Netfinity 5000 and 5.2.1-RELEASE

[Toomas Aas]

Hello!

Earlier today, I wrote:

> So, I'm trying to install 5.2.1 on IBM Netfinity 5000 and I'm not
> having much luck. Before going into great technical detail (ha!) and
> frustrating stories of my failures, I just thought to ask, is anyone
> at all running this combination successfully?

I can now report that it's working. At least so far. The key to success
was a tip I found after digging the IBM website - to make sure in BIOS 
setup that *both* Planar SCSI INTA and Planar SCSI INTB are routed to 
IRQ15 and none of the adapters in any of the PCI slots are routed to 
IRQ15. In my case I only had to change Planar SCSI INTB from IRQ11 
(Automatic) to 15 and the system is now happily humming along with the 
minimal install that I had somehow actually managed to complete even 
before posting my original message. I haven't done any real 
stress-testing yet but at least I'm past the stage where the system 
could consistently be forced to reboot by running top :-) I hope this 
piece of information saves someone some grief.

Other notes: 

1. I need to boot with ACPI disabled, otherwise the boot 
   process never completes (freezes hard after the line 
   'Timecounters tick every 10.000 msec', even NumLock key doesn't
   work).

2. The server's IDE CD-ROM (LG CRD-8400B) doesn't seem to be detected 
   by the FeeBSD 5.2.1 install CD. When booting from the install CD,
   dmesg lists two IDE channels, but doesn't list the CD-ROM device, 
   and later in the install process when you try to select CD/DVD as 
   the install medium, you get a message that no CD/DVD drives were 
   found. I ended up attaching an old SCSI CD-ROM to server's 
   integrated AIC7895 controller and could successfully install from 
   that.
--
Toomas Aas | toomas.aas at raad.tartu.ee | http://www.raad.tartu.ee/~toomas/
* Laughing stock: cattle with a sense of humor.