[RFC] Deprecation and removal of the drm2 driver

[Rodney W. Grimes]

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> On Thu, May 24, 2018 at 08:22:12AM -0700, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> > > On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 11:48:38AM +0200, Philip Homburg wrote:
> > > > >Also as the Moore's law curve flattens expect the life of these
> > > > >older, but not so old, machines to live quiet some time.  I
> > > > >believe we are talking sandy bridge and earlier?  If that is
> > > > >corret Sandy bridge is still a very viable system.
> > > > 
> > > > I noticed this lack of love for older systems recently. 
> > > > 
> > > > I wanted to use an older Dell server to test the 11.2 BETAs and RCs.
> > > > 
> > > > Turns out, you can't install FreeBSD using a USB stick image because the
> > > > BIOS only support MBR. No idea why MBR support was dropped for the USB images.
> > > > 
> > > > In the end I had to find a CD burner, and after a couple of tries managed to
> > > > install from CD.
> > > > 
> > > > After that, my ansible playbooks started failing because /boot/loader.conf 
> > > > is absent if you boot from zfs in combination with MBR.
> > > > 
> > > > Pity. This older server hardware is great for trying out new releases, play 
> > > > with zfs, etc.
> > > 
> > > The disc1.iso (as well as bootonly.iso and dvd1.iso) images are now
> > > built as hybrid images, supporting both MBR and GPT, as well as being
> > > written to a flash drive (like memstick.img) as well as a CD.
> > 
> > To clarify a minor point here, are the amd64 disc1.iso images or
> > both the amd64 and i386 disk1.iso images being built as "hybrid"?
> > 
> 
> Only amd64.  i386 does not have UEFI-/GPT-related boot issues.

Here is a data point:

Test system is Dell R710,
First attempt is with BIOS in Boot mode: Bios 
Second attempt is with BIOS in Boot mode: UEFI

Attemtped to boot amd64 version:
Screen goes white background, text appears (yes, way indented)
                        BTX version is 1.02
Consoles: internal video/keyboard
_
 
That last _ is a blinking cursor, system is hung, does repsond to C-A-del
 
 
Second attempt:
Works properly
 

I am going after Ed Maste's posted build image in the other thread now...


> 
> > As this is what I see on my system:
> > root at x230a:/home/ISO/x # file FreeBSD-11.2-BETA2-*
> > FreeBSD-11.2-BETA2-amd64-disc1.iso: DOS/MBR boot sector; partition 1 : ID=0xee, start-CHS (0x0,0,2), end-CHS (0x3ff,255,63), startsector 1, 1472695 sectors
> > FreeBSD-11.2-BETA2-i386-disc1.iso:  ISO 9660 CD-ROM filesystem data '11_2_BETA2_I386_CD' (bootable)
> > 
> > > MBR support was initially removed from the memstick installer, as it is
> > > not compatible with some UEFI implementations.  (Or, at least that is my
> > > understanding, based on my limited intimate knowledge of UEFI.)
> > > 
> 
> Glen
> 
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-- 
Rod Grimes                                                 rgrimes at freebsd.org