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Date:      Fri, 13 Apr 2001 05:48:49 +0200
From:      "Michael Nottebrock" <michaelnottebrock@gmx.net>
To:        "brian j. peterson" <rbw@myplace.org>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Re: turning off DMA pre-boot
Message-ID:  <012701c0c3cc$a952e260$0508a8c0@lofi.dyndns.org>
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0104111225540.26386-100000@malkavian.org>

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----- Original Message -----
From: "brian j. peterson" <rbw@myplace.org>
To: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2001 11:11 PM
Subject: turning off DMA pre-boot


> background:
>
> i have a 4.3-BETA system that is freezing on me every few days.
(the
> cvsup from 4.2-R to stable was done around March 11th.)  i have
trimmed
> down the kernel as much as possible in an attempt to isolate the
problem,
> but this hasn't helped so far.  the motherboard this system is on
uses a
> VIA chipset, and i have been hearing that VIA's DMA support is less
than
> perfect.  turning off DMA in the BIOS didn't seem to stop FreeBSD
from
> using DMA (at least according to 'sysctl hw.atamodes').  i was able
to
> turn off DMA _after_ boot by running 'sysctl -w
hw.atamodes=pio,pio,'.  (i
> just did this last night, so i'm not sure if this has solved the
system's
> freezing problem.)
>
> question:
>
> is there some way to disable DMA support (and force PIO mode) before
the
> system boots?  perhaps a kernel option or a loader option?
>
> any help would be greatly appreciated.
>
> thanks for your time,
> brian

There is, at least in the latest 4.3's. You can set hw.ata.ata_dma="0"
in /boot/loader.conf amongst some other options. Turning off dma after
booting should have solved your problem, though, if it was really
ide-dma related. Also see 'man ata' for details.


Greetings,

Michael Nottebrock


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