From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Feb 16 17:47:53 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DA78A1065670 for ; Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:47:53 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from alex-goncharov@comcast.net) Received: from qmta01.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net (qmta02.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net [76.96.62.24]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 96C4F8FC08 for ; Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:47:53 +0000 (UTC) Received: from omta24.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net ([76.96.62.76]) by qmta01.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net with comcast id agsM1i0011ei1Bg51hae75; Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:34:38 +0000 Received: from hans3 ([66.30.197.229]) by omta24.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net with comcast id ahad1i00Q4xSlmi3khad1T; Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:34:37 +0000 Received: from algo by hans3 with local (Exim 4.77 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1Ry5E4-000HRq-ED; Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:34:36 -0500 From: Alex Goncharov To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Message-Id: Sender: Alex Goncharov Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:34:36 -0500 Cc: Subject: 8 to 9: A longer wait early in the boot of a (damaged) Compaq Presario X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Alex Goncharov List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:47:54 -0000 About three years ago, my Compaq Presario F700 notebook got "damaged in BIOS": it carried Windows Vista then, and that OS could not be recovered from the system image disks I had created for a brand-new machine. The damage was somewhere around BIOS/firmware area -- the way the console looked on a bootup looked differently (simpler) now that after several reboots trying to recover Vista, it got fried. Some googling told me then that the irreversible loss of Windows was not unusual for these Compaq machines -- the damaged systems didn't give one a chance to use the recovery disks. OK, I made the system dual bootable to Debian Linux and FreeBSD 8 then; with that, it booted all right, but in both cases the 'nfe0' interface Ethernet address was being set to 0. No big deal: I used an Ethernet address from my older laptop destined to be destroyed and gave it to 'nfe0' when setting the network interface properties at the system initialization. Works great, both in Debian and FreeBSD. There was one other odd thing that I noticed then: while Debian booted without a delay, FreeBSD 8 made a long pause after passing the boot menu: it would display the '/' character and sit there for some non-trivial amount of seconds. I assumed that it was doing some BIOS querying, and with BIOS (firmware?) being damaged, it took the system some time to figure things out... perhaps it was re-querying BIOS, seeing the insane value of 0 for an interface's Ethernet address (I have many machines running FreeBSD, including multiple laptops, and this machine is unique in the long bootup pause). About a week ago, I made a jump and upgraded the system's FreeBSD from version 8 to 9. Everything is great (I am typing this message on that machine now) but the boot pause after the (looking new in 9) boot menu is *much* longer now -- it will show the '\' character and wait for, subjectively, half a minute before putting anything else on the screen. This is not of any practical importance for me, I feel very good about what I got in FreeBSD 9 but I am puzzled and earn for the knowledge. Can anybody educate me on: * What might have happened with this notebook three years ago, when some layer over BIOS "burned out"? What are these layers? Where are the interface Ethernet addresses set up? Interesting, it was only this interface that lost its factory-assigned address: ---------------------------------------- nfe0@pci0:0:10:0: class=0x020000 card=0x30ea103c chip=0x054c10derev=0xa2 hdr=0x00 vendor = 'nVidia Corporation' device = 'MCP67 Ethernet' ---------------------------------------- but not this one: ---------------------------------------- ath0@pci0:3:0:0: class=0x020000 card=0x137a103c chip=0x001c168crev=0x01 hdr=0x00 vendor = 'Atheros Communications Inc.' device = 'AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)' ---------------------------------------- * What is the boot process doing, hanging out there after passing the boot menu stage? * Why does it hang there longer in FreeBSD 9, compared to 8? (And why doesn't it hang there at all in Debian?) * Is there any loader.conf variable or some such that would tell the system to safely skip things leading to this pause? Thanks, -- Alex -- alex-goncharov@comcast.net --