[9fans] Booting problem after fresh install from 20080203 iso.

[9fans] Booting problem after fresh install from 20080203 iso.

[Sander van Dijk]

Hi,

Yesterday I did a fresh install from the 20080203 image, and when
booting from the harddisk I get a 'panic' almost immediately after the
booting process starts.
When this happens, the line "Press almost any key to reset..panic.."
is repeatedly (with a very small interval) printed to the screen.
After approximately 12 seconds, the last two characters of 'reset' are
garbled, and this garbled variant of the message is then repeatedly
printed to the screen.
After approximately 15 more seconds, more of the message gets garbled,
after which this even more garbled version of the message is
repeatedly printed to the screen for approximately 4 seconds.
Then the machine resets.
During this > 30 seconds of message printing, the machine doesn't seem
to respond to keypresses; it keeps scrolling the message instead of
resetting.

This only happens on my real hardware though: when I boot my harddisk
from linux through qemu, Plan 9 comes up nicely.

The previous image I did a fresh install from, 20071222, didn't have
this problem.

Does anyone have an idea about what could be causing this, or how I
can obtain useful information about what may be causing this?

Thanks in advance,

Sander.

[9fans] Re: Booting problem after fresh install from 20080203 iso.

[Sander van Dijk]

It seems that my machine and /386/pbs don't get along too well. I
reformatted my 9fat partition this way:

disk/format –b /386/pbslba –d –r 2 /dev/sdC1/9fat /386/9load /386/9pcf
/tmp/plan9.ini

and then my machine booted nicely.
Reformatting it again this way:

disk/format –b /386/pbs –d –r 2 /dev/sdC1/9fat /386/9load /386/9pcf
/tmp/plan9.ini

broke things again. Can anyone give me a hint about why that could be?
As far as I can tell, /386/pbs and /386/pbslba haven't changed since
the 20071222 iso, yet things worked for me after a default install
back then, and now they don't...

Sander.

[9fans] Re: Booting problem after fresh install from 20080203 iso.

[Sander van Dijk]

It's getting stranger. I just did a fresh install from the 20071222
image (from which I've done a succesfull install on the same machine
and disk before), and it gives me the same error.

Two things that I haven't mentioned before and that may be relevant are these:

1. I zeroed the target harddisk before installation like this: "dd -if
/dev/zero -of /dev/sdC1/data".
2. I also accidentally did this first when I really meant to zero the
disk: "dd -if /dev/zero -f /dev/sdC1/raw".

Does anyone know if either of these (specifically number 2) could have
caused my issue? I'm not sure what (if anything) number two did.

Greetings, Sander.

Re: [9fans] Re: Booting problem after fresh install from 20080203 iso.

[lucio]

> 1. I zeroed the target harddisk before installation like this: "dd -if
> /dev/zero -of /dev/sdC1/data".

You wiped out the MBR on the disk, use DOS's FDISK/MBR (sic) to
restore it, it is the least painful way to fix this type of problem,
in my experience.

++L

Re: [9fans] Re: Booting problem after fresh install from 20080203 iso.

[Sander van Dijk]

On Feb 12, 2008 10:19 AM,  <lucio@proxima.alt.za> wrote:
> > 1. I zeroed the target harddisk before installation like this: "dd -if
> > /dev/zero -of /dev/sdC1/data".
>
> You wiped out the MBR on the disk, use DOS's FDISK/MBR (sic) to
> restore it, it is the least painful way to fix this type of problem,
> in my experience.

I'll take a look, but I'm afraid it's not going to help. I've already
tried NetBSD's MBR and Plan 9's MBR (using disk/mbr), and they both
don't fix the problem.
I've got the feeling that the problem has something to do with the
addressing that the Plan 9 partition's boot block uses (When I install
/386/pbslba it works, with /386/pbs it doesn't).
So why don't I just install /386/pbslba then? Because a week ago,
/386/pbs was working on this machine, and now all the sudden it isn't,
and I can't stand that I can't explain why...
Anyway, thanks for your suggestion, I'll give it a go and see if it helps.

Greetings, Sander.

Re: [9fans] Re: Booting problem after fresh install from 20080203 iso.

[lucio]

> I'll take a look, but I'm afraid it's not going to help. I've already
> tried NetBSD's MBR and Plan 9's MBR (using disk/mbr), and they both
> don't fix the problem.

That makes two of us.  I have the same problem with compact flash
devices.  If I don't get the geometry exactly right (I did, a couple
of times, bu no more) the devices are positively useless.

And I cannot figure out why a while back I could find the right
geometry it and now I have no idea how.  Just like you.

And, ironically, that may be your problem, too.

++L

Re: [9fans] Re: Booting problem after fresh install from 20080203 iso.

[erik quanstrom]

> That makes two of us.  I have the same problem with compact flash
> devices.  If I don't get the geometry exactly right (I did, a couple
> of times, bu no more) the devices are positively useless.
>
> And I cannot figure out why a while back I could find the right
> geometry it and now I have no idea how.  Just like you.
>
> And, ironically, that may be your problem, too.

i've been booting from cf without any worries for a long time.  even
my semi-retired 440gx machine boots from cf;  i've never looked at
the disk geometry.  what controller are you using and what's the
output of /dev/sd../ctl?

- erik

Re: [9fans] Re: Booting problem after fresh install from 20080203 iso.

[Sander van Dijk]

I've been looking around for an explanation some more, and I've got
some new information that I believe may suggest that it's my BIOS
that's messing up.
I've got all my drives set to autodetect at boot time in the BIOS, but
there's one thing I can still configure per drive: addressing mode.
I've got four of them to choose from (well, three actually): normal,
large, lba and auto.
Here's a list of what does and what doesn't work with the various
addressing settings.

Normal:
/386/pbs does NOT work
/386/pbslba does work

Large:
/386/pbs does work
/386/pbslba does work

LBA:
/386/pbs does work
/386/pbslba does work

Auto:
/386/pbs does work
/386/pbslba does work

Looking at this, I'm starting to think that my BIOS is messing up when
I have my disk set to normal mode. That combination (normal mode in
BIOS and /386/pbs) used to work though, so that would mean that
something in the hardware of my machine must have broken in the
meantime. Does anyone know if this is likely (given the symptoms), and
how I could verify this?

Greetings, Sander.

Re: [9fans] Re: Booting problem after fresh install from 20080203 iso.

[erik quanstrom]

> 1. I zeroed the target harddisk before installation like this: "dd -if
> /dev/zero -of /dev/sdC1/data".
> 2. I also accidentally did this first when I really meant to zero the
> disk: "dd -if /dev/zero -f /dev/sdC1/raw".

you did the right thing.  the raw file is for issuing raw commands to
the drive.  (not raw like you're thinking.  they're raw scsi commands
which might be translated (loosely) into ata.)  see scuzz(8).

- erik

Re: [9fans] Re: Booting problem after fresh install from 20080203 iso.

[Sander van Dijk]

On Feb 12, 2008 1:50 PM, erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> > 1. I zeroed the target harddisk before installation like this: "dd -if
> > /dev/zero -of /dev/sdC1/data".
> > 2. I also accidentally did this first when I really meant to zero the
> > disk: "dd -if /dev/zero -f /dev/sdC1/raw".
>
> you did the right thing.  the raw file is for issuing raw commands to
> the drive.  (not raw like you're thinking.  they're raw scsi commands
> which might be translated (loosely) into ata.)  see scuzz(8).

I believe my writing turns out a bit unclear. What I meant to say was
that I actually did a "dd -if /dev/zero -f /dev/sdC1/raw" before I
figured out that it should have been "dd -if /dev/zero -of
/dev/sdC1/data" instead. Hence I was wondering if writing those zeroes
to the raw file could be the source of my problem (in case those
zeroes translate to a command I really shouldn't have given), because
this is one of the things I did right before the problem appeared.
Anyway, thanks for the reference, I'll take a look at scuzz(8).

Greetings, Sander.

Re: [9fans] Re: Booting problem after fresh install from 20080203 iso.

[erik quanstrom]

> I believe my writing turns out a bit unclear. What I meant to say was
> that I actually did a "dd -if /dev/zero -f /dev/sdC1/raw" before I
> figured out that it should have been "dd -if /dev/zero -of
> /dev/sdC1/data" instead. Hence I was wondering if writing those zeroes
> to the raw file could be the source of my problem (in case those
> zeroes translate to a command I really shouldn't have given), because
> this is one of the things I did right before the problem appeared.
> Anyway, thanks for the reference, I'll take a look at scuzz(8).

p. 361 ata 6.1 notes that command 0 is NOP.  ata nop does put the
drive into an error state so it could have screwed things up into you
reboot.  it shouldn't, but you'd have to trace through the code to
prove it doesn't.

- erik