Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2003 09:37:07 -0700 From: Patrick Salsbury <salsbury@sculptors.com> To: taxman@acd.net, wham@crashmedia.com Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 4.8 mini-iso wont boot off SCSI cdrom Message-ID: <200304071637.h37Gb8qr024409@bootstrap.sculptors.com>
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On Saturday 05 April 2003 08:42 pm, C Mead wrote:
- -> Hi all,
- ->
- -> Wondering if anyone has had, or can try to recreate the problem below.
- ->
- -> Just downloaded the 4.8 mini iso, and tried booting it from a Plextor UW
- -> SCSI cdrom, for some reason though it doesnt want to boot from it. The
- -
- -at what point does it fail? Do you see any messages?
I've been seeing the same behavior for a few months as I try to get a
couple of older Pentium boxes installed with FreeBSD. I've got a 200MHz Intel
Performance/AU motherboard, and Adaptec AHA-2940UW SCSI card, a 2Gb IBM
SCSI drive, and a 9Gb Seagate one. Also, an old NEC 4-speed CDR-222.
I've tried just about every combination imaginable over the past
couple of months, and more so in a frenzy of determination the past few days.
I've tried an IDE CD-ROM, with one or the other of the SCSI drives out, by
booting with floppies, or with a CD-ROM. I've tried it with 4.3 and 4.7 CD's,
too! The CD-ROM boots right up in my Linux machine, too. The media is fine.
But it always wedges at exactly the same place:
Copyright (c) 1992-2001 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD 4.3-Release #0: Sat Apr 21 10:54:49 GMT 2001
jkh@narf.osd.bsdi.com:/usr/src/sys/compile/GENERIC
(Stops here....)
The fourth line varies, depending on which CD I try, but it always
freezes after the 5th.
Now the *REALLY* weird thing is... I've found that if I ignore the
machine, walk away in disgust, or get busy typing a note like this, and leave
it there at the frozen point for a while, sometimes, after 15 minutes or so,
it suddenly comes back to life, finishes booting, and greets me with a
cheerful install prompt. (The first time this happened, I did a basic install,
so I can now also get to a fully functional system with very snappy response
and usability...if I don't mind waiting about a half-hour for it to boot. :-) )
- -> cd works I've booted it on 2 other machines with IDE drives, so its not
- -> the media(cdrom) itself.
Ditto.
- -> And I've booted both Slackware and Gentoo iso's on the scsi cdrom and
- -> they boot fine as well.
Also ditto. I was able to install RedHat 8.0 on the 9Gb disk long
before I discovered the half-hour-wait trick and was able to install 4.3 on
the 2Gb disc.
- -> I have just stuck a old IDE cdrom in the SCSI box and it boots the
- -> install fine from that drive.
- -
- -we need the output of the boot messages to be able to figure out why and see
- -what hardware you have. Boot with the IDE drive then use a fixit floppy
- -ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/4.8-RELEASE/floppies/fixit.flp
- -to save the output of dmesg. That needs to be written as an image to a
- -floppy. See the install instructions in the handbook for how.
- -
- -Or just install using the IDE cdrom and copy the text from the file
- -/var/run/dmesg.boot
...Or just type it in while waiting! :-) You have my output above. And
just on cue, the system came back to life and has resumed its boot! It's
pausing for a minute or two at sendmail, then it'll finish up. Guess I'll go
play for a bit.
Anyone have clues or ideas about this? I just flashed my Adaptec BIOS
to the 2.20 version. Going to do the motherboard next. I've read about 200 web
pages and posts in the past 2 days about this, and it seems that a LOT of
people are having problems surrounding the 2940 and/or SCSI CD-ROMs in
general.
I'm still new to FreeBSD, but I like what I've seen so far. Just wish
I could get it to work on my machines... :-)
Any replies are appreciated. I'm not (yet) on this list, so I'm not
even sure if my post will go through. Gotta get back to it...
Pat
___________________Think For Yourself____________________
Patrick G. Salsbury - http://reality.sculptors.com/~salsbury/
Learn about stereolithography:
http://reality.sculptors.com/stereolithography.html
---------------------------------------------------------
"Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to
communicate always sounds foolish" -- Herman Hesse, _Siddhartha_
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