10.1-BETA2 "as distributed": PowerMac G4 (yes: 4) no boot hang with GeForce4 Ti 4600, so no hang without options DDB/GDB?

[Mark Millard]

I tried installing 10.1-BETA2 directly from the 10.1-BETA2 MANIFEST and *.txz files (via bsdinstall) to an SSD. The result booted the GeForce4 Ti 4600 PowerMac G4 just fine.

It appears that the additions of "options DDB" and "options GDB" to GENERIC (and then doing buildworld kernel ...) may be what lead to the boot time hang for the GeForce4 Ti 4600 video board based PowerMac G4. The alternate is that WITH_DEBUG_FILES=, WITHOUT_CLANG=, WITH_DEBUG= contributes or verbose_loading="YES" in /boot/loader.conf does. Or just building from source from a powerpc/GENERIC context (on a G5 PowerMac) leads to the issue.

At this point I've no clue why the GeForce4 Ti 4600 combined with any of those alternatives leads to the hang. I may never know since the hang is silent and rather early in the boot sequence. The radeon based PowerMac G4's did not hang. Nor did the GeForce 7800 GT PowerMac G5's.


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Mark Millard
markmi at dsl-only.net

On Sep 17, 2014, at 11:01 PM, Mark Millard <markmi at dsl-only.net> wrote:

For FreeBSD 10.1-BETA1 the 1.4GHz Dual-processor PowerMac G4 (yep: 4) with a NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 in it always hangs after:

> GDB: no debug ports present
> KDB: debugger backends: DDB
> KDB: current backend: DDB

without writing out the Copyright notice or anything else.

The same SSD boots an ATI Radeon 9000/PRO If (AGP/PCI) PowerMac G4 of the same PowerMac model just fine. (I give uname -a and build details later.) The same SSD also boots a PowerMac G5 with a GeForce 7800 GT video board just fine. Other than the SSD, video board, and memory, there is only basic stock equipment in the PowerMacs. The two G4's match for those details as well: only the video boards are different models and the amounts of RAM match.

And my older 10.1-PRERELEASE #0 r271215 boot SSD still boots the GeForce Ti 4600 PowerMac G4 just fine.

While the place for the boot-hang is suggestive, I've nothing beyond that indicating any relationship to the random PowerMac G5 boot problem at the same place in the display sequence.

And on the G4 DDB is not reporting anything, unlike on the G5 when it hangs there.




Context for failed boots off the GeForce Ti 4600 PowerMac G4 (I've not tried much variation from this so no claims of essential status for any of it):

> FreeBSD FBSDG4S1 10.1-BETA1 FreeBSD 10.1-BETA1 #1 r271610M: Wed Sep 17 21:47:20 PDT 2014     root at FBSDG4S1:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  powerpc


The "M" status of r271610M (now that I "make -j 8 buildworld kernel" based on svn materials in /usr/src/) is from the GENERIC modification in the modifications listed below. The non-default things are...

A) Adding to /usr/src/sys/powerpc/conf/GENERIC: "options DDB" and "options GDB".

B) Having /etc/make.conf use WITH_DEBUG_FILES=, WITHOUT_CLANG=, WITH_DEBUG=, as well as having a WRKDIRPREFIX=(path not listed here).

C) Having /boot/loader.conf with just: verbose_loading="YES".



Context for working boots of the same GeForce Ti 4600 PowerMac G4:

> FreeBSD FBSDG4S0 10.1-PRERELEASE FreeBSD 10.1-PRERELEASE #0 r271215: Sat Sep  6 23:56:15 PDT 2014     root at FBSDG4S0:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  powerpc


/usr/src/sys/powerpc/conf/GENERIC was not modified at all. (Thus no M suffix on r271215.)

But /etc/make.conf uses WITH_DEBUG_FILES=, WITHOUT_CLANG=, WITH_DEBUG=, as well as having a WRKDIRPREFIX=(path not listed here).

/boot/loader.conf empty.






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Mark Millard
markmi at dsl-only.net