When I saw your note, I figured Something Ain't Right here. I wasn't
the only one. Theo noticed.
I'm on a mission from Theo.
Michael White wrote:
Hi all,
I'm attempting my first install of OpenBSD (version 3.9) on an HP Omnibook
800CT (Pentium 166, 80 MB RAM, 4.3 GB HD, 3COM 3CXEM556 Carbus Ethernet
card), coming over from RH9.0. One peculiarity of the 800CTs is that the
SCSI CDROM is not bootable, so I'm down to booting with floppies.
whoa. SCSI. (he's right on this, btw... Symbios Logic 53C810, if the
page I'm reading is to be believed.)
I first attempted to boot from "floppyC39.fs", since that's supposed to be the
image for laptops. Well, it does recognize my Ethernet card, but seems to
choke on the hard drive. After recognizing the Ethernet card, I see the
following:
----------------------------------------------
wd0(wdc0:0:0): timeout
type: ata
c_bcount: 512
c_skip: 0
wd0(wdc0:0:0): timeout
type: ata
c_bcount: 512
c_skip: 0
WARNING: preposterous time in file system
WARNING: file system time much less than clock time
----------------------------------------------
After that, the machine is locked up. So I boot from "floppy39.fs" instead.
That had no problem with the hard drive. I was able to successfully
partition the drive. But that image does not recognize my Ethernet card, so
I'm unable to retrieve any images (didn't see an option for PPP).
The fact that floppy38.fs didn't see your network adapter is not
unexpected, of course.
The fact that you had disk issues on floppyC39.fs is unexpected. The
fact that they go away on floppy39.fs is all the way to Just Plain Wrong.
Even after formatting the hard drive under the "floppy39.s" floppy, the
"floppyC39.fs" floppy chokes on the hard drive.
Is there any way to combine the two capabilities?
Not the way you are thinking. But I have some ideas...
> The only reason I'm asking is because of a comment in the FAQ
(section 4.3):
"Yes, there may be situations where one install disk is required to support
your SCSI adapter and another disk is required to support your network
adapter. Fortunately, this is a rare event, and can usually be worked
around."
Worked around means combining hardware and install options in such a way
that it is made to work...not fiddling with the boot media. Usually.
I may have access to a Xircom network card - is that supported by the
"floppy39.s" floppy?
No, the Xircom driver is not in floppy39.fs...
At least, not the Xircom driver I'm thinking of...they may have more
than one. :)
Anyway...I'm sitting here looking at the config files that make up
floppy39.fs and floppy39C.fs (RAMDISK and RAMDISKC, for those who want
to follow along), and their diffs.
First, I see that the SCSI controller that is probably in your laptop is
supported by the siop(4) driver, which is on floppy39.fs. SO..the
suggestion of dropping the file set on a CD and installing from that is
probably workable.
But that's not what Theo sent me to ask. We are interested in the
reason for the problem more than a quick-and-dirty work-around.
Besides, it is entirely possible the problem will be back with us when
the full kernel loads.
So..back to the diff... It sounds like there is something hurting the
disk support on this thing. So...we can try turning some drivers off,
and see if that gets floppyC booting properly. You do this using User
Kernel Configuration, a.k.a., UKC:
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq5.html#BootConfig
Here is a list of things to try disabling ("disable bla" at the ukc>
prompt):
uhci*
ohci*
wdc*
Those you can do all at once.
hmmmm... those were the only easy (a.k.a., mostly harmless) ones.
Well...if those don't improve things, let's try breaking some things:
pciide* (your disk performance now sucks)
pcic* (that might kill your PCcard slot)
cbb* (if the above didn't, this will)
Do these one-at-a-time.
I'm not really sure what is going on... You may have an issue with the
PCcard/Cardbus support...which means your NIC may show up in the dmesg,
but it may be just as non-functional as it is with floppy39.fs.
Disabling pciide will cause a huge performance hit, but "slow" beats
"not working at all".
Might be interesting to see what happens if you boot without the NIC
installed in the machine. yeah, useless for your problem, but
interesting for troubleshooting.
I'd love to see is a serial console capture of the output of the boot on
this thing, from both the floppy39 and floppyC39 disks...but if you
aren't fluent in serial, hooking one up for your first OpenBSD install
might be a lot to ask for. Ah, heck, if I don't ask, I won't get, right? :)
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#getdmesg
You can probably at least get the dmesg from floppy39.fs to a floppy
disk using the process there, but if you can get both by using a serial
cable, all the better...
Nick.
