Re: BTX Loader crashes -- Help wanted
In message <20091121015230.cf2c15dd.free...@edvax.de>, Polytropon wrote: >On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:48:34 -0800, "Ronald F. Guilmette" om> wrote: >> But I have one question. The author sez to do this: >> >>dd if=8.0-BETA1-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync >> >> I just want to know what the effect of conv=sync and why it might be >> necessary. >... >it appears that the data is ensured to be "properly >aligned" with a possibly different block size on the >source or target media. As far as I remember, not >giving the bs= argument would result in a default >block size of 512 bytes which may - but don't ask >me why - lead to a non-functioning target USB stick. Actually, I already _did_ ask why. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: BTX Loader crashes -- Help wanted
Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: [snip] >>Try 8RC3 and see if any difference. I believe some work in this area may >>have occurred. > > I just tried it. Alas, same result. I follow the -CURRENT and -STABLE mail lists as well as this one. Though this particular problem does not pertain to me, I seem to recall some traffic off and on about this subject occasionally. So it is known. The place to get the developers to look is wrt to 8.0, so if the problem is well documented they may be more inclined to look into it. If the bootonly, install CD, or LiveFS CD for 8-RC3 can be used to reproduce the problem concentrate here. >>I don't believe you are the first to experience this. > Well, I'm just about to file a new PR on this, but I'll refrain if > someone else has alreadyt done so. Do you have an eisting PR number > on this? There are quite a number and a few of which are very similar in that they directly reference boot loader crashes. You could review the ones that seem to match the closest to your situation directly (e.g. hardware and crash- dump wise), particularly the BTX crash associated with booting from SATA CD/DVD. Eye them towards using as a template to get started. The more exacting and succinct the PR the more likely to stimulate interest. You can reference the handful that match the closest by number in your own PR. Be very exact to localize the trouble to specifically SATA CD/DVD hardware. If the box will boot and install fine from a PATA CD/DVD drive to a SATA hard drive be sure to include this. You have a VIA VT8237A controller on that board so that aspect should work. This will serve to isolate and confine the problem to be examined to a very specific issue. This increases the chances someone may look into it. [snip] > > Shsh! I literally _just_ bought this new SATA DVD drive, and I went > with SATA because I believed that (a) the world is slowly but surely > switching everything over to SATA and (b) SATA has been around long enough > now that FreeBSD related bugs should have all been shaken out by now. > > Please excuse my snarkiness, but... I guess I was wrong about the latter. > >>If 8 does the same thing file a PR in order to bring the attention of the >>developers. There may be one, or more, already on the subject. > > Well, I did a search on the PR database for "BTX" and I'm looking at all > those PRs... some of them going back to 2004, which doesn't exactly > inspire confidence about a possible timely fix... and I don't see anything > in the subjects that quite matched up to what I'm talking about. If you just need the box to work immediately use a PATA CD/DVD. If you have the time to deal with it, attract the attention of developer(s), and have the time to work with them it serves the interests of the larger community. Others have had and will have your problem and getting it fixed for you will just mean many others will not go through what you are currently experiencing. > And ah... while we are on the subject... > > If I do file a PR on this, then at long last I'll need to know the answers > to the two questions that have been in the back of my mind for ages, > regarding PRs... > >1) What do the various severity codes mean? >2) What do the various proirity codes mean? http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/problem-reports/ http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/pr-guidelines/ Might be good reading. I should read them again myself. It's been a while. > > I've never filed a PR with severity "critical" or with priority "high" > because I've always figured that this may be a good way to get the > developers to view _all_ one's future (and past) PRs with a suspicious/ > jaundiced eye... you know... the-boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome. > > I don't want to be labeled as a nut case or an incessant complainer, but > for _this_ issue I'm thinking that severity==critical and/or > priority==high > may be appropriate. I mean jeezzz Louise! If one can't even install from > the distribution CDs/DVDs on perfectly good hardware... (And it's not > like the whole SATA interface standard is exactly ``new'' or anything > anymore.) > > So? Any advice? Should I stick my neck out and label this PR either > severity==critical or priority==high ? > There is always going to be a certain subjectivity present here. What is life and death important to one person may not be to another. I believe a commonly accepted dividing line can be found when you consider the usage of the system(s) in question. If you are a sysadmin or consultant who is being paid money to maintain mission critical servers then it warrants a higher level of concern than a single user at home with a desktop PC. If you are racking a hundred Dell 2950's and have a problem it is critical. If you are a single PC user at home with a desktop, not so much. I do understand your concern wrt to "the boy who cried wolf" and it does matter. You stand more of a c
Re: BTX Loader crashes -- Help wanted
"Ronald F. Guilmette" wrote: > If one can't even install from the distribution CDs/DVDs > on perfectly good hardware ... it's not like the whole SATA > interface standard is exactly ``new'' or anything anymore.) > > ... Should I stick my neck out and label this PR > either severity==critical or priority==high ? Before filing a PR at all, you might want to check what kind of SATA controller chip you've got. There have been several postings on the FreeBSD lists reporting that the Silicon Image 3112 should not be considered "perfectly good hardware". ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: BTX Loader crashes -- Help wanted
On Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:48:34 -0800, "Ronald F. Guilmette" wrote: > But I have one question. The author sez to do this: > >dd if=8.0-BETA1-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync > > I just want to know what the effect of conv=sync and why it might be > necessary. According to "man dd": bs=n Set both input and output block size to n bytes, superseding the ibs and obs operands. If no conversion values other than noerror, notrunc or sync are specified, then each input block is copied to the output as a single block without any aggregation of short blocks. in conjunction with conv=value[,value ...] Where value is one of the symbols from the following list. sync Pad every input block to the input buffer size. Spaces are used for pad bytes if a block oriented conversion value is specified, otherwise NUL bytes are used. it appears that the data is ensured to be "properly aligned" with a possibly different block size on the source or target media. As far as I remember, not giving the bs= argument would result in a default block size of 512 bytes which may - but don't ask me why - lead to a non-functioning target USB stick. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: BTX Loader crashes -- Help wanted
[[ To: Michael Powell ... please accept my apologies that you can't e-mail me directly. I jsyt get too much spam from hotmail.com, so it's blacklisted here. Nothing personal. ]] In message <7872.1258759...@tristatelogic.com>, Michael Powell wrote: rfg: >>> The problem(s) occurs with FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE/i386 disk1 (CD), >>> 7.0-RELEASE/i386 disk1 (CD), 7.2-RELEASE/i386 Live Filesystem (CD), and >>> 7.2-RELEASE/amd64 Live Filesystem (CD). >> >>Try 8RC3 and see if any difference. I believe some work in this area may >>have occurred. As I said (in my other post) that didn't help. :-( But... While researching this problem (BTX v. SATA) I saw where someone recommended booting from floppy first. So I went and started to download images on boot floppies. I haven't used this install/booting method for ages and ages, but I vaguely recalled that you could get rolling with just a single boot floppy. But now I see where they say you need the first boot floppy and then three more "kernel" floppies! Yikes! Sounds like a bit of a pain. So that gave me a Swell Idea. I though "Hey! Wouldn't it be great if we could put all this stuff into one single image and ``burn'' it onto a bootable USB thumb drive! I should definitely write to the FreeBSD developers and suggest this Great Idea.'' But of course, since you directed me to 8.0-RC3, I had to go groveling around in the relevant FTP directories to get that stuff, and while I was there, of course, I saw: 8.0-RC3-amd64-memstick.img Yippie! Some smart FreeBSD deloper is already way ahead of me! Marvelous! Now all I need is instructions for how to use that .img file. (Fortunately, I have a spare USB 1GB flash drive lying around.) So I go groveling around, trying to find some mention of this .img file in the README.TXT files and I find nothing. But Google is my friend, and I found this: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2009-July/051018.html which gives instructions for ``burning'' the image onto USB/flash. But I have one question. The author sez to do this: dd if=8.0-BETA1-amd64-memstick.img of=/dev/da0 bs=10240 conv=sync I just want to know what the effect of conv=sync and why it might be necessary. Anybody happen to know? Why can't you just dd the thing? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: BTX Loader crashes -- Help wanted
In message , you wrote: >Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > >> >> Who should I be talking to if the BTX loader is crashing on my >> specific hardware configuration, and what specific info do I >> need to be gathering for him/her in order to have hope of getting >> the problem rectified? >> >> I'd pulled stuff out of the system in question until there's >> practically nothing left and I'm at my wit's end with this problem. >> >> System: >> AMD Athlon 64 1640B CPU >> MSI K9VGM-V motherboard >> 1GB 667 DDR (Kingston) >> LG DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH22NS50 - OEM >> floppy drive >> >> That's it. I've yanked out all the non-essential cards, _and_ I've >> even taken out the hard drive, and I'm still having BTX crashes. >> >> The problem(s) occurs with FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE/i386 disk1 (CD), >> 7.0-RELEASE/i386 disk1 (CD), 7.2-RELEASE/i386 Live Filesystem (CD), and >> 7.2-RELEASE/amd64 Live Filesystem (CD). > >Try 8RC3 and see if any difference. I believe some work in this area may >have occurred. I just tried it. Alas, same result. >I don't believe you are the first to experience this. Well, I'm just about to file a new PR on this, but I'll refrain if someone else has alreadyt done so. Do you have an eisting PR number on this? >> Curiously, with the same motherboard (_and_ the same boot CDs), I have no >> problems at all booting off of any of the above boot CDs, AS LONG AS I am >> using a different (PATA) CD/DVD drive. But I have tried two different >> recent vintage SATA CD/DVD drives (Optiarc & the LG mentioned above) and >> both result in the booting failures described above. > >You can try disabling ACPI at boot I just tried that (at your suggesting). Same result. No change. :-( >... as well as toggling the BIOS between >Enhanced and Legacy mode if this option is available. I'm not seeing anything like that in my BIOS settings. >Probably your best >approach will be to use a SATA hard drive while using a PATA CD-ROM. This is >most likely what you will have to do if 8RC3 doesn't make any difference and >you just want to get the box going. Shsh! I literally _just_ bought this new SATA DVD drive, and I went with SATA because I believed that (a) the world is slowly but surely switching everything over to SATA and (b) SATA has been around long enough now that FreeBSD related bugs should have all been shaken out by now. Please excuse my snarkiness, but... I guess I was wrong about the latter. >If 8 does the same thing file a PR in order to bring the attention of the >developers. There may be one, or more, already on the subject. Well, I did a search on the PR database for "BTX" and I'm looking at all those PRs... some of them going back to 2004, which doesn't exactly inspire confidence about a possible timely fix... and I don't see anything in the subjects that quite matched up to what I'm talking about. And ah... while we are on the subject... If I do file a PR on this, then at long last I'll need to know the answers to the two questions that have been in the back of my mind for ages, regarding PRs... 1) What do the various severity codes mean? 2) What do the various proirity codes mean? I've never filed a PR with severity "critical" or with priority "high" because I've always figured that this may be a good way to get the developers to view _all_ one's future (and past) PRs with a suspicious/ jaundiced eye... you know... the-boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome. I don't want to be labeled as a nut case or an incessant complainer, but for _this_ issue I'm thinking that severity==critical and/or priority==high may be appropriate. I mean jeezzz Louise! If one can't even install from the distribution CDs/DVDs on perfectly good hardware... (And it's not like the whole SATA interface standard is exactly ``new'' or anything anymore.) So? Any advice? Should I stick my neck out and label this PR either severity==critical or priority==high ? Regards, rfg ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: BTX Loader crashes -- Help wanted
On 11/20/09, Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > > Who should I be talking to if the BTX loader is crashing on my > specific hardware configuration, and what specific info do I > need to be gathering for him/her in order to have hope of getting > the problem rectified? Since the BTX is the BooT eXtender, what brings I think a 16-bit real-mode BIOS/POST to a 32-bit (or 64-bit?) protected operating system, I would start looking at BIOS options. Some BIOSes have a windows mentality and don't let you tweak much. Retail boards you buy off the shelf are typically pretty good to let you tweak lots of options. I'd also check for a BIOS update. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: BTX Loader crashes -- Help wanted
Ronald F. Guilmette wrote: > > Who should I be talking to if the BTX loader is crashing on my > specific hardware configuration, and what specific info do I > need to be gathering for him/her in order to have hope of getting > the problem rectified? > > I'd pulled stuff out of the system in question until there's > practically nothing left and I'm at my wit's end with this problem. > > System: > AMD Athlon 64 1640B CPU > MSI K9VGM-V motherboard > 1GB 667 DDR (Kingston) > LG DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH22NS50 - OEM > floppy drive > > That's it. I've yanked out all the non-essential cards, _and_ I've > even taken out the hard drive, and I'm still having BTX crashes. > > The problem(s) occurs with FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE/i386 disk1 (CD), > 7.0-RELEASE/i386 disk1 (CD), 7.2-RELEASE/i386 Live Filesystem (CD), and > 7.2-RELEASE/amd64 Live Filesystem (CD). Try 8RC3 and see if any difference. I believe some work in this area may have occurred. In any event, these RELEASE versions are static and will not change. The only hope in this area would be if a fix from the 8.0 work has been MFC'd back to 7 STABLE. > The symptoms are different depending on which of the above I'm trying to > boot from. In the case of the first two, the crash results in a bunch of > register values being displayed on my screen, after which the system is > dead. In the case of the last two above, it appears that the BTX loader > actually starts to load a kernel (well, anyway, the little twisty thing > starts turning), but then the screen goes completely black, after which > my monitor senses that the video signal has gone completely dead, and > at that point the system is just frozen, and needs a power-cycle or hard > reset to get going again. I don't believe you are the first to experience this. > Curiously, with the same motherboard (_and_ the same boot CDs), I have no > problems at all booting off of any of the above boot CDs, AS LONG AS I am > using a different (PATA) CD/DVD drive. But I have tried two different > recent vintage SATA CD/DVD drives (Optiarc & the LG mentioned above) and > both result in the booting failures described above. You can try disabling ACPI at boot, as well as toggling the BIOS between Enhanced and Legacy mode if this option is available. Probably your best approach will be to use a SATA hard drive while using a PATA CD-ROM. This is most likely what you will have to do if 8RC3 doesn't make any difference and you just want to get the box going. > I'm bumbed. I really had hoped to start moving my machines over to SATA, > but so far things are just not working out smoothly at all. If 8 does the same thing file a PR in order to bring the attention of the developers. There may be one, or more, already on the subject. Since the old releases are static the place to get the bits fixed is in the ongoing work. -Mike ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
BTX Loader crashes -- Help wanted
Who should I be talking to if the BTX loader is crashing on my specific hardware configuration, and what specific info do I need to be gathering for him/her in order to have hope of getting the problem rectified? I'd pulled stuff out of the system in question until there's practically nothing left and I'm at my wit's end with this problem. System: AMD Athlon 64 1640B CPU MSI K9VGM-V motherboard 1GB 667 DDR (Kingston) LG DVD Burner Black SATA Model GH22NS50 - OEM floppy drive That's it. I've yanked out all the non-essential cards, _and_ I've even taken out the hard drive, and I'm still having BTX crashes. The problem(s) occurs with FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE/i386 disk1 (CD), 7.0-RELEASE/i386 disk1 (CD), 7.2-RELEASE/i386 Live Filesystem (CD), and 7.2-RELEASE/amd64 Live Filesystem (CD). The symptoms are different depending on which of the above I'm trying to boot from. In the case of the first two, the crash results in a bunch of register values being displayed on my screen, after which the system is dead. In the case of the last two above, it appears that the BTX loader actually starts to load a kernel (well, anyway, the little twisty thing starts turning), but then the screen goes completely black, after which my monitor senses that the video signal has gone completely dead, and at that point the system is just frozen, and needs a power-cycle or hard reset to get going again. Curiously, with the same motherboard (_and_ the same boot CDs), I have no problems at all booting off of any of the above boot CDs, AS LONG AS I am using a different (PATA) CD/DVD drive. But I have tried two different recent vintage SATA CD/DVD drives (Optiarc & the LG mentioned above) and both result in the booting failures described above. I'm bumbed. I really had hoped to start moving my machines over to SATA, but so far things are just not working out smoothly at all. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"