From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Feb 16 19:04:48 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 C0953106564A for ; Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:04:48 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bsdlisten@gmail.com) Received: from mail-ee0-f54.google.com (mail-ee0-f54.google.com [74.125.83.54]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 52F428FC12 for ; Thu, 16 Feb 2012 19:04:48 +0000 (UTC) Received: by eekb47 with SMTP id b47so1174767eek.13 for ; Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:04:47 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to:cc:subject :references:in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=vznz7RwQi3Se/N0G5T1UsM1szfcRkYEy5wa1Jl9dIX0=; b=uWCzHFlwcRfvTaqMe/eTlG+ok03sXCJHsvmGXZlAOF3ub0IgJPNa+g4xb9mLt9tD4U pJcNWNCnggb6z+XGVYubO8XVs/vix9bt8JAIVtTNmIYCB9NAjZDtaELGd64Dy0Akf8OE fNvEp3jyFk9SVhzb/fJBFa7EMx7qQYYxtzEhk= Received: by 10.112.29.6 with SMTP id f6mr1401736lbh.69.1329415703253; Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:08:23 -0800 (PST) Received: from [192.168.0.100] ([89.47.83.116]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id op8sm6853352lab.15.2012.02.16.10.08.21 (version=SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:08:22 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <4F3D460E.7090507@gmail.com> Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:08:14 +0200 From: Rares Aioanei User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.24) Gecko/20111114 Icedove/3.1.16 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Alex Goncharov References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: 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 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 19:04:48 -0000 On 02/16/2012 07:34 PM, Alex Goncharov wrote: > 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 I get the same on my HP Pavilion dv9750 laptop, but with an intact BIOS, afaict. And that happens regardless of the wi-fi card's state (eg disabled or enabled from the hardware button). Maybe this helps. -- Rares Aioanei