Re: Boot issues with a Dell Inspiron 530 and 8.0 RC1

> From: Christian Schmidt <schmidt_chr_at_gmx.net>
> Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:35:11 +0200
> Sender: owner-freebsd-current_at_freebsd.org
> 
> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 18:12, Christian Schmidt <schmidt_chr_at_gmx.net> wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 12, 2009 at 07:21, john hood <jh_at_sandstorm.net> wrote:
> >> Christian Schmidt wrote:
> > [...]
> >>> I am seeing a strange issue with my Dell Inspiron 530 with 8.0 RC1-p1
> >>> at around 50-75% percent of all boots. It all boils down to GENERIC
> >>> throwing the following:
> >>>
> >>> AP #1 (PHY #1) failed!
> >>> panic y/n? [y] panic: bye-bye
> >>> cpuid = 0
> > [...]
> >> We have 3 of these machines.
> >>
> >> In my experience, keyboard activity triggers the problem.  If I boot the
> >> machine without any keyboard presses/releases between the time the loader
> >> starts the kernel and some time later, definitely by the time the USB
> >> keyboard driver attaches, then I don't get this problem.  This includes any
> >> key-up (and maybe key repeat) events you may generate after typing a key at
> >> the boot menu, or after typing enter at the OK prompt, or pressing a key to
> >> bypass the autoboot timeout that counts down by seconds.
> >>
> >> If you let the machine start from cold without touching the keyboard, what
> >> happens?
> >
> > That is a very interesting point you are making. Indeed, it never
> > occured to me that I am usually hammering down on F1 and 1 to boot
> > faster (yeah yeah, I know ;-)). I let the machine boot through without
> > that a couple of times and it seemed to have worked for about a 100%
> > of those cases. I will keep testing but I think we have a hot
> > contender. :-)
> >
> 
> Okay, after testing that for a couple of days I can confirm that it
> never-ever happens when I leave the keyboard alone during the
> boot-phase. As a workaround, I can live with not touching the
> keyboard. Nethertheless, this seems to be a bug that deserves fixing,
> isn't it?

FWIW, I've seen this at least as far back as V5 and I think I have seen
it on V4. I have no idea if it happened in V3. That was too long ago. 

IT would be nice to see this fixed, but I think we have all lived with
it for a long time and most have either learned not to type stuff before
the device probes have ended or they have never happened to trigger it.

In my case, it seems like it is OK to type after the keyboard probe is
completed. 
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman_at_es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
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