Compaq PL5000

[Jason Taylor]

Robert Slade wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've have been running Fedora for a couple of months and wanted to move
> to a more stable OS and was recommended BSD.
> 
> I have an old Proliant 5000 server (Quad Processors, 1GByte Memory, Raid
> array) that I have been using as a test system. I have just tried to
> install Free BSD 5.3 on it and ran into problems, 
> 
> If I allow the default at the 1st screen, the machine hangs at:
> 
> pci2: <PCI bus> on pcib2
> 
> trying the other options eg with acpi support, safe mode etc I get a
> kernal panic:
> 
> cpu0 on motherboard
> make device: can't find device vt
> 
> Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernal mode
> Etc
> 
> panic: page fault
> 
> I note that during boot only 16Mbyte of memory is recognised. I had this
> problem with Fedora etc which lead to a kernal panic. I guess that this
> is the same problem as above. In that case I was able to correct this by
> adding mem=1008M as a kernal parameter during boot. I cannot see how to
> do that with Free BSD. Is this possible with Free BSD or am I barking up
> the wrong tree with this problem?
> 
> Rob  
> 

Choose the "Escape to loader prompt" option, then:
 > set hw.physmem="1048576k"
 > boot

Once you have a working install, add the following line to 
/boot/loader.conf:
hw.physmem="1048576k"

...and now for the disclaimers...
I'm no expert.  Others may have better ideas and/or corrections to this. 
  My calculation about how many k = 1G may be off.