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

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 20:33, Kevin Oberman <oberman_at_es.net> wrote:
>> 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.

Okay, I'll take that as the closing statement. :-) Now that I know
what the problem is I can just work around it. Thanks for the useful
hints!

Cheers,
Christian