Re: Combining boot floppies
On Friday 09 June 2006 00:57, you wrote: 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. When I inserted my Wireless card (DWL-G650), OpenBSD did not recognize the card: pcmcia0 at pcic0 controller 0 socket 0 pci_chip_socket_enable: status c pcic_wait_ready: ready never happened, status = 0c This happens in either PCMCIA slot, even the one where the current working Ethernet card is installed. If I set the PCMCIA settings in the BIOS to CardBUS, the DWL-G650 is recognized (but not supported?). Unfortunately, the hard drive is not. This is very odd, because I'm booting off of the hard drive. The PC then hangs with a signature I emailed out earlier (available upon request :). Is this because of the unsupported card? Thanks. -- Michael White To protect people from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
Re: Combining boot floppies
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. h... 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*
Combining boot floppies
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. 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). 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? I.e. dropping to the shell, loading some driver or other, forcing the recognition, and re-starting where I left off? 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. I may have access to a Xircom network card - is that supported by the floppy39.s floppy? Thanks in advance. -- Michael White To protect people from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. -Herbert Spencer
Re: Combining boot floppies
On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 01:08:04AM -0500, 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. 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). 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? I.e. dropping to the shell, Do you know if either or both of those recognize your CD? If so, you can download the install sets and burn them on CD, and do your install from there w/out ethernet. If you've got access to a burner that's probably the simpler way to go. Or try out the Xircom and see if it works. -- Darrin Chandler| Phoenix BSD Users Group [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://bsd.phoenix.az.us/ http://www.stilyagin.com/ |
Re: Combining boot floppies
On Wed, Jun 07, 2006 at 11:36:14PM -0700, Darrin Chandler wrote: On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 01:08:04AM -0500, 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. 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). 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? I.e. dropping to the shell, Do you know if either or both of those recognize your CD? If so, you can download the install sets and burn them on CD, and do your install from there w/out ethernet. If you've got access to a burner that's probably the simpler way to go. Or try out the Xircom and see if it works. Be aware, though, that (not all|many) older CD drives do not recognize (all|most|some|any) burned CDs. Joachim
Re: Combining boot floppies
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. 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. h... 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. 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. 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 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.
