From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Dec 17 05:36:06 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E23561065670 for ; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:36:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bounces@nabble.com) Received: from kuber.nabble.com (kuber.nabble.com [216.139.236.158]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9FC538FC14 for ; Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:36:06 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bounces@nabble.com) Received: from isper.nabble.com ([192.168.236.156]) by kuber.nabble.com with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1LCp4n-0005Nl-SL for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:36:05 -0800 Message-ID: <21047496.post@talk.nabble.com> Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:36:05 -0800 (PST) From: ThinkDifferently To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <21047275.post@talk.nabble.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Nabble-From: Jeremy@FutureCIS.com References: <21039625.post@talk.nabble.com> <21045931.post@talk.nabble.com> <49486B95.70803@ibctech.ca> <21046366.post@talk.nabble.com> <21046636.post@talk.nabble.com> <49487A15.2090103@ibctech.ca> <21047275.post@talk.nabble.com> Subject: Re: FreeBSD 7 load hangs on boot X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:36:07 -0000 ThinkDifferently wrote: > > Another item of curiosity... > I just now tried booting from a CentOS 5.2 DVD. It also hangs with a > little window titled "Loading SCSI driver" that says "Loading ahci > driver..." The funny thing is, I've tried turning off all RAID > functionality in the BIOS. On my mobo, this entails setting it to IDE > mode, instead of RAID or AHCI. That doesn't appear to do anything. > I'm at my wit's end with this. I tried FreeBSD in every way I know how, and they all hang. I tried CentOS and it hung. I even tried Windows Vista Ultimate. It didn't hang, but it found no storage devices. That led me to a train of thought. This board has 6 SATA ports on it, and in the BIOS it has 3 settings for them -- IDE, RAID or AHCI. When I put it into IDE mode, it shows me each disk as an individual device, but all of the OS'es fail to recognize them. When I put it into RAID mode, it recognizes each disk as a SATA device and offers me the RAID options (F10) on bootup. When I put it into AHCI mode, nothing at all is recognized. Furthermore, I was reading in the board's manual that to load Windows XP or Vista, a special driver diskette is required for Windows to recognize the storage volumes. This leads me to believe that the only way this board knows how to handle SATA disks is to use RAID mode, and the only way for an OS to recognize the RAID volume is to have a driver pre-loaded before the OS. For OS'es like FreeBSD and CentOS this is very difficult, even if such a driver exists. Unless somebody can correct me for being way off base, my conclusion can only be that this board cannot support a Unix/Linux operating system, and even with Windows it's extremely difficult. I'm now considering returning this board and suffering the dreaded 15% restocking fee. Can anyone suggest a motherboard that is FreeBSD friendly? I need it to support 4 cores with the AM2+ socket (either that, or I need to return my chip too) and be a full ATX board with 4 DDR2 ram slots. On board VGA would be nice too, but I suppose I can buy a VGA card. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/FreeBSD-7-load-hangs-on-boot-tp21039625p21047496.html Sent from the freebsd-questions mailing list archive at Nabble.com.