After booting from Installation CD-ROM, going through everything (editing slices and partitions on the disk, selecting a distribution, etc.), the system hangs while writing the partition/slice table to the disk. After a while it gives up, giving error messages (couldn't activate swap, etc.) On virtual console 1 (alt-f2), I see messages like ad0: WRITE command timeout - resetting ata0: resetting devices - done ad0: WRITE command timeout - resetting ata0: resetting devices - done ... and so on The disk is OK, Win98 installs hassle-free. How-To-Repeat: Just try installing it in a similar machine...
State Changed From-To: open->feedback Actually, lots of people _have_ installed successfully using several "similar machine" configurations. However, your description of your hardware is very vague. Can you list exactly which chipset you have for your IDE controller on the motherboard? Also of interest is the exact model of your hard drive and of your CDROM device. It would probably also be interesting to hear which IDE channel you have your hard drive on, and which channel you have your CDROM on, and whether these devices are jumpered as masters, slaves, or cable-select.
I found a workaround. The problem was that the ata driver dma mode was corrupting disk write/read on my computer. My IDE controller is a VIA VT82C693A or VT82C596B (not sure which one, both codes are listed), onboard a Asus P3V133 motherboard. After I figured that out: I booted from the installation CD-ROM, started a emergency shell and issued the command "sysctl -w hw.atamodes=pio,---,---,pio" (hard-drive primary master,cd-rom secondary slave). Then it installed ok. But on every boot from the hard drive I need to boot_single and do the sysctl again before starting to write on the drive. Then I compiled a new kernel using the wd driver. Works fast and is reliable. Thanks for your attention. --- sheldonh@FreeBSD.org wrote: > Synopsis: Unable to install. Can't write disklabel > to ad0 (ata disk0, udma33) > > State-Changed-From-To: open->feedback > State-Changed-By: sheldonh > State-Changed-When: Wed Sep 6 04:21:42 PDT 2000 > State-Changed-Why: > Actually, lots of people _have_ installed > successfully using > several "similar machine" configurations. > > However, your description of your hardware is very > vague. > > Can you list exactly which chipset you have for your > IDE > controller on the motherboard? Also of interest is > the exact model of your hard drive and of your CDROM > device. > > It would probably also be interesting to hear which > IDE > channel you have your hard drive on, and which > channel > you have your CDROM on, and whether these devices > are > jumpered as masters, slaves, or cable-select. > > http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=21072 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - Free email you can access from anywhere! http://mail.yahoo.com/
State Changed From-To: feedback->open Soren, here's another case that makes it sound like it'd be better to start the system off in PIO mode, although I seem to remember you saying that this came with its own set of problems. Perhaps there's some way to pass PIO/DMA mode configs to the kernel via the boot loader? Anyway, it's an interesting PR. :-)
Responsible Changed From-To: freebsd-bugs->sos Over to maintainer.
State Changed From-To: open->closed Please try 4.2 and contact me if the problem persists.