6.4 RC1 locks up solid on first reboot

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 02:37:50AM +0200, Aragon Gouveia wrote:
> | By Jo Rhett <jrhett at netconsonance.com>
> |                                          [ 2008-10-24 21:13 +0200 ]
> > On Oct 22, 2008, at 9:27 PM, Milan Obuch wrote:
> > >I did not investigate on this issue too much, but there is an  
> > >workaround -
> > >copy older /boot/loader over newer one. In my case, I am rebuilding  
> > >whole
> > >world often, and now /boot/loader seems to not build correctly for  
> > >me. Older
> > >one is ~ 250 kB, rebuilt will be ~ 185 kB, and freezes.
> > 
> > 6.4's boot loader is 221k
> > 6.3's boot loader is 217k
> > 
> > Copying 6.3 boot loader to the 6.4 solved the keyboard lockup problem,  
> > but it still panics during the boot.  At last now I get the entire  
> > panic to the serial console so I can cut/paste.
> 
> FWIW, I've had problems with 7.0's boot loader locking up too.  I'm running
> a -stable compile from march and during bootup, if I make too many
> keypresses the bootup sequence freezes.  Once loader has handed off to the
> kernel then everything's fine, but I can't make any use of loader's or
> bootX's command lines without the system freezing.  I'm careful not to touch
> my keyboard during bootup!
> 
> Keyboard and mouse are both USB.

There are known problems with some BIOSes and "USB Legacy" support.
Said BIOS option allows a USB keyboard and mouse to be emulated as PS/2
for operating systems which lack a USB stack, such as MS-DOS -- and more
importantly, bootloaders!  The FreeBSD bootloader only understands
AT/PS2 keyboards, which is why that BIOS option is needed.

Can you confirm this problem happens when using a PS/2 keyboard?

If so, then the issue is probably in the bootstrap code somewhere.

If the problem goes away when using a PS/2 keyboard, then the problem
is either a BIOS bug (likely in this day and age), or a compatibility
issue with the model of USB keyboard you have (not all USB keyboards
are identical in behaviour).

P.S. -- Why are you slamming keys during the bootup sequence?  :-)

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |