the troubles. I guess not all BSDs are created equal :).
BTW, FreeBSD couldn't recognize the hard drive at all, regardless of the
PCMCIA setting.
[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type text/x-log which had a name of
floppy39.log]
[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type text/x-log which had a name of
floppyC39.log]
[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type text/x-log which had a name of
noNic.log]
