Dell PE850 and FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE - Boot Issues

[Jeff Cross]

Adam Martin wrote:
> 
> On 2006 Sep 18 , at 16:25, Jeff Cross wrote:
> 
>> I am trying to run FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE on a Dell PowerEdge 850 with some
>> booting issues.  I have searched the archives and found someone having a
>> problem with the machine "booting too fast" but my problem is a little
>> different.  My machine hangs up after the following line is displayed
>> during boot:
>>
>> acd0: CDROM <TEAC CD-ROM CD-224E-N/3.AB> at ata0-master UDMA33
>>
>> I have to poke the machine in the eye to get it back.  The keyboard and
>> everything locks up at that point.  The only way I can get the machine
>> to boot up successfully is to use option 5 from the boot menu, Verbose
>> Logging.
>>
>> Is there a way around this?  I know this is ghetto but just being able
>> to make the machine use that boot menu option as the default would work
>> fine I believe.  It would ultimately be nice to not have this issue on
>> boot but the verbose logging option seems to boot fine so that would
>> work for the interim.
>>
>> I am attaching my dmesg output from the verbose boot.  I can't seem to
>> get anything in messages or dmesg from one of the failed boot attempts.
> 
>     I do not know what's causing this, but for the meantime, if you edit
> /boot/defaults/loader.conf and copy the line that reads:
> 
> verbose_loading="NO"
> 
>     Paste this line into /boot/loader.conf, (or /boot/loader.conf.local,
> depending upon your setup...) and change NO to YES.  This will force
> verbose loading, always.  I don't know if this will do everything
> IDENTICAL to boot option 5, however, when looking at the Forth code for
> it, it appears that it will, on first glance (but I'm a bit rusty on
> that...)
> 
>> Any help is greatly appreciated.  If more information is required to
>> troubleshoot this further, please let me know.
> 
>     Good luck.  I hope that people still read this thread, to help
> diagnose your dmesg, and find your problem.  This is really just a
> temporary fix.
> 
> 
> [dmesg trimmed for brevity]
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> -- 
> ADAM David Alan Martin
> 
> 
> -- 
> Adam David Alan Martin
> 
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> 
> 
Thanks for the reply, Adam.  I actually tried the verbose_logging="YES"
in my /boot/loader.conf file prior to posting but it still hangs after
the CD-ROM line for some reason.

It appears the only way the machine will boot up properly is if I hit 5
on the boot menu.  This obviously doesn't make remote reboots very
"admin friendly"!

Thanks again for your reply!

Jeff Cross
http://www.averageadmins.com/