4.6/i386 hangs when installing on a Gateway laptop

[AlexLibman]

I am also having a problem booting the OpenBSD 4.6 install CD on a Gateway CX200 laptop / tablet, but disabling APM as per above instructions didn't solve it. The same CD installed on other computers, so it's not a media issue. I also tried changing some BIOS settings, which had no effect. This laptop handled Linux, FreeBSD, and even Haiku w/o any major problems.

The last line of blue-bg output (following "COM# at" lines) is "pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5".

Then something bizarre happens: the computer freezes with ALL indicator lights shining bright blue (regardless of the battery / adapter condition), and even the power button doesn't work, so the only way I had of turning it off was pulling out the battery. Another time it shut off by itself after a few minutes, which probably happened due to overheating. No permanent damage was done to the laptop.

[AlexLibman]

Using "boot -c" to "disable pckbc" results in a different situation:

The boot process devolves into endless "uhub1" / "uhub2" / "uhub3" messages in various combinations appearing every 3-7 seconds: "port error, restarting port [#]", "port error, giving up on port [#]", and "illegal enable change, port [#]". I waited about 15 minutes to see if it gives up and continues, and then held the power button, which worked this time.

I have no external devices attached to the laptop except an Ethernet connection.

(And even if had worked, isn't pckbc the keyboard controller driver, without which I wouldn't be able to do anything?)

[J65nko]

The first poster used a 4.6 snapshot

OpenBSD 4.6-current (GENERIC) #105: Mon Aug 10 18:02:36 MDT 2009

This is newer then 4.6 release.

Burn a snapshot CD and see how that goes.

[ocicat]

Originally Posted by AlexLibman

...but disabling APM as per above instructions didn't solve it.

Assuming that this is a relatively new laptop, disabling APM will not make any difference given that ACPI is the default in newer SMBIOS versions:

http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=124545473209570&w=2

[AlexLibman]

Originally Posted by J65nko

The first poster used a 4.6 snapshot

This is newer then 4.6 release.

Burn a snapshot CD and see how that goes.

Hmm, I thought 4.6 release was in late October. Well, anyway, I've re-downloaded the latest snapshot from FTP (/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/i386/install46.iso, file date Jan 15th) and retried everything again. Same sad story...

This time with I noticed that the "(I)nstall (U)pgrade (S)hell" prompt (black bg) does appear when I use "disable pckbc", but the keyboard isn't working and I have no way to communicate with it before the screen gets flooded with the aforementioned "uhub[#]: [...]" error lines (blue bg). I think this prompt also appeared with the 4.6 release CD as well, it just scrolled off-screen before I could recognize what it was.

I also tried disabling pckbd in addition to pckbc - this resulted in output ending with: "dumping to dev 1101, offset 0", "dump error 19", and "rebooting ..." (which it never did, until I used the power button a few minutes later) prior to it ever getting to the black-bg I/U/S prompt.

Originally Posted by ocicat

Assuming that this is a relatively new laptop, disabling APM will not make any difference given that ACPI is the default in newer SMBIOS versions: [...]

The laptop is just celebrated its 4th birthday.

Yeah, it looks like "disable apm" doesn't affect my issue at all. My bad if it was wrong of me to append to this thread instead of starting a new one.

I'm really hoping someone will suggest something else I can try to resolve this...

[ocicat]

Originally Posted by AlexLibman

Yeah, it looks like "disable apm" doesn't affect my issue at all.

If you can post the complete output of dmesg(8), we will be able to determine more than by guessing.

My bad if it was wrong of me to append to this thread instead of starting a new one.

It seems to be a natural choice to simply append, but rarely (if ever...) does the second poster have the same problem or same hardware, or same experience, skill level, etc. Depending upon the personality of the new people entering a thread, the OP can get lost in the noise. Because we have seen these situations more than once, it is far simpler to state upfront that "hijacking" doesn't work.

[J65nko]

Originally Posted by AlexLibman

Hmm, I thought 4.6 release was in late October.
Well, anyway, I've re-downloaded the latest snapshot from FTP (/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/i386/install46.iso, file date Jan 15th) and retried everything again. Same sad story...

The 4.6 release was already tagged somewhere in July, with a planned release date of 1st of October.

A pity that the latest snapshot shows similar behaviour

If you really want this to be resolved you should connect another PC to the first serial port of your laptop and follow the procedure tersely described in http://www.openbsd.dk/faq/faq4.html#getdmesg
Then send the dmesg to the OpenBSD misc mailing list, so an developer can have a look at it.

[BSDfan666]

Originally Posted by J65nko

If you really want this to be resolved you should connect another PC to the first serial port of your laptop and follow the procedure tersely described in http://www.openbsd.dk/faq/faq4.html#getdmesg
Then send the dmesg to the OpenBSD misc mailing list, so an developer can have a look at it.

Seems a lot of newer systems ship without serial ports, may be pins on the motherboard.. but the connectors are typically missing.

Very sad, and quite inconvenient for developers these days.

[J65nko]

Originally Posted by BSDfan666

Seems a lot of newer systems ship without serial ports, may be pins on the motherboard.. but the connectors are typically missing.

I assumed he had the same laptop as the poster of
http://www.daemonforums.org/showthre...3638#post26068
That dmesg showed a serial chip

com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo

[AlexLibman]

Originally Posted by BSDfan666

ocicat was hinting that you should try disabling acpi instead of apm, and disabling the keyboard controller will not solve your problem.

Never had to disable ACPI to install anything before (but if memory serves me right I had to disable APM to get DragonFly BSD to boot a few versions ago). Tried disabling ACPI now with the latest OpenBSD snapshot - didn't help.

Originally Posted by BSDfan666

You may wish to upgrade your BIOS, that might help.. or not.

Just double-checked with Gateway and I did have the latest BIOS version for my CX200X laptop (62.0702 from 02/16/2007).

Originally Posted by ocicat

If you can post the complete output of dmesg(8), we will be able to determine more than by guessing.

Absent a video camera and serial cable, the best I can do is a dmesg from FreeBSD, in case that helps in any way:

Copyright (c) 1992-2009 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
	The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE-p2 #0: Tue Jan  5 16:02:27 UTC 2010
    root@i386-builder.daemonology.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.86GHz (1884.92-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x6d8  Stepping = 8
  Features=0xafe9fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,CLFLUSH,DTS,ACPI,MMX,FXSR,SSE,SSE2,SS,TM,PBE>
  Features2=0x180<EST,TM2>
  AMD Features=0x100000<NX>
real memory  = 2147483648 (2048 MB)
avail memory = 2089861120 (1993 MB)
ACPI APIC Table: <GATEWA M280    >
ioapic0: Changing APIC ID to 1
ioapic0 <Version 2.0> irqs 0-23 on motherboard
kbd1 at kbdmux0
acpi0: <GATEWA M280> on motherboard
acpi0: [ITHREAD]
acpi0: Power Button (fixed)
Timecounter "ACPI-fast" frequency 3579545 Hz quality 1000
acpi_timer0: <24-bit timer at 3.579545MHz> port 0x1008-0x100b on acpi0
acpi_ec0: <Embedded Controller: GPE 0x1c> port 0x62,0x66 on acpi0
acpi_button0: <Power Button> on acpi0
acpi_button1: <Sleep Button> on acpi0
acpi_acad0: <AC Adapter> on acpi0
battery0: <ACPI Control Method Battery> on acpi0
battery1: <ACPI Control Method Battery> on acpi0
acpi_lid0: <Control Method Lid Switch> on acpi0
pcib0: <ACPI Host-PCI bridge> port 0xcf8-0xcff on acpi0
pci0: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib0
pcib1: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> irq 16 at device 1.0 on pci0
pci1: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib1
vgapci0: <VGA-compatible display> port 0x3000-0x30ff mem 0xd0000000-0xd7ffffff,0xc0100000-0xc010ffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
pcib2: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> irq 17 at device 28.0 on pci0
pci2: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib2
bge0: <Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet Controller, ASIC rev. 0x6001> mem 0xc4000000-0xc400ffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci2
miibus0: <MII bus> on bge0
brgphy0: <BCM5752 10/100/1000baseTX PHY> PHY 1 on miibus0
brgphy0:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 1000baseT, 1000baseT-FDX, auto
bge0: Ethernet address: 00:e0:b8:89:7c:95
bge0: [ITHREAD]
uhci0: <Intel 82801FB/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6) USB controller USB-A> port 0x1800-0x181f irq 23 at device 29.0 on pci0
uhci0: [ITHREAD]
uhci0: LegSup = 0x003b
usbus0: <Intel 82801FB/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6) USB controller USB-A> on uhci0
uhci1: <Intel 82801FB/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6) USB controller USB-B> port 0x1820-0x183f irq 23 at device 29.1 on pci0
uhci1: [ITHREAD]
uhci1: LegSup = 0x0010
usbus1: <Intel 82801FB/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6) USB controller USB-B> on uhci1
uhci2: <Intel 82801FB/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6) USB controller USB-C> port 0x1840-0x185f irq 22 at device 29.2 on pci0
uhci2: [ITHREAD]
uhci2: LegSup = 0x0010
usbus2: <Intel 82801FB/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6) USB controller USB-C> on uhci2
ehci0: <Intel 82801FB (ICH6) USB 2.0 controller> mem 0xc0000000-0xc00003ff irq 23 at device 29.7 on pci0
ehci0: [ITHREAD]
usbus3: EHCI version 1.0
usbus3: <Intel 82801FB (ICH6) USB 2.0 controller> on ehci0
pcib3: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> at device 30.0 on pci0
pci6: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib3
pci6: <network> at device 4.0 (no driver attached)
cbb0: <TI6411 PCI-CardBus Bridge> at device 9.0 on pci6
cardbus0: <CardBus bus> on cbb0
pccard0: <16-bit PCCard bus> on cbb0
cbb0: [FILTER]
fwohci0: <1394 Open Host Controller Interface> mem 0xc8007000-0xc80077ff,0xc8000000-0xc8003fff irq 18 at device 9.2 on pci6
fwohci0: [ITHREAD]
fwohci0: OHCI version 1.10 (ROM=1)
fwohci0: No. of Isochronous channels is 4.
fwohci0: EUI64 00:e0:b8:06:10:00:6a:61
fwohci0: Phy 1394a available S400, 2 ports.
fwohci0: Link S400, max_rec 2048 bytes.
firewire0: <IEEE1394(FireWire) bus> on fwohci0
dcons_crom0: <dcons configuration ROM> on firewire0
dcons_crom0: bus_addr 0x1380000
fwe0: <Ethernet over FireWire> on firewire0
if_fwe0: Fake Ethernet address: 02:e0:b8:00:6a:61
fwe0: Ethernet address: 02:e0:b8:00:6a:61
fwip0: <IP over FireWire> on firewire0
fwip0: Firewire address: 00:e0:b8:06:10:00:6a:61 @ 0xfffe00000000, S400, maxrec 2048
fwohci0: Initiate bus reset
fwohci0: fwohci_intr_core: BUS reset
fwohci0: fwohci_intr_core: node_id=0x00000000, SelfID Count=1, CYCLEMASTER mode
pci6: <mass storage> at device 9.3 (no driver attached)
pci6: <base peripheral, SD host controller> at device 9.4 (no driver attached)
pci0: <multimedia, audio> at device 30.2 (no driver attached)
pci0: <simple comms, generic modem> at device 30.3 (no driver attached)
isab0: <PCI-ISA bridge> at device 31.0 on pci0
isa0: <ISA bus> on isab0
atapci0: <Intel ICH6 UDMA100 controller> port 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6,0x170-0x177,0x376,0x18c0-0x18cf at device 31.1 on pci0
ata0: <ATA channel 0> on atapci0
ata0: [ITHREAD]
ata1: <ATA channel 1> on atapci0
ata1: [ITHREAD]
atapci1: <Intel ICH6M SATA150 controller> port 0x2080-0x2087,0x18f8-0x18fb,0x18f0-0x18f7,0x18d4-0x18d7,0x18e0-0x18ef mem 0xc0000c00-0xc0000fff irq 19 at device 31.2 on pci0
atapci1: [ITHREAD]
atapci1: AHCI called from vendor specific driver
atapci1: AHCI v1.00 controller with 4 1.5Gbps ports, PM not supported
ata2: <ATA channel 0> on atapci1
ata2: [ITHREAD]
ata3: <ATA channel 2> on atapci1
ata3: [ITHREAD]
pci0: <serial bus, SMBus> at device 31.3 (no driver attached)
acpi_tz0: <Thermal Zone> on acpi0
atrtc0: <AT realtime clock> port 0x70-0x77 irq 8 on acpi0
atrtc0: Warning: Couldn't map I/O.
atkbdc0: <Keyboard controller (i8042)> port 0x60,0x64 irq 1 on acpi0
atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
atkbd0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
atkbd0: [ITHREAD]
psm0: <PS/2 Mouse> irq 12 on atkbdc0
psm0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
psm0: [ITHREAD]
psm0: model IntelliMouse, device ID 3
cpu0: <ACPI CPU> on acpi0
est0: <Enhanced SpeedStep Frequency Control> on cpu0
p4tcc0: <CPU Frequency Thermal Control> on cpu0
pmtimer0 on isa0
orm0: <ISA Option ROMs> at iomem 0xc0000-0xcefff,0xcf000-0xcffff,0xdc000-0xdffff,0xe0000-0xe07ff pnpid ORM0000 on isa0
sc0: <System console> at flags 0x100 on isa0
sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
ppc0: parallel port not found.
uart0: <16550 or compatible> at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0
uart0: [FILTER]
Timecounter "TSC" frequency 1884921961 Hz quality 800
Timecounters tick every 1.000 msec
firewire0: 1 nodes, maxhop <= 0 cable IRM irm(0)  (me) 
firewire0: bus manager 0 
usbus0: 12Mbps Full Speed USB v1.0
usbus1: 12Mbps Full Speed USB v1.0
usbus2: 12Mbps Full Speed USB v1.0
usbus3: 480Mbps High Speed USB v2.0
ugen0.1: <Intel> at usbus0
uhub0: <Intel UHCI root HUB, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1> on usbus0
ugen1.1: <Intel> at usbus1
uhub1: <Intel UHCI root HUB, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1> on usbus1
ugen2.1: <Intel> at usbus2
uhub2: <Intel UHCI root HUB, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1> on usbus2
ugen3.1: <Intel> at usbus3
uhub3: <Intel EHCI root HUB, class 9/0, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 1> on usbus3
acd0: DVDR <HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GWA-4082N/CG02> at ata0-master UDMA33
ad4: 76319MB <HTS541080G9SA00 MB4OC60H> at ata2-master SATA150
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
uhub1: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
uhub2: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
Root mount waiting for: usbus3
Root mount waiting for: usbus3
Root mount waiting for: usbus3
uhub3: 8 ports with 8 removable, self powered
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ad4s3a
bge0: link state changed to UP

Originally Posted by ocicat

Likewise, I have separated recent activity into its own thread.

I appreciate it.

Originally Posted by J65nko

If you really want this to be resolved you should connect another PC to the first serial port of your laptop and follow the procedure tersely described in [...] Then send the dmesg to the OpenBSD misc mailing list, so an developer can have a look at it.

This laptop doesn't have a floppy drive. The thought of serial ports hasn't crossed my mind since 1990s - I'd have to RTFM on what I have, but I certainly don't have any cables for them. Too late on a Sunday night to try to go out to get one... Any chance of it being able to log dmesg to HDD or USB, or over Ethernet / telephone modem?

[ocicat]

Originally Posted by AlexLibman

Hmm, I thought 4.6 release was in late October.

J65nko's response was correct. Tagging occurred in July because sufficient lead time has to be factored into the schedule for official CD sets to be manufactured & be available for shipment on the official release date. The process doesn't occur overnight.

[BSDfan666]

ocicat was hinting that you should try disabling acpi instead of apm, and disabling the keyboard controller will not solve your problem.

You may wish to upgrade your BIOS, that might help.. or not.

[ocicat]

Originally Posted by BSDfan666

ocicat was hinting that you should try disabling acpi instead of apm, and disabling the keyboard controller will not solve your problem.

You may wish to upgrade your BIOS, that might help.. or not.

Both are excellent suggestions.

Likewise, I have separated recent activity into its own thread.

[AlexLibman]

I'm pretty sure you have to boot before you can mount, no?

Chicken-and-egg problem...

[J65nko]

RE: chicken and egg problem

You are right, you cannot mount an USB drive, because the system hangs, before you get to the shell/installer prompt.

With the install kernel already hanging during the hardware probing stage, the only possibility is capturing of the dmesg through the serial port.

Because you set up logging in the boot loader prompt

boot> set tty com0

the dmesg output will be directed to the serial port.

A verbose boot would even be better:

boot> set tty com0
boot> boot -c
.......
......
UKC> verbose
autoconf verbose enabled
UKC> quit

[shep]

My first reply seems to have gotten lost. Your Freebsd dmesg shows all 3 versions of usb drivers to be loaded and your OpenBSD install message probing for usb ports would suggest the problem is there. If you have no other usb devices plugged in you should only need the EHCI and OHCI drivers.

I suggest trying to disable legacy usb support in the bios and/or using apm to disable UHCI.

[AlexLibman]

Tried disabling *hci in various combinations and a few other BIOS changes - still no luck. Going to give up on this for a while. I'm grateful to everyone for trying to help.

The serial thing ain't happening - got too much to do this week, and I already moved on with another OS on that laptop...

Will give OpenBSD on that laptop another try in subsequent releases. If someone here can pass the word up Theo's chain of command to make disk logging of boot-time messages / code dumps easier that would be great.

[J65nko]

With a serial cable the logging of these messages is very easy. Here is a sample:

com0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
com0: console
com1 at isa0 port 0x2f8/8 irq 3: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo
pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5
pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot)
pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot
wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0
npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0/16: reported by CPUID; using exception 16
fdc0 at isa0 port 0x3f0/6 irq 6 drq 2
fd0 at fdc0 drive 0: 1.44MB 80 cyl, 2 head, 18 sec
usb3 at uhci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub3 at usb3 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
usb4 at uhci1: USB revision 1.0
uhub4 at usb4 "Intel UHCI root hub" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 1
rd0: fixed, 3800 blocks
softraid0 at root
root on rd0a swap on rd0b dump on rd0b
erase ^?, werase ^W, kill ^U, intr ^C, status ^T

Welcome to the OpenBSD/i386 4.5 installation program.
(I)nstall, (U)pgrade or (S)hell? i

Cool! Let's get to it.

At any prompt except password prompts you can escape to a shell by
typing '!'. Default answers are shown in []'s and are selected by
pressing RETURN.  You can exit this program at any time by pressing
Control-C, but this can leave your system in an inconsistent state.

Terminal type? [vt220]
System hostname? (short form, e.g. 'foo') vintrax

Available network interfaces are: fxp0 vlan0.
Which one do you wish to configure? (or 'done') [fxp0]
IPv4 address for fxp0? (or 'dhcp' or 'none') [dhcp] 192.168.222.244
Netmask? [255.255.255.0]
IPv6 address for fxp0? (or 'rtsol' or 'none') [none]
Available network interfaces are: fxp0 vlan0.
Which one do you wish to configure? (or 'done') [done]
Default IPv4 route? (IPv4 address, 'dhcp' or 'none') 192.168.222.10
add net default: gateway 192.168.222.10

I am not going to pass this request on, I am not even considering it, because I know, I would get an answer like this:

"Why should OpenBSD developers spend their precious time, to make things easier for lazy people"

[AlexLibman]

Because some laptops don't have external serial ports, and opening it up to check the motherboard simply isn't an option when you need to have that laptop working ASAP?

In any case, I continue to be a big fan of OpenBSD in other situations, but not for this laptop - unless of course the issues are resolved in later versions, or someone makes a debug bootloader that can log boot messages to HDD, USB, or netcat (whichever is easier to implement w/o loading the full kernel).

Stupid question - can the startup messages be written to the BIOS DMI event log?

[BSDfan666]

Originally Posted by AlexLibman

Stupid question - can the startup messages be written to the BIOS DMI event log?

No.