From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Feb 14 20:12:11 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 03BDC16A406 for ; Wed, 14 Feb 2007 20:12:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kdk@daleco.biz) Received: from ezekiel.daleco.biz (southernuniform.com [66.76.92.18]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A85CD13C4A3 for ; Wed, 14 Feb 2007 20:12:10 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kdk@daleco.biz) Received: from [192.168.2.2] (archangel.daleco.biz [69.27.145.126]) by ezekiel.daleco.biz (8.13.4/8.13.1) with ESMTP id l1EKC3fg021796; Wed, 14 Feb 2007 14:12:05 -0600 (CST) (envelope-from kdk@daleco.biz) Message-ID: <45D36D0E.9090804@daleco.biz> Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 14:11:58 -0600 From: Kevin Kinsey User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.0.9) Gecko/20070207 SeaMonkey/1.0.7 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Josh Makler References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Cannot get freebsd up and running... X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 20:12:11 -0000 Josh Makler wrote: > > I first posted this on a FreeBSD help forum, where I was quickly > redirected here (I guess this is a serious issue...) Well, I don't wish to offend, but if that message was formatted anything like this one, probably nobody at that forum wished to deal with it. Like it or not, we don't know you personally, so you are going to be judged by the quality of your e-mail. Your mailer seems pretty "b0rked", or else you were having a bit of a "one off" day, as most messages to the list don't look this bad. Ah, perhaps you cut-n-pasted from the forum source? Still not a great move. All that aside .... > I'm going to first off my hardware is: > AMD 3800+ > 1GB RAM > NviDia 7900 GT OC gfx card > DVDRW/CDRW drive > ??? Hard drive with windows XP on it (came with the PC...) > SeaGate ST340810A Hard drive as slave (This one has FreeBSD on it) > I added on to an EMachines T6536 to get this setup... I cannot find > any info on my motherboard at all... I think its an American > Megatrends board though. OK - probably not "American Megatrends" -- they are a BIOS manufacturer. EMachines have, in the last 3 or so years, begun to use motherboards that are modified for their needs; it may be hard to decide which board you have. Have you tried a resource such as "Wim's BIOS" or "motherboards.org" or "pc911.com" to get a *positive* ID on your board? Almost everything you're discussing here depends on the motherboard. > OK, this problem is not a simple one to diagnose, and probably near > impossible to fix. > when I began to install FreeBSD (Actually PC-BSD, but it is 100% the > same aside from the installer pretty much...) It gave me errors about > ACPI (which my PC here does support...) I got through the installer by > disabling ACPI, but it doesn't work that way when I try to start it > up. > these errors were: > > ACPI-0397: *** Error: name:43005350 > ACPI-0397: in namespace, > ACPI-0204: *** Error: AcpiLoadTables: could not AE_BAD_CHARACTER > ACPI-0213: *** Error: AE_BAD_CHARACTER > ACPI: table MADT: ACPI Startup failed with > the other errors are not so easy to describe. They move rapidly down > the screen, and repeat over and over again until I pull the plug. > these errors occur when I try to start the system after disabling > ACPI: > "disabling ACPI" ?? How? In the system's BIOS setup? If FreeBSD doesn't like your ACPI table, you need to tell FreeBSD not to use ACPI. > these are for da0 all...) > all the info I that they look somewhat like this, > although messages: > SCSI (da#: umass Not Ready csi-0,aa,55,40 > asc: 3a, 0 > there is a Is there supposed to be more to this? Note that "da0" refers generally to a SCSI drive, but could be some other device such as a USB drive, scanner, camera, etc. Unplug everything from the computer and try the boot again; do you have the same error messages regarding "da0"? > Windows works fine on this PC, and I had a working linux installation > prviously as well (although I did get some funky errors too, but it > just ignored then and moved on without trouble...) So I'm pretty sure > it's some sort of issue BSD is having with my PC, and not some issue > with my processor. > please help, I'd really like to use BSD, and I'm willing to do > whatever I can to work through this. I Don't mean to sound like a > newbie, and I'm not, I've used other types of Unix for years, it's > just this is my first *real* run in with BSD, and this is a pretty new > computer I'm using... not to mention my first encounter with those > errors. > This imply, even when system. > thanks in err, advance? Is your system BIOS up-to-date? It could be that a later BIOS version will enable your motherboard to talk turkey with the FBSD ACPI driver. It's also quite possible that something about your motherboard causes FreeBSD to load the wrong ACPI table. When booting, use the "escape to loader prompt" option, and try these commands: > set hint.acpi.0.disabled=1 > boot That may only get you running as in "example two" above; maybe try this the next time to get better error messages: > set hw.acpi.verbose > boot You might also wish to try the following tunables in a similar manner, using "set" at the loader prompt and then "boot". debug.acpi.disabled debug.acpi.quirks Lastly, there is a lot of hardware out there, and the FreeBSD Project doesn't have the resources to test the OS on every variation. You might consider a different motherboard for this box. HTH, Kevin Kinsey -- You should make a point of trying every experience once -- except incest and folk-dancing. -- A. Bax, Farewell My Youth