New powerpc64 snapshot

[Paul Mather]

On Nov 18, 2010, at 9:50 AM, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:

> I've prepared some new powerpc64 snapshot ISOs which can be found at http://people.freebsd.org/~nwhitehorn/FreeBSD-9.0-20101118-SNAP-powerpc64/
> 
> These include several bugfixes relative to previous snapshots.

I was able successfully to install this snapshot today on an Xserve G5.  I had several problems, though:

1) I could not boot from the bootloader script after the install was complete; I had forcibly to "setenv boot-device hd:,\ppc\boot1.elf" for the system to boot into FreeBSD from power-on.  (I did remember the "gpart bootcode ..." step, too.)

2) Usually, the system will not boot multi-user as it is unable to mount the root partition after booting the kernel.  Dropping into the debugger and issuing a "reboot" to do a warm boot will allow the system then to boot multi-user successfully.

3) The system is LOUD!  It sounds like the fans are running high pretty much all the time---running much higher than Mac OS X 10.5 runs them.  I notice a "fcu" fan-related device during boot.  Is there any way to force the fans to run at a lower speed?  I'm going to go deaf at this rate. :-)

4) After a while, my system fell of the network with "bge0: watchdog timeout -- resetting" being output on the console periodically.

5) A minor thing, but the "locate" command doesn't work properly.  Either it doesn't find something I know is there, or it finds something but prints out incorrect gibberish as a result (e.g., just printing out lines of "/" in response to a "locate etc").


I realise the FreeBSD/powerpc64 port is experimental at this point.  Can anyone tell me if the above symptoms afflict the 32-bit FreeBSD/powerpc 8-STABLE port?  Although I like the idea of the powerpc64 port allowing me to use all of the 3.5 GB RAM in this machine, at this point it is more important for me to trade away the extra RAM for stability (and *quietness*:).  If FreeBSD/powerpc 8-STABLE is more solid, I'd rather switch to that, as I'd like to get this machine back into service.

(I would be more prepared to soldier on with FreeBSD/powerpc64 if I could get the fan noise problem under control.  That would let me do more testing without going crazy from the noise.:)

Cheers,

Paul.