From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jul 8 18:41:27 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E759216A41C for ; Fri, 8 Jul 2005 18:41:27 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jfarmer@goldsword.com) Received: from audi.websitewelcome.com (audi.websitewelcome.com [67.19.210.130]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 92E4743D48 for ; Fri, 8 Jul 2005 18:41:27 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from jfarmer@goldsword.com) Received: from adsl-065-013-105-239.sip.tys.bellsouth.net ([65.13.105.239]:4046 helo=[192.168.1.33]) by audi.websitewelcome.com with esmtpa (Exim 4.50) id 1Dqxmo-000588-VF for freebsd-stable@freebsd.org; Fri, 08 Jul 2005 13:41:19 -0500 Message-ID: <42CEC8D9.7090900@goldsword.com> Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2005 14:41:29 -0400 From: "J. T. Farmer" Organization: GoldSword Systems User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050414 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org References: <20050708180555.EB6A05D07@ptavv.es.net> In-Reply-To: <20050708180555.EB6A05D07@ptavv.es.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - audi.websitewelcome.com X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - freebsd.org X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [0 0] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - goldsword.com X-Source: X-Source-Args: X-Source-Dir: Subject: Re: ATA HDD installer issue X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 08 Jul 2005 18:41:28 -0000 Kevin Oberman wrote: >Don't forget that any "modern" BIOS and HD will be using LBA, not CHS, >for addressing the disk and disks have not had the same number of >sectors per track on all cylinders for a long time, so the numbers are >bogus in any case. CHS does not allow properly addressing any >modern drive and BIOS always "makes up" the values reported (but not >used, to the best of my knowledge) and those work fine in every case I >have encountered. > >I'd just ignore the warning and proceed. > > I did that. I don't know if that's part of the problem (I have AthlonXP 2200 with a Via KT266A chipset), I get the same types of complaints from sysinstall, I ignore the warning, it leaves a good size chunk of disk at the end unused, then I get error messages about failing to initialize various slices and structures. Check screen #2, lots of WRITE_DMA error messages while doing the superblocks. Tried booting the install kernel in safe mode. Still get the warnings about the values reported by the BIOS (which is set to auto-detect the drives), but it successfully creates the disk and goes through the install. My BIOS reports the values of Cyn 38309, heads 16, Sectors 255. It's a WD800, 80GB ATA100. So I'm getting the same errors on install as the OP, and it appears that I have the same problems with the controller & drivers that other VIA users are... So far, if I boot the install using safe mode, I can install. However, on reboot, the log goes crazy with WRITE_DMA errors, and things start getting flaky (don't know exactly what is happening, I gave up on it for a few days...) Are the two problems related? Will installing the ATA III patch set ### fix any of this? Oh, yeah, Obligatory whine... WinXP installed into a partition on this machine without a problem... John FreeBSD since 2.0.2.... Starting on a 486/50.... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- John T. Farmer Owner & CTO GoldSword Systems jfarmer@goldsword.com 865-691-6498 Knoxville TN Consulting, Design, & Development of Networks & Software