From owner-freebsd-mobile Fri Apr 27 11:38:11 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Received: from gw.nectar.com (gw.nectar.com [208.42.49.153]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 77F4837B43C; Fri, 27 Apr 2001 11:38:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nectar@nectar.com) Received: from hamlet.nectar.com (hamlet.nectar.com [10.0.1.102]) by gw.nectar.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E1164193BD; Fri, 27 Apr 2001 13:37:59 -0500 (CDT) Received: (from nectar@localhost) by hamlet.nectar.com (8.11.3/8.9.3) id f3RIbxw71926; Fri, 27 Apr 2001 13:37:59 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from nectar@spawn.nectar.com) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 13:37:59 -0500 From: "Jacques A. Vidrine" To: freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.org Subject: [SOLVED?] IBM ThinkPad X20 and FreeBSD Message-ID: <20010427133759.A71732@hamlet.nectar.com> Mail-Followup-To: "Jacques A. Vidrine" , freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i X-Url: http://www.nectar.com/ Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org [Bcc'd to -chat because there was general interest in this at one time. Please follow-up there if your message is not related to the technical content of this message. Thanks!] Hello all. This is the continuing saga of apparent incompatibilities between IBM's ThinkPad BIOS and FreeBSD. Summary for the impatient: I received a ThinkPad X20 yesterday, with BIOS version 2.12 and embedded controller program version 1.27 (the most recent available of each). It was preinstalled with Windows 2000 Professional. I shrunk the partition and installed FreeBSD. Thereafter, the BIOS would hang at boot, so that I could not boot off of any device. I downgraded to an older BIOS, and was then able to boot FreeBSD. BIOS version 2.12: The most recent. Hangs if FreeBSD is installed. version 2.10: Supposedly fixed, but unavailable for download or from tech support. version 2.07: Supposedly broken, but actually works with FreeBSD. More information: Those interested will already be aware of the BIOS problems that have plagued ThinkPads in the past 6 months or so. The issue was brought up on BSD Today [1] and Slashdot, and there was a discouraging description of the problem posted on IBM's tech support web site [2]. Later it was reported that the problem was fixed [3]. Shortly after, I ordered a ThinkPad X20 to replace my really well beaten Sony VAIO Z505. When I received the ThinkPad X20, it had two partitions: partition 1 was Windows 2000; partition 2 was the IBM Recovery Partition. Both were FAT32 formatted with partition id 28. The system worked fine under Windows 2000. There was no hibernation partition and I did not try anything to do with hibernation. After verifying the thing was in basic working order, I used PartitionMagic to shrink the Windows 2000 partition. I also installed BootMagic. This left me with pretty much the same partition table, except that the Windows 2000 partition started about 14 GB into the disk (20 GB total disk). I then verified everything still worked by rebooting a few times. Finally, I installed FreeBSD 4.2. FreeBSD was installed at the beginning of the disk in the 14 GB partition. My resulting partition table looked something like this: # ID type ~start ~size description 1 28 FAT32 14GB 4GB Windows 2000 2 28 FAT32 18GB 1GB IBM Recovery Partition 3 165 FreeBSD 0 14GB FreeBSD 4.2 Fairly simple set up. Once I rebooted after this new installation, the BIOS hung. I could not access the BIOS configuration menu, or boot off of any device. Searching the IBM web site led me to the location of BIOS and related updates [4]. One can see on the web site and in the release notes that the original problem was corrected. Here is an excerpt from the release notes for BIOS version 2.10 for the ThinkPad X20: <2.10 - 2.10(IZET90WW)> - (Fix) The system can't be booted from the hard disk drive whose partition ID is n5h (n is 1 or greater). At this point I was pretty confused, since naturally this fix should have also been in BIOS version 2.12 (the BIOS I was running). Yet the symptoms were exactly as those described in the originally reported problem and on these mailing lists. I decided that I would try downgrading to BIOS version 2.10. Only I couldn't find it for download! 2.07 and 2.12 were available, but not 2.10. This prompted me to contact IBM tech support. I was told by the (nice, helpful) tech there that version 2.10 was never made available for download and never will -- it was only factory installed. He didn't know why :-) The tech suggested downgrading to 2.07, and then back to 2.12 to see if that cleared anything up. I was skeptical, but I wanted to give support enough information so that the problem would be resolved, so I gave it a try. I removed the hard drive so I could boot of the System Program Service Diskette with BIOS version 2.07. The downgrade went smoothly. I replaced the hard drive, just to see what happened, and what-do-you-know: I could now boot normally again. As a sanity check, I went through the procedure to upgrade back to 2.12. Once this was done, my BIOS would hang at boot again. Again downgrading to 2.07 brought things back to `normal'. I reported the results back to IBM support, so that they could fix BIOS version 2.12. My ticket number for this problem is 16650354. I asked them to keep the ticket open -- I consider using the older BIOS a work-around only. If you have similar problems with your ThinkPad X20 or other ThinkPads, I encourage you to cross-reference my ticket number when contacting support. Now, if I were brave, I would create another dummy partition and mess around with different partition IDs to see if it matched the description of the bug fixed (i.e. supposedly any partition id that is a multiple of 16, plus 5 should trigger the bug). However, I don't have any way to access the ThinkPad hard drive should I get myself into a fix. If you have multiple ThinkPads or can otherwise frob your drive elsewhere to recover, I encourage you to do so and report your results here. I may report more later about how well this ThinkPad works under FreeBSD. For now I have to visit my in-laws for the weekend, and eat boiled crawfish and fried catfish. :-) Cheers, -- Jacques Vidrine / n@nectar.com / jvidrine@verio.net / nectar@FreeBSD.org [1] [2] or go to IBM's web site and search for `thinkpad freebsd'. [3] [4] To find information about the bug fixes, search the *.txt files for the string `n5h'. The important files there for the ThinkPad X20 are: spsdiz88.exe Creates a bootable disk for installing BIOS v2.07 spsdiz88.txt Release notes for above. spsdiz92.exe Creates a bootable disk for installing BIOS v2.12 spsdiz92.txt Release notes for above. d2dfdfix.exe Creates a bootable disk for accessing the IBM Recovery Partition of your hard drive. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message