From owner-freebsd-bugs Fri Apr 11 21:50:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA13764 for bugs-outgoing; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 21:50:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from gnats@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA13758; Fri, 11 Apr 1997 21:50:02 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 21:50:02 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199704120450.VAA13758@freefall.freebsd.org> To: freebsd-bugs Cc: From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Subject: Re: kern/3260: FreeBSD 2.2.1 (and 2.2) npx0 boot problem on IBM Aptiva M71 Reply-To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk The following reply was made to PR kern/3260; it has been noted by GNATS. From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" To: rsm@spyder.ssw.com Cc: freebsd-gnats-submit@freebsd.org Subject: Re: kern/3260: FreeBSD 2.2.1 (and 2.2) npx0 boot problem on IBM Aptiva M71 Date: Fri, 11 Apr 1997 21:41:20 -0700 > This problem does not occur with the 2.1.7 boot floppy, i.e. that does > properly run "sysinstall" after autoconfig. > > Using NetBSD I was able to build custom FreeBSD kernels with which to > diagnose the problem. Only when I excluded the npx0 device would the > kernel stop hanging the machine. Subsequently, I discovered that the > boot floppy's kernel can be made to work, either by disabling the npx0 > device in CLI mode, or setting npx0 flags to 7 in CLI mode. This sounds like the same broken behavior we've seen on certain laptops. Apparently, the new optimized-for-Pentium bcopy code works great on 99.9% of the machines out there, and then there are a few on which it just does not. Could you try setting the npx0 flags to 1 and see if it still boots? That would at least point the finger directly at the bcopy() code (7 turns off a number of optimized features, not just bcopy()). If you are interested in debugging this, Bruce Evans is your man since he added the optimized code in the first place. Thanks!