Re: hp700 boot-from-disk troubles

On Mon, 16 May 2005 07:50:27 -0700
Chuck Silvers <[email protected]> wrote:

> I've found more problems with booting from disk on hp700.  it looks
> like the same problem that we originally saw on the older machines is
> still there on the newer machines, namely that in some kernels, the
> scsipi_xfer pool gets corrupted.
I slowly start to belive that the SCSI / DMA problems are olny a symptom
and the actual problem is much deeper. The problems detecting the FPU
may be an other symptom of this deep problem. I got the "fabricating a
geometry" message, typical for the disk boot problem, even when net
booted:
sd0 at scsibus0 target 2 lun 0: <SEAGATE, ST34572WS, HP00> disk fixed
sd0: 4095 MB, 6300 cyl, 8 head, 166 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 8388314 sectors
sd0: sync (50.00ns offset 15), 16-bit (40.000MB/s) transfers, tagged queueing
sd0: fabricating a geometry
boot device: tlp0
root on tlp0

It adds a new view to the problem if the real problem causes the FPU
detection to fail. The FPU detection is done very early in startup, even
before the kernel goes virtual.

Regarding to your suspicion that xxboot causes the problem, because
xxboot is not involved when netbooting, I have an idea for booting from
disk without xxboot. This would be a good test for CDROM booting too but
my time is tight during the next two days.
-- 


tschüß,
       Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/