Re: 8 to 9: A longer wait early in the boot of a (damaged) Compaq Presario
On 2012-02-16 19:21, Alex Goncharov wrote: ,--- I/Alex (Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:34:36 -0500) * | There was one other odd thing that I noticed then: while Debian booted | without a delay, FreeBSD 8 made a long pause after passing the boot | menu: it would display the '/' character and sit there for some | non-trivial amount of seconds. I assumed that it was doing some BIOS | querying, and with BIOS (firmware?) being damaged, it took the system | some time to figure things out... perhaps it was re-querying BIOS, | seeing the insane value of 0 for an interface's Ethernet address (I | have many machines running FreeBSD, including multiple laptops, and | this machine is unique in the long bootup pause). `-* ,--- Rares Aioanei (Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:08:14 +0200) * | I get the same on my HP Pavilion dv9750 laptop, but with an intact BIOS, | afaict. And that happens regardless of the wi-fi card's state (eg | disabled or enabled from the hardware button). Maybe this helps. `* To add to the fact base: I don't have any of this with my HP Pavilion DV6-1334US: neither with FreeBSD 8 nor 9 (upgraded that laptop two days ago, too.) FreeBSD 8.x has a memory test that takes place quite early during kernel startup - I have seen a system with 128Gb ram hang for 1-2 minuttes on this account - quite annoying delay if you ask me. There were discussions about removing this memtest feature in FreeBSD 9 but I do not know if it made it into the tree in time... but you'll need to have lots of memory for this to kickin - not very likely with your laptop. Another similar boot delay/hang seen with FreeBSD 8.x with certain SATA controllers. I have a FreeBSD 8.x system that hangs exactly 75 seconds (timeout?) during (every) kernel startup when running SATA in AHCI mode (setup within the BIOS) - if switched back to SATA IDE (compatible) mode the system kernel starts instantly with out the 75 sec (timeout) hang. This problem seems resolved by the SATA/AHCI driver overhaul that FreeBSD 9 got. Both problems are visually identical (as far as I remember) - an unexplainable delay during kernel startup - it sleeps/hangs before anything is printed on screen... HTH /Uffe ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
8 to 9: A longer wait early in the boot of a (damaged) Compaq Presario
About three years ago, my Compaq Presario F700 notebook got damaged in BIOS: it carried Windows Vista then, and that OS could not be recovered from the system image disks I had created for a brand-new machine. The damage was somewhere around BIOS/firmware area -- the way the console looked on a bootup looked differently (simpler) now that after several reboots trying to recover Vista, it got fried. Some googling told me then that the irreversible loss of Windows was not unusual for these Compaq machines -- the damaged systems didn't give one a chance to use the recovery disks. OK, I made the system dual bootable to Debian Linux and FreeBSD 8 then; with that, it booted all right, but in both cases the 'nfe0' interface Ethernet address was being set to 0. No big deal: I used an Ethernet address from my older laptop destined to be destroyed and gave it to 'nfe0' when setting the network interface properties at the system initialization. Works great, both in Debian and FreeBSD. There was one other odd thing that I noticed then: while Debian booted without a delay, FreeBSD 8 made a long pause after passing the boot menu: it would display the '/' character and sit there for some non-trivial amount of seconds. I assumed that it was doing some BIOS querying, and with BIOS (firmware?) being damaged, it took the system some time to figure things out... perhaps it was re-querying BIOS, seeing the insane value of 0 for an interface's Ethernet address (I have many machines running FreeBSD, including multiple laptops, and this machine is unique in the long bootup pause). About a week ago, I made a jump and upgraded the system's FreeBSD from version 8 to 9. Everything is great (I am typing this message on that machine now) but the boot pause after the (looking new in 9) boot menu is *much* longer now -- it will show the '\' character and wait for, subjectively, half a minute before putting anything else on the screen. This is not of any practical importance for me, I feel very good about what I got in FreeBSD 9 but I am puzzled and earn for the knowledge. Can anybody educate me on: * What might have happened with this notebook three years ago, when some layer over BIOS burned out? What are these layers? Where are the interface Ethernet addresses set up? Interesting, it was only this interface that lost its factory-assigned address: nfe0@pci0:0:10:0: class=0x02 card=0x30ea103c chip=0x054c10derev=0xa2 hdr=0x00 vendor = 'nVidia Corporation' device = 'MCP67 Ethernet' but not this one: ath0@pci0:3:0:0:class=0x02 card=0x137a103c chip=0x001c168crev=0x01 hdr=0x00 vendor = 'Atheros Communications Inc.' device = 'AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)' * What is the boot process doing, hanging out there after passing the boot menu stage? * Why does it hang there longer in FreeBSD 9, compared to 8? (And why doesn't it hang there at all in Debian?) * Is there any loader.conf variable or some such that would tell the system to safely skip things leading to this pause? Thanks, -- Alex -- alex-goncha...@comcast.net -- ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 8 to 9: A longer wait early in the boot of a (damaged) Compaq Presario
,--- I/Alex (Thu, 16 Feb 2012 12:34:36 -0500) * | There was one other odd thing that I noticed then: while Debian booted | without a delay, FreeBSD 8 made a long pause after passing the boot | menu: it would display the '/' character and sit there for some | non-trivial amount of seconds. I assumed that it was doing some BIOS | querying, and with BIOS (firmware?) being damaged, it took the system | some time to figure things out... perhaps it was re-querying BIOS, | seeing the insane value of 0 for an interface's Ethernet address (I | have many machines running FreeBSD, including multiple laptops, and | this machine is unique in the long bootup pause). `-* ,--- Rares Aioanei (Thu, 16 Feb 2012 20:08:14 +0200) * | I get the same on my HP Pavilion dv9750 laptop, but with an intact BIOS, | afaict. And that happens regardless of the wi-fi card's state (eg | disabled or enabled from the hardware button). Maybe this helps. `* To add to the fact base: I don't have any of this with my HP Pavilion DV6-1334US: neither with FreeBSD 8 nor 9 (upgraded that laptop two days ago, too.) -- Alex -- alex-goncha...@comcast.net -- ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 8 to 9: A longer wait early in the boot of a (damaged) Compaq Presario
On 02/16/2012 07:34 PM, Alex Goncharov wrote: About three years ago, my Compaq Presario F700 notebook got damaged in BIOS: it carried Windows Vista then, and that OS could not be recovered from the system image disks I had created for a brand-new machine. The damage was somewhere around BIOS/firmware area -- the way the console looked on a bootup looked differently (simpler) now that after several reboots trying to recover Vista, it got fried. Some googling told me then that the irreversible loss of Windows was not unusual for these Compaq machines -- the damaged systems didn't give one a chance to use the recovery disks. OK, I made the system dual bootable to Debian Linux and FreeBSD 8 then; with that, it booted all right, but in both cases the 'nfe0' interface Ethernet address was being set to 0. No big deal: I used an Ethernet address from my older laptop destined to be destroyed and gave it to 'nfe0' when setting the network interface properties at the system initialization. Works great, both in Debian and FreeBSD. There was one other odd thing that I noticed then: while Debian booted without a delay, FreeBSD 8 made a long pause after passing the boot menu: it would display the '/' character and sit there for some non-trivial amount of seconds. I assumed that it was doing some BIOS querying, and with BIOS (firmware?) being damaged, it took the system some time to figure things out... perhaps it was re-querying BIOS, seeing the insane value of 0 for an interface's Ethernet address (I have many machines running FreeBSD, including multiple laptops, and I get the same on my HP Pavilion dv9750 laptop, but with an intact BIOS, afaict. And that happens regardless of the wi-fi card's state (eg disabled or enabled from the hardware button). Maybe this helps. -- Rares Aioanei ___ freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hackers-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
