Loader hangs after the 'welcome to freebsd' page

[horly]

hi all,

quite the newbie to FreeBSD here.

I have installed freeBSD 8.2 on a fujitsu RX300 server, with a LSI raid controller based on the LSI SAS 2108 Raid on Chip.
After installation,
the boot process will hang for about 5 min, after selecting option from 1 to 5
at the 'Welcome to FreeBSD' , with progress cursor hanging at '/','|','\' or '-' .

I have tried using
1) Boot FreeBSD
2) Boot FreeBSD with ACPI disabled
3) Boot FreeBSD in Safe Mode
4) Boot FreeBSD in single user mode
5) Boot FreeBSD with verbose logging

None which made any difference.

The problem which causes the loader to hang for 5 min , seems to occur before
the 1st line of boot message appears.
i.e
Copyright (c) 1992-2011 The FreeBSD Project
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980 ..... (blah, blah , blah)

Could this be due to some of the kernel modules ?

Another interesting note, was that the boot up from the installation DVD,
also hangs for about 3 mins at the same place.

See attached for the screen shot at which the loader hangs

Thanks in advance for any help / suggestion

 

[tingo]

It could be the kernel modules; but that is easy for you to test, simply disable them in /boot/loader.conf and see if that helps.
For other things; over the years, various machines have had the "slow boot" syndrome related to things like
- BIOS or BIOS settings
- virtual floppies / cdroms / other media (on blades / server class machines)
- usb
- ATAPI DMA
- firewire controllers
and probably more.
Disabling suspects one at the time (either from BIOS or the boot prompt) might give you more insight in where the problems lies. However, it might be a long road.

 

[Terri_Kennedy]

I have installed freeBSD 8.2 on a fujitsu RX300 server, with a LSI raid controller based on the LSI SAS 2108 Raid on Chip.
After installation,
the boot process will hang for about 5 min, after selecting option from 1 to 5
at the 'Welcome to FreeBSD' , with progress cursor hanging at '/','|','\' or '-'

How much memory do you have in the system? I have some roughly-similar hardware (dual Xeon E5520) with 48GB RAM and have a pause at the same spot, but only around 45 seconds. I've always assumed that it was the loader zeroing out memory to prevent subsequent reads of un-initialized memory from triggering machine checks due to parity / ECC errors.

 

[horly]

It could be the kernel modules; but that is easy for you to test, simply disable them in /boot/loader.conf and see if that helps.
For other things; over the years, various machines have had the "slow boot" syndrome related to things like
- BIOS or BIOS settings
- virtual floppies / cdroms / other media (on blades / server class machines)
- usb
- ATAPI DMA
- firewire controllers
and probably more.
Disabling suspects one at the time (either from BIOS or the boot prompt) might give you more insight in where the problems lies. However, it might be a long road.

Hi tingo,
thanks for you reply. i think i will try disabling the modules from the boot prompt first.
FYI, there are some emulex FC HBAs, and Intel Pro 1000 HBAs.
which modules/hardware do you think would be the likely suspects ?

thanks in advance

 

[horly]

How much memory do you have in the system? I have some roughly-similar hardware (dual Xeon E5520) with 48GB RAM and have a pause at the same spot, but only around 45 seconds. I've always assumed that it was the loader zeroing out memory to prevent subsequent reads of un-initialized memory from triggering machine checks due to parity / ECC errors.

Hi Terry,
thanks for replying, this machine has 1 xeon 5600 4 core cpu and 16 GB RAM.
which are lesser than yours, however the hang time seems to much longer.
Do you have any other theories ?

Rgds
Henley

 

[tingo]

Hi tingo,
thanks for you reply. i think i will try disabling the modules from the boot prompt first.
FYI, there are some emulex FC HBAs, and Intel Pro 1000 HBAs.
which modules/hardware do you think would be the likely suspects ?

Sorry, I have no idea. Your guess is a good as mine. If you have no better clues, you will have to try them one by one.

On a second thought: how many HBA's are in your machine, and do you know what the timeout (searching for devices) are on them?