Installation of new FreeBSD Release on ThinkPad

P

photor-freebsd

Hello Forum,

I want to come back to FreeBSD. :) I had FreeBSD 4 ... 7 installed on my laptop (and desktop) - and then had to change to Linux (now using Arch). I have an "old" IBM ThinkPad X24 (368MB RAM, 40GB HDD) left over which already had FreeBSD running, last was FreeBSD 7.

So, I downloaded CD-image FreeBSD 10.3 RELEASE (DVD-image was not booting) and tried to boot that image using the drive in the dock, but I got stuck with following output (sorry, but I wrote it down by hand):
Code: 
 ...
(aprobe0:ata1:0:1:0) ATAPI_IDENTIFY
( ... )              CAM status: command time out
ad0: <TOSHIBA MK4026GAX PA100U> ATA-6 device 38154 MB
...
These messages are repeated and repeated and ... and I aborted after about 15 minutes.:(

My research in the web gave me 3 entries(!), from which I get the impression, that this is an issue because of the ThinkPad together with CDROM/DVD-drive. I tried to boot with an old FreeBSD 7 RELEASE - which worked. (BTW: the 10.3-CD worked with my working Laptop ThinkPad X440s - I could boot into the Live system, so image seems to be OK)

Do I have a chance to get FreeBSD newer than 7 to run on the ThinkPad X24?

Thank you for your help,

Photor

PS: sorry, if this topic has been discussed here already.
 
At boot, escape at prompt, set this option:
Code: 
set hw.ata.ata_dma=0

I didn't used it myself, but had a report that it worked out a similar issue.
 
Thank you, ASX

I tried it and first it looked as if it works. But later I run into the same endless(?) loop. Here is what I got:
Code: 
ata1: reset tp1 mask=03 ostato=50 ostat1=00
      stat0=0x00 err=0x01 lsb=0x14 msb=0xbe
      stat1=0x00 ....
      reset tp2 stat0=00 stat1=00 devcos=0x300000
This plus the open metioned aprobe0-block is repeated.

BTW: if the exact text is needed for better diagnosis I can provide.
BTW2: I booted from FreeBSD 10.3 RELEASE i386 CD Disk1. Unfortunately. I cannot boot from USB-Stick.

I know that FreeBSD 7 works (it already was installed on that computer). Can it be an option to install this and update via FBSD8, 9, 10 and than 11; This - I think - has to be done with base system only, rigth? But my question is: if I went up to FBSD11, will it work/boot or do I get the same situation? And are the intermediate versions still available?

But 1st option would be ti install FBSD 10.3 or 11 if that's better.

Ciao,

Photor
 
photor-freebsd said:
TOSHIBA MK4026GAX PA100U
Click to expand...
that's the optical drive?

I had similar problem with a T41, but I can't remember exactly what it was, or what fixed it. That Thinkpad is recycled now, can't peek :( Vague memory about something in /boot/loader.conf, a sysctl setting and/or some hp-specific kld. It did run 9, 10 and 11 okay.

not much help,
Juha

Slow cogs... I recall installing 9.something from CD. I can't remember booting any later (10 or 11) from CD.

It really wanted to have the (mostly unused) CD drive, did not boot without it.
 
Looks like the CD player might be a bit dodgy. It has happened to me too on a number of occasions, if the CD drive hasn't been used for years. If the laptop is able to boot from USB you might want to give that a try.
 
Juha Nurmela said:
that's the optical drive?
Click to expand...
yes.

Juha Nurmela said:
I had similar problem with a T41, but I can't remember exactly what it was, or what fixed it. That Thinkpad is recycled now, can't peek :( Vague memory about something in /boot/loader.conf, a sysctl setting and/or some hp-specific kld. It did run 9, 10 and 11 okay.
Click to expand...

At the moment I think about installing FBSD7 or 8 and the update step by step. But I don't know, if the intermediate versions are still available. As far as I know I have to do this step by step - at least for the major version numbers.
Or is it even adviced to do each minor step (8.0 -> 8.1 -> 8.2 -> 8.3 -> 9.0 -> 9.1 .....), too?

Juha Nurmela said:
Slow cogs... I recall installing 9.something from CD. I can't remember booting any later (10 or 11) from CD.

It really wanted to have the (mostly unused) CD drive, did not boot without it.
Click to expand...

May be the case; it was not used very often. On the other hand booting an old FBSD7 CD worked. So I think the drive (and the dock) is working.

SirDice said:
Looks like the CD player might be a bit dodgy. It has happened to me too on a number of occasions, if the CD drive hasn't been used for years. If the laptop is able to boot from USB you might want to give that a try.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the X24 is not able to boot from USB-Drive.:( (Workaround: see above)

Ciao,

Photor
 
Hello Forum,

I installed a FreeBSD 8.1 i386 from CD (provided by a magazin, found in my CD-archive). I now play a little bit with it and will update/upgrade successively to newest (AKA will most likely come back with questions ;) )

Ciao,

photor
 
Spirit :)

Something you might regret later, what version of UFS will your root-fs end up as ? I don't know if it's important at all, or if you can fix it later, just an idea.

Juha
 
Juha Nurmela said:
Something you might regret later, what version of UFS will your root-fs end up as?
Click to expand...
UFS2 has been the default since FreeBSD 5.0.

Because the laptop is using i386 I would recommend against using ZFS.
 
Somewhere I read about ZFS and that it needs memory. As this laptop has only 380 MB of RAM I did not think about using ZFS.
BTW I am thinking about an SSD. But I do not know if that is possible in that machine. For the first I will "train" myself in operating FBSD.

Ciao,

Photor
 
photor-freebsd said:
I am thinking about an SSD. But I do not know if that is possible in that machine.
Click to expand...
The machine simply detects a disk, it can't really tell the difference. Looking at some of the previous outputs it looks like this laptop uses IDE. I've never seen an IDE SSD, not even sure they exist.
 
SirDice said:
I've never seen an IDE SSD, not even sure they exist.
Click to expand...

I have one sitting on my shelf, it's a Transend 8GB 2.5" SSD. It's terrible though because it has a firmware (as I've read somewhere) that optimizes the operation for FAT32 only.
 
Thank you, tobik. I will keep it in mind. Have to figure out, how to change hard disk in that machine.

I am now about to update (playing with the system and "FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE HAS PASSED ITS End-OF-LIFE DATE." ;)). Do I need to step through all minor releases or is it possible to update directly to FreeBSD9 afterwards to FreeBSD10 etc?[1]

Awaiting the adventure,

Photor

[1] and I hope I will not end up in the same loop that made me post here (see 1st post of the thread):oops:
 
You should be able to upgrade to 9.x, there's no need to step through all the 8.x releases. In theory it should also be possible to jump directly to 10.x but that might be too big a step at once.
 
Thank you SirDice, I will try like this. At the moment there are no ports installed. So, that should do without too much overhead.:beer:

Ciao,

Photor
 
Hello,

I tried to go from 8.1 up to 9.1 (same going up to 9.3) doing
Code: 
# freebsd-update -r 9.1-RELEASE upgrade
and I got:
Code: 
...
The update metadata is correctly signed, but
failed an integrity check.
Cowardly refusing to proceed any further.
Now I am going to 8.3 first (also, to just learn). This is running a.t.m. Is there a "major" change in the system between 8.X and 9.X?
BTW: in between I crashed the system by following the handbook[1] updating the system with a customized kernel.:eek: I am going now with GENERIC - don't worry! Still having fun :)

Ciao,

Photor

[1] FreeBSD Handbook (German edition) https://www.freebsd.org/doc/de_DE.I...sdupdate.html#freebsd-update-custom-kernel-9x
 
Hello,

I did some upgrading on the weekend and reached FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE using freebsd-update which was new to me. But now doing the last step up to 11.0-RELEASE I get ... /var: filesystem full. This is due to /var/db/freebsd-update-directory, which carries 1.2 GB (in subfolder files) after update marathon.

Is there a command to clean this db?

Ciao,

Photor
 
You can remove everything, anything missing will get downloaded anyway. rm -rf /var/db/freebsd-update/*
 
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