cant start 9pcfs

cant start 9pcfs

[Paul]

I just scanned by cache of 9fans mail and could not find anything
similar to my problem.  I am trying to install a file server (PC).
It has a 3c509 and an adaptec 1542 with a couple SCSI drives hung
off of it.  I built a fs boot disk and then tried to boot from it.
It finds the 3c509 and the 1542, complains about unknown int 7
(I guess it does not like a parallel port?), displays info on the
two hard drives, quickly followed by something about iobuf and
some large negative number, after which it immediately clears
the display and hangs.  I cannot for the life of me read what it
prints before it clears the display.  (Can I boot with a serial
console?)  Anyhow, if anyone has seen this, I would appreciate
any wisdom you might be able to pass on.

Other hardware in the system (not all for use by Plan9) is:

    Maxspeed (does not use interrupts)
    Future Domain SCSI TMC-850 or some such with a CD-ROM and DAT (for DOS)
    ATI Ultra VLB video
    Soundblaster AWE 32
    16MB of memory

Oh, I do not have the Adapatec BIOS turned on, but the Future Domain
BIOS is on.

Thanks in advance.

				-Paul Borman
				 prb@bsdi.com

cant start 9pcfs

[Paul]

> >>This is most certainly due to a memory sizing problem (heaven knows
> >>we have made the rounds with this one with BSD/OS...)  For now I
> 
> are the bytes in the CMOS that give the extended memory size not standard,
> or do some machines not set them correctly?

Well, we have found that many (all?) Dell machines think that the CMOS
can never report more than 16MB, so it doesn't, even if you have more
than 16MB of memory.  Then there are machines which we can't accurately
probe for how much memory there is, but the CMOS is right!  There are
also weird caching affect (i.e. you can read/write memory beyond the
end of memory as long as it stays in cache) as well as new and unique
ways to remap addresses that are beyond the end of memory.  To give you
and idea, here are the various parameters one can set in their boot.default
file for BSD/OS:

	-basemen mem	Assume this much base memory (memory below 1M)
	-cmosmem	Limit memory search to the mount given by the CMOS
	-extended mem	Limit the amount of memory to check
	-memsize mem	Just assume this it the amount of memory
	-noflushcache	Don't flush the cache while sizing memory

Each one of these is needed for at least one machine that we have had
problems with.  I should note that we can probe the proper amount of
memory on *most* machines, but...

Finding out how much memory you have is certainly a black art.

				-Paul Borman
				 prb@bsdi.com

cant start 9pcfs

[forsyth]

>>This is most certainly due to a memory sizing problem (heaven knows
>>we have made the rounds with this one with BSD/OS...)  For now I

are the bytes in the CMOS that give the extended memory size not standard,
or do some machines not set them correctly?

cant start 9pcfs

[Paul]

Thanks to daveb@tkg.com who suggested I use a camcorder to "catch"
the screen. I was putzing with trying to get it to freeze on the
right frame when jim mckie pointed out I could use a serial console.

The problem text was:

	iobufinit
		-3290 buffers; -409 hashes

This is most certainly due to a memory sizing problem (heaven knows
we have made the rounds with this one with BSD/OS...)  For now I
have just hacked fs/pc.c and limited it to search only the first 16MB,
which is all I have.  It would probably be nice to have the ability
to specify the maximum amount of memory available in the plan9.ini file.
(BSD/OS still has this sort of escape hatch as some machine are just
too bizarre for words).

The great experiment continues on :-)

				-Paul Borman
				 prb@bsdi.com

cant start 9pcfs

[jim]

the interrupt on 7 is a spurious interrupt generated by the interrupt
controller at reset. not to worry.

man plan9.ini has an example of setting up a serial line as a console.
perhaps then it will be clearer what's going on.