Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2013 10:12:20 -0500 From: Kevin Day <kevin@your.org> To: "freebsd-ia64@freebsd.org" <freebsd-ia64@freebsd.org> Subject: rx2600 installation success/steps Message-ID: <82F3280F-52C5-4F95-9661-AB6879C29BB4@your.org>
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It took a while, but I got 9.1-RELEASE installed on an HP rx2600. Here = are the steps it took. 1) Prepare the hardware. The system was ridiculously picky about which USB keyboards it would = use. Out of our giant pile, I only found one Dell USB keyboard that it = would work with. Plugging in any other keyboard would throw up a machine = check exception, and instantly reboot. You'll probably be better off using a serial console for everything = anyway - by default the freebsd console won't come out on the VGA = console. 2) Make the ciss controller work. For some reason the ciss controller that shipped with this system = (ciss0: <Compaq Smart Array 5300>) has an issue in the PERFORMANT = transport mode. If you try to boot the default kernel, it either hangs = probing the controller or detects no drives. So, when the boot loader = comes up on the install CD, break to the loader and run: set hw.ciss.force_transport=3D1 to force it into SIMPLE mode. This was later changed (after 9.1-RELEASE = shipped) here: = http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=3Drevision&revision=3D247279 so this = may no longer be necessary on future releases. You'll need to also add this to /boot/loader.conf on your root partition = after installation so it takes effect permanently on the next boot. 3) Do the install. The new installer doesn't automatically create an EFI partition anymore, = so you need to manually do this when you're partitioning. It also doesn't write the MBR correctly (it forces the 'active' flag to = be set which is a no-no for EFI), so you'll need to fix this after = installing but before rebooting. My steps were to create an EFI partition using the installer, then go to = a shell and do: mkdir /efi newfs_msdos -F 12 /dev/gpt/EFI mount_msdosfs /dev/gpt/EFI /efi mkdir -p /efi/efi/boot cp /boot/loader.efi /efi/efi/boot/bootx64.efi mkdir /efi/boot cp /boot/* /efi/boot mkdir /efi/boot/kernel cp /boot/kernel/kernel /efi/boot/kernel mkdir /efi/boot/defaults cp /boot/defaults/* /efi/boot/defaults echo 'hw.ciss.force_transport=3D"1"' >/efi/boot/loader.conf echo 'vfs.root.mountfrom=3D"ufs:/dev/gpt/root"' >>/efi/boot/loader.conf umount /efi Then according to the very helpful debugging documentation here ( = http://people.freebsd.org/~lstewart/misc/gpart_debug/ ) I manually = edited the first sector of /dev/da0 so that the byte at offset 0x1be is = 0x00 instead of 0x80, the system's EFI shell will now correctly see the = EFI partition. sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=3D16 dd if=3D/dev/zero of=3D/dev/da0 bs=3D1 seek=3D446 count=3D1 sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=3D0 If you do anything that causes gpart to write to the disk, you'll need = to do this again before rebooting or you won't be able to boot. be = careful! 4) While I can get a working console from the install disc, I don't = after installation. During boot I see some obvious signs of problems: eval: cannot open /dev/ttyv0: No such file or directory eval: cannot open /dev/ttyv0: No such file or directory The boot seems successful but stops here without a login prompt: Updating motd:. Starting sshd. Starting cron. Starting background file system checks in 60 seconds. Sun Jun 2 10:29:42 UTC 2013 If I have networking running, i can ssh in. One very weird thing is that = the number of ttyu* devices seems to change every time I reboot. = Sometimes I have 0-2, going all the way up to 0-5 occasionally. The tty = that the actual system console is appears to change on every reboot.=20 I edited /etc/ttys to turn "on" ttyu1 through ttyu3, and added a ttyu4 = and ttyu5 so that all the serial consoles will work, and this = occasionally works. When it doesn't, I hard hang the system at the point = it should be spawning terminals, so I'm guessing some of the incorrect = ttys are not really working when they appear. It seems that every time I warm-restart I gain another tty, but then it = goes back to "normal" on a cold restart. Possibly an EFI bug, but I do = have the latest firmware here so I'm not sure. I'm still no closer to getting my rx8620 working, but this was a good = success today!
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