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Date:      Fri, 11 Apr 2003 14:42:52 -0400 (EDT)
From:      John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Toerless Eckert <eckert@i4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   RE: boot2 broken ? (booting from pst fails)
Message-ID:  <XFMail.20030411144252.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <200304110026.CAA02069@faui40p.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

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On 11-Apr-2003 Toerless Eckert wrote:
> Has someone ever managed to boot FreeBSD off a Promise SuperTRAK SX6000
> RAID controller ? I tried all options i can think of, but it always
> failed: boot0 and boot1 work nicely, but boot2 simply hangs as soon
> as it tries to do the first bios read from the array. I am somewhat
> suspecting that this is related to the BIOS of that controller being
> offended by the environment of the btx client it's being called from
> (boot2 is the first btx client in the boot phases).
> 
> - Tried FreeBSD 5.0(release) and 4.8(release) boot1/boot2 - same effect.
> - Problem is unrelated to disk being a raid. Same effect happens when
>   simply moving a perfectly booting ide disk from a "normal" ide controller
>   to the sx6000 (hangs in boot2).
> - Windows XP boots fine off the sx6000 (also via FreeBSD boot0). Have not
>   tried other OSs like Linux though.
> - Tried all "OS" settings in the sx6000 BIOS config. No change.
> 
> - Q: Any ideas what i could do ?
> 
> - Q: Is btx actually switching to real mode for int 13 ? Could it be
>      that there's a bug in that code ?

No, we run it in virtual 86 mode, and it is likely that their BIOS
routine just can't handle that.

> - Q: Are there any alternatives how i could boot a 4.8 or 5.0 freebsd
>      solely from the disk ? (I guess i could try to install a linux and
>      then use liloboot, but that also uses the btx code from loader...)

Nope. :(  Other than get promise to fix their BIOS maybe.

-- 

John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>  <><  http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/



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