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Date:      Sat, 22 Nov 2014 10:09:04 +0200
From:      Jukka Ukkonen <jau789@gmail.com>
To:        Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org>
Cc:        "freebsd-ppc@FreeBSD.org" <freebsd-ppc@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   Re: Booting freebsd on a powermac g4 from a CD
Message-ID:  <06B7F5FE-7677-4832-85D7-8901C003AB7F@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <546FB34E.6080006@freebsd.org>
References:  <546E38E4.70305@gmail.com> <546E3959.5020904@freebsd.org> <20141121055732.GB56272@FreeBSD.org> <546F028D.9040907@gmail.com> <546F6C90.4040005@freebsd.org> <003B9EAA-E1AD-45C6-AC56-4331BCDE4193@gmail.com> <546FB34E.6080006@freebsd.org>

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Sent from my iPad

> On 21 Nov 2014, at 23:49, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> wrote:=

>=20
>=20
>> On 11/21/14 12:08, Jukka Ukkonen wrote:
>>=20
>> Sent from my iPad
>>=20
>>> On 21 Nov 2014, at 18:47, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> wrot=
e:
>>>=20
>>>=20
>>>>> On 11/21/14 01:14, Jukka Ukkonen wrote:
>>>>>> On 11/21/14 07:57, Alexey Dokuchaev wrote:
>>>>>>> On Thu, Nov 20, 2014 at 10:56:25AM -0800, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
>>>>>>> On 11/20/14 10:54, Jukka Ukkonen wrote:
>>>>>>> What might be the current official method or at least known
>>>>>>> working method for booting FreeBSD on a PowerMac G4 from a CD?
>>>>>> You should just be able to insert the CD and hold 'C'. Does that not
>>>>>> work for you? What model of G4 is this?
>>>> Right, I needed the CD boot only to fix an existing FreeBSD-10.1
>>>> installation which had started hanging during boot time autoconfig
>>>> right after having displayed gem0 MAC address.
>>>> These odd systematic hangs began after updating from 10.1-RC3 to
>>>> 10.1.
>>>>=20
>>>> So, I installed an alternative 10.1 kernel from the CD.
>>>> It booted without any major problems both from the CD and from
>>>> the hard disk. The only apparent difference in my locally built
>>>> kernel was that it used VT instead of syscons.
>>>> The default ppc kernel on the CD seems to be using syscons.
>>>> Obviously I rebuilt the kernel locally once more switching back
>>>> from VT to syscons. Rebooting with the new locally built kernel
>>>> which uses syscons worked just fine again.
>>>> So, my quick hypothesis is that VT must be somehow broken.
>>>>=20
>>>> An additional little brain teaser I found while fixing the
>>>> dysfunctional boot with the VT enabled kernel was that when
>>>> I boot the ppc system from a CD it seems to be quite happy
>>>> to work with a PS/2 keyboard connected to a USB adapter.
>>>> When I boot the system from hard disk this adapter and the
>>>> PS/2 keyboard connected to it are not recognized at all.
>>>> Here is what "usbconfig list" tells about the gizmo...
>>>>=20
>>>> ugen1.2: <product 0x0018 vendor 0x13ba> at usbus1, cfg=3D0 md=3DHOST sp=
d=3DLOW
>>>> (1.5Mbps) pwr=3DON (400mA)
>>>>=20
>>>> Anyhow it seems that for now it makes sense to stick to
>>>> using syscons instead of VT on ppc unless one wishes to
>>>> start debugging VT code.
>>>>=20
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> --jau
>>>>=20
>>> This is very confusing to me. Are the kernel configs really *completely*=
 identical aside from VT vs. syscons? VT uses the same code on PPC to use th=
e framebuffer as syscons and doesn't touch any of this other stuff. 10.1 als=
o doesn't have vt in GENERIC -- only 11 has that. Are you sure you didn't in=
stall an 11 image instead?
>>> -Nathan
>> Yes, the only diff was commenting sc out and putting vt in.
>> I even named the modified version VTGENERIC to remember
>> that this configuration shall never carry any other changes.
>>=20
>> --jau
>=20
> OK, that's instructive anyway. How about the 10.1 CD thing? The 10.1 ISOs h=
ave only syscons.
> -Nathan

As I tried to explain before, the kernel on the 10.1 CD works.
That is how I figured out that the console code must be somehow
the culprit. My first local 10.1 build, which hanged during the boot,
used VT, though, otherwise it was built using a completely normal
GENERIC configuration.
Both the kernel on the 10.1 CD and my second local build have
used syscons, and they do not experience the mysterious hangs.

--jau





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