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Date:      Wed, 11 Aug 1999 09:34:43 -0700
From:      Kent Stewart <kstewart@3-cities.com>
To:        Robert Watson <robert+freebsd@cyrus.watson.org>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Hang during install (probing devices) Dell Dimension XPS P90  (pentium), Western Digital Caviar 21000
Message-ID:  <37B1A623.79DE3B1D@3-cities.com>
References:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.990811111539.3772B-100000@fledge.watson.org>

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Robert Watson wrote:
> 
> We were recently trying to install FreeBSD onto one of our test servers, a
> Dell Pentium 90 (Dimension XPS P90), and had repeated problems with
> sysinstall/kernel hangs when "Probing for devices".  It would appear to
> boot the kernel fine and correctly discover hardware, but when sysinstall
> popped up its dialog about probing devices, most system functions would
> hang.  The num lock key still changed the keyboard light, but no scroll
> back occured with scroll lock, or changing of vt's.  This was with both
> FreeBSD 3.1 and 3.2 release versions.  We recently tracked it down to
> being a problem with the Western Digital Caviar 21000 drive in the
> machine, as we moved the drive to another machine, and it also hung on
> that machine where it had not previously.

Did you change the MBR because that seems to be a problem with the
Caviar's. I had to leave a DOS MBR on the drive in order for it to
make it passed the memory count and drive interregation.

Kent

> 
> I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this problem--we can use
> the Dell fine now (well, sans CDROM drive because FreeBSD seems not to
> like the IDE ATAPI drive) with a new hard disk, but the old hard disk
> hangs the install on all the machines we've tried.  Any thoughts on why a
> particular hard disk would hang FreeBSD's probe?  BSD/OS 3.x installs and
> boots in the machine fine.
> 
>   Robert N M Watson
> 
> robert@fledge.watson.org              http://www.watson.org/~robert/
> PGP key fingerprint: AF B5 5F FF A6 4A 79 37  ED 5F 55 E9 58 04 6A B1
> TIS Labs at Network Associates, Computing Laboratory at Cambridge University
> Safeport Network Services
> 
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-- 
Kent Stewart
Richland, WA

mailto:kstewart@3-cities.com
http://www.3-cities.com/~kstewart/index.html

SETI(Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) @ HOME
http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/

Hunting Archibald Stewart, b 1802 in Ballymena, Antrim Co., NIR
http://www.3-cities.com/~kstewart/genealogy/archibald_stewart.html


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